Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 December 2023 to Question 6492 on Crime: Databases, whether the Government has made an assessment of the potential merits of amalgamating data sets into one system.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government is committed to making sure the police have the tools and technology they need to solve and prevent crimes and keep the range of policy and technology changes needed to enable this under review. Not to keep pace with change will leave our communities vulnerable.
Territorial police forces and the National Crime Agency, for example, have access to a range of datasets to help them identify suspects or victims. This includes the Passport Office databases
The Home Office, working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, continues to assess the national policing programmes to determine the best approach to delivery of digital capabilities. This includes discussions on the merits of combining policing databases.
There are no plans to merge the Police National Database and the Passport Office Databases and therefore no assessment of merits has been made.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 December 2023 to Question 6492 on Crime: Databases, which data sets police forces have access to to help identify criminals as of 8 January 2024.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government is committed to making sure the police have the tools and technology they need to solve and prevent crimes and keep the range of policy and technology changes needed to enable this under review. Not to keep pace with change will leave our communities vulnerable.
Territorial police forces and the National Crime Agency, for example, have access to a range of datasets to help them identify suspects or victims. This includes the Passport Office databases
The Home Office, working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, continues to assess the national policing programmes to determine the best approach to delivery of digital capabilities. This includes discussions on the merits of combining policing databases.
There are no plans to merge the Police National Database and the Passport Office Databases and therefore no assessment of merits has been made.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 December 2023 to Question 6492 on Crime: Databases, whether the Government plans to increase police access to HM Passport Office data to help identify criminals.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government is committed to making sure the police have the tools and technology they need to solve and prevent crimes and keep the range of policy and technology changes needed to enable this under review. Not to keep pace with change will leave our communities vulnerable.
Territorial police forces and the National Crime Agency, for example, have access to a range of datasets to help them identify suspects or victims. This includes the Passport Office databases
The Home Office, working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, continues to assess the national policing programmes to determine the best approach to delivery of digital capabilities. This includes discussions on the merits of combining policing databases.
There are no plans to merge the Police National Database and the Passport Office Databases and therefore no assessment of merits has been made.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans he has for data-sharing between the (a) police national database, (b) data held by the Passport Office and (c) other national databases to help tackle crime.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office is continuing its work with National Police Chiefs’ Council and law enforcement partners to facilitate access to the data sets they need to make sure the police have the tools and technology they need to solve and prevent crimes, bring offenders to justice, and keep people safe..
The use of such information is limited to organisations who have a lawful reason in support of the law enforcement mission they have been tasked with performing.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate he has made of the number of times the HM Passport Office database has been accessed to identify suspects as part of a criminal investigation in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
His Majesty’s Passport Office receives requests for various information from the police. The volumes of requests for any range of data that is specifically due to an active criminal investigation is not held in a reportable format.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will undertake a review of the adequacy of the legislation relating to bystanders and shoplifting.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is clear that violent and abusive behaviour towards any public-facing worker is never acceptable. We take this issue very seriously and recognise the implications on businesses as well as the victims.
We keep all legislation under review. This Government has recently made significant steps to improve the police response to retail crime, including shoplifting.
In October, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) published the Retail Crime Action Plan. Through this Plan, all police forces in England and Wales have committed to prioritise police attendance at the scene where violence has been used towards shop staff, where an offender has been detained by store security, and where evidence needs to be secured and can only be done by police personnel. Additionally, where CCTV or other digital images are secured, police will run this through the Police National Database to further aid efforts to identify prolific offenders or potentially dangerous individuals. There are no plans to review PACE legislation which makes it legal (as it has been for many decades) for a member of the public to perform a citizens arrest in certain circumstances.
This builds on the commitment made by the NPCC in August 2023 that all police forces across England and Wales will follow up all crimes where there is actionable evidence and the chance of identifying an offender, including shoplifting.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many foreign national offenders have been categorised as high-prolife by her Department in each year since 2015.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The information requested about how many foreign national offenders have been categorised as high-profile since 2015 is not available from published statistics.
Information on the number of foreign national offenders that are returned from the UK is available quarterly from Table Ret_D03 in the Returns Data tables of the Immigration system statistics quarterly release - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to transaction number 90-DG -Delivery-8228, what class these tickets were; and how many were purchased.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The tickets were two first class rail tickets totalling £822.80 for the Home Secretary and Private Secretary’s return journey to Stoke-on-Trent for a regional Cabinet Meeting.
First class travel would have been booked as this is how the Home Secretary plus an official or a SpAd travels, due to the Home Secretary’s Protective Security arrangements.
On this occasion the tickets were booked at short notice, which increased their cost. Specific trains had to be booked to enable the Home Secretary to arrive in time for Regional Cabinet meeting.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) people and (b) families received money from the Resettlement Grant in each year since 2015.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Information requested about the Facilitated Return Scheme (FRS) since 2015 is not available from published statistics.
Information on the number of foreign national offenders that were returned from the UK under the Facilitated Return Scheme is available from Table FNO_09 in Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Information on resettlement grants for FNOs departing under the FRS is available from The Facilitated Return Scheme (FRS) (publishing.service.gov.uk).
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to transaction number 1-COMMS - Communications Directorate-72389, how many times this equipment has been used; and if she will make an assessment of its (a) utility, (b) impact and (c) value for money.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The photography background was purchased to provide a professional multi-purpose backdrop to a broad range of video and photo communications for the Home Office including social media, departmental announcements, Ministerial pre-records, pool clips, other media moments and range of internal filming. The background is used on an almost weekly basis for all of the above.