Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of remarks by Tony Blair to The Times on 1 February regarding the potential use of digital identity to help solve immigration and other problems.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
Digital right to work and right to rent checks are already in place for migrants and British or Irish citizens. For British passport, and Irish passport or passport card holders, employers and landlords can already choose to use digital identity services which are independently certified against Government standards. This can reduce business costs and enable individuals to access work and housing much faster, and more easily.
Foreign nationals can also use their eVisa to evidence their status in the UK and for identification purposes.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of illegal immigrants residing in the UK.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
By its very nature, it is not possible to know the exact number of people living in the UK illegally, or produce official estimates of that illegal population. In June 2019, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a note on ‘measuring illegal migration’, which can be found here: Measuring illegal migration: our current view - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Home Office Introducing Public Health Measures Impact Assessment 2019, published on 4 July 2019, which found that the Cardiff Model for violence reduction would cut the costs of violence by £858 million over 10 years if five per cent of Community Service Partnerships implemented it, what plans they have to extend its use throughout (1) England, and (2) Wales.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
The Cardiff Model is a multi-agency approach to violence prevention that relies on the strategic use of information and data from health and law enforcement services to improve policing and community violence prevention initiatives. The Government recognises the benefits of using the Cardiff Model to tackle serious violence and have adopted the approach across a number of policies and projects.
For example, the Serious Violence Duty will commence on the 31st January 2023 and will be rolled out across England and Wales. Introduced through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the Serious Violence Duty will require a range of specified authorities, such as the police, local government, youth offending teams, health and probation services, to work collaboratively, sharing data and information to analyse the local problem, and put in place a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities, through existing partnership structures where possible.
The proactive sharing of data between health and law enforcement, as set out in the Cardiff Model, has also been adopted and built upon by our Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) who also seek to incorporate data from wider multi-agency partners to generate new insights into violent crime trends and drivers. As of this financial year, we now have 20 VRUs operating in the 20 police force areas worst affected by serious violence. Effective data sharing is a key priority for VRUs, and the Home Office closely monitors progress against this.
The Government also encourages all Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) to meet the expectation to work with local hospitals to implement the sharing of appropriate health data to tackle serious violence, as detailed in the 2018 Serious Violence Strategy for England and Wales.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of Community Safety Partnerships in England and Wales are using the Cardiff Model (A&E) data to identify serious violence hotspots; whether they have plans to extend the usage of this data; and what is the timetable for that extension.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
This government recognises the benefits of using the Cardiff Model to identify serious violence hotspots. That is why we continue to encourage all Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) to meet the expectation to work with local hospitals to implement the sharing of appropriate health data to tackle serious violence, as detailed in the 2018 Serious Violence Strategy for England and Wales. At this time, data on the percentage of CSPs using this model is not held centrally.