Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of refugees who will be resettled in the UK under the Gateway Protection Programme in 2018.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Government’s current commitment is to resettle 750 refugees each financial year under the Gateway Protection Programme
We do not resettle people under the asylum route and there is no provision within our Immigration Rules for a person to be allowed to travel to the UK to seek asylum; a person must be in the UK in order to lodge an asylum claim here. All claims for asylum are considered on their individual merits, and where a genuine need for protection or a well founded fear of persecution is established, refugee status will be granted.
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average processing time was for immigration applications that fell outside service standards because they raised human rights issues between 1 September 2016 and 31 August 2017.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
The migration transparency data does not directly answer the question, but does show performance against service standards for routes that have them, and work in progress volumes for all routes.
It can be found here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/in-country-migration-data-august-2017
The data at table at InC_05 does not breakdown into specific case types and will include non human rights cases.
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Syrian families have been resettled in Hackney through the Syrian Resettlement Programme.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Progress on resettlement under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement scheme is indicated in quarterly immigration statistics, and is broken down by each local authority. The last set of statistics, published on 25 May, showed that 11 people have been resettled to Hackney since the scheme began. A total of 7,307 Syrians have been resettled across 235 different local authorities.
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the timetable is for details to be made available to EU citizens on how to register to remain in the UK.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
As the Government’s policy paper (C9464) sets out, we recognise that the cost of the new scheme will be important for EU nationals. The UK intends to set fees at a reasonable level.
We have been clear that EU citizens will enjoy all of their current residence rights until we exit from the EU, and that they will have time to secure their new status post-exit. However, the Government does intend to introduce a voluntary scheme to enable eligible EU citizens to apply for their permission to stay and residence document before the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. This will enable them to obtain their UK immigration status at an early stage, should they wish to do so, in order to ensure as smooth and efficient process as possible for EU residents here.
Details of the new scheme are the subject of ongoing negotiations with the EU and therefore will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much it will cost EU citizens wishing to register to remain in the UK.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
As the Government’s policy paper (C9464) sets out, we recognise that the cost of the new scheme will be important for EU nationals. The UK intends to set fees at a reasonable level.
We have been clear that EU citizens will enjoy all of their current residence rights until we exit from the EU, and that they will have time to secure their new status post-exit. However, the Government does intend to introduce a voluntary scheme to enable eligible EU citizens to apply for their permission to stay and residence document before the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. This will enable them to obtain their UK immigration status at an early stage, should they wish to do so, in order to ensure as smooth and efficient process as possible for EU residents here.
Details of the new scheme are the subject of ongoing negotiations with the EU and therefore will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how often the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme has been applied in each police authority area in England.
Answered by Sarah Newton
The Home Office published an evaluation report on the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme on 8 March 2016 which showed that there had been over 1,900 disclosures under the scheme since national roll out. A full breakdown by police force area can be found in the report which is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-violence-disclosure-scheme-assessment-of-national-roll-out
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for how long since the date of initial application the longest outstanding disclosure and barring check has been outstanding.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The longest outstanding application for an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Certificate is 25 months.
It would not be appropriate to comment further on this specific case, but there are a number of factors which can affect the timely completion of checks. These include the length of time it can take for an employer to deal with the initial application, the accurate completion of the application form, the clarity of the information provided, the existence of conviction or non-conviction information, legal challenges and the operational effectiveness of the disclosure units of the police forces involved in the enhanced process.
In some cases, forces will ask DBS to clarify some details provided by the applicant which requires further investigation and this can cause further delays.
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which police forces take longest to process applications from the Disclosure and Barring Service; and what the average processing time for such application is for each police force in England.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) processes applications in date order and is reliant on the police completing their checks in a timely manner. In very exceptional cases, where it is apparent that a delay is likely to cause undue hardship to an applicant, the DBS will do all it can to expedite the process by raising an escalation with the relevant police force.
The table below shows the average time spent by each police force in England to process disclosure applications between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016.
Force Name | Average Days Taken By Force |
Avon And Somerset | 7.4 |
Bedfordshire | 3.5 |
Cambridgeshire | 10.9 |
Cheshire | 10.7 |
City of London | 9.0 |
Cleveland | 8.6 |
Cumbria | 13.8 |
Derbyshire | 14.8 |
Devon And Cornwall | 4.7 |
Dorset | 76.6 |
Durham | 15.3 |
Essex | 16.2 |
Gloucester | 11.1 |
Greater Manchester | 12.8 |
Hampshire | 11.4 |
Hertfordshire | 10.5 |
Humberside | 9.8 |
Kent | 18.5 |
Lancashire | 5.0 |
Leicestershire | 7.7 |
Lincolnshire | 9.2 |
Merseyside | 8.2 |
Metropolitan | 85.2 |
Norfolk | 1.6 |
North Yorkshire | 17.9 |
Northamptonshire | 17.1 |
Northumbria | 13.9 |
Nottinghamshire | 10.9 |
South Yorkshire | 21.7 |
Staffordshire | 10.7 |
Suffolk | 8.8 |
Surrey | 13.1 |
Sussex | 17.5 |
Thames Valley | 60.3 |
Warwickshire | 7.2 |
West Mercia | 9.3 |
West Midlands | 21.2 |
West Yorkshire | 12.3 |
Wiltshire | 4.8 |
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her policy is on priority categories in Disclosure and Barring Service checks.
Answered by Karen Bradley
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) processes applications in date order and is reliant on the police completing their checks in a timely manner. In very exceptional cases, where it is apparent that a delay is likely to cause undue hardship to an applicant, the DBS will do all it can to expedite the process by raising an escalation with the relevant police force.
The table below shows the average time spent by each police force in England to process disclosure applications between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016.
Force Name | Average Days Taken By Force |
Avon And Somerset | 7.4 |
Bedfordshire | 3.5 |
Cambridgeshire | 10.9 |
Cheshire | 10.7 |
City of London | 9.0 |
Cleveland | 8.6 |
Cumbria | 13.8 |
Derbyshire | 14.8 |
Devon And Cornwall | 4.7 |
Dorset | 76.6 |
Durham | 15.3 |
Essex | 16.2 |
Gloucester | 11.1 |
Greater Manchester | 12.8 |
Hampshire | 11.4 |
Hertfordshire | 10.5 |
Humberside | 9.8 |
Kent | 18.5 |
Lancashire | 5.0 |
Leicestershire | 7.7 |
Lincolnshire | 9.2 |
Merseyside | 8.2 |
Metropolitan | 85.2 |
Norfolk | 1.6 |
North Yorkshire | 17.9 |
Northamptonshire | 17.1 |
Northumbria | 13.9 |
Nottinghamshire | 10.9 |
South Yorkshire | 21.7 |
Staffordshire | 10.7 |
Suffolk | 8.8 |
Surrey | 13.1 |
Sussex | 17.5 |
Thames Valley | 60.3 |
Warwickshire | 7.2 |
West Mercia | 9.3 |
West Midlands | 21.2 |
West Yorkshire | 12.3 |
Wiltshire | 4.8 |
Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 7 January 2016 to Question 20730, what change there has been in the level of overall police spending in real terms over the Spending Review period when precept is not taken into account.
Answered by Mike Penning
Overall central Government funding to the police (excluding funding for counter-terrorism policing) will reduce by 1.4% in real terms over the Spending Review (SR) 2015 period. This is equivalent to a £500 million (6.2%) cash increase over the period.
When precept is taken into account, this amounts to a flat cash protection for policing over the SR period.