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 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 Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the number of admissions to hospital for cannabis use in the last five years.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the number of finished admission episodes with a primary diagnosis recorded for cannabis use, in each of the last five years:
Year | Hospital admissions |
2022/23 | 189 |
2021/22 | 354 |
2020/21 | 508 |
2019/20 | 367 |
2018/19 | 375 |
Source: NHS England publishes information on hospital admissions, which is available at the following link: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/hospital-admitted-patient-care-activity
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times Ministers in his Department have met with representatives of the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign since 2015.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Departmental Ministers met with representatives from the WASPI campaign group on 29 June 2016. The department did not meet with representatives from the campaign group for the duration of the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman's investigation which began in 2018.
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and I will provide a further update to the House once I have considered the report's findings.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many road traffic accidents have occurred as a result of smart motorway technology since 2019.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The latest safety data and assessment can be found in National Highways’ Third Year Progress Report, which was published in December 2023: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-work/smart-motorways-evidence-stocktake/.
Overall, the data shows that in terms of serious or fatal casualties, smart motorways are the safest roads on the Strategic Road Network (SRN).
National Highways has undertaken contributory factor analysis to help further understand which factors which lead to collisions on the SRN. This analysis can be found in the above report.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, 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 Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
No costs were incurred by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport connected to any events, activities, merchandise, or other associated costs in relation to Pride Month 2023.
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 prosecuted in relation to sham marriages or civil partnerships that have taken place for the purpose of remaining in the UK since 2019.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
Between 14 November 2018 to 1 May 2024, 11 individuals who have entered into sham marriages or civil partnerships, or facilitated those arrangements, have been convicted by Home Office Criminal and Financial Investigation teams.