Asked by: Christian Wakeford (Labour - Bury South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons a UK citizen living in the UK is charged a fee for the citizenship applications process to bring their non-UK citizen spouse to the UK and a EU citizen living in the UK is able to bring their spouse to the UK through the settled status scheme.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Immigration Act 2014 gives the Home Office statutory powers to set fees for applications for entry or residence documentation issued under our domestic Immigration Rules and fees currently charged to non-EU citizens, including the dependants of British citizens, take into account wider factors within primary legislation.
At the end of the transition period, we will introduce a new fairer immigration system. This new points-based immigration system, to be implemented from 1 January 2021, will focus on the skills migrants possess and the contribution they can make to the UK, not where their passport comes from. Our intention is to align the immigration arrangements for newly arriving EU citizens with those for migrants from the rest of the world, including in respect of family reunion. Further details of the new system will be set out in due course.
The EU Settlement Scheme reflects our obligations under the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU in relation to EU citizens resident in the UK by the end of the transition period and their family members. British nationals living in the UK are not exercising free movement rights and therefore need to sponsor family members under the UK’s immigration rules.
Asked by: Christian Wakeford (Labour - Bury South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many immigrants who have crossed the English Channel illegally since 1 January 2018 remain in the UK.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Details on the number of people who have crossed the Channel in small boats between January 2018 and June 2020 was published, via a letter from the Home Secretary to the Home Affairs Select Committee, in September 2020. The information is available at:https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/2333/documents/22962/default/
We remain committed to removing those with no right to be in the UK, and who do not comply with our immigration laws.
The Home Office continues to work closely with EU Member State partners to enact transfers as soon as possible and ahead of the six-month timeframe for a return.
The Home Office publishes data on the number of asylum seekers transferred under the Dublin regulation in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release
Data on the number of asylum seekers transferred out of the UK under the Dublin Regulation, broken down by the EU member state they have been transferred to are published in tables Dub_D01 of the asylum and resettlement detailed datasets. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/asylum-and-resettlement-datasets
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates to the year ending December 2019.
Additionally, the Home Office publishes a high-level overview of the data in the ‘summary tables’. The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data on asylum and resettlement.
Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar https://www.gov.uk/search/research-and-statistics?keywords=immigration&content_store_document_type=upcoming_statistics&organisations%5B%5D=home-office&order=relevance