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Community Support Officers
8. Vernon Coaker (Gedling): What plans he has to increase the provision for community support officers. [109762]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (
Mr. Bob Ainsworth): Last year, we provided £19 million of funding for 27 police forces. They have recruited 1,338 community support officers. This year, £41 million is available to continue to support the existing CSOs and to provide for further growth. The results of the second bidding round will be announced shortly.
Vernon Coaker : Many of us think that the introduction of community support officers is a very welcome initiative to tackle antisocial behaviour, which is one of the scourges of modern society. When my hon. Friend considers increasing the number of community support officers and their distribution, will he ensure that divisions outside inner-city areas are also considered so that we have a fair distribution of CSOs to tackle antisocial behaviour in all our communities, including my own in south Nottinghamshire?
Mr. Ainsworth: We have received bids in the second round from forces that did not apply the first time. By the end of that round, the overwhelming majority of police forces throughout the length and breadth of the country will have recruited CSOs in either year one or year two. The way in which forces deploy CSOs is a matter for their operational determination.
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham): Can the Minister explain the anomaly that community support officers—welcome as they are—can be recruited through the crime fighting fund, whereas the recruitment of retired police officers, who are extremely valuable because of their experience and specialist skills, cannot be given the same priority to access that finance?
Mr. Ainsworth: The hon. Gentleman is incorrect. The crime fighting fund exists for the recruitment of police officers, not CSOs.
Iraq
9. Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): What the evidential basis was for his statement in the United States on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. [109763]
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): The United Kingdom consistently maintained that Iraq continued to pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction. This assertion was based on the first report by the executive chairman of UNSCOM, Richard Butler. Saddam's regime had not provided, and never did provide, any evidence to support its claims that its weapons of mass destruction programmes were no longer active. Refusing unfettered access to unsupervised scientists and constant changes to declarations relating to relevant materials underlined the Government's belief in the existence of such potential.
Mr. Dalyell : Could the Home Secretary forgive a tinge of scepticism, as it appears that all that stuff about weapons of mass destruction was got from a website by Mr. Campbell's young things? It was not even run past the Joint Intelligence Committee, which was only 50
yards up the corridor. It would have been very simple to consult the JIC. What happens now about all the accusations of forgery by Dr. el-Baradei in relation to the yellow cake for which Iraq was supposed to have asked Niger? Just forgive us our scepticism.
Mr. Blunkett: My hon. Friend is entitled to his scepticism and we are entitled to address the reality, which is that the uranium that he mentions, which was in the Government's assessment last September, was, according to all the intelligence available to us, being sought in considerable quantities from Africa. We have no reason to believe that that intelligence evidence from several sources was incorrect. The priority since the end of the three-and-a-half week conflict has been, of course, to restore civil society, protect the civilian population, restore medical provision and ensure humanitarian aid. The process of finding what Saddam Hussein has been up to will be long and difficult, but I am absolutely certain that the majority of hon. Members believe that we have brought about a situation in which peace in the middle east, and peace and prosperity for the people of Iraq, can be obtained.
Mr. David Cameron (Witney): Does the Home Secretary agree that it would not be at all surprising if some of the people responsible for either developing those weapons of mass destruction or harbouring or running them were to apply for asylum in this country now that the conflict is over? Does he also agree that it would be quite wrong for anyone associated with the regime or the Ba'ath party to be granted asylum? Will he ensure that that is the case?
Mr. Blunkett: I agree with myself on that. We have made it clear that those who have been engaged in any way with the regime and its actions against its people or its threat to others would be automatically disqualified from receiving asylum. That is true under the 1951 convention and our domestic law. We will stick to that, whoever it is and whatever posts they held in the Saddam regime.
Prisoners (Dependent Children)
10. Mr. Huw Edwards (Monmouth): What proportion of (a) male and (b) female prison inmates have dependent children. [109764]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Hilary Benn): Information on the number of prisoners with dependent children is not routinely collected. However, surveys conducted between 1994 and 2000 indicated that 59 per cent. of men and 66 per cent. of women had dependent children. The Prison Service works closely with family support groups in maintaining prisoners' family ties.
Mr. Edwards : May I suggest to my hon. Friend that such information should be routinely collected and published? Does he note from the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" trial that the judge stated that he was not going to give an immediate prison sentence to Major Ingram and his wife because they had dependent children, yet many working-class women get immediate prison sentences for relatively minor offences when they
have dependent children? Does my hon. Friend agree with the Halliday report that there must be more consistency and, if that principle is to be applied, that it must be done so more broadly? [Interruption.]
Hilary Benn: I am just waiting for the outbreak of coughing to subside.
I agree that there needs to be greater consistency. On the collection of information, part of the difficulty is that 200,000 or so people pass through prison every year and prisoners may not always choose to give correct information about their family circumstances when they are first questioned. However, we have just completed the second of our resettlement surveys of about 2,000 prisoners who are about to leave prison and who may be more inclined to give accurate information about their family circumstances and those relating to their children. We shall publish that later in the year.
My hon. Friend is right to suggest that the importance of maintaining family ties to reduce reoffending is now better understood across the criminal justice system. It is one reason why the Prison Service is working much more in partnership with voluntary organisations to maintain family links. I saw a good example of that at Wayland prison in the eastern region, where, as a result of our partnership with the Lankelly Foundation and the Ormiston Children and Families Trust, it is operating an all-day visits facility for children so that they can spend time with their fathers.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): The hon. Gentleman's emollience is all very well, but what plans does he have to stop or minimise the operation of the "churn"—the phenomenon whereby often large-scale movements and transfers of prisoners take place, critically at short or no notice—given that the effect of those disruptive movements damages the chance of training, undermines the prospects of rehabilitation and reduces the links between prisoners and their families?
Hilary Benn: I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the disadvantages that the phenomenon of churn, which he accurately described, creates for prisons in trying to work with prisoners and for prisoners themselves. One of the answers is to provide additional prison places so that we can reduce the rate of churn, which is precisely what the Government are doing, as he will be only too well aware.
Identity Cards
12. Mr. Paul Marsden (Shrewsbury and Atcham): If he will make a statement on plans to introduce identity cards. [109766]
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes): We published a consultation paper on entitlement cards and identity fraud on 3 July 2002. We are at the moment making a detailed assessment of the 2,000 responses received to the consultation exercise, which ended on 31 July. Many organisations and individuals have expressed support for a card scheme,
and that has been backed up by other research on the public's views, which we will publish alongside our response.
Mr. Marsden : Does the Minister agree with what the assistant information commissioner, Jonathan Bamford, said about the idea of an ID card:
- "Do we risk changing the fabric of our society so that the highest level of identification becomes the norm for the most mundane of services"?
Beverley Hughes: No, I do not agree with those comments. It is interesting that the Information Commissioner himself has said that there are no insurmountable privacy or data protection obstacles in respect of such a scheme and has welcomed some of the Home Secretary's proposals about how legislation might be implemented if the Government decide to take that course of action.
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the main issues will be whether there are better things to do with the £2 billion or £3 billion cost of introducing ID cards? Will she give an undertaking that any estimates received from IT companies of the cost of introducing them will be treated with great scepticism in the light of previous such estimates?
Beverley Hughes: In terms of the benefits of a particular scheme, my hon. Friend will make up his own mind on the basis of the consultation paper that we circulated and the discussions that have taken place. As I said, the 2,000 responses that we have received from individuals show that ordinary members of the public generally do not share his concerns. The responses have been about 2:1 in favour of introducing a scheme.
I also point out that the proposal does not involve investing large amounts of public money, although some up-front expenditure would certainly be involved. The cost of the scheme would be borne by individuals as they applied for cards, just as people will have to apply for passport and driving licence cards in the fulness of time, as those provisions are also coming on line and people will have to make a payment for them.
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton): Does the Minister not realise that when Australia tried out the proposal to introduce an ID card, it was initially enormously popular, but only until people realised how much personal information Government officials would have access to? As a result, the proposal became the Australian equivalent of the poll tax and was dropped in the face of mass demonstrations and huge public hostility.
Beverley Hughes: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has read the consultation paper, but if he has, he will recall that what is being proposed is not a card that would hold large amounts of information. It would be a gateway providing a very secure identity access to other databases for the individual, but the
particular databases to which the card might give access would obviously be determined through the process of legislation on which we would embark. It would not be able to add to those through any other mechanism, so Parliament would have its say.
Mr. Tony Banks (West Ham): A system of compulsory identity cards would be a very useful tool in dealing with the upsurge and recurrence of football hooliganism. What discussions have taken place between the Home Department and the English Football Association regarding the forthcoming match against Turkey in Istanbul? If the Football Association does not make any tickets available to English supporters, will the Government assist it in ensuring that supporters do not—
Mr. Speaker: Order. That is far too wide of the question.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): Reverting to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb), what is the difference between "access" and "gateway"?
Beverley Hughes: I do not think that there is a particular difference in this context, except that providing access to a number of databases would, as I said, be determined by Parliament, so the extent to which the card became a gateway would be as limited or as extensive as Parliament determined.
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