The Investigatory Powers Bill significantly strengthens the safeguards in relation to the security and intelligence agencies’ retention and use of bulk personal datasets through the requirement for warrants subject to the ‘double-lock’ of Secretary of State and judicial approval.

The security and intelligence agencies do not hold medical records as part of their bulk personal datasets. Medical records are a collection of confidential medical information about the mental or physical health of individuals compiled by a medical professional and held by a medical institution.

The agencies may only acquire information where it is necessary for the proper discharge of their statutory functions and the retention of each bulk personal dataset is subject to strict handling arrangements to ensure that they are only retained where it is necessary and proportionate to do so.The Government cannot provide further details on the datasets that the agencies hold or how they are acquired as to do so would undermine the agencies’ ability to protect national security and prevent and disrupt serious crime.

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary and territorial police forces offer mutual support through individual agreements. As the Prime Minister said in his statement to the House of Commons on 23 November [23 Nov 2015: Column 1051], plans are in place to enable military personnel to support the Police in the event of major terrorist incidents in the UK. Military personnel will be able to fill a number of operational tasks. For national security reasons, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further on these detailed operational agreements.

The Home Office ran a Call for Information on the operation of the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) regime between 25 February and 25 March 2015. We received more than 60 responses from a wide range of stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, the financial sector, and the legal and accountancy sectors. Subsequently, further discussions were held with private and public sector bodies through a series of workshops.

The Government published the Action Plan for Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist finance on 21 April 2016. The Action Plan sets out the Government’s programme to deliver a significantly improved anti-money laundering regime for the UK. This includes the replacement of the SARs IT infrastructure. A summary of the submissions received following the Call for Information is set out in the Action Plan at Annex B.

In the Action Plan, we announced our commitment to develop a stronger public private partnership to tackle money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and as part of that we will engage with public and private stakeholders to develop the replacement.

The stakeholders will include law enforcement agencies, government departments, and businesses in the ‘regulated sector’ including banks, the legal and accountancy sectors, and estate agents. We will also include regulatory and supervisory bodies, and public bodies for whom SARs are of value.

This engagement will enable us to ensure that the replacement of the SARs IT architecture will deliver significant benefits for all of the sectors involved in the SARs regime. As we set out in the Action Plan, we will reform the SARs regime, making the necessary legislative, operational and technical changes, by October 2018.

The Home Office ran a Call for Information on the operation of the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) regime between 25 February and 25 March 2015. We received more than 60 responses from a wide range of stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, the financial sector, and the legal and accountancy sectors. Subsequently, further discussions were held with private and public sector bodies through a series of workshops.

The Government published the Action Plan for Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist finance on 21 April 2016. The Action Plan sets out the Government’s programme to deliver a significantly improved anti-money laundering regime for the UK. This includes the replacement of the SARs IT infrastructure. A summary of the submissions received following the Call for Information is set out in the Action Plan at Annex B.

In the Action Plan, we announced our commitment to develop a stronger public private partnership to tackle money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and as part of that we will engage with public and private stakeholders to develop the replacement.

The stakeholders will include law enforcement agencies, government departments, and businesses in the ‘regulated sector’ including banks, the legal and accountancy sectors, and estate agents. We will also include regulatory and supervisory bodies, and public bodies for whom SARs are of value.

This engagement will enable us to ensure that the replacement of the SARs IT architecture will deliver significant benefits for all of the sectors involved in the SARs regime. As we set out in the Action Plan, we will reform the SARs regime, making the necessary legislative, operational and technical changes, by October 2018.

The government expects those who have been refused asylum and who have no lawful basis to remain in the UK to leave at the earliest opportunity. If there is a genuine obstacle that prevents a failed asylum seeker's departure from the UK and they are destitute, they can apply for support under section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. As of 31 December 2015, a total of 3,821 failed asylum seekers and their dependants were supported under section 4.

The government is at the forefront of assisting and protecting vulnerable children, wherever they are. Children in Europe are mostly already able to access support from countries that have similar legal obligations to our own.

The UK has been playing its full part in supporting European neighbours to provide support to those who have arrived. We have provided nearly £46 million of funding to the Europe wide response to help the most vulnerable, including children and infants.

In addition the £10 million the Department for International Development fund announced on 28 January will support UNHCR, Save the Children and International Rescue Committee to work with host authorities to care and assist unaccompanied or separated children.

This is in addition to resettling those from conflict regions through our Syrian Resettlement Programme and Children at Risk Resettlement Scheme. The UK is playing a leading role in the resettlement of the most vulnerable and supports other EU Member States in establishing and developing their resettlement schemes, through bilateral and multinational discussions.

There has been no change in Immigration Rules in relation to the use of property interference by immigration officers. Part III Sections 55(1) and (2) of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 amended the Police Act 1997 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) in 2013 to empower officials within the Home Office exercising immigration functions to seek authority for property interference solely for the purpose of preventing and detecting serious crime. Immigration removal centres themselves cannot seek property interference authorisations.

The Office of Surveillance Commissioners (OSC) scrutinise every application for property interference made by immigration officers upon authorisation and also retrospectively oversee any use of the power to ensure compliance. The OSC publish an annual report, which refers to the overall use of these powers by public authorities including the Home Office.

The Home Office does not provide information on individual Immigration Removal Centres visited by the OSC, or investigations carried out within them.

The Investigatory Powers Bill will replace the current oversight regime with a powerful In-vestigatory Powers Commissioner who will have the support, powers, resources and tech-nical expertise to continue to ensure that these powers are being used fully in accordance with the law.

We are currently updating our September 2015 country information and guidance on handling asylum claims made by Eritrean nationals.

The revised guidance will be based on an assessment of a range of sources including the Foreign Office’s Human Rights and Democracy Report 2015 as well as recent publications by Amnesty International and the findings of a Home Office fact finding mission to Eritrea undertaken in February 2016.

The number of full time equivalent police officers employed in traffic policing roles as at 31 March in each of the last 5 years is provided in the tables. Officers with multiple responsibilities are recorded under their primary function or role. Data for 31 March 2015 (the latest period for which figures are available) can also be found in the supplementary tables of the July 2015 police workforce statistics publication:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/444537/police-workforce-supptabs-mar15.ods

Reclassification of roles within a force can lead to fluctuations in the number of officers in a particular role.

As HMIC has made clear, there is no simple link between police numbers and crime levels, between numbers and the visibility of police in the community, or between numbers and the quality of service provided.

Decisions on the size and composition of the police workforce are operational matters for Chief Officers working with their Police and Crime Commissioners and taking into account local priorities. What matters is how officers are deployed, not how many of them there are.

Resourcing is an operational matter for individual Chief Constables. We have prioritised child sexual abuse as a national threat in the Strategic Policing Requirement to empower police forces to maximise specialist skills and expertise to prevent offending and resolve cases. This means that police forces must have in place the capabilities they need to protect children from sexual abuse.

In 2015/16 the Government provided an additional £10 million to the National Crime Agency to create specialist teams to tackle online child sexual exploitation. We have also made available £1.7 million to fund Operation Hydrant, which coordinates the handling of multiple non-recent child sexual abuse investigations specifically concerning institutions or persons of public prominence, and up to £1.5 million to support regional coordinators and analysts to oversee the implementation of the National Policing Plan for tackling child sexual exploitation.

A full Impact Assessment, setting out the cost across Criminal Justice System of the proposed bail reforms, was drawn up as part of the consultation process in late 2014 and was updated in the light of that consultation in March 2015. The Impact Assessment was updated again and published with the Policing and Crime Bill in February 2016; a copy of the latest version is available online at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/499365/Impact_Assessment_-_Reform_Pre-Charge_Bail.pdf

The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice have worked together closely in drawing up these proposals; I am of course a Minister in both Departments, and my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice is one of the backers of the Policing and Crime Bill.

The UK is committed to ensuring the EU Turkey deal is implemented in an effective and sustainable way. We believe it is going to make a genuine difference to managing the flows of migrants; preventing people from putting themselves in the hands of smugglers and from dying while attempting the crossing. The UK is working with our European partners to ensure that most migrants can be returned quickly, fairly and securely to Turkey. We have offered 75 expert personnel including staff to help with the processing and administration of migrants in Greek reception centres. This will help to ensure that vulnerable people, including children, are identified and can access asylum systems as quickly as possible, while other migrants will be returned to Turkey in accordance with the EU-Turkey deal. The first cohort of staff are due to arrive in Greece next week. The UK also continues to deploy three vessels in the Aegean assisting in Search & Rescue missions, and a Royal Navy vessel operating as part of the NATO mission.

The table below gives the number of asylum seekers in receipt of Section 95 support in each local authority in London, as at the end of December 2015. The numbers of asylum seekers in receipt of section 95 support, by local authority, are published quarterly by the Home Office in Table as_16_q of the Immigration Statistics release. The latest publication (Immigration Statistics, October to December 2015) is available on the GOV.UK website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-october-to-december-2015/asylum

It is long established Home Office policy not to comment upon matters of personal protective security.

The Home Office has an internal target to consider all new Further Leave applications within six months of application. The resources in place in Complex Casework Directorate for Further Leave applications from failed asylum seekers granted Discretionary Leave to Remain is based around meeting this internal target. Our records indicate that the average time taken to decide such applications is 186 days.

Note: This is provisional management information that is subject to change. It has not been assured to the standard of Official Statistics

Entries are retained on the Her Majesty’s Passport Office Stop File for reasons of public protection and the prevention of crime.

Given the nature of the data, it would be inappropriate to disclose the volume of entries.

The team has a full time equivalent of 26 members of staff and amongst its responsibilities is to act as the single point of entry to Her Majesty’s Passport Office for law enforcement partners.

The Home Office continues to work closely with police forces to ensure that we are best placed to tackle the threat posed by cyber crime.

Through the National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP), we invested over £90 million during the last Parliament to bolster the law enforcement response.

As the Chancellor announced in November, this Government has committed to spending £1.9 billion on cyber security over the next five years, including for tackling cyber crime.

The Home Office is also supporting the work led by Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh, the National Policing Lead for Digital Investigation and Intelligence (DII), to build capabilities to combat the full range of digital crime types. In addition we are providing funding through the Police Transformation Fund to support police led programmes to provide a step-change in digital capability.

For reasons of national security we do not comment on operational issues relating to border security systems.

The table below shows the countries and territories that have made requests to the UK for assistance in recovering criminal assets.

These figures only show countries where 6 or more requests have been made for restraint or confiscation. This is because disclosure of figures where 5 or fewer requests have been made may lead to the identification of an individual Mutual Legal Assistance request. Please note that these figures are taken from local management information, and have not been quality assured to the level of published National Statistics. As such they should be treated as provisional and therefore subject to change.