| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
21 Mar 2007 : Column 969W—continued
Biometrics
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he plans to check facial images taken for the purposes of biometric passports or identity cards against CCTV footage from unsolved crimes. [126437]
John Reid: There are no plans currently to do so.
Domestic Violence: Durham
John Cummings: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many incidents of domestic violence were reported in (a) County Durham and (b) Easington constituency in each of the last five years. [126451]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Although the Home Office collects data on the number of reported domestic violence incidents by police force area, it does not routinely collect these data at constituency level. However, the Government Office for the north east has provided the following data:
| County Durham | Easington | |
Electronic Tagging
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were subject to electronic monitoring whilst on bail in each of the last two years; and how many of these people were charged with violent crimes. [125335]
John Reid: The following table sets out the number of separate occasions on which courts imposed an electronically monitored curfew requirement as a condition of bail in each of the last two financial years in England and Wales. The figures have been provided by the two electronic monitoring suppliers G4S and SERCO.
| Total number of times courts imposed a curfew with electronic monitoring as a bail condition | |
| Financial year | Number |
Data on defendants subject to electronic monitoring while charged with violent crimes are not collected centrally, and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many times he has written to members of the judiciary on the subject of electronic monitoring of people whilst on bail in the last 12 months. [125336]
John Reid: I have not written to members of the judiciary on the subject of electronic monitoring of defendants while on bail in the last 12 months.
Identity Cards
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the oral answer from the Minister for Immigration of 19 February 2007, Official Report, column 1, on identity cards, if he will publish the research and briefing documents on which his statement that 70 per cent. of the costs of identity cards will be spent on introducing biometric passports is based. [127719]
John Reid: Cost estimates for the national identity scheme are outlined every six months in cost reports laid before Parliament pursuant to section 37 of the Identity Cards Act 2006. The first such report was published in October 2006 and is available at:
Immigration: Criminal Records
Mr. Drew: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the effect of the absence of data on offences committed abroad by foreign nationals on the adequacy of risk assessments of those individuals by the Immigration Service. [124469]
Mr. Byrne:
The review announced by right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will consider how
information about criminality is recorded and shared both within the UK and between the UK and other countries as well as how such information is used to protect the public.
Immigration: Northern Ireland
Mark Durkan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) non-EEA residence card (Form EEA 2) and (b) permanent residence card (Form EEA 4) applications are being considered by his Department from each parliamentary constituency in Northern Ireland; and how many of these applications were submitted more than 14 weeks ago. [125546]
Mr. Byrne: This information would be available only by examination of individual records at a disproportionate cost
Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people in (a) Northern Ireland and (b) each port and airport in Northern Ireland have been detected as in alleged breach of the Immigration Rules (i) in each of the past four years and (ii) in the current year to date. [125677]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 7 March 2007]: We are unable to provide the figures for immigration offenders detected in Northern Ireland by the Local Enforcement Office (LEO) for the years requested as they form part of the national picture and therefore cannot be quantified.
Members: Correspondence
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to reply to the letter of 5 February 2007 from the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. [123621]
John Reid: I wrote to the hon. Member on 19 March 2007.
Open Prisons: Drugs
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners were found to be in possession of narcotics in each open prison in each of the last two years. [128644]
John Reid: I refer the right hon. Member to the answer I gave on 13 March 2007, Official Report, column 302W.
Parking Offences
Ms Buck: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many parking penalties were issued in the area of each local authority in England with parking responsibility in 2006; and what percentage change this represents from the equivalent figures for 2000. [128675]
Mr. Coaker:
Information on penalty charge notices issued by local authorities operating decriminalised parking enforcements were first published in 2002 and can be found in the annual Home Office publication 'Offences relating to motor vehicles, England and
Wales, Supplementary tables' (latest available covers 2004)— Tables 22(a) and 22(b) refers. The publication is available on the Research Development and Statistics (RDS) website. Copies of the publication are also available in the Library.
2005 data will be available later this year; 2006 data will be available in 2008.
Passports
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 1 March 2007, Official Report, columns 1514-5W, on passports, if he will list the organisations using the Passport Validation Service. [127557]
John Reid: The Passport Validation Service (PVS) is used by organisations from both the private and public sector.
Public sector customers include the Criminal Records Bureau, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Department of Work and Pensions, e-Borders, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, HM Revenue and Customs, Immigration and Nationality Directorate and the Police.
Within the private sector, organisations regulated by the Financial Services Authority have to comply with the “Know Your Customer” requirements in order to guard against money laundering. As part of meeting these requirements, many financial institutions already check passports of individuals as part of opening accounts or taking out loans.
PVS offers such institutions the ability to ensure that these checks are more effective and secure by confirming whether the passport presented is a valid passport and has not been reported as lost or stolen. Thus, this provides a deterrent against fraud and forgery. Private sector organisations using PVS do so via a call centre, they provide PVS with the details from the passport in front of them and PVS confirms or denies whether this information matches our records. No personal details are divulged by PVS.
There are currently seven financial services organisations using PVS. Each is regulated by the Financial Service Authority and has been accredited before being allowed to enter into contracts to use PVS. Organisations are accredited to ensure they have a legitimate need to use the service and systems are in place to regulate staff using the service and to ensure adequate data protection.
However, it is not intended that the names of these organisations should be published so as not to reduce the effectiveness of the Passport Validation Service as a deterrent to combat fraud.
Police: Working Hours
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many hours of overtime were worked by police officers in each of the last 10 years. [127760]
John Reid: The Home Office does not collect figures on the number of overtime hours worked by police officers.
Prisoners
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners serving indeterminate public protection sentences have been reclassified and transferred to another prison in the last 12 months. [125418]
John Reid: This information is not held centrally.
Prisoners Transfers
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many UK prisoners are being held under prisoner transfer arrangements for offences committed abroad. [127875]
John Reid: Between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2006, 295 British nationals convicted of offences committed abroad were returned to prisons in England and Wales to continue serving their sentences.
The repatriation of prisons to Scotland and to Northern Ireland is a matter for Scottish Ministers and for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland respectively.
Prisoners: Bridgend
Mrs. Moon: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what issues require resolution at Sandville Self-Help Centre prior to the resumption of pre-release prisoner volunteers being placed there. [128484]
Mr. Sutcliffe: All outstanding issues between the CSV, probation and prison service have been resolved. Instructions to resume placements at Sandville and the revised Memorandum of understanding are due to be issued to all relevant establishments shortly.
Prisoners: Females
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many women prisoners have children who are (a) under five years and (b) under 18 months. [127759]
John Reid: This information is not kept routinely by the Prison Service. A resettlement survey commissioned in 2003-04 by the service showed that half of all female prisoners had dependent children (including stepchildren) under 18, and 46 per cent. of those women had lived with at least one dependent child before custody.
Prisons: ICT
Mr. Clegg: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 5 December 2006, Official Report, column 271W, on the C-NOMIS IT project, what the outcome was of the review conducted in January; and what plans he has for further releases and implementation of the C-NOMIS system across the wider prison estate. [127884]
John Reid: As planned, the NOMIS Programme Board reviewed an independently assured plan for developing and testing the versions of C-NOMIS that are to be rolled out across England and Wales, including the timing of the upgrading of the IT infrastructure and how all of these are underpinned by a strengthened contractual arrangements with our suppliers. Lessons learnt from the highly successful introduction of the early version of C-NOMIS at HMP Albany on the Isle Wight were also taken into account.
Going forward, we plan to introduce a second version of the application with an improved level of functionality no later than July 2007. At the discretion of HM Prison Service and private sector prisons management this could be implemented in as many as 25 suitable prisons. Work is already well advanced to confirm identification and scheduling of that group. This will begin with upgrading HMP Albany and going live at other two Isle of Wight prisons, HMPs Parkhurst and Camp Hill.
Beyond that, the main C-NOMIS base release, encompassing full prison and probation functionality, will be available no later than July 2008. In the near future senior prisons managers will be meeting with colleagues from probation and the C-NOMIS Project deployment support teams to decide how they will schedule the remaining prisons for implementation.
Given this re-planning we now anticipate that this major roll-out schedule can now be speeded up significantly overall without cutting down on the time to implement for individual sites. We expect the roll-out of replacement of legacy systems—LIDS in the case of prisons—to be complete by the end of March 2009 which represents only a slight delay on the original plans.
Prisons: Religion
Mr. Hands: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what vetting procedures are undertaken by his Department before employing a minister of religion in HM prisons. [127563]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Ministers of religion fall under the category of chaplains and the checks undertaken include checks on: identity; proof of address; entitlement to work in the UK; criminal record check; references; qualifications, endorsement from the relevant faith adviser and national security vetting.
Secure Accommodation: Wales
Jenny Willott: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in which secure accommodation facilities female adult offenders from each local authority in Wales were held in each year since 1997; and if he will make a statement. [128467]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Information about the prisons in which women from each local authority in Wales are held is not available centrally.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |