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11 Feb 2009 : Column 2092W—continued
Human Trafficking: Essex
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many (a) adults and (b) children in Essex were identified as having been trafficked in each of the last three years; [254782]
(2) what accommodation in Essex his Department and its agencies provide for those identified as having been trafficked into the UK.[254785]
Maria Eagle: The Government fund the Poppy project to provide adult victims that have been trafficked into sexual exploitation with safe, appropriate accommodation and a range of support services. Although the accommodation is based within the London region the project takes national referrals and provides an outreach service. This year’s grant also includes a small flexible budget to temporary accommodate victims with other refuges if the project reaches capacity. We will be expanding the services available to adult victims of human trafficking this year.
Responsibility for the care, protection and accommodation of child trafficking victims falls within the designated responsibilities of local authorities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children under the provisions of the 1989 and 2004 Children Acts.
Central Government do not hold a record on the number of victims identified as being trafficked by region. We are developing a national referral mechanism to help in the identification and referral of all victims under our implementation plans for the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. This will also provide a mechanism for more co-ordinated national data collection on identified victims.
Land
Andrew George: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) who the absolute owner of land is in (a) England, (b) Scotland, (c) Northern Ireland, (d) Wales, (e) Cornwall and (f) the Isles of Scilly; [255057]
(2) who has responsibility for land in (a) England, (b) Scotland, (c) Northern Ireland, (d) Wales, (e) Cornwall and (f) the Isles of Scilly under circumstances in which deeds to land have been lost. [255058]
Bridget Prentice: : The Crown is the ultimate owner of all land in England and Wales (including the Isles of Scilly): all other owners hold an estate in land. Although there is some land that the Crown has never granted away, most land is held of the Crown as freehold or leasehold. If there is no other owner, land will belong to the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duchy of Cornwall.
The loss of title deeds does not alter the ownership of land or responsibility for it in England and Wales (including the Isles of Scilly). Title deeds are evidence of ownership of unregistered land. If the deeds have been lost, other evidence could be used to prove ownership. Title to registered land is derived from the register of title maintained under the Land Registration Act 2002.
Responsibility for land law and succession law in Scotland and Northern Ireland is devolved. Questions about land law in these jurisdictions should be addressed to the Scottish Executive and the Department of Finance and Personnel in Northern Ireland respectively.
Legal Aid Scheme
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many firms undertook criminal legal aid work in (a) 2002 and (b) 2008. [255253]
Mr. Malik: The number of contracts held between the Legal Services Commission and solicitors’ offices to provide legal aid under the General Criminal Contract was 2,909 at 31 March 2002. At 31 March 2008 the number of contracts held was 2,230. These figures do not include former providers with claims yet to be paid or those completing existing cases but not taking on new work.
Before the introduction of the Unified Contract for crime work in July 2008, solicitor firms practising from more than one office needed to hold a separate contract for each office that provided legal aid. However, from 14 July 2008 there were 1,799 providers contracted under the new contracts to offer criminal legal aid through 2,274 individual offices. The LSC has continued
to maintain 100 per cent. coverage of its police station and magistrates court duty solicitor schemes through these providers.
The reduction in the number of contracts reflects the trend in the last several years of offices doing small amounts of legal aid work to drop out of the market or merge with other offices, so that the work is done in larger volumes at fewer offices. This has not affected the availability of legal aid to those that need it.
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was paid by his Department for (a) criminal legal aid work and (b) other legal aid work in each of the last five years. [255259]
Mr. Malik: The Ministry of Justice funds legal aid through a grant to the Legal Services Commission (LSC). The following table shows the grant paid to the LSC in each of the financial years 2003-04 to 2007-08 for its provision of Criminal Defence Service (CDS) and the Community Legal Service (CLS). All criminal legal aid work is funded by the CDS grant, and all other legal aid work funded by the CLS grant.
| £ million | ||
| CDS | CLS | |
Prison Accommodation
Mr. Oaten: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prisoners there were in (a) England and Wales and (b) Winchester Prison on the latest date for which figures are available; what the maximum prison capacity in England and Wales is; and what the maximum capacity of Winchester Prison is. [256278]
Mr. Hanson: At the end of January 2009, the latest date for which figures are available, there were 82,240 prisoners detained in all prison establishments in England and Wales and 701 prisoners in HMP Winchester. The useable operational capacity for all prison establishments in England and Wales was 84,902 and the operational capacity of HMP Winchester was 706.
Operational capacity for establishments is the total number of prisoners that an establishment can hold taking into account control, security and the proper operation of the planned regime.
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.
Sark
Mrs. Laing: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what steps his Department plans to take in response to the Court of Appeal ruling on 5 December 2008 in the case of R (Barclay and others) v. Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice and others. [255488]
Mr. Wills: In a letter to the Seneschal, the Minister for the Crown Dependencies, Lord Bach, has made clear that both he and officials in the Ministry of Justice expect to be kept informed of the progress made in reforming the role of the Seneschal.
Special Educational Needs: Tribunals
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many appeals have been made to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal in each of the last 10 years; and how many of those appeals were successful. [255708]
Bridget Prentice: The information requested is shown in the following table:
| Range( 1) | Appeals Received( 2) | Appeals Registered | Successful( 3) |
| (1) The data relate to academic years, September to August. (2) The SEND annual data are presented on the basis of: All Appeals Received and Appeals Registered. The Appeal Received data also include appeals received by SEND that fall outside of SEND jurisdiction. The Appeals Registered data include all the appeals that are accepted by SEND as falling within its jurisdiction and which are taken forward to hearing and disposal. (3) The successful decisions issued do not relate to appeals registered in that particular year; this figure will include appeals which were carried over from the preceding year. The registered appeals are those which could be decided i.e. those which were within jurisdiction and within the time limits in which an appeal must be lodged. | |||
Innovation, Universities and Skills
Chelmsford Prison: Education
Mr. Burns: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many (a) prisoners and (b) young offenders obtained qualifications while at HM Prison Chelmsford in each of the last five years. [254753]
Mr. Simon: Qualifications at HMP Chelmsford are achieved by offenders in a variety of areas of the prison’s work. Data are not recorded uniformly although we will improve this through the Learning and Skills Council’s IT-based Learner Record system shortly to roll-out across prisons. As well as solving the longstanding problem of prisoner learner data not following them as they move from prison to prison, the new system will for the first time allow all learning outcomes, no matter by whom delivered in the prison, to be recorded on a single record for the learner.
Health and safety qualifications are delivered in the prison’s workshops. 109 qualifications were achieved in 2005, 350 in 2006, 305 in 2007 and 325 in 2008. A further 734 qualifications, including in textiles and engineering, have been delivered in the prison’s workshops
since 2005. Food hygiene qualifications are delivered in the prison kitchens, literacy and numeracy qualifications through Learn Direct provision, parenting qualifications through the Ormiston Trust, a variety of information technology qualifications through a Prison ICT Academy (PICTA) workshop.
The physical education department at the prison has recorded the award of 272 qualifications in financial year 2004-05, 282 in 2005-06, 406 in 2006-07 and 438 in 2007-08. The information is not recorded by age.
Learning and Skills Council data for the 2006-07 academic year shows a total of 52 individual achievements recorded by the offender learning and skills service provider at HMP Chelmsford, of which 15 were achieved by those aged under 21. Final data for 2007-08 are not yet available, but indications are that there were a total of 524 achievements, of which 191 were achieved by those aged under 21. We believe there was significant under-recording of achievements in 2006-07, which we have now taken steps to resolve.
Prior to the 2006-07 academic year, education at HMP Chelmsford was provided by Norwich City College. Data from that period show there were 471 awards recorded against the HM Prison Service Key Performance Target for basic skills in financial year 2003-04, 1,123 in 2004-05, 1,241 in 2005-06 and 617 awards in the first four months of financial year 2006-07.
Departmental Impact Assessments
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many equalities impact assessments his Department has undertaken in the last 12 month period for which figures are available; and what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of such assessments. [255070]
Mr. Simon: In the last 12 months DIUS has undertaken four equality impact assessments. As this is part of routine policy development, I have made no separate estimate of the cost.
Departmental Plants
Mr. Hunt: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how much his Department has spent on (a) pot plants and (b) cut flowers in each year since it was established. [256117]
Mr. Simon: The Department occupies space in buildings that are managed by other Government Departments. The Department’s contribution towards the cost of plants and flowers is:
| £ | |
2007-08 | 517 |
2008-09 | 1,722 |
Total | 2,239 |
This includes expenditure on plant displays and maintenance, purchase of Christmas trees and Remembrance Day wreaths and flowers, and cannot be further broken down between pot plants and flowers.
Departmental Recruitment
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many new recruits his Department took on in (a) 2005-06, (b) 2006-07, (c) 2007-08 and (d) 2008-09, how many of these were taken on as (i) permanent, (ii) temporary and (iii) agency staff; and what estimate he has made of the equivalent figures for (A) 2009-10 and (B) 2010-11. [254463]
Mr. Simon: The Department was created on 28 June 2007. 34 new recruits joined the Department up to 31 March 2008 and to date, 51 have joined since 1 April 2008. A breakdown of permanent and temporary staff could be produced only at disproportionate cost. The Department does not hold central records of recruitment campaigns as the majority of vacancies are managed locally by individual vacancy managers. A joint campaign was run on behalf of the DIUS and the Department for Children, Schools and Families for the Private Office in May 2008 which resulted in 16 executive officers being recruited on a permanent basis into the Department.
The number of agency staff engaged by the Department since its creation is shown in the following table. January 2009 figures are not available yet.
| Financial year | Agency staff |
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