Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff from her Department were assigned to processing visa applications for entry into the UK from nationals from (a) Afghanistan and (b) Ukraine, as of 10 March 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
We are committed to ensuring our operational teams have the resources they need to run an efficient and effective system, and we actively monitor workflows to ensure sufficient resources are in place to meet demand, including from pressures relating to the situations in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
The Home Office, alongside the commercial provider operating our Visa Application Centres have surged staff across Europe to meet demand, so we can offer over 13,000 appointments to visa applicants. UKVI staff in the UK are working seven days a week to process applications, with personnel drawn from across its operations as needed.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff in her Department are assigned to visa application centres in (a) France, (b) Poland, (c) Hungary, (d) Moldova, (e) Romania and (f) other overseas centres as of 10 March 2022; and if she will provide a breakdown of the number of staff assigned to each of those countries.
Answered by Kevin Foster
We are committed to ensuring our operational teams have the resources they need to run an efficient and effective system, and we actively monitor workflows to ensure sufficient resources are in place to meet demand, including from pressures relating to Ukraine.
The Home Office and the commercial provider operating our Visa Application Centres have surged staff across Europe to meet demand, where we can offer over 13,000 appointments to visa applicants. We review demand in individual locations regularly and flex resources to meet it as needed.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the long-term effects on children who did not apply to the EU settlement scheme before they turned 18.
Answered by Kevin Foster
In line with the Citizens’ Rights Agreements, there remains scope, indefinitely, for a person eligible for status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) to make a late application to the scheme where there are reasonable grounds for their failure to meet the deadline applicable to them.
The Home Office published non-exhaustive guidance on 1 April 2021 on what
may constitute such reasonable grounds, to underpin a flexible and pragmatic
approach to considering late applications to the EUSS in light of the
circumstances of each case. The guidance refers, as an example of reasonable grounds, to where a parent, guardian or Local Authority has failed to apply on behalf of a child by the relevant deadline. The relevant guidance is now available at pages 32 to 50 here:
EU Settlement Scheme EU, other EEA, Swiss citizens and family members (publishing.service.gov.uk)
There are no plans to implement automatic enrolment to the EUSS for children under 18 who were born in the UK to parents from European Union member states. It is important all those eligible for the EUSS obtain the individual status under the scheme and the secure evidence of this which they will need to prove their rights in the UK for years to come, such a provision could also conflict with nationality law as a child born in the UK to an EU citizen will automatically be a British citizen if one of their parents was settled in the UK, for example by holding Settled Status under the EUSS, at the time of their birth.
In addition, a child of an EU citizen has an entitlement to registration as a British citizen if the parent becomes settled after the child’s birth. The Home Office also introduced Regulations earlier this year to ensure a specific group of children, born between the end of the grace period on 30 June 2021 and their parent being granted settled status under the EUSS, will automatically be a British citizen. However, the basic position described above is the same for all children born in the UK: we do not intend to create a separate route to British citizenship for the children of EU citizens.
The Home Office continues to work closely with Local Authorities to monitor their progress in making applications to the EUSS on behalf of looked after children and care leavers and to ensure the EUSS remains a high priority in their work with that group. The latest survey indicates that, as of 30 November 2021, for children for whom the Local Authority has parental responsibility, 96% of those identified as eligible for the EUSS had so far had an application to the scheme made for them by the Local Authority. The full survey can be found at:
To ensure information and assistance gets through to those who are hardest to reach, and no one is left behind, the Home Office has provided £25 million in grant funding through to 31 March 2022 to a network of 72 organisations across the UK, which includes local authorities and local government associations, working to help vulnerable people apply to the EUSS.