My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jacqui Smith) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

The House will wish to know that Sir Ian Magee's independent review of criminality information is being published today.

I am grateful to Sir Ian for his work on the review. He has presented us with a substantial report with wide ranging implications for all organisations which collect information that may be relevant to the prevention, investigation, prosecution, or penalising of crime. This is a complex area and there are no quick fixes. Sir Ian's package of recommendations will require sustained attention. I will therefore be consulting widely and I intend to publish a full, government-wide action plan in the autumn.

The Government are keen to develop work quickly across a range of Sir Ian's recommendations and my department will continue to take the lead in driving this work forward as part of our primary focus on public protection. We intend now to proceed with the following.

First, we will continue with the complex and difficult work which the Home Office has been leading to enhance the information we have about the criminal histories of foreign nationals and UK citizens who have spent time abroad. We will do this both by making better use of existing information channels and by leading a process of improvement within Europe and more widely. This work will significantly improve the way we protect the public by ensuring relevant overseas data are available to inform the criminal justice process and key systems such as those used to vet and bar people seeking to work with children and vulnerable adults.

Secondly, we will build on, extend and strengthen existing streams of work, such as the programme the Home Office has led to implement the recommendations from the Bichard inquiry, to develop a clear strategic direction for the improvement of criminality information management across what Sir Ian is calling the public protection network. That will provide the framework for positive changes to sharing of criminality information, training for leaders and frontline staff and the ways in which we identify and respond to information-related risks.

Thirdly, the Home Office will be involved in an in-depth review of the way technology supports information flows between public protection organisations, drawing on the expertise of other departments and key organisations such as the National Policing Improvement Agency. A huge programme of work is already under way to strengthen information handling within policing and the broader criminal justice system, but we recognise the need to join up even more and sharpen the focus on public protection. There is also significant potential to save taxpayers' money through the re-use of existing technology and through reducing the amount of duplicate data held by various organisations.

Fourthly, Sir Ian has conducted some detailed work in specific areas of public protection and made recommendations that directly affect front line operations. We intend to implement these recommendations. Their focus is improving the way information is captured, stored and accessed, shared, analysed and acted upon, and managed. Full implementation of these recommendations will improve the quality of criminality information available to frontline staff who are making very difficult decisions on a day-to-day basis. In all these areas we will be building on the foundations of positive work which is already under way between the Home Office and its partners within the public protection network. For example, I anticipate we can:

work with the UK Border Agency to improve the use of criminality information to assist in deporting people in a timely and fair way; and

improve the effectiveness of our vetting and barring processes so as to protect children and the vulnerable from those unsuitable to work with them.

Working together to protect the public is the fundamental statement of purpose for the Home Office. I want that to be the guiding principle for our policies to cut crime, provide effective policing, secure our borders and protect personal identity. The effective use and sharing of criminality information is critical to the successful delivery of those policies and Sir Ian's report provides us with the framework within which that can be achieved.

Copies of the documents have been placed in the Printed Paper Office and the Libraries of both Houses.