Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions she has had with police forces in areas experiencing disappearances of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from hotels on (a) investigating the disappearances and (b) helping to prevent future disappearances; and what steps she is taking with the impacted hotels to help to prevent future disappearances.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The rise in the number of small boat crossings has placed significant pressures on local authority care placements for young people. The safety and wellbeing of those in our care is our primary concern. Out of necessity, and with the best interests of the child in mind, we have had no alternative but to temporarily use hotels to give unaccompanied children a roof over their heads whilst local authority accommodation is found.
We take the safety and welfare of those in our care seriously and the Home Office has robust safeguarding procedures in place to ensure those in our accommodation are as safe and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority. The National Transfer scheme (NTS) has seen 3,148 children transferred to local authorities with children's services between 1 July 2021 and 30 September 2022. This compares to 739 children transferred in the same time period in the previous year. We are providing local authorities with children's services with an additional £15,000 for every eligible young person they take into their care from a dedicated UASC hotel, or the Reception and Safe Care Service in Kent, by the end of February 2023.
For any young person that goes missing from an unaccompanied asylum seeking child (UASC) hotel, the local authority will convene a multi-agency forum including local police forces and the Home Office to seek to locate the child and ensure their safety, following the 'missing persons protocol', led by our directly engaged social workers. The MARS (Missing After Reasonable Steps) protocol is followed for any looked after child who goes missing from a care setting, including the UASC hotels. Similar protocols within police forces have safely reduced the number of missing episodes from placements by 36%.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had recent discussions with local authorities on the risk of child refugees (a) disappearing and (b) being kidnapped from hotels run by her Department.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The wellbeing, welfare and security of children and minors in our care is an absolute priority. Robust safeguarding procedures are in place to ensure all children and minors are safe and supported as we seek urgent placements with local authorities.
Officials hold regular meetings with local authorities to arrange the placement of young people via the National Transfer Scheme, to consider strategic improvements to the processes and procedures and in response to the concern around young people going missing from hotels.
We continue to consult multi-agency partners and subject matter experts to ensure our processes and procedures are robust and evolve as new trends or risks emerge. Local police forces are engaged in ongoing activity where a child fails to return to a hotel and this data is shared across the police national computer as it would be in any case where a child goes missing
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions he has had with (a) Cabinet colleagues and (b) relevant stakeholders on the appointment of a migrants commissioner; and what is the timeline for their appointment.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
A range of options have been considered for delivering the Windrush recommendations, including discussions with external stakeholders. The Home Office is taking steps to be more transparent to ensure that the department is as open as possible to all types of scrutiny, both internal and external.
We will keep the Home Affairs Select Committee updated on the progress of all the Wendy Williams recommendations.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason it takes 16 weeks on average to receive a decision on Health and Care Workers visas; and what steps she is taking to reduce this amount of time.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office had been prioritising Ukraine Visa Scheme applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has impacted on the delivery of some of our service standards.
We remain focussed on the processing of Entry Clearance applications for Health & Care Workers, to assist them in entering the UK to take up employment in the Health and Care sector, and these are being decided within our published service standards. We have injected additional resource into the team and expect the time taken to assess Health and Care Worker in-country applications to reduce significantly.
Details on visa processing times are published on the Home Office website at: Visa decision waiting times - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) These are updated on a regular basis to inform customers of any changes that may affect their application.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps his Department has taken to protect people who protest outside the Chinese Embassy in London since the incident at the Chinese Consulate in Manchester.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights set out that everyone has the right to freedom of expression, assembly and association. This government will always fully support these rights, including the right of individuals to engage in peaceful protest.
It is a long-standing tradition in this country that people are free to gather together and to demonstrate their views, provided that they do so within the law.
The management of demonstrations is an operational matter for the police. In certain circumstances, the police have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect those who want to exercise their rights peacefully.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle metal theft across the country; and what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of licensing and regulatory requirements in the metals recycling sector in preventing the sale of stolen metals.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Home Office engages at a national level with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, police forces and law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders to understand the national picture on metal theft, and what can be done to tackle it. This includes supporting the work of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Metal Crime Steering Group led by the NPCC lead for metal theft, ACC Charlie Doyle.
The Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 regulates the metal recycling sector, making it more difficult to dispose of stolen metal. A 2017 review of the 2013 Act found it provides a strong legislative foundation. We will continue to keep the Act and supporting guidance under review and update where appropriate.
To support enforcement of the 2013 Act, the Home Office provided £177,000 seed corn funding in the 2020/21 financial year to establish the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership (NICRP), ensuring co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft. The Partnership facilitates data and intelligence sharing to partners to target offenders, understand emerging trends and implement crime prevention measures and has provided training to over 1,600 police officers and other law enforcement agencies in tackling metal theft.
Last month officers and partner agencies across the UK took part in the fourth national week of action tackling metal theft, heritage and waste crime. During the week officers visited 39 scrap metal dealers, 41 mobile collectors were stopped, and 16 offences were identified.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if her Department will take steps to (a) provide additional funding to help tackle illegal unlicensed operators in the metals recycling sector and (b) launch a wider campaign to tackle waste crime.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Home Office engages at a national level with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, police forces and law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders to understand the national picture on metal theft, and what can be done to tackle it. This includes supporting the work of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Metal Crime Steering Group led by the NPCC lead for metal theft, ACC Charlie Doyle.
The Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 regulates the metal recycling sector, making it more difficult to dispose of stolen metal. A 2017 review of the 2013 Act found it provides a strong legislative foundation. We will continue to keep the Act and supporting guidance under review and update where appropriate.
To support enforcement of the 2013 Act, the Home Office provided £177,000 seed corn funding in the 2020/21 financial year to establish the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership (NICRP), ensuring co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft. The Partnership facilitates data and intelligence sharing to partners to target offenders, understand emerging trends and implement crime prevention measures and has provided training to over 1,600 police officers and other law enforcement agencies in tackling metal theft.
Last month officers and partner agencies across the UK took part in the fourth national week of action tackling metal theft, heritage and waste crime. During the week officers visited 39 scrap metal dealers, 41 mobile collectors were stopped, and 16 offences were identified.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions his Department has had with the Metropolitan Police on lead theft from buildings such as churches.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Home Office engages at a national level with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, police forces and law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders to understand the national picture on metal theft, including gas copper pipe theft, and what can be done to tackle it. This includes supporting the work of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Metal Crime Steering Group led by the NPCC lead for metal theft, ACC Charlie Doyle. The Metropolitan Police is represented on this group.
The Home Office provided £177,000 seed corn funding in the 2020/21 financial year to establish the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership. The Partnership ensures national co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft. The Partnership, facilitates data and intelligence sharing to partners to target offenders, understand emerging trends, and implement crime prevention measures. The partnership has provided training to over 1,600 police officers and other law enforcement agencies in tackling metal theft.
We have also provided funding to Historic England for a project to mark lead from church roofs and explore how to best prevent and investigate theft and illicit disposal of metal from historic sites.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions his Department has had with the Metropolitan Police on gas copper pipe theft.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Home Office engages at a national level with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, police forces and law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders to understand the national picture on metal theft, including gas copper pipe theft, and what can be done to tackle it. This includes supporting the work of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Metal Crime Steering Group led by the NPCC lead for metal theft, ACC Charlie Doyle. The Metropolitan Police is represented on this group.
The Home Office provided £177,000 seed corn funding in the 2020/21 financial year to establish the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership. The Partnership ensures national co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft. The Partnership, facilitates data and intelligence sharing to partners to target offenders, understand emerging trends, and implement crime prevention measures. The partnership has provided training to over 1,600 police officers and other law enforcement agencies in tackling metal theft.
We have also provided funding to Historic England for a project to mark lead from church roofs and explore how to best prevent and investigate theft and illicit disposal of metal from historic sites.