Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many requests have been made by (a) France, (b) Greece and (c) Italy for the UK to take charge of an asylum application under the family reunification articles of the Dublin III Regulation in the last six months.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
Whilst all asylum claims including those accepted under Dublin III are registered on the Home Office Case Information Database (CID), this data is not currently held in a way that allows it to be reported on automatically and is therefore not currently available.
Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the time taken to process applications related to refugee family reunion.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
Customer service is a key priority for UK Visas and Immigration, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the visa application process is kept under regular review, including by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. The published service standard for resolving refugee family reunion applications is within 12 weeks, or 60 working days.
Where an application is complex and likely to take longer than the advertised processing times, UKVI will contact the applicant to inform them of this.
Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 10 May 2016 to Question 36436, what progress she has made on (a) reflecting on the recommendations of other parties on the rollout of independent child trafficking advocates and (b) that rollout.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The Government is committed to introducing appropriate support for trafficked children. It is important we get these structures right, given the significant risks to these children. We are working with a broad range of interested parties as well as Parliamentarians to further develop an approach so that we deliver an improved service for trafficked children. I will update Parliament in due course.
Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the number of people whose asylum application has been transferred for consideration by the Government under the Dublin III Regulation as part of quarterly immigration statistics.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The information published in the quarterly Immigration Statistics is kept under review, taking into account the needs of users, burdens on suppliers and producers, in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. There are currently no plans to publish data relating to asylum applications transferred under Dublin III Regulation.
Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 9 May 2016 to Question 36277, how many requests have been made for asylum applications to be transferred for consideration by the UK from (a) Greece and (b) Italy since UK experts were deployed to support the respective Dublin units.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Whilst all asylum claims including those accepted under Dublin III are registered on the Home Office Case Information Database (CID), this data is not currently held in a way that allows it to be reported on automatically and is therefore not currently available.
Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) asylum seekers and (b) refugees have been accommodated by each London borough in the last three years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Figures on asylum seekers in receipt of Section 95 support (dispersed accommodation or subsistence only) by local authority, are published quarterly by the Home Office in the Immigration Statistics release, in table as_16q in volume 4 of the Asylum data tables. The following table gives the number of asylum seekers housed in dispersed accommodation in each London local authority, as at the end of March for the last three years.
A copy of the latest release, Immigration Statistics January to March 2016, is available from:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2016.
Asked by: David Burrowes (Conservative - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many places have been made available by each London borough for (a) the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, (b) the Children at Risk from the Middle East and North Africa scheme and (c) unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Europe.
Answered by James Brokenshire
For those refugees resettled in the UK under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme the Home Office publishes the number of people resettled, broken down by local authority, on a quarterly basis. The most recent statistics were published on 26 May 2016 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2016) These figures show the number of refugees that were resettled in each area up to the end of March 2016.
As the Prime Minister announced on 4 May and as set out in the new Immigration Act 2016, we will work to admit unaccompanied refugee children from Europe to the UK. The very nature of this legislation means we must take the time to consult Local Authorities and others before bringing final proposals on how to implement this scheme.
We will consult local authorities to establish how best to implement this commitment and the recently announced Children at Risk resettlement scheme, which is the only other resettlement to include unaccompanied children, as part of our wider discussion with them about the transfer of unaccompanied asylum seeking children who have arrived spontaneously, which is designed to relieve the pressure on authorities such as Kent.