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2 Mar 2010 : Column 1047W—continued
Unemployment: Parents
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many households there were in which (a) both parents and (b) one parent in a married or cohabiting couple claimed jobseeker's allowance in each year since 2005. [316636]
Jim Knight: The information is not available.
Work Capability Assessment
Mr. Hancock:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to the answer of 19 January 2010, Official Report, column 213W, on social security
benefits: medical examinations, what guidance her Department issues to ATOS Medical assessors on work capability assessments. [318180]
Jonathan Shaw: The main guidance for examining Atos Healthcare professionals, who carry out the work capability assessments on behalf of the Department, is the Employment and Support Allowance handbook which has been developed in conjunction with the Chief Medical Adviser to the Department. This complements the training that the health care professionals receive to carry out the work capability assessment.
Work Capability Assessment: Parkinson's Disease
Mrs. Moon: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what guidance her Department has issued to GPs on Parkinson's disease and medical assessments of individuals' fitness for work. [319452]
Jonathan Shaw: The Department for Work and Pensions does not issue guidance to GPs on Parkinson's disease. However, all healthcare professionals working for Atos Healthcare, who undertake work capability and personal capability assessments on behalf of the Department, are issued with an evidence based protocol on Parkinson's disease.
Home Department
Anti-terrorism Control Orders
Mr. Dismore: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 10 February 2010, Official Report, column 1054W, on control orders, if he will hold discussions with law reporters on arrangements for reports of control order judgments and interim orders; and if he will make a statement. [318761]
Mr. Hanson [holding answer 25 February 2010]: My officials will hold discussions with the Ministry of Justice to explore the issues in relation to the reporting of closed judgments and interim orders.
Automatic Number Plate Recognition
Mr. Maude: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment his Department and its agencies have made of the accuracy of the data stored on the Automatic Number Plate Recognition databases for which they are responsible; and whether he has made a recent estimate of the proportion of entries on such databases which contain incorrect information. [318115]
Mr. Alan Campbell: Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems are owned and operated by individual police forces. Number plates read by police force cameras are fed into local Back Office Facility (BOF) databases before being forwarded to the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC) which is managed by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).
Chief Constables are "data controllers in common" for ANPR data and are responsible for the accuracy of the data. The National ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) ANPR Standards (NAAS) set out clearly the criteria for ANPR data quality.
While no estimate has been made of the proportion of incorrect interpretations of number plates, an image of the plate is stored with each record of a sighting. The plate text is never used without the image being viewed and such information would not be acted upon without further information or intelligence.
Blaydon
Mr. David Anderson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set out, with statistical information related as directly as possible to the Blaydon constituency, the effects on Blaydon of his Department's policies and actions since 2000. [315300]
Mr. Alan Campbell: The Home Office has introduced a range of policies and initiatives since 2000. However, it is not always possible to quantify their effects particularly at constituency level. The available statistical information therefore relates to the Gateshead crime and disorder reduction partnership area.
In terms of police recorded crime in Gateshead, between 2002-03 and 2008-09, total recorded crime fell by 41 per cent. More specifically:
Violence against the person-down 36 per cent;
Sexual offences-down 37 per cent;
Robbery-down 68 per cent;
Burglary-down 50 per cent;
Offences against vehicles-down 49 per cent;
Other theft offences-down 38 per cent;
Criminal damage-down 36 per cent;
Drug offences-down 40 per cent.
Data prior to 2002-03 are not directly comparable because of the introduction of the national crime recording standard in April 2002.
Gateshead basic command unit had 443 police officers as at 30 March 2009. The number of police officers has increased by 33 since 2003. Comparisons with 2000 for Gateshead BCU are not available. There were 35 police community support officers as at 30 March 2009 while there were none in existence in 2000.
The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 saw positive effects with the statutory duty to create a crime and disorder reduction partnership (CDRP).
Gateshead CDRP is a merged CDRP/drug and alcohol action team and forms part of the local strategic partnership sub-group safer stronger communities and culture partnership. There is a genuine partnership with police, local authority and other key stakeholders problem solving to tackle complex issues.
Generally crime performance is positive. The overall rate of violence with injury per 1,000 population is lower than the regional and national averages.
Gateshead, as part of Northumbria police force, has been part of the Tackling Knives Action Programme in 2009-10. This has provided additional funding for prevention and education activity on knife crime and serious youth violence, as well as additional enforcement operations. The partnership has have also received funding and support from the Home Office and Ministry of Justice to tackle domestic and sexual violence including the development of multi area risk assessment conference
(MARAC), a special domestic violence court (SDVC) and associated independent domestic violence advisers (IDVA).
Safer Gateshead uses antisocial behaviour tools and powers effectively. It is currently reviewing its delivery to provide a graded approach to ASB with a focus on early intervention.
Gateshead agreed to become a Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Pioneer Area in 2009. As a pioneer, it has dedicated resource to work with its communities to address local concerns on crime, antisocial behaviour and justice. The partnership uses Community Payback effectively as part of this approach.
Gateshead is an intensive drug intervention programme (DIP) area and tackles drug-related offending through drug-testing on arrest and restriction on bail provisions thereby allowing more offenders to be targeted and steered into treatment and out of crime. Gateshead's DIP budget for 2009-10 is £637,363. In 2008-09 there were 2,255 positive drug tests with 945 problem drug users (crack and/or opiate users) recorded as being in effective drug treatment.
The Neighbourhood Statistics Service provides a wide range of statistical information at parliamentary constituency level, taken from the 2001 census and other sources. This service is available on the National Statistics website at:
Burglary
Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what the rate of recovery has been of items stolen in reported incidents of aggravated burglary in each of the last five years; [315455]
(2) what proportion of reports of aggravated burglary to the police have resulted in (a) an arrest of a suspect and (b) a conviction in each of the last five years; [315456]
(3) how many incidents of aggravated burglary there were in (a) the Ribble Valley, (b) Lancashire and (c) England and Wales in each of the last five years. [315458]
Mr. Alan Campbell [holding answer 4 February 2010]: Statistics in relation to recovery rates for items stolen is not collected centrally.
In relation to part (a) of the second question, the arrests collection held by the Home Office covers arrests for recorded crime broken down by offence group eg violence against the person, sexual offences, burglary etc. Data for component offences within each offence group is not available and therefore data on arrests for aggravated burglary cannot be provided.
Referring to part (b) of the second question, the number of people found guilty at all courts for 'aggravated burglary', England and Wales 2004 to 2008, the latest available, is given in table 1. Court proceedings data for 2009 are planned for publication in the autumn, 2010.
The available information for the third question relates to offences recorded by the police and is given in table 2.
| Table 1: Number of defendants found guilty at all courts for aggravated burglary( 1) , England and Wales 2004 to 2008( 2, 3, 4) | |
| Found guilty | |
| (1) Includes the following offences: i. Aggravated burglary in a dwelling. ii. Aggravated burglary in a building other than a dwelling. (2) The figures given in the table relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe. (3) 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. (4) Excludes convictions data for Cardiff magistrates court for April, July, and August 2008. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services in the Ministry of Justice 080-10 | |
| Table 2: Recorded offences of 'aggravated burglary' from 2004-05 to 2008-09 | |||||
| Area | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 |
| (1) Domestic burglary. (2) Non-domestic burglary. (3) Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership. (4) Police force area. | |||||
Control Orders
Mr. Blunt: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much his Department spent on private security firms in respect of the oversight of individuals subject to a control order in each financial year since 2006-07. [319178]
Mr. Hanson [holding answer 1 March 2010]: The only involvement of private security firms in the oversight of individuals subject to a control order relates to the electronic monitoring of those individuals. This is carried out under contracts currently held by the Ministry of Justice. These contracts also cover all electronic monitoring of individuals within the criminal justice system in England and Wales.
The cost of the electronic monitoring of controlled individuals to the Ministry of Justice from April 2007 is set out in the following table. No breakdown of the costs of monitoring individuals subject to a control order is available for the period prior to April 2007 when these contracts were held by the Home Office.
| Financial year | Cost of electronic monitoring of control orders to the Ministry of Justice (£) |
| (1) The figure for 2007-08 is based partly on estimates. (2) The figure for 2009-10 represents the most recent figure provided to the Ministry of Justice by the monitoring companies during the financial year and is based partly on estimates. | |
Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000: Prosecutions
Ms Angela C. Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) prosecutions, (b) convictions and (c) orders there have been under section 14 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. [318498]
Huw Irranca-Davies: I have been asked to reply.
Section 14(1) of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 relates to
"placing or maintaining on access land notice deterring public use".
Section 14(2) and (3) stipulates
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