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2 Jun 2009 : Column 367W—continued
Police: G20
David Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the latest estimate is of the cost of policing the G20 summit in April 2009; and how much of this cost was incurred in undertaking public order policing relating to demonstrations. [276157]
Mr. Coaker: The Metropolitan Police Service inform me that the current estimate of the cost of policing the G20 summit is £7.5 million. It is not possible at this stage to disaggregate the public order costs from the total costs of the operation.
Police: Retirement
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers who retired from police forces at the rank of (a) assistant chief constable and above and (b) assistant commissioner and above and who are in receipt of a police pension are employed in authorities and agencies for which she is responsible. [268908]
Mr. Coaker:
Information in respect of Home Office headquarters and Executive Agencies is not held centrally. Home Office sponsored non-departmental public bodies
employ a total of 10 former police officers who retired at the rank of assistant chief constable and above or at assistant commissioner and above or at equivalent ranks. It is not recorded whether these employees are in receipt of a police pension.
Police: Stun Guns
Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which police forces made requests before November 2008 to her Department to fund the purchase of Tasers. [273636]
Mr. Coaker: The Home Office routinely discusses police funding issues, including Taser, with individual forces, the Association of Chief Police Officers and police staff associations.
Schengen Agreement
Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in which aspects of the Schengen system the UK participates. [277125]
Mr. Coaker: The UK participates in the police and judicial co-operation aspects of the Schengen acquis in accordance with the European Union Council Decision of 29 May 2000 concerning the request of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to take part in some of the provisions of the Schengen acquis (2000/365/EC). The UK does not participate in the provisions of the Schengen acquis relating to visas and borders, having taken the decision that we wished to maintain our own frontier controls.
Smuggling: Heathrow Airport
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many and what percentage of travellers using Heathrow airport were stopped and searched by HM Revenue and Customs in 2008; how many of those were found to be smuggling; and if she will make a statement. [276927]
Mr. Woolas: During 2008, responsibility for searching passengers moved to the UK Border Agency. Location specific statistics are not published as this would provide information of value to those seeking to circumvent controls, thereby prejudicing the prevention and detection of crime.
National Statistics regarding Search of Person are outlined on page 47 of the HMRC autumn report which can be found at:
Terrorism
Patrick Mercer: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to paragraph 9.09 of the UK's Strategy for Countering International Terrorism, published in March 2009, what the cost of the key deliverables in the Prevent Delivery Plan (a) has been in each year since 2003 and (b) is expected to be in 2009-10. [277359]
Mr. Coaker: Prior to 2008-09 the Home Office did not collate financial data on the cost of key deliverables in the Prevent Delivery Plan.
The cost of Prevent key deliverables during 2008-09 was estimated at £157 million. This is an estimate which was provided at the beginning of the financial year, and may not reflect actual spend. The delivery plan only contains the estimated cost of key deliverables and does not represent total spending on Prevent.
The key deliverables for 2009-10 are still in development, with spend currently estimated at £81 million.
Terrorism: Internet
Patrick Mercer: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 20 April 2009, Official Report, column 156W, on community relations: internet, what material has been classified by her Department as unlawful under the Terrorism Act 2006 to date; and what routine discussions her Department has had with the European Commission on such classifications. [277308]
Mr. Coaker: The material concerned is that which may be unlawful under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006.
No discussions have been held with the European Commission specifically on this matter. Use of the internet for radicalisation to violent extremism in Europe is the subject of ongoing Commission-supported discussions.
Patrick Mercer: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what powers her Department has to (a) order the closure of websites hosted in the UK which display material considered by her Department to be unlawful under the Terrorism Act 2006 and (b) to restrict the activities of owners of such sites. [277341]
Mr. Coaker: The Home Office has no such powers. Under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006 a police constable may issue a notice to an internet service provider that requires unlawful terrorism-related material to be removed or modified within two working days. Failure to do so is not an offence in itself but removes the defence of non-endorsement to charges under sections 1 and 2 of the Act.
Owners of websites containing unlawful material may commit offences under sections l or 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006 (publishing a statement that encourages others directly or indirectly to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, or dissemination of terrorist publications).
Vetting
Dr. Ladyman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what requirements there are on the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) for completion of a CRB check within a specified period of time; and what the average time taken to complete such a check was in the latest period for which figures are available. [276314]
Mr. Coaker: The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) operates to a set of published service standards (PSS) which include issuing 90 per cent. of Standard Disclosures within 10 days and 90 per cent. of Enhanced Disclosures within 28 days.
Data concerning the average time taken to complete a Disclosure are not a performance target and are not collated by the CRB. Average figures do not give an accurate indication of performance, since any force's performance can be affected by a number of factors, including the volume of cases sent to a force to process in any given month, the number of staff available to process the checks and the IT resources on hand to forces. With these variables, performance can fluctuate within individual forces from one month to the next.
Between April 2008 and March 2009 the CRB issued 396,000 Standard Disclosures and 3,459,000 Enhanced Disclosures. During this period the CRB exceeded its targets for Standard Disclosures with a cumulative total of 99.1 per cent. issued within 10 days but did not meet PSS for Enhanced Disclosures, issuing 88.6 per cent. within 28 days. The principal reason for this has been the high volume of Disclosures that have been presented for processing. This has put a great deal of pressure on the police Disclosure Units involved in the processing of Enhanced Disclosures.
An improvement plan has been initiated aimed at reducing the volume of outstanding work at police forces and number of aged cases, which are those applications that have been outstanding for longer than 25 days. This improvement plan has contributed towards a steady decline in the number of these cases over recent months.
There are a number of other factors which can affect the timely completion of checks, including but not restricted to the length of time it can take for an employer to deal with the initial application; the accurate completion of the Disclosure application form; the clarity of the information provided and the existence of conviction or non-conviction information.
To explain further, Enhanced Disclosures must include any local police force information which, in the chief officer's opinion, might be relevant to the application and ought to be included in the Disclosure. Such decisions must balance the need to protect a person's right to privacy with the need to protect the public from potential harm and therefore require careful consideration. Consequently, some applications can take longer to deal with.
Innovation, Universities and Skills
Departmental Security
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many breaches of security have been reported at the (a) National Weights and Measures Laboratory and (b) UK Intellectual Property Office in the last five years; and what procedures each agency follows when a breach of security involves the disclosure of personal data. [276953]
Mr. Lammy: The National Measurement Office (previously the National Weights and Measures Laboratory) has had no breaches of security reported in the last five years.
If a breach of security involving disclosure of personal data were to occur, the National Measurement Office has procedures in place to deal with the consequences, developed with the Department, that reflect current Cabinet Office guidance and standards.
Higher Education: Finance
Mr. Willetts: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills what discussions he has had with the Higher Education Funding Council for England on financial penalties for higher education institutions that over-recruit for the 2009-10 academic year; and when information on such penalties will be provided to higher education institutions. [277845]
Mr. Lammy:
This is not a question of imposing financial penalties, but rather of ensuring the quality of the student experience and providing student support to all those who need it. If universities over-recruit, both of these objectives are put at risk. The Secretary of State wrote to HEFCE on 29 October setting out his plans for additional student numbers in 2009/10 and asking the Council to minimise and preferably eliminate over-recruitment by HE Institutions in that year. HEFCE wrote to institutions on 10 November 2008, asking them to review their recruitment plans for the following year. We have said that any over recruitment in the coming year could result in a transfer of HEFCE grant back to this Department in that or future years. HEFCE
will pass this transfer on to over-recruiting universities according to the extent of their over recruitment.
Natural Environment Research Council: Shipping
Mr. Anthony Wright: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many ships and boats have been (a) owned, (b) leased and (c) hired by or on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in each of the last three financial years; how many operational days each of those vessels has spent at sea at the NERC’s expense; and how much the NERC spent on purchasing, hiring and leasing such vessels in each such year. [277261]
Mr. Lammy: The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) owns, leases and hires a number of vessels. These vessels are used for a number of purposes, including, for example, taking samples from lakes, and monitoring/surveying coastal areas. Data for ships (defined as a vessel above 40 tonnes and 40 feet in length) are provided in the following table.
Hire of smaller boats for activities such as lake sampling are arranged locally under NERC purchasing guidelines on best value for money but the information is not held centrally by NERC.
| Operational Days( 1) | Cost of purchasing, hiring or leasing (£ 000) | ||||||
| Ship name | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 | |
| (1) Data from NERC’s Ship Management Review, which reported to NERC Council in February 2009. A breakdown on days on Cook/Discovery was not recorded. (2) Operated by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS). RRS James Cook came into service in September 2006. (3) Denotes brace (4) Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). (5) Under a PFI arrangement. (6) Includes insurance costs. (7) The RV Prince Madog is a recognised NERC facility operated by VT Ocean Sciences and is available to the NERC community on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis. NERC has no record of the precise costs, which are negotiated between scientists and the RV Madog operator within limits defined within research grants. The basic charter day rate cost is likely to have been in the region of £5,000 per day during this period. | |||||||
As well as owning, leasing and hiring a number of boats and ships, NERC also has barter arrangements with other international operators of ocean-going research ships, which allows for NERC to use its partners’ research ships. These barter arrangements allow for the barter exchange of ship-time between partners without there being any transfer of money. In the calendar years 2006, 2007 and 2008, NERC used its barter arrangements to secure 118 days, four days, 72 days, respectively, of ship-time on its barter partners’ research ships. More information on the European barter arrangements can be found at:
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Afghanistan and Iraq
Mr. Holloway: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what expenditure his Department has incurred in (a) Afghanistan since 2001 and (b) Iraq since 2003; how much his Department has paid to private security companies for services provided in each year in (i) Afghanistan since 2001 and (ii) Iraq since 2003; and what the monetary value of each contract his Department has with private security companies in each such country is. [275436]
Bill Rammell [holding answer 14 May 2009]: Calculating the total Foreign and Commonwealth Office expenditure incurred in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq since 2003 could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
The amount the FCO has paid to private security companies for services in Afghanistan and Iraq is as follows:
| £ million | |
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