Asked by: Lord Cryer (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of repealing the Vagrancy Act 1824.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities lead on homelessness and rough sleeping. They reviewed the legislation in relation to rough sleeping and determined that the Vagrancy Act required repeal, they consulted on replacing the outdated Vagrancy Act, undertook extensive engagement and published their response to that consultation.
The Home Office has additionally engaged with police, local authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners and other organisations on this topic.
The Vagrancy Act 1824 criminalises begging and some forms of rough sleeping and the Government agreed in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 to repeal this outdated legislation and replace it with a package fit for modern usage. We outlined those plans in the Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan published by this Government in March this year and are now bringing forward these provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill which is currently before Parliament.
As the Government has always made clear, the repeal of the Vagrancy Act will be brought into force once this replacement legislation is in place to ensure local authorities and police have the powers they need to support vulnerable individuals and keep communities safe.
Asked by: Lord Cryer (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason the UK Visas and Immigration MPs' Enquiry Service requires letters of authority from visa applicants whose sponsor has contacted their MP about the progress of their application.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Data Protection Act 2018 requires large organisations such as the Home Office to ensure that we protect the individual rights and freedoms of the individuals (data subjects) whose information we process. We are not able to provide personal information as defined by the Data Protection Act 2018 to third parties, including sponsors with the explicit consent of the applicant. We therefore ask that sponsors provide letters of authority showing they have the applicant’s consent before providing personal information.
Article 4 (11) of the GDPR defines consent and further conditions for consent are listed in Article 7.
Asked by: Lord Cryer (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what secondments (a) PricewaterhouseCoopers, (b) Deloitte & Touche, (c) Ernst & Young and (d) KPMG has made to the Department, including predecessor Departments, since 2010; for which (i) periods and (ii) tasks the secondments were made; whether secondments of staff from the Department have been made to those firms; and for which (A) periods and (B) tasks.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
To retrieve historical information on secondments would require a manual search of local records as only current secondments are held centrally by the Home Office.
Therefore, this information can only be obtained by disproportionate effort.
Asked by: Lord Cryer (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the (a) nature and (b) value was of all contracts, consultancies or other services placed with the accountancy firms (i) Deloitte & Touche, (ii) Ernst & Young, (iii) KPMG and (iv) PricewaterhouseCoopers in each year since 2010-11 by her Department.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Details of Government contracts from 2016 above £10,000 are published on Contracts Finder.