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4 Jun 2007 : Column 262W—continued
Departments: Sovereign Strategy
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many meetings (a) Ministers and (b) officials from his Department held with Sovereign Strategy in each year between 1997 and 2006. [136854]
Mr. McNulty: Ministers and civil servants meet many people as part of the process of policy development and advice. It is not normal practice to disclose details of such meetings.
Domestic Violence: Suffolk
Mr. Spring: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many cases of domestic violence were recorded in Suffolk in each of the last five years. [139140]
Mr. Coaker: From the information collected centrally on recorded crime, it is not possible to identify recorded cases of domestic violence. Such offences are not specifically defined by law and details of the individual circumstances of offences are not collected.
Drug Interventions Programme
Mr. Mark Field: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice his Department has given to intensive service drug intervention programme (DIP) teams in London on changes in funding to DIPs. [139053]
Mr. Coaker: The detailed spending of funds allocated to partnerships as part of the drug interventions programme is a matter for the partnerships who receive that funding.
There has been significant investment in the drug interventions programme—over £500 million since its commencement. In the context of the changes of the funding allocations for 2007-08, the Home Office, through its close work with the Government offices for the regions and colleagues from the National Treatment Agency, is encouraging partnerships to concentrate on protecting front line operational services which are the key to getting drug misusing offenders into treatment. This might be achieved, for example, by looking at administrative overheads, working patterns and other areas for efficiencies, including whether funding provided for start-up costs can now be deployed in support of operations.
Drug Interventions Programme: City of Westminster
Mr. Mark Field: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the likely impact on the rates of drug related acquisitive crime of changes in funding levels for Westminster city council’s drug intervention programmes for 2007-08. [139055]
Mr. Coaker: There is a well established link between certain acquisitive crimes and drug misuse. Drug treatment has been shown to significantly reduce drug related offending which is why through the Drug Interventions Programme over 75,000 offenders have entered treatment since the beginning of the programme in 2003.
The Home Office is working closely with the regional Government offices, including London and colleagues from the National Treatment Agency, to encourage partnerships to ensure that operational capacity—which is the key to getting offenders into treatment and reducing crime—continues to have top priority in the new budget allocations. The Drug Interventions Programme remains on course to meet its target of getting 1,000 offenders a week into treatment by April 2008.
Drug Interventions Programme: Greater London
Mr. Mark Field: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he consulted the Metropolitan police prior to announcing the funding reductions to intensive service drug intervention programmes within London. [138646]
Mr. Coaker: The Metropolitan police receives funding directly from the Home Office, as part of the Drug Interventions Programme, to support drug testing operations in some Metropolitan police custody suites. The Metropolitan police have been consulted about the funding of those services in 2007-08 for which the budget has not been reduced.
Where funding streams to drug action team partnerships have been reduced, of which the Metropolitan police are part, representatives of regional Government office in London and the National Treatment Agency were consulted to ensure that local and regional perspectives were taken into account.
Emergency Calls
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the (a) cost per operator and (b) total cost was to each police force of training emergency telephone operators in each of the last 10 years. [139484]
Mr. McNulty: This information is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much was spent by police forces on outside consultants to provide customer service training to emergency telephone operators in each of the last 10 years. [139485]
Mr. McNulty: This information is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Forensic Science
Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many crime scene investigators are in post in each police force in England and Wales; and what percentage of these are civilian. [138480]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 22 May 2007]: The information requested is not collected centrally in the police personnel statistics. The available information is the number of police officers and police staff who are primarily involved in the function “scenes of crime”. These data are given in the following table.
The “scenes of crime” function refers to those staff who are predominately employed in providing scientific support, or supporting those who provide scientific support, including scenes of crime officers, their supervisors and those engaged in administrative duties relating thereto.
Genetics: Databases
Natascha Engel: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what personal and biometric data is collected by police when an arrest is made; and how much of this data is retained when a suspect is released without being charged. [140248]
Mr. McNulty: Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 the police may photograph any person detained at a police station. They may also take a photograph elsewhere than at a police station of a person who has been arrested for an offence. Photographs taken under these provisions may be retained, regardless of the outcome of the arrest, and shared for purposes relating to the prevention or detection of crime, the investigation of an offence, the conduct of a prosecution or the enforcement of a sentence.
PACE also enables the police to take fingerprints, non-intimate samples, intimate samples and footwear impressions from individuals arrested for a recordable offence. Intimate samples may only be taken on the authority of an inspector (if he or she has reasonable grounds to believe that such an impression or sample will tend to confirm or disprove the suspect's involvement in a recordable offence) and with the person's consent.
Photographs, fingerprints, non-intimate samples and footwear impressions taken under PACE may be retained, regardless of the outcome of the arrest, but cannot be used by any person except for purposes related to the prevention or detection of crime, the
investigation of an offence, the conduct of a prosecution or the identification of a deceased person.
Chief constables retain the operational discretion to decide whether or not fingerprints and samples will be retained in individual cases. To ensure national consistency regarding retention and deletion of fingerprints and samples, the Association of Chief Police Officers has devised guidelines for chief officers on the consideration of applications from individuals for the removal of their samples and the procedure that should apply.
Under PACE code of practice C, when a person is arrested and taken into police custody the custody officer must carry out a risk assessment for the individual. This will include seeking information from the detainee around their history and any health issues that the police need to be aware of to enable the safe detention of the individual. This information will be recorded and retained on the Police National Computer.
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