Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of passport applications are processed within six to 10 weeks.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic. 98.6% of all passport applications continue to be dealt with well within 10 weeks.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passport applications have been submitted to the Passport Office in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The volume of passport applications received is published quarterly in HM Passport Office’s transparency data. The most recent published data can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-passport-office-data-q1-2022
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the criteria were for the appointment of members to the External Reference Group for the Review into group-based child sexual exploitation.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Home Office consulted with an External Reference Group (ERG) while developing its publicly available paper ‘Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation; Characteristics of offending’ between July and December 2020. The aim of the ERG was to provide comment on the content and findings of the draft paper to ensure it provided as accurate a picture as possible of what is known about group-based child sexual exploitation offending. Members of the ERG did not have access to any sensitive information or direct access with children, and on this basis DBS checks were accordingly not sought.
The ERG was drawn from a range of sectors, including representatives of victims and survivors, law enforcement, academia, the third sector, and parliamentarians. It had an advisory role in the development of the paper, and as such all comments from the ERG were considered carefully, but not all were taken onboard. The final paper is ultimately a Home Office product and does not reflect the position of all ERG members.
Full details of the ERG’s role and input are set out in paragraphs 1 to 10 of the published paper Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation Characteristics of Offenders (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether DBS checks were undertaken on appointees to the External Reference Group for the Review into group-based child sexual exploitation.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Home Office consulted with an External Reference Group (ERG) while developing its publicly available paper ‘Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation; Characteristics of offending’ between July and December 2020. The aim of the ERG was to provide comment on the content and findings of the draft paper to ensure it provided as accurate a picture as possible of what is known about group-based child sexual exploitation offending. Members of the ERG did not have access to any sensitive information or direct access with children, and on this basis DBS checks were accordingly not sought.
The ERG was drawn from a range of sectors, including representatives of victims and survivors, law enforcement, academia, the third sector, and parliamentarians. It had an advisory role in the development of the paper, and as such all comments from the ERG were considered carefully, but not all were taken onboard. The final paper is ultimately a Home Office product and does not reflect the position of all ERG members.
Full details of the ERG’s role and input are set out in paragraphs 1 to 10 of the published paper Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation Characteristics of Offenders (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what is the longest amount of time it has taken for the Passport Office to process a passport application in the last three years.
Answered by Kevin Foster
A British passport cannot be issued until all checks are satisfactorily completed. These checks include those intended to protect the passport system against fraud and misrepresentation.
If further information is required to enable an application to be progressed in light of these checks, then it will take longer to conclude as a British Passport will not be issued until HM Passport Office is satisfied of the applicant’s identity and that they are entitled to hold one.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passport applications have been received by the Passport Office but have not been processed for a period of longer than six weeks as of 25 May 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic. The vast majority of all passport applications continue to be dealt with well within 10 weeks
HM Passport Office has increased its staffing numbers by 650 since April 2021 and is in the process of recruiting a further 550. This has helped to ensure passport applications continue to be processed in higher numbers than ever before, with the processing of almost two million applications being completed across March and April 2022.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passport applications are currently being processed by the Passport Office.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Approximately 250,000 passport applications are being processed each week.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of passport applications received by the Passport Office have been processed by the Passport Office in under six weeks in the last twelve months.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Ahead of unrestricted international travel returning, HM Passport Office prepared extensively to serve an unprecedented number of customers, with 9.5 million British passport applications forecasted throughout 2022.
These preparations, which include the recruitment of 650 additional staff since April 2021 and with plans in place to recruit a further 550 by this summer, have ensured that passport applications can be processed in higher numbers than ever before. This was demonstrated in March and April 2022 when HM Passport Office achieved record outputs by completing the processing of two million applications.
Since April 2021, HM Passport Office has been advising people to allow up to 10 weeks when applying for their passport from the UK. However, Her Majesty’s Passport Office will always endeavour to process applications as quickly as possible, and in the simplest of cases that require fewer manual interventions these may be processed much more quickly.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to respond to the email correspondence of 30 April 2022 from the hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley, reference H18249.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office responded to the Hon. Member’s correspondence on 17 May 2022.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will confirm whether members of the External Reference Group for the Review into group-based child sexual exploitation had access to sensitive material.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.