Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her Department's guidance entitled Terms of reference for VfM Study on procuring short-term residential accommodation, published on 11 March 2025, how much the Home Office spent on hotels for asylum support in 2024-25.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes information on asylum expenditure in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts at Home Office annual reports and accounts - GOV.UK(opens in a new tab).
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 14 February 2025 to Question 29611 on Offences against Children: Reviews, how many local inquiries will be supported; and at what average cost.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave on 7 April to Question UIN 44574, and to the responses I gave in Parliament on 28 April.
The Home Secretary has commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to conduct an audit to improve national understanding of the scale, nature, and profile of group-based child sexual abuse. The audit is well underway and will report to the Home Secretary in the next month.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish correspondence sent to local authorities on (a) accessing funding for locally-led work on grooming gangs and (b) the conditions of funding.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave on 7 April to Question UIN 44574, and to the responses I gave in Parliament on 28 April.
The Home Secretary has commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to conduct an audit to improve national understanding of the scale, nature, and profile of group-based child sexual abuse. The audit is well underway and will report to the Home Secretary in the next month.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when Baroness Casey will report on the national audit into grooming gangs.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave on 7 April to Question UIN 44574, and to the responses I gave in Parliament on 28 April.
The Home Secretary has commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to conduct an audit to improve national understanding of the scale, nature, and profile of group-based child sexual abuse. The audit is well underway and will report to the Home Secretary in the next month.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what information her Department holds on the number of former foreign national asylum seekers granted (a) refugee status and (b) settlement claiming (i) emergency homeless and (ii) temporary accommodation.
Answered by Rushanara Ali - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The most recent statutory homelessness statistics (July – September 2024) is available at: Homelessness statistics - GOV.UK, which includes former asylum seeker households that are owed a homelessness duty.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what type of public body the child protection authority will be; what powers it will have; how it will be funded; whether it will subsume existing (a) public bodies and (b) regulators; and what powers it will have over local government.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government has committed to consulting on a roadmap to establish a Child Protection Authority for England. The design and delivery of this Authority requires consultation, including with child protection experts and victim groups to ensure it has the right constitution and powers to make a tangible difference to child protection practice.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average cost to the public purse is of an asylum seeker.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office’s publicly available transparency data sets out the annual costs of asylum support. The most recent data, covering the year 2023/24, can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-and-protection-data-q4-2024.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 27 March 2025 to Question 40190, on Asylum: Hotels, if she will publish each letter sent to each local authority chief executive since 4 July 2024.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not routinely publish correspondence on operational matters.
In addition, it has been the longstanding policy of the Home Office under successive governments not to comment publicly on individual hotels which may or may not be utilised by the Home Office, nor do we provide details of those we accommodate at any site.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what information her Department holds on the number of former foreign national asylum seekers granted (a) refugee status and (b) settlement claiming social housing.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
My Department does not hold information on former foreign national asylum seekers claiming social housing who were formally granted refugee status and/or settlement.
The Department’s social housing lettings in England statistical series includes information based on self-reported status. It can be found on gov.uk here.
It shows that 2.0% of new social housing lettings in 2023/24 were to households who self-reported as refugees (4,100 households). There were 1,000 households who self-reported that they were housed by The National Asylum Support Service immediately before their new social letting (0.4% of new social lettings).
Care should be taken when considering figures for new social lettings to refugees and asylum seekers. CORE data is based on specific definitions and there may be overlaps and households missing from the statistics presented above.
Asked by: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 7 April 2025 to Question 43097 on Asylum: Housing, how many dwellings have been procured via Cushman and Wakefield by local authority; and what the cost of those dwellings is.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office is working closely with a range of stakeholders to fulfil its statutory obligations, while seeking to reduce the overall cost of asylum accommodation for the taxpayer.
As part of this programme, the Home Office works with its contracted estates delivery partner, Cushman and Wakefield, to identify potential leasehold and freehold properties for the Home Office to acquire. The Home Office does not publish information on the location of asylum accommodation sites for safety and security reasons.
Overall asylum expenditure is published on a routine basis in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts.