Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had recent discussions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the potential merits of providing additional financial support for victims of violence against women and girls to help with increases in the cost of living.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Tackling violence against women and girls is a Government priority. It is unacceptable and preventable, and an issue which blights the lives of millions. The Government is absolutely committed to ensuring victims have the support they need and we are conscious that the cost of living may generate additional challenges for victims and survivors.
Our Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan invests over £230 million of cross-Government funding into tackling this crime, including over £140 million to support victims and over £81 million to tackle perpetrators. This includes trialling a £300,000 ‘flexible fund’, that could make direct payments to domestic abuse victims.
In addition to the direct impact on victims, the Government also acknowledges the cost of living will have an impact on charitable organisations who work to support them. To help mitigate these challenges, where possible the Home Office has provided multi-year grants to support organisations to make maximum use of their funding, by providing greater stability and predictability on their budgets.
As announced in the Spring Budget, the Government will also be providing over £100 million of support for charities and community organisations in England. Further detail on this funding, including eligibility criteria, will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the impact of increases in the cost of living on victims of domestic abuse.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Tackling violence against women and girls is a Government priority. It is unacceptable and preventable, and an issue which blights the lives of millions. The Government is absolutely committed to ensuring victims have the support they need and we are conscious that the cost of living may generate additional challenges for victims and survivors.
Our Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan invests over £230 million of cross-Government funding into tackling this crime, including over £140 million to support victims and over £81 million to tackle perpetrators. This includes trialling a £300,000 ‘flexible fund’, that could make direct payments to domestic abuse victims.
In addition to the direct impact on victims, the Government also acknowledges the cost of living will have an impact on charitable organisations who work to support them. To help mitigate these challenges, where possible the Home Office has provided multi-year grants to support organisations to make maximum use of their funding, by providing greater stability and predictability on their budgets.
As announced in the Spring Budget, the Government will also be providing over £100 million of support for charities and community organisations in England. Further detail on this funding, including eligibility criteria, will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applicantions under the Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme have been made in the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will provide up to 20,000 women, children, and others at risk with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK. The scheme does not have an application process. Instead, eligible people will be referred for resettlement to the UK through one of three referral pathways.
We are continuing the process to grant Indefinite Leave to Remain to all eligible individuals who arrived during the evacuation: officials have already registered over 13,000 applications for resettlement from Afghans in the UK, with biometric residence permits being issued accordingly. In the meantime, applicants remain eligible to work and access services under their continuing leave.
At November 4 2022, we had granted Indefinite Leave to Remain to 6,314 people under ACRS pathway 1.
Work is underway to assure information relating to all the individuals relocated under the ARAP and ACRS on case working systems. Once this work concludes, statistics on both schemes - including the number of people resettled under each - will be included in future editions of the Immigration Statistics.
More information on the number of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain issued to Afghans resettling under the ARAP or ACRS can be viewed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many successful applications under the Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme were made outside the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will provide up to 20,000 women, children, and others at risk with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK. The scheme does not have an application process. Instead, eligible people will be referred for resettlement to the UK through one of three referral pathways.
We are continuing the process to grant Indefinite Leave to Remain to all eligible individuals who arrived during the evacuation: officials have already registered over 13,000 applications for resettlement from Afghans in the UK, with biometric residence permits being issued accordingly. In the meantime, applicants remain eligible to work and access services under their continuing leave.
At November 4 2022, we had granted Indefinite Leave to Remain to 6,314 people under ACRS pathway 1.
Work is underway to assure information relating to all the individuals relocated under the ARAP and ACRS on case working systems. Once this work concludes, statistics on both schemes - including the number of people resettled under each - will be included in future editions of the Immigration Statistics.
More information on the number of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain issued to Afghans resettling under the ARAP or ACRS can be viewed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications under the Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme have been made outside the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will provide up to 20,000 women, children, and others at risk with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK. The scheme does not have an application process. Instead, eligible people will be referred for resettlement to the UK through one of three referral pathways.
We are continuing the process to grant Indefinite Leave to Remain to all eligible individuals who arrived during the evacuation: officials have already registered over 13,000 applications for resettlement from Afghans in the UK, with biometric residence permits being issued accordingly. In the meantime, applicants remain eligible to work and access services under their continuing leave.
At November 4 2022, we had granted Indefinite Leave to Remain to 6,314 people under ACRS pathway 1.
Work is underway to assure information relating to all the individuals relocated under the ARAP and ACRS on case working systems. Once this work concludes, statistics on both schemes - including the number of people resettled under each - will be included in future editions of the Immigration Statistics.
More information on the number of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain issued to Afghans resettling under the ARAP or ACRS can be viewed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many successful applications under the Afghan Citizen Resettlement Scheme were made in the UK.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will provide up to 20,000 women, children, and others at risk with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK. The scheme does not have an application process. Instead, eligible people will be referred for resettlement to the UK through one of three referral pathways.
We are continuing the process to grant Indefinite Leave to Remain to all eligible individuals who arrived during the evacuation: officials have already registered over 13,000 applications for resettlement from Afghans in the UK, with biometric residence permits being issued accordingly. In the meantime, applicants remain eligible to work and access services under their continuing leave.
At November 4 2022, we had granted Indefinite Leave to Remain to 6,314 people under ACRS pathway 1.
Work is underway to assure information relating to all the individuals relocated under the ARAP and ACRS on case working systems. Once this work concludes, statistics on both schemes - including the number of people resettled under each - will be included in future editions of the Immigration Statistics.
More information on the number of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain issued to Afghans resettling under the ARAP or ACRS can be viewed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data/afghan-resettlement-programme-operational-data
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government will make an assessment of the potential merits of allocating additional funding to local authorities to improve street safety, such as additional funding for the maintenance of street lighting.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The Government is providing local authorities with additional funding to improve street safety through the Safer Streets Fund.
Over the first four rounds of the Safer Streets Fund, £120 million has been awarded to local projects to prevent crime through measures such as improved street lighting.
Local authorities have been eligible to bid for funding since Round Two of the Fund. All rounds of funding are subject to independent evaluation, which is vital to understand what is effective at improving street safety and how future Government investment should be targeted.
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department is providing the Metropolitan Police with extra resources to target violent offenders and remove knives and dangerous weapons from circulation.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
This Government is committed to tackling violent crime and making our streets safer, which is why we are giving the police and their partners the resources they need to do so.
To support the prevention of violence in London, we have allocated the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) c.£33.7m since 2019, including a c.£12.6m allocation for this financial year (2022/23). The VRU also received an additional investment of £5.5m in 2021/22 to deliver specific, highly targeted interventions to vulnerable young people.
The London VRU delivers multiple initiatives that are projected to support over 5,300 young people in the capital next year. This includes locally delivered activity in all 32 boroughs, including Ilford’s borough of Redbridge, where the London VRU have used Home Office funding to make a £145,000 investment into the “Redbridge Inclusion and Alternative Activities Hub”, which targets support, mentoring, and diversion to those young people identified as being at risk of involvement in violent crime.
We are also providing additional funding to enable the Metropolitan Police to increase enforcement activity where most violence occurs, through our Grip programme (previously known as Surge). The Metropolitan Police have been allocated approximately £50.9m over the last three years, including £7.9m for this financial year (2022/23) for Grip. Through this programme, the Metropolitan Police are delivering data-driven, targeted visible patrols to suppress violence where it is most concentrated.
Grip and VRU funding are provided in addition to the commitment to increase the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000 by March 2023. As of 30 June 2022, the MPS has recruited an additional 2,952 uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers.
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle violent crime in Ilford.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
This Government is committed to tackling violent crime and making our streets safer, which is why we are giving the police and their partners the resources they need to do so.
To support the prevention of violence in London, we have allocated the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) c.£33.7m since 2019, including a c.£12.6m allocation for this financial year (2022/23). The VRU also received an additional investment of £5.5m in 2021/22 to deliver specific, highly targeted interventions to vulnerable young people.
The London VRU delivers multiple initiatives that are projected to support over 5,300 young people in the capital next year. This includes locally delivered activity in all 32 boroughs, including Ilford’s borough of Redbridge, where the London VRU have used Home Office funding to make a £145,000 investment into the “Redbridge Inclusion and Alternative Activities Hub”, which targets support, mentoring, and diversion to those young people identified as being at risk of involvement in violent crime.
We are also providing additional funding to enable the Metropolitan Police to increase enforcement activity where most violence occurs, through our Grip programme (previously known as Surge). The Metropolitan Police have been allocated approximately £50.9m over the last three years, including £7.9m for this financial year (2022/23) for Grip. Through this programme, the Metropolitan Police are delivering data-driven, targeted visible patrols to suppress violence where it is most concentrated.
Grip and VRU funding are provided in addition to the commitment to increase the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000 by March 2023. As of 30 June 2022, the MPS has recruited an additional 2,952 uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers.
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to support the Violence Reduction Unit to help support community initiatives aimed at preventing violence crime.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
This Government is committed to tackling violent crime and making our streets safer, which is why we are giving the police and their partners the resources they need to do so.
To support the prevention of violence in London, we have allocated the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) c.£33.7m since 2019, including a c.£12.6m allocation for this financial year (2022/23). The VRU also received an additional investment of £5.5m in 2021/22 to deliver specific, highly targeted interventions to vulnerable young people.
The London VRU delivers multiple initiatives that are projected to support over 5,300 young people in the capital next year. This includes locally delivered activity in all 32 boroughs, including Ilford’s borough of Redbridge, where the London VRU have used Home Office funding to make a £145,000 investment into the “Redbridge Inclusion and Alternative Activities Hub”, which targets support, mentoring, and diversion to those young people identified as being at risk of involvement in violent crime.
We are also providing additional funding to enable the Metropolitan Police to increase enforcement activity where most violence occurs, through our Grip programme (previously known as Surge). The Metropolitan Police have been allocated approximately £50.9m over the last three years, including £7.9m for this financial year (2022/23) for Grip. Through this programme, the Metropolitan Police are delivering data-driven, targeted visible patrols to suppress violence where it is most concentrated.
Grip and VRU funding are provided in addition to the commitment to increase the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000 by March 2023. As of 30 June 2022, the MPS has recruited an additional 2,952 uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers.