| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
29 Jun 2009 : Column 112W—continued
The Ministry's predecessor Department, the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA), which excluded the National Offender Management Service and the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, incurred the following expenditure on publications:
| £ | |
The Ministry has a contract with TSO to supply the Department with a large proportion of external publications. The figures quoted above for the Ministry of Justice HQ, HM Courts Service and Tribunals Service figures represent expenditure with TSO only. The Ministry's publications via TSO can be found at:
The figures provided for the National Offender Management Service (including HM Prison Service and the 42 local probation boards) include publication expenditure for their business plans, annual reports and annual accounts only. To collate the expenditure for all NOMS agency publications would incur disproportionate cost.
The Office of the Public Guardian figures include both in-house and TSO expenditure.
EU Law
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the proportion of statutory obligations provided for by legislation on matters for which his Department is responsible which were introduced as a consequence of obligations arising from EU legislation in the latest period for which figures are available. [281861]
Mr. Straw: The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only by manually examining each piece of legislation the Ministry of Justice has introduced at a disproportionate cost. On the basis of the information provided by MoJ policy experts, it appears that of the 280 statutory instruments laid by the MoJ since its creation in May 2007, two of these were partially concerned with meeting obligations arising from EU legislation.
Land Titles
Dan Rogerson: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether there is a (a) statutory or (b) other limit on the amount of time made available for the Lord Chancellor to defend land title guarantees at tribunal. [281420]
Bridget Prentice: The Lord Chancellor is not required to defend land title guarantees in proceedings before the adjudicator to HM Land Registry.
Legal Aid
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much has been spent from the public purse on legal aid for judicial review cases in each of the last five years. [282184]
Bridget Prentice: Legal aid cash expenditure for judicial review cases in each of the past five years is shown in the following table.
| Judicial review cases expenditure | |
| Financial year | Expenditure (£ million) |
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether there are limits on the amount an expert witness may charge in legal aid cases. [282186]
Bridget Prentice: In Crown court cases, discretionary guideline rates apply to specified types of expert witness. There are no fees set for other types of expert witnesses in criminal cases or for any expert in civil cases. These are assessed against knowledge of local market rates on a case by case basis. Providers are required to obtain at least two quotes and choose the best option in terms of the service they provide and the fees charged.
The recent “Civil Bid Rounds for 2010 Contracts” consultation and the “Family Legal Aid Funding from 2010” consultation included proposals to control spending on experts’ fees by removing experts’ cancellation fees and administration costs from the scope of public funding and capping the pay rates for experts’ travel and waiting time.
The Legal Services Commission (LSC) is currently finalising the official consultation response on the “Civil Bid Rounds for 2010 Contracts” consultation which will set out the final proposals regarding experts’ fees. It is currently due to be published by the end of June and will apply to all civil publicly funded cases.
Legal Services Commission: Expenditure
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much expenditure the Legal Services Commission has incurred on expert witnesses in (a) family law cases and (b) criminal law cases funded through legal aid in each of the last five years. [282185]
Bridget Prentice: The Legal Services Commission (LSC) does not record separately the amounts paid to expert witnesses from funds granted by the LSC. Payments to expert witnesses form part of the overall disbursement paid to legal services providers.
Magistrates Courts
David Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the average time taken between charge and trial of a defendant tried in a magistrates court has been in each year since 2000. [282006]
Bridget Prentice: Table 1 shows the estimated average time from charge/laying of information to start of trial in the magistrates courts for England and Wales in all criminal cases since 2001. Table 2 below shows the estimated average time from charge to start of trial for charge cases only. Results for 2000 have not been supplied, due to differences in data collection methods and business rules.
| Table 1, charge and summons cases, estimated number of days in all criminal cases between charge/laying of information and start of trial for defendants in England and Wales, 2001 to 2009 | |||
| Estimated time from charge/laying of information to start of trial (days) | Margin of error (+/- number of days) | Number of defendants in the sample | |
| Notes: 1. Results taken from time intervals survey, a quarterly, one week survey, primarily used to measure timeliness in the magistrates courts 2. Two surveys (March and September) have been used for each year, except for 2009 where only March is available 3. Results shown for cases in which start of trial date is provided 4. Results include trials in which a defendant pleads not guilty and is tried summarily in absence 5. Results for 2000 have not been supplied, due to differences in data collection methods and business rules 6. The margin of error is a precision of a result based on a sample survey. The true value is likely to fall within the range of the sample result +/- the margin of error | |||
Parliamentary Standards Authority
Mr. Dai Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many individuals are to be appointed to the Parliamentary Standards Authority; by what process the appointments will be made; what criteria for appointment will apply; whether there is to be provision for their remuneration; and for what period such appointments would be made. [277698]
Barbara Keeley: I have been asked to reply.
The proposed arrangements for appointment and remuneration of members of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority are set out in Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Parliamentary Standards Bill [Bill 121] as published.
Mr. Dai Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the likely (a) establishment and (b) running costs of the proposed new Parliamentary Standards Authority (PSA); and whether the PSA will be a public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. [280177]
Barbara Keeley: I have been asked to reply.
Cross-party discussions on the form of the new authority are ongoing. The Government's proposal on the classification of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act is published in the Parliamentary Standards Bill.
Probation Officers: Manpower
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many trainee probation officers are expected to complete training in 2009. [280833]
Mr. Straw: The number expected to complete their training in 2009 is 513. It is too soon to give an accurate picture of the number of TPO graduates who will be offered jobs. All probation areas are looking closely at their budgets and work force needs to ensure as many trainees as possible are offered employment.
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the number of trainee probation officers who will not be offered employment in each region in 2009. [280834]
Mr. Straw: A recent survey of the 42 probation areas, who are the employers, has shown that it is too soon to be certain how many of these graduates will be offered jobs in the Probation Service. The regional Directors of Offender Management have been asked to review the position of their local probation boards and trusts to ensure that decisions about TPO employment are based on credible workforce plans that take full account of the staffing requirements of the next three years within the region and elsewhere in the country.
Reoffenders
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will publish the feasibility studies carried out by his Department on quantifying re-offending rates among former prisoners of each prison in England and Wales. [281157]
Maria Eagle: The Ministry of Justice is currently undertaking a feasibility study to investigate this issue. This study aims to determine whether meaningful data on the reoffending of former prisoners from individual institutions can be produced. We aim to complete this work by the end of the financial year 2009-10. Once this work has been completed, it will need to go through the normal analytical quality assurance process to determine how this could be suitably published.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |