The Ivory Bill has gained Royal Assent to become law. The Act is expected to come into force in late 2019

Illicit mobile phones in prisons will be blocked, motorists will save money through lower car insurance premiums, and courts will run more efficiently after the bills all passed Parliament on the final sitting day before Christmas recess.

Justice Secretary David Gauke said:

These important new laws will help us to deliver safe, decent prisons and a fair, efficient justice system that puts the people who use it first.

Days like today show that – despite the current squeeze on Parliamentary time – this is a department getting on with business as usual and delivering real change.

The Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill means mobile network operators can now detect, block and investigate illegal phone use in prisons – joining the government in the fight against criminals who fuel violence behind bars. The Secretary of State will be able to authorise mobile network operators to interfere and block phone signals in all prisons across England and Wales.

Prisons Minister Rory Stewart said:

A mobile phone in prison effectively allows a prisoner to jump the prison walls: they can transfer money, record videos and intimidate witnesses.

I thank my colleagues Maria Caulfield MP and Baroness Pidding for their work in sponsoring this Bill, which will help us to find and seize these illicit devices.

This is just one in a series of measures we have implemented this year, showing our commitment to restoring stability and security to the prison estate.

This builds on legislation delivered earlier this year by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), including the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill which doubled the maximum prison sentence from 6 to 12 months for anyone found guilty of assaulting a prison officer. MOJ has introduced a number of other additional measures throughout 2018 to restore stability to the prison estate, including a £70 million investment in safety, security and decency. This includes £16 million to improve conditions for prisoners and staff and £7 million for new security measures, such as scanners, improved searching techniques, phone-blocking technology and a financial crime unit to target the criminal kingpins operating in prisons.

Meanwhile prison officer numbers are rising, with more than 4,300 now recruited and staffing levels at their highest since 2012, and there has been a significant focus on prisoner rehabilitation. The launch of the Education and Employment strategy this year created a system where each prisoner is set on a path to employment from the moment they arrive in custody.

The Civil Liability Bill, also passed today, will ensure spurious or exaggerated whiplash claims are no longer an easy payday. Compensation will be capped, and settling claims without medical evidence will be banned – with insurers promising to pass on savings to hard-pressed motorists through lower insurance premiums.

The Bill also makes important changes to how the personal injury discount rate is set. Under the reforms, the rate will be reviewed in a more regular, transparent way, ensuring claimants suffering life-changing injuries still receive full and fair compensation. The changes will also reduce the burden of over-compensation on defendants, in particular the NHS, and will make the system fairer for all – including taxpayers and motorists.

The third bill passed today, the Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill, will allow appropriately qualified and experienced court and tribunal staff to deal with routine matters, freeing up judges’ time to focus their expertise on matters that need it most. It will also allow the judiciary to be flexibly deployed across jurisdictions where they are most needed, allowing judges to gain experience of different types of cases, helping with their career progression.

Justice Minister Lucy Frazer said:

This Bill supports our fundamental transformation of the justice system, making courts easier to use, more efficient and fit for the digital age.

By enabling judges to hear cases in different jurisdictions and giving court staff powers to deal with routine issues, we will make our courts more efficient and effective, while making better use of taxpayers’ money.

As well as delivering new laws in Parliament, MOJ has introduced a wide range of other measures throughout 2018, including:

• A Victims Strategy, which ensures support for victims is aligned to the changing nature of crime, and boosts services at every stage of the justice system.
• A Female Offender Strategy which delivers dedicated support to vulnerable female offenders – diverting them away from short prison sentences wherever possible. This includes £5 million of funding in community services as well as establishing five pilot residential women’s centres across England and Wales.
• Increasing transparency of the parole process, by legislating to allow the Parole Board to provide summaries of its decisions to victims, media and the wider public.
• Launching a consultation on no fault divorce, to remove the acrimony created by forcing couples to attribute blame when a marriage ends.
• Move more court processes online, saving time and money as part of the government’s ambitious £1 billion court reform programme, bringing new technology and modern ways of working to the justice system. This includes a new fully accessible online civil money claims service giving the public the ability to make small claims online – with more than 37,000 claims made since its launch in March and user satisfaction at 90% – and a new system for applying for divorce online, which has cut errors in application forms from 40% to less than 1%.
• Introducing the ‘Upskirting’ Bill, protecting victims by making this invasive behaviour a criminal offence punishable by two years in prison.

Justice Secretary David Gauke today spoke of his pride in a department ‘delivering real change’, after 3 important justice bills all became law on the same day (20 December 2018).

The new mental health support teams will be based in and near schools and colleges in 25 areas and will start giving support in 2019.

Each designated team will support up to 8,000 children and young people in around 20 schools and colleges in their ‘trailblazer’ area.

Mental health support teams will:

• build on support already in place from school counsellors, nurses, educational psychologists and the voluntary sector
• support children and young people with mild to moderate mental health issues
• help children and young people with more severe needs to access the right support, and provide a link to specialist NHS services

The Department for Education will also fund training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges to ensure a ‘whole school’ approach to mental health and wellbeing.

The first mental health support teams will begin their training in January 2019 at 7 universities nationwide.

The trailblazer sites will be set up in between one-fifth and one quarter of the country by 2023 to 2024.

One in nine young people aged 5 to 15 had a mental health condition in 2017. Teenagers with a mental disorder are more than twice as likely to have a mental disorder in adulthood.

Plans for further expansion of children and young people’s mental health services will be set out in the NHS long-term plan.

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock said:

Children and young people with mental illness should receive the same level of support as those with physical illness.

Made possible by the extra £20.5 billion we are investing in the NHS, today’s announcement will see the health and education systems come together so our children can access the help they need at school, and takes us a step closer to achieving our goal of parity between mental and physical health.

Minister for Mental Health, Inequalities and Suicide Prevention Jackie Doyle-Price said:

Early intervention is crucial when it comes to mental ill-health and today’s announcement will ensure that young people can immediately access life-changing support when the signs of mental health issues first appear, helping to prevent these problems from escalating further into adulthood.

Encouraging young people to think about their mental wellbeing in the same way they do their physical aches and pains is a vital part of our goal to put mental and physical health on equal footing, and will help ensure no young person is left to suffer in silence.

It’s estimated 1 in 4 of us has a common mental disorder at any one time – I’m confident that, by introducing improved access to critical care at a young age, we are delivering on our promise to help people lead healthier lives for longer and build an NHS that’s fit for the future, which will be set out further in our long-term plan.

New rules on developer contributions which help fund new roads, schools, play areas and other essential infrastructure have been published for consultation in a move to quicken the pace of housing delivery in England.

Financial contributions are required from developers where additional public infrastructure is needed to support the building of new homes, with the government’s Community Infrastructure Levy collecting almost £1 billion since it was introduced in 2010.

This is part of a package of reforms to address the lengthy and complex process of negotiation for councils that slows down the delivery of new homes, precisely at a time when more are needed.

This will ensure the infrastructure needs of communities are identified from the outset, saving time and allowing the provision of infrastructure to be costed in to projects at an early stage. It also seeks to increase the types of project that can benefit from the Community Infrastructure Levy, ensuring a wider range of community priorities are eligible to receive funding.

Launching the consultation Minister of State for Housing Kit Malthouse MP said:

Communities and developers must know that vital infrastructure needed to support new homes is going to arrive – even before a shovel hits the ground.

The billions of pounds already paid by developers has been critical in delivering the more, better, faster homes this country so desperately needs, but we must go further.

These reforms will make the system simpler, transparent and easy to understand and will accelerate the pace of homebuilding – it’s now up to housebuilders and residents to tell us what they think.

The draft measures, initially announced at the 2018 Autumn Budget, are part of the government’s wide-ranging programme of planning reform and targeted funding to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.

The consultation takes forward new proposals that will:

• Introduce a new strategic infrastructure tariff, helping fund large-scale projects which benefit multiple communities falling under a combined local authority.
• Widen options on how contributions can be used by councils to benefit their residents, ensuring funds are spent on a wider range of local priorities.
• Increase certainty and transparency by requiring councils to publish details on what has been collected and spent, so communities understand the benefit of development.
• Ensuring the Community Infrastructure Levy responds to changes in land values, ensuring towns and village get the contributions they deserve when planning permission is granted.

These proposals follow on from of a wider package of reform set out in the new planning rulebook adopted in July 2018 – changing the way developer contributions make new homes a reality for the areas which need them.

It sets out that viability assessments are now hardwired into the local plan process, giving communities upfront certainty on the infrastructure investment needed in their area when land is initially earmarked for new housing.

Figures reveal that between 2016-17 around £5 billion was successfully secured from developers through Section 106 agreements to support local communities with new infrastructure and more affordable housing. Separately, the Community Infrastructure Levy has raised an additional £940 million for those areas which have adopted it since 2010.

The consultation will close to responses on 31 January 2019.

The Community Infrastructure Levy was introduced in 2010 and allows local planning authorities to raise funds from new development, to help fund infrastructure to support the development of their area.

So far, £940 million in levy receipts had been collected by authorities at March 2017.

A total of 227 (67%) English authorities are currently charging or progressing towards charging Community Infrastructure Levy.

Section 106 Agreements

Section 106 planning obligations are negotiated between a local authority and developer on a case by case basis.

In 2016-17, independent research estimated that local authorities negotiated £5 billion towards affordable housing and infrastructure through Section 106 planning obligations.