Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to stop sham marriages and civil partnerships.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
The Government takes abuse of the spouse and partner immigration routes very seriously and is clear that family migration must be based on a genuine and subsisting marriage or relationship.
The Home Office focuses its efforts on disrupting facilitators as well as prosecuting individuals involved in sham marriages and civil partnerships and will consider refusal or cancellation of permission to stay, or removal, following any determination that a relationship is a sham.
The marriage referral and investigation scheme, introduced across the UK under the Immigration Act 2014, requires that all proposed marriages and civil partnerships where one or both parties could gain an immigration advantage from it are referred to the Home Office. Under this scheme, where we have reasonable grounds to suspect a sham relationship, the marriage notice period will be extended to allow for further investigation, and for enforcement or casework action to be taken where appropriate.
Part 9 of the Immigration Rules provides specific grounds for the refusal or cancellation of permission to enter or stay on the basis of any involvement in a sham marriage or sham civil partnership, providing a more robust and consistent framework against which immigration applications are assessed, and reflecting the seriousness of this type of abuse.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he has taken to mitigate potential delays in visa application processing for people affected by merged identities.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) holds millions of identities that have been submitted, or otherwise provided, in support of immigration applications.
The ‘merged identities’ issue affects around 0.02% of PCDP customer records; over 99.98% of records are not impacted by this issue. We have identified around 46,000 records with an identity issue, of which over 13,000 have already been resolved and we have a dedicated team working on the remainder.
The Home Office takes data security and accuracy very seriously. We continue pro-active analysis to identify potentially erroneous records so that appropriate remedial work can be undertaken as quickly, and as carefully, as possible, and ideally before the individual is even aware.
Where customers identify an issue with their data, we encourage them to contact the UK Visas and Immigration Contact Centre so this can be investigated and resolved.
As part of the Identity Document Linking change, we pro-actively highlighted a small number of records which were sent for manual resolution through our existing processes. We expect that most of these records would have been corrected before the person themselves would become aware.
We do not hold information on how many people have contacted the Home Office due to a merged identity issue which is directly related to the document linking change.
We are not aware of any significant delays to visa application processing as a result of this issue. UKVI also have a triage process in place so that where there may be an outstanding application, cases can be escalated for immediate resolution.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been affected by merged identities created in the Identity Document Linking change.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) holds millions of identities that have been submitted, or otherwise provided, in support of immigration applications.
The ‘merged identities’ issue affects around 0.02% of PCDP customer records; over 99.98% of records are not impacted by this issue. We have identified around 46,000 records with an identity issue, of which over 13,000 have already been resolved and we have a dedicated team working on the remainder.
The Home Office takes data security and accuracy very seriously. We continue pro-active analysis to identify potentially erroneous records so that appropriate remedial work can be undertaken as quickly, and as carefully, as possible, and ideally before the individual is even aware.
Where customers identify an issue with their data, we encourage them to contact the UK Visas and Immigration Contact Centre so this can be investigated and resolved.
As part of the Identity Document Linking change, we pro-actively highlighted a small number of records which were sent for manual resolution through our existing processes. We expect that most of these records would have been corrected before the person themselves would become aware.
We do not hold information on how many people have contacted the Home Office due to a merged identity issue which is directly related to the document linking change.
We are not aware of any significant delays to visa application processing as a result of this issue. UKVI also have a triage process in place so that where there may be an outstanding application, cases can be escalated for immediate resolution.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been affected by merged identities in the Person Centric Data Platform.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) holds millions of identities that have been submitted, or otherwise provided, in support of immigration applications.
The ‘merged identities’ issue affects around 0.02% of PCDP customer records; over 99.98% of records are not impacted by this issue. We have identified around 46,000 records with an identity issue, of which over 13,000 have already been resolved and we have a dedicated team working on the remainder.
The Home Office takes data security and accuracy very seriously. We continue pro-active analysis to identify potentially erroneous records so that appropriate remedial work can be undertaken as quickly, and as carefully, as possible, and ideally before the individual is even aware.
Where customers identify an issue with their data, we encourage them to contact the UK Visas and Immigration Contact Centre so this can be investigated and resolved.
As part of the Identity Document Linking change, we pro-actively highlighted a small number of records which were sent for manual resolution through our existing processes. We expect that most of these records would have been corrected before the person themselves would become aware.
We do not hold information on how many people have contacted the Home Office due to a merged identity issue which is directly related to the document linking change.
We are not aware of any significant delays to visa application processing as a result of this issue. UKVI also have a triage process in place so that where there may be an outstanding application, cases can be escalated for immediate resolution.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate he has made of the number of applications to stay in the UK that are made on the basis of a sham marriage or civil partnership.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The number of applications to stay in the UK that are made on the basis of a sham marriage or civil partnership does not form part of any current transparency data or migration statistics and is not published. The transparency data does, however, include a range of processing data and the latest data can be found at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data#uk-visas-and-immigration.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the cost to her Department was of (a) events, (b) activities, (c) merchandise and (d) other associated costs relating to Pride Month 2023.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
No costs were incurred by the department connected to any events, activities, merchandise or other associated costs in relation to Pride Month 2023.