Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she intends to publish the findings of the follow-up audit of reports made under Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules 2001.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The results of the audit of Rule 35 processes are being considered at present. We will consider how best to make them available in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what the effect has been of changes in the security situation and displacement of people following recent attacks by Boko Haram on UK Government-funded programmes for education in northern Nigeria.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The UK has provided £1 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to deliver food, safe water, clothes, shelter material and other basic necessities to those people displaced following attacks by Boko Haram.
A further £1 million of UK funding is committed to the Nigerian Government’s “Safe Schools Initiative” to help protect children at school in North East Nigeria and provide schooling to children displaced by the violence. The UK has also contributed £1.7 million to the UN’s and EU’s relief efforts.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether the UK will provide observers for the forthcoming general election in Nigeria.
Answered by Lord Swire
Presidential and gubernatorial Elections are due to take place in Nigeria on 14 and 28 February. We continue to call on all leaders and political parties to use their influence to ensure that elections are credible, transparent and free from violence. Approximately 50 personnel from the UK Missions in Abuja and Lagos also plan to observe in 14 States, including the Abuja Federal Capital Territory, for election polls on both 14 and 28 February. We are also planning to contribute 6 Local Short Term Observers to the European Union Election Observation Mission.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent steps her Department has taken to ensure a rapid humanitarian response for refugees displaced as a result of violence carried out by Boko Haram.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The UK has provided £1 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to deliver food, safe water, clothes, shelter material and other basic necessities to those people displaced following attacks by Boko Haram.
A further £1 million of UK funding is committed to the Nigerian Government’s “Safe Schools Initiative” to help protect children at school in North East Nigeria and provide schooling to children displaced by the violence. The UK has also contributed £1.7 million to the UN’s and EU’s relief efforts.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what discussions her Department has had with the Nigerian government about protection for humanitarian workers in northern Nigeria.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The UK is in regular dialogue with the Government of Nigeria about support to victims of Boko Haram. This includes protection for humanitarian workers in northern Nigeria.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons her Department decided that further submissions on asylum and human rights cases must be made in person in Liverpool; with which bodies her Department consulted before making that decision; and what assistance her Department will provide to help individuals travel to Liverpool to make such submissions.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The changes are designed to speed up decision-making on further submissions, enabling us to grant protection more quickly to those who need it and remove those who have no right to be here.
Centralising the process will allow us to make decisions within five working days in most cases. The new process applies only to failed asylum seekers whose claims have already been refused, and their appeal rights exhausted.
There have been extensive internal discussions with policy experts, legal advisers and operational staff during the development of this policy. We believe that early public consultation would have led to a rush of further
submissions, but we notified the National Asylum Stakeholder Forum in advance of the changes. There is already a nationwide requirement for those who claimed asylum before March 2007 to lodge further submissions in Liverpool.
Travel costs will not be reimbursed. In exceptional cases where a person is genuinely unable to travel to Liverpool, for example due to a disability or severe illness, there is provision to accept further submissions by post.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for bail made under Schedules 2 and 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 or section 36(4) of the UK Borders Act 2007 were made to (a) an immigration officer, (b) the Secretary of State for the Home Department and (c) the First-Tier Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office does not record bail applications in a reportable format that shows the schedule under which each application was submitted. In order to extract this data each applicant’s Home Office file would need to be
interrogated to locate the paper copy of the bail application.
Therefore, to provide the data as requested would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the (a) number of resettlement places that EU member states are offering Syrian refugees and (b) EU's response to other aspects of the Syrian refugee crisis.
Answered by Tobias Ellwood
The UK Government believes that humanitarian aid and actively seeking to end the conflict in Syria are the most effective ways for the UK to help the majority of refugees, rather than increasing resettlement. That is why the UK has donated £700 million to support refugees in the region, making us the second largest bilateral donor after the USA. We have made our position on this clear in relevant discussions with other EU Member States. EU Member States have responded to the crisis in different ways; it is right that the international community should consider all available means to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions his Department has had with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees following the introduction of visa requirements for Syrian nationals entering Lebanon.
Answered by Tobias Ellwood
I discussed the issue of Syrian refugees with the Lebanese Prime Minister and the Speaker for Parliament when I visited Lebanon in December. I paid tribute to Lebanon’s generosity towards over 1.1 million registered refugees, and made clear that the UK’s support for Lebanon, which has now reached around £160 million since the start of the Syria crisis, will continue. Following the announcement of new border regulations by the Lebanese authorities, our Ambassador in Lebanon, alongside EU partners, reiterated to the Lebanese Prime Minister the international community’s concern that the new border regulations should provide adequately for the most vulnerable humanitarian cases. UK officials have also shared our concerns about the situation with the Lebanon Country Director of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people under the age of 18 have been returned to (a) their country of nationality and (b) a third country by her Department in the last 12 months.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The table below shows the removals and voluntary departures of people under 18 by destination for the 12 month period to September 2014, the latest date for which figures have been published.
| Removals and voluntary departures, people aged under 18, by destination | ||||
| 12 months to year ending September 2014 | Destination: Country of nationality | Destination: Other | Total | |
| Total enforced removals | 60 | 30 | 90 | |
| Total refused entry at port and subsequently departed | 370 | 749 | 1,119 | |
| Total voluntary departures | 1,776 | 555 | 2,331 | |
These figures are provisional and may subsequently differ when the tables are revised, due to data cleansing and data matching exercises that take place after the extracts are taken.
The Home Office publishes quarterly and annual statistics on the number of persons removed or departed voluntarily from the UK within Immigration Statistics. The data on removals and voluntary departures are readily available
in the latest release, Immigration Statistics: July – September 2014, from the GOV.UK website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/series/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release.