Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that all police forces in England have a specialist Rape and Serious Sexual Offences unit.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Government is committed to ensuring that victims and survivors of rape and other sexual offences have their cases investigated in a thorough and timely manner. Every victim should have their case treated seriously from the point of disclosure.
The structuring of individual police forces is an operational matter for Chief Constables.
In June 2021, we published our findings and action plan following an end-to-end review of how the criminal justice system handles rape cases. Among the actions we are taking forward is Operation Soteria, through which we are investing in a programme of work to drive improvements in the handling of rape cases by the police and CPS. Academics working with Policing and CPS partners across five pathfinder forces will make targeted recommendations across a range of themes.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase the volume of suitable accommodation in which people seeking asylum are housed.
Answered by Kevin Foster
We have established the Local Government Chief Executive Group (HOLGCEX) group to bring together senior representatives from Home Office, Local Government Association and local authorities with the aim of working in partnership to improve the asylum dispersal process for the people who use this service and the communities in which they reside.
With the support of local authorities we, and our housing providers, are continuing to engage with areas which to date have not participated in asylum dispersal with a view to negotiating voluntary agreements to do so.
We are grateful to those local authorities who participate in the dispersal scheme and will continue to work in partnership with them to procure suitable accommodation.
Sadly, many local authorities do not currently participate in the dispersal scheme, making it harder to procure sufficient dispersal accommodation. I would encourage them to step up and play their part in the UK-wide effort to provide accommodation to those seeking asylum who would otherwise be destitute.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average response time for her Department was to respond substantially to hon. Members' correspondence in (a) 2019, (b) 2020 and (c) 2021 so far.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of MPs’ written correspondence within 20 working days, for all areas of the business, including asylum, visa and passport applications.
Performance has been impacted by a very significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including items relating to the situation in Afghanistan.
The Department recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many items of correspondence from hon. Members on (a) asylum applications, (b) visa applications and (c) passport applications were awaiting a response as at 15 October 2021.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of MPs’ written correspondence within 20 working days, for all areas of the business, including asylum, visa and passport applications.
Performance has been impacted by a very significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including items relating to the situation in Afghanistan.
The Department recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of correspondence from Honourable Members on (a) asylum applications, (b) visa applications and (c) passport applications were responded to within her Department's service standard in every month in the last year.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of MPs’ written correspondence within 20 working days, for all areas of the business, including asylum, visa and passport applications.
Performance has been impacted by a very significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including items relating to the situation in Afghanistan.
The Department recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the Department's service standards are for responding to correspondence from Honourable Members on (a) asylum applications, (b) visa applications and (c) passport applications; and how meeting those standards and corresponding targets have potentially been affected by the outbreak of covid-19.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of MPs’ written correspondence within 20 working days, for all areas of the business, including asylum, visa and passport applications.
Performance has been impacted by a very significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including items relating to the situation in Afghanistan.
The Department recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help ensure consistency in police force’s response to domestic violence across the country.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Government is committed to clamping down on domestic abuse. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 achieved Royal Assent in April and is a game- changing piece of legislation which transforms our response to these crimes. We plan to publish the Domestic Abuse Strategy later this year. It will seek to transform the whole of society’s response to domestic abuse, including by strengthening the systems in place to tackle it and through a focus on pursuing perpetrators of these crimes.
The College of Policing has issued guidance to all police forces on the ‘Identification, assessment and management of serial or potentially dangerous domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators’. The key principles set out that forces should have processes in place to identify serial or potentially dangerous domestic abuse or stalking perpetrators and ensure that information about the perpetrator is recorded on the Police National Computer, the Police National Database or ViSOR as appropriate.
The Domestic Abuse Matters training developed by the College of Policing in partnership with SafeLives and has been delivered to 27 forces as of April 2021, with a further six forces in discussion. We continue to work closely with the College to see what more can be done to encourage take up of the Domestic Abuse Matters programme. We look forward to working with DCC Maggie Blyth as the new NPCC national VAWG lead, a key recommendation of the first ever VAWG strategy which reported this summer.
Our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021 places the guidance on which the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (also known as Clare’s Law) is based into statute. This will place a duty on the police to apply the guidance unless there is good reason not to and will strengthen the visibility and consistent operation of the scheme across England and Wales.
We are also working to address the recommendations made in the HMICFRS review of policing domestic abuse in the pandemic.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help ensure that Afghan asylum seekers living in the UK are able to access immigration advice and legal representation.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
All asylum seekers have access to a 24/7 AIRE (Advice, Issue Reporting and Eligibility) service provided for the Home Office by Migrant Help where they can escalate any concerns regarding accommodation or support services, and they can get information about how to obtain further support including legal advice where appropriate.
AIRE asylum services provide free independent advice, guidance and information on the asylum process, accommodation, financial support, finding legal representation and any other asylum related matters. AIRE run a national helpline that is free and accessible to all asylum seekers in the UK.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps is she taking to (a) standardise the use of the domestic violence disclosure scheme across police forces and (b) remove discrepancies in how likely forces are to pass on information.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Domestic Violence Disclosure System also known as ‘Clare’s Law’ enables police to disclose information to a victim or potential victim of domestic abuse about their partner’s or ex-partner’s previous abusive or violent offending.
As part of the landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021 we are putting the guidance on which the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme is based into statute. This will place a duty on all police forces to apply the guidance unless there is good reason not to, and will strengthen the visibility and consistent operation of the scheme across England and Wales.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Afghan nationals living in the UK are awaiting a decision on asylum applications as at 16 September 2021; and what steps she is taking to help ensure that applicants are responded to as quickly as possible.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office publishes data on how many Afghan nationals are awaiting an initial asylum decision, but only up to and including June 2021. This data can be found at Asy_01c of the published Immigration Statistics:
The Home Office are pursuing a programme of transformation and business improvement initiatives which will speed up decision making, reduce the time people spend in the system and reduce the numbers who are awaiting an interview or decision. This includes almost doubling decision makers number to c.1,000 by March 2022 and providing improved training and career progression opportunities to aid retention of staff.
We are continuing to develop existing and new technology to help build on recent improvements such as digital interviewing and move away from a paper-based system. We have three key areas of focus in the short to medium term to reduce the number of outstanding asylum cases by improving efficiency and productivity, reducing the number of outstanding claims and building high performing teams. We are streamlining and digitalising the case working process to enable more effective workflow, appointment booking and decision-making.