David Ruffley

THE number of children repeatedly committing crimes has soared by two-thirds since Labour came to power.

Ministry of Justice figures show that since 1997 the number of "persistent young offenders'' has increased from 9,868 to 16,512.

The number of offences they committed has nearly doubled to more than 30,000 a year.

POLICE are wasting more than a third of their days doing paperwork instead of fighting crime, the Government has admitted.

Some spend nearly four hours in every eight-hour shift filling in forms rather than on the beat.

Home Office figures show that police spent less than two thirds of their time on the front line last year.

However, the data, obtained by David Ruffley, the Conservative police spokesman, showed a slight increase in time on the beat compared with 2005-06.

Lags set to sue as prisoner details go missing

TAXPAYERS face a huge compensation bill after the personal details of thousands of criminals were lost in the latest Government data blunder.

The names, addresses and expected release dates of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales were among the information on a computer memory stick lost by contractor PA Consulting.

Now the public could be landed with the enormous cost of protecting paedophiles, rapists, drug runners and killers from vigilantes or rival gangs.

HOME OFFICE CONSULTANTS AT CENTRE OF NEW DATA-LOSS FIASCO ARE HANDLING ID CARDS TOO

JACQUI Smith was under fire last night for failing to sack the private contractor which lost personal data on thousands of criminals.

The Home Secretary said PA Consulting - which has won

Government contracts worth £240million since 2004 - broke the rules on secret data.

But Whitehall officials made clear it will continue to be paid vast sums of taxpayers' money.

Now lags could sue over latest ID blunder

CONFIDENTIAL information on every prisoner in England and Wales - plus 40,000 career crooks - has been lost in a security breach.

Cops are investigating after a computer memory stick holding 84,000 lags' names, addresses and release dates vanished.

Last night there were fears the Home Office could be hit by a wave of compensation claims from convicts and crooks affected. It follows uproar last year when child benefit discs holding personal information on 25 million people went missing.

SECRET personal details of Britain's most dangerous criminals have been lost by the Government.

The public could now face an enormous bill to protect paedophiles, rapists, drug runners and killers from vigilantes or rival gangsters.

The names, addresses, details

of convictions and even jail release dates of almost 130,000 people were all in Home Office files lost when a computer memory stick went missing.

It was being used by an employee of a private contractor working for the department.

THE Home Office has lost confidential information on every prisoner in the country and more than 40,000 serious criminals causing yet another government data crisis.

It has led to fears that the taxpayer may now face a multi-million pound compensation bill from criminals whose safety may be compromised.

The home addresses of some of Britain's most prolific and serious offenders - including those who have committed violent and sexual crimes - are understood to be among the data missing.

Home Office blunder leads to fears for informants' safety

Confidential records and sensitive intelligence on tens of thousands of the country's most prolific criminals have been lost in a major breach of data security at the heart of Whitehall.

Scotland Yard is investigating the loss of the information, which was taken from the Police National Computer and entrusted by the Home Office to a private consultancy firm.

DETAILS of up to 127,000 criminals have been lost in a major security scandal at the Home Office, the Daily Express can reveal.

A computer memory stick containing names, addresses and offences of more than 40,000 persistent offenders and every prisoner currently locked up has vanished.

The information watchdog yesterday said that mishandling such important data was a "toxic liability" and called the fiasco "deeply worrying".

The details were lost on Monday but the Home Office kept the blunder a secret and only admitted it yesterday when quizzed by journalists.

David Ruffley MP has today released new figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which reveal that Suffolk Constabulary have been making full use of new fixed penalty powers which came into force in March 2006.

In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available and the first full year of being able to issue fixed penalty notices for the offences of driving without insurance and driving without a valid MOT certificate, Suffolk Constabulary punished 482 and 478 motorists respectively for each offence.