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9 Oct 2006 : Column 484W—continued
It is also not possible to identify ‘cash in transit’ robberies from other robberies on the Court Proceedings Database held by the Office for Criminal
Justice Reform, as the individual circumstances of robberies are not centrally collected.
Child Pornography
Margaret Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many incidents of downloads of child pornography occurred in (a) prisons and (b) ex-offenders’ institutions in each of the last five years. [90113]
Mr. Sutcliffe: No cases of downloads of child pornography have been reported in prisons or probation hostels in the last five years. Internet use is closely monitored and controls are in place to filter out access to inappropriate websites.
Class A Drugs
Mr. Salmond: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what research he has carried out into the impact on the supply to each constituent part of the UK of class A drugs from Afghanistan following the invasion in 2001. [89380]
Mr. Coaker: No such research has been carried out.
Mr. Salmond: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many registered class A drug users there have been in Scotland in each year since 2001. [89381]
Mr. Coaker: I am advised by the Scottish Executive that there is no central register of problem drug misusers in Scotland.
Closure Orders
Mr. Salmond: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many closure orders have been (a) applied for and (b) granted in each year since their introduction, broken down by local authority area. [89337]
Mr. Coaker: The data are not available in the form requested.
Community Orders
Mrs. Dean: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons have had their benefit withheld following the breach of a community order in each of the pilot areas. [88309]
Mr. Sutcliffe: The Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) jointly undertook to pilot a scheme to apply a benefits sanction to offenders found to be in breach of their community sentence. The scheme was piloted in four probation areas— Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, West Midlands, and Teesside—from October 2001.
The following figures for the number of offenders sanctioned have been compiled by DWP and are not available at area level.
| High level figures for the original 12-month evaluation period, 15 October 2001 to 14 October 2002 | |
| Number | |
| Overall figures on numbers sanctioned to end of further monitoring period, 15 October 2001 to 13 May 2005 | |
| Number | |
| Notes: 1. JSA = Job Seekers Allowance. 2. IS = Income Support. | |
Community Service
Margaret Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many offenders failed to complete their community service hours in (a) England and Wales, (b) Bedfordshire and (c) Luton in each of the last five years. [90118]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Information for England and Wales on the completion rates for the main types of community sentence, for each year since 1994, can be found in table 5.1 of the Home Office Statistical Bulletin: Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2004, a copy of which can be found in the Library. Provisional data on completion rates in 2005 have been published in the latest Offender Management Caseload Quarterly Brief (October to December 2005) which is available on the Home Office website. The reliability of this data below national level is not sufficiently robust for publication.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system, and although shown to the last individual, the figures may not be accurate to that level.
Condoleezza Rice (Police Costs)
Paul Rowen: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the cost of policing the visit in 2006 of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to (a) Merseyside police and (b) Lancashire police; and what additional grant was paid to each police authority to cover those costs. [89258]
Mr. McNulty
[holding answer 26 July 2006]: Lancashire and Merseyside police have indicated that the additional costs of policing the visit of US
Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, were £174,000 and £226,000 respectively. Lancashire police has received £174,000 special grant support. Merseyside police has applied for £226,000 and this application is under consideration.
Correspondence
Mr. Salmond: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will provide a substantive reply to the letter of 24 May (correspondence reference M12777/6) from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan which received an acknowledgment on 26 May. [89327]
Joan Ryan: I wrote to the hon. Member on 24 August 2006.
Mr. Weir: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will reply to the letter of 2 June from the hon. Member for Angus concerning Mrs. McKenzie of Forfar, a constituent of the hon. Member. [89455]
Mr. Byrne: I wrote to the hon. Member on 26 July.
Sir Gerald Kaufman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will reply to the letter dated 30 May from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton with regard to Ms Samina Kavsar, transferred from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. [89735]
Mr. Byrne: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary wrote to my right hon. Friend on 27 July 2006.
Crime (Kent)
Mr. Holloway: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many violent crimes recorded in North Kent resulted in an arrest and successful prosecution in the last year for which statistics are available. [92438]
Mr. McNulty: The information requested on arrests for violent crimes in North Kent is not available centrally. Information on arrests is based on persons arrested for recorded crime “notifiable” offences by police force area only in England and Wales, and therefore does not identify individual areas.
Information from the Court Proceedings database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform showing the number of defendants convicted of violent crime in the North Kent area is shown in the following table. Figures for 2005 will be available in November 2006.
| Defendants found guilty at all courts for violence against the person, sexual offences and robbery, in North Kent, 2004( 1, 2, 3) | |
| Number | |
| Offence type | Found guilty |
| (1) These data are on the principal offence basis. (2) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the police forces and courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. (3) The data supplied for North Kent comprise the following local justice areas: West Kent, Faversham and Sittingbourne, Thanet and Dartford and Gravesham. | |
Crime (Milton Keynes)
Mr. Lancaster: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were arrested for carrying (a) a knife and (b) a dangerous weapon in Milton Keynes in each year between 1997 and 2006. [91661]
Mr. Coaker: The information requested is not available centrally. Information is collected at police force area level and in respect of offences by main offence group and does not identify individual offences.
Crime Prevention
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what measures are being deployed in (a) Peterborough constituency and (b) Cambridgeshire to prevent offending by (i) prolific and (ii) other priority offenders; and if he will make a statement. [89184]
Mr. Coaker [holding answer 26 July 2006]: Information about specific interventions for offenders targeted by the Prolific and other Priority Offender programme is not held centrally. These interventions are tailored to meet the needs of the offenders targeted by the programme to address the risk of re-offending. The nature of the interventions is not necessarily dependent on whether the offender has been selected for the programme as a ‘prolific’ or ‘other priority’ offender. There are currently six PPO schemes across Cambridgeshire, including the Peterborough scheme. Each brings together a range of local partners including the police and probation services but also, for example, Youth Offending Teams, mental health services, Connexions and education and welfare services. The support provided to individual offenders will include help in addressing drugs or alcohol problems, accommodation and employment training needs. Early findings from the national evaluation of the PRO programme suggested that there was a 10 per cent. reduction in recorded convictions for those first targeted by the programme over their first six months on a PRO scheme
Criminal Records Bureau
Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many cases the Criminal Records Bureau has wrongly reported that a person has a criminal record related to offences against children in each of the last three years. [91361]
Joan Ryan: I refer the hon. Member to my written answer of 19 July 2006, Official Report, column 541W.
Information is not available to provide the number of occasions in each year such cases involved children. Such information could be provided only by conducting an individual case search against the Police National Computer (PNC) and at disproportionate cost.
Daniel Kawczynski: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what checks are made by the Criminal Records Bureau on foreign nationals working in the areas of (a) education, (b) social care and (c) health; and what plans he has to review the procedures for such checks. [91687]
Joan Ryan: The Criminal Records Bureau's (CRB) Disclosure service is only available for those positions and types of work included in the Exceptions Order (1975) to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. The Standard and Enhanced Disclosure process includes checks against the Police National Computer (PNC) and, if applicable, a search against Section 142 of the Education Act 2002, the Protection of Children Act and Protection of Vulnerable Adults (PoCA and PoVA) lists.
Enhanced Disclosures also contain a further check conducted by police forces for any relevant non-conviction information. The checks are undertaken irrespective of an applicant’s nationality or length of residence in the United Kingdom.
Individuals who work in the education, social care and health sectors will require a combination of all the above checks, depending upon the nature of their work and whether their position brings them into contact with children, vulnerable adults or both.
The procedures are subject to continuous review and the CRB is in discussion with the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and others about seeking access to overseas conviction data. Discussions are at the preliminary stage and it is too early to say how data will be shared and there are a number of concerns that would need to be addressed, including the safety of data for inclusion within the Disclosure service, the legality of sharing data, the safety of UK data provided to overseas agencies and the interpretation of overseas conviction information to ensure that employment decisions are made consistently and effectively.
In the meantime, the CRB has introduced an overseas service in February 2003 to provide details and guidance to employers and individuals on how to obtain a certificate of good conduct or a copy of a person’s own criminal record from those countries included in the overseas service.
This information can be used in conjunction with the full range of pre-appointment checks to ensure that the
prospective employee is suitable for the post. These pre-appointment checks are the responsibility of the employer and a CRB Disclosure is only one part of that process. Full details of this service are available on the CRB’s website at www.crb.gov.uk//overseas.
Some countries, including most in the EU, also have arrangements enabling their citizens to obtain certificates of good conduct or extracts from any existing criminal record to show to prospective employers. These may be obtained once the prospective employees have arrived in the UK but it may be advisable for them to obtain the document before leaving their home country.
Mr. Graham Stuart: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what access his Department has to the results of Criminal Records Bureau checks carried out in other EU member states; and if he will make a statement; [91930]
(2) what arrangements are in place to ensure that all EU migrants are subject to a Criminal Records Bureau check before commencing employment in the UK; and if he will make a statement. [92143]
Joan Ryan: There is no direct equivalent to the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) in other EU member states. Each country operates its own arrangements for providing access to criminal record information and the CRB does not currently access overseas criminal records as part of its Disclosure service.
The CRB’s Standard and Enhanced Disclosure process contains a check against the Police National Computer (PNC), which may contain details of some overseas convictions relating to British nationals. Enhanced Disclosures also contain a check conducted by police forces for any relevant non-conviction information. The checks are undertaken irrespective of an applicant's nationality or the length of time spent in the UK.
Not all EU migrants in, or seeking, employment in the UK are required to obtain CRB checks; the Disclosure service is only available for those positions and types of work included in the Exception Order (1975) to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. An individual may become known to the police within days of entering the country and eligible employers should therefore always be encouraged to undertake Disclosure checks regardless of the length of time an individual has been resident in the UK.
The CRB introduced an overseas service in February 2003 to provide details and guidance to employers and individuals on how to obtain a certificate of good conduct or a copy of a person’s own criminal record from those countries included in the service. This information can be used in conjunction with the full range of pre-appointment checks to ensure that the prospective employee is suitable for the post.
These pre-appointment checks are the responsibility of the employer and a CRB Disclosure is only one part of that process. Full details of the overseas service are available on the CRB’s website at www.crb.gov.uk//overseas.
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