Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average time it takes an officer to complete a case file is on (a) CONNECT and (b) Case Overview and Prosecutions Application (COPA).
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Police forces and Policing and Crime Commissioners are responsible for their procurement and commercial strategies for Records Management Systems.
Each force is responsible for evaluating the performance of their Record Management System in line with those strategies and their local requirements.
It would not be appropriate for the Home Office to comment on the individual performance of one supplier in relation to the factors mentioned.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police forces purchased CONNECT computer software; and how many such forces (a) no longer and (b) continue to use the software.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Police forces and Policing and Crime Commissioners are responsible for their procurement and commercial strategies for Records Management Systems.
Each force is responsible for evaluating the performance of their Record Management System in line with those strategies and their local requirements.
It would not be appropriate for the Home Office to comment on the individual performance of one supplier in relation to the factors mentioned.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average annual number is of case files rejected due to incorrectly submitted documents using (a) Case Overview and Prosecutions Application (COPA) and (b) CONNECT computer software.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Police forces and Policing and Crime Commissioners are responsible for their procurement and commercial strategies for Records Management Systems.
Each force is responsible for evaluating the performance of their Record Management System in line with those strategies and their local requirements.
It would not be appropriate for the Home Office to comment on the individual performance of one supplier in relation to the factors mentioned.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average number of case file (a) rejections and (b) discontinuations by the Crown Prosecution Service was (i) before and (ii) after the introduction of the CONNECT computer software.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Police forces and Policing and Crime Commissioners are responsible for their procurement and commercial strategies for Records Management Systems.
Each force is responsible for evaluating the performance of their Record Management System in line with those strategies and their local requirements.
It would not be appropriate for the Home Office to comment on the individual performance of one supplier in relation to the factors mentioned.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average number of open custody records was in (a) 2019, (b) 2022, (c) 2023 and (d) 2024.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested is not currently held centrally.
The Home Office collects and publishes data on detentions in police custody in England and Wales, available here: Police powers and procedures England and Wales statistics - GOV.UK.
This data includes the number of detentions by financial year, with the most recently available data up to March 2023. Data for the year ending March 2024 will be available in February 2025.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 16 December 2024 to Question 18968 on Asylum: Sri Lanka, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of relocating to St Helena asylum seekers who have travelled to the UK by small boat across the English Channel.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The specific purpose of the Memorandum of Understanding with St Helena was to deal with the risk of further migrants attempting to travel to the British Indian Ocean Territory, prior to the sovereignty agreement with Mauritius being formally completed. There are no plans to extend that agreement beyond its current remit.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many migrants entering the country illegally claimed to be children since 5 July 2024; how many and what proportion of those migrants were subsequently assessed to be (a) under and (b) over 18; and whether those migrants were assessed using scientific age assessments.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes quarterly statistics on detected irregular arrivals to the UK in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Quarterly data on detected irregular arrivals by age group is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’. The latest data is up to the end of September 2024, with data up to December 2024 to be published on 27 February 2025.
The Home Office also publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on age disputes raised and resolved is published in table Asy_D05 of the ‘Asylum applications, initial decisions and resettlement detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to year ending June 2024.
Accurately assessing an individual's age remains an incredibly complex and difficult task, and current methods and procedures for doing so are set out in detail in the Home Office's Assessing Age guidance, which is publicly available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/672e169e4f7608e424ffdab1/Assessing+age.pdf(opens in a new tab).
The effectiveness of these and other potential methods and procedures for age assessment are kept under regular review, and any future changes will be updated in the usual way. On the issue of scientific age assessments, I will write to the Rt Hon Member to address in more detail the question he has raised.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has written to Chief Constables setting out her priorities for policing.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Secretary spoke with all Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners within her first days of office, on 7th July. In that same week on 11th July, the Home Secretary attended meetings of both the NPCC and APCC to set out this Government’s Safer Streets mission and priorities for policing.
She discussed her priorities for policing with sector leaders at the National Policing Board on 23rd October and, on 19th November, set out more detail of her plans to all Chief Constables and PCCs at the National Police Chiefs Council and Association of Police Crime Commissioners Summit.
The Home Secretary wrote to all Chief Constables and Police Crime Commissioners (PCCs) on 5th December on the Government’s Plan for Change and the ambition to restore neighbourhood policing.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been arrested as a result of investigations by the Grooming Gangs Taskforce since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce (or ‘Grooming Gangs Taskforce’) provides practical, expert, on the ground support for local forces investigating complex, group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation, with a focus on grooming gangs. It supports force-led investigations rather than running its own investigations.
Data is collected and reported quarterly. Arrest data is currently available from 34 out of the 44 forces that the Taskforce collects data from. In the most recent data collection – which is for Quarter 3 of 2024 (1 July – 30 September) - those 34 forces recorded 222 arrests for group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation offences. ‘Group-based’ offending in this context includes any offence with two or more perpetrators. This will include – but is not limited to – ‘grooming gang’ type offending; other ‘group-based’ offending includes intra-familial and peer-on-peer abuse, for example.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether a Minister in her Department has chaired a meeting of the synthetic opioids taskforce; and how many times that taskforce has met since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Ministers are prioritising the risk of synthetic opioids as part of the wider long-term drug strategy. The Synthetic Opioids Taskforce is chaired by the Director General of the Public Safety Group at the Home Office on behalf of the Minister. The Taskforce meets quarterly, including on 3 July and most recently on 10 October 2024. It will next meet in January 2025 and Ministers are regularly briefed by officials on the response.
Reducing drug harms has important benefits for the Government’s missions to deliver safer streets, improve health outcomes and break down barriers to opportunity, while supporting overall economic growth.