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26 Nov 2008 : Column 2281W—continued
Passports: Fraud
Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of passport fraud in each of the last five years. [237216]
Meg Hillier: Information on the cost to the public purse of passport fraud in each the last five years is not available. However in publishing on 9 October on identitytheft.org.uk, the 2006-07 estimate of £1.2 billion for the cost of identity fraud to the UK economy, the costs to the Home office were shown as £284.4 million. These relate to the work of its agencies in safeguarding and validating the identities of its customers as well as costs around deterrence, prevention, and investigation of identity fraud. The majority of these costs (£227.8 million) relate to the operating cost of the Identity and Passport Service in detecting and preventing fraudulent passport applications.
Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate she has made of the number of unrecovered fraudulent passports in circulation. [237217]
Meg Hillier: It is not known how many un-recovered fraudulently obtained passports there are in circulation. Passport fraud by its very nature is difficult to establish and measure.
Moreover, the Identity and Passport Service is not always informed when fraudulent passports are identified, seized and taken out of circulation by other agencies in the UK and abroad.
Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have been (a) arrested and (b) charged in relation to passport fraud in each of the last five years. [237218]
Meg Hillier: The figures recorded by the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) for the number of people arrested and the number of people charged in relation to passport fraud in the last five years is shown as follows.
| Arrested | Charged | |
| n/a = Not available. | ||
The aforementioned figures relate to those recorded for people arrested following a passport application, but may not necessarily be specifically for passport fraud.
Also, IPS does not routinely receive feedback from the police or prosecution authorities on cases of passport fraud which are referred to them. The figures given above are therefore likely to be a significant under representation of the number of arrests and charges brought. IPS is working with the police and prosecution authorities to develop more effective notification arrangements.
Passports: Interviews
Damian Green: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were interviewed in each of the operational passport interview centres between the establishment of each centre and 1 October 2008. [231585]
Meg Hillier: We completed 264,046 interviews which have been broken down by office in the following table:
| Number | |
Passports: Lost Property
Kate Hoey: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when she expects to find the passports of the constituent of the hon. Member for Vauxhall and her daughter, Home Office Ref: M664274; and at what point lost passport letters will be issued. [222586]
Mr. Woolas: Passports for the constituent of the hon. Member for Vauxhall and her daughter have been located and the UK Border Agency wrote to the constituent on 2 September 2008.
Performance Appraisal
David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many staff in her Department did not achieve an acceptable assessment grade in their annual report in the latest reporting year for which figures are available. [235222]
Mr. Woolas: In the 2007-08 reporting year, and from the data available, 146 members of staff across Home Office Headquarters, the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) and the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) did not achieve an acceptable assessment marking in their annual reports.
The Criminal Records Bureau is able provide this information only by reviewing individual paper records, and this would incur disproportionate cost.
There are formal end of year assessment arrangements in UKBA and Home Office HQ for identifying members of staff who, while not receiving unacceptable assessment markings, require targeted development.
Photography: Public Places
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what reports she has received of the police preventing members of the public from taking photographs in public places; what her policy is on this matter; and if she will make a statement. [209526]
Mr. Coaker: I will write to the hon. Member.
Police Custody
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent assessment she has made of the extent to which police custody suites are being used for (a) those who are mentally ill or held for their own protection and (b) the drunk and disorderly. [234472]
Mr. Coaker: The Independent Police Complaints Commission published a report on 10 September on the use of police stations as places of safety under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. Findings from the research show that 11,500 people were detained in police custody under section 136 during 2005-06. The average amount of time spent in police custody was nine hours 36 minutes, with the vast majority of detainees leaving within 12 hours. On 30 April 2008, section 44 of the Mental Health Act 2007 was brought into effect. This allows the transfer of a person from one place of safety to another before an assessment has been carried out and recognises the importance of using a police station on an exceptional basis and that when it is used, there is the ability to transfer a person to a more suitable place at the earliest available opportunity.
The arrests information held by the Ministry of Justice covers persons arrested for recorded crime (notifiable offences) only which excludes summary offences of “being drunk and disorderly”. The Home Office has not made any assessments of the use of custody suites
in relation to drunk people. Alcohol arrest referral schemes aim to reduce offending among people arrested for alcohol-related offences by providing them with advice on the links between unsafe drinking levels and offending. This can take place in custody suites.
Some brief interventions are initially custody-based and voluntary with follow-up interventions outside custody.
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