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14 Jan 2008 : Column 1064W—continued
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to the answer of 26 February 2007, Official Report, columns 1056-60W and 1072-6W, on police, if she will provide figures for 2007. [174217]
Mr. McNulty: The management of the police estate and allocation of resources are matters for each police authority and the chief officer, who are responsible for assessing local needs.
Latest published statistics on police officer numbers can be found in the Home Office Statistical Bulletin (no.13/07) “Police Service Strength, England and Wales, 31 March 2007”. A copy has been placed in the Library. It is also available on the Home Office website at:
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which police forces use mobile police stations; if she will take steps to require such forces to provide more (a) officers on the beat and (b) high speed police cars; and if she will make a statement. [176066]
Mr. McNulty: The management of the police estate and allocation of resources are matters for each police authority and the chief officer, who are responsible for assessing local needs.
Mr. Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate she has made of the number of police posts which have been civilianised in (a) Northamptonshire and (b) England since the publication of Building Communities, Beating Crime in November 2004. [177918]
Mr. McNulty: Between September 2004 (the nearest date to the White Paper “Building Communities, Beating Crime”) and March 2007 police officer numbers in Northamptonshire increased by 17 (+1.3 per cent.) to 1,281. For England officer numbers have increased during the same period by 1,617 (+1.2 per cent.) to 132,474.
Police Stations: Closures
Mr. Spring: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police stations closed in (a) Suffolk and (b) the east of England in each year since 1997. [175720]
Mr. McNulty: The management of the police estate and allocation of resources are matters for each police authority and the chief officer, who are responsible for assessing local needs.
Police: Expenditure
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will rank police forces in order of expenditure per thousand population in each police force area. [176060]
Mr. McNulty: Police expenditure is determined by each authority within funding by grant and council tax. Government general grant is determined by formula which takes account of a number of factors, not just population.
Information on police authority expenditure and population are set out in the following table.
Police: Firearms
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department under what circumstances and on whose authority police officers may use hollow-point dum-dum bullets; what assessment she has made of whether use of such bullets is compatible with the UK’s international obligations; and if she will make a statement. [177207]
Mr. McNulty: It is for chief officers to decide what ammunition and weapons are appropriate to use in order to meet their own operational requirements, subject to the general law that use of force by the police must be reasonable in the circumstances.
Police: Greater London
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers have been in post in the London Borough of Havering since 1997; and if she will make a statement. [176794]
Mr. McNulty: While the Home Office has collected police officer data at police force area level since 1997, it only started collecting police officer data at a more local level, namely police basic command units (BCUs), in 2003. For this reason we can only provide figures for Havering (a Metropolitan police BCU) from 2003, and they appear in the following table.
| Number of police officers in the London borough of Havering: 2003-07 | |
| As at 31 March each year | Police officers (FTE)( 1) |
| (1) All figures are full-time equivalents (FTE) rounded to the nearest whole number. | |
Police: ICT
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (a) how many and (b) what percentage of (i) police stations and (ii) police forces had livescan units, in each year since 1997. [176055]
Mr. McNulty: Information relating to the number, and the percentage, of police forces with Livescan in each year since 2001 is available and is contained in the following table:
| Number of police forces with Livescan | Percentage of police forces with Livescan | |
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment she has made of the (a) reliability and (b) effectiveness of headcam technology in tackling crime; if she will make resources available to make this technology more widely available to the police; and if she will make a statement. [176301]
Mr. McNulty: A number of police forces have participated in trialling head cam (or ‘body-worn video device’) technology. This exercise was completed in April 2007 and a report, capturing the learning from the trials and providing other advice, was made available to the police service in July 2007.
In addition, all police forces will benefit from a £3 million Government investment in the current financial year for the procurement of ‘body- worn video device’ devices. This is in recognition of the potential for delivering operational and efficiency gains associated with this kind of technology. The wider roll-out of this body-worn video technology will be fully evaluated later this year.
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