Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to ensure that non-statutory guidance on abortion clinic safe access zones around abortion clinics issued by his Department supports the human rights of people with pro-life views.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government respects people’s fundamental rights provided under Article 9 (freedom of thought, religion and belief), Article 10 (freedom of expression) and Article 11 (freedom of association and assembly) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The enforcement of abortion safe access zones must be compliant with the ECHR.
The Government has recently consulted publicly on the guidance. We are currently analysing all responses to the consultation, which closed on 22 January, and we will publish the final guidance in due course.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will (a) make and (b) publish an assessment of the potential impact on equality of New Clause 11 of the Public Order Bill; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
New Clause 11 was added to the Public Order Bill by a majority in the House of Commons. The Home Office is obliged to consider the equalities impacts of all new policies.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of extending to six months the three month limit for tribunal applications for employees claiming to be the subject of sexual harassment.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
The Government consultation on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace asked whether the time limit for taking a harassment, discrimination or victimisation claim to an Employment Tribunal should be extended, including in cases of sexual harassment.
We are considering the responses we received and will publish our response to this consultation in due course.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of level of risk of online harms for children including (a) child sexual abuse and (b) exposure to inappropriate sexual content on social media during the covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government recognises that the measures required to tackle COVID-19 mean it is likely that more people are spending more time online, including children and vulnerable users.
The Internet Watch Foundation reported an increase of almost 50% in indecent images of children online over an eleven-week period during lockdown and that there were 8.8 million attempts by UK internet users to access child sexual abuse imagery during a one-month period during lockdown.
We have worked with technology companies, civil society and academia on online harms and amplifying messages to ensure online child users are protected. We have also worked across government and agencies to ensure that teachers and parents and carers have access to the support they need to help keep children safe online. This includes the launch at the start of national lockdown in March, of the NCA-CEOP Education team’s #OnlineSafetyAtHome campaign, to reach those most at risk, as a result of which ThinkuKnow resources aimed at parents, carers and children have now been downloaded over half a million times.
Protecting children is at the heart of our Online Harms agenda, and wider government priorities. We expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content and to protect them from other harms.
Our proposals as part of the Online Harms framework sets out our plans to introduce world-leading legislation to tackle harmful content online and make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. This legislation will include a legal duty of care on online platforms, backed up by an independent regulator to hold them to account. This will make companies more responsible for their user’s safety online, especially children.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people her Department is housing in the Chimney House Hotel, Sandbach; and for how long those people have been so housed.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The number of asylum seekers accommodated in each local authority can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/asylum-and-resettlement-datasets#asylum-support
This includes the numbers of those accommodated under Section 98, Section 95 and Section 4.The length of stay varies, with the average length of stay not available in a reportable format. To provide the information could only be done at disproportionate cost.
It is Home Office policy to move people into suitable Dispersed Accommodation (DA) once their claim for support has been assessed.The current global pandemic has presented significant challenges when it comes to the provision of asylum accommodation. This has included the need to source sufficient accommodation to meet demand.
A comprehensive cessation plan has been established with input from Local Authorities, Other Government Departments and Stakeholders to reduce the number of people in hotels.Work to explore further options to accommodate asylum seekers have included work with the Ministry of Defence to identify and to utilise MOD sites at short notice.
This accommodation is contingency accommodation, whilst pressures in the system are addressed and will be discontinued as soon as the Home Office is able to do so.Our accommodation providers are working to maximise their procurement plans throughout the UK, but they can only do so with Local Authority agreement. It is our intention to move all individuals in contingency accommodation into suitable DA as soon as reasonably practical.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) people are eligible for compensation and (b) people have received compensation from the Windrush compensation scheme.
Answered by Priti Patel
An updated Impact Assessment was published in February 2020 which outlines the Home Office’s estimate that there could be 11,500 eligible claims to the Windrush Compensation Scheme.
This has reduced since the previous Impact Assessment was published in April 2019 (which predicted 15,000 eligible claims), due to lower than anticipated claims to date.
There inevitably is a high degree of uncertainty around estimated volumes of claims and the Department will continue to review estimates as more payments are made.
Information on the total number of applications, claims paid and the overall amount paid out by the scheme since April 2019 is available to view on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/windrush-compensation-scheme-data-may-2020.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to publish the Government's alcohol strategy.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government is working to reduce alcohol-related harms with the NHS long-term plan, the prevention Green Paper, support for children of alcohol-dependent parents and action to tackle alcohol-related violent crime. Together, this work constitutes an effective package to address alcohol abuse. We are not planning a stand-alone strategy.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the timeframe is for the publication of the Home Office funded research by the University of Bristol on prostitution policy.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
As part of the Government’s response to the 2016 Home Affairs Select Committee report into prostitution, the Home Office provided £150,000 to fund research specifically into the nature and prevalence of prostitution in England and Wales.
This independent research was led by the University of Bristol and was published on 30 October 2019. It is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-of-prostitution-and-sex-work-in-england-and-wales
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to tackle alcoholism.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government is committed to tackling health harms from alcohol and supporting the most vulnerable at risk from alcohol misuse.
We continue to support and deliver programmes at both national and local levels to address harms including establishing Alcohol Care Teams (ACTS) in the hospitals with the highest rates of alcohol related admissions, a commitment in the Prevention Green paper to encourage drinking habits towards low and no alcohol products, a £6 million investment to support children with alcohol dependent parents and the provision of capital Grant funding awarded to 23 projects enabling local authorities to invest in better meeting the needs of people that require alcohol treatment, including parents who are dependent drinkers.
The Licensing Act 2003 also continues to provide a robust framework for regulating the sale and supply of alcohol.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate he has made of the number of (a) Tazidis and (b) Christians from Iraq that have been granted asylum in the UK since 2014.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
I refer the Hon. Member to my answer of 3rd June 2019: The Home Office are unable to report on how many Yazidis and Christians from Iraq were granted asylum in the UK in each year since 2014, as the basis of a person’s asylum claim is recorded on their individual Home Office file, but not in a way that can be easily aggregated.
The Home Office do publish data on those who have been granted asylum in the UK in each year since 2014, broken down by country of nationality, including those from Iraq. The latest published release can be found in tab as_01 at volume 1 of the quarterly Immigration Statistics release: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-march-2019/list-of-tables#asylum