Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to help ensure ensure that public parks in Newham are safe for children during the hours when children travel home from school.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Policing of parks in Newham is an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police Service. Multi-agency partners, including the Metropolitan Police Service receives over £22.5m in funds to tackle serious violence in London. This includes funds for the Violence Reduction Unit which delivers a multi-agency partnerships to lead the local response to reducing violence, with a focus on long-term prevention.
To date, £3.2 million has been awarded through all rounds of the Safer Streets Fund to local projects across London. This includes just over £1.5 million in funding through the current fourth round for projects targeting anti-social behaviour, as well as neighbourhood crime and violence against women and girls. Interventions funded have included the installation of additional CCTV, streetlighting and alleygating. The Mayor for Policing and Crime in London and the City of London Police Authority board have both been allocated £2m in total through the latest fifth round of the fund to support delivery of a range of interventions focused on VAWG, ASB and Neighbourhood Crime.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the cost to the public purse was for processing (a) an average tourist visa application and (b) all tourist visa applications in (i) 2021 and (ii) 2022.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The estimated cost of processing visit visa applications for the years 2021 – 2022, is published on gov.uk as part of the Home Office’s transparency publications Visa fees transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many tourist visa applications were made to UK Visas and Immigration in (a) 2021 and (b) 2022.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
According to the Home Office published data on visit visa applications in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’ and in the Entry clearance detailed dataset of the quarterly publication, for 2021 there were 613,741 visit visa applications and in 2022 there were 1,795,963 visit visa applications.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate she has made of the number of (a) Sudanese and (b) other nationals residing in Sudan who (i) are waiting, (ii) have been waiting for more than two months and( iii) have been waiting for more than three months for the outcome of their family reunification applications to the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Information regarding processing times and nationality of applicants is not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate she has made of the number of (a) Eritrean and (b) Sudanese children waiting for the outcome of their family reunification applications to the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Information regarding processing times and nationality of applicants is not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Sudanese nationals have been returned to Sudan on the basis of failed claims for asylum in 2023; and whether her Department considers Sudan to be a safe country for such returns from 15 April 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on asylum and returns in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’.
Data on asylum applications awaiting a decision, by nationality, can be found in table Asy_D03 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to March 2023. Data as at 30 June 2023 will be published on 24 August 2023.
The Home Office does not currently publish data on the waiting times of asylum applications receiving initial decisions.
Data on returns by destination are published in table Ret_D02 of the ‘Returns detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to December 2022. Additionally, the Home Office publishes aggregate returns data broken down by asylum-related and non-asylum-related in the ‘summary tables’. The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data broken down in this way. Data for asylum-related returns by nationality and destination are not available in the published statistics..
The Home Office’s assessment of the general security situation in Sudan for the use of officials handling protection claims is set out in our country policy and information note on this subject of June 2023. This note is available on Gov.UK.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Sudanese national asylum seekers are waiting for a decision on their application as of 1 July 2023; and what the (a) median and (b) longest waiting time was for that group.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on asylum and returns in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’.
Data on asylum applications awaiting a decision, by nationality, can be found in table Asy_D03 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to March 2023. Data as at 30 June 2023 will be published on 24 August 2023.
The Home Office does not currently publish data on the waiting times of asylum applications receiving initial decisions.
Data on returns by destination are published in table Ret_D02 of the ‘Returns detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to December 2022. Additionally, the Home Office publishes aggregate returns data broken down by asylum-related and non-asylum-related in the ‘summary tables’. The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data broken down in this way. Data for asylum-related returns by nationality and destination are not available in the published statistics..
The Home Office’s assessment of the general security situation in Sudan for the use of officials handling protection claims is set out in our country policy and information note on this subject of June 2023. This note is available on Gov.UK.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) passports and (b) other identity documents submitted to the Khartoum Visa Application Centre before 15 April 2023 (i) remain in the Khartoum Visa Application Centre, (ii) are being held by the Nairobi Visa Application Centre, (iii) are being held in countries neighbouring Sudan, (iv) otherwise remain in UK Government custody and (v) have been returned to applicants.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Where our records confirm that a customer’s passport is being held in the Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Khartoum, UK Visas and Immigration have contacted all those customers that have been issued or refused visa applications in our VAC in Khartoum and offered them a letter confirming that their passport is securely stored and attaching a digital copy of their passport, that may help support their travel out of Sudan and into a third country.
Where our records show that the passport is held in Nairobi or Pretoria and a named individual (either the applicant or a designated 3rd party) is identified to return the passport to outside of Sudan, the passport can be sent (to the named individual) by courier or for collection from another visa application centre. UK Visas and Immigration have contacted all those customers. For customers that have been able to exit Sudan, processes are in place to re-direct printing of their visa and endorsement on a Form for affixing a visa (FAV) to another VAC location of their choice for collection.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the implications for the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership of the policy of the Rwandan government on the eviction of refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Rwanda has been recognised globally for its record in welcoming and integrating migrants and refugees, and our own comprehensive assessment as set out in the relevant country policy and information notes (CPINs) Rwanda is a safe and secure country.
Our CPINs are kept under constant review and updated periodically on the Gov.uk website. Any decision to relocate a person to Rwanda will be made on a case-by-case basis and take into account their individual circumstances and relevant country information.