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25 May 2006 : Column 2022W—continued
Prisons
Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the cost of providing (a) educational facilities, (b) dental services, (c) medical services, including costs involved in transporting inmates to and from hospital, (d) clothing and (e) food has been in each prison in England and Wales in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available. [37538]
Mr. Sutcliffe: The Prison Service does not collect information separately on the costs of providing education facilities in English public prisons and the information sought could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. Such information is also not available for the Welsh public prisons.
The Department of Health received £118 million from the Home Office for prison health care costs, including for dentistry, in 2002-03. Some £139.7 million was spent in 2003-04 and £158 million was spent in 2004-05 on medical and psychiatric care for prisoners in England. The allocation for 2005-06 is £175.7 million. The current comparable amount for health care in the Welsh public prisons is £3,395,000. The cost of providing prisoners with escorts for hospital appointments is not available.
As the cost of providing clothing is included in the overall figure for prisoners' consumables it is not possible immediately to disaggregate it for the English or Welsh public prisons.
The cost of food for the public prisons in England was £28.625 million for 2003, £36.807 million for 2003-04 and £38.322 million for 2004-05. The 2005-06 budget for food for the Welsh public prisons is £756,000.
Comparable information for the contracted prisons is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Probation Service
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many throughcare cases held by the probation service in England and Wales (a) have not been allocated to a named probation officer and (b) are held nominally by a senior probation officer. [63081]
Mr. Sutcliffe: National Standards 2005 state:
“GS3—Sentenced cases will be allocated to an offender manager.
SS3.1—Following sentence each case will be assigned to a tier within the National Offender Management Model, be recorded as such and will be allocated to an offender manager. The tiering decision will be based on an OASys assessment where available. For offenders sentenced to custody, allocation should be made within five working days of sentence.
SS3.2—Probation areas will ensure that:
Tier four and tier three cases are allocated within one working day of sentence.
Tier two and tier one cases are allocated within a maximum of three working days after sentence.
Requirements which require commencement before three working days are allocated accordingly.
Data against this national standard are available from October 2005. Between October 2005 and February 2006, 86 per cent. of cases were allocated an offender manager in accordance with national standards. Data by probation area and region showing the proportion of cases in which the standard was met between October 2005 and February 2006 are shown in the following table.
Racial Abuse
David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many complaints of racial abuse in his Department have been (a) investigated and (b) upheld in each of the last five years. [72878]
Mr. Byrne: The figures available for the Department are set out in the table at annex A.
| Complaints of racial abuse | Up-held | |
| (1) Data is categorised as three cases of racial harassment, one of which was upheld and five cases of racial discrimination. (2) Data is categorised as three racial harassment cases, one of which was upheld, and seven racial discrimination cases include one which was not upheld and six which still ongoing. |
Recidivism
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many crimes were committed by people who had previously been (a) convicted of a crime and (b) cautioned in each of the last five years, broken down by police authority area; and if he will make a statement. [71843]
Mr. McNulty: The information requested is not available.
Information on the criminal histories of offenders is published annually for offenders convicted in courts of indictable offences. The criminal histories are counts of previous convictions, and not cautions. The data are available for England and Wales as a whole, and are not broken down by police authority area.
The most recent data on the previous convictions of those sentenced in court are available in chapter 6 of Sentencing Statistics 2004, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 15/05, a copy of which is available in the House Library and is available online at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/hosbpubs1.html Information is presented in the bulletin going back to 1994.
Refugees
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what criteria determine the exclusion of an individual from international protection under the UN Refugee Convention 1951 resulting in that individual receiving temporary admission instead of leave to remain; and if he will make a statement. [71839]
Mr. Byrne: Article 1F of the Refugee Convention excludes any individual from being a refugee where there are serious reasons for considering that they have: committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity; committed a serious non-political crime prior to arrival in the country of refuge; or been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention allows an asylum seeker or recognised refugee to be removed even if they have a well founded fear of persecution where they represent a threat to national security or where having been convicted of a particularly serious crime they constitute a danger to the community. Section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 provides an interpretation of Article 33(2) of the 1951 Convention and defines the term “particularly serious crime” for the purposes of Article 33(2).
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