Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the Annual statistics of scientific procedures on living animals, Great Britain for 2024; and what funding her Department has allocated for research into alternative testing methods.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Annual Statistics of scientific procedures on living animals, Great Britain: 2024 will be published on October 23, 2025.
The Government is committed to the development of non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy to support their development, validation and adoption.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has a diverse portfolio of investments that supports research which can lead to alternatives, such as organ-on-a-chip, cell-based assays, functional genomics and computer modelling. UKRI also invests £10 million annually in the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs). The Government also co-funds seven Centres of Excellence for Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI), two focusing on AI which will support alternative method development.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average processing time was for visas broken down by (a) each visa route and (b) month since July 2024.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
UKVI have been processing applications on all of its routes where a customer service standard is operated within their published customer service standards during the requested time period. On 1 September the Secretary of State for the Home Department announced a temporary suspension of new applications under the Refugee Family Reunion route and this remains in place. Visa processing times are published on the UKVI website at Visa processing times: applications outside the UK - GOV.UK and Visa processing times: applications inside the UK - GOV.UK.
It may take longer to process an application if:
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to respond to the letter of 7 September 2025 from the hon. Member for West Suffolk.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The letter of 7 September 2025 was transferred to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for response.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average processing time for asylum claims was broken down by (a) individual route and (b) month since July 2024.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of claims awaiting an initial decision, broken down by duration, is published in table Asy_D03 and data on the number of people claiming asylum, by route of entry to the UK, is published in table Asy_D01a. These data tables are published as part of the asylum detailed datasets.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the headcount number of caseworkers for processing asylum claims was broken down by (a) individual route and (b) month since July 2024.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office is maintaining sufficient resource in place to clear the Asylum backlog.
The number of full time equivalent (FTE) asylum caseworkers employed per month until June 2025 is published in the ASY_05(M) tab of the published migration transparency statistics, located here: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK.
At the end of June 2025 there were 2,057 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Asylum Caseworking Staff.
We do not publish breakdown of this information by individual route.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how the headcount number was of caseworkers processing visas by (a) each visa route and (b) month since July 2024.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Department is unable to provide previous headcount data for visa processing broken down by route and by month. Caseworkers are routinely reallocated across visa routes to maintain service standards and a flexible deployment model is used by UKVI to manage fluctuations in demand and seasonal surges. As a result, the Departmental systems do not capture headcount movements at a visa route level with sufficient accuracy to support robust external reporting.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her planned timetable is for launching a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government is driving forward work to establish the National Inquiry into Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse under the Inquiries Act 2005. It will be overseen by an Independent Commission with statutory powers to compel evidence and testimony so that institutions can be held to account for current and historic failures. The inquiry will be independent of government and designed to command the confidence of victims and survivors and the wider public.
The first step in establishing the inquiry is the appointment of the Chair to the inquiry. A rigorous selection process is currently underway, which we are undertaking properly and thoroughly, with appropriate due diligence and meaningful engagement with victims and survivors. This is a non-negotiable part of this process and remains ongoing. Once the Chair is appointed, the Government will provide a full update to Parliament.
In line with the Inquiries Act, the appointed Chair will play a central role in shaping the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference. These will be published in draft once the Chair is appointed and subject to consultation with stakeholders, including victims and survivors.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the number of foreign national offenders who have cited Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights as a reason not to be removed since 2019, broken down by (a) year, (b) nationality and (c) offence committed.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and could only be obtained for the purpose of answering this question through a manual search of case files, something that could only be done at disproportionate cost.
Work is underway to improve the quality of information held by the department on foreign national offenders (FNOs). Further information on this work can be found at: Statistics on foreign national offenders and the immigration system - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the number of foreign nationals in prisons who are (a) illegal immigrants and (b) asylum seekers since 2019, broken down by (i) year, (ii) nationality and (iii) offence committed.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and could only be obtained for the purpose of answering this question through a manual search of case files, something that could only be done at disproportionate cost.
Work is underway to improve the quality of information held by the department on foreign national offenders (FNOs). Further information on this work can be found at: Statistics on foreign national offenders and the immigration system - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to Answer of 8 July 2025 to Question 64923 on Asylum: Housing, on what basis can (a) her Department, (b) Serco and (c) local authorities not inform Members of Parliament when sites are used for asylum dispersal in their constituency.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
I refer the Hon Member to the Answer he received on 8 July 2025 to UIN 64923.