Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei was temporarily detained at the UK border on 29 September 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office would not routinely comment on individual cases.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of adding (a) HGV and (b) PSV drivers to the shortage occupation list for visas.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Government has no plans to increase the number of visas available for (a) HGV and (b) public service vehicle drivers, as these occupations are not eligible under the Points Based System. The Government’s position is that employers should invest in recruitment from the resident workforce, which includes UK workers and migrants with general work rights, for jobs with relatively short training requirements.
The independent Migratory Advisory Committee (MAC) is currently reviewing the Shortage Occupation List (SOL), which involves extensive consultation with industry. The MAC will report its recommendations in the Autumn, after which the Government will consider its position. As per the Government’s commissioning letter to the MAC last year, inclusion on the SOL for jobs which do not meet the skills threshold should only be considered in exceptional circumstances, such as when we added care workers last year.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of increasing the number of visas available for (a) HGV and (b) public service vehicle drivers.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Government has no plans to increase the number of visas available for (a) HGV and (b) public service vehicle drivers, as these occupations are not eligible under the Points Based System. The Government’s position is that employers should invest in recruitment from the resident workforce, which includes UK workers and migrants with general work rights, for jobs with relatively short training requirements.
The independent Migratory Advisory Committee (MAC) is currently reviewing the Shortage Occupation List (SOL), which involves extensive consultation with industry. The MAC will report its recommendations in the Autumn, after which the Government will consider its position. As per the Government’s commissioning letter to the MAC last year, inclusion on the SOL for jobs which do not meet the skills threshold should only be considered in exceptional circumstances, such as when we added care workers last year.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions she has had with (a) the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, (b) police forces, (c) the National Crime Agency, (d) HMRC and (e) other law enforcement agencies on the potential traffic of illicit and counterfeit goods through freeports.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Secretary of State for the Home Department has regular meetings with Ministerial colleagues across Government and other law enforcement agencies where all aspects of border security are discussed as needed.
Measures are in place across all our borders and points of entry to tackle the importation of counterfeit or illicit goods. We continue to work closely with Intellectual Property (IP) Right’s Holders, HMRC and other agencies such as Trading Standards to ensure rigorous controls on goods across the UK.
IP Right’s Holders can help protect their rights by making an Application for Action. This requests Border Force to detain goods suspected of infringing a range of rights, including trademarks, copyrights, design and patents.
Freeports, in the same way as every other business in the UK, will have to adhere to the UK’s high regulatory standards with respect to security. Moreover, Freeports will be subject to an annual audit, by HMRC and Border Force, to make sure security measures continue to meet the high standards expected from Freeport operators to mitigate security risks across physical, personnel, and cyber domains.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on whether Denis Kapustin visited the UK in 2014.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office do not comment on individual cases.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether Denis Kapustin has been banned from entering the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office do not comment on individual cases.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to protect UK (a) nationals and (b) residents from cyberattacks and malicious hacking through the use of spyware by the Government of Bahrain.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat
The UK’s National Cyber Strategy commits us to countering the proliferation of high-end cyber capabilities and reducing the opportunity for states and organised crime groups to access them via commercial and criminal marketplaces, as well as tackling forums that enable, facilitate, or glamorise cyber criminality.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) does not routinely avow details of its assessments of the capabilities of foreign governments. However, the cyber security of individuals and organisations is a high priority for the Government. The government is delivering a strategic programme of work to prevent attacks reaching citizens and organisations at scale. This includes a range of interventions such as identifying and removing malicious websites, building a national data sharing capability to enable industry to block malicious websites and attacks, advising banks of stolen customer credentials to enable them to protect their customers, and work to improve the resilience of UK telecoms networks.
Opportunities for malicious actors have increased in line with improvements in connectivity and our growing reliance on digital services. At the same time, barriers to entry have fallen, granting those who were formerly unable the capability to conduct attacks. Government is continually learning from these incidents to further refine and improve our defences and incident management processes.
With respect to spyware specifically, it is vital that all cyber capabilities are used in ways that are legal, responsible and proportionate to ensure cyberspace remains a safe and prosperous place for everyone. The UK currently considers public attribution of cyber attacks on a case-by-case basis, and has shown that we attribute malicious cyber activity where we believe it is in the best interests of the UK to do so.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 13 December 2022 to Question 106455 on Wind Power: Labour Market, if she will take steps to ensure that employers employing workers under the Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017 regularise the position of those workers before the concession ends on 30 April 2023; and what data her Department holds on steps taken by employers to regularise the position of such workers before 31 October 2022.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not collect or store data on the number of overseas nationals working under the concession in the offshore industry in the UK from 2017 to date.
We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies who use the immigration system which is consistent with the policy across the wider system.
The Home Office is not responsible for evaluating the labour market or governing how private companies recruit their workers. The information about the concession is published at Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: October 2022 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) on gov.uk for employers to access if they wish to.
As previously set out, the Government regularly reviews all concessions to the Immigration Rules against the general principles of the immigration system to check whether they are necessary and regularly undertakes engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. This will continue to be the case in future.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 13 December 2022 to Question 106455 on Wind Power: Labour Market, how many persons granted entry to work in the UK under the Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017 provided a letter from their employer stating that they were employed in the construction or maintenance of a wind farm project within territorial waters.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not collect or store data on the number of overseas nationals working under the concession in the offshore industry in the UK from 2017 to date.
We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies who use the immigration system which is consistent with the policy across the wider system.
The Home Office is not responsible for evaluating the labour market or governing how private companies recruit their workers. The information about the concession is published at Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: October 2022 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) on gov.uk for employers to access if they wish to.
As previously set out, the Government regularly reviews all concessions to the Immigration Rules against the general principles of the immigration system to check whether they are necessary and regularly undertakes engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. This will continue to be the case in future.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 13 December 2022 to Question 106455 on Wind Power: Labour Market, if she will place in the Library figures showing the number of workers granted leave to enter the UK under the Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017 in each year of its operation when the concession ends on 30 April 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not collect or store data on the number of overseas nationals working under the concession in the offshore industry in the UK from 2017 to date.
We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies who use the immigration system which is consistent with the policy across the wider system.
The Home Office is not responsible for evaluating the labour market or governing how private companies recruit their workers. The information about the concession is published at Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: October 2022 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) on gov.uk for employers to access if they wish to.
As previously set out, the Government regularly reviews all concessions to the Immigration Rules against the general principles of the immigration system to check whether they are necessary and regularly undertakes engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. This will continue to be the case in future.