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Immigration: Zimbabwe
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Mr Liam Byrne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
As a result of intelligence received in 2001 andJuly 2004 suggesting systematic fraud in applications for UK ancestry from Zimbabwean nationals, consideration of such applications was suspended last year pending further investigation.
In the light of continued evidence of fraudulent Zimbabwean applications for indefinite leave to remain in the UK on grounds of UK ancestry lodged prior to 25 October 2004, my predecessor made an authorisation on 16 January of six months' duration under Section 19D of the Race Relations Act 1976. This authorisation enabled staff in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to subject these applications to more rigorous investigation than applications from persons of other nationalities, for the purpose of detecting fraudulent applications.
As a result of our review of this authorisation, I have decided to renew it for a further six months. We will review the continued need for this authorisation before its expiry.
A copy of the authorisation has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.
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NHS: Annual Reports
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Lord Warner): My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Ivan Lewis) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
The annual reports and accounts for the following organisations have been laid before Parliament today:
Dental Vocational Training Authority
National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse
NHS Business Services Authority
NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
The annual reports and accounts for the following organisations will be laid before Parliament shortly:
Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health
Council for Health care Regulatory Excellence
NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service
Prescription Pricing Authority
The business plans for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency have been placed in the Library today.
Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman: Annual Report
Lord Rooker: My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Peter Hain) has made the following Ministerial Statement.
The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland's annual report and accounts for the year ended31 March 2006 is published today. Copies will be available in the Libraries of both Houses.
Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme: Ninth Report to Parliament
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Lord Warner): My honourable friend the Minister of State, Department of Health (Andy Burnham) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
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The ninth report to Parliament on the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme (PPRS) was published today. The report covers the main points of the 2005 scheme and the delivery of the 7 per cent price cut; the management and operation of the 1999 scheme, including the delivery of the 4.5 per cent price cut; and consolidated information on company annual financial returns. The report sets out the contribution made to the economy by the UK-based pharmaceutical industry and gives an update on international price comparisons. Copies of the report have been placed in the Library.
Prisoners: Foreign Nationals
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Mr Liam Byrne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I would like to update the House on progress in deporting foreign national prisoners, following the Home Secretary's Statement on 23 May (Official Report, Commons; col. 77WS).
Our objective is that foreign national prisoners should face deportation and that deportation should happen as early as possible in their sentence. As an immediate step, we now have an imminent release team in IND working with HM Prison Service to ensure that foreign national prisoners who meet the existing criteria are not being released from prison without being considered for deportation. My review of the past few weeks confirms that, in order fully to achieve our objective, there is a need for legislation, as well as for fundamental reforms in the eight areas identified.
First, the Home Secretary identified that there is today no unique identifier to link individuals who come in contact with the asylum, immigrationand criminal justice systems. We have therefore commenced development of a comprehensive approach to identity management across all Home Office areas and will finalise a strategic action plan by the end of September 2006.
Secondly, we have identified that the police, Crown Prosecution Service, courts and prisons depend on self-declaration of nationality and that there is no requirement for the police to record the nationality of people brought into custody. There is no requirement in law for a detainee to furnish details of their identity or nationality. IND and the criminal justice agencies have now designed and tested proposals for newways of working, alongside options for new legal requirements to address this. We will conduct detailed field tests with front-line staff over the summer and produce recommendations in October.
Thirdly, work has to be
done to ensure that all future instructions are given to all agencies
of the criminal justice, asylum and immigration systems and are both
consistent and fully implemented. IND needs to work much more closely
with the criminal justice agencies. Lin Homer has therefore joined the
National Criminal Justice Board to ensure that this is
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Fourthly, the Home Secretary asked for an audit of policy criteria and processes and, fifthly, for steps to be taken to ensure that all deportation decisions are made according to the most robust interpretation of the requirements of our international obligations. Guidance in May to IND and prisons identified interim criteria, so that all non-EEA nationals sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment or more, either in one sentence or in two or three sentences over five years, and all EEA nationals sentenced to24 months or more, should be considered for deportation. We are changing the Immigration Rules with effect from midnight tonight to confirm the presumption that all such prisoners should be deported. The guidance also sets out that only rarely will factors other than international obligations weigh against deportation.
But the current law does not go far enough to link criminality with deportation in the way that we would want and the public would expect. We need to change the law to make deportation the norm for foreign national prisoners, to remove some in-country rights of appeal, to streamline procedures and otherwise to remove barriers to deportation and removal, including existing exemptions for some Commonwealth nationals. We shall announce further steps in the wider IND review, to be published before the Recess.
Sixthly, new formal arrangements are now in place to refer cases for consideration of deportation where the foreign national prisoner is in custody in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Prison authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland have confirmed that these processes are working well. These arrangements involve IND officials and officials in the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Prison Service, the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland Prison Service. Agencies are now developing proposals to extend these formal arrangements for referral across the justice systems in these jurisdictions: for example, with the police, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and Scottish courts; and at each stage in the system in Northern Ireland, as approved by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The seventh priority
area for action is the sensitive issue of mentally disordered
offenders, where there has hitherto been no established system of
referral and nationality has not routinely been recorded. As with
Scotland and Northern Ireland, arrangements have now been put in place
to ensure that cases are referred for consideration of deportation for
this particular group when their formal restriction is due to end. Home
Office officials are considering with the Department of Health what
other actions we might
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Finally, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is conducting targeted interviews with foreign national prisoners who qualify to transfer to serve their sentence in their home country. An urgent amendment is being sought to legislation currently before Parliament to remove the need for prisoner consent in these cases, and prisoner transfer agreements are being negotiated with more foreign Governments. We have agreements with 96 countries and territories. NOMS, IND and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are assembling a package of measures to accelerate this work further.
There remains much to be done. Progress in all these areas will be reported in due course.
Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office
The Attorney-General (Lord Goldsmith): During the passage of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 13/1/05; col. 130) and the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 (Official Report, Commons, 7/2/05; col. 615) statements were made that certain powers available to the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) would not be used in respect of tax offences until the outcome of the consideration of these powers by the current review of HM Revenue and Customs' powers.
Those powers are contained in Part 2 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which came into force on 1 April. They enable the director of RCPO (and prosecutors to whom he has delegated such powers) to serve disclosure notices, obtain material, conduct compulsory interviews and execute search warrants. These powers are powers of RCPO, not of HMRC; they are RCPO's to use. However, the prosecutor can authorise use of the powers by an officer of HMRC in respect of tax offences where the prosecutor has decided that such use is appropriate.
As the powers are for RCPO to use, the issue for the review of HMRC's powers to consider was the guidance that was available to HMRC staff when a prosecutor had authorised the use of the powers by an officer of HMRC. The review has looked atthat guidance and, following minor changes, has approved it.
The Paymaster General and I agree that the powers contained in Part 2 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 are now available for use by RCPO in respect of tax offences.
Roads: M25
Lord Davies of Oldham: My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport (Douglas Alexander) has made the following Ministerial Statement.
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In July 2003, Alistair Darling, in response to the Orbit multi-modal study, confirmed his intention to add an extra lane of capacity to bring most of the remaining three-lane sections of the M25 up to four lanes in each direction. Construction work on this major investment project costing over £2 billion is expected to start in 2008 and run through until 2016 with the widening being undertaken in stages.
At the time of the decision to increase the capacity of the M25, it was made clear that widening wouldbe pursued alongside measures to improve the management of traffic flow in order to lock in the benefits that the additional capacity would provide.
The department has been exploring how traffic management technology already being used on the motorway network might be used to control congestion on the orbital motorway and its junctions. But traffic using the motorway also uses surrounding local roads and not just the motorway. The modelling that has been completed shows that there is potentially considerable benefit to be gained inthe department applying and operating traffic management techniques jointly with local authorities. The benefits would be reflected in better overall journey times for the majority of road users across both the national and the local networks.
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It is vital that we harness local authorities’ local knowledge at the planning stage, as well as developing a joint approach in applying that knowledge. I am therefore writing today to all the local authorities around the M25 to start this dialogue, focusing initially on those in the north-west segment, where the first section of widening will take place, with the aim of developing an approach that will ensure that long-distance traffic and local residents all benefit from this huge national investment.
Youth Justice Agency of Northern Ireland: Annual Report
Lord Rooker: My honourable friend the Minister of State for Northern Ireland (David Hanson) has made the following Ministerial Statement.
I have placed copies of the Youth Justice Agency's annual report and accounts for 2005-06 in the Libraries of both Houses. This is the agency's third annual report since its inception on 1 April 2003. It achieved nine of its 10 key performance targets and all 17 of its development objectives.
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