Asked by: Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government when the cross-departmental ministerial group will next meet to discuss the violence against women and girls strategy action plan; and how that group plans to report its work to Parliament.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Ministerial Board met on Tuesday 27th January and will continue to meet regularly.
Home Office Ministers look forward to engaging with Parliament on the working of the government in implementing our Strategy ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse’, our supporting Action Plan, and our ambition to halve VAWG within a decade. This will include annual progress reports which will be published.
Asked by: Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many watercrafts linked to people smugglers have been seized by officials in each year since 2023.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Border Security Command (BSC) works with partners across Government and further afield to disrupt the smuggling gang networks who facilitate small boat crossings, and to help bring those responsible to justice.
Since 2023, the BSC and National Crime Agency (NCA) have contributed to the seizure of over 950 small boats and engines related to Channel crossings.
The BSC and NCA work with a range of international partners to seize equipment, including Europol, Bulgaria, Belgium, France, and Germany. We do not routinely confirm the location of seizures publicly.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the risk of released Daesh members with British citizenship or residency returning to the UK.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
It is the long-standing policy of successive UK Governments not to comment either on individual cases or operational intelligence.We are monitoring the situation in North-East Syria closely and working with partners, including the Global Coalition against Daesh, to mitigate shared national security risks.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will provide a timeline for their engagement with technology companies on preventing nude image sharing among children, as referenced in Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls, published on 18 December 2025.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
We committed in the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy ‘to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view a nude image’, and that ‘we are working constructively with companies to make this a reality’. This engagement will be targeted and carried out with the urgency that the issue deserves.
We want device operating systems to be doing more to protect their child users. Applying nudity detection technology more comprehensively across the operating system can prevent nude imagery from being taken, shared or viewed on the phone at all. This intervention is about preventing the harm from happening by blocking the imagery entirely. Preventing the creation and sharing of self-generated indecent imagery (SGII) would undermine grooming and sextortion models, where imagery is extorted out of the child by offenders.
This intervention will also prevent children from being exposed to harmful content, building on similar protections already enacted through the Online Safety Act. Exposure to harmful content – especially pornography – at such an impressionable age can feed misogynistic views and give distorted views of healthy relationships.
We will provide an update on this work as soon as possible. If voluntary action from industry is not sufficient, we will not hesitate to consider other means.
Asked by: Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, with regard to Freedom from violence and abuse volume 2: action plan, published on 18 December 2025, what actions they have taken, or plan to take, to deliver the commitment to working with employers on domestic abuse.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls’, published on 18 December 2025, sets out our commitment to improving the employer response to violence against women and girls (VAWG). Work is underway to encourage employers to maximise employment opportunities and provide support for those experiencing domestic abuse in the workplace. This includes:
We are working across government to deliver commitments on employers’ response to domestic abuse, including through a cross-government Ministerial Group that has shaped the development of the Strategy and will oversee its implementation.
This is further supported by a Strategy Advisory Board of external expert stakeholders who will help to hold the Government to account on delivery.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support is in place to help recover the credit score of victims of domestic abuse when their credit score has been impacted by an abusive partner.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government recognises the devastating impact economic abuse can have on victims, even long after a relationship ends. ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls’, published on 18 December 2025, outlined a package of commitments to tackle economic abuse.
This included a commitment from His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) to work with Credit Reference Agencies, lenders and the third sector to improve the way coerced debt is reflected on victim-survivors’ credit files with the aim of making it easier for them to access financial products in the future. This commitment was also included in HMT’s recent Financial Inclusion Strategy which considered economic abuse as a key theme, in recognition of the particular challenges victim-survivors can face in accessing financial products and services.
Asked by: Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the Welsh Government regarding changes to how police forces are governed in Wales.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
We are working closely with the Welsh Government, Welsh local government, police forces and other partners to ensure new governance arrangements provide strong and effective local governance for Wales, recognising the distinct nature of local and regional arrangements. The Policing Minister regularly speaks to the Welsh Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Jane Hutt, and attended the Policing Partnership Board for Wales on 18 December.
We have established a specific transition working group to consider future governance arrangements in Wales as part of our Police Governance Reform project, and we will continue to work collaboratively with Welsh stakeholders on the design and implementation of these arrangements.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether pensions income that is not eligible for taxation in the UK due to the UK and Hong Kong Tax Treaty will count towards the proposed £12,570 personal income threshold for British National (Overseas) visa holders wanting to acquire permanent residence.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The earned settlement model, proposed in ’A Fairer Pathway to Settlement’, is currently subject to a public consultation, running until 12 February 2026.
The Government remains steadfast in its support for members of the Hong Kong community in the UK. BN(O) visa holders will attract a five-year reduction in the qualifying period for settlement, meaning they will continue to be able to settle in the UK after five years’ residence, subject to meeting the mandatory requirements.
The consultation seeks views from Hong Kongers on the proposals, including whether there should be exemptions from the mandatory economic contribution.
Details of mandatory requirements, including those relating to personal income threshold, will be finalised following the close of that consultation. In the meantime, the current rules for settlement under the BN(O) route will continue to apply.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether pensions income that is not eligible for taxation in the UK due to the UK and Hong Kong Tax Treaty will count towards the proposed £12,570 personal income threshold for British National (Overseas) visa holders wanting to acquire permanent residence.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The earned settlement model, proposed in ’A Fairer Pathway to Settlement’, is currently subject to a public consultation, running until 12 February 2026.
The Government remains steadfast in its support for members of the Hong Kong community in the UK. BN(O) visa holders will attract a five-year reduction in the qualifying period for settlement, meaning they will continue to be able to settle in the UK after five years’ residence, subject to meeting the mandatory requirements.
The consultation seeks views from Hong Kongers on the proposals, including whether there should be exemptions from the mandatory economic contribution.
Details of mandatory requirements, including those relating to personal income threshold, will be finalised following the close of that consultation. In the meantime, the current rules for settlement under the BN(O) route will continue to apply.
Asked by: Valerie Vaz (Labour - Walsall and Bloxwich)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many visitors from (a) India, (b) Pakistan, (c) Bangladesh and (d) Nepal were refused visas in 2024.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on entry clearance visas by visa route, including Visitor visas, and nationality in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on visa applications refused are published in table ‘Vis_D02’ of the detailed entry clearance visas dataset. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data is from January 2005 up to the end of September 2025.
Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.