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22 July 2008 : Column 1358W—continued
Olympic Games 2012: Security
Chris Huhne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) when the costed security plan being prepared by the Olympic security directorate will be finalised; [217319]
(2) what estimate she has made of the (a) total costs and (b) costs additional to existing budgets of providing security for the Olympic games in each year until 2012. [217320]
Jacqui Smith: A costed security plan for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games will be agreed by the end of 2008. £600 million has been allocated for policing and wider security, in addition to the provision by the Olympic Delivery Authority and by the London organising committee for the Olympic games.
Overseas Students: Languages
Mr. Ellwood: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps the Government is taking to prevent unaccredited language schools being used as avenues for illegal entry into the UK. [220547]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 21 July 2008]: We have been working closely with the Joint Education Taskforce and Ofsted and from early 2009 accreditation by an independent accreditation body approved by the UK Border Agency will be required by all private education providers that recruit international students.
This means that any private college delivering English language courses to international students coming to the UK under our new Australian-style points system or in the student visitor category will need to hold independent accreditation.
The intention of demanding independent accreditation will be to assure the UK Border Agency that an institution is genuinely providing good quality education rather than offering low quality courses for the purposes of facilitating applications by bogus students.
In the interim the UK Border Agency will continue to act upon allegations and intelligence relating to English language schools that are suspected of being bogus.
Passports: Interviews
Damian Green: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what the cost of each of the passport interview centres was in June 2008; [218884]
(2) how many people had been interviewed at each of the passport interview centres by 30 June 2008; and what the cost per interview was for each office. [218885]
Meg Hillier: The total operating costs for the interview office network of 68 offices during June 2008 was £2.4 million, which excludes the cost of depreciation of relevant set-up capital expenditure. There are a number of central costs within the £2.4 million such as call centre appointments and IT maintenance that make it impossible to give meaningful comprehensive monthly costs for each individual office. A total of 32,792 interviews were carried out in the network during June resulting in an average cost per interview of £73.19, just below the planned figure.
Passports: Lost Property
Mr. David Hamilton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many passports were reported lost or stolen by people aged (a) under 18, (b) between 19 and 25, (c) between 25 and 35, (d) between 35 and 45, (e) between 45 and 55, (f) between 55 and 65 and (g) over 65 years old in the last year for which figures are available. [217420]
Meg Hillier: Procedures and supporting systems for reporting lost, stolen and recovered British passports were introduced in December 2003. Since then the Identity and Passport Service has provided a range of management information on the number of passports that have been processed under these arrangements. In 2007 there were 251,751 reports of lost passports and 41,393 reports of stolen passports. In addition, 10,428 passports were reported under the “other” category, which includes those damaged or destroyed. The systems, however, do not capture specifically the age of the holder whose passport is reported lost or stolen.
Police Custody: ICT
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress has been made on the development and provision of electronic custody systems for the police; when such systems will be available; what the expected cost of such systems is; what the cost of their development has been to date; and what the planned date was for such systems to be available. [219111]
Mr. McNulty: All forces now have an electronic custody system in use at all custody sites. 24 police forces are equipped with the national strategy for police information systems custody system. The other 19 forces have implemented alternative custody systems that conform to the same data standards.
The cost of these systems varies from force to force, depending upon the size of the force and the particular system chosen. Furthermore, some systems were deployed as part of an integrated suite of applications and so the actual cost of the custody element cannot be identified separately.
The target date for the implementation of these systems was 31 March 2008.
Police Stations: Closures
Mr. Dunne: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police stations were closed in each police force area in each year since 1997-98. [213625]
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: Bureaucracy
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of time police officers spent on frontline policing duties in each police force in each year since 2001. [219117]
Mr. McNulty: The information is set out in the following table has only been collected since 2003-04. The frontline policing measure does not cover a range of essential, but not frontline activities, including time spent at court, crime prevention activities, custody duties, operational planning, call handling duties or time spent on non-incident related paperwork.
| Time spent on front-line policing 2003-04 to 2006-07 | ||||
| Front line policing | Baseline year 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 |
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