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18 Jan 2007 : Column 1292Wcontinued
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 UKs 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.
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]
Mr. McNulty: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave on 8 January 2007, Official Report, column 150W.
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:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html
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