Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with Oldham Council on the potential starting date for its inquiry into grooming gangs operating in Oldham.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
In June this year, Baroness Casey published her independent audit into group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, and the Government accepted every recommendation it made, including establishing a new national inquiry. The national inquiry, equipped with statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005, will direct targeted local reviews in specific areas.
The former Home Secretary made a specific commitment to support Oldham Council in undertaking their own local inquiry. The Department has been discussing the right approach for Oldham’s inquiry with Oldham Council, given the Government’s commitment to a new national inquiry. We also intend to consult the prospective chair of the national inquiry once appointed and will confirm the proposed approach for Oldham alongside further details about the national inquiry 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, whether her Department is taking steps to track people crossing the Channel who might pose a security risk.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
We have launched the Border Security Command (BSC) whose work is imperative not only to stop criminals from entering the UK via small boats in the first place but to stop anyone from making these dangerous journeys. This is why the BSC is working with partners internationally to tackle and disrupt organised immigration crime gangs.
All individuals arriving in the UK via small boats undergo a comprehensive screening process. This is designed to gather key information about each person, including any indicators of criminality.
As part of this process, the Home Office collects biometric data—such as facial images and fingerprints—to verify identity. These biometrics are checked against Home Office systems and other law enforcement databases, including Interpol’s wanted list. This enables us to identify individuals, assess whether they pose a risk to public safety, and determine any breaches of immigration law. These checks are essential to maintaining a secure, fair, and effective immigration system.
In line with the Refugee Convention, refugee status will be denied to those who have committed serious crimes, pose a danger to the community, or present a threat to national security.
For further details on security checks during the asylum screening process, please refer to: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a0e95e49b9c0597fdb03dd/Screening+and+routing.pdf
This process also ensures that individuals who should not be granted bail are identified promptly.
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 to stop foreign offenders wanted for crimes abroad from (a) crossing the Channel and (b) claiming asylum in the UK.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
We have launched the Border Security Command (BSC) whose work is imperative not only to stop criminals from entering the UK via small boats in the first place but to stop anyone from making these dangerous journeys. This is why the BSC is working with partners internationally to tackle and disrupt organised immigration crime gangs.
All individuals arriving in the UK via small boats undergo a comprehensive screening process. This is designed to gather key information about each person, including any indicators of criminality.
As part of this process, the Home Office collects biometric data—such as facial images and fingerprints—to verify identity. These biometrics are checked against Home Office systems and other law enforcement databases, including Interpol’s wanted list. This enables us to identify individuals, assess whether they pose a risk to public safety, and determine any breaches of immigration law. These checks are essential to maintaining a secure, fair, and effective immigration system.
In line with the Refugee Convention, refugee status will be denied to those who have committed serious crimes, pose a danger to the community, or present a threat to national security.
For further details on security checks during the asylum screening process, please refer to: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a0e95e49b9c0597fdb03dd/Screening+and+routing.pdf
This process also ensures that individuals who should not be granted bail are identified promptly.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of the cases included in her formal review of grooming gang investigations are in London; in which London boroughs these cases are; and what the dates are of each case.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We can confirm that over 1,200 cases have been identified for review in the first phase of the review of cases that ended with ‘No Further Action’ that was announced by the previous Home Secretary in January 2025. This is now a component part of Operation Beaconport. The Operation has advised that work has already begun on reviewing the 216 most serious cases. We do not hold the detailed data on the breakdown of cases under review by force or local authority area.
Asked by: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to Answer of 24 June 2025 to Question 59762 on Immigration, what progress her Department has made on each of the proposals she plans to bring into effect.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Restoring Control of the Immigration System White Paper published 12 May 2025 set out reforms to legal migration, so that we can restore order, control and fairness to the system, bring down net migration and promote economic growth.
On 1 July 2025 we laid Immigration Rules changes that delivered the first of the package of reforms set out in the White Paper:
Further Immigration Rules changes were laid on 14 October 2025 to deliver tighter control, while continuing to attract top global talent. Details of which can be found here: Statement of Changes to Immigration Rules and Explanatory memorandum to the statement of changes to the Immigration Rules: HC 1333, 14 October 2025 (accessible) - GOV.UK
Further measures 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 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 Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many asylum seekers have received NHS-funded IVF treatment since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Neither the Department nor NHS England holds data on who accesses in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority publishes information on the numbers and IVF cycles carried out, including whether they were privately or National Health Service funded, but this does not cover the immigration status of the patient.
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.