The Bank of England is operationally independent in its banknote production decisions and determines the volume and denomination of notes issued based on demand from the wholesale cash industry. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, six commercial banks retain historical rights to issue their own sterling banknotes under the Banking Act 2009, subject to regulatory requirements that they hold backing assets equivalent to the value of notes in circulation.

The Royal Mint is the sole producer of UK circulating coinage, whilst HM Treasury holds responsibility for UK coinage under the Coinage Act 1971, with the Chancellor holding the historic title of Master of the Mint. HM Treasury, in consultation with the Royal Mint, determines the volume and denominations of coin issued in response to demand from the wholesale cash industry.

Aggregate data on notes and coin in circulation is available through the Bank of England statistics publications, the Royal Mint's Annual Report, and the annual reports of the Scottish and Northern Irish note-issuing banks.

The Home Office publishes data on police misconduct annually as part of its statistical series on police misconduct and criminal investigations. In addition, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) publishes data annually on the police complaints system.

Data is collected and published on the total time taken to finalise cases. A case is considered finalised once all resultant actions have concluded, including criminal proceedings, appeals and any associated reviews. The majority of these cases do not result in formal misconduct proceedings.

For cases involving police officers that were finalised in the year ending 31 March 2024, it took on average (median) 111 calendar days to finalise conduct matter cases and 311 calendar days to finalise recordable conduct matters. It took on average 133 working days for complaint cases to be finalised in the same time period. Data on police complaints covers police staff as well as police officers.

Last year, the Home Secretary announced a review into systemic barriers to timeliness in the police misconduct system, which is due to commence in the near future.

My Lords, through the Crime and Policing Bill, the Government will amend Section 59 of the Police Reform Act to allow the police to seize any vehicle, including e-scooters, which are used in an antisocial manner, without having to first give a warning to the offender. The Government are also consulting on proposals to allow police more swiftly to dispose of seized vehicles. These actions, I believe, will send a clear message that anti-social use of any vehicle will not be tolerated.

The £19.2bn cost for the Emergency Services Network (ESN) covers the period 2015/16 to 2043/44, and is broken down as follows:

Programme Delivery spend is £3.2bn, this includes the cost of developing the ESN network, the Mission Critical Communications (MCX) solution, and includes infrastructure costs.

Ongoing run costs for ESN are calculated at £9.9bn. This includes service charges for both the Mobile Services and User Services contracts.

The continued operation of the Airwave network during the delivery phase of the Programme, and up until completion of transition to ESN is £6.1bn. These legacy costs are expected to last until the final transition date of December 2029, when these legacy systems are expected to be fully replaced by ESN.

These costs, when compared to the estimated cost of running Airwave for the entire period of evaluation, are considerably lower.

Of the £19.2bn, £5.5bn has been spent up to 31 March 2024, with the remaining £13.7bn to be spent by 2043/44.

My Lords, in December 2024, the Home Office awarded the user service contract for the emergency service network to IBM and its partners. The programme’s attention is now on producing a plan with our partners, focusing on mobilisation and delivery of key capabilities to deliver the emergency service network. Programme delivery dates with milestones will be available in the spring.

The Home Office collects and publishes information annually on the number of armed police officers in the Police use of firearms statistics. The latest available data is for the year ending 31 March 2024 and can be accessed at at Gov.UK.

There were a total of 6,473 armed officers as at 31 March 2024, a decrease of 3% (-178) compared with 31 March 2023 (6,651).

Of the 6,473 armed officers, 5,861 were operationally deployable armed officers (91%). This proportion was the same as the year ending 31 March 2023, and 2 percentage points lower than in the year ending 31 March 2022 (93%).

As at 31 March 2024, there were 3% fewer (-177) operationally deployable armed officers than in the year ending 31 March 2023. ‘Operationally deployable’ excludes officers who were absent due to sickness (long or short-term) or on restricted duties.

A 5-year armed officer uplift programme, with the aim to train and equip 1,000 extra firearm officers was announced on 1 April 2016 (separate from the recent recruitment of an additional 20,000 officers). Following the programme, the number of operationally deployable armed officers increased from 5,639 on 31 March 2016, to a peak of 6,621 on 31 March 2019 (Figure 4).

Since 31 March 2019, the number of operationally deployable armed officers has decreased by 760 (to 5,861 on 31 March 2024). This is the fifth consecutive year that the number has decreased. The number of operationally deployable armed officers is 4% (222) higher than before the armed officer uplift programme (31 March 2016).

In its 2021 Business Case the Programme estimated the total cost of providing critical emergency services communications between 2015/16 and 2036/37 to be £11.3bn. This is the combined cost of running the current system Airwave while developing ESN. A revised Programme Business Case setting out a new timetable and costs is expected early next year. This will reflect an extension of the evaluation period from FY2036/37 to FY2043/44 and extended run period for legacy Airwave systems by approximately three years. We plan for the network to be live for first users in early 2027 and are targeting full transition by end of 2029.

The Home Office has been in the process of two major procurements for ESN. The Mobile Services contract was awarded to BT/EE by direct award in July 2024 and the second contract is nearing finalisation and expected to be ready by the end of this year. Details will be published on the government commercial disclosure portal Contracts Finder. Airwave will be shut down only when it is safe to do so.

My Lords, no specific government policy exists for treating children from other countries with life-threatening or rare diseases and it is generally preferable to treat patients close to home, subject to capacity and expertise. Some UK international healthcare agreements, mostly with Europe, the British Crown dependencies and overseas territories, permit doctors to refer patients to the UK. Referrals are usually reimbursed and happen when wait times are excessive or the treatments are not available in the child’s home country.

My Lords, the Government considered this matter carefully as part of a comprehensive cycling and walking safety review in 2018. The Government have no plans to require cyclists to have insurance, because the costs and complexity of doing so would significantly outweigh the benefits, and because it would be at odds with the Government’s aim of getting more people to switch to cycling for their everyday journeys.

The Department for Transport publishes road casualty statistics based on personal injury road collisions reported to the police via the STATS19 reporting system.

Electrically assisted pedal cycles are included in the pedal cycle category depending on their power output.

The table below shows the annual number of pedestrian casualties where they were in collision with a pedal cycle from 2003 to 2022 (the latest year that data is available for). There may also be other vehicles involved in the overall collision.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on Fixed Penalty Notices and other outcomes for motoring offences as part of the “Police Powers and Procedures: Other PACE powers” statistical bulletin. The most recent data, for 2021, are available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1118166/fixed-penalty-notices-and-other-motoring-offences-statistics-police-powers-and-procedures-year-ending-31-december-2021.ods

The Home Office collects data through a national fixed penalty processing system (PentiP), which includes some information on offences of pedal cyclists breaching road traffic collections. However, these data are not routinely published within the motoring offences statistics and are therefore not quality assured. Additionally, data are not collected on whether there were near misses or injuries sustained during an incident.

The Home Office has also been informed by the Department for Transport that they do not hold data regarding either part of the question.

The GB-wide Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (the Scheme) provides state-funded compensation to victims of violent crime who cannot pursue compensation or redress from other routes. The Scheme is administered by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA).

Payments are available under the Scheme for physical or psychological injuries resulting directly from a crime of violence, as defined in Annex B of the Scheme. Paragraph 4(1)(b) of Annex B specifies that a crime of violence will not be considered to have been committed if an injury “resulted from the use of a vehicle, unless the vehicle was used with intent to cause injury to a person”. Paragraph 4(2) outlines that a “vehicle” for the purposes of this paragraph means any device which can be used to transport persons, animals or goods, whether by land, water or air. Therefore, any application which relates to an injury caused by a cyclist will only be eligible if the vehicle was used with intent to cause injury to the applicant.

It is possible that CICA holds information which falls within the scope of this request, however it can only be extracted from the CICA’s database through manual search of case records at disproportionate cost.

The information requested is not held by the Department.

The number of pedestrian casualties in Great Britain injured in a collision with a pedal cyclist which was reported by police using the STATS19 system in each of the last 5 years for which data are available is shown in the table. Note however it is known that a majority of non-fatal collisions are not reported to police.

The number of reported personal injury collisions between a pedal cyclist and a pedestrian in England and Wales, and the resulting casualties by severity of injury, in each of the last 5 years for which data are available is shown in the table.

Policing is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland and operational capability is a matter for the Chief Constable. The PSNI’s main budget is allocated by the Department of Justice from the Northern Ireland block grant.

The UK Government has provided the PSNI with the additional security funding it has asked for and needs to ensure that they have the resource (including officers) to tackle the SEVERE threat from Northern Ireland related terrorism. This additional security funding boosts PSNI’s ability to tackle the terrorist threat while ensuring day-to-day policing isn’t compromised.

PSNI received £230m in additional security funding in the last Parliament and £160m in this one. In addition, the UK Government has, to date, provided PSNI with over £16.5m in EU Exit funding to help manage pressures and contingencies arising from ongoing EU exit preparations. This has enabled PSNI to recruit 206 additional officers this financial year.

Police funding is increasing by over £1 billion this year, including council tax and serious violence funding. Police force spending is a decision for PCCs and Chief Constables, considering their local pressures and priorities.

The Home Secretary has committed to prioritising police funding at the next Spending Review.

In line with the National Serious Organised Crime Performance Framework, disruption data allows for the assessment of varied activities including traditional law enforcement Pursue responses and the broader spectrum of Prevent, Protect and Prepare activities, carried out by a range of agencies and government departments.

Therefore, across SOC threats (including Drugs), the NCA assesses its disruptions by the extent to which an activity is judged to have led to a reduction in the threat from an individual, group, or vulnerability linked to serious and organised crime. This approach helps to calibrate the NCA’s effort towards the highest harm serious and organised criminals and networks.

The UK Government’s approach to tackling modern slavery and trafficking in Pakistan is to reduce the permissive environment through community based activities, and to strengthen the legislative framework for more effective prevention and control. We have not made an assessment of the number of cases of faith targeted human trafficking, however the UK Government is currently working on a range of projects aimed at minimising the incidence of modern slavery (including trafficking) in Pakistan. DFID and the Home Office have also commissioned a study which will look at modern slavery and trafficking specifically. A second study on women and trafficking is planned in 2020.