Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to ensure that long-standing tenants in Croydon are not (a) evicted and (b) displaced by higher rental offers made to landlords by (i) Serco and (ii) other contractors.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has a legal obligation to provide accommodation for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute, whilst their claims are being processed.
This Government is determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly. This includes our accommodation sites, as the Home Office continues to identify a range of options to minimise the use of hotels and ensure better use of public money, whilst maintaining sufficient accommodation to meet demand.
Our accommodation strategy is to support exit from hotels and deliver a more sustainable model for asylum seekers, local partners, local authorities, and communities as a whole. We are working closely with Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to deliver this, with a focus on community cohesion.
Accommodation providers are responsible for sourcing and securing suitable properties. They work closely with local authorities to ensure that local knowledge, intelligence and context inform procurement decisions, helping to place accommodation where it is most appropriate and sustainable.
The procurement process is guided by principles of sustainability and measured growth, ensuring that accommodation is not only available but also suitable for long-term use and integrated within local communities.
The latest published Immigration Statistics detail the number of supported asylum seekers accommodated in each local authority area. These statistics can be found at Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether landlords in Croydon are being offered rents above market rates to house asylum seekers.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has a legal obligation to provide accommodation for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute, whilst their claims are being processed.
This Government is determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly. This includes our accommodation sites, as the Home Office continues to identify a range of options to minimise the use of hotels and ensure better use of public money, whilst maintaining sufficient accommodation to meet demand.
Our accommodation strategy is to support exit from hotels and deliver a more sustainable model for asylum seekers, local partners, local authorities, and communities as a whole. We are working closely with Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to deliver this, with a focus on community cohesion.
Accommodation providers are responsible for sourcing and securing suitable properties. They work closely with local authorities to ensure that local knowledge, intelligence and context inform procurement decisions, helping to place accommodation where it is most appropriate and sustainable.
The procurement process is guided by principles of sustainability and measured growth, ensuring that accommodation is not only available but also suitable for long-term use and integrated within local communities.
The latest published Immigration Statistics detail the number of supported asylum seekers accommodated in each local authority area. These statistics can be found at Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have had Indefinite Leave to Remain status revoked in each of the last five years.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
In order to respond to your request, a manual data extraction would be required. Under section 12(1) of the FOIA, the Home Office is not obliged to comply with an information request where to do so would exceed the appropriate limit. We estimate that the cost of locating and collating any relevant information and extracting the information to meet your request would exceed the appropriate limit of £600 specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. We are therefore unable to comply with it. The £600 limit is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 24 hours of work per request. The cost of locating, retrieving and extracting information can be included in the costs for these purposes. In this case, the time taken to identify and review the information held in relation to the question would exceed the cost limit.
Where section 12 is engaged in relation to part of a request it is applied to the whole request. This is in line with good practice recommended by the Information Commissioner’s Office. Please note that even if a revised request were to fall within the cost limit, it is possible that further relevant exemptions in the Act might still apply.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of asylum accommodation contracts on the private rented housing market in Croydon.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
When this Government came to office, we inherited a system where hotels had become one of the primary means of providing asylum accommodation – with more than 400 in use in Autumn 2023 at a cost of almost £9 million per day – and where a 70 per cent collapse in asylum decision-making in the last months of the previous administration had driven that pressure up further.
We have taken rapid action to address that chaos, in particular by speeding up the volume of asylum decision-making so that fewer people are stuck in limbo, dependent on support from the state, and so that more failed asylum-seekers can be removed from the UK, along with foreign national offenders and others with no right to be in our country.
The number of hotels in use is now around half the peak reached under the previous Government, and we will take further action over the rest of this Parliament to end the use of asylum hotels entirely.
We are continuing to work with a range of stakeholders to pursue that goal, while fulfilling our statutory obligations in the interim. Where the Home Office needs to use dispersed accommodation, it does so in accordance with the principle of Full Dispersal, announced by the previous government in 2022 to ensure that asylum seekers were more fairly distributed across the UK.
We also continue to consult with local authorities, the police, and other interested parties to ensure that – wherever there are concerns over the impact of particular asylum accommodation sites on the local community, public safety and public amenities – all necessary actions are taken to address those concerns, and protect the security of each local area.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether Serco has been contracted to provide asylum seeker accommodation in Croydon.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
When this Government came to office, we inherited a system where hotels had become one of the primary means of providing asylum accommodation – with more than 400 in use in Autumn 2023 at a cost of almost £9 million per day – and where a 70 per cent collapse in asylum decision-making in the last months of the previous administration had driven that pressure up further.
We have taken rapid action to address that chaos, in particular by speeding up the volume of asylum decision-making so that fewer people are stuck in limbo, dependent on support from the state, and so that more failed asylum-seekers can be removed from the UK, along with foreign national offenders and others with no right to be in our country.
The number of hotels in use is now around half the peak reached under the previous Government, and we will take further action over the rest of this Parliament to end the use of asylum hotels entirely.
We are continuing to work with a range of stakeholders to pursue that goal, while fulfilling our statutory obligations in the interim. Where the Home Office needs to use dispersed accommodation, it does so in accordance with the principle of Full Dispersal, announced by the previous government in 2022 to ensure that asylum seekers were more fairly distributed across the UK.
We also continue to consult with local authorities, the police, and other interested parties to ensure that – wherever there are concerns over the impact of particular asylum accommodation sites on the local community, public safety and public amenities – all necessary actions are taken to address those concerns, and protect the security of each local area.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to establish an independent national inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
On the 16 June the Home Secretary announced that she had accepted all 12 of Baroness Casey’s recommendations from her National Audit into Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
As part of this, and as recommended by Baroness Casey, the Government is moving swiftly to establish an Independent Commission on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation under the Inquiries Act 2005.
We are working closely with partners across government and beyond to develop the Terms of Reference, which will be shaped through engagement with the appointed Chair, victims and survivors, and other key stakeholders.
Following the appointment of the independent Chair and the establishment of the inquiry structure, the Commission will begin considering evidence and data to select the first local areas for targeted investigations.
Further details will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the number people who came to the UK on a study visa and later claimed asylum for each sponsoring institution.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Immigration White Paper, published on 12 May, sets out proposals for reform in a wide range of areas, including student visas, further details of which will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking in relation to institutions that have sponsored high numbers of students who have later claimed asylum.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Immigration White Paper, published on 12 May, sets out proposals for reform in a wide range of areas, including student visas, further details of which will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to implement the £38,000 family visa salary threshold.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave on 22 May to Question 52912.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the rules laid in Parliament on 12 March 2025 on care workers, how many social care workers have (a) been removed from the UK and (b) had their visas cancelled as a result of their sponsor losing their licence since 4 July 2024.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.