Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage skilled digital migrants to choose the UK as their preferred work destination.
Answered by Lord Murray of Blidworth
For the UK to become a science and tech superpower, it is vital that we are able to attract and retain top talent from across the globe. The race to attract the brightest and best, mobile and desirable digital talent is fierce, with many countries seeking to improve their attractiveness to this highly prized cohort.
As well as nurturing homegrown talent and harnessing the unique skills base from our world leading universities, we are also attracting the best talent from abroad via our immigration system, which includes the Global Talent, Skilled Worker and High Potential Individual routes which all provide a generous catering for the digital sector.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to create a mutually beneficial immigration policy to improve the ongoing trade negotiations between India and the UK.
Answered by Lord Murray of Blidworth
The UK is embarking on a modern and ambitious trade programme to strengthen political and economic ties with our global partners, including with India. It is not government policy to comment on live negotiations.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any increase in the number of immigration staff that are being investigated and suspended as a result of violence and racism towards the detainees.
Answered by Lord Murray of Blidworth
We expect all staff working in the immigration detention estate to behave in a professional and respectful manner. Where custodial staff are found not to have met the standards of behaviour and professionalism required they may face disciplinary action from their employer and may have their certification to work as a detainee custody officer reviewed by the Home Office.
We operate a comprehensive complaints process for detained individuals including complaints submitted on their behalf by third parties. As set out in published guidance, DSO - 03-2015 Handling complaints (publishing.service.gov.uk), complaints involving any allegation of misconduct are referred to the Home Office Professional Standard Unit and all allegations of a criminal nature must be reported to the police as soon as the allegation is made.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support people experiencing racist assault.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
The Government takes all forms of hate crime, including race hate crime, seriously. We expect the police to investigate these hateful attacks and make sure the cowards who commit them feel the full force of the law.
Our absolute priority is to get more police onto our streets, cut crime, protect the public and bring more criminals to justice. We are supporting the police by providing them with the resources they need, including recruiting 20,000 extra police officers.
The Government has worked with the police to fund True Vision, an online hate crime reporting portal, designed so that victims of hate crime do not have to visit a police station to report. The Government also funds the National Online Hate Crime Hub, a central capability designed to support individual local police forces in dealing with online hate crime. The Hub provides expert advice to police forces to support them in investigating these offences.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to mitigate any shortages of foreign workers caused by the operation of the seasonal farm worker visa scheme.
Answered by Lord Murray of Blidworth
The Seasonal Worker route allows workers to come to the UK for up to six months to pick both edible and ornamental crops, enabling UK growers to access seasonal workers throughout the calendar year.
The UK government is committed to supporting the agricultural industry. The Seasonal Worker route will be expanded in 2023, with 45,000 visas available. The separate poultry quota will remain at 2,000 places.
This enlarged route will be kept under review with the potential to increase it by a further 10,000 if necessary, and is contingent on sponsors and growers improving and abiding by worker welfare standards, including ensuring workers are guaranteed a minimum number of paid hours each week.
Employers should look to recruit from the domestic labour market in the first instance which includes those who have EU settled status or others with status which provides general work rights.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the forecast by the Office for Budget responsibility that higher net migration reduces pressure on government debt over time, what plans they have to introduce changes to the UK immigration rules.
Answered by Lord Murray of Blidworth
The points-based system has encouraged highly skilled people and high growth businesses to choose to locate and invest in the UK, alongside ensuring that employers are drawing on and upskilling the domestic UK workforce.
The Home Office keeps all immigration routes introduced under the points-based immigration system under review and regularly makes changes to the immigration rules accordingly.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce knife crime in London.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
Whilst the Mayor of London has operational responsibility for policing in the capital, this Government is committed to providing additional resources to the police and their partners to tackle violent crime and make our streets safer.
To support the prevention of violence in London, we have allocated the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) c.£33.7m since 2019, including a
c.£12.6m allocation for this financial year (2022/23). The VRU also received an additional investment of £5.5m in 2021/22 to deliver specific, highly targeted interventions to vulnerable young people. The London VRU delivers multiple initiatives that are projected to support over 5,300 young people in the capital next year.
We are also providing additional funding to enable the Metropolitan Police to increase enforcement activity where most violence occurs, through our Grip programme (previously known as Surge). The Metropolitan Police have been allocated approximately £50.9m over the last three years, including £7.9m for this financial year (2022/23) for Grip. Through this programme, the Metropolitan Police are delivering data-driven, targeted visible patrols to suppress violence where it is most concentrated.
Whilst the Mayor of London has operational responsibility for policing in the capital, the Government continues to encourage police forces to undertake a series of coordinated national weeks of action to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre. The latest phase of the operation took place between 16 to 22 May 2022. In the Metropolitan and City Police areas 126 knives were seized during enforcement action with a further 90 being surrendered or seized during sweeps.
The Home Office has invested £200m over 10 years in early intervention and prevention initiatives to help children and young people at risk of exploitation and involvement in serious violence, through the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF). This will support how the Government responds to serious violence by identifying what works in diverting children and young people away from involvement in serious violence. Currently the YEF has invested around £50m on interventions and evaluations around London.
Grip, VRU & YEF funding are provided in addition to the commitment to increase the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000 by March 2023. As of 30 June 2022, the MPS has recruited an additional 2,952 uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent further wildfires.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
The Home Office works across Government with a wide range of stakeholders including the National Fire Chiefs Council, England and Wales Wildfire Forum and other Departments and Agencies including Defra and the Met Office to promote planning and prevention for wildfire incidents in England.
At a local level, each Fire and Rescue Authority is required to plan for the foreseeable risks in their area (including wildfires) through their Integrated Risk Management Plan. This will include plans to prevent and respond to incidents and Fire and Rescue Services will have regard in their planning to other key local responders including landowners and other emergency services.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to stop cyber criminals.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
Tackling cyber crime is at the heart of the Government’s new National Cyber Strategy which is supported by £2.6bn of new investment over the three year Spending Review period. The National Cyber Strategy (2022-2025) has set the direction and ambition for investment and efforts in UK Cyber. Delivery of the Strategy is being supported by the National Cyber Fund. This programme has allocated investment to lead government departments to support delivery of the objectives set out in the strategy.
We are continuing to invest in law enforcement capabilities at the national, regional and local levels to ensure they have the capacity to deal with the increasing volume and sophistication of cyber crime, which includes ensuring officers are being trained and upskilled.
The Cyber Aware campaign is a major national advertising campaign that aims to help businesses (as well as individuals) to protect themselves online. The campaign empowers and enables the public and micro businesses to understand the best ways to stay secure online and take the necessary protective actions; and supports wider efforts to combat the threat at source via the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERs), and through partnership interventions. This year’s campaign was launched on 18 March and is focusing on empowering citizens, microbusinesses and sole traders to keep their email accounts secure. Cyber Aware - NCSC.GOV.UK
The Governments’ Cyber Essentials Scheme provides the basic controls all businesses should implement to protect themselves. About Cyber Essentials - NCSC.GOV.UK
Cyber Prevent is an important part of our response to tackling cyber crime. This is an early intervention programme aimed at deterring individuals from getting involved in cyber crime in the first place, moving deeper into cyber crime or reoffending and diverting them towards positive directions. Since 2019, all local forces now have a Cyber Prevent capability.
Further good advice and helpful products from Government include the 10 Steps to Cyber Security and the Cyber Information Sharing Partnership (CISP). 10 Steps to Cyber Security - NCSC.GOV.UK
We have also rolled out Regional Cyber Resilience Centres in each of the nine policing regions, and London. These are a collaboration between police, public, private sector and academic partners to provide subsidised or free products and cyber security consultancy services to help Small and Medium Sized Enterprise and micro businesses protect themselves better in a digital age.
We have developed and we continue to innovate on a series of Active Cyber Defence measures. Active Cyber Defence is the principle of implementing security measures to strengthen the security of a network or system to make it more robust against attack. The National Cyber Security Centre’s Active Cyber Defence programme provides tools that are free at the point of use which help organisations to tackle, in a relatively automated way, a significant proportion of the cyber attacks that hit the UK.
There were 28,886 computer misuse offences referred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) by Action Fraud in the year ending March 2022, an overall decrease of 5% from the year ending March 2021 (30,467). All computer misuse offence types saw a decrease, apart from ‘Hacking – social media and email’ which increased by 6% (from 13,576 to 14,357)
The number of computer misuse offences disseminated to forces rose by 9%, from 3,991 in the year ending March 2021 to 4,335 in the year ending March 2022.The total number of computer misuse offences assigned an outcome decreased by 5% from 7,900 in the year ending March 2021 to 7,556 in the year ending March 2022. Of those outcomes, the number resulting in a ‘Charged/Summonsed’ outcome increased from 74 to 97.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent environmental protests that endanger the lives of others.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
Peaceful protest is a vital part of a democratic society. However, there is a balance to be struck and rights to peaceful protest do not extend to highly disruptive and dangerous acts, such as tunnelling, which places not only the lives of the protesters at risk, but also those who rescue them.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act has already increased the maximum penalty for those who obstruct the highway, putting their lives and those of road users at risk. The Public Order Bill further improves the police’s ability to respond to dangerous protest acts by criminalising tunnelling which causes serious disruption and creating serious disruption prevention orders; a new court order that targets the most prolific protesters.