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4 Sep 2006 : Column 1785W—continued
Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the unnumbered Command papers produced by his Department in each session since 1976; by what means (a) hon. Members and (b) members of the public can (i) inspect and (ii) obtain copies; and if he will make a statement. [81320]
Mr. Byrne: I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my Department on 18 July 2005. No unnumbered Command Papers have been produced since the end of June 2005 although the Department has published a number of departmental publications as well as several numbered Command Papers through TSO. The list on the website of the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), www.opsi.gov.uk, of Command Papers from 2001 onwards continues to be updated and allows searching by Department or numerically. All Command Papers presented to the House are recorded in the Commons Journal and are available in the Library of the House.
Departmental publications that are still in print in paper form may be obtained through the Home Office public inquiry unit. TSO bookshops sell Command Papers and other priced publications. The Home Office website www.homeoffice.gov.uk provides access to many recent publications in electronic formats.
Copies of most Home Office departmental publications since 1976 have been sent to the deposit libraries under the legislation in force at the time and will be available to hon. Members and the public in accordance with the conditions of use of each library. Many public library authorities are able to obtain copies of Home Office publications that they do not already stock through long-established inter-lending arrangements.
Departmental Report
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the Home Office 2006 Departmental Report, how the £97 million of criminal assets was distributed. [88651]
Mr. Coaker: £26 million was allocated to police forces under the police asset recovery incentive scheme. £9.1 million was allocated to the Crown Prosecution Service for proceeds of crime work. £13.5 million was provided to increase front line asset recovery capacity and activity, including £9.4 million for five multi-agency Regional Asset Recovery Teams. A further £2.6 million was made available to fund additional financial investigators in police forces. In addition, £1.5 million was used to fund a Confiscation Enforcement Task Force. The remainder was used by the Home Office in recognition of its broader responsibility for crime reduction, and contributing towards delivery of our crime and community safety objectives.
Departmental Staff
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many staff in his Department at (a) executive officer level or equivalent and (b) higher executive officer level or equivalent are employed on temporary contracts. [59911]
Mr. Byrne: The available figures are in the following table.
David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many and what percentage of staff in his Department are making additional voluntary contributions to their pension. [73022]
Mr. Byrne: A total of 552 Home Office staff currently contribute to Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVC) schemes to supplement their Civil Service Pension. This represents 0.65 per cent. of all employees on the Home Office payroll.
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people, and at what grades, are employed in his Department to work on criminal justice aspects of drugs and alcohol misuse. [83923]
Mr. Byrne: I refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 15 March 2006, Official Report, column 308W.
The breakdown by grade is set out in the following table. These are the most recent available data and differ from the information provided in March.
| Grades | Drugs | Alcohol |
| (1) Staff joining recently or in transit. (2) Figure used in 15 March PQ difference is due to time. | ||
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of senior managers within the (a) Serious Organised Crime Agency, (b) National Offender Management Service, (c) Immigration and Nationality Directorate, (d) Identity and Passport Service, (e) Criminal Records Bureau and (f) Forensic Science Service are (i) female and (ii) male; and if he will make a statement. [88648]
Mr. Byrne: The available figures are set out in the table. The definitions of senior management differs in some areas and figures are for Senior Civil Service grades except for the Prison Service, and Serious Organised Crime Agency where they list senior managers at Grade seven and above, and for Criminal Records Bureau which list their senior managers at Senior Executive Officer and above. Data is at 30 June 2006 except for National Offender Management Service staff in HQ and for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate which is for 31 March 2006. In addition the data for the National Probation Service was only available as at the end of 2005. As a result it has not been possible to provide a consistent figure for the total staff in NOMS. Forensic Science Service ceased to be a Home Office Agency and became a government limited company (Govco) in December 2006. Its figures are for the five SCS equivalent staff.
| Percentage | ||
| Female | Male | |
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many staff vacancies there are in (a) the probation service, (b) the Prison Service and (c) the immigration and nationality directorate. [88951]
John Reid: The number of staff vacancies for the probation service, the Prison Service and the immigration and nationality directorate are detailed as follows.
(a) In the probation service on the 31 March 2006 there were 977.32 full-time equivalent (FTE) active vacancies in the NPS, and active vacancies accounted for 5.30 per cent. of the available posts in the organisation.
(b) In the Prison Service on 30 June 2006 within the public sector Prison Service there was a variation of 874 between operational staffing requirement and staffing availability. Staffing availability includes the contribution made by officers working contract supplementary hours and agency workers as well as permanent and casual members of staff.
(c) In the immigration and nationality directorate there is no precise figure for vacancies, the level of which will vary depending on a number of factors including volumes of business, forecasts of future staff turnover and assessments of affordability. As an indication, the difference between the number of staff in post at the end of March and the planned average strength for 2006-07 was around 400.
Departmental Website
Judy Mallaber: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when his Department's website was last updated to make it more user-friendly; and if the Department will take steps to ensure that audio-visual material is used in addition to text. [88386]
Mr. Byrne: The Home Office website was redeveloped throughout 2005 and a more user-friendly version was published in October that year, aimed specifically at the general public. The new site was developed according to principles of user-centred design and was recognised in a recent independent report published by Porter & Precedent as being the best of the 32 UK public sector websites they assessed. Particular praise was given to the accessible, user-friendly site design and navigation. The Home Office will publish audio-visual material on the site if it is appropriate to do so and if there is relevant material. Audio-visual content is already published on some parts of the Home Office website.
Deportation
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the average cost was of deportation evaluations of foreign prisoners carried out by his Department in the latest period for which figures are available. [70100]
Mr. Byrne: This information is not available other than at disproportionate cost.
Stephen Pound: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what account is taken of whether Irish nationals have been resident in the UK from birth when considering cases for deportation from the UK to Ireland. [75388]
Mr. Byrne:
Under section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971, Irish citizens who were ordinarily resident in the
United Kingdom on 1 January 1973 (the date of the coming into force of the that Act) and who have been ordinarily resident five years prior to a court recommendation or decision to make a deportation order are exempt from deportation. Those Irish nationals who do not fall into this category may be removed under the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 if it is decided that removal is justified on the grounds of public policy, public security or public health.
Mr. Wallace: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were deported from the UK in each year since 1997, broken down by nationality. [73675]
Mr. Byrne: The total number of deportations from the UK broken down by nationality is not available.
The Immigration and Nationality Directorate is currently putting in place new processes to improve its data collection systems for the future in this area.
Detection Rates
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the detection rate was in 2005-06 for (a) theft and handling stolen goods, (b) fraud and forgery, (c) criminal damage, (d) violence against the person, (e) sexual offences, (f) robbery and (g) all violent crime calculated by the methodology used to calculate the figures presented in Table 7.03 of Crime in England and Wales 2004-05. [89151]
John Reid: The information requested is given in the following table:
| Overall detection rates for crime in England and Wales 2005-06 | |
| Offence group | Percentage detected |
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