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28 Oct 2009 : Column 420W—continued
Prisoners: Food
Gregory Barker: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was allocated for prison food on average per prisoner per day in the last 12 months. [296225]
Maria Eagle: For the current financial year the National Offender Management Service introduced a benchmark of £2.10 food costs per prisoner per day. Many establishments already operate below this level and provide acceptable meals. Those operating above the benchmark are working towards reducing their costs with appropriate support.
Evidence and experience has proven that acceptable healthy meals can be provided in prisons within this level of funding by carefully managing menu content and using key messages from the Department of Health about promoting a healthy diet.
The average public sector Prison Service daily food cost per prisoner includes all food and beverage requirements. Prisons provide breakfast, midday and evening meal and a supper snack together with all condiments and beverages.
Menu requirements vary between establishments and are based on the prisoner population, local regimes and seasonal availability.
Prisoners: Suicide
Harry Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what mechanism is in place to assess the compliance of prison establishments with suicide watch monitoring standards. [295478]
Claire Ward: The National Offender Management Service's (NOMS') Standards Audit provides assurance to the Director General and senior managers on the management of risk throughout the service. This is done through objective measurement of performance against standards in establishments and courts. This process supports continuous improvement and informs the issue and review of standards, the dissemination of good practice and implementation of policy.
The standards which establishments are required to meet are specified in Performance Standard 60, Suicide and Self Harm Reduction. Auditing of establishments'
performance against Standard 60 is carried out independently by NOMS' Standards Audit.
NOMS has a broad, integrated and evidence-based prisoner suicide prevention and self-harm management strategy that seeks to reduce the distress of all those in prison. This requires proactively identifying prisoners at risk of suicide and self-harm. At-risk prisoners are cared for using Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) procedures.
Prisons: Mother and Baby Units
Chris Huhne: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many children born in custody were subsequently taken away from their mothers while in custody in each of the last 10 years. [295826]
Maria Eagle: Figures on the number of children born and subsequently separated from their mother while in custody are not collected centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Mothers who have their children with them in custody will be located in a Mother and Baby Unit (MBU). Babies can remain with their mothers in an MBU up to the age of 18 months, and a condition of admission to an MBU is that a separation plan is agreed between the mother and the care team. The child will leave the MBU when it is considered to be in their best interest. Ideally the process of separation will be voluntary, gradually staged and, wherever possible, conducted over a period of time known and clearly understood by all parties involved. The desirable scenario is that a mother and child will leave an MBU together when the mother is released from prison.
Not all mothers who give birth in custody keep their children with them. This may be because Social Services have made the decision in the child's best interests that mother and child should be separated at birth, or because the mother has decided that the child should be cared for by a relative or friend. It may also be because the mother has been refused a place on an MBU, and if this is the case the application process will have involved Social Services and liaison will be maintained with them and the family in determining the future care of the child.
Remand in Custody
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many people were remanded in custody in each of the last five years. [295681]
(2) how many people have been given bail by the courts in each year since 2006. [295705]
(3) what proportion of requests for remand made by the Crown Prosecution Service were granted by the courts in the latest period for which figures are available. [295757]
Claire Ward: The estimated number of persons remanded in custody at all courts in England and Wales in each year throughout the period 2003-07 (latest available) is shown in the table following table.
The estimated number of persons granted bail by all magistrates' courts and the Crown court in England and Wales during 2006 and 2007 (latest available) was and 493,800 and 485,200 respectively.
During 2007, an estimated four percent of all defendants proceeded against at magistrates' courts and the Crown Court were remanded in custody at some point during proceedings. Remands data held on the Office for Criminal Justice Reform Court Proceedings Database do not include information on the reasons for remanding a defendant in custody and do not identify the entity responsible for bringing the prosecution.
These figures are taken from data on the use of court bail and remand presented in Chapter 4 of the publication Criminal Statistics, England and Wales, 2003 to 2007 and include those also held in custody for some but not the whole period of the proceedings. Data for 2008 are planned for publication at the end of January 2010.
| The estimated numbers( 1) of persons remanded in custody at magistrates' courts or the Crown Court( 2) , England and Wales, 2003-07 | |||||
| Thousand | |||||
| 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | |
| (1) Includes estimates for those offences omitted from data supplied. (2) Crown Court cases are not necessarily concluded in the same year as the committal therefore the figures presented may include cases where defendants were remanded in custody during earlier years than under which they are presented in this table. (3) Includes those remanded for part of the time in custody and part on bail. Notes: 1. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 2. For Magistrates' courts cases, the number of remands and more importantly, the number which are in custody, are believed to be under-recorded in total. The extent of under-recording is not known, as only limited checks are available with independently collected data. However, it is clear that the breakdown of remands into bail and custody cases is not accurate for a number of forces. The accuracy of data about Crown Court remand decisions has improved as a result of data being returned directly from the Crown Court computer system. Source: OCJR Court proceedings Database. | |||||
Trafigura: Injunctions
Paul Farrelly: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the Prime Minister's Answer of 14 October 2009, Official Report, column 204, what steps he plans to take to assess the implications of the injunction obtained in the High Court by Trafigura in the case listed as (1) RJW (2) SJW-and-(1) The Guardian (2) Persons unknown for (a) parliamentary privilege, (b) investigative reporting and (c) legislative safeguards for whistleblowers. [294858]
Mr. Straw: I have asked senior officials at the Ministry of Justice to meet representatives of the national press and to consult the judiciary to assess the situation. I will then consider the situation in the light of these discussions and will make a statement in due course.
Business, Innovation and Skills
Construction: Procurement
Mr. Oaten: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many contracts for construction works his Department has put out to tender and then withdrawn in each of the last three years. [292974]
Mr. McFadden: This Department and its predecessors have not withdrawn any contracts for construction works put out to tender during the period covered by the question.
Departmental Public Expenditure
Philip Davies: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how much it cost to establish his Department following the machinery of government changes in June 2009. [296338]
Mr. McFadden: The costs of the merger to date are £160,000, primarily on changes to accommodation and building signage, offset by savings from removing duplication.
Higher Education: Admissions
Dr. Cable: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many people aged (a) 21 years and under and (b) over 21 years old in each socio-economic group resident in (i) Twickenham constituency, (ii) Richmond-upon-Thames, (iii) London and (iv) England attended university in each of the last five years. [294755]
Mr. Lammy: The latest available information from the Higher Education Statistics Agency is shown in tables 1 to 4. The figures are for full-time undergraduate entrants as socio-economic class information is not available for part-time higher education students.
Figures for the 2008/09 academic year will be available from the Higher Education Statistics Agency in January 2010.
| Table 1: Full-time undergraduate entrants( 1) from Twickenham parliamentary constituency by age and socio-economic classification( 2) , UK higher education institutions, academic years 2003/04 to 2007/08 | ||||||||||
| 2003/04 | 2004/05 | 2005/06 | 2006/07 | 2007/08 | ||||||
| (1 )The table does not include entrants where the constituency of the student cannot be established due to missing or invalid home postcodes. (2 )This field collects the socio-economic classification of students participating in HE if 21 or over at the start of their course or parental classification if under 21. (3 )Information is not comprehensively collected on the "Never worked and long-term unemployed" category for students. Students who fit this group are usually classed as having missing information. (4 )Covers students whose socio-economic classification was missing or not classified: not classified includes occupations which were inadequately described, not classifiable or unstated. Note: Figures are based on a HESA standard registration population and have been rounded up or down to the nearest five, therefore components may not sum totals. Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). | ||||||||||
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