Oral and Written Evidence, Tuesday 13 September 2005; Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department; Sir Ian Blair QPM and Mr Andy Hayman QPM, Metropolitan Police; Mr Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, and Sir Iqbal Sacranie,. Muslim Council of Britain
Oral and Written Evidence, Tuesday 13 September 2005; Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department; Sir Ian Blair QPM and Mr Andy Hayman QPM, Metropolitan Police; Mr Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, and Sir Iqbal Sacranie,. Muslim Council of Britain
Following the announcement that UK border controls had been relaxed without proper authorisation during the summer of 2011, the Home Affairs Committee held a number of evidence sessions to establish the facts of the case and determine what had led to such a situation occurring. The Committee concludes that lack of communication between the different arms of the UK Border Agency, and the Home Office of which it is part, has once again been responsible for a situation damaging to their reputation. Whilst the situation may or may not have been caused by the actions of an individual, a lack of supervision of senior staff at the UK Border Agency allowed the situation to continue. The risk-based trial of allowing relaxation of certain checks, although not yet fully evaluated, appears to have been a success. The Committee commends the effort to make a more targeted use of staff in this period of staff reductions. The Home Office Warnings Index Guidance 2007 - the principal counter-terrorism guidance - may be being used inappropriately. There should be a review of its use and clarifying guidelines should be issued to staff if necessary. The Committee also believes that the Home Office should make available to the Committee certain documents which have been given to the internal inquiries instigated by the Home Office. Denying the Committee sight of these documents runs counter to the Government's commitment to transparency and accountability.
Anti-social behaviour encompasses a broad range of behaviours including nuisance behaviour, intimidation and vandalism. Seventeen per cent of the population perceive high levels of anti-social behaviour in their area, with the young and the less well off being disproportionately affected, at a cost to government agencies of responding to reports of anti-social behaviour in England and Wales of around £3.4 billion per year. This report examines the work of the Home Office's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit set up in 2003 and measures introduced by the Home Office since 1997 to tackle anti-social behaviour, focusing on the impact of three of the most commonly used interventions: warning letters, Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. Using a sample of 893 cases, the report found that the majority of people who received one of these interventions did not re-engage in anti-social behaviour, but there were a number of perpetrators for whom interventions had limited impact, with about 20 per cent of the sample having received 55 per cent of the interventions issued. Recommendations include that the Home Office should undertake formal evaluation of the success of different interventions and the impact of combining these with support services at the local level. International research suggests that preventive programmes, such as education, counselling and training can be a cost effective way of addressing anti-social behaviour.
This report is the Committee's annual review of how the FCO is managing its resources, examining the departmental annual report for 2007-08 (Cm. 7398, ISBN 9780101739825). Chapters cover: new strategic framework; performance measurement; global network; essential services; FCO Services; personnel issues; transparency and openness; financial management; public diplomacy and communication; the British Council; the BBC World Service. The Committee is concerned that the FCO is facing serious financial pressures in this financial year due to the Treasury's withdrawal of its support for the Overseas Pricing Mechanism (OPM) which used to protect departments from the weakening of sterling. There is a risk that the FCO may not be able to meet higher international subscriptions over the next two financial years, causing its performance against Public Service Agreement targets to suffer. The likely increase in the UN Regular Budget and other international subscriptions will push this figure even higher. The FCO should have to shoulder the financial burden from within its already tight budget to pay for subscriptions which also benefit other Government departments. The Committee recommends that additional nondiscretionary costs should properly be met by the Treasury.
This is the second in a series of reports into various aspects of the work of the UK Border Agency. During the late 1990s and early 2000s the Home Office built up a backlog of between 400,000 and 450,000 unresolved asylum cases. The target for clearing this backlog is summer of 2011, and the UKBA has made huge efforts to meet this deadline. However the target seems to have been achieved largely through increasing resort to grants of permission to stay or archiving cases signifying that the applicant cannot be found and the Agency has no idea whether the applicant remains in the UK legally or otherwise. Out of 403,500 cases dealt with by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) since 2006, 40% of applicants have been allowed to stay. This was largely as a result of revised guidance allowing caseworkers to consider granting permission to stay to applicants who had been in the UK for 6-8 years, rather than 10-12 years. Also, in about 74,500 of 400,000 to 450,000 cases - approximately one in six - the UKBA has been completely unable to trace what has happened to the applicant. The Committee considers that this amounts to an amnesty - at considerable cost to the taxpayer. The quality of initial decision making needs to improve to avoid the substantial delays, financial costs and human suffering that occur at present. The Committee also says that the UKBA has not carried out satisfactory checks on employers registered as sponsors of skilled migrants nor has it followed up intelligence of possible illegal migrants
This NAO report (HC 132, session 2008-09, ISBN 9780102954579) examines ChangeUp and Futurebuilders, two Cabinet Office programmes designed to build the capacity of the "third" sector. The Third Sector consists of non-governmental organisations which are value driven and which principally reinvest their surpluses to further social, environmental or cultural objectives. The sector includes voluntary and community organisations, charities, social enterprises, cooperatives and mutuals. It is distinguished from the other two sectors of the economy, public (government) and private (business). Both ChangeUp and Futurebuilders were introduced by the Home Office in 2004 to address the findings of a 2002 Treasury review that the third sector's ability to contribute to the delivery of public services was constrained by a lack of capacity. The NAO examined the impact of these programmes on frontline third sector organisations, and looked at whether they are likely to meet the Government's objectives for building capacity. For both schemes it is not yet possible to establish if the programmes have provided good value for money. The report's findings and recommendations to improve the management of these programmes include: that when designing future policy initiatives, the Office of the Third Sector should build in adequate arrangements to evaluate and measure performance from the outset; a transfer between old and new financial systems has impaired the assessment of the costs and benefits of the ChangeUp programme and that the Cabinet Office and Treasury should advise departments of the importance of preserving adequate financial information; the Office of the Third Sector should identify examples of sustainable services; the Cabinet Office needs to formulate a plan for the long-term management of the assets created by the Futurebuilders fund.
The Border Force's 7,600 staff operate immigration and customs controls at 138 air, sea and rail ports across the UK. It has a budget of £604 million for 2013-14, but is facing cuts. It has had to prioritise passenger checks at the expense of its other duties thereby weakening security at the border by neglecting other duties, such as the examination of freight for illicit goods, and checks in Calais on lorries to detect concealed illegal entrants. It was not able to meet and check up to 90,000 private planes or private boats arriving in the UK each year, leaving the UK border vulnerable and raising issues about resourcing and how priorities are set. The Border Force acknowledged that it had missed 8 of its 19 seizure and detection targets. Recommendations: set out how it will ensure that it delivers its full range of duties across all ports to provide the required level of national security; demonstrate that it can deliver its workload within the resources available; must address the gaps in the data it receives on people arriving in the UK, and the existing data needs to be cleansed to increase the quality, reliability and usefulness of the intelligence generated; set out how, and by when, it will have in place the functional IT systems it needs to underpin the security of the UK border; senior management must provide the organisation with a clear sense of purpose and tackle those barriers which inhibit the flexible and effective deployment of its staff.
Cocaine is a dangerous drug linked to heart disease, long-term erosion of cognitive brain function, and has extremely toxic effects when combined with alcohol. This title notes some successful operations to prevent couriers from reaching the UK, but the degree of success is difficult to quantify.
The Olympic Delivery Authority's management of its building programme has been exemplary but, due to significant increases in the cost of venue security, the likelihood of staying within the overall £9.3 billion Public Sector Funding Package is very finely balanced. The Funding Package does not cover the totality of the costs to the public purse of delivering the Games and their legacy, which are already heading for around £11 billion. Operational and financial risks have emerged in areas of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games' responsibility, and LOCOG itself now has almost no contingency left to meet further costs, even though it has done well in its revenue generation. The number of security guards required in and around the venues has more than doubled, and renegotiation of the contract for venue security does not appear to have secured any price advantage. With only 109,000 new people regularly participating in sport against an original target (which the new Government chose not to adopt) of 1 million by March 2013, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has got poor value for money for the £450 million spent through sporting National Governing Bodies. It is unclear what the sporting participation legacy of the Games is intended to be. Responsibility for delivery of all legacy matters is shared across many different parts of Government, and this rings alarm bells about the effective integration of the various legacy plans and about clear accountability to the taxpayer.
Crime and Security Bill; Personal Care at Home Bill; Children, Schools and Families Bill, twelfth report of session 2009-10, report, together with formal minutes and written evidence
Crime and Security Bill; Personal Care at Home Bill; Children, Schools and Families Bill, twelfth report of session 2009-10, report, together with formal minutes and written evidence
Legislative Scrutiny : Crime and Security Bill; Personal Care at Home Bill; Children, Schools and Families Bill, twelfth report of session 2009-10, report, together with formal minutes and written Evidence
The Government's progressive work on tackling violence against women and girls abroad is not translating into its domestic policy, despite its Violence against Women and Girls Action Strategy and the Home Secretary's personal commitment to the issue. The Committee warns that failure to provide adequate refuge spaces and specialist services for victims of violence against women and girls demonstrates the difficulty for the Government in fulfilling its international obligations under the Convention when decisions over commissioning of certain services has been devolved. The Committee also expresses alarm at the prevalence of violence against women and girls across many cultures in the UK today, and heard troubling evidence from many minority groups that represent women with particular needs. The portrayal of women as victims of violence is deeply embedded in cultural stereotypes, in the depiction of women in the media and in how women are treated in the asylum system. This has to stop The Committee's recommendations include that: schools should play a greater role and include issues of violence against women and girls within the PSHE curriculum; whilst the Government has taken steps to engage with the media and with public awareness campaigns to counteract the sexualised portrayal of women, noting that the BBC declined invitations to give evidence to this inquiry, the media themselves should do more; the Government look again at the payment of universal credit to couples because of its concerns that it could put women subject to domestic violence at risk.
The Government's objective is to build a strong economy and a fair society, in which there is opportunity and security for all. The 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review, 'Meeting the aspirations of the British People' (Cm 7227), presents updated assessments and forecasts of the economy and public finances, describes reforms that the Government is making and sets out the Government's priorities and spending plans for the years 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11, including: maintaining macroeconomic stability; investing in the future with total public spending rising from £589bn in 2007-08 to £678bn in 2010-11 including an additional £2bn for capital investment in public services; continuing the sustained investment in the NHS, with resources rising from £90bn in 2007-08 to £110bn by 2010-11 and with value for money savings of at least £8.2bn contributing to the funding of the conclusions of the Darzi Review 'Our NHS, our future'; further sustained increases in resources for education, science, transport, housing, child poverty, security and international poverty reduction and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; simplifying the tax system to make it fairer, simpler and more efficient; modernising the tax system through major reforms to inheritance tax and capital gains tax; steps to protect the environment, including reforms of the tax regime for aviation and a new Environmental Taxation Fund to support the demonstration and deployment of new energy and efficiency technologies. For related publications, see 9780102944556 (2007 Budget Statement), 9780101698429 (2006 Pre-Budget), and for the Darzi Review see (http://www.ournhs.nhs.uk/files/283411_OurNHS_v3acc.pdf)
The FCO was timid and inconsistent in the discussions which led to the decision to award to Sri Lanka the right to host the 2013 CHOGM. It should have taken a more robust approach since, in the light of continuing human rights abuses in the country. In 2009 the FCO objected to Sri Lanka hosting the 2011 CHOGM but did not obstruct a proposal that it might do so in 2013, nor did it insist that Sri Lanka's right to host in 2013 should be conditional on improvements in human rights. The Committee took evidence from the BBC World Service on jamming and denial of access to its broadcast and internet services, particularly in Iran and China. The Committee calls on the BBC to recognise in future funding plans the need to provide the resources necessary to afford protection. All providers of satellite services have a commercial interest in defeating jamming. The report considers Government policy on human rights in Burma and concludes that the EU's decision to lift economic sanctions in April 2013 was the right one, given the remarkable progress made in Burma. But it warns that the UK should be prepared to advocate re-imposition of sanctions if undertakings on human rights are not followed through. The Government should also urge condemnation of those responsible for violence in Rakhine State in 2012. The Committee does not support suggestions that the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games should be boycotted in protest against human rights abuses in Russia
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