Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to bring forward legislative proposals on economic crime.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
As set out in the Queen’s Speech, the Government is committed to bringing forward further legislation on economic crime. Building on the recently enacted Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act, the upcoming Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill will bear down further on kleptocrats, criminals and terrorists who abuse our financial system, strengthening the UK's economic security and reputation as a place where legitimate business can thrive while driving dirty money out of the UK.
This will be a joint Bill between Home Office and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The Bill will include reform of Companies House, reforms to prevent abuse of limited partnerships, additional powers to seize cryptoassets more quickly and easily, reforms to support more effective and targeted information sharing to tackle money laundering and economic crime, new intelligence gathering powers for law enforcement and removing regulatory burdens on businesses.
We are preparing the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill at pace and expect it to be introduced soon.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to publish a new Economic Crime Plan when the current one elapses this year.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
In July 2019, the Government set out a comprehensive programme for addressing economic crime, in partnership with the private sector, in the July 2019 Economic Crime Plan, and May 2021 Statement of Progress.
The December 2021 Economic Crime Strategic Board formally commissioned the production of a second Economic Crime Plan to be developed with partners across the private sector. It is due to be published later this year.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of funding available to effectively (a) investigate and (b) prevent fraud and other economic crime.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
In total, the SR21 settlement and the Economic Crime Levy represent an overall package of circa £400 million to tackle economic crime over the next three years, including support for the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) and law enforcement.
This investment will allow us to: continue to deliver our in-flight Suspicious Activity Reporting and Illicit Finance programmes, as well as investing in new fraud and anti-money laundering capabilities. For fraud, we will invest in the law enforcement response, work with industry to remove the vulnerabilities that fraudsters exploit online, and replace the current Action Fraud system with a new Fraud and Cyber Reporting and Analysis Service.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the day-to-day impact of fraud on the general public.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Reports of fraud offences are made to Action Fraud and are recorded as criminal offences by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). The Home Office collects data on these reports. This data is published by the Office for National Statistics on a quarterly basis. The latest breakdown of fraud offences is available in table A5 below: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesappendixtables. Later this year, we will publish a new strategy to address the threat of fraud. This will set out how we will work with industry to remove the vulnerabilities that fraudsters exploit, with intelligence agencies to shut down fraudulent infrastructure, with law enforcement to identify and bring the most harmful offenders to justice, and with all partners to ensure that the public have the advice and support they need. |
We encourage the public to continue reporting fraud to Action Fraud, forwarding any suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and suspicious texts to 7726, free of charge.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average length of time is to process an immigration application for (a) a Visa and (b) leave to remain.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Published data on visa and leave to remain processing times, is published online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data (then listed by publication date under ‘UK Visas & Immigration’).
We continually monitor and review our performance against service standards.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many notifications her Department's secure portal has received of bank current accounts which match immigration checks; how many of those notifications resulted in enforcement action by her Department; how many of those notifications included information about regular payments to the account; and what were the nationalities of the account holders.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The 2016 Act banking measures came into force on 30 October; however, banks and building societies had until 31 March 2018 to conduct their initial checks on all personal current accounts against Home Office disqualified persons data.
Operation of these measures is in the early stages and it is too soon to provide the information requested.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many notifications her Department's secure portal has received of bank current accounts which match immigration checks; how many of those notifications resulted in enforcement action by her Department; how many of those notifications included information about regular payments to the account; and what were the nationalities of the account holders.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The 2016 Act banking measures came into force on 30 October; however, banks and building societies had until 31 March 2018 to conduct their initial checks on all personal current accounts against Home Office disqualified persons data.
Operation of these measures is in the early stages and it is too soon to provide the information requested.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the value was of the assets seized under Unexplained Wealth Orders in 2017-18.
Answered by Ben Wallace
Unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) can be used to compel individuals to explain the sources of their wealth where it is suspected that their lawful income would be insufficient to obtain specified property, if they are a non-EEA politically exposed person, or suspected of being involved in serious crime. This is a powerful new weapon for tackling illicit finances and corruption.
Since the legislation came into force on 31 January 2018, the first UWOs have already been issued by the courts to investigate assets totalling £22 million. In addition to the UWOs, the courts granted interim freezing orders (IFOs), meaning that the assets cannot be sold, transferred or dissipated while subject to the IFO.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of tier one visas were granted to Russian nationals between 2010 and 2015.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Information on grants of Tier 1 entry clearance visas, by nationality, is published in the quarterly Immigration Statistics, Visas data tables volume 2, table vi_06_q_w, latest edition at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-october-to-december-2017/list-of-tables#visas.
Asked by: Jonathan Reynolds (Labour (Co-op) - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that Orthodox Christians seeking asylum in the UK from Syria for persecution are given fair and appropriate treatment and consideration.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
All claims for asylum are considered on their individual merits, and where people establish a genuine need for protection, or a well founded fear of persecution, refugee status will be granted.