Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police officers are currently serving in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Unit.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size of the police workforce in England and Wales on a biannual basis in the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin
Information on the number of police officers, police staff and Police Community Support Officers by function is published annually in tables F1, F2 and F3 accompanying the police workforce statistics as at 31 March. The latest data, covering the situation as at 31 March 2021 are available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1005990/police-workforce-mar21-tables.ods
The data in these tables include the number of police officers and staff working under function 9 – National Policing.
Function 9 - "National Policing" - includes officers, staff, and PCSOs working primarily in the following subfunctions:
Table F4 provides further details on the types of roles covered by these functions. For reasons of national security, we do not separately publish the number or officers in each of these roles.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of financial support for rehoming retired police dogs.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Information on police dogs is not held by the Home Office. Decisions on the number, make up and deployment of police dogs are made on a force by force basis and are a matter for Chief Constables, working with their Police and Crime Commissioners.
Similarly, decisions on the retirement and re-homing of police dogs are made locally by the Chief Constable after having carefully considered the specific circumstances of each case. Each force has its own system in place to manage this, which may include charitable organisations and volunteers.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average cost of a serving police dog’s veterinary fees is each year.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Information on police dogs is not held by the Home Office. Decisions on the number, make up and deployment of police dogs are made on a force by force basis and are a matter for Chief Constables, working with their Police and Crime Commissioners.
Similarly, decisions on the retirement and re-homing of police dogs are made locally by the Chief Constable after having carefully considered the specific circumstances of each case. Each force has its own system in place to manage this, which may include charitable organisations and volunteers.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police dogs that retired from service in 2021 (a) remained in the care of their handlers and (b) were rehomed.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Information on police dogs is not held by the Home Office. Decisions on the number, make up and deployment of police dogs are made on a force by force basis and are a matter for Chief Constables, working with their Police and Crime Commissioners.
Similarly, decisions on the retirement and re-homing of police dogs are made locally by the Chief Constable after having carefully considered the specific circumstances of each case. Each force has its own system in place to manage this, which may include charitable organisations and volunteers.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police dogs retire across the UK on average each year.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Information on police dogs is not held by the Home Office. Decisions on the number, make up and deployment of police dogs are made on a force by force basis and are a matter for Chief Constables, working with their Police and Crime Commissioners.
Similarly, decisions on the retirement and re-homing of police dogs are made locally by the Chief Constable after having carefully considered the specific circumstances of each case. Each force has its own system in place to manage this, which may include charitable organisations and volunteers.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police dogs retired in each of the last three years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Information on police dogs is not held by the Home Office. Decisions on the number, make up and deployment of police dogs are made on a force by force basis and are a matter for Chief Constables, working with their Police and Crime Commissioners.
Similarly, decisions on the retirement and re-homing of police dogs are made locally by the Chief Constable after having carefully considered the specific circumstances of each case. Each force has its own system in place to manage this, which may include charitable organisations and volunteers.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to publish any consultation undertaken by her Department on the creation of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The creation of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority (IECA) was an internal restructure within the Home Office and no public consultation occurred. A full assessment of the Public Sector Equality Duty was undertaken and in line with our ongoing duty, will be kept under review.
The change is part of a wider approach to ensure decision making is streamlined and funding for the IECA is being built into our plans for the next fiscal year.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether an equality impact assessment was conducted prior to the creation of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority; and whether an estimate was made on the additional cost of having two National Referral Mechanism decision making bodies in place.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The creation of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority (IECA) was an internal restructure within the Home Office and no public consultation occurred. A full assessment of the Public Sector Equality Duty was undertaken and in line with our ongoing duty, will be kept under review.
The change is part of a wider approach to ensure decision making is streamlined and funding for the IECA is being built into our plans for the next fiscal year.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children have been supported by Independent Child Trafficking Regional Co-ordinators in each year since that service came into existence.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Home Office has rolled out Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs), an independent source of advice for trafficked children, in two thirds of local authorities across England and Wales.
ICTGs provide one-to-one support for children who have no one with parental responsibility for them in the UK via an ICTG Direct Worker. They also provide an expert ICTG Regional Practice Co-ordinator, first introduced in October 2018, for children where there is someone with parental responsibility for them in the UK.
A staggered approach has been adopted in the delivery of ICTGs, together with built-in evaluations to ensure the ICTG service meets the needs of the children it supports. ICTGs were first introduced to three initial adopter sites in January 2017. Following the findings of the interim evaluation published in 2018, ICTGs were expanded to a further three sites in 2018 and 2019. In May 2021, ICTGs were rolled out to eleven additional areas extending the service to cover two thirds of local authorities across England and Wales.
Data tables published in October 2020 as part of the Assessment of Independent Child Trafficking Guardians – Regional Practice Co-ordinators: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-analysis-of-independent-child-trafficking-guardians show the number of ICTG referrals for Direct Workers and Regional Practice Coordinators since 2017, split by local authority area. This data covers the period from Q1 2017 – Q4 2019.
Data tables published in November 2021 in the UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery: 2021 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery (accessible version) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) show the numbers of children referred to Direct Workers and Regional Practice Coordinators, broken down by region, in 2019 and 2020. This shows an overall increase in referrals between 2019 and 2020.
Asked by: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children have been supported by Independent Child Trafficking Direct Workers in each year since that service came into existence.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Home Office has rolled out Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs), an independent source of advice for trafficked children, in two thirds of local authorities across England and Wales.
ICTGs provide one-to-one support for children who have no one with parental responsibility for them in the UK via an ICTG Direct Worker. They also provide an expert ICTG Regional Practice Co-ordinator, first introduced in October 2018, for children where there is someone with parental responsibility for them in the UK.
A staggered approach has been adopted in the delivery of ICTGs, together with built-in evaluations to ensure the ICTG service meets the needs of the children it supports. ICTGs were first introduced to three initial adopter sites in January 2017. Following the findings of the interim evaluation published in 2018, ICTGs were expanded to a further three sites in 2018 and 2019. In May 2021, ICTGs were rolled out to eleven additional areas extending the service to cover two thirds of local authorities across England and Wales.
Data tables published in October 2020 as part of the Assessment of Independent Child Trafficking Guardians – Regional Practice Co-ordinators: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-analysis-of-independent-child-trafficking-guardians show the number of ICTG referrals for Direct Workers and Regional Practice Coordinators since 2017, split by local authority area. This data covers the period from Q1 2017 – Q4 2019.
Data tables published in November 2021 in the UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery: 2021 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery (accessible version) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) show the numbers of children referred to Direct Workers and Regional Practice Coordinators, broken down by region, in 2019 and 2020. This shows an overall increase in referrals between 2019 and 2020.