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24 Nov 2008 : Column 827W—continued
Passports: Fees and Charges
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the fee revenue from passports has been in each of the last eight years. [235515]
Jacqui Smith [holding answer 13 November 2008]: The fee revenue received by IPS over the last eight financial years has been as follows:
| £ million | |
Police: Pay
David Simpson:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many temporary advances issued to police officers in England and Wales (a) attending
courses outside their area is and (b) performing duty outside their area are outstanding; and what the monetary value of those advances is. [237395]
Mr. Coaker: This information is not held centrally.
Police: Pensions
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of members of the police pension scheme joined on or after 6 April 2006; and what projections she has made of changes to this figure over time. [233129]
Mr. Coaker: Information on the number of members of the police pension schemes is not held centrally. However, virtually all serving officers are members of either the Police Pension Scheme 1987 (PPS) or the New Police Pension Scheme 2006 (NPPS), which was introduced for new entrants on 6 April 2006. Figures in the Home Office Statistical Bulletin series "Police Service Strength, England and Wales"—available in the Library and at:
suggest that at 31 March 2008 there were 129,593 officers (91.4 per cent. of the total) eligible for membership of PPS and 12,266 officers (8.6 per cent. of the total) able to be members only of NPPS. No projections have been made of the changes over time to the proportion of officers who joined on or after 6 April 2006, but the proportion of officers who are members of the closed PPS is expected to reduce to zero by about 2036.
Police: Staffordshire
Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers there are in (a) Tamworth constituency and (b) Staffordshire. [237338]
Mr. Coaker: There were 2,269 full-time equivalent officers in Staffordshire police and 410 full-time equivalent officers in the basic command unit of Trent Valley as at 31 March 2008. These figures are calculated on a full-time equivalent basis and include officers on career breaks or maternity/paternity leave. Police personnel data are not collected by parliamentary constituency.
Prisoners
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the size of the prison population was at the latest date for which figures are available, broken down by ethnic group. [236838]
Mr. Hanson: I have been asked to reply.
The following table shows the prison population of England and Wales at June 30th 2007, broken down by ethnicity:
| Number | |
This table is taken from table 7.21 in the recently published Offender Management Caseload Statistics, 2007, a copy of which has been placed in the House of Commons Library. This table can also be found at the following website:
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Protection: Religious Freedom
Mark Pritchard: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police forces in England and Wales are providing police protection for individuals who have converted from Islam to other faiths. [173946]
Mr. Coaker: The information requested is not collected centrally.
Serious and Organised Crime Agency: ICT
James Brokenshire: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent assessment she has made of the capability of computer systems used by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency to share data with other agencies; and if she will make a statement. [236261]
Mr. Alan Campbell [holding answer 17 November 2008]: SOCA has well-developed processes for exchanging information, set out in its publicly-available Statement of Information Management Practice. These ensure information exchange with partners is timely, risk-assessed, and accords with legal and other standards.
SOCA has secure electronic links to the police service and major Government partners for the transmission of sensitive material. Further exchange of information is achieved through direct access by partners to SOCA-managed information systems and SOCA uploading information to shared law enforcement systems, as well as via SOCA liaison staff and the operation of inquiry services.
Small Businesses: Crime
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what definition she uses of crime against business. [234870]
Mr. Alan Campbell:
Various definitions of ‘business crime’ are in use by police forces to reflect local concerns and circumstances. The Government do not specify a particular definition of business crime, but is looking with the National Retail Crime Steering Group, at how
a fuller picture of the scale and nature of the crime problems that affect businesses nationally might be obtained.
Telecommunications: Surveillance
Patrick Mercer: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will place in the Library copies of the information which was presented to internet service providers on 3 November 2008 by her Department on the issues and technology surrounding the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme. [235526]
Mr. Coaker: We have been considering how we can continue to protect the public by utilising communications data in the light of changing technology and have created the cross-Government Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) to analyse the available options. Since 2006 there has been ongoing work with intelligence agencies, SOCA, police, HMRC and the telecommunications industry to analyse the size of the problem and to investigate possible solutions to help maintain this essential capability, including relevant safeguards.
I recognise there is a difficult balance between public safety and public rights to privacy so I recently announced my intention to launch a public consultation on the Interception Modernisation Programme. As part of the ongoing engagements with communications service providers, and to raise awareness of the forthcoming consultation, the Interception Modernisation Programme recently presented at the Internet Services Providers' Association conference, outlining the importance of communications data to public safety and the problems that the move to internet technologies will cause. The consultation document also will set out the range of background issues including the vital requirement of communications data in protecting the UK from serious crime and terrorism, the need for a solution to maintain our capability and the need to provide adequate safeguards as part of any solution.
This will be published in January 2009 and as a matter of course be placed in the Library. The results of the public consultation will be used to inform any decisions on the programme's preferred solution and safeguards and to determine whether future legislation is needed.
Terrorism
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) arrests and (b) convictions there were for criminal activity connected to (i) eco-terrorism and (ii) environmental activism in each year since 2001. [235997]
Jacqui Smith: The information requested is not collected centrally.
Activities relating to “Eco-terrorism” and “environmental activism” are not covered by specific legislation, as such ecological and environmental activists involved in consequential criminal behaviour are likely to be arrested or charged with an offence appropriate to the circumstances (such as criminal damage, common assault etc).
The arrests collection held by the Home Office covers arrests for recorded crime (notifiable offences) only, broken down at a main offence group level, covering categories such as violence against the person, burglary, robbery and drug offences. Information on the individual circumstances of arrests is not reported to the Home Office.
The particulars surrounding prosecutions, other than the offence and outcome, are not collected centrally.
UK Border Agency
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many officials of the UK Border Agency were stationed outside the UK in each of the last five years. [234737]
Jacqui Smith: The UK Border Agency came into existence on 1 April 2008, in the last machinery of government changes. It presently has the following staff located abroad:
| Staff as at 31 August 2008 | ||
| UKBA immigration staff( 1) | UK Visas( 2) | |
UK Border Agency: Expenditure
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much the UK Border Agency and its predecessors spent on hotel and other accommodation for its staff (a) in the UK and (b) abroad in each of the last five years. [234738]
Jacqui Smith: The financial record system in use at that time called BASS did not have a category to record hotel payments alone. This figure includes hotels and all subsistence, such as allowances for meals. There was no separate category for UK or overseas accommodation at that time. The total differs slightly due to rounding up from decimal points of the original sums.
| £ | ||||
| 2007-08 | 2006-07 | 2005-06 | 2004-05 | |
| (1 )The financial record system in use at that time called BASS did not have a category to record hotel payments alone. This figure includes hotels and all subsistence, such as allowances for meals. There was no separate category for UK or overseas accommodation at that time. The total differs slightly due to rounding up from decimal points of the original sums. | ||||
Vetting
Mike Penning: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what guidelines her Department has issued for those undertaking Criminal Records Bureau checks; [232945]
(2) what reviews her Department plans to undertake of procedures for those undertaking Criminal Records Bureau checks. [233428]
Meg Hillier: There are a number of published guidelines issued to organisations and applicants undertaking Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks, all of which are available on the CRB website at:
There are no plans to review the procedures for the undertaking of CRB checks. However, the CRB regularly provide advice and guidance to registered organisations relating to best practice through its customer newsletter and the website.
Any reviews of procedures affecting those organisations undertaking CRB checks are done so in full consultation with major stakeholders.
As for the disclosures themselves, standard and enhanced disclosures must contain ‘every relevant matter’ recorded in ‘central records’. This means all convictions, cautions, reprimands and warnings held on the Police National Computer (PNC), including spent convictions. Enhanced disclosures must also include any local police force information which, in the chief officer’s opinion, might be relevant to the application and ought to be included in the disclosure or exceptionally ought not to be included in the disclosure, in the interests of the prevention or detection of crime, but can without harming those interests, be disclosed to the registered body. It is a matter for each chief officer to decide what additional information might be relevant and should be included in an enhanced disclosure.
Home Office Circular 5/2005 provides guidance to the police on how forces should approach the task of determining what information is relevant and should be provided to the Criminal Records Bureau as part of the enhanced criminal record certificates. This guidance is available on the Home Office website and this Circular is currently under review.
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many Criminal Records Bureau checks were found to have been incorrect in (a) 2005, (b) 2006 and (c) 2007; how many individuals were affected in each year; and what estimate she has made of the (i) number and (ii) percentage of individuals in respect of whom the Criminal Records Bureau holds incorrect information. [234660]
Meg Hillier: The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) do not hold criminal records but does release information held on police records and other data sources.
The total number of disclosures where the details released by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) were successfully challenged by the applicant in the last three years are detailed in the following table.
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