House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 08 Feb 2010 (pt 0028)

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Driving Offences: Disqualification

Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people in (a) Torbay constituency, (b) the South West and (c) England were disqualified from driving as a result of an offence of (i) drink-driving, (ii) speeding and (iii) dangerous or reckless driving in each of the last 10 years. [313334]

Claire Ward: The number persons disqualified from driving as a result of convictions for (i) drink driving, (ii) speeding and (iii) dangerous or careless driving in the South West and England in each of the last 10 years is shown in tables 1 and 2 as follows.

Court proceedings data are not available at parliamentary constituency level. Data for 2009 are expected to be published in the autumn 2010.

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Table 1: Disqualifications imposed at all courts in the South West Government office region^{( 1)} , for selected motoring offences, from 1998 to 2008^{( 2, 3)}
Number
Offence type	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Dangerous driving	376	345	356	334	407	494	492	415	339	316	291
Driving etc., after consuming alcohol or taking drugs	7,596	7,563	7,124	7,222	7,556	8,132	8,056	7,316	7,380	7,114	6,411
Careless driving	105	129	128	196	181	192	200	193	195	189	137
Speed limit offences	1,564	1,680	1,833	2,067	1,959	2,391	1,908	1,670	1,655	1,307	1,155
Total	9,641	9,717	9,441	9,819	10,103	11,209	10,656	9,594	9,569	8,926	7,994
⁽¹⁾ Includes: Avon and Somerset police force area; Devon and Cornwall police force area; Dorset police force area; Gloucestershire police force area; Wiltshire police force area. ⁽²⁾ It is known that for some police force areas, the reporting of court proceedings, in particular those relating to summary motoring offences, may be less than complete. ⁽³⁾ Excludes convictions for Cardiff magistrates court for April, July and August 2008. Note: Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services-Ministry of Justice.

Table 2: Disqualifications imposed at all courts in England, for selected motoring offences, from 1998 to 2008^{( 1, 2, 3)}
Number
Offence type	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004^{( 4)}	2005	2006	2007	2008
Dangerous driving:	4,570	4,269	4,225	4,116	5,071	6,220	6,177	5,256	4,914	4,675	4,150
Driving etc., after consuming alcohol or taking drugs:	80,332	77,827	74,697	73,685	79,310	81,139	84,669	81,107	81,461	78,503	70,179
Careless driving:	1,423	1,445	1,478	1,861	2,026	1,988	2,240	2,164	2,085	2,232	1,770
Speed limit offences	11,565	11,551	10,695	10,951	8,739	9,330	9,582	9,875	8,977	7,917	6,502
Total	97,890	95,092	91,095	90,613	95,146	98,677	102,668	98,402	97,437	93,327	82,601
⁽¹⁾ It is known that for some police force areas, the reporting of court proceedings, in particular those relating to summary motoring offences, may be less than complete. ⁽²⁾ Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. ⁽³⁾ Excludes convictions for Cardiff magistrates court for April, July and August 2008. ⁽⁴⁾ Figures given include revised figures for Sussex police force area. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services-Ministry of Justice.

Electorate: British Nationals Abroad

Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many persons entitled to vote in each parliamentary constituency are registered as resident abroad. [316404]

Angela E. Smith: I have been asked to reply.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Letter from Stephen Penneck, dated 9 February 2010:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your question asking how many persons reported to vote in each parliamentary constituency are registered as resident abroad. (316404)

ONS has data, collected by local authorities, on the number of UK citizens resident overseas who are registered to vote in parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom. However it is not possible to distinguish those who actually voted.

Funding Certificates

Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many appeals regarding decisions on funding certificates have been referred to a review panel comprising more than one member in each of the last five years. [315708]

Bridget Prentice: A review panel is an independent body made up of solicitors and barristers from which adjudicators, assessors and committees are appointed to review decisions made by LSC staff in regional offices.

The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only at a disproportionate cost.

Legal Aid: Brighton

Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many applications for legal aid funding have been referred to the Special Cases Unit in Brighton in each of the last five years; and how many of those were (a) accepted, (b) refused and (c) referred to the adjudicator in each such year. [315711]

Bridget Prentice: The Special Cases Unit does not necessarily only receive applications for funding. Funded cases are also transferred to SCU when the referral criteria are met. Only since 2007 have all SCU's cases been recorded to SCU specifically. The figures from that point are reported in the table. Because of the transfer of cases these figures do not relate directly to Committee or Adjudicator decisions of applications.

	Number
2007-08	6,893
2008-09	6,303

Legal Services Commission

Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many new housing matters were started by the Legal Services Commission in 2008-09; and how many have been started in 2009-10 to date; [315650]

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(2) what proportion of all applications for (a) civil representations and (b) legal help in 2008-09 were related to housing; [315651]

(3) how many applications for acts of assistance relating to housing the Legal Services Commission (LSC) received in (a) 2008-09 and (b) 2009-10 to date; how many such applications were accepted; and what percentage of the total number of requests to the LSC each figure represents. [315653]

Bridget Prentice: Legal aid in civil matters is provided at two levels, Controlled Work and Licensed Work:

Controlled Work, also known as legal help, covers basic levels of advice and representation, not including representation in court. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) allocates specific volumes of New Matter Starts to providers. An act of assistance is each instance in which a provider gives legal help to a client, including face to face and telephone advice (New Matter Start) and there is no need for providers to apply to the LSC for each case.

Licensed Work, also known as civil representation, accounts for all other types of civil work, with the exception of Very High Cost Cases, which are managed under specialist contracts. Funding applications need to be submitted to the LSC for each case. The LSC decides whether funding criteria and the merits test are met. Funding limits in relation to the work are then set, which may be varied on application by the client.

Legal aid providers contract with the LSC to undertake an agreed number of new matter starts in legal help within specific categories of law. The numbers of applications for legal help are unknown because they are received and assessed directly by the legal services provider. Therefore, while the LSC can determine the number of matters started within a certain category of law, such as housing, it cannot determine how many applications have been made. Table A shows the numbers of housing new matter starts for legal help.

The numbers of applications for civil representation are shown in Table B.

Table A : Legal h elp new matters started figures
	1 April to 30 November 2009	2008-09
Housing new matters started (NMS)	75,129	111,244
Housing CLA telephone advice⁽¹⁾	18,863	26,450
Housing NMS- CLACs⁽²⁾	1,841	2,077
Housing court duty scheme⁽³⁾	21,866	33,842
Total housing NMS	117,699	173,613
Total NMS (all categories)	671,740	927,654
Total (percentage)	17.5	18.7
⁽¹⁾ Community Legal Advice telephone service-providing help on a range of civil categories for eligible clients. ⁽²⁾ Community Legal Advice Centres-LSC and local authority commissioned centres, providing integrated face to face advice in housing, debt, welfare benefits, employment, community care and family. ⁽³⁾ Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme-available in most county courts in England and Wales providing free on the day advice and representation to individuals at risk of losing their home. Note: Many of these figures can be found in the statistical information packs published on the LSC website: http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/aboutus/how/strategic_publications.asp

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