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1 Feb 2005 : Column 830W—continued
Emergency Response Vehicles
Mr. Swayne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many emergency response vehicles are available to police forces. [209750]
Ms Blears: This information is not held centrally. Decisions regarding the procurement and use of vehicles are operational matters and are the responsibility of the chief constable and the police authority.
Ethnic Minorities
Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the extent to which the policies of his Department meet the needs of ethnic minorities. [205794]
Fiona Mactaggart: The Home Office's Race Equality Scheme, which was first published in 2002, sets out how the Home Office meets its obligations under the revised Race Relations Act. It includes our commitment to assess the impact of our policies and services on minority ethnic communities. Assessments of new policies are produced and published individually; for example, the assessment relating to the Identity Cards Bill was published recently. Both the scheme and individual assessments are available on the Home Office web site. On 19 January 2005 a consultation on updating the scheme was published.
Gun Crimes
Mr. Webb: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many gun crimes there have been in the Avon and Somerset police authority in each year since 1997. [212012]
Caroline Flint:
The information requested is given in the table. Avon and Somerset adopted the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in October 2000 ahead of national implementation in April 2002. Figures from 2000–01 onwards may have been affected by this.
1 Feb 2005 : Column 831W
| Number of offences | |
|---|---|
| 1997–98 | 65 |
| 1998–99 | 71 |
| 1999–2000 | 103 |
| 2000–01 | 101 |
| 2001–02 | 131 |
| 2002–03 | 119 |
| 2003–04 | 123 |
Initiatives (Funding)
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what budget was allocated to (a) the Connecting Communities Network, (b) the Civil Justice Council, (c) the Criminal Justice Integration Unit, (d) crime reduction partnerships, (e) each of the regional crime reduction teams, (f) the drug action teams, (g) the Criminal Records Bureau and (h) the Frank Drugs Campaign in each of the last two years; and how many staff each organisation employed in each year. [201725]
Fiona Mactaggart: The information is as follows:
(a) The Department does not recognise the term Connecting Communities Network", but the budget for the Connecting Communities Grant programme was £4.695 million in the financial year 2003–04, rising to £5.908 million in 2004–05. The number of Home Office staff employed full-time on administering this grant was five in 2003–04, and one and a half in 2004–05.
(b) The Civil Justice Council (CJC) is funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The CJC's budget was £205,000 in the financial year 2003–04, rising to £214,000 in 2004–05. The number of staff in post (full-time equivalents) at 31 March 2004 was 3.1 and at 30 November 2004 was 4.1 (excluding the administrative head of the CJC, as he has split responsibilities and is funded by the Master of the Rolls).
(c) As the term Criminal Justice Integration Unit" is unfamiliar, this question cannot be answered.
(d) The Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP), although having statutory functions, are not organisations in their own right and it is not possible to quantify the staff employed. CDRPs are virtual" partnerships, reliant upon the individual partners for the quality and quantity of resource available to them. Their work is largely co-ordinated by staff employed by local authorities, supplemented by seconded, or dedicated, police officers and officers from other Responsible Authorities.
(e) The budgets for, and number of staff employed by, the regional crime reduction teams at the 10 Government Office for the Regions is given in the following table.
Note:
With regard to Wales, the budget shown here includes the Crime Reduction Director's Salary, and the number of staff employed in 2004–05 includes one Business Crime Adviser.
1 Feb 2005 : Column 832W
The Crime Reduction Teams in the Government Offices for the Regions include drugs teams, partnership advisors, youth crime workers and street crime workers, among others. Not all of the staff within the team have their costs covered by the Home Office. The Regional Coordination Unit in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has responsibility for the staffing of the Government Offices and the Welsh Assembly Government has responsibility for the Crime Reduction Team in Wales. The Home Office holds details only of the number of staff employed in the teams at the end of July 2004, which was then 448.
(f) Drug Action Teams (DAT) were established in 1995 and are accountable to the Home Secretary. They are local partnerships charged with responsibility for delivering the National Drugs Strategy at a local level, with representatives from the local authority (education, social services, housing), health, police, probation, the prison service and the voluntary sector.
The 149 DATs in England receive an allocation from the Partnership Support Grant to support delivery of the Drugs Strategy. The Partnership Support Grant was formed in 2004–05 from the merger of two previous funding streams, the Drug Action Team Development Grant and the Drug Action Team Communities Against Drugs Grant. The budget for each of the financial years 2003–04 and 2004–05 was £11.3 million.
No information is held centrally about the number of staff employed by the 149 DATs.
(g) The budget allocated to the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) in the financial year 2003–04 was £22.8 million, comprising £8 million from the Home Office, £7.4 million from the Department for Education and Skills and £7.4 million from the Department of Health. In that year the CRB employed 380 staff.
The CRB's budget for 2004–05 is £8.1 million, comprising £2.7 million from the Home Office, £3.4 million from the Department for Education and Skills and £2 million from the Department of Health.
(h) The Frank Review report published on 25 November 2004 states that in the first set up year (2003–04) a total of £3.743 million was spent on advertising media funded by the Home Office and Department of Health. The marketing and advertising budget for the financial year 2004–05 is £3 million, funded equally by the Home Office and the Department of Health.
Frank is not an organisation so has no staff.
1 Feb 2005 : Column 833W
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what budget was allocated to (a) The National Centre for Policing Excellence, (b) the National Refugee Integration Forum, (c) each of the multi-agency public protection arrangements panels, (d) the Community Cohesion Unit, (e) each of the regional asset recovery teams, (f) each of the street crime courts and (g) the Country Information Unit in each of the last two years; and how many staff each organisation employed in each year. [201730]
Fiona Mactaggart: The information is as follows:
(a) the National Centre for Policing Excellence:
Financial year 2003–04: £16.4million (comprising £3 million from the Home Office and £13.4 million through CENTREX 1 and training income). 355 staff.
Financial year 2004–05: £21.9 million (comprising £5 million from the Home Office, £7.7 million from training income and £9.2 million from CENTREX 1 ). 354 staff.
(b) The budget for the National Refugee Integration Forum in each of the last two financial years, 2003–04 and 2004–05, was £0.4 million. No staff are employed solely to run this Forum.
(c) In the last two years there has been no specific central funding for the operation or staffing of the 42 multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements Panels.
(d) The budget for Community Cohesion Unit in the financial year 2003–04 was £4.762 million, when 34 staff were employed. For the financial year 2004–05 the figures are £5.273 million and 21 respectively.
(e) The budget for, and staff employed by, the four Regional Asset Recovery Teams was:
| Financial year 2003–04 | Financial year 2004–05 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £ million | Staff | £ million | Staff | |
| Wales | 0.673 | 25 | 1.459 | 32 |
| NE | 0.718 | 27 | 1.510 | 29 |
| NW | 0.955 | 12 | 1.244 | 34 |
| London | 0.519 | 22 | 1.821 | 29 |
| Total | 2.865 | 86 | 6.034 | 124 |
The Teams were not operational until part-way through 2003–04.
(f) At the start of the Street Crime Initiative, in April 2002, 67 (later increased to 70) courts in the 10 Street Crime Force Areas were designated specialist street crime courts to give priority to street crime cases. They have not received any Home Office funding in the last two years, nor have they received, from the Department for Constitutional Affairs, any additional funding for extra sitting days arising from the Street Crime Initiative. No extra staff have been employed at these courts as a result of the Initiative.
(g) The Country Information and Policy Unit (CIPU) had 27 staff in the financial year 2003–04 and 30 staff in 2004–05. It is part of the Home Office's
1 Feb 2005 : Column 834W
Asylum and Appeals Policy Directorate. Its costs are met from within the overall resource budget of the Immigration and Nationality Department.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what budget was allocated to the (a) Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit, (b) Persistent Offenders Taskforce and (c) Asylum Decision Service Unit in each of the last two years; and how many staff were employed by each. [201891]
Fiona Mactaggart: The information is as follows:
(a) The Dedicated Cheque & Plastic Crime Unit had a budget of £0.823 million in the financial year 2003–04, and employed 28 staff. In the current financial year, 2004–05, it still has 28 staff but it has no government-funded budget—the Unit is now fully funded by the banking industry.
(b) There is no Persistent Offenders Taskforce", but the budget for the Persistent Offenders Scheme was £5.355 million (of which £0.175 million was resource and £5.18 million capital) in the financial year 2003–4, when it employed 3.5 staff.
In 2004–5 the Scheme's budget is £2.960 million (of which £0.120 million is resource and £2.84 million is capital). There are just 2 Home Office staff.
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