Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made a comparative assessment of the cost of housing refugees in (a) hotels and (b) rented accommodation; and whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of housing more refugees in rented accommodation.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office has not made a comparative assessment of the cost of housing asylum seekers in either hotels or in rented accommodation on the basis that hotel accommodation is and always has been contingency accommodation where we are unable to procure sufficient Dispersed Accommodation to meet our statutory obligation. Whilst we are working to reduce our use of hotels, we must continue to ensure there is sufficient capacity in the system to meet our obligations.
That is why we wrote to all Local Authorities on 13 April 2022 to set out plans for Full Dispersal. This will reduce and then eliminate the use of hotels for asylum seekers by moving to a full dispersal model for asylum accommodation.
We will achieve this through three key interventions:
1. To reduce and eliminate the use of hotels for asylum seekers by moving to a full dispersal model for asylum accommodation. This will mean expanding our existing approach of using private rental sector housing to all local authority areas across England, Scotland and Wales.
2. We are committed to working with local authorities to move to a fairer distribution of asylum seekers and have launched an informal consultation with local government to inform how this model will work across England, Scotland and Wales and within regions and nations. The consultation will explore how asylum dispersal can better take account of the impact of other protection based immigration on local authorities, including resettlement and the care of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
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3. Providing specific funding to recognise the existing contribution of local authorities and for new dispersed accommodation. We will continue to work with local government to capture and evaluate data to understand the impact of asylum dispersal on local authorities going forward.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Russian citizens who are in the process of applying for UK Visas.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Part of the government’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been to issue more than 107,000 visas to Ukrainians seeking to come to the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme and the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme. This has inevitably had an impact on visa applications from other nationalities coming through normal visa routes.
As a result of the current conflict in Ukraine, applications from Russian nationals to enter the United Kingdom are subject to additional checks. Russia is also subject to sanctions which may impact on the ability of individuals to pay for certain services and a visa will not be granted if the purpose of the travel to the UK would be in breach of them.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make it her policy to expedite UK visas for Russian men who have been conscripted into the Russian military against their will and whom are morally opposed to war.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The government has no plans to expedite visas for Russian nationals subject to conscription in the military.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what comparative assessment she has made of the efficiency of each HM Passport Office branch for processing passport applications and renewals; and what steps her Department is taking to improve efficiency in branches that are comparatively less efficient.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Due to differences in some of the work undertaken at individual passport offices, such as more complex international work, productivity will vary at a local level. However, Her Majesty’s Passport Office has a range of tried and tested arrangements in place to monitor performance at local and national level, which helps to ensure that there is no disparity in the handling of like-for-like cases across each site.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to add further exemptions to her Department's absence policy to include absence related to reactions and side effects caused by covid-19 booster vaccination.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
There is an existing exemption in our attendance management policy covering the acute phase of Covid infection.
For absences relating to reactions to, or side effects from, Covid vaccination (which are likely to be of short duration), managers are encouraged to take a sympathetic approach under the normal provisions of our attendance management policy. We have no plans to introduce an exemption covering reactions to Covid vaccinations.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure the equity of her Department's decisions to grant indefinite leave to remain to Afghans and spouses of British citizens.
Answered by Kevin Foster
All decisions to grant indefinite leave to those evacuated from Afghanistan, including the spouses of British citizens, are taken on an individual basis and with consideration to the specific circumstances of the case.
These cohorts are treated more generously than other family members of British citizens because of the unique circumstances of the evacuation, alongside the need to quickly move people to safety without being able to assess their ability to meet the normal Immigration Rules.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government plans to add the garment industry to the Shortage Occupation List.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Skilled Worker route already contains several eligible occupations from this sector, such as weavers, upholsterers, tailors and dressmakers subject to salary and language requirements being met. An occupation at RQF3 or above does not need to be on the Shortage Occupation List to qualify for recruitment under the Skilled Worker Route.
In their last call for evidence the independent Migration Advisory Committee received evidence from several stakeholders from the garment industry, but they concluded this evidence did not warrant occupations from this sector being added onto the SOL. We will also not be creating more general routes allowing recruitment at or near the minimum wage into this sector via immigration as an alternative to investing in UK based staff and offering them rewarding packages of terms and conditions.
More generally those business facing recruitment issues should, in the first instance, engage with the Department for Work and Pensions about the support they can offer in seeking recruits and supporting training.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information his Department holds on the number of people who have lost money through telephone scams in each of the last five years in (a) the UK, (b) Scotland and (c) Falkirk constituency.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Victims of fraud and cyber-crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are encouraged to report these crimes directly to a centralised reporting centre called Action Fraud. Fraud victims in Scotland also reported crimes directly into Action Fraud until December 2019, when Police Scotland decided that victims should report incidents directly to them, via their 101 service. These reports are now recorded separately from Action Fraud data.
Action Fraud does not categorise fraud reports by the mode in which the fraud was conducted. Fraud can often encompass several different methods of communication, so it may not necessarily be clear to the victim what the primary vector for this kind of criminal attack was. Victim locations are only recorded when sufficient information is provided. For these reasons, the data requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
What information the Government holds on the sale of illegal drugs through private groups on Facebook; and if he will ensure that Facebook tackles that practice.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The government does not hold this information
A robust law enforcement response is a fundamental part of the government's drug strategy and we are taking coordinated action to tackle illegal drugs alongside associated criminal activity. Law enforcement agencies continue to work with internet service providers to shut down UK-based websites found to be committing offences such as selling drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
The government has been clear that more needs to be done to tackle online harms, including sale of illegal goods. That is why the Government published the Online Harms White Paper, which sets out our plans for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online and hold companies to account for tackling a wide range of online harms.