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18 Jan 2007 : Column 1292W—continued


Departmental Common Policy Programme

Mr. Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether officials in his Department and Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff at posts abroad work to a common policy programme. [100622]

Joan Ryan: The FCO has nine strategic priorities, three of which are directly concerned with Home Office business: making the world safer from global terrorism; reducing the harm to the UK from international crime, including drug trafficking, people smuggling and money laundering; and managing migration and combating illegal immigration. In those countries of priority concern to the UK, officials from both Departments also work very closely in delivering UK justice and home affairs objectives. There are Home Office secondees in the British embassies in Washington DC and Madrid and a joint unit working on Afghan counter-narcotics. The Home Office has both intensive and extensive contact with the FCO on EU business and works closely on justice and home affairs issues within the G8 Lyon-Roma group.

DNA Samples

John Penrose: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what procedures should be followed when DNA samples are taken from people by the police in terms of advice on legal rights in respect of the use of such samples; and what assessment he has made of the implementation of such procedures. [107378]

Joan Ryan: Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 as amended, the police may take, without consent, DNA (and fingerprints) from persons who have been arrested for, charged with, informed they will be reported for or convicted of a recordable offence.

These may only be used for the purposes of prevention and detection of crime, the investigation of an offence, the conduct of a prosecution or, since April 2005, for the purposes of identifying a deceased person.

Procedures on the taking of such samples and guidance to officers are given in PACE Codes of Practice, Code D. These state that the person should be informed of the reason for taking the sample, if
18 Jan 2007 : Column 1293W
appropriate the grounds on which the relevant authority to take the sample has been given, and that information derived from the sample may be subject to a speculative search on the National DNA Database.

Drivers' Vision

Mr. Carmichael: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what powers police officers have to check motorists are driving with vision of the required standard; and what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of such powers. [113766]

Mr. Coaker: It is an offence under section 96 (1) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (RTA) for a person to drive a motor vehicle on a road while his eyesight, corrected by glasses or contact lenses if necessary, is such that he cannot comply with the requirement prescribed by the Act. Under section 96(2) RTA a constable with reason to suspect that a driver is committing this offence may require the driver to undergo an eye test. Exercise of this power is an operational matter for the police. I am not aware of any reason to consider these provisions insufficient.

EU Foreign Ministers Meeting

Mr. Paul Murphy: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has had with the Gwent police authority on the costs of providing security for the meeting of European Union Foreign Ministers in Newport. [113067]

Mr. McNulty: Gwent police made a request for special grant assistance for policing this event. We agreed to provide £2,670,000 for policing this event.

Identity Fraud

Mr. Waterson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people in (a) Eastbourne constituency and (b) England and Wales reported being victims of identity fraud in each of the last five years. [116557]

Joan Ryan: This information is not available centrally because there is no single offence of identity fraud.

However, the 240 members of CIFAS, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service for the private sector (mainly financial services companies), recorded 32,737 victims of identity fraud in 2002, 43,094 in 2003, 50,455 in 2004, 56,200 in 2005 and 51,025 for the first three quarters of 2006 (CIFAS estimate that this will rise to 68,000 for the entire year).

In addition, identity theft and identity fraud questions were incorporated into the British Crime Survey in 2005 and the results should give us more information on the number of victims.

Interpreters

Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much was spent by each police force on interpreters in the last year for which figures are available. [114232]


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Mr. McNulty: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave on 8 January 2007, Official Report, column 150W.

Leave to Remain

Mr. Clappison: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the answer of 9 January 2007, Official Report, column 538W, on leave to remain, what the other countries are from which nationals have been granted indefinite leave to remain (ILR) under the ILR exercise of 30 September 2006. [115774]

Mr. Byrne: The following table based on management information shows the number of persons granted indefinite leave to remain under the terms of the family indefinite leave to remain exercise, by nationality, where five or more, as at 30 September 2006. This is the latest data for which information has been published.

Further information on the Family ILR exercise is published in quarterly web pages and in the annual statistical bulletin, Asylum Statistics United Kingdom. Copies of these publications and others relating to general immigration to the UK are available from the Library of the House and from the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at:


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18 Jan 2007 : Column 1296W
Grants of ILR issued under the IND Family ILR exercise as at 30 September 2006( 1,2) , by nationality
Nationality Total
(1) Provisional figures rounded to the nearest 5.(2 )Main asylum applicant only.

Serbia and Montenegro

3,905

Sri Lanka

1,945

Turkey

1,735

Pakistan

1,220

Nigeria

1,125

Democratic Republic of Congo

935

Colombia

715

Afghanistan

700

Kenya

685

Ecuador

665

Ghana

595

Somalia

590

Poland

580

China

545

Iran

465

Sierra Leone

405

India

380

Lithuania

380

Uganda

365

Croatia

350

Albania

345

Angola

340

Iraq

290

Algeria

265

Czech Republic

255

Ukraine

245

Bangladesh

230

Rwanda

225

Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire)

210

Tanzania

205

Romania

186

Congo

170

Eritrea

166

Burundi

160

Turkish Republic of northern Cyprus (TRNC)

155

Zimbabwe

155

Palestine

155

Russia

145

Cameroon

135

Jamaica

135

Ethiopia

125

Latvia

110

Gambia

105

Lebanon

100

Sudan

100

Estonia

95

Slovakia

85

.Iberia

70

Yemen

65

Bulgaria

65

Nepal

45

Vietnam

45

Armenia

45

Libya (Arab Republic)

40

Israel

40

South Africa

40

Togo

40

Cyprus (excluding Turkish Republic of northern Cyprus)

40

Georgia

40

Syria

35

Bosnia-Herzegovina

35

Azerbaijan

30

Belarus

30

Moldova

30

Mongolia

30

Bolivia

25

Brazil

25

Egypt

20

Zambia

20

Peru

20

Mauritius

15

Philippines

15

Macedonia (former Yugoslav Republic of)

15

Morocco

15

Guinea

10

Guinea-Bissau

10

Tunisia

10

Venezuela

10

Jordan

10

Kuwait

10

Malawi

10

Kazakhstan

10

Chad

10

Chile

10

Guyana

10

Indonesia

10

Myanmar (Burma)

10

Seychelles

10

Niger

5

Burkina Faso

5

Kyrgyzstan

5

Malaysia

5

Trinidad And Tobago

5

Uzbekistan

5

Cuba

5

Mall

5

Saudi Arabia

5

Benin

5

Gabon

5

Korea (South)

5

St. Lucia

5

Thailand

5

Other Nationalities

20

Total

24,340


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