To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to the answer to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) of 16 October 2008, Official Report, column 1436W, on vetting, how many (a) standard and (b) enhanced Criminal Records Bureau checks were undertaken in each police force area in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement. (285996)

The total number of standard and enhanced disclosures processed in each financial year since 2002 until March 2009 is shown in the following table.

The CRB cannot provide figures broken down by police force area. This is because standard disclosures are processed without any requirement for the police forces to conduct checks and several different police forces may be required to conduct checks in order to produce one enhanced disclosure.

The CRB has now issued over 20 million disclosures since inception and operates to a set of published service standards (PSS) which are to issue 95 per cent. of standard disclosures within 10 days and 90 per cent. of enhanced disclosures within 28 days. While the CRB has consistently exceeded their targets for standard disclosures, there have been problems in meeting the target set for enhanced disclosures.

To address these problems associated with delays, the CRB has set up an improvement plan with their delivery partners, including the police forces. This is aimed at maintaining a balanced output of applications on the system while also reducing the number of aged cases. This work has started to show an improvement in turnaround times but the CRB will continue to monitor forces performance in line with its own performance.