Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average wait time is for the processing of an extension to Health and Care Worker visas for those working in the NHS in each of the last 5 years; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not routinely publish details of average processing times and they do not form part of any current transparency data. However, information on our immigration routes with service standards and whether they have been processed against these standards is available as part of our transparency data, at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Health and Care visa extensions already benefit from a 15 working day service standard from the point of biometric submission, instead of the standard 8 weeks.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what is the average wait time for the processing of Health and Care Worker visas for those waiting to fulfil vacancies to work in the NHS in each of the last 5 years; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not routinely publish details of average processing times and they do not form part of any current transparency data. However, information on our immigration routes with service standards and whether they have been processed against these standards is available as part of our transparency data, at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Health and Care visa extensions already benefit from a 15 working day service standard from the point of biometric submission, instead of the standard 8 weeks.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many biometric residence permits have been issued with an error in each of the last six months; what steps her Department is taking to ensure that biometric residence permits are not issued with errors; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The information is not available publicly and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason the case of the hon. Member for Harrow West's constituent, reference: MPAM/0293091/22, which surpassed the 12-week expectation for a decision in August 2022, has yet to be determined; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
From 11 May 2022, the decision waiting time for applicants applying to enter the UK as the spouse, partner or family member of someone who has British Citizenship or is settled in the UK changed. The applicant should now get a decision within 24 weeks once they attend their appointment at the Visa Application Centre (VAC).
Information on family visa processing times for applications made outside of the UK can be found here:
Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum applicants were waiting for an asylum interview to be undertaken as of 1 September 2022; hoe many of those cases pending had been waiting (a) beyond the published timescales, (b) for over one year and (c) in excess of two years; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Home Office is unable to state how many asylum claimants were awaiting their asylum interview as of 1 September 2022, or how many claimants had been waiting (a) beyond the published timescales, (b) for over one year and (c) in excess of two years. This data is not held in a reportable format, not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
However, the Home Office does publish data on the number of asylum claims awaiting an initial decision by duration, for main claimant only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the published Immigration Statistics:
List of tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The Home Office is committed to ensuring asylum claims are considered without unnecessary delay; that individuals who need protection are granted asylum as soon as possible so that they can start to integrate and rebuild their lives.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many full-time equivalent staff in her Department were based permanently in (a) Gujarat, (b) Delhi and (c) other states in India in each of the last five years; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
Please find below a table for the number of staff located in India.
| Delhi | Other |
2018 | 316 | 82 |
2019 | 328 | 68 |
2020 | 324 | 54 |
2021 | 307 | 0 |
2022 | 318 | 0 |
Source : Metis HO-HR database
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what further support she plans to put in place to provide responses to the large number of constituent enquiries that hon. Members and their staff are making via the Home Office hub in Westminster as a result of delays in processing passport applications; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The UK Visas and Immigration, MP Account Management Team have recently increased the staffing at the Portcullis House hub by 50% to provide additional support for Members and their staff in answering enquiries about passport applications as well as about matters related to the situation in Ukraine.
Staffing levels at the hub continue to be reviewed to ensure the hub provides the best possible service to Members and their staff.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to (a) recruit more staff, (b) offer more upgrade appointments, (c) increase the responsiveness of the helpline for hon. Members and (d) put in place other resources to mitigate delays in processing passport applications; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Her Majesty’s Passport Office has added 850 staff since April 2021, which has enabled more passport applications to be processed than ever before. Approximately three million applications were completed across March, April, and May, and an additional 350 staff will arrive this summer to add further resilience to this processing capacity.
If a customer has made a standard application and now needs their passport sooner than the published processing times of ten weeks, they should contact the Passport Adviceline (0300 222 0000) to discuss any available options. For those who have yet to apply and need their passport more quickly, appointments for urgent services are released on a daily basis, three weeks in advance. Work to increase appointment capacity has led to the recent opening of an eighth public counter.
In light of the difficulties caseworkers have had in making contact about constituents’ passport matters, members of HM Passport Office staff are now dedicated to support on the Home Office’s MP Enquiry Line. 25 members of non-frontline staff have been trained so far, with an average of 15 staff on the phones each day. HM Passport Office staff are also available at Portcullis House from Monday to Friday, to provide in-person surgeries for the most urgent enquiries.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff in her Department have been (a) redeployed and (b) hired since March 2022 to alleviate delays in processing passport applications; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Since April 2021, Her Majesty’s Passport Office have added over 850 additional staff to help meet the current unprecedented demand for passports, with almost 400 of these staff brought in since March 2022. A further 350 staff will added during the summer.
HM Passport Office’s makes use of its own flexible resources, with fully trained staff being deployed to operational roles as required. It also routinely uses flexible resource from HMRC to support with peaks in passport demand, with over 80 full-time equivalents from HMRC supporting passport services in May.
This has helped to process applications in record numbers. Across March, April, and May, HM Passport Office completed the processing of approximately three million applications, with 98.5% of applications from the UK being completed within the published processing time of up to ten weeks.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department holds documents on the 1984 Camell Laird dispute; and whether she will make a statement.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
I refer the Honourable Member to the response made to PQ 210572 tabled on 29 January 2019. The Home Office does not hold any files relating to the 1984 dispute at Cammell Laird shipyards.