Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many immigration cases have been delayed due to legal challenges under the Human Rights Act in the past five years.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many migrants who arrived in the UK illegally are housed in hotels; and what the daily cost is to the public purse of those hotels.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
Data is published quarterly on the number of supported asylum seekers in accommodation, including accommodation type, and can be found within the Asy_D11 tab of our most recent statistics release at Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK.
Costs are subject to change depending on numbers being accommodated within the asylum system. Accommodation costs are commercially confidential therefore, the Home Office does not publish this information. However, total expenditure on asylum is published in the Home Office annual reports and accounts - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of Regulation C9 of the Police Pensions Regulations 1987 that removes survivor benefits on (a) widows and (b) widowers who (i) remarry and (ii) cohabit.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
From 1 April 2015, the 1987 police pension scheme was amended to allow widows, widowers and civil partners of police officers who have died as a result of an injury on duty to receive their survivor benefits for life regardless of remarriage, civil partnership or cohabitation.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Iranian nationals have been detected arriving in the United Kingdom via small boat crossings in (a) 2023, (b) 2024 and (c) 2025 to date.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Home Office publishes statistics on detected small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on small boat arrivals by nationality and year is published in table Irr_02b of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK summary tables’, with the latest data up to the end of December 2024. Data up to the end of March 2025 will be published on 22 May 2025.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to strengthen (a) counter-extremism measures and (b) public order enforcement following the recent attack on the Israeli Embassy in London; and how the Department plans to ensure the continued safety of diplomatic (i) premises and (ii) staff from politically motivated violence.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Government takes the protective security of diplomatic missions extremely seriously. The UK Government's protective security system is rigorous and proportionate. It is our longstanding policy not to provide detailed information on those arrangements, as doing so could compromise their integrity and affect individuals' and sites' security.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking with police forces to (a) help prevent antisemitic marches and (b) ensure that public order legislation is effectively enforced where protests involve (i) incitement, (ii) intimidation and (iii) groups that are known to have previously perpetrated hate crimes; and if her Department will issue national guidance to police forces on the protection of Jewish communities from (A) harassment and (B) abuse during protests.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to tackling antisemitism and other forms of hate crimes and supports the police in taking robust action where protests cross the line into criminality. Where protest activity does involve criminality, the police have a broad range of powers to respond. The use of these powers and the management of demonstrations are operational matters for individual forces, and Government ministers are unable to intervene in these decisions.
On the issue of antisemitism, I would also refer the Hon Member to the Speech given by the Home Secretary at the annual dinner of the Community Security Trust on 26 March, which can be found here:https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretary-speech-at-the-community-security-trust
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the number of people (a) arrested and (b) charged following the trans rights demonstration on 19 April 2025; and what were the offences recorded.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office does not hold the information requested.
This is an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff in her Department are responsible for (a) processing and (b) responding to Freedom of Information Act requests; and if she will make an estimate of the annual cost to the public purse of this work.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office has a central team consisting of 13.7 FTEs managing FOI requests and related appeals work. The annual salaries paid to this group of staff were approximately £663K in the year ending September 2024.
To determine precisely how many staff are responsible for processing and responding to FOI requests across the entire department and to provide an estimate of the resulting costs, is not feasible for the purposes of answering this question, in particular because the majority of these staff will carry out such work as part of their overall responsibilities.
However, if we consider that the Home Office dealt with 6115 resolvable FOI requests in the year ending September 2024 (the most recent data available) and that each resolvable request cost a maximum of £600 to process (the current FOI cost limit), then we can conclude that the cost of processing FOI requests over that twelve month period was a maximum of £3,669,000.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether a review has been undertaken of the Metropolitan Police’s involvement in the case of Ali Kololo.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office has not undertaken a review of the Metropolitan Police’s involvement in the case of Ali Kololo.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff are responsible for (a) processing and (b) responding to Freedom of Information Act requests related to police forces in England and Wales; and if she will make an estimate of the annual cost to the public purse of this work.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office does not centrally hold this information.
Each police force is a separate public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act and is responsible for processing and responding to requests they receive.
However, we agree with the Hon Member that the burden of responding to FOI requests is not one that we wish to see increasing unnecessarily on police forces at a time we are seeking to maximise the resources devoted to neighbourhood policing.