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Written Question
Asylum: Employment and Qualifications
Monday 11th September 2023

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the skills and qualifications of asylum seekers; and how many asylum seekers have been permitted to take up employment pending a decision on their asylum application in 2022 and 2023.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Those who have claimed asylum in the UK and have had their asylum claim outstanding for 12 months or more, through no fault of their own, are allowed to work. Those permitted to work are restricted to jobs on the Shortage Occupation List, which is based on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee.

There are also various legal routes for those seeking to work in the UK under the Points-Based System. These routes include Skilled Worker, Global Talent, and Health and Care routes, which are supporting UK businesses to recruit workers with the skills and talent they need from around the world.

The Home Office does not record data on the number of asylum seekers who have been permitted to work in a reportable format.


Written Question
Asylum: Temporary Accommodation
Thursday 7th September 2023

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers were staying in (a) hotels or (b) other forms of accommodation on 1 September 2023.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office publishes data on asylum seekers in receipt of support in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum seekers in receipt of support by accommodation type including hotels and other accommodation can be found in table Asy_D09 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’.

Please note the data show a snapshot as at the last day of each quarter, rather than the number of asylum applications awaiting a decision over the entire quarter.

The latest data relates to as at 30 June 2023. Data as at 30 September 2023 will be published on 23 November 2023. Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.


Speech in Commons Chamber - Wed 23 Nov 2022
Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Speech Link

View all George Howarth (Lab - Knowsley) contributions to the debate on: Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Written Question
Overseas Students
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Higher Education Policy Institute's (HEPI) 2022 soft-power index, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of restricting the number of international students to the UK's universities on the UK's soft power.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Our offer to international students is extremely competitive and ensures that we continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world.

The Government’s International Education Strategy set out a target of attracting 600,000 international Higher Education students to the UK by 2030, which we have achieved almost a decade early.

The public also rightly expects us to control immigration and ensure we have a system that works in the UK’s best interests.

As the Growth Plan set out, the Government is looking at how immigration contributes to growth and will set out further details in due course.


Written Question
Visas: Overseas Students
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of capping the number of graduate visas on the UK’s economy.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Our offer to international students is extremely competitive and ensures that we continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world.

The Government’s International Education Strategy set out a target of attracting 600,000 international Higher Education students to the UK by 2030, which we have achieved almost a decade early.

The public also rightly expects us to control immigration and ensure we have a system that works in the UK’s best interests.

As the Growth Plan set out, the Government is looking at how immigration contributes to growth and will set out further details in due course.


Written Question
Visas: Overseas Students
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the graduate visa route, introduced in 2021, remains his Department's policy objective.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Our offer to international students is extremely competitive and ensures that we continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world.

The Government’s International Education Strategy set out a target of attracting 600,000 international Higher Education students to the UK by 2030, which we have achieved almost a decade early.

The public also rightly expects us to control immigration and ensure we have a system that works in the UK’s best interests.

As the Growth Plan set out, the Government is looking at how immigration contributes to growth and will set out further details in due course.


Written Question
Overseas Students
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential (a) loss of tuition fee income, (b) loss of living cost expenditure, (c) loss of knock-on expenditure and (d) total economic cost of restricting the number of international students and their dependents to the UK's university sector.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Our offer to international students is extremely competitive and ensures that we continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world.

The Government’s International Education Strategy set out a target of attracting 600,000 international Higher Education students to the UK by 2030, which we have achieved almost a decade early.

The public also rightly expects us to control immigration and ensure we have a system that works in the UK’s best interests.

As the Growth Plan set out, the Government is looking at how immigration contributes to growth and will set out further details in due course.


Written Question
Overseas Students: Children
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of introducing a cap on the number of children that international students can bring to the UK on (a) the number of international students studying in the UK, (b) the potential economic cost to the UK and (c) women.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Our offer to international students is extremely competitive and ensures that we continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world.

The Government’s International Education Strategy set out a target of attracting 600,000 international Higher Education students to the UK by 2030, which we have achieved almost a decade early.

The public also rightly expects us to control immigration and ensure we have a system that works in the UK’s best interests.

As the Growth Plan set out, the Government is looking at how immigration contributes to growth and will set out further details in due course.


Written Question
Overseas Students
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department plans to restrict the number of international students who can study at UK universities.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Our offer to international students is extremely competitive and ensures that we continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world.

The Government’s International Education Strategy set out a target of attracting 600,000 international Higher Education students to the UK by 2030, which we have achieved almost a decade early.

The public also rightly expects us to control immigration and ensure we have a system that works in the UK’s best interests.

As the Growth Plan set out, the Government is looking at how immigration contributes to growth and will set out further details in due course.


Written Question
Visas: Overseas Students
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many recipients of graduate student visas have been accompanied by five or six dependents to date.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office does not routinely publish data on the number of recipients of international student visas who are accompanied by dependants.

Information on our immigration routes is available as part of our transparency data and can be found at: Visas and Citizenship data: Q2 2022.