Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress she has made in implementing the recommendations of the Bradley Report on liaison and diversion of people with mental vulnerability in the criminal justice system.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Police forces work closely with local health and criminal justice partners to identify and deal appropriately with those taken into custody who may have mental ill health issues. Liaison and diversion schemes in police custody suites currently provide coverage for around 50% of the population of England. The Government recently announced provision of a further £12 million to extend this coverage to 75% of the population by 2017/18.
The Government has also committed £15 million to provide for additional health based places of safety to ensure that those detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act are not taken to police cells for want of a more appropriate place. Police cells were used as a place of safety on 2,100 occasions in 2015/16, a reduction of 54% on the previous year.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the cost of online retail fraud was to retailers in each year for which data is available.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The Home Office does not hold the information requested.
The Home Office runs an annual Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS) which asks business premises in different sectors about their experience of various crime types, including fraud, in the latest year.
In order to keep the length of the survey, and hence the burden on respondents, to a minimum, businesses are only asked about the cost of the latest incident of each crime type experienced in the year. Therefore, it is not possible to provide an aggregate cost of fraud or overall crime to businesses in the retail sector.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the cost of retail crime was to businesses in each year for which data is available.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The Home Office does not hold the information requested.
The Home Office runs an annual Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS) which asks business premises in different sectors about their experience of various crime types, including fraud, in the latest year.
In order to keep the length of the survey, and hence the burden on respondents, to a minimum, businesses are only asked about the cost of the latest incident of each crime type experienced in the year. Therefore, it is not possible to provide an aggregate cost of fraud or overall crime to businesses in the retail sector.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many shop workers were assaulted in each of the last six months for which figures are available.
Answered by John Hayes
The data requested is not available broken down by month. However, the Home Office runs an annual Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS) which asks business premises in different sectors about their experience of various crime types, including assaults and threats (a combined category) in the last year.
In 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were around 410,000 assaults and threats against businesses in the wholesale and retail sector. The 2015 figures will be published on 28th April.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) also publish annual figures on the number of violent incidents in the workplace based on findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. However, this information is not available just for shops. According to the 2013/14 crime survey, there were an estimated 583,000 incidents of violence at work, comprising 269,000 assaults and 314,000 threats. HSE will publish figures for 2014/15 on 31st March.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will bring forward legislative proposals for a statutory duty for fire and rescue services to respond to flooding.
Answered by Mike Penning
The Hon. Member will be aware that the Prime Minister announced on 5 January 2016 that responsibility for fire policy was being transferred to the Home Secretary with immediate effect. I am, therefore, answering the Hon Member’s question as Fire Minister. As fire is a devolved matter in Wales, my response applies only to England.
Fire and Rescue Authorities are required to put in place integrated risk management plans, coordinated with the community risk registers produced by Local Resilience Forums. These documents should identify the full range of risks to which fire and rescue services should be able to respond. The effective response of fire and rescue services to the recent flooding demonstrates that the system is working.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those at the frontline involved in that response. The commitment and dedication they showed throughout the Christmas and New Year period in helping communities affected to deal with the largescale flooding and to rebuild their lives afterwards is a demonstration of public service at its very best.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will bring forward legislative proposals for a statutory duty for fire and rescue services to respond to flooding.
Answered by Mike Penning
The Hon. Member will be aware that the Prime Minister announced on 5 January 2016 that responsibility for fire policy was being transferred to the Home Secretary with immediate effect. I am, therefore, answering the Hon Member’s question as Fire Minister. As fire is a devolved matter in Wales, my response applies only to England.
Fire and Rescue Authorities are required to put in place integrated risk management plans, coordinated with the community risk registers produced by Local Resilience Forums. These documents should identify the full range of risks to which fire and rescue services should be able to respond. The effective response of fire and rescue services to the recent flooding demonstrates that the system is working.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those at the frontline involved in that response. The commitment and dedication they showed throughout the Christmas and New Year period in helping communities affected to deal with the largescale flooding and to rebuild their lives afterwards is a demonstration of public service at its very best.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Syrian refugees have been admitted to the UK since September 2015 in each region; and how many she plans to admit by the end of 2016.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
We will not be giving a running commentary on numbers. The refugees that we are bringing to the United Kingdom are very vulnerable people. Our prime concern is their safety and protection as they arrive in this country. We believe that one way to protect their privacy and ensure their recovery and integration is to limit the amount of information about them that we make publicly available. We want to ensure the understandable public interest in the scheme is not based on a running commentary on the numbers that have arrived.
Notwithstanding this, the Home Office is committed to publishing data in an orderly way as part of the regular quarterly Immigration Statistics, in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The next set of figures will be in the quarterly release on 26 November 2015 and will cover the period July-September 2015.
The programme is driven by need, and the number resettled in a particular period will depend on a range of factors. This includes the number of referrals we have received from UNHCR and the number of confirmed places we have received from local authorities that are suitable for the specific needs of those who have been accepted for resettlement. Rather than a monthly or yearly target we acknowledge that some months we will resettle more or less than others because it is based on the need in the region at that time and the progress of those people through the system. We cannot, therefore, state at this time how many confirmed places will be made available by the end of 2016.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 10 June 2015 to Question 2060, whether the Government is liaising with British Overseas Territories about ratification of the convention.
Answered by John Hayes
We intend our ratification to apply to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We will encourage the overseas territories to consider ratification when they are in a position to do so. However, this is a matter for them to decide.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons the UK has not ratified the 2011 Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women and domestic violence.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The UK already complies with the vast majority of the articles to the convention including the criminalisation of forced marriage which was one of the pre-requisites of ratification as required by Article 37. Primary legislation will be needed to comply with the remaining extra-territorial jurisdiction provisions in Article 44 of the Convention before it can be ratified. The UK Government is liaising with the devolved administrations about ratification, including any further legislative steps that may be necessary.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to implement the recommendations in paragraph 12.2 of the report of the Commission on Devolution in Wales published in March 2014 in relation to the Welsh language registration of births, marriages and deaths and cremations and burials.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Her Majesty’s Passport Office (the Directorate of the Home Office which is responsible for civil registration in England and Wales) is currently pursuing options to modernise civil registration. As part of this work, discussions have already taken place with officials in the Welsh Government and the Wales Office to examine how Welsh language services can be improved as part of this work. These discussions will continue with a view to bringing forward options as to how the issues raised in 12.2.2. of the report of the Commission on Devolution in Wales might be addressed.