Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will allocate more funding to the fire service in the 2019-20 financial year.
Answered by Nick Hurd
Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work and will receive around £2.3 billion in 2019/20.
Fire and Rescue Services funding requirements from 2020/21 will be considered as part of the Spending Review.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will remove visa charges for indefinite leave to remain for commonwealth UK armed forces personnel and their families .
Answered by Caroline Nokes
All immigration and nationality fees are set within strict financial limits agreed with HM Treasury and Parliament, and are also aligned with clear principles that balance a number of complex factors, including the benefits likely to be accrued.
The Home Office is listening carefully to those with concerns about how foreign and Commonwealth members of HM Forces can have the support of their families whilst serving our country.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to support convenience retailers in Warrington South that have lost an estimated £133,145 due to shop theft.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
All forms of retail crime are unacceptable, and everyone has the right to feel safe at work.
I chair the National Retail Crime Steering Group (NRCSG) which brings together partners including the police, trade bodies – including the Association of Convenience Stores - and retailers and is overseeing a range of work to tackle retail crime. This includes the collation and dissemination of good practice and developing guidance on the use of Impact Statements for Business, which give victims of business crime the opportunity to set out the impact the crime has had on the business, including, for example, financial loss. The NRCSG also continues to work with retailers to improve the management and response to shop theft using a partnership approach according to local circumstances.
On 21 January I announced that we will launch a call for evidence on violence and abuse towards shop workers to strengthen our understanding of this issue, including how existing legislation is being applied.
In addition, the Sentencing Council is reviewing its guidelines on assault and a consultation on a revised guideline is anticipated to commence this Summer.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to prevent unaccompanied and trafficked children going missing from care.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government is committed to protecting all children who go missing and recognises the specific needs of trafficked children, which is why we have announced a range of actions to better protect child victims and keep them safe.
The Government has committed to expanding Independent Child Traf-ficking Advocates to one third of all local authorities by April 2019. The Child Trafficking Protection Fund which, as well as providing victim support and recovery, aims to reduce vulnerability to exploitation by preventing trafficked children from going missing and potentially being re-trafficked. In November 2017, the Department for Education published a Safeguarding Strategy for unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children. The Strategy com-missioned a further 1,000 training places for carers and support workers to equip them with the skills they need to identify when a child is at risk of going missing and of potentially being trafficked onwards. The Refugee Council are delivering this training and will have delivered 1,000 places by the end of March 2019.
The Home Office is also working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) through the Home Office National Law Enforcement Data Pro-gramme (NLEDP) to deliver a National Register of Missing Persons (NRMP). This will enable real time information about police reported missing persons incidents to be accessed by police forces across England and Wales. Over time the NRMP will build a national picture of historic missing persons incidents. This will assist officers when they are looking for, or en-counter a missing person, particularly if that missing person is outside their home force area. We are currently working towards the NRMP to be in use operationally in 2020/2021.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans the Government has to increase police resources to deal with crimes against animals and wildlife, including investigating reports of illegal fox hunting.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The Home Office, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, committed to fund the National Wildlife Crime Unit until 2019/20. This money is in addition to central government funding to police forces. Decisions on funding the National Wildlife Crime Unit beyond 2020 will be taken at the next Spending Review.
The Government does not prescribe the nature or level of resources deployed by individual police forces to tackle crimes against animals and wildlife or any other form of crime. It is for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, as operational leaders and elected local representa-tives, to ensure that forces’ priorities locally reflect those of their communities, and it is important that forces have the flexibility to deploy their resources without Government interference.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for indefinite leave to remain were made by Tier 1 migrants in the last 12 months; and how many of those applications were declined.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The specific information you have requested is not currently published.
Information on total refusals and grants by category of settlement (indefinite leave to remain) is published in the quarterly Immigration Statistics, Settlement table se_02_q, latest edition at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2018/list-of-tables#settlement
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for indefinite leave to remain were made by Tier 1 migrants in the last 12 months; and how many of those applications were declined.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The specific information you have requested is not currently published.
Information on total refusals and grants by category of settlement (indefinite leave to remain) is published in the quarterly Immigration Statistics, Settlement table se_02_q, latest edition at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2018/list-of-tables#settlement
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
‘To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many family visit visa applications from non-EEA countries have been declined in the last 12 months.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The family visitor visa has been replaced by the standard visitor visa https://www.gov.uk/standard-visitor-visa
The information on total entry clearance visitor visas granted is released quarterly as part of the Home Office’s Immigration Statistics, available at the .GOV.UK website.
The most recent published visas statistics are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2018/list-of-tables#visas
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the report Waiting in the Dark: How the asylum system dehumanises, disempowers and damages, published in May 2018 by Refugee Action.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Home Office Ministers and officials meet regularly with Refugee Action and other NGOs to discuss the operation of the asylum system. However, we do not routinely provide responses to individual reports.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference evidence in the report, Waiting in the Dark: How the asylum system dehumanises, disempowers and damages, published by Refugee Action in May 2019, what assessment has he made of the reasons for the high number of decisions overturned on appeal.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
UK Visas and Immigration has an internal audit process, consisting of reviews by senior case workers and independent auditors, which assesses the application of Home Office policy. We continue to work to improve the quality of decision-making to ensure that we properly consider all the evidence provided and get decisions right the first time.
Appeals are allowed for a variety of reasons including the presentation of fresh evidence, not available at the time of the initial decision. We have a very active feedback system between our presenting officers and those who make decisions on asylum claims. Where our reviews show that there are lessons for the Home Office, these are fed back to decision making units who use them to improve operational practices.