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29 Jan 2009 : Column 830W—continued
Prostitution: Human Trafficking
John McDonnell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the evidential basis is for her Department’s position that 80 per cent. of women working as prostitutes have been trafficked into the UK; and if she will place in the Library a copy of such evidence. [247522]
Mr. Alan Campbell: It is not the position of the Home Office that 80 per cent. of women working as prostitutes have been trafficked into the UK. Tackling the Demand for Prostitution: A Review stated that there were an estimated 80,000 people involved in prostitution in the UK, and that the most recent Home Office analysis (from 2003) had estimated that up to 4,000 women in the UK had been trafficked for sexual exploitation.
Terrorism
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment she has made of the extent to which persons (a) convicted of and (b) suspected of terrorist offences in the United Kingdom have used (i) multiple and (ii) false identities. [251463]
Mr. Coaker: This information is not held centrally.
Investigations into a person’s identity at the time of arrest is an operational matter for the police.
Terrorism: Libya
Sammy Wilson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what quantity of (a) weapons and (b) explosives is estimated to have been supplied to IRA terrorists by Libya between 1980 and 2000. [247220]
Paul Goggins: I have been asked to reply.
This is an intelligence matter and it is the longstanding practice of successive Governments not to comment on such matters.
UK Border Agency: Manpower
Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many individuals the UK Border Agency employs. [250180]
Mr. Woolas: As at 31 December 2008, the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA) employed directly 18,078 individuals (excluding 1,206 employees on career break, loan to other Government Departments, maternity leave etc.).
Children, Schools and Families
Child Minding: Registration
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether childminders working two hours or less a week have to pay a fee to Ofsted to become registered. [251041]
Beverley Hughes: As part of a number of reforms that were introduced in September 2008, we extended and redefined the categories of child care that are exempt from compulsory registration. Where child care is provided by a child minder, or any other type of provider, for an individual child for two hours or less per day, these providers would be exempt from registration. The full range of exemptions are set out in the Childcare (Exemptions from Registration) Order 2008 (SI 2008 No 979.) which can be found at:
Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service
Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many industrial tribunal cases there have been involving Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service staff in each of the last five years; and how many of them (a) were settled in the employee's favour and (b) involved redundancy payments. [252999]
Beverley Hughes: CAFCASS has had six employment tribunals within the last five years. There were no employment tribunals prior to 2007. During 2007-08 there were four employment tribunals and during 2008-09 there were two. None of these tribunals were settled in the employee's favour and none of these involved redundancy payments.
Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what assessment has been made of the current level of backlog of work in the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service; and what estimate has been made of the number of staff hours required to deal with that backlog. [253000]
Beverley Hughes: At the end of December 2008, CAFCASS had a backlog of 414 public law cases and 1,979 private law reports. The size of backlogs is influenced by levels of demand which, in December, were unusually high for public law cases.
CAFCASS attempts to allocate all care and supervision cases within two working days of receipt, and has achieved this on 73 per cent. of cases received between April and December 2008, against a key performance indicator of 65 per cent. for this financial year.
CAFCASS aims to complete all cases within timescales agreed by local courts for filing all types of report and case analysis. CAFCASS does not have an estimate of the time necessary to deal with the backlogs as this depends on the circumstances of individual cases. CAFCASS is working with its statutory partners in the family justice system to keep all backlogs and delays to a minimum.
Children: Databases
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) what procedures are in place to request that a child's personal data be shielded on the ContactPoint database; and what appeals procedure is in place in respect of decisions taken on shielding requests; [252893]
(2) what guidance his Department has given to local authorities on the shielding of children's personal data on the ContactPoint database; [252894]
(3) what steps his Department is taking to ensure consistency across local authorities in their implementation of data shielding under ContactPoint; [252895]
(4) what recent estimate he has made of the number of records that will be subject to shielding on the ContactPoint database. [252900]
Beverley Hughes: ContactPoint is an online tool to enable support for children and young people to be effectively coordinated and ensure that they do not slip through the net. It will contain basic identifying information about all children and young people in England, up to their 18th birthday, and contact details for their parents/carers and for services working with a child or young person and nothing more. ContactPoint will be the quick way for practitioners to find out who else is working with the same child.
Shielding of a small proportion of records on ContactPoint is an additional precautionary measure appropriate in the case of children who are at risk of
significant harm if their whereabouts were to become known. Parents who believe this to be the case can contact their local authority and make a request for the record to be shielded on ContactPoint. Local authorities will apply the criteria set out in statutory guidance to determine whether it is appropriate to shield the record on ContactPoint. Such decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis and may take into account the level of threat posed, and the views of the child or young person in question, their parents or carers and any practitioners involved with the child.
Where the child, young person, parent/carer or practitioner disagrees with a shielding decision, they should follow existing procedures in the local authority for complaints and appeals.
Comprehensive national guidance on shielding policy and processes has been made available to all local authorities:
The ContactPoint Guidance, which was made available to local authorities in July 2008, sets out the policy on shielding.
Best Practice Processes: Manage Data, which was made available to local authorities in August 2008, sets out the recommended business processes for shielding.
Additional guidance, produced in response to specific questions asked by local authorities, was made available in December 2008.
The policy and processes for shielding have been informed by the experience of a range of bodies including the Children's Society, Women's Aid, the Greater London Domestic Violence Project, the National Police Improvement Agency and the Association of Chief Police Officers.
We are not in a position at this early point to provide a definitive figure for numbers of records that may be shielded. However, early indications are that between one and two hundred records on average may be shielded in each local authority.
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department has spent on ContactPoint in each year since 2003; what its projected spend on ContactPoint is for each of the next four years; and under what budgetary headings such expenditure is expected to be incurred. [252964]
Beverley Hughes: The total costs for implementing the system are estimated at £224 million, unchanged since I announced in December 2005 that the Government would proceed with this project. These estimated costs include the costs of adapting systems that will supply the data to ContactPoint and adapting the day-to-day systems used by practitioners so they can access ContactPoint from their own systems. It also includes the costs to ensure security, data accuracy and staff training. Operating costs thereafter are estimated to be £41 million per year. Most of this will go directly to local authorities to fund staff to ensure the ongoing security, accuracy and audit of ContactPoint.
The following table shows actual and anticipated expenditure by year, broken down into set up costs and operating costs.
| £000 | |||
| Set up | Operating | Total | |
Children: Day Care
Annette Brooke: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of childcare in each local authority area. [252966]
Beverley Hughes: Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006 requires each local authority to secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient childcare provision to meet the needs of working parents in their area. Sufficiency does not simply relate to the numbers of places available but also encompasses consideration of the accessibility, affordability, flexibility, sustainability and quality of such places.
To enable local authorities to meet the Sufficiency Duty they were also required under Section 11 of the Act to complete a Childcare Sufficiency Assessment by 31 March 2008. These assessments included analysis of the extent of the provision of, and demand for, childcare places, and identified any local gaps. Local authorities have to repeat the assessment process every three years, and must keep their assessments up to date in between times. Assessments are required to be to be published on local authority websites.
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many local authorities have (a) completed their childcare efficiency assessment and (b) identified gaps in their provision of affordable childcare. [252981]
Beverley Hughes: As required under Section 11 of the Childcare Act 2006, all local authorities have completed and published their first child care sufficiency assessments. These assessments offer a detailed analysis of the extent of the provision of, and demand for, child care places, and identify any gaps in such provision. The duty to secure sufficient child care which came into force in April 2008 requires local authorities progressively to eliminate gaps in provision and I would expect all local authorities to be working to close gaps they have identified.
Children: Forced Marriage
John Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether he has implemented a national policy for safeguarding children at risk of forced marriage. [247394]
Beverley Hughes:
The Home Office leads work on the Government's national domestic violence delivery plan including work on forced marriage. The Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) is a key partner in this work and we are committed to doing all we can to tackle forced marriage and to engage effectively
with local communities. We work closely with the Forced Marriage Unit to improve the engagement of schools and local authorities. In April 2008 DCSF Ministers wrote to local authorities and schools reminding them of their responsibilities relating to forced marriage, and in June 2008 new materials were launched to raise awareness of forced marriage. These were sent to all secondary schools, pupil referral units, local authorities and local safeguarding children boards. In November 2008 new statutory guidance was published aimed at local authorities and other agencies entitled "The Right to Choose: Multi-agency statutory guidance for dealing with Forced Marriage". Practice guidelines to support the implementation of this statutory guidance are being developed and will be available shortly.
Children: Literacy
John Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what recent progress has been made under the (a) Every Child a Reader and (b) Every Child Counts programmes; and if he will make a statement. [247396]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Every Child a Reader (ECaR) was established by the KPMG Every Child a Chance Trust in 2005, and from September 2008 is being rolled out by the National Strategies on behalf of Government. By 2010-11, it aims to support the bottom 5 per cent. (approximately 30,000) of children aged 5 and 6 who are struggling to learn to read. It combines one-to-one Reading Recovery support with other less intensive interventions. The programme works on a cascade model whereby each local authority funds Teacher Leader training, and Teacher Leaders, in turn, train Reading Recovery teachers to deliver one-to-one tuition and coordinate the programme in schools. Forty-two Teacher Leaders have so far been trained, and a further 20 local authorities selected a Teacher Leader to undertake the required Masters level training from September 2008. A further cohort will begin training from September 2009, putting us on course to reach 30,000 children a year by 2010-11.
In November 2008, the KPMG Every Child a Chance Trust published their final report on the three-year ECaR pilot. This found that the programme has continued to deliver reliable results for children, both in terms of raising attainment levels and narrowing the social and gender gap. Over 86 per cent. of children who received Reading Recovery in year 1 went on to meet national expectations (level 2+) in reading at the end of KS1, in comparison to 84 per cent. nationally.
Every Child Counts (ECC) is a mathematics intervention programme targeted at the bottom 5 per cent. (around 30,000) of children aged 6 and 7 who are struggling with numeracy. The programme combines one-to-one Numbers Count support with other less intensive interventions. ECC builds on the relationship with the KPMG Every Child a Chance Trust, established to deliver the ECaR programme. The National Strategies will lead on the national roll-out from 2010. This follows a two-year development phase which began in September 2008.
ECC follows the same structure as ECaR. Twenty-one local authorities started the pilot programme in September 2008, each with a Teacher Leader training at Masters
level, directing the work at a local level among schools and training Numbers Count teachers. From September 2009, a further cohort will begin training, expanding the programme until national roll-out in 2010.
Data from the research phase showed that 73 per cent. of children receiving the Numbers Count intervention went on to achieve level 2 or above at the end of KS1. Before receiving the programme, none of these children were predicted to reach age-level expectations at this stage.
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