Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans her Department has to make public sexual harassment a criminal offence.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
Sexual harassment in public places is appalling, and this Government is committed to tackling it. Women and girls have the right to both be and feel safe on our streets.
As set out in the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy, published last July, and whose Call for Evidence was informed by over 180,000 responses, the vast majority of them from the public, we have been looking carefully at where there may be gaps in existing law and how a specific offence for public sexual harassment could address those.
As a result of this work, we will by the summer recess begin a consultation on whether there should be a new offence of public sexual harassment. We will seek to ensure that a representative range of voices is included in the responses to the consultation.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the value for money of the Jamaica deportation charter flight on 8 May 2022.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
This Government’s priority is keeping the people of this country safe, and we make no apology for seeking to remove dangerous foreign criminals. Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.
Charter flight operations there are an important means to return disruptive individuals or where they are limited scheduled routes, particularly during the global Coronavirus pandemic. We manage the charter programme flexibly, balancing it with the use of scheduled flights to best respond to operational needs.
The endless merry go round of late legal claims – which are often unfounded or without merit – can result in people being removed from flights at the last minute.
Our New Plan for Immigration will stop the abuse of the system and expedite the removal of those who have no right to be here.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the (a) rationale and (b) number of applications in the latest period for which data is available for each definition for migration applications classified as non-straightforward.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The complexity of an application varies from case to case due to a range of factors which may include the various checks that must be carried out in the course of assessment.
The Home Office routinely conducts checks with other government departments and external agencies. This may mean the time it takes to process an application may be longer than normal, but in some cases, it is essential we do so.
If an application is deemed complex and expected to take longer than the standard processing timescale, UKVI will write to the customer within the standard processing time and explain what will happen next.
The Home Office is committed to publishing data in an orderly way as part of the regular quarterly Immigration Statistics, in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Transparency Data provides a breakdown of applications classified straightforward and non-straightforward and is available at Tab VC_02 of ‘Visas and Citizenship data: Q4 2021’: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q4-2021
Latest statistics published on 24 February 2022 shows the breakdown of cases that are classified as straightforward from Quarter 2 2019 until Quarter 4 of 2021 is 5,640,606 and non-straightforward during the same time frame is 629,403. The next set of data is due to be published on 26 May 2022.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to expedite enhanced DBS checks for (a) Ukrainian refugees and (b) UK applicants to the Homes for Ukraine scheme to speed up the process of children coming to the UK from Ukraine.
Answered by Kevin Foster
This question can be best answered by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and should therefore be directed to that Department.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many refugees her Department estimates will arrive from Ukraine; and whether her Department plans to limit the number of refugees that it will admit from Ukraine.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government has set no limit on the number of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion who can come to the UK and does not plan to.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Animals in Science Regulation Unit; and what assessment she has made of the compatibility of her Department’s change programme with the UK's animal welfare responsibilities.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The Animals in Science Regulation Unit has undertaken a change programme to benchmark itself against leading regulatory practice. The aim of the programme has been to improve its effectiveness.
Under the Change Programme the Regulator has strengthened its regulatory oversight and published its process of full system audits at: www.gov.uk/guidance/animal-research-technical-advice#process-and-standards-for-establishment-full-system-audits.
At audits the Regulator requires evidence for assessment of compliance against all legal licence conditions, including those for animal welfare, which is available at: www.gov.uk/guidance/animal-research-technical-advice#process-and-standards-for-establishment-full-system-audits.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of recent trends in the level of decision making costs for migration applications on migration application fees.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Fees and the estimated unit cost for immigration and nationality applications are kept under review. When setting visa, immigration and citizenship fees, the Home Office takes into account a number of factors set by Section 68(9) of the Immigration Act 2014. Full details of which can be found via the following link:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/22/section/68
The fees include the cost of processing the application, the wider cost of running the migration and borders system, international comparisons and the benefits that are likely to accrue from a successful application.
Fees and the estimated unit costs for immigration and nationality applications are published on gov.uk and can be viewed through this link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visa-fees-transparency-data
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of compensating passport holders for lost unexpired time on their passports at renewal.
Answered by Kevin Foster
As the British passport remains a valid passport up until its expiry date, and a need to renew early is determined by where the holder may choose to travel, there are no plans to compensate for any unused validity period.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the cost to residential leaseholders of ensuring tall buildings meet (a) building and (b) fire safety regulations following the Fire Safety Act.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
An impact assessment for the Fire Safety Act 2021 was published alongside its introduction on 12 March 2020 and is available here Impact Assessment (parliament.uk).
The Government intends to lay fire safety regulations to implement the majority of the recommendations made by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry in the Phase 1 report, which require a change in the law, as soon as possible once the Fire Safety Act 2021 is commenced in full in England. The impact assessment published alongside the Fire Safety Consultation on 9 July 2020 included an assessment of the costs for the planned fire safety regulations and is available here Fire safety - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). A new impact assessment will be published alongside the regulations when they are laid.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of naturalisation applications were completed within her Department’s target of six months in each of the last four reporting periods for which data is available.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Secretary of State’s Home Department publishes data on naturalisation applications completed within six months, this data for the previous 4 quarters can be found on the Gov.uk website at.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q1-2021
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q2-2021
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q3-2021
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q4-2021
The last set of data was published on 24th February 2022.