Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding her Department plans to provide to the Department of Education in Northern Ireland through the Asylum Dispersal Grant in the next 12 months; when schools in Northern Ireland were invited to bid for that funding; and what the deadlines for those bids is.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office has been working with The Executive Office (TEO) on an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) regarding funding. The MoU is similar to the asylum dispersal grant funding provided to regions in England, Scotland and Wales, in which the Home Office has funded Northern Ireland over £4million as of December 2022. This funding is unconditional and will be allocated by the TEO.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions her Department has had with local authorities in Northern Ireland on the use of contingency accommodation for asylum seekers in Northern Ireland; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Due to the continuing unprecedented number of small boats arrivals and the historical pressure from COVID-19 measures on the asylum system it has been necessary to continue to use hotels to accommodate some asylum seekers to meet our immediate statutory need.
As is the case across the UK, the Home Office notify local authorities when new contingency accommodation is stood up in a local authority area. Additionally, there are bi-weekly council engagement meetings chaired by The Executive Office (TEO), at which councils can raise any issues that they are experiencing. These meetings are regularly attended by representatives hosting contingency accommodation.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether Republic of Ireland citizens will be included in Government plans for the biometric enrolment of non-Irish foreign nationals visiting the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Irish citizens will not be required to obtain an ETA.
All other non- British and non-Irish nationals arriving in the UK, including those crossing the land border into Northern Ireland, need to enter in line with the UK’s immigration framework: this will include the requirement to obtain an ETA when it is introduced. However, as now, the UK will not operate routine immigration controls on journeys from within the Common Travel Area, with no immigration controls whatsoever on the Ireland-Northern Ireland land border.
The UK remains committed to working with Ireland to give consideration to whether there is scope for a workable UK/Ireland data-sharing solution to determine, whether a person is a lawful resident of Ireland, and so could potentially be exempt from the ETA requirement for travel into the UK.
Irish citizens are not subject to immigration control and are not routinely required to enrol their biometrics.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether citizens resident in the Republic of Ireland will be exempted from the requirement to apply for an Electronic Travel Authorisation to cross the border into Northern Ireland.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Irish citizens will not be required to obtain an ETA.
All other non- British and non-Irish nationals arriving in the UK, including those crossing the land border into Northern Ireland, need to enter in line with the UK’s immigration framework: this will include the requirement to obtain an ETA when it is introduced. However, as now, the UK will not operate routine immigration controls on journeys from within the Common Travel Area, with no immigration controls whatsoever on the Ireland-Northern Ireland land border.
The UK remains committed to working with Ireland to give consideration to whether there is scope for a workable UK/Ireland data-sharing solution to determine, whether a person is a lawful resident of Ireland, and so could potentially be exempt from the ETA requirement for travel into the UK.
Irish citizens are not subject to immigration control and are not routinely required to enrol their biometrics.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers in Northern Ireland are without an initial decision as of 26 October 2022.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The information is not held in the requested format.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers in Northern Ireland are under investigation for third party interest.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not publish this data and such information although recorded across various systems on individual cases, it is not held in a readily available, extractable format.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers in Northern Ireland have been assessed as a potential victim of human trafficking.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes statistics regarding asylum, which can be found here
Asylum and resettlement datasets - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
The Home Office publishes quarterly and annual statistics regarding the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-referral-mechanism-statistics
Data on the number of asylum seekers who have been referred into the National Referral Mechanism are not published.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many additional staff her Department has a hired to work on asylum and visa applications.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The latest decision waiting times for visa applications made inside the UK are published on Gov.uk.
Individuals may wait longer for a decision if their application is not straightforward, and more information is required. Where priority and super-priority visas have been applied for, these will remain at the head of the decision-making queue. The Home Office are working hard to ensure that service standards are met across all visa application routes.
The Home Office does not currently have a service standard to decide initial asylum claims. A new accelerated service standard is being developed and we are testing the impact of several coordinated initiatives, including enhanced screening, case triage, centralised workflow and streamlined decision templates.
We have already made progress in prioritising older claims, high harm cases, those cases with extreme vulnerability, children and new flow cases following the introduction of the Nationality & Borders Act, whilst those in receipt of support are a priority for caseworkers considering legacy cases.
Whilst we are unable to offer specific timescales to individuals at this time, we are working hard to reintroduce service standards in line with the Nationality and Borders Act to improve the level of service we provide to those who claim asylum.
The number of asylum decision makers in the Home Office has increased from 614 in 2021/22 to 1,073, an increase of 75% with ongoing recruitment strategies in place to retain and increase the number of asylum decision makers.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on improvements in service standards to visa and asylum applications; and whether it is on target to meet its goal to return to a 20 day service standard by March 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The latest decision waiting times for visa applications made inside the UK are published on Gov.uk.
Individuals may wait longer for a decision if their application is not straightforward, and more information is required. Where priority and super-priority visas have been applied for, these will remain at the head of the decision-making queue. The Home Office are working hard to ensure that service standards are met across all visa application routes.
The Home Office does not currently have a service standard to decide initial asylum claims. A new accelerated service standard is being developed and we are testing the impact of several coordinated initiatives, including enhanced screening, case triage, centralised workflow and streamlined decision templates.
We have already made progress in prioritising older claims, high harm cases, those cases with extreme vulnerability, children and new flow cases following the introduction of the Nationality & Borders Act, whilst those in receipt of support are a priority for caseworkers considering legacy cases.
Whilst we are unable to offer specific timescales to individuals at this time, we are working hard to reintroduce service standards in line with the Nationality and Borders Act to improve the level of service we provide to those who claim asylum.
The number of asylum decision makers in the Home Office has increased from 614 in 2021/22 to 1,073, an increase of 75% with ongoing recruitment strategies in place to retain and increase the number of asylum decision makers.
Asked by: Claire Hanna (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she is taking steps to update her Department's internal IT systems to improve efficiencies and help ensure effective processing of visa applications.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The current processing of overseas visa applications is mainly carried out on the Proviso caseworking IT system. The Department continues to review the effectiveness of this system to ensure it provides a robust platform from which applications can be concluded within UKVI’s existing customer service standards.
The Department has already begun to transition overseas visa applications from Proviso to ATLAS for example on the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) (BNO) and Ukrainian Scheme routes. ATLAS is replacing the in-country IT system ‘CID’, and has provided efficiencies in processing applications from the Access UK online application service, enabling automated and integrated security checks, increased caseworking flexibility and the creation of a fully Digital Immigration Status for individuals.
The full movement of all overseas cases on-to ATLAS is scheduled over the course of the next three years”.