Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she is taking steps to prioritise visa applications for the relatives of UK citizens and residents affected by the recent earthquake in Turkey.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The UK government continue to support British nationals with relatives impacted by the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Where family members do not have a current UK visa, they can apply online via one of our standard visa routes, which remain available, and biometrics can be submitted at the nearest Visa Application Centre (VAC).
UKVI will aim to process any compassionate cases as quickly as possible in line with current guidance.
Should individual circumstances require a quicker decision, customers should flag this with visa application centre staff when submitting their biometrics and UKVI will consider this as part of their wider application.
If customers have an existing visa application and have been impacted by the earthquake, then they should please contact the UKVI Contact Centre, details can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/contact-ukvi-inside-outside-uk.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to prioritise visa applications for the relatives of UK citizens and residents affected by the recent earthquake in Syria.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The UK government continue to support British nationals with relatives impacted by the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Where family members do not have a current UK visa, they can apply online via one of our standard visa routes, which remain available, and biometrics can be submitted at the nearest Visa Application Centre (VAC).
UKVI will aim to process any compassionate cases as quickly as possible in line with current guidance.
Should individual circumstances require a quicker decision, customers should flag this with visa application centre staff when submitting their biometrics and UKVI will consider this as part of their wider application.
If customers have an existing visa application and have been impacted by the earthquake, then they should please contact the UKVI Contact Centre, details can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/contact-ukvi-inside-outside-uk.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent meetings she has had with (a) the Chief Constable for South Wales Police and (b) the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Secretary regularly meets with senior colleagues across the policing sector and will continue to do so as part of her role.
Details of ministerial meetings are published on the Cabinet Office website on a quarterly basis, and can be found here: Home Office: ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her policy is on expediting the visa applications of Iranian residents sponsored by UK citizens or residents.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
UKVI aims to process all visa applications in line with our customer service standards. Details of customer service standards for each visa route, along with the latest wait times, can be found at Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Priority visa services are available in many overseas locations. However, we are currently unable to offer a priority service to customers in Iran due to courier delivery times.
UKVI understands that the impact of delays to customers is significant; resources are focused on reducing the current processing times and UKVI will continue to prioritise urgent compelling or compassionate cases across all visa routes.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of applications to the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme have been granted.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
We are continuing the process to grant Indefinite Leave to Remain to all eligible individuals who arrived during the evacuation: officials have already registered over 13,000 (and counting) applications for resettlement from Afghans in the UK, with biometric residence permits being issued accordingly. In the meantime, applicants remain eligible to work and access services under their continuing leave.
At 12 August 2022, we have granted Indefinite Leave to Remain to 11,303 individuals across the ARAP and ACRS, since they opened in April 2021 and Jan 2022, respectively. We are unable, at this time, to provide a breakdown of whether a grant of leave was made under the ARAP or the ACRS Pathway 1. Work is underway to assure information relating to all the individuals relocated under the ARAP and ACRS on case working systems. Once this work concludes, statistics on both schemes - including the number of people resettled under each - will be included in future editions of the Immigration Statistics.
More information on the number of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain issued to Afghans resettling under the ARAP or ACRS can be viewed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of applications for leave to remain expired because applicants had not responded to decisions sent by email relating to fee waiver requests in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Applicants wishing to apply for an entry clearance fee waiver must do so by submitting an online application form. Once assessed, a decision on the fee waiver application is sent by email to the email address specified on the application form by either the applicant or their representative.
Applications for Leave to Remain fee waivers are mandated to be completed online, to receive a decision by email. However, in exceptional circumstances leave to remain fee waiver applications can be submitted on a paper form, in which case we will offer the applicant the choice of a paper or electronic decision.
Child Citizenship fee waiver applications can also be submitted on paper or online. These decisions may be despatched by email or post accordingly.
It is the applicant’s (or their representative’s) responsibility to monitor their email inbox and ‘spam’ folder in anticipation of our decision email.
Information on the number of applicants whose leave to remain expired following the issue of a fee waiver decision of which the applicant was not aware, is not captured. To recover this information would require a manual examination of each individual case and would thus incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how decisions on fee waiver applications are communicated to applicants.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Applicants wishing to apply for an entry clearance fee waiver must do so by submitting an online application form. Once assessed, a decision on the fee waiver application is sent by email to the email address specified on the application form by either the applicant or their representative.
Applications for Leave to Remain fee waivers are mandated to be completed online, to receive a decision by email. However, in exceptional circumstances leave to remain fee waiver applications can be submitted on a paper form, in which case we will offer the applicant the choice of a paper or electronic decision.
Child Citizenship fee waiver applications can also be submitted on paper or online. These decisions may be despatched by email or post accordingly.
It is the applicant’s (or their representative’s) responsibility to monitor their email inbox and ‘spam’ folder in anticipation of our decision email.
Information on the number of applicants whose leave to remain expired following the issue of a fee waiver decision of which the applicant was not aware, is not captured. To recover this information would require a manual examination of each individual case and would thus incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make it her policy to introduce service standards for the processing of asylum applications.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office does not currently have a target time for processing applications for asylum, but are committed to ensuring asylum claims are considered without unnecessary delay. We have already made progress in prioritising claims with acute vulnerability and those in receipt of the greatest level of support, including Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children. Additionally, we are prioritising older claims and those where an individual has already received a decision, but a reconsideration is required.
Asylum Operations are working to reintroduce a service standard for the processing of asylum applications. It is our intention to reintroduce a service standard aligning with the recommendation from the recent Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s (ICIBI) published report - An inspection of asylum casework (November 2021).
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of European Union identity cards seized by Border Force since 2010 were in the possession of people (a) under the age of 18 and (b) on organised visits from educational institutions.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Border Force does not hold this data in an easily accessible format.
For the financial year beginning from 01/04/2021 to 31/03/2022, there were 1235 forged/counterfeit documents, and 153 imposters encountered at the UK Border.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of applications to her Department in each customer group were processed within the time stipulated by the customer service standard since 1 January 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office has been prioritising visa applications in response to the humanitarian crisis arising from the invasion of Ukraine.
Information on how UKVI is performing against service standards can be found in the migration transparency data published on the GOV.UK webpage Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).