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14 Dec 2006 : Column 1325W—continued
Police
Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what guidelines his Department has issued on the circumstances in which the exigency of duty rule is deployed by managers to alter shift rosters of police officers; [104583]
(2) how many complaints he has received about the exigency of duty rule in overriding existing official shift rosters in the last two years. [107855]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 7 December 2006]: It is for the Chief Officer of the individual force to determine whether a specific incident requires police officers to be deployed under the exigency of duty rule.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what expenditure by the Cambridgeshire constabulary was under the headings (a) non-incident linked paperwork, (b) checking paperwork (supervisory), (c) robberies, (d) house burglaries and (e) violent crime identified by the recent Activity Based Costing review for 2004-05; and if he will make a statement. [105260]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 11 December 2006]: The information was not gathered by Cambridgeshire constabulary and has not been provided to the Home Office.
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice or guidelines his Department has issued to local police forces on the working relationship between the police force and media professionals. [108458]
Mr. McNulty: The Home Office has not issued specific advice or guidelines to local police forces on their working relationship with media professionals.
Mr. Lancaster: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many full-time equivalent front line police officers there were per head of population in Thames Valley police force, broken down by basic command unit in each of the last three years. [108872]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 12 December 2006]: The available data for operational police officers are given in the tables. Boundary changes for Thames Valley police force came into place on 1 April 2005. Statistics for operational police officers per 100,000 of the population as at 31 March 2006 are given in the tables. Available population data are not comparable to basic command units prior to boundary changes.
| Table 1: Operational police officer strength (FTE)( 1) for Thames Valley police force, by BCU as at 31 March 2004 to 31 March 2005 | ||
| 31 March each year: | ||
| 2004 | 2005 | |
| (1) Full-time equivalent. This figure includes those officers on career breaks or maternity/paternity leave. | ||
Prison Service
Stephen Pound: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many Irish nationals are held in each place of detention on the prison estate. [108226]
Mr. Byrne: At the end of October 2006 there were some 690 Irish national prisoners held in prison establishments in England and Wales.
The data, which are obtained from the prison IT system, are not shown separately by nationality within individual prison establishment because the numbers are small and the accuracy at this level of detail cannot be guaranteed.
Information on the numbers of Irish national prisoners held in prison establishments in Scotland and Northern Ireland can be obtained from the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Prison Service.
The figure quoted has 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 figure may not be accurate to that level.
Probation Service
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many targets his Department set for the National Probation Service in the latest year for which figures are available; and which of those targets have been reached. [107761]
Mr. Sutcliffe: The National Probation Service has been set a total of 14 performance targets for 2006-07. The targets cover the key objectives of protecting the public and reducing re-offending while reflecting the priority given to work with offenders on matters such as accommodation; education, training and employment; health and drugs and alcohol, as well as addressing the needs of victims.
Details of the performance of the 42 Probation Areas in England and Wales against the performance targets and measures set for the service are published on a quarterly basis in National Probation Service Performance Reports. The reports are public documents and are posted on the NPS website at:
http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/output/page34.asp
The latest report (22) shows that the National Probation Service had met or exceeded nine of the 13 performance targets for the first six months of 2006-07. (Data on the regionally set employment targets for minority ethnic staff will not be available until the new
year when the census returns are made. This target has been met in each of the previous years since monitoring began and it is envisaged that it will be met again this year).
Public Opinion Research
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much his Department spent on commissioning public opinion research in each of the last five years. [105448]
Mr. Byrne: The Home Office conducts a wide range of research activities that support the development of information-led policy, including surveys of public opinion that consider Home Office issues and its related areas of responsibility.
The Department commissions such work only when it is justified by the specific needs of a particular policy or programme and when this is the most economic, efficient and effective way to achieve the purpose. Consulting and involving the public helps inform both policy formulation and delivery of better quality public services.
Research programmes are often complex and combine a mixture of quantitative and qualitative elements. It is therefore not possible to break down the costs of opinion polling from the overall cost of a research project. It has therefore not been possible to provide the breakdown requested without incurring disproportionate cost.
Recruitment
Charles Hendry: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much his Department spent on recruitment advertising in each of the last three years. [107742]
Mr. Byrne: The Home Office, which includes Immigration and Nationality Directorate and the Prison Service, but not its agencies, does not hold this information centrally and to provide a breakdown as requested could be supplied only at disproportionate costs.
Regional Offices
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which (a) non-departmental public bodies and (b) Executive agencies within the remit of his Department have regional offices based on the Government offices for the regions’ regional structure; and when the regional offices were established in each case. [103915]
Mr. Byrne: The majority of the Department’s services are arranged nationally. However, in bringing increased local focus to delivering public priorities, since 1999, the Home Office has established the following regional bodies:
149 drug action teams in England were first established in 1995, but realigned with local authority boundaries in April 2002.
Also the bodies in the following table have been closed or reclassified since 1997:
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