Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 14 January to Question 22097 on Drugs: Organised Crime, what steps she is taking to tackle cuckooing.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is clear that cuckooing is an appalling practice associated with violence, exploitation and anti-social behaviour.
Through the County Lines Programme we are targeting exploitative drug dealing gangs, including those who take over the homes of vulnerable people.
The Government’s Safer Streets Mission will continue to tackle these issues and we will make further announcements in the normal way in due course.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much revenue the Government has received from the issuing of passports in each of the last four years.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
Income from passport services are published within the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts which are laid in the House every year pre-summer recess. Please see the attached links for previous four financial years.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 24 May 2019 to Question 255697 on Alcoholic Drinks: Sales, what assessment he has made of whether the BSI Publicly Available Specification (a) 499: 2019 entitled Code of practice for digital identification and strong customer authentication and (b) 1296:2018 entitled Online age checking: Provision and use of online age check services: Code of Practice could be used to amend the mandatory licensing condition on age verification.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The formation of a joint Digital Identity Unit by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Culture Media and Sport was recently announced. My officials will seek to work with that unit to examine the suitability of existing standards for the purpose of amending the mandatory licensing condition.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to prevent joint mortgages being used as a method of financial abuse.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Following our public consultation last year, on 21 January we published a landmark draft Domestic Abuse Bill, consultation response and research on the societal costs of domestic abuse. This work contains a ground-breaking series of measures to transform our response to all forms of domestic abuse – including economic abuse – by promoting awareness, supporting victims, tackling perpetrators and improving services.
We are explicitly including economic abuse in the proposed new statutory definition of domestic abuse in the draft Bill to acknowledge the life-changing impact that economic abuse can have on a victim’s life and to raise awareness of this issue amongst criminal justice agencies and frontline professionals.
In our Government consultation response published alongside the draft Bill we set out our commitment to fund the National Skills Academy £200,000 to develop and deliver financial capability training for frontline workers to support individuals who are experiencing economic abuse. We are also providing approximately £250,000 until 2020 to create a national advice service for banks and building societies, increase the capacity of existing telephone casework services for victims of domestic abuse and develop resources to help people identify if they are experiencing economic abuse.
In addition, we are working closely with UK Finance to support their work to encourage banks and the wider financial services sector to improve the support they provide to victims of domestic abuse accessing their services, such as the voluntary Code of Conduct for banks to sign up to and a Consumer Information Pack setting out for victims what support they can expect from their bank. We will continue to work with UK Finance to encourage banks and financial authorities to do more to support victims of domestic abuse and help them move forward to escape debt, joint accounts, and mortgages.
More widely, the Joint Fraud Taskforce is leading an ambitious programme of work to prevent all forms of fraud and protect the most vulnerable in our society who are often targeted by fraudsters.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 7 May 2019 to Question 248072, whether his Department has a timeframe for the introduction of digital forms of identification for the purchase of alcohol.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Home Office has no timeframe for amending the mandatory licensing condition on age verification to enable the use of digital forms of identification.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 24 May 2019 to Question 255697, what the timescale is for considering whether the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation could be used to amend the mandatory licensing condition on age verification.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Home Office officials have now considered the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards.
Those standards relate to identity documents such as passports and national identity cards that contain a biometric chip. We are aware that a digital ID is being proposed for use in verifying age during the purchase of alcohol which takes the form of a mobile phone app. It does not incorporate a biometric chip into the mobile device. Therefore, the ICAO standards are not applicable for this purpose.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 7 May 2019 to Question 248072 on Alcoholic Drinks: Sales , and the Answer of 16 May to Question 253725 on Immigration: EU Nationals, for what reason the Government does not use the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization to amend the mandatory licensing condition to allow the use of digital forms of identification.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Home Office will consider whether the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation could be used to amend the mandatory licensing condition on age verification.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what standards his Department used in the digital verification of people applying to the EU Settlement Scheme.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
EU citizens make a huge contribution to our economy and society, and we want them to stay. The EU Settlement Scheme enables them to do so.
The ‘EU Exit: Identity Document Check’ app is an optional aspect of the service which allows applicants to prove their identity remotely.
The app performs a series of digital security checks on the chip contained within the applicant’s identity document that meets the international standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). These checks allow us to establish, to a high level of trust, the authenticity of the identity document and its contents. Where an individual cannot validate their identity document using the app to make an application to the EU Settlement Scheme, they can post their identity documents to the Home Office to be checked and returned quickly.
The use of the ‘EU Exit: ID Document Check’ app is entirely optional, but it offers a secure and quick way of making an application to the EU Settlement Scheme.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans his Department has to review the requirement for holographic ID for the purchase of alcohol.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Home Office has no plans to review the requirement for a holographic mark or an ultra-violet feature on identification used for the purchase of alcohol. In due course, the mandatory licensing condition that includes this requirement will need to be amended to allow the use of digital forms of identification. However, at present there are no industry standards on which to base such an amendment.
Asked by: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many mandatory cyber security training sessions civil servants working in his Department are required to undertake.
Answered by Ben Wallace
Civil Servants are manadated to undertake a course entitled "Responsible for Information", which includes steps to improve information security. Civil Servants required to handle higher classification information have enhanced requirements.