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26 Feb 2009 : Column 990W—continued
Garth Prison: Visits
Mr. Hoyle: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) whether he has received reports of the recent incident that took place at HM Prison Garth where a female visitor was locked in a visiting room for four hours; [258907]
(2) if he will investigate the recent incident that took place at HM Prison Garth where a female visitor was locked in a visiting room for four hours. [258908]
Mr. Hanson: HMP Garth informed both the director general and chief operating officer of the National Offender Management Service on the morning of 19 February. I was made aware of the incident on 20 February. An investigation into the circumstances is ongoing, and the prison has apologised to the visitor.
Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the monthly costs incurred by his Department in (a) legal and (b) accountancy fees relating to its handling on behalf of the Isle of Man Government of the issue of Kaupthing, Singer and Friedlander (Isle of Man). [258318]
Mr. Wills: No assessment has been made of the monthly costs incurred by the Ministry of Justice in legal and accountancy fees relating to its handling of the issue of Kaupthing Singer Friedlander (Isle of Man). The Ministry of Justice is the UK Department with responsibility for managing the UK's relationship with the Isle of Man (and the other Crown Dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey), and the issue of Kaupthing Singer Friedlander (Isle of Man) is one of many in which the Department is involved. In this instance it is the Treasury that is operationally responsible for representing the Isle of Man in negotiations with the Icelandic Government.
Land Registry: VAT
Mr. Maude: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether the Land Registry has reduced its retail prices for items which attract value added tax since December 2008. [258386]
Mr. Wills: Land Registry's statutory services are not subject to value added tax. However, all “value add” products and services, which are subject to value added tax, were reduced in line with implementation guidance in December 2008.
National Offender Management Service: Administration
John McDonnell: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much it cost to administer the National Offender Management Head Office in (a) 2003-04, (b) 2004-05, (c) 2005-06, (d) 2006-07 and (e) 2007-08; and what he estimates those costs to be in (i) 2008-09 and (ii) 2009-10. [257508]
Maria Eagle: The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) was formed in 2004. The expenditure on “administration costs” (as defined for estimates and accounts purposes) was as follows:
| Expenditure (£ million) | |
| (1 )Planned. | |
This does not include administration costs included in HM Prison Service. Organisational and accounting changes over the period may mean these figures are not directly comparable. The new NOMS Agency was created
from 1 April 2008 and certain functions were transferred to the centre of the Ministry of Justice.
Due to the restructuring of NOMS following creation of the new agency, the categorisation of “head office” costs is changing and planned budget for 2009-10 is not yet available. The overall administration costs budget for NOMS is reducing by approximately 2.5 per cent.
Orders and Regulations
Richard Younger-Ross: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many statutory instruments were made and not laid before Parliament in each year since 1997. [259025]
Mr. Wills: No information is held centrally regarding the number of Statutory Instruments which are not laid before Parliament. Of the total number of instruments made each year those Orders commencing provisions within primary legislation and those instruments which are purely of a local nature (e.g. relating to roads and bridges, parish boundaries etc) are not required to be laid before Parliament. There will also have been other instruments which will not have been required to be laid and therefore information cannot be readily identified. The information (covering the period from 1999 from when electronic records have been maintained) was as follows:
| Total number of Sis | Local Sis | Commencement Orders | Approx number of Sis not laid | |
Parc Young Offender Institution
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what new facilities and developments are planned for HM Prison Young Offender Institution Parc; and what the cost of that work will be in the next 12 months, broken down by category of expenditure. [258550]
Mr. Hanson: The primary additional facility is the provision of an additional 320 custodial spaces, with the capacity to increase to 470 custodial spaces. In order to support the additional population, a number of internal physical changes to the building will be required, and a new houseblock will be built.
New, upgraded or replacement facilities required to support the increased custodial population include a first night induction unit, an improved multi-faith facility, a new medical centre, enhanced visiting facilities for social and professional visitors, new kitchens, enhanced staff training facilities and additional car parking for visitors and staff.
Payments for the expansion at HMP and YOI Parc during the period March 2009 to February 2010, inclusive, will total £24.024 million. This figure is made up of:
| £ | |
| (1) Including fixtures, fittings, design fees and management fees. | |
Police Custody
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many cells are identified for use under Operation Safeguard; on how many nights Operation Safeguard cells have been used since the operation's inception; and what the largest number of prisoners held under Operation Safeguard on any one night has been to date. [257572]
Mr. Straw: Operation Safeguard is a formal agreement between the National Offender Management Service and Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to hold prisoners in police cells at times of very high population pressure. ACPO has currently agreed the release of up to 400 spaces, although this total is flexible and subject to change due to operational constraints.
Operation Safeguard was activated between 12 October and 22 December 2006 and again from 16 January 2007 to 31 October 2008. Police cells have not been used since 22 September 2008 and no police cells have been on stand by since the end of October 2008. The aggregate total of the number of prisoner nights in which a police cell was used during this period is 88,921. It is not possible to ascertain how many individual prisoners these totals cover. The largest number of prisoners held in police cells was 467 on 11 June 2007.
Prison Service: Reorganisation
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many days (a) he and his Ministers and (b) officials of (i) his Department, (ii) the National Offender Management Service and (iii) the Prison Service have spent on negotiations with the Prison Officers’ Association on his proposals for workforce modernisation in prisons; and how much his Department has spent on advancing the case for those proposals. [258769]
Mr. Straw: Officials in my Department have held extensive and regular meetings with representatives of the POA since March 2008 to progress negotiations on pay and related reforms within the public sector Prison Service. Ministers have held meetings with the POA on six occasions since May 2008.
During 2008-09, £350,000 (including salary costs) has been spent on communications activity within the overall NOMS Workforce Modernisation programme. It is not possible to identify the proportion of this overall spend associated with the POA negotiations.
Prison Service: Vacancies
Mr. Oaten: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how long on average it took to fill a staff vacancy at (a) prisons in England and Wales and (b) HM Prison Winchester in the most recent period for which figures are available. [258845]
Mr. Hanson: Information on the time taken to fill a vacancy in the Prison Service is not routinely collected for all grades. Data are however available from the latest prison officer recruitment campaign held in the autumn of 2008. The average time taken from application to offer for this campaign was 88 days. No comparative information for HM Prison Winchester is available because they did not have vacancies for prison officers at that time.
Prisoners: Suicide
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the total cost was of inquiries into the attempted suicide of the female young offender known as SP by (a) the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and (b) Mr Bryan Payling. [257806]
Mr. Hanson: The total costs of the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman investigation are not known. This information is not held centrally and would require a manual check of a variety of sources and this would be at a disproportionate cost.
The total costs of the Bryan Payling investigation are not yet known. Costs of the investigator and administrative support for the investigation were £3,169.34.
Prisons: Manpower
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prison officers at each grade there were in each prison in England and Wales in each of the last five years; and what estimate he has made of the likely numbers at each grade in the next 12 months. [258678]
Mr. Malik: Information on the number of officers in each establishment, by grade, in each year since 2005 and projections of the number of officers in March 2010 has been placed in the Library of the House.
Probation Officers: Manpower
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the (a) largest, (b) smallest and (c) average number of offenders under the supervision of one probation officer was in each of the last 10 years. [258679]
Mr. Hanson: The caseloads of individual officers will vary according to factors such as the experience of the officer and the complexity (and risk assessment) of the cases. Information about the caseloads of individual probation officers is not collated centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. Information about the trends in probation service caseloads is contained in the annual Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2007.
Probation: Standards
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the performance against objectives of the management of each probation area in England and Wales. [258301]
Mr. Hanson: The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly data-driven performance assessments for each probation area. The most recent performance ratings for probation boards/trusts can be viewed on its website at:
Reoffenders: Rehabilitation
Mr. Wallace: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what studies his Department has undertaken into the effect of attendance on residential outdoor activity courses on re-offending rates. [254725]
Mr. Hanson: A range of outdoor activities are within measures available within local Youth Inclusion Programmes aimed at 8-17 year olds, identified as being at high risk of involvement in offending or anti-social behaviour. However, the Youth Justice Board does not continually monitor the effectiveness of outdoor activities.
A Home Office Research Study(1) also evaluated two regimes—'High Intensity Training' at the Young Offenders Institution at Thorn Cross and a scheme based on the ethos of a 'Military Corrective Training Centre' (MCTC) at the YOI in Colchester. Both schemes were for 18-21 year old males suitable for open conditions. The study of the Colchester scheme concluded that this regime
was not successful in reducing reconvictions, but the young people on the Colchester regime had significantly more positive attitudes towards staff and other inmates at the end of sentence and were significantly more hopeful about the future than the control group. The two year reconviction rates for Thorn Cross showed that, while there was no significant difference in the proportion of offenders reconvicted between the experimental and control group, the experimental group took longer to offend and committed significantly fewer crimes.
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