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8 Feb 2010 : Column 766W—continued
Taxation: Holiday Accommodation
Bob Spink: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make it his policy to extend arrangements for tax relief under the furnished holiday lettings rules from 6 April 2010 for those who let furnished holiday properties as their (a) sole source of income and (b) main business; and if he will make a statement. [316535]
Mr. Timms: Budget 2009 announced that the furnished holiday lettings (FHL) rules would be repealed with effect from April 2010. Draft legislation and an impact assessment were published alongside the 2009 pre-Budget report in December 2009. There are no plans to extend the FHL rules in the way suggested.
Valuation Office: Freedom of Information
Robert Neill: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what timetable has been set for the Valuation Office Agency to make a substantive response to Freedom of Information request 11461802.1/CEO, submitted to the Agency in August 2008; and what the reasons are for the time taken to respond to that request. [308686]
Ian Pearson: The VOA will provide a substantive answer to this request by 26 February 2010. The VOA has written to the requester explaining the reasons for the delay in replying.
Welfare Tax Credits
Steve Webb: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many and what percentage of tax credit claimants had been (a) underpaid and (b) overpaid more than (i) once, (ii) twice, (iii) three times and (iv) four times since their claim began in the latest period for which figures are available. [316536]
Mr. Timms: Through the Tax Credits Transformation programme HM Revenue and Customs is continuing to help people to reduce the likelihood of getting an over or underpayment on their award.
Information on the number of tax credit awards with more than one, two, three and four underpayments or overpayments, between 2003-04 and 2007-08, is provided in the following table:
Steve Webb: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many individual cases of tax credit overpayment his Department has taken to court to seek recovery in each month since April 2009; and if he will make a statement. [316537]
Mr. Timms: HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) initiates court action only as a last resort.
The number of court actions initiated by HMRC through the county court (in England and Wales)(1), sheriff's court (Scotland) and magistrates court (Northern Ireland) from April 2009 for the recovery of tax credit overpayments are shown in the following table.
(1) For England and Wales these figures relate only to actions commenced centrally and exclude those commenced by local HMRC Technical Offices where it is not possible to readily disaggregate tax credit cases from the total number of locally initiated court actions.
| Court cases | |
Justice
Alcoholic Drinks: Rehabilitation
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many offenders in the criminal justice system have been required to undergo alcohol treatment as part of a sentence in each of the last five years. [316403]
Maria Eagle: Offenders aged 18 or over convicted of offences committed on or after 4 April 2005 and who have expressed their willingness to comply can be sentenced to an alcohol treatment requirement (ATR) as part of a community order or suspended sentence order. Courts can make it a requirement of a community rehabilitation order or community punishment and rehabilitation order for offenders convicted of offences committed before 4 April 2005 and 16 to 17-year-old offenders to receive alcohol treatment.
The youth rehabilitation order (YROs), the new community sentence for under-18s, was introduced in November 2009. A specific intoxicating substance requirement can be made part of a YRO under which an under-18 would be required to undertake treatment for alcohol misuse. Data for the number of YROs with an intoxicating substance requirement are not yet available.
The number of offenders made subject to an ATR in each year from 2005, when the ATR first became available to courts in England and Wales, to 2008 is shown in the following table(1). Equivalent data for 2009 will be published on the last working day of April. It is not possible to provide data for the number of offenders required to attend alcohol treatment as part of a community rehabilitation order (CRO) or community punishment and rehabilitation order (CPRO) from 2005-09.
| ATR commencements | |||
| Community order | Suspended sentence order | Total | |
| (1) Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2008 Note: These figures have been drawn from administrative data systems which may be amended at any time. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. | |||
Blaydon
Mr. David Anderson: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will set out, with statistical information related as directly as possible to the Blaydon constituency, the effects on Blaydon of his Department's policies and actions since 2000. [315295]
Mr. Wills: The Ministry of Justice's work spans criminal, civil and family justice, democracy, rights and the constitution. Every year around nine million people use our services in 900 locations across the United Kingdom, including 650 courts and tribunals and 139 prisons in England and Wales.
The range of the Department's policies and actions is wide and the statistical information relating to it is not normally collected on a constituency basis. Consequently, some of the information requested in the question cannot be provided in the form requested except at a disproportionate cost.
Although data on sentencing for the period is not available for the constituency of Blaydon, it is available for Northumbria. This shows an increase in the total number of offenders sentenced annually from 50,378 in 2000 to 50,622 in 2008, the latest period for which such information is available.
Likewise, the number of offences brought to justice for the Northumbria area increased from 39,360 for the 12 months ending 31 March 2001 to 45,399 (provisional figures) for the 12 months ending 31 March 2009.
With regard to prosecutions, data are not available for the constituency of Blaydon. However, the total number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts in Northumbria was 66,781 in 1997 compared to 60,642 in 2008.
The latest data, which cover reoffending in the period 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2009, showed that the three-month reoffending rate for offenders on the probation caseload in Gateshead was 14.07 per cent. After controlling for changes in the characteristics
of offenders on the probation caseload, there was a reduction in reoffending of 3.07 per cent. compared to the 2007-08 baseline. Data are not available prior to 2007 on this basis.
The number of persons commencing court order supervision by the Probation Service in Northumbria was 4,083 in 2000 and 6,574 in 2008.
55,879 civil non-family proceedings were started in the county courts of the Cleveland, Durham and Northumbria HMCS area in 2008, compared to 44,568 in 2000. There were also 4,368 private law applications and 258 public law applications made in the county or High Courts of this HMCS area in 2008/09, compared to 3,353 and 277 respectively in 2003-04, the first annual period for which these figures are available.
In addition, at a national level:
Local communities are being better engaged in criminal justice-by giving them a say in the types of Community Payback projects offenders carry out and allowing them to see justice being done, for example through the use of high visibility jackets. Offenders have now worked more than fourteen million hours, with an estimated value to the taxpayer of over £80 million.
Major constitutional reforms have been delivered, including devolution, the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, Lords Reform, and a new Supreme Court for the UK.
Brighton Special Cases Unit
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice on how many occasions the Review Panel covering the Brighton Special Cases Unit has met; on what date each such meeting took place; who (a) acted as the (i) chairman and (ii) clerk and (b) attended each meeting; how many (A) matters were considered and (B) appeals were (x) upheld and (y) rejected at each meeting; on what date papers were distributed for each meeting; and how many pages there were in each paginated bundle. [315728]
Bridget Prentice: Committee agendas are not kept for five years. SCU retain the original agendas for 18 months. Copies of decisions are retained on the individual case files. This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
In the period January to December 2009 determinations by single independent adjudicators were: (a) 41 upheld the clients' review in part or full, (b) 194 dismissed. In the same period determinations by committees of independent funding adjudicators were: (a) five upheld the clients' review in part or full, (b) 37 dismissed. These reviews covered applications, amendments and discharges of funding.
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice with reference to the statutory requirement set out in paragraph 6.4(b) of the Review Panel Arrangements 2000, what (a) professional and other qualifications and (b) specialist experience and knowledge is held by the Regional Director of the Adjudicators to whom appeals against decisions of the Brighton Special Cases Unit may be referred. [315729]
Bridget Prentice:
The regional director for Special Cases Unit is David Keegan. He is more widely the director of high cost cases. He is not a solicitor or barrister. He has been employed by the Legal Services Commission and its predecessor the Legal Aid Board for 19 years. He has been the director for Special Cases Unit since 2000. Prior to that he was regional director for the south-east. He is supported by an experienced
professional team specialising in specific areas of law, currently consisting of 10 solicitors, three barristers and five legal executives (qualified or in training).
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice who the Regional Director of the adjudicators is to whom appeals against decisions of the Brighton Special Cases Unit may be referred. [315730]
Bridget Prentice: The regional director for Special Cases Unit is David Keegan. He is more widely the director of high cost cases. He is not a solicitor or barrister. He has been employed by the Legal Services Commission and its predecessor the Legal Aid Board for 19 years. He has been the director for Special Cases Unit since 2000. Prior to that he was regional director for the south-east. He is supported by an experienced professional team specialising in specific areas of law.
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice which personnel are employed in the Brighton Special Cases Unit of the Legal Services Commission (LSC); what professional and other qualifications were considered relevant to the fulfilment of their role in each such case; to whom such personnel are accountable; and from whom they can seek advice within the LSC. [315732]
Bridget Prentice: The Special Cases Unit presently employs 10 solicitors, three barristers and five legal executives (qualified or in training). They operate in teams specialising in areas of law with senior case managers providing supervision. Senior case managers are typically solicitors and barristers of 20 to 30 years' qualification. They are accountable to the director of high cost cases. They can obtain advice from the legal and governance team in LSC's head office.
Community Orders
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many community orders were handed down in each of the last five years; and how many such orders were handed down with (a) a mental health treatment order and (b) an unpaid work order. [316532]
Claire Ward: The following table shows the number of community orders and those with a mental health treatment and unpaid work requirements which commenced under probation service supervision in each year from 2005 to 2008 (latest available).
Data are available from April 2005 only as the community order was introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 on 4 April 2005.
| Total number of persons starting community orders and the number of those required to undertake mental health or unpaid work requirements, 2005-08 | ||||
| 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | |
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