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, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of changing the time limit after which asylum seekers with outstanding claims may seek permission to work.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Asylum seekers cannot work unless they have had their asylum claim outstanding for 12 months or more, through no fault of their own. Those who apply and are granted permission to work after 12 months are restricted to applying for jobs on the Shortage Occupation List (SOL). This is based on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee.
Our current policy approach on permission to work is longstanding and there are no plans to make changes, other than aligning it with the upcoming Immigration Salary List, which replaces the SOL. It is important that we distinguish between individuals who need protection and those seeking to work here who can apply for a work visa under the Immigration Rules. The government has always been clear that asylum seekers do not need to make perilous journeys in order to seek employment in the UK.
Unrestricted access to employment could act as an incentive for more migrants to choose to come here illegally; leading to further dangerous journeys across the Channel and supporting the business model of people smugglers, rather than claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.
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 asylum seekers were employed in roles on the shortage occupation list in 2023.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Asylum seekers who have had their claim outstanding for 12 months or more, through no fault of their own, are eligible to apply for permission to work. Those granted permission are restricted to applying for jobs on the Shortage Occupation List. This is based on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee.
Should an individual find successful employment, they must provide employment details when available, so that a review of their eligibility for and level of asylum support (if any) can be conducted. Failure to do so will result in any support being discontinued.
The Home Office does not publish data on the number of asylum seekers who have been permitted to work.
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 help prevent the conversion of handguns that are designed to fire blanks into guns which can fire live rounds.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to tackling the threat posed by the illegal trafficking and misuse of firearms. This includes making it harder for criminals to access blank firing weapons and preventing these devices being converted for criminal use.
Under the Firearms Act 1968, for anyone other than a registered firearms dealer, it is an offence to convert blank firers to lethal purpose.
The Home Office works closely with the National Crime Agency to reduce the threat posed by converted blank firearms. This includes reviewing relevant legislation, working with manufacturers to make blank firearms harder to covert, and supporting police forces to tackle the threat from converted blank firearms.
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 much and what proportion of the funding for the national rural crime unit will be allocated to Lincolnshire Police in each of the next five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is committed to driving down rural crime. Whether someone lives in the countryside or a town or city, they should get the same service from the police if they fall victim to a crime.
The Home Office has provided £200,000 funding this financial year to help set up the National Rural Crime Unit, with an additional £100,000 from DEFRA. The National Rural Crime Unit has secured over £1m of funding from industry for the next three financial years, including from NFU Mutual, Network Rail and Construction and Equipment Association.
The National Rural Crime Unit aims to help police forces tackle rural crime priorities through the provision of specialist operational support, as well as through sharing best practice and encouraging regional and national approaches to tackling rural crime. Funding provided by the Government for the National Rural Crime Unit is not allocated to individual forces.
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, with reference to his Department's press release entitled Legacy backlog cleared as plan to stop the boats delivers, published on 2 January 2024, how many of the 112,000 were granted permanent right to remain in the UK.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
The Home Office published data on initial decisions made on asylum cases on 2 January 2024 as part of the Statistics relating to Illegal Migration ad-hoc release. The Additional statistics relating to Illegal Migration (December 2023) release notes that “Of the 112,138 initial asylum decisions [between 1 January and 28 December 2023], 77,019 were substantive decisions Please note that this data is provisional in table Asy_D02 of the Asylum, Applications, Decisions and Resettlement detailed datasets as part of the Immigration System Statistics quarterly release.
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 hotels used to provide housing for asylum seekers on 1 January 2024 were contracted out to Mears Group.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office publishes data on asylum seekers in receipt of support in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. This data shows how many asylum seekers are accommodated in hotels, broken down by region, and can be found in table Asy_D09 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. This data is not broken down to show how many hotels have been contracted to specific providers as we cannot comment on commercial arrangements which are confidential.
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 hotels used to provide housing for asylum seekers on 1 January 2024 were contracted out to Serco.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office publishes data on asylum seekers in receipt of support in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. This data shows how many asylum seekers are accommodated in hotels, broken down by region, and can be found in table Asy_D09 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. This data is not broken down to show how many hotels have been contracted to specific providers as we cannot comment on commercial arrangements which are confidential.
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, on what date the threshold for family visas will be raised to £34,500.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
We will raise the minimum income for family visas incrementally in stages to give predictability to families. Further details will be set out in due course.
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 asylum seekers awaiting their claims to be processed were housed in (a) hotels and (b) other locations at public expense as of 1 January 2024.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Data on the number of supported asylum seekers in accommodation (including in contingency hotels and other contingency accommodation) is published in table Asy_D11 here: Asylum and resettlement datasets - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Data is published on a quarterly basis.
Costs are subject to change depending on numbers being accommodated within the asylum system. Accommodation costs are considered to be commercially confidential; therefore, the Home Office does not publish this information. However, total expenditure on asylum is published in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/ho-annual-reports-and-accounts.
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 much money his Department has allocated for housing asylum seekers in (a) hotels and (b) other locations in 2024.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Costs are subject to change depending on numbers being accommodated within the asylum system. Accommodation costs are considered to be commercially confidential, therefore the Home Office does not publish this information. However, total expenditure on asylum is published in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/ho-annual-reports-and-accounts(opens in a new tab).