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22 Mar 2006 : Column 464W—continued
IMPACT
Mr. Illsley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the Intelligence Management Prioritisation Analysis Co-ordination Tasking (IMPACT) Initiative 2005; and if he will list the component parts of (a) IMPACT and (b) IMPACT 2005. [56330]
Hazel Blears:
IMPACT 2005 was the title of the project to deliver the short term elements of the programme; in particular the development and deployment of the IMPACT Nominal Index (INI) and the associated work on data preparation in forces. With the delivery of the INI on 23 December, IMPACT 2005 came to an end and the work was subsumed into the wider IMPACT Programme to deliver the information sharing capability which will give full effect to Sir Michael Richard's recommendations 1, 2, 4 and 8 to 11.
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The components of IMPACT are subject to the decisions to be made following consideration of the business case.
Indecent Images (Cautions)
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of offenders who have received a caution for having indecent pictures of children have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register. [48500]
Paul Goggins: All adults (aged 18 years old or above) who are the subject of a conviction, finding or caution for an offence under section one of the Protection of Children Act 1978 (indecent photographs of children) or under section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (possession of indecent photographs of a child) are made subject to the notification requirements of Part two of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which are more commonly known as the sex offenders register. These requirements apply as an automatic consequence of a conviction, finding or caution for a relevant sexual offence.
Any minor (under 18 years old) convicted for the same offences will only be made subject to the notification requirements if they are sentenced to a term of imprisonment or receive a community sentence of at least 12 months. Minors cautioned for these offences will not be made subject to the notification requirements.
Life Expectancy
Mr. Spellar: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 9 March 2006, Official Report, column 1665W, on life expectancy, whether the two studies referred to provided any evidence of the impact of experiencing burglary on life expectancy among older victims. [60292]
Hazel Blears: The Home Office conducted some research in this area and produced a report in 2003, Experiences of older burglary victims", (R. Donaldson (2003) Home Office Findings 198). This looked at a small group of 56 people living in sheltered accommodation who had been the victim of burglary.
The report suggests that the health of these people declined faster than non-burgled fellow residents of a similar age. Two years after the burglary they were 2.4 times more likely to have died or be in residential care. This was a small study, so should be treated with caution.
Following on from this, the Home Office produced the report Older victims of burglary and distraction burglary-recommendations for practitioners" (2003 Home Office Development and Practice Report 11), which drew on the Donaldson report and another report Distraction burglary amongst older adults & minority ethnic communities" (Thornton et al (2003) Home Office Findings 197).
The Thornton report found that the impact on victims was less than the Donaldson report, but there were differences between the samples studied. The average age in Donaldson's study was significantly older (81 compared to 76).
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The Thornton report had only 16 per cent. of its 215 subjects living in a warden assisted environment. The Thornton report, while not specifically concluding on life expectancy, found a smaller proportion of people showing any change in physical health, post-incident.
Life Sentences
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many inmates serving life sentences there were in each year since 1992. [59305]
Fiona Mactaggart: Information on the numbers of prisoners serving life sentences held in each year since 1992 is to be found in Prison Statistics England and Wales 2002, CM 5996, table 5.1, and table 8.1 in the Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2004 for England and Wales
Mini-motorbikes
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what powers local authorities have to tackle irresponsible use of mini-motorbikes. [59135]
Hazel Blears: Local authorities and the police have a range of interventions available to them to tackle this problem. In particular any mechanically propelled vehicle can be seized by the police if it is being driven both in a careless and inconsiderate manner on-road or off-road without lawful authority, and is likely to be causing antisocial behaviour. In addition, local authorities can seize any noise making equipment including vehicles, when the noise constitutes a statutory nuisance.
National Offender Management Service
Julie Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department under what legal authority regional offender managers negotiate service level agreements with local probation areas under the National Offender Management Service arrangements. [59966]
Fiona Mactaggart: Regional Offender Managers will be commissioning services from prison and probation areas through Service Level Agreements from 1 April 2006. The current legislative framework, which sets out the statutory duties of probation boards remains in place, and is unchanged by the creation of Service Level Agreements. However, the SLAs are the key mechanism for introducing commissioning, and signed SLAs will demonstrate the strength of the relationships. Any legal authority derives from the fact that ROMs are Crown servants exercising the powers of the Secretary of State.
Number Plate Recognition
Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many offenders have been charged after being stopped following the use of automatic and number plate recognition cameras. [59168]
Hazel Blears:
The number of offenders that have been charged after being stopped following the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras is not held centrally.
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Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many cameras that automatically recognise number plates are installed on roads on British roads. [59169]
Hazel Blears: There are a variety of fixed site and mobile Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)-enabled cameras in existence. These cameras are operated by a number of different organisations such as the police service, local authorities and other system owners. The information on the total numbers of cameras is not collected centrally.
Mr. Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to extend automated number plate recognition technology across the country. [60652]
Hazel Blears: Following the publicised success of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Project Laser Two, involving 23 police forces, this concept was then rolled out to all forces in England and Wales on one April 2005.
The Government have made £25 million capital funding available to the Police Service in years 2005–06 and a further £7.5 million in 2006 and 2007 (£32.5 million in total) for the provision of ANPR technological development. This investment both addresses, and builds on, the success that ANPR has achieved in the fight against serious and organised crime, terrorism, volume crime and road traffic offending.
Passports
Anne Moffat: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to improve the security of the UK passport to prevent identity theft. [59379]
Andy Burnham [holding answer 20 March 2006]: The UK Passport Service is engaged in a range of initiatives designed to enhance the security of the passport issuing process and the UK passport itself. Because of the nature of fraud and the way in which criminals seeking to obtain passports illegally may operate, UKPS has taken a holistic approach to enhancing security. The initiatives which are under way are therefore designed to ensure that each part of the passport operation contributes to the security of the whole system and ensures the integrity of the UK passport.
The UKPS corporate and business plan for 2005–10 describes these initiatives and sets out the agency's strategic objectives for fraud prevention. This programme of work includes:
better arrangements for the reporting of lost, stolen and recovered passports, and the storage of that data on a new database which is shared with UK Border Control, and Interpol.
the use of secure delivery for the despatch of all passports which has reduced losses of passports in the post by 80 per cent.
increasing the professionalism of its fraud investigation capability through the establishment in all passport offices of fraud and intelligence units. These units have been provided
- with specialist professional training accredited by the University of Portsmouth and are further supported by the introduction of a fraud casework and management system.
further developing IT systems to build on the automatic checks on applications that already take place, to better link passport records to an individual.
the introduction of more secure passports incorporating biometrics identifiers. The first UK e.Passport was issued on 6 March, and rollout to all customers should be completed by the end of August.
the application, from March of this year, of the social footprint approach to confirming an individuals identity through a Personal Identification Project (PIP).
the introduction from November 2006 of mandatory interviews for first time adult passport applicants.
developing the capability to have automated on line access to UK birth and death records and to naturalisation records.
Data sharing and the positive validation of passport data is critical to the fight against fraud. The UKPS has developed Omnibase which provides secure web based access to passport information for FCO consular posts abroad, UK's Border control authorities, the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency, Criminal Records Bureau and other Government Departments. From July of this year, and building on successful pilots, UKPS plan to extend this passport validation service (PVS) to financial institutions who receive passports as evidence of identity from customers opening bank accounts, seeking mortgages or undertaking other financial transactions. The pilots have already shown that PVS can support users in the identification of suspicious passports and prevent fraud.
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