I undertook to come back to the Committee on the following points:

DATE AND CONFIRMATION OF AMOUNT OF INVESTMENT FOR THE JOINT EMERGENCY CONTROL ROOM PILOTS (Q25)

  In January this year, the Department of Health was allocated £7.8 million from the Invest to Save Budget to conduct a series of projects evaluating joint control rooms for the police, fire and ambulance services. This was supported by the Home Office and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. The emergency services and the coastguard were invited on 12 March to submit outline joint proposals. After an initial sift, full business cases were invited and received from services in four areas and assessed by a project steering group representing the Home Office, Department of Health and other stakeholders. Lady Hayman announced the successful pilots (Cleveland, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire) on 3 July at the ambulance services annual conference in Harrogate. Work on setting up the schemes has begun and they will be closely monitored and evaluated over the coming three years.

 CASES WHERE FIRE AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN SUED BY PROPERTY OWNERS (Q44)

  Two other cases were dealt with at the same time as the Digital case. These were John Munroe (Acrylics) Ltd v London Fire and Civil Defence Authority and others and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (Great Britain) v West Yorkshire Fire and Civil Defence Authority.

  In the Digital case, the High Court found that the Hampshire Brigade had been negligent in deciding to switch off the sprinkler system at a building leased by Digital and damages were awarded against the County Council. The Court of Appeal considered the Digital judgement with two other cases referred to above. It held that while, for the purpose of extinguishing fires, the powers of the members of a fire brigade were very extensive, there was nothing in legislation which permitted them to be exercised negligently. However, a high threshold had to be crossed to establish negligence: the error must be one that no reasonably well-informed and competent firefighter could have made. The Court of Appeal upheld the judgement in the Digital case, while finding for the fire authority in the other cases.

  The circumstances of the Digital judgement were considered by the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council for England and Wales on the basis of the paper attached (annex A[21]*.) The Advisory Council decided that the case did not justify seeking blanket immunity for fire authorities from legal actions for negligence.

BREAKDOWN OF CATEGORIES OF CASES IN IND'S BACKLOG (Q46)

  The backlog figure discussed by the Committee (125,165) was that cited by the Secretary of State when he appeared before the Committee in April. It excludes nationality cases. The following table updates the figures at the end of June:

	June 1999
Asylum	80,000
General & Settlement	38,000
European	4,000
Illegal Entry/Deportation	18,000
Nationality	101,000
Total backlog	241,000

COMPENSATION PAYMENTS THIS YEAR BY UKPA (Q122)

  In the 1999 calendar year to the end of June, around £50,000 has been paid in compensation, covering 1,409 claims. Average payment made is £36.

  Included in the above are 132 claims made, paid or expected in respect of missed travel dates. The average payment for these claims is £270.

WHEN WE FIRST BECAME AWARE THAT THERE WOULD BE A CRISIS IN UKPA (Q138)

  The Passport Agency introduced a new passport issuing system on 5 October 1998 in the Liverpool Regional Office on a pilot basis and in the Newport Office as an extended pilot some six weeks later. These pilots revealed some problems with the new system, particularly in relation to work throughput both by Agency staff and the private sector partner Siemens Business Services. Because of the problems, the Project Steering Committee decided on 18 November 1998 to defer rollout of the planned system to the remaining offices. At that stage, performance, although not at planned levels of throughput, was expected to improve by early in 1999.

  In his next Quarterly Report, on 2 February 1999, the Chief Executive informed Ministers of some of the problems being experienced in Liverpool and Newport and deferral of the full rollout. Ministers raised various questions about backlogs and the failure to answer telephone calls. The Chief Executive responded on 25 February with a fuller explanation of the problems and how they were being addressed. He provided reassurances that problems were temporary and expressed the hope that full production would be restored by early summer. On 26 February the UKPA branch of the Public and Commercial Services union raised their concerns about relaxation of security checks and the Siemens contract problems in a letter to Mr O'Brien. Having read the letter on 3 March, Mr O'Brien asked for a meeting with the Chief Executive and the Unions. He also asked for briefing from the Chief Executive. On 5 March, the Chairman of the Advisory Board minuted Mr O'Brien referring to the deferral of the roll out and the steps the Agency was taking to deal with them. He suggested a meeting with the Chief Executive. On 15 March Mr O'Brien met the Unions and the Chief Executive. Following the meeting, Mr O'Brien expressed serious concern at the developing situation and asked urgently for a business recovery plan to restore delivery of customer service targets within six months. This was submitted on 29 March and approved by Mr O'Brien and the Home Secretary on 31 March. It forecast restoring turn around times of 15 days by June.

  The plan included provision of some 300 extra staff and the Agency expected that this increase together with the normal dip in demand between Easter and the late May Bank Holiday, and high staff availability at that time of year, would enable them to recover lost ground and contain the problem to manageable proportions. At the end of the financial year 1998-99 the total amount of unprocessed work was some 75,000 cases higher than in 1997-98 and was still not judged to be critical.

  However, intake of applications did not dip as expected but instead rose significantly. By late April there were serious concerns at the increasing arrears and the rising level of enquiries which were swamping the telephone enquiry system. The reasons for this shift in the pattern of demand are being investigated but on current information appear to have been caused by a mix of demand being brought forward, as people hearing of delays sent in applications earlier than usual, and higher than forecast demand for separate passports for children.

  The Agency response was to introduce greater use of free two year extensions from early May. This proved insufficient in the face of escalating demand as public concern and media coverage of growing delays increased and figures for intake and output in the first two weeks of June showed that the position was deteriorating rapidly. Further measures were introduced, including 100 additional staff, the facility exceptionally to extend passports at some 1,700 main Post Offices, and a national telephone helpline to deal with enquiries from customers with urgent travel needs. Work is prioritised to meet travel dates and extensive weekend and evening work has helped to reduce the arrears. The number of applications outstanding has fallen from over 550,000 in early June to less than 420,000 at 19 July—the equivalent of some three weeks work.

  I should also like to provide further information to the Committee to supplement the information I gave at the hearing on 6 July:

FURTHER INFORMATION ON LONG-TERM FIRE TRENDS (Q12)

  The target to reduce by 20 per cent the number of accidental fire-related deaths in the home is from an average of 380 a year in England and Wales to an average of 304 a year by March 2003.

  The target to reduce the number of fires to a level lower than currently projected in long-term trends is against projected trends for numbers of fires of 608,100 (high rainfall) to 633,500 (low rainfall) in the UK in the year ending March 2002.

IND'S LATEST OUTPUT FIGURES (Q56)

  The following table reflects the latest available casework output figures.

	April 1999	May 1999
Nationality	4,910	5,080
After-entry	17,000	17,200
Asylum Decisions	3,040*	3,220*

  *recent asylum output figures include significant numbers of applications from Kosovars, which were processed as part of a special exercise.

  The following table shows the number of Kosovan Asylum cases decided in 1999:

January	40
February	50
March	80
April	980
May	1,680

PROGRESS WITH CASES TO ADJUDICATORS (QQ71-74)

  An Appeals Support Section (ASS) was established in early April to prepare asylum appeals bundles and the number of cases now being sent to IAA continues to increase. In week ending 3 July, 269 appeals were forwarded, representing 107 per cent of the agreed 1998 weekly average. This was an increase of 7 per cent compared with the previous week. The backlog of asylum appeals has now fallen from 1,150 at the beginning of June to 942 at 3 July.

David Omand

20 July 1999