Page:Hansard (UK) - Vol 566 No. 40 August 29th 2013.pdf/103

1029W

‘—’ Nil

Jeremy Wright: These offences are contained in the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and came into force on 3 December 2012, and carry a minimum custodial sentence of six months for adults, and a four month detention and training order for 16 to 17-years-olds which must be imposed unless in all circumstances it would be unjust to do so. The following table shows the sentence lengths for each of the eight offenders who received an immediate custodial sentence for aggravated possession of a knife or offensive weapon.

Source: Ministry of Justice

It is not possible to further break down the number of offenders presented in each sentencing category from table 8 of the latest Knife Possession Sentencing Quarterly Brief due to the risk of disclosing personal data about these small numbers of individuals. We can however provide overall figures for each of the different parts of the question as follows:

These are the latest available figures and are a copy of table 8 of the Knife Possession Sentencing Quarterly Brief which was published on 6 June 2012. The quarterly bulletin is available from the Ministry of Justice website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/knifepossession-sentencing-quarterly-brief-january-to-march-2013

Jeremy Wright: Between 9 April and 4 June 2013 the Government consulted on a number of proposals to reform legal aid via the ‘Transforming Legal Aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system’ consultation. This included a proposed model of competitive tendering for criminal legal aid services. We have been clear we must continue to bear down on the cost of legal aid, including nearly £1 billion of taxpayers’ money spent on criminal legal aid a year, to ensure we are getting the best deal for the taxpayer.

We will also be consulting in the autumn on changes to the legal aid financial eligibility tests to accommodate the further roll-out of universal credit. That will include proposals for the treatment of housing costs.