Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many analyses his Department has made since 2015 of the effect of decreased funding for youth services on levels of serious violence; and what the conclusions of those analyses were.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government’s Serious Violence Strategy published in April last year sets out our analysis of the trends and drivers of rises in violent crime. The strategy is clear that there are a range of factors driving increases in serious violence most notably changes in the drugs market. The focus of the strategy is on early intervention and prevention, together with a robust law enforcement response. The action delivered includes:
• Our Early Intervention Youth Fund of £22m which is already supporting 29 projects in England and Wales to deliver interventions to young people at risk of criminal involvement, gang exploitation and county lines
• A new National County Lines Co-ordination Centre to tackle violent and exploitative criminal activity associated with county lines
• The new Offensive Weapons Bill to strengthen legislation on fire-arms, knives and corrosive substances which has now completed its passage through Parliament
• Delivering our national knife crime media campaign - #knifefree - to raise awareness of the consequences of knife crime
On 2 October 2018 the Home Secretary announced further measures to address violent crime in the UK including:
• The new £200 million Youth Endowment Fund which will be delivered over 10 years and will support interventions with children and young people at risk of involvement in crime and violence, and which started this month.
• An Independent Review of Drug Misuse, to be chaired by Dame Carol Black, which will look into ways in which drugs are fuelling seri-ous violence
• A consultation on a new legal duty to underpin a ‘public health’ approach to tackling serious violence. This consultation launched on 1 April 2019.
On 13 March the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced further funding of £100 million in 2019/20 to help tackle the rise in serious violence. Two thirds of the funding will enable priority forces to immediately begin planning to put in place the additional capacity they need and the other third of the funding will be invested in Violence Reduction Units, bringing together a range of agencies to develop a multi-agency approach in preventing serious violence altogether. The initial allocation to forces of £51 million was announced on 17 April.
In addition to this funding, in 2019/20, total police funding will increase by around £970m including council tax precept, additional pensions funding and national investment, the most substantial investment in policing since 2010. The settlement for local government for 2019/20 will also mean that core spending power increases from £45.1bn in 2018/19 to £46.6bn in 2019/20. This settlement sees a real-terms increase in resources available to local authorities.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times the serious violence taskforce has met since its creation in April 2018; and how many members of the taskforce attended each meeting.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Serious Violence Taskforce was established to oversee and drive im-plementation of Serious Violence Strategy launched in April 2018. The Taskforce has met nine times, on 26 April, 11 June, 17 July, 22 October, 21 November, 9 January 2019, 11 February, 26 March and 24 April.
Chaired by the Home Secretary, the Taskforce brings together Ministers, Members of Parliament, the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Director General of the National Crime Agency, other senior police leaders, and public sector and voluntary sector chief executives.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which (a) Police and Crime Commissioners and (b) Chief Constables have informed him in the last year that they require more funding to tackle serious violent crime.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The Home Secretary has regular meetings with senior police officers and Police and Crime Commissioners in which they discuss a range of issues, including serious violence.
We have engaged closely with the police about the additional complex demands they face, including from serious violence. In response, we increased funding for policing by over £1 billion this year, including the £100 million announced at Spring Statement to tackle serious violence which includes £80m of new funding from the Treasury.
This additional funding follows the Home Secretary’s roundtable on 6 March with senior police officers from Metropolitan Police, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, where they discussed what more can be done to tackle serious violence and the resources they needed to fight violent crime.
The majority of this additional investment will go towards supporting police forces where violent crime is impacting the most, to take immediate action to suppress the violence we are seeing, to make our streets safer. Officials are engaging with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in relation to this funding.
Last year we also provided £4.6m of Special Grant funding to Bedfordshire Police to support Operation Boson, the force’s specialist response to gang, gun and knife crime.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on how many occasions in the past year he has (a) been interviewed by and (b) written an op-ed for (i) The Times and The Sunday Times, (ii) The Daily Telegraph, (iii) The Guardian, (iv) The Sun, (v) The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, (vi) The Mirror, (vii) The Daily Express, (viii) The Evening Standard and (ix) the Metro.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Over the last 12 months, the Secretary of State for the Home Department has been interviewed by the following publications on one occasion.
The Times/The Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Metro, the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday.
He has not been interviewed by the Guardian, Sun, Mirror, Daily Express or Evening Standard.
He has written opeds for the following publications on the following number of occasions.
The Times/The Sunday Times: 2
The Daily Telegraph: 5
The Guardian: 1
The Sun: 1
The Daily Mail/ Mail on Sunday: 2
The Daily Express: 4
He was not written any opeds for the Evening Standard, The Mirror or Metro.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much his Department is spending on a public information campaign to prepare people for the potential effects of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Home Office has a duty to inform citizens and businesses about how leaving the EU might affect them, and to advise on the steps they may need to take to prepare for EU Exit.
Home Office is part of the cross-departmental public information campaign to help achieve this, including campaign activity focused on passport renewal and EU citizens’ rights. Over the coming weeks, we will be using a range of channels to direct UK citizens, businesses, EU citizens living in the UK and UK nationals living in the EU to a dedicated area on GOV.UK at Gov.uk/euexit.
Information on the costs associated with this campaign will be released in due course as part of normal data transparency releases.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate he has made of the (a) additional cost to police forces in 2019-20 of employer contributions to the police pension scheme arising from the reduction in the public sector pension scheme discount rate confirmed in Budget 2018 and (b) additional grant to police forces to contribute towards those costs.
Answered by Nick Hurd
We are assessing the implications of changes to the public service pensions discount rate change announced in Budget 2018 on all forces.
The Budget made clear that part of these costs will be met from the Treasury Reserve in 2019/20. As the Chancellor set out in his speech, the Home Secretary will review police spending power ahead of the provisional police funding settlement for 2019/20 to be published next month.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Guardian article UK asylum seekers refused housing over social cohesion issues, published 27 September 2018, what information his Department holds on whether local authorities have placed a temporary ban on people seeking asylum from being housed in (a) Durham, (b) Newcastle upon Tyne and (c) Sunderland; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The dispersal of Asylum Seekers across the UK requires the active participation of local authorities working with the Home Office in providing support and accommodation.
Local Authorities work with the Home Office and its partners to manage the housing of asylum seekers in the UK. We can confirm there are no areas where the dispersal of asylum seekers has been suspended on the basis of social cohesion issues. Officials will continue to work with Local Authorities to ensure dispersal of asylum seekers is managed effectively for those seeking international protection and the communities in which they are based.
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many extraditions were successfully completed from each of the other EU countries in each of the five years prior to the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant to (a) England and Wales, (b) Scotland and (c) Northern Ireland; and if he will publish a list of those extraditions by the category of crime committed.
Answered by Nick Hurd
This information is not routinely published.
However, some of the information is available in the Review of the United Kingdom’s Extradition Arrangements published in October 2011:
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many extraditions were successfully completed from each of the other EU countries in each of the last five years following the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant to (a) England and Wales, (b) Scotland, (c) Northern Ireland; and if he will publish a list of those extraditions by the category of crime committed.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The Home Office does not hold the information requested.
However, statistics on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) are published by the National Crime Agency each year. These figures are published at: http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/european-arrest-warrant-statistics
Asked by: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding his Department has allocated to the UK Visas and Immigration Lost Documents Working Group.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Lost Documents Working group is led by the UKVI Improvement Team, who deploy resources when required to support business areas with process improvements. When funding is required by the team, they will be supported by UKVI.