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Police Manpower

Mr. Simon Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the total number of police per

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head of population was (a) in each police force and (b) in total on the last date for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement. [152373]

Mr. Charles Clarke: The information is given in the table. The comparison 'population per police officer' provides a more meaningful figure than 'numbers of police per head of population'.

Force	Police officers as at September 2000	Population as at June 1999	Population per officer
Avon and Somerset	2,941	1,501,193	510
Bedfordshire	1,006	562,214	559
Cambridgeshire	1,266	724,897	573
Cheshire	2,000	982,527	491
Cleveland	1,421	555,944	391
Cumbria	1,048	491,814	469
Derbyshire	1,780	974,084	547
Devon and Cornwall	2,873	1,569,666	546
Dorset	1,299	692,543	533
Durham	1,581	606,744	384
Dyfed-Powys	1,045	480,663	460
Essex	2,780	1,617,660	582
Gloucestershire	1,142	561,941	492
Greater Manchester	6,767	2,577,040	381
Gwent	1,271	556,622	438
Hampshire	3,435	1,781,049	519
Hertfordshire	1,961	1,043,028	532
Humberside	1,905	881,586	463
Kent	3,239	1,587,243	490
Lancashire	3,215	1,425,533	443
Leicestershire	2,010	934,687	465
Lincolnshire	1,162	628,612	541
Merseyside	4,081	1,403,625	344
Norfolk	1,387	796,460	574
Northamptonshire	1,166	621,162	533
Northumbria	3,885	1,418,626	365
North Wales	1,393	657,738	472
North Yorkshire	1,293	747,613	578
Nottinghamshire	2,232	1,032,685	463
South Wales	3,029	1,242,004	410
South Yorkshire	3,184	1,302,410	409
Staffordshire	2,157	1,060,606	492
Suffolk	1,115	674,639	605
Surrey	2,113	1,078,067	510
Sussex	2,812	1,514,991	539
Thames Valley	3,748	2,116,233	565
Warwickshire	912	507,909	557
West Mercia	1,906	1,140,577	598
West Midlands	7,350	2,626,505	357
West Yorkshire	4,806	2,115,380	440
Wiltshire	1,099	610,326	555
City of London(24)	720	--	--
Metropolitan police	24,695	7,285,045	295
Total force numbers(25)	122,230	52,689,891	431
Total for England and Wales including secondments	124,614	52,689,891	423

⁽²⁴⁾ Police per head of population for City and Metropolitan police are combined.

⁽²⁵⁾ Excluding secondments to central service, NCS, NCIS and inter-force units.

Note:

Police numbers are full time equivalents.

Police Training

Mr. Denis Murphy: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have entered police training in each of the last two years, broken down by police force area. [153362]

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Mr. Charles Clarke: The vast majority of police training (over 80 per cent.) takes place in forces. Details of numbers of officers undergoing training are not held centrally and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost.

Police Officers (Wandsworth)

Mr. Linton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what action the Government have taken to bring the number of police officers in Wandsworth up to its establishment, with special reference to Battersea. [151151]

Mr. Charles Clarke: The Government want to see police numbers rising. Our spending plans therefore make generous provision, intended to meet major pay, pensions and other pressures on forces as well as providing ring-fenced funding to increase recruitment through the Crime Fighting Fund (CFF).

As part of the police grant settlement for 2001-02, the Metropolitan police authority will receive £1,822.8 million in Government supported funding. This is an increase of 5.3 per cent. over the provision for 2000-01. In addition, funding is available from the CFF to enable the Metropolitan police service to recruit an additional 2,044 officers over and above the number that the force would otherwise have recruited in the three years from April 2000.

Other measures which should boost recruitment in the Met include the £3,327 per annum increase in London Allowance paid to officers in the Met (and City), who were recruited on or after 1 September 1994; the provision of free rail travel within a 70-mile radius of London for the Met's officers; and the National Recruitment Campaign. By 25 February the campaign had resulted in 2,304 Expressions of Interest being passed to the Met, and a further 1,160 calls transferred to the Met's own call centre.

Several outline bids covering the Met police area are also being assessed under the first round of the Government's Starter Homes Initiative which will enable key workers, including police officers, to purchase homes in areas of high-cost housing.

The allocation of resources and the deployment of officers within the Metropolitan police is an operational decision for the Commissioner.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

Country Court Hearing Centres

Mr. Garnier: To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, pursuant to his oral statement in Westminster Hall of 8 March 2001, Official Report, columns 169-70WH, if he will list the county court hearing centres which he plans to close in response to his Departmental Consultation Paper on court modernisation; and when they are to be closed. [153585]

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Mr. Lock: At present there are no plans to close particular county court hearing centres as a result of my Departmental Consultation Paper on "Modernising the Civil Courts".

A key theme of "Modernising the Civil Courts" is to make best use of our resources to improve access to justice. As the consultation paper notes, we have a responsibility to ask whether the current court estate offers the best way of providing the services that we have a duty to provide, or whether there are more cost-effective alternatives that maintain, or improve, the level of service required. To that end we are developing a strategy for achieving best value from our estate which will include identifying the most appropriate locations for hearing centres. Part of the exercise will involve looking at opportunities to develop partnerships with other agencies, including the magistrates courts, so that hearings and other services can be provided in areas where there is no permanent county court building.

Legal Services Commission

Mr. Garnier: To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, pursuant to his oral statement, in Standing Committee A, Official Report, 6 March 2001; c. 6, how many solicitors' firms had signed up to the Legal Services Commission contract for criminal legal services by 12 March; and how many he expects will have done so by 2 April. [153586]

Mr. Lock: As at 12 March 2001, the Legal Services Commission had received 1,285 signed general criminal contracts from firms of solicitors across England and Wales. It is expected that some 2,800 firms, the vast majority of those that were offered contracts to sign, will elect to take up the contract.

Judicial Appointments

Mr. Rammell: To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what progress he has made in implementing the recommendations of Sir Leonard Peach's independent scrutiny report on the Appointment Processes for Judges and Queen's Counsel in England and Wales. [154448]

Mr. Lock: I am pleased to tell the House that Her Majesty yesterday made Orders in Council defining the functions of her Commissioners for Judicial Appointments and appointing Professor Sir Colin Murray Campbell, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, as her First Commissioner for Judicial Appointments. The Commission has commenced its work today. The recruitment of Deputy Commissioners will begin shortly, and the Lord Chancellor hopes the first of them will be appointed in the autumn.

Sir Leonard also recommended that a pilot scheme be produced for an Assessment Centre for judicial appointments. The tendering process will commence shortly to identify consultants who will advise on the design and development of the pilot scheme. Several of Sir Leonard's other recommendations--such as improvements to the forms used in consultations on candidates for judicial appointments, and to the procedures for appointment to Silk--have already been implemented.

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SOLICITOR-GENERAL

Factortame Litigation

Mr. David Taylor: To ask the Solicitor-General if he will make a statement on the role of the Treasury Solicitor's Department in the Factortame litigation. [154271]

The Solicitor-General: The Factortame litigation involved a claim for damages against the UK Government as a result of the 1996 ruling of the European Court of Justice that those affected by the removal of vessels from the UK fishing vessel register in 1989 under the Merchant Shipping Act 1998 had been discriminated against on the grounds of nationality, contrary to EC law.

The Government have reached a settlement with all 133 claimants. The total amount claimed was £285 million excluding interest. The cases were all settled for a total sum of damages of £44.99 million, including £20.19 million in interest.

His Honour Judge J. K. Toulmin CMG QC made the following observations in open court:

"I think a special word should go to Jonathan Morris and his team because they have had the carriage of the administration of a large part of the action and they have done so in a way, so far, which has really been extraordinarily impressive, and I wanted to put that on the record now. The Treasury Solicitor, that is Jonathan Morris and his team, are the ones who have understood what the whole picture is and they are the ones who have therefore been in the position where they have had to deal with everybody else, and indeed to assist the Court in a way that is entirely neutral . . . I see nods from other parties represented on the front row, so they understand precisely the sense in which I am making this comment."

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