§ Mr. KaufmanTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set out, with statistical information relating as directly as possible to the constituency, the effects on the Manchester, Gorton constituency of his Department's policies and actions since 30 November 2000. [154496]
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§ Mr. Charles ClarkeI wrote to my right hon. Friend on 30 November 2000 regarding a similar query. I explained that the impact of Home Office policies and actions is not normally collected by constituency and the statistics which the Department collects cannot be matched in the way requested. The three major projects which I mentioned are ongoing. They are a burglary reduction project in Rusholme, a targeted policing project against armed crime in South Manchester and the neighbourhood wardens projects in three parts of Gorton.
The Manchester Youth Offending Team received a visit from my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in December 2000 and there was a significant increase in the number of Pre-Sentence Reports prepared for the courts during that quarter. There are plans for this progress to be sustained.
As I explained in the earlier reply, all the policies of the Home Office will in a more general way impact on Manchester, Gorton to a greater or lesser extent. Changes since I last wrote to my right hon. Friend are as follows:
The asylum backlog has been cut from 103,495 at the end of January 2000 to 66,195 by the end of December 2000;Good progress is being made in reducing the incidence of fire deaths in England and Wales. They have dropped from 605 in 1997 to 534 in 1999.Information on the Home Office and its policies is also published on its website, www.homeoffice.gov.uk, but once again this is not collected on a constituency basis.