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23 Mar 2009 : Column 175W—continued
Haverigg Prison
Mr. Jamie Reed: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the average annual cost of accommodating an inmate in HM Prison Haverigg since 1997 has been. [263703]
Mr. Hanson: The full average cost per prisoner at Haverigg prison has not been calculated for each year requested. This information was not until recently gathered in this format and to produce it would incur disproportionate costs. However the direct cost per prisoner at Haverigg is published in the annual accounts of Her Majesty’s Prison Service, and is set out in the following table.
These costs represent the direct costs only; that is expenditure accounted for at prison establishment level. The year on year figures may not be strictly comparable due to accounting changes over the period.
For 2007-08, an overall cost per prisoner has been calculated taking into account costs met centrally by the Prison Service and the National Offender Management Service. These are primarily property costs (in particular depreciation and cost of capital) but also include some headquarter overheads and other costs met centrally. On this basis the overall cost per prisoner at Haverigg, for 2007-08 was £34,815, and includes some estimation.
| Cost per prisoner—HM Prison Haverigg (£) | |
| (1 )The cost for 1998-99 is cost per prisoner place. | |
Immigration: Appeals
Mr. Carswell: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many immigration appeals were (a) received from and (b) granted in relation to people from (i) India, (ii) Pakistan and (iii) Nigeria in each of the last six years. [264760]
Bridget Prentice: The number of immigration appeals received and granted in relation to appeals from people from India, Pakistan and Nigeria in the last six years is shown in the following table.
| Appeal receipts | Appeals allowed | |||||
| India | Nigeria | Pakistan | India | Nigeria | Pakistan | |
| (1) Data are provisional and subject to reconciliation. | ||||||
Legal Aid: Housing
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many applications for acts of assistance relating to housing were received by the Legal Services Commission in each Government region in each quarter of (a) 2007-08 and (b) 2008-09; how many such applications were accepted; how much has been spent on them; and if he will make a statement. [264644]
Mr. Malik: The information will take the Legal Services Commission several days to obtain. I will write to the hon. Member once the information becomes available.
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people in Greater London have received assistance from each of the desks established in courts to provide free legal representation at repossession hearings in each month since the scheme's inception. [264645]
Mr. Malik: A table showing the number of people who have received assistance from Legal Services Commission funded schemes for repossession hearings at courts in Greater London in each month since the scheme's inception at that court has been placed in the House of Commons Library.
Libel: Legal Aid
Daniel Kawczynski: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make available legal aid for libel cases in which members of the medical profession are stating medical opinion. [264506]
Mr. Malik: There are no plans to make legal aid available for libel cases. We believe it is not in the public interest to allocate the limited resources available for legal aid to these types of cases, particularly as libel cases can be funded by Conditional Fee Agreements.
Magistrates Courts
Mr. Jamie Reed: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what recent assessment his Department has made of the willingness of businesses to release employees to fulfil magistracy duties in the current economic situation. [263708]
Mr. Straw: My Department and advisory committees undertake continuous work with employers both to encourage them to support employees wishing to serve as magistrates, and to highlight the benefits to them of employees being trained, and serving as, magistrates.
The Government will continue to encourage employers to support employees who wish to serve as magistrates. Attracting those in full-time employment can impact positively on the diversity of the magistracy in respect of age. In 2008, of 1,700 new magistrates, 46 per cent. were under 50 years of age, compared to 19 per cent. in the magistracy as a whole.
Magistrates: Barnsley
Jeff Ennis: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many magistrates on the Barnsley Magistrates’ Bench resided in (a) Barnsley Central constituency, (b) Barnsley West and Penistone constituency and (c) Barnsley East and Mexborough constituency in each of the last 10 years. [264551]
Mr. Straw: There are currently 115 magistrates in the Barnsley local justice area.
(a) 36 magistrates live in the constituency of Barnsley Central
(b) 50 magistrates live in the constituency of Barnsley West and Penistone
(c) 15 magistrates live in the constituency of Barnsley East and Mexborough.
10 magistrates live in other constituencies and four had invalid postcodes recorded.
My Department does not hold a central record of the constituencies in which magistrates live. We are undertaking a manual exercise in order to provide the historical information sought, and I will write to the hon. Member as soon as it is available.
Offenders: Rehabilitation
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent by West Yorkshire Drugs and Offender Management Unit on its Integrated Offender Management Programme in (a) 2006, (b) 2007, (c) 2008 and (d) 2009. [264576]
Mr. Hanson: Integrated Offender Management is a locally agreed, multi-agency approach to reducing crime through punishing and reforming persistent offenders. IOM is a relatively new concept and there was no central funding of West Yorkshire before 2008-09. In 2008-09, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice together allocated £550,000 to support the development of Integrated Offender Management in West Yorkshire. This money was received by the Drugs and Offender Management Unit in West Yorkshire police on behalf of the multi-agency Integrated Offender Management partnership in West Yorkshire. We expect the allocation for 2009-10 to be £395,000. The core funding of criminal justice agencies also supports this work.
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much time was spent by the Yorkshire and Humber Offender Management Service interviewing and informing offenders that discriminatory behaviour is unacceptable in (a) 2006, (b) 2007, (c) 2008 and (d) 2009. [264579]
Mr. Hanson: Tackling prejudice and discrimination is one of the aims of offender management and it is standard practice for offenders to be advised about the implications of discriminatory behaviour during the induction process. The information requested is not available, and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost, however, in the four probation areas that make up the Yorkshire and Humberside region of the National Offender Management Service, 16,715 offenders started community or suspended sentence orders during 2006 and 18,079 during 2007. Each offender will have gone through an induction process. Section 2c.7 of the National Standards for the Management of Offenders requires probation areas to induct offenders into the sentence at the start of a community order.
Similarly induction procedures into prison establishments require prisons to emphasise the prison policy on the Race Relations Act and establish standards of behaviour. There were 125,881 first receptions into prison establishments in 2007 and 128,986 in 2006. The data are not broken down by region.
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much time was spent by the Yorkshire and Humber Offender Management Service on the delivery of restrictive interventions to offenders in (a) 2006, (b) 2007, (c) 2008 and (d) 2009. [264580]
Mr. Hanson: For the purposes of this reply, we are taking “restrictive interventions” to mean the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, Approved Premises, Home Detention Curfew and certain licence conditions.
It is not possible, on the basis of information held by the Yorkshire and Humberside region or by each probation area within that region, to disaggregate and isolate from general probation activity the amount of time spent on the delivery of each of those restrictive interventions to offenders. To require this information to be collected would incur disproportionate cost.
Restrictive interventions are used to manage the risk of harm which offenders in the community present and so protect the public.
Open Prisons: Prisoner Escapes
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many inmates (a) escaped and (b) absconded from each open prison in each year since 1997. [264718]
Mr. Hanson: Absconds have fallen to less than half the levels they were 10 years ago while there have been no prison escapes so far this financial year compared to 10 to 20 escapes per year a decade ago. Escapes occur when prisoners unlawfully absent themselves from custody by overcoming a physical barrier or restraint. Absconds occur from open prisons when prisoners absent themselves without needing to overcome a physical barrier or restraint. Prisoners can escape from an open prison if they are being held temporarily in secure conditions within the open prison such as in segregation.
The following table shows the number of prisoners who have absconded from each open prison since 1997. In addition to the figures shown in this table, one prisoner escaped from HMP Thorn Cross in 1999.
| 1997-98 | 1998-99 | 1999-2000 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | |
| Notes: 1. Colchester closed during 1998 2. Drake Hall changed role to Semi Open in 2001-02 from Open 3. Hatfield merged with Moorland in 2003-04 4. Kirklevington changed role to Semi Open in 2001-02 from Category C 5. Latchmere House changed role to Semi Open in 2001-02 from Open 6. Morton Hall changed role to Semi Open in 2001 -02 from Open 7. Norwich—Open Resettlement Unit | |||||||||||
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