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4 Feb 2008 : Column 813W—continued
Personal Records
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consideration she has given to the merits of issuing one identity number to each citizen shared across the public sector. [176507]
Meg Hillier: Section 2(5) of the Identity Cards Act 2006 requires that a unique number, the National Identity Registration Number, is given to each individual who is registered on the National Identity Register and issued with an ID card.
Subject to parliamentary approval and regulations it would then be possible for the National Identity Registration Number to become used as a general identifier, in accordance with the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998.
Police Stations
Mr. Hands: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many police stations (a) opened and (b) closed in London in each of the last five years, broken down by borough; [178641]
(2) what police station closures are currently planned in each London borough. [183019]
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: Finance
Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which events in London the Government have (a) part and (b) fully funded the policing of in each of the last 10 years. [182369]
Mr. McNulty: The Government have made a major contribution to the cost of policing events in London over the past 10 years in the form of general grant, specific grants and the special payment to the Metropolitan Police Service for its capital city functions. In addition to this the Government have provided special grant on four occasions in the last 10 years as detailed in the following table.
| Special grant paid to the Metropolitan Police in the last 10 years | ||
| Event | Special g rant (£ million) | |
Police: Mergers
Jenny Willott: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how much has been reimbursed to date to each police force for costs incurred over the police force merger consultations; and if she will make a statement; [182627]
(2) how much has been pledged to be reimbursed to each police force from the costs of police force merger consultations; and if she will make a statement; [182628]
(3) what the full cost of the police force merger consultations was (a) to her Department and (b) to each police force; and if she will make a statement. [182629]
Mr. McNulty: Between September 2005 and July 2006, the Home Office spent approximately £400,000 on staff costs (representing a team of permanent, temporary and seconded staff averaging 10 people during this period), approximately £20,000 on legal costs and approximately £800,000 on consultancy for assessing and refining the police structures business cases. Other Home Office officials and special advisers made contributions to work on police restructuring as part of routine business and those costs could not be identified separately. Information on the full costs incurred by police forces on this work is not available. However, all police authorities were invited to submit claims for the additional costs incurred in the early preparations for police force mergers. On 30 October 2006, I announced in a written statement to Parliament the amounts to be offered towards those costs amounting to £3,997,200 in total. The amounts offered to each police authority are set out in the following table. Payment of these contributions was dependent on confirmation being received from each police authority that their claims had been made in accordance with the terms of the invitation. These payments have been made to all police authorities to whom the offers were made(1).
(1) Except for Humberside Police Authority and North Yorkshire Police Authority whose confirmations have not been received.
| Offers of payment towards additional costs incurred on the preparations for police force mergers | |
| Police authority | Payment offered (£) |
Police: South Tyneside
Mr. Hepburn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much has been spent on policing in (a) South Tyneside, (b) the north-east and (c) England in each year since 1997. [174755]
Mr. McNulty: Northumbria Police Authority has responsibility for policing South Tyneside. Figures for South Tyneside alone are not available.
Information on Northumbria and the north-east are set out in the following table.
Police: Telephone Services
Martin Horwood: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what her most recent estimate is of the revenue received from customers phoning on telephone numbers beginning 08 by police forces in the last five financial years. [183045]
Mr. McNulty: This information is not collected centrally.
Proceeds of Crime
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what the total operational cost of the suspicious activity reports regime has been since it was created; and how much was spent on capital establishment costs; [182158]
(2) what the total operational cost of the suspicious activity reports regime has been to the Government in the past 12 months. [182213]
Jacqui Smith: Suspicious activity reports (SARs) are submitted to the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) in the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). £12,792.502 has been spent on the operation of the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) since April 2006, when the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) assumed responsibility for the UKFIU. In 2007 £7,305,511 was spent on the operation of the UKFIU. This includes the running costs of the SARs transformation project. This is not contained within the FIU, but is an IT-enabled business change project entirely focused on improving the SARs regime. In addition, the overhead charge associated with running estates and IT for the UKFIU is currently around £1,200,000 per year.
David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much money has been collected through the suspicious activity reports regime since its creation. [182214]
Jacqui Smith: SARs make a contribution to a range of outcomes including asset recovery but also harm reduction, the building of intelligence on criminals and terrorists, and criminal convictions. In relation to terrorism, the information contained in SARs has been used to assist in the prevention of further terrorist activity, through being linked to ongoing inquiries, and regularly adds valuable new information.
Because the information contained in SARs is one of many inputs to these results it is not possible to quantify the value of these in terms of amounts of criminal assets recovered. Nor would this cover the full range of benefits.
Racial Violence
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 29 November 2007, Official Report, columns 662-64W, on racial violence, how many and what percentage of those incidents resulted in a conviction. [172180]
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