Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of (a) care workers and (b) senior care workers issued a health and care worker visa were (i) female and (ii) male in each of the last five years.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office publishes data on sponsored work visas by occupation in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on grants of visas are published in table ‘Occ_D02’ of the sponsored work visas by occupation and industry dataset. Selecting ‘6145 – Care workers and home carers’ and ‘6146 – Senior care workers’ from the occupation filter will output data on care workers and senior care workers respectively. Selecting ‘Skilled Worker – Health and Care’ will also output data on health and care worker visas. Nationality and time frames can also be filtered.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. Data is from January 2021 up to the end of September 2023.
We are unable to provide a gender breakdown in the published dataset.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the oral statement of the Secretary of State for the Home Department on legal migration of 4 December 2023, Official Report, column 41, whether his Department conducted an equality impact assessment of his policies on reducing net migration.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The policy proposals do not directly discriminate against people on the basis of the protected characteristics. There may be some indirect impacts. We consider the measures to be proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims of managing immigration, attracting high-skilled individuals, controlling our borders and protecting the UK taxpayer.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department has made a comparative assessment of the potential impact of the ban on overseas care workers bringing their dependents to the UK on (a) women and (b) men.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The policy proposals do not directly discriminate against people on the basis of the protected characteristics. There may be some indirect impacts. We consider the measures to be proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims of managing immigration, attracting high-skilled individuals, controlling our borders and protecting the UK taxpayer.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to his Statement on Illegal Immigration on 15 November 2023, Official Report, column 649, whether he plans to lay the treaty with Rwanda on asylum processing before Parliament for 21 sitting days before ratification.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The treaties the Government wishes to ratify are subject to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (CRaG) 2010. As provided for under CRaG, Parliament has a statutory period of 21 days to scrutinise and potentially debate the treaty prior to ratification. We will set out further details in due course.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers who arrived in the UK since 20 July 2023 are held in detention centres.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on detention in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum seekers in detention is published in table Det_01 of the ‘detention summary tables’. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relate to September 2022. More recent data on asylum seekers in detention is not available due to the on-going transition to a new case working system. We will seek to include this information in future editions of the publication when available.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to make it an offence to (a) enable and (b) profit from the commercial sexual exploitation of another person.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Tackling all forms of sexual exploitation remains a top priority for this Government.
The acts of buying and selling sex are not in themselves illegal in England and Wales and we have no plans to change the law in this area. However, the Government’s focus is on tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with prostitution and sex work.
There are already offences in place to tackle illegal activities that can be associated with prostitution, including sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which cover offences of causing or inciting prostitution for gain and controlling prostitution for gain. Sexual exploitation related to human trafficking is an offence under section 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 also gives law enforcement agencies and courts the tools, such as Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders and Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders, to take action against offenders and prevent future offending.
The new Online Safety Act 2023 includes these crimes as priority offences. Online companies, including adult services websites (ASWs), will have a duty to prevent illegal content relating to sexual exploitation appearing on their sites.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to discourage demand for trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Tackling all forms of sexual exploitation remains a top priority for this Government.
The acts of buying and selling sex are not in themselves illegal in England and Wales and we have no plans to change the law in this area. However, the Government’s focus is on tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with prostitution and sex work.
There are already offences in place to tackle illegal activities that can be associated with prostitution, including sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which cover offences of causing or inciting prostitution for gain and controlling prostitution for gain. Sexual exploitation related to human trafficking is an offence under section 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 also gives law enforcement agencies and courts the tools, such as Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders and Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders, to take action against offenders and prevent future offending.
The new Online Safety Act 2023 includes these crimes as priority offences. Online companies, including adult services websites (ASWs), will have a duty to prevent illegal content relating to sexual exploitation appearing on their sites.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 18 October 2023 to Question 202265 on Asylum, if he will make heat maps on the geographical distribution of asylum seekers available to hon. Members.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Heatmaps are shared with Local Authorities to provide an indication of the number of decisions and therefore cessations that could flow through down to LA level because of the increase in decisions made this year. The data only provides a snapshot in time and is heavily caveated as it is taken from live sources and therefore has not been assured to the level that published data has been and as such there are no plans to share with honourable Members.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 12 September 2023 to Question 198095 on Asylum: Housing, what progress his Department has made on assessing the potential impact of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 on Official Development Assistance spending.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
All ODA spending will be in line with the OECD DAC rules relevant to in-donor refugee costs and we will report our spending in the usual way.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 18 October 2022 to Question 202261 on Asylum: Applications, if he will make it his policy to routinely publish data on the attrition rate of (a) asylum application decision makers and (b) national referral mechanism case workers.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the code of practice for statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, as well as quality and availability of data.