| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
29 Mar 2007 : Column 1739W—continued
Departments: Postal Services
Mr. Fraser: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which postal companies handle mail dispatched by his Department and its agencies. [128257]
Mr. Byrne: The Department, including its executive agencies, has mail contracts with Royal Mail and Secure Mail Services Ltd.
Deportation: Iran
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has had regarding enforcement of deportations to Iran in the last two years. [129342]
Mr. Byrne: I refer the hon. Member to the written ministerial statement of 7 March 2007, Official Report, column 132WS.
Driving Offences: Fixed Penalties
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were issued with a fixed penalty notice for (a) failing to wear a seat belt and (b) speeding in each of the last five years. [129922]
Mr. Coaker [holding answer 27 March 2007] : Available information on seat belt and speed limit offences taken from the Fixed Penalty Notices Collection held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, from 2000 to 2004 (latest available) is provided in the table.
2005 data will be available later this year.
| Fixed penalty notices issued( 1) for seat belt( 2) and speed limit( 3) offences, England and Wales, 2000 to 2004 | |||||
| Thousand | |||||
| 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | |
| (1) Covers tickets paid where there is no further action. (2) Offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988 ss.14 (3) and 15 (2) & (4). (3) Offences under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 ss. 16, 81, 84, 86, 88 & 89; Motor Vehicles (Speed Limits on Motorways) Regs. 1973; Parks Regulation (Amendment) Act 1926 - byelaws made thereunder. Note: Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. | |||||
Drugs
Ann Coffey: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of those charged with theft tested positive for an illegal narcotic on arrest in the latest period for which figures are available. [129979]
Mr. Coaker: Information in the format required is not available. Data on those testing positive for specified Class A drugs—heroin, cocaine or crack cocaine—are collected at the point of testing, either on arrest or at charge, but not at both points.
In January 2007, 39 per cent. of offenders arrested for theft tested positive for Class A drugs while 48 per cent. of offenders tested at charge for theft were found to be positive for the specified Class A drugs.
Drugs: Rehabilitation Centres
Mr. Malins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will undertake an audit of the availability of beds for convicted offenders in residential rehabilitation centres. [130348]
Mr. Coaker: Figures relating to the number of these beds which are occupied by convicted defendants are not held centrally and an audit would not be cost-effective.
Nationally, there are around 120 drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation services in the community with approximately 3,000 bed spaces. These are available to individual drug misusers in the community, including convicted defendants as part of a community order with a drug rehabilitation requirement (DRR)/drug treatment and testing order (DTTO) or post-custodial licence, where assessed as suitable on an individual basis by a qualified professional.
Fingerprints: Children
Lynne Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals are being considered to fingerprint children under the age of 16 as part of the passport and identity card system; and if he will make a statement. [126202]
Joan Ryan: Section 2 of the Identity Cards Act 2006 clearly establishes that only those aged 16 and over are eligible to be registered on the National Identity Register and issued with an identity card. Thus, there are no plans to record fingerprint biometrics of those aged under 16 on the National Identity Register for the purpose of issuing identity cards. The records of passport holders aged under 16 will not form part of the National Identity Register.
To maintain the reputation and integrity of the British passport, we intend to keep in step with European Union regulations which require the introduction of fingerprint biometrics into passports by June 2009. At present, the regulation specifies no minimum age for the recording of fingerprint biometrics and discussions between member states are continuing on that issue.
As set out in the Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme published in December 2006, the Identity and Passport Service has anticipated that it may be necessary to record fingerprint biometrics for passports issued to those over the age of 11. Passports issued to those aged between 11 and 15 years are of a five year validity. They need to match the physical and technical standards of those issued to adults as the holders of such passports hold them when they become more economically active and move into adulthood, possibly continuing to use such passports up to the age of 20. For example it would be anomalous for one 19-year-old to have a passport which incorporated fingerprint biometric data and another 19-year-old to have a passport which did not incorporate fingerprint biometric data as it was issued when the holder was under 16 and not treated as an adult.
Police
Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the salary cost is of the (a) director of the Policing Policy and Operations Directorate and (b) head of the Police Human Resources Unit in 2006-07. [129371]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 23 March 2007]: It is civil service policy to disclose salary details for senior civil servants at board level only. These are published in the annual Home Office Resource accounts. The director of the Policing Policy and Operations Directorate and the head of the Police Human Resources Unit are not board level posts.
Prison Service Staff
Mr. Mullin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of senior operational managers in the Prison Service are from ethnic minority groups. [129974]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Information is available for all public sector prisons and seven of the 11 private establishments. Together the Prison Service employs 341 senior operational managers, of whom eight (2.3 per cent.) are recorded as black and minority ethnic (BME). The base total includes two people who declined to state their ethnicity.
Prisons: Construction
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many additional prison officers and custody officers at each rank within (a) the Prison Service and (b) the private sector will be employed to supervise the new prisoner places announced as being available by 2012; how many of those places will be for (a) single and (b) multiple occupation; and how many occupants per multiple occupied cell this represents. [121214]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Staff numbers are dependent on the type. Decisions on the number of additional prison and location of prisons and whether they are financed publicly or privately. As the prison regimes are also still under consideration, decisions on the number of additional prison custody officers required, whether publicly or privately employed, have not yet been made. The number of additional staff required for each site will largely be dependent on the type of prisoners.
Nearly all new places to be provided by 2012 will be built as single occupancy cells although, at certain sites, there will be cells built to hold two prisoners. The final configurations have not yet been confirmed for all sites.
Prisons: Drugs
Mr. Mullin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners were placed on detoxification programmes for drug misuse in each of the last three years. [129931]
Mr. Sutcliffe: The following table indicates the number of entrants to prison detoxification and drug maintenance programmes for the years 2001-02 to 2005-06. Full year figures for 2006-07 are not yet available.
| Entrants | |
These data have been extracted from the Prison Service PSimon database.
Road Traffic Offences: Cross Border Cooperation
Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions his Department has had with the European Commission on cross border traffic penalty enforcement; and what agreements have been reached. [129264]
Dr. Ladyman: I have been asked to reply.
The Department has had no direct meetings with the European Commission on cross border traffic penalty enforcement. However, research is being funded by the Commission's Director General for Energy and Transport (DGTREN) under the projects VERA (Video Enforcement for Road Authorities) and CAPTIVE (Common Application of Traffic Violations Enforcement). These projects were initiated to identify the steps that could be taken at a European level to implement a pan-EU approach to cross-border enforcement of traffic offences
involving all member states. Officials from the Department and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency have taken part in workshops to take this work forward.
Additionally, in January, the Department also responded to a Commission consultation paper ‘Respecting the Rules Better Road Safety Enforcement in the European Union’. A copy of the response can be found at:
Serious and Organised Crime Agency
Mr. Francois: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the (a) set-up and (b) transition costs were for the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. [125759]
Mr. Coaker: The SOCA (a) set-up costs are £27.28 million, made up of £8.9 million net additional resource expenditure and £7.73 million capital as reported in the 2005-06 accounts of the Home Office, NCS and NCIS; in addition to £10.65 million NCS and NCIS reported as core budget expenditure related to SOCA, which included the value of NCS/NCIS staff time spent on implementation and planning of SOCA work.
The SOCA (b) transition costs are identified by SOCA as being £33.5 million during 2006-07; £8 million being related to one-off costs and £25.5 million of recurrent costs.
Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005
Mr. Djanogly: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when sections 71 to 74 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 came into effect; and how many times a judge has made an order pursuant to these sections. [128770]
Mr. Coaker: Sections 71 to 74 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 were brought into effect on 1 April 2006 by means of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (Commencement No. 5 and Transitional and Transitory Provisions and Savings) Order 2006 [SI 2006/378 (C.9)]. Central figures are not kept on how often these provisions have been used.
Standford Hill Prison
Mr. Gale: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many prisoners absconded from HMP Standford Hill in each year since 1992; [130073]
(2) how many prisoners who have absconded from HMP Standford Hill were not recaptured and returned in each year since 1992; [130074]
(3) how many prisoners, returned to HMP Standford Hill having absconded, were dealt with under prison disciplinary procedures in each year since 1987. [130075]
Mr. Sutcliffe
[holding answer 28 March 2007]: The following table sets out the number of absconds that have occurred from Standford Hill prison in each financial year since 1995-96. It is not possible to provide data for previous years as there are no central
records prior to 1995-96. Data for the current financial year are provisional and subject to further validation as part of the in-year and final end of year validation process.
The prison service is currently developing a mechanism for collating recapture data. At the moment the only way of providing this information is for every prison to interrogate records to determine whether any of Standford Hill’s absconders were subsequently received in any other prison following recapture and what disciplinary action, in addition to being returned to closed conditions, was taken. This could be undertaken only at disproportionate cost.
| Absconds f rom Standford Hill p rison | |
| Number | |
| (1 )Data for the current financial year includes absconds from 1 April 2006 to 28 February 2007 | |
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |