Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the consequences for her policies of the report Strip search of children in England and Wales – analysis by the Children’s Commissioner for England, published in March 2023.
Answered by Sarah Dines
The Children’s Commissioners report raises several concerns which the Home Office is taking seriously. We are considering all recommendations made for the Home Office, including amendments to the PACE Codes of Practice.
The IOPC are actively investigating several instances of children being strip-searched. Whilst we await their findings and recommendations, we are reviewing whether existing legislation, guidance, data collection and policies remain appropriate and will set out our plans in due course.
The Home Office is taking steps to increase the transparency surrounding the use of strip search. This year, we have made the data collection mandatory for all forces, with increased data collection on strip search under stop and search powers, including the age and ethnicity of those searched.
Detailed Police Custody data was published for the first time on 17 November 2022, including figures on the use of strip search in custody, covering age, gender and ethnicity of the person searched, the number of children detained overnight, and the number supported by an Appropriate Adult. We are working with forces and the NPCC to improve data collection in future years.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the collection of data on the strip searching of children.
Answered by Sarah Dines
The Children’s Commissioners report raises several concerns which the Home Office is taking seriously. We are considering all recommendations made for the Home Office, including amendments to the PACE Codes of Practice.
The IOPC are actively investigating several instances of children being strip-searched. Whilst we await their findings and recommendations, we are reviewing whether existing legislation, guidance, data collection and policies remain appropriate and will set out our plans in due course.
The Home Office is taking steps to increase the transparency surrounding the use of strip search. This year, we have made the data collection mandatory for all forces, with increased data collection on strip search under stop and search powers, including the age and ethnicity of those searched.
Detailed Police Custody data was published for the first time on 17 November 2022, including figures on the use of strip search in custody, covering age, gender and ethnicity of the person searched, the number of children detained overnight, and the number supported by an Appropriate Adult. We are working with forces and the NPCC to improve data collection in future years.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the ethnic characteristics of offenders of group based child sexual exploitation.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Our understanding of the child sexual abuse threat is based on police data, including recorded crime data, and is informed by independent reviews into offending in local areas and wider research. In 2020 the Government published a paper on the characteristics of group-based child exploitation offenders setting out the best evidence on how they operate, ethnicity, age, offender networks, the context in which these crimes are committed and implications for national and local policy.
We understand that it is essential for police and local authorities to have a good understanding of offender characteristics and the drivers of child sexual exploitation in their areas, so that they can uncover and tackle offending effectively. We are working closely with the police to drive up data quality and develop a better understanding of perpetrators, including through collecting higher quality data on the characteristics of offenders, including their ethnicity.
Home Office funding provides a dedicated analyst, working on child sexual abuse and exploitation, in each of the ten policing Regional Organised Crime Units based in England and Wales, and through the new Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce, a Complex and Organised Child Abuse Database is being developed. This will strengthen what we know about the scale, risk and prevalence of child sexual exploitation. It will improve the collection of demographic data including ethnicity, age and relationships. Local forces will be able to draw on this information to assess the risk in their areas, and thereby better identify and disrupt grooming gangs.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
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 using national insurance numbers to register sex offenders.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Public protection is a priority for this Government and the notification requirements for registered sex offenders form an invaluable tool in the management of offenders within the community.
Qualifying offenders are required to notify their personal details to the police. This system is often referred to as the ‘sex offenders’ register’ and requires offenders to provide the police with a record of their national insurance number, as well as other personal details such as their name, date of birth, and bank details. This must be done annually and whenever their details change.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an estimate of the cost to claimants of applying for compensation under the Windrush compensation scheme; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We have designed the Windrush Compensation Scheme to be as clear and simple as possible; the Home Office does not charge claimants to apply for compensation under the Scheme.
The claim forms and guidance can either be requested as a hard-copy or downloaded for free from GOV.UK: Windrush Compensation Scheme: claim forms and guidance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Once the claim form has been completed, it can either be posted to the Scheme’s freepost address or it can be emailed to the Scheme for free.
Our claimant assistance provider, We Are Digital provides free impartial advice and support with completing a claim form. The Windrush Help Team also assists individuals should they have questions about the claim form or process.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what funding her Department has made available to prevent abuse of older people in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Tackling abuse is a key Government priority. There is ongoing work across government to tackle abuse of older people, including by the Department of Health and Social Care. The Home Office oversees specifically policy related to domestic abuse.
Domestic abuse is deeply harmful, not only because of the profound effect it can have on victims, survivors and their loved ones, but also because of the harm it inflicts on wider society. This Government recognises that, although anyone can suffer from domestic abuse, for older victims, abuse may be more hidden and disguised or compounded by other age-related factors such as ill health.
The Home Office has funded Hourglass, a specialist elder abuse charity, for a number of years to enhance their helpline, provide casework support, and train specialist Independent Domestic Violence Advisers. For financial years 2018/19 through to 2020/21 we provided Hourglass £50,000 per annum. An additional £106,000 was provided to further bolster their services as part of the response to the Covid-19 crisis, to ensure victims could continue to access support. In 2021-22, the Home Office provided Hourglass over £200,000 to support their work in enhancing their helpline, providing casework support, and training specialist IDVAs, with over 3000 victims being supported in 2021-22 alone. Again in 2022/23 we provided Hourglass £50,000.
In 2021/22, Hourglass supported over 3,000 cases.
In relation to future funding, the Domestic Abuse Plan commits to over £140 million for supporting victims of which £47 million will be ringfenced for community-based services to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence, including, but not limited to, older victims.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what data her Department holds on the proportion of (a) victims and (b) perpetrators of domestic abuse of people over the age of 65 by police authority.
Answered by Sarah Dines
The Home Office holds information on the number of domestic abuse-related offences by age of victim recorded by 26 police forces in England and Wales. Data on the proportion of these offences that involved a victim aged 65 or over for the financial year 2021/22 for these forces are given in the table.
The Home Office does not hold routinely collect data on the age of the perpetrator for these offences.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing an emergency fund for those impacted by domestic abuse to provide them with the resources required to flee the perpetrators of that abuse in the context of the increases in the cost of living.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Tackling domestic abuse is a priority for this Government. A key part of this is making sure victims and survivors get the support they need.
The Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, which we published in March, invests over £230 million, including over £140 million specifically for supporting victims and survivors. The commitments in the Plan include doubling funding for the National Domestic Abuse Helpline.
The Plan also committed to establish trials of a ‘flexible fund’, which charities could use to provide extra money to victims and survivors in light of the increased cost of living.
More widely, the Government is providing direct Cost of Living Payments to more than 8 million UK households on means tested benefits. These payments will be tax-free, will not count towards the benefit cap, and will not have any impact on existing benefit awards. The Government also is protecting the most vulnerable in society, many of whom face the biggest challenge making their incomes stretch, by increasing benefits in line with inflation. This means that they will rise by September Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation – 10.1%.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans her Department has to publish guidance to Integrated Care Systems about people claiming asylum who are being accommodated in hotels and what funding is being provided to them.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office is not able to commission health services for asylum seekers, and we do not fund healthcare.
We work closely with NHS and LA partners to support the health needs of asylum seekers. All asylum seekers have access to NHS services from arrival in the UK. The Home Office and its contractors work closely with the NHS, local authorities and non-governmental organisations to ensure that people can access the health care and support they need.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether a Ukrainian national on the Homes for Ukraine Scheme who has been issued a visa on the form for affixing a visa FAV can be issued with a permission to travel letter if they subsequently obtain a Ukrainian passport.
Answered by Kevin Foster
UKVI would not normally issue a visa on a Form for Affixing a Visa (FAV) to someone who has a passport or travel document valid for travel to the UK.
Yet to avoid delaying Ukraine Scheme applicants’ travel to the UK, it has been agreed UKVI not reissue the visa in the new passport and will allow them to travel with the visa still attached to a Form for Affixing a Visa (FAV), to be carried alongside their valid passport.
A Form for Affixing a Visa (FAV) with an expired visa is no longer valid for travel.