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15 Mar 2007 : Column 549W—continued


Police: Finance

Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the statement of the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety in the Westminster Hall debate of 28 February 2007, Official Report, column 277WH, on police funding, if he will place in the Library a copy of the Minister’s letter sent to all police forces on 14 February. [127302]

Mr. McNulty: I have deposited a copy in the Library of the House.

Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department from which police forces in England and Wales he has received budget projections for the financial years up to and including 2010-11. [127304]

Mr. McNulty: Broad budget projections for future years have been received from Cleveland, Durham, Lincolnshire and Sussex Police Authorities.

Tentative overall projections for the police service in England and Wales as a whole have been received from the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities as part of their Comprehensive Spending Review briefing document “Sustainable Policing” published in November 2006.

Police: Manpower

Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many Criminal Investigation Department officers are employed in (a) England and Wales and (b) the West Midlands police authority area. [126024]

Mr. McNulty [holding answer 13 March 2007]: The latest available data for 31 March 2006 are given in the following table.

Police officers whose primary function( 1) is Criminal Investigation Department, as at 31 March 2006 (FTE)( 2)
31 March 2006 FTE( 2)

West Midlands

1,009

England and Wales

16,467

(1) Staff with multiple responsibilities (or designations); are recorded under their primary role or function. The deployment of police officers is an operational matter for individual chief constables.
(2) Full-time equivalent. These figures include those on career breaks or maternity/paternity leave.


15 Mar 2007 : Column 550W

Police: Retirement

Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether police forces conduct exit interviews for police officers leaving the force (a) at retirement and (b) before retirement. [122014]

John Reid: In November 2005, the Home Office issued guidance to police forces in England and Wales on National Exit Interview procedures. The guidance advises police forces to conduct exit interviews with police officers and police staff who have given notice of voluntary resignation or transfer to another force. Forces may also use the same procedure for officers retiring from the service. Police forces are asked to provide data to the Home Office as part of the Annual Data Requirement. The first set of national data will be available for analysis later this year.

Police: Terrorism

Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which police forces in England and Wales do not have their own anti-terrorist unit. [125791]

Mr. McNulty [holding answer 6 March 2007]: Each police force maintains its own special branch. Special branches play a key role in protecting the public and maintaining order. They acquire and develop intelligence to help protect the public from national security threats, especially terrorism and other extremist activity, and through this they also play a valuable role in promoting community safety and cohesion.

Prison Sentences

Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners aged (a) 60 to 64 and (b) over 65 years are serving sentences of (i) one to five, (ii) six to 10 and (iii) over 10 years. [126416]

Mr. Sutcliffe [holding answer 9 March 2007]: The numbers of prisoners detained in prison establishments in England and Wales as referred to in the question are as in this table:

Sentence length
Aged
Years 60-64 65 and over

1-5

259

282

6-10

267

284

Over 10

363

386


These figures have been drawn from administrative data 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.

Prisoner Escapes

Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent estimate he has made of the percentage of inmates who, having absconded from custody, commit offences while they remain at large; and if he will make a statement. [126814]


15 Mar 2007 : Column 551W

Mr. Sutcliffe [holding answer 13 March 2007]: The information requested is not held centrally.

Prisoners Release

Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the number of (a) sex and (b) other offenders who were released from prison before the end of the sentence handed down by the courts in the last 12 months who were considered a (i) high, (ii) medium and (iii) low risk by the (A) Police, (B) Probation and (C) Prison Service were. [123763]

Mr. Sutcliffe: This question cannot be answered without incurring disproportionate cost.

Prisoners: Foreigners

Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many foreign national prisoners were held at HMP Peterborough as at 31 January 2007; and if he will make a statement. [126213]

Mr. Sutcliffe: There were 128 foreign national prisoners detained in Peterborough prison at the end of January 2007.

These figures have been drawn from administrative data 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.

Prisoners: Wales

Julie Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many women prisoners in the prison estate have home addresses in Wales, broken down by (a) category of offence and (b) length of sentence; and how many of these are on remand. [126937]

Mr. Sutcliffe: Information for January 2007 is provided in the following table. Where no home address is listed for a prisoner the committal court is used as a proxy address.

The table shows the number of sentenced women in prison with a home address in Wales broken down by category of offence:

Offence Total

Burglary

10

Drug offences

23

Frauds and forgery

1

Robbery

7

Sex offences

4

Theft and handling

19

Violence against the person

39

Other offences

33


The following table shows the number of sentenced women in prison with a home address in Wales broken down by sentence length:


15 Mar 2007 : Column 552W
Sentence length (months) Total

<6

20

6 to 12

17

12

6

12 to 48

53

= 48

40


There are a further 42 women prisoners with a home address in Wales who are convicted but unsentenced or on remand.

Prisons: Drugs

Anne Main: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to his predecessor's statement of 28 September 2004 on extra funding for drug treatment, what additional funding has been spent on extra facilities and counselling for prisoners with drug problems; and how many and what proportion of the prisoners requiring drug treatment received such treatment. [127240]

Mr. Sutcliffe: Further to the statement of 28 September 2004, the funding currently allocated for 2006-07 for delivery of the collaborative Integrated Drug Treatment System (IDTS) is £12 million from the Department of Health and £5 million from NOMS.

The following table shows details of funding allocated for the totality of prison drug treatment for the years 2004-05 to 2006-07:

£ million
Intervention 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07

Clinical Services (maintenance-prescribing, detoxification)

11.3

11.3

23.3

CARATs (Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice & Through-care services)

23.2

26.7

31.7

Drug Rehabilitation Programmes

13.8

19.4

19.4

YPSMS (Young Persons Substance-Misuse Service)

2.3

2.9

2.9

Total Drug Treatment

50.6

60.3

77.3


Data on the number of prisoners requiring drug treatment are not recorded in the way requested. Instead, prisons rely on epidemiological data which show that, on average, approximately 55 per cent. of prisoners report a serious drug problem prior to prison, with 80 per cent. reporting some prior misuse.

The following table shows the number of prisoners who engaged in drug treatment over the past two years (individual prisoners may engage in more than one form of treatment):

Intervention 2004-05 2005-06

Clinical Services

53,903

53,323

CARATs

59,025

(1)74,588

Drug Rehabilitation Programmes

7,621

10,743

(1 )Of which: 8,709 juvenile/YPSMS element.


15 Mar 2007 : Column 553W

Respect Task Force

Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what the total annual staffing costs are of his Department's Respect Task Force; [125792]

(2) what the cost was of setting up his Department's Respect Task Force. [125793]

Mr. McNulty [holding answer 6 March 2007]: The Respect Task Force was formed from existing staff and utilised existing Home Office accommodation. The only significant set up cost incurred was an external recruitment exercise to boost the staff complement costing £32,000.

During 2006-07 a total of £1.9 million is projected to have been spent on staffing costs for £36.5 full time equivalents. This includes specialist staff to work directly with frontline practitioners to support and advise them on the implementation of the Respect programme.

Road Traffic Offences

Mr. Heald: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to centralise data collected by CCTV at the national Auto Number Plate Recognition Data Centre; and how much he has allocated to facilitate the integration of this data. [125643]

Mr. McNulty: The Government have provided £32.5 million of capital investment between the years 2005 and 2007 to enhance Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) infrastructure at a national, regional and local level. The Home Office is working with colleagues in the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to use approximately £7 million of this funding to progress the development of a national infrastructure, specifically the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC—due to become fully operational during the 2007-08 financial year), and a Back Office Facility (BOF) system. The NADC will hold data collected by police-operated ANPR-linked to closed circuit television (CCTV) systems. The BOF will provide data storage and analysis tools for all police forces in England and Wales, enabling them to use ANPR in a more effective manner to tackle all levels of criminality.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Mr. Paice: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many participants in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme there were in each of the last five years, broken down by country of origin. [117401]

Mr. Byrne [holding answer 22 January 2007]: The following table shows the number of work cards issued to foreign nationals under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Scheme in calendar years 2004, 2005 and 2006. Some of those individuals may not have travelled to the UK to take up their posts.


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