Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 3 March 2022 to Question 131268, on Police: Pepper Spray and Tasers, under what circumstances police officers are permitted to be in possession of (a) PAVa and (b) Conducted Energy Devices when they are (i) off duty and (ii) on call.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Decisions around equipping police officers, including the specific arrangements for carrying and storing equipment while off-duty and on call, are for operationally independent Chief Constables.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent guidance her Department has issued to police officers on the possession of (a) Pelargonic Acid Vannilylamide (PAVa) spray and (b) conducted energy devices (Taser) when they are (i) off duty and (ii) on call.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Home Office has not issued guidance to police officers on the possession of PAVa and Conducted Energy Devices.
Guidance for police on operational matters, including equipment, is for Chief officers and/or the College of Policing to issue.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of travellers who have been unable to complete the passenger locator form for a return journey to the UK, in the context of there being a 48 hour window for people to complete that form before arriving in the UK, because they did not have access to the internet.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Current regulations require transport operators to check all passengers have completed the Passenger Locator Form (PLF) prior to departure to the UK.
We do not have specific data on the number of passengers that have not been able to complete the form because they did not have access to the internet.
However, from the assurance checks carried out by UK authorities there continues to be very high levels of compliance and the vast majority of travellers are meeting the UK’s health requirements for travel, including completion of the PLF before departure.
We engage closely with travel industry partners and operators and take onboard their feedback. As part of a wider review to reduce and simplify the PLF, we will also be extending the PLF completion window from 48 hours to three days from the end of February.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of people who have been spiked through the use of injection needles in (a) Wales, (b) England, (c) Scotland and (d) Northern Ireland in each month since January 2021.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Home Office does not collect figures for the number of people who have been spiked through the use of injection needles.
However, following the concerns raised about this new phenomenon last year, the Home Secretary has been receiving regular reports from the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC). The NPCC has established a reporting mechanism to enable forces to report any reported incidences of needle-spiking to help us to gain a better understanding of the scale and nature of the problem.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if her Department will take steps to accelerate the activation of Emergency Area Service masts in Wales.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Activation of all EAS sites is dependent on securing a transmission solution with a supplier. This is currently in progress and we expect to make this award towards the end of this year. Thereafter, we anticipate that all EAS sites will commence in April 2022 with all sites activated by the end of 2024. In Wales there are 86 EAS sites of which 35 are passive build complete and awaiting transmission and activation. These 35 sites will be part of the priority sites once the transmission contract has been secured. We need to follow government procurement processes fully in this award and are unable to accelerate this aspect of the process.
Asked by: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were housed in (a) Brook House Immigration Removal Centre and (b) Tinsley House Immigration Removal Centre at the start of each of the last six months; and what proportion of maximum capacity that represents.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The immigration removal estate is kept under ongoing review to ensure that the Home Office has sufficient capacity, in the right places and that it provides value for money.
The Home Office will maintain sufficient capacity to support the removal of the men and women it proves necessary to detain for the purposes of removal. In order to meet operational needs and demands, we will continue to operate the immigration removal estate in a flexible manner.
The Home Office publishes statistics on people in detention on the last day of each quarter in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on people in detention under immigration powers are published in table Det_D02 of the Detention detailed datasets. The data can be broken down by place of detention. The latest data release relates to the number of people in detention at the end of June 2021.The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data on detention.