Asked by: Ged Killen (Labour (Co-op) - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of implementing a maximum time limit of eight days for the registration of deaths in England.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Section 16(3) of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 requires deaths to be registered by a qualified informant within five days for England and Wales. There are no current plans to amend this legislation.
Asked by: Ged Killen (Labour (Co-op) - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions has she had with (a) WhatsApp and (b) other technology companies on access by the security services to encrypted messages sent by a person of interest.
Answered by Ben Wallace
The Government is in favour of strong encryption: it is critical to protect UK citizens from harm online, and billions of people use it every day for a range of services including banking, commerce and communications.
However, like many powerful technologies, encrypted services are abused by a small minority of people. There is a particular problem with end-to-end encryption where certain providers have deliberately designed their systems so that even they cannot see the content of the message.
The Secretary of State meets with a range of stakeholders to discuss various issues as part of the process of policy development and delivery. As was the case with previous administrations, it is not the Government's practice to provide details of all such meetings. However, we are committed to working with service providers to fulfil our collective responsibility to protect us from terrorists and those who commit serious crimes, while allowing providers to protect privacy. We are quite clear that it is essential for law enforcement to access content when there is a clear need and when properly warranted. The Government will continue to press for that ability.
A mature dialogue between government and industry on this issue is crucial, and we expect them to live up to their responsibilities: working with law enforcement where there is a warrant authorised by a Secretary of State and approved by a senior judge under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
Asked by: Ged Killen (Labour (Co-op) - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing regional variations in the salary thresholds for tier two visas for skilled non-EU migrants.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
The Government is committed to developing an immigration system that serves the national interest and are clear that applying different immigration rules to different parts of the UK would complicate the immigration system, harm its integrity, and cause difficulties for employers who need the flexibility to deploy their staff to other parts of the UK.
The Government commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to undertake a comprehensive review of the Tier 2 route in June 2015.
The MAC concluded and has repeatedly recommended that we should not operate different salary thresholds for different regions and countries in the UK. More information about the MAC and its report on Tier 2 can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisory-committee-mac-review-tier-2-migration