§ Ms ShipleyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what additional resources are available to the police to deal with the recent names given to them by US detectives investigating internet child pornography. [85410]
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§ Hilary BennThe new National Policing Plan requires forces to include child protection in their local policing plans, strengthen their partnership arrangements and carefully select and train staff working in this area.
This reinforces the Joint Chief Inspectors' Report on Arrangements to Safeguard Children recommendation that police forces and authorities should review the role, remit, location and status of child protection units to ensure that child protection is dealt with to a consistently high standard.
As part of the investment programme for police services in England and Wales, this year (2002–03) the police received an overall funding increase of 6.1 per cent. (on top of record spending and a record increase of 10.1 per cent. in 2001–02) taking the total provision to £9,010 million. In addition policing will receive an increase of £1.5 billion for policing as a wholeby 2005–06 over the 2002–03 figure.The Home Office has also decided to provide an additional £¼ million in this financial year only to assist the Association of Chief Police Officers national structure to support operations to combat child abuse on the internet.
Operational decisions on allocation of police resources to combating child exploitation rest with police authorities and chief officers. There is no central record of the additional resources which chief officers across forces may have allocated to deal with investigations resulting from this operation.