Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 1 November 2022 to Question 72950 on Home Office: Vivastreet, what discussions her Department has had with Adult Services Websites on developing a code of conduct for the operation of their industry; and whether she plans to publish that code.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
As committed to in the Violence Against Woman and Girls Strategy, published in July 2021, the Government is working with adult service websites to explore a set of voluntary principles to counter exploitation on their sites. The principles will encourage adult service websites to take reasonable and practical steps to prevent modern slavery and exploitation on their platforms and work collaboratively with law enforcement.
The voluntary principles are still under development and will be published 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, on how many occasions (a) officials and (b) Ministers from her Department have met with victims of trafficking for (i) labour, (ii) sexual and (iii) criminal exploitation in each calendar year since 2017.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Stakeholder engagement is a normal and routine part of the government business across officials and Ministers. These engagements are not centrally recorded.
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 victims of trafficking who have been exploited on adult services websites (a) officials and (b) Ministers from her Department have met with in each calendar year since 2017.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Stakeholder engagement is a normal and routine part of the government business across officials and Ministers. These engagements are not centrally recorded.
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 paragraph 2.2.11 of the UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery, how much funding was provided for prevention work to raise awareness of the risks and signs of sexual exploitation among users of Adult Services Websites; which organisations received that funding; and if she will publish the (a) results and (b) evaluation of this campaign.
Answered by Sarah Dines
The Home Office provided a grant of £10,000 in 2020/21 to fund a 3-month campaign targeted at UK-located sex buyers and those using adult service websites. The intention of the campaign was to increase their understanding of how adult service websites are used by offenders to advertise victims of sexual exploitation.
The campaign provided informative messaging on how to spot indicators, how sex buyers can help victims, and increasing confidence in reporting pathways with the aim to uplift reporting levels among UK located buyers of sexual services.
The recipient of the grant cannot be shared publicly as it compromises the intentions of the campaign itself. The campaign was evaluated; however, the results have not be published as it would potentially compromise future campaigns of this nature.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which charitable organisations (a) Ministers and (b) officials from her Department have met with to discuss how to prevent trafficking for sexual exploitation on Adult Services Websites; and on how many separate occasions they met for this purpose in each calendar year since 2017.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Stakeholder engagement is a normal and routine part of the government business across officials and Ministers. These engagements are not centrally recorded.
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 caseworkers have been recruited to work at the Asylum Casework Hub in Stoke-on-Trent.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We are increasing the productivity of caseworkers by streamlining, digitalising, and simplifying our process. We have already doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years, and we are continuing to recruit more. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.
Provisional data indicates that, as of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online in the IMB_06 tab of the Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). IMB_06 is not broken down in terms of how many decision makers are allocated to each Decision-Making Unit nor how many have been trained to work independently.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year.
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 caseworkers employed at the Asylum Casework Hub in Stoke-on-Trent (a) are and (b) are not making decisions on asylum claims independently.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We are increasing the productivity of caseworkers by streamlining, digitalising, and simplifying our process. We have already doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years, and we are continuing to recruit more. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.
Provisional data indicates that, as of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online in the IMB_06 tab of the Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). IMB_06 is not broken down in terms of how many decision makers are allocated to each Decision-Making Unit nor how many have been trained to work independently.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year.
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 decisions were made on asylum applications in (a) May and (b) June 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on initial decisions made on asylum applications can be found in table Asy_D02 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks. The latest data relate to the year ending March 2023.
Data for May and June 2023 will be published on 24 August 2023. Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 15 November 2022 to Question 87795 on Home Office: Vivastreet, whether (a) officials and (b) Ministers from her Department have had (i) online and (ii) in-person meetings with representatives of other adult services websites in each year since 2017.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Pursuant to the answer of 15 November 2022 to questions 87795 and 87796, Home Office officials attended an online Adult Services Websites (ASWs) industry event jointly organised with the National Crime Agency in June 2022, to discuss the provisions of the Online Safety Bill and the obligations it will place on companies. This event included representatives from the following ASWs and Classified Advertising Platforms:
EuroGirlsEscort;
Gumtree;
Friday-Ad;
Kommons;
Locanto;
Skokka; and
Ybirds
Since 2017, Ministers have not met with representatives of ASWs.
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 the current average wait time is for people calling the voluntary returns service to speak to a caseworker.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The information requested on waiting times is not available in a reportable format.
We are actively working to improve the helpline service and do encourage those who are able to access IT to make contact with the service by completing an online application form or sending us information via email.
VRS currently has around 40 caseworkers who divide their time between triage services, including answering the public phone line, processing online application forms and progressing cases to return.
We are currently in the process of recruiting and training additional staff into the Voluntary Returns Service which will assist in reducing waiting times.