Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will re-assess the procedures established to review the numbers of Syrians offered resettlement places in the UK as part of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme to ensure that the scheme is responsive to need.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Government is deeply concerned about the crisis in Syria, the suffering and hardship it is causing for millions of displaced Syrians in the region, and the strain it is placing on their host countries. Given the scale of the crisis,
we believe the most effective way to ensure the UK’s help has the greatest impact for displaced people and their host countries is through substantial humanitarian aid and actively seeking an end to the conflict so that refugees
can return to their homes and livelihoods safely. We have committed £700 million in response to the crisis, making us the second largest bilateral donor after the USA, and UK taxpayers' money is helping to support hundreds of
thousands of displaced people in the region, providing food, healthcare and essential supplies. Compared with aid, resettlement can only ever help a minority of those in need.
We launched the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation (VPR) scheme to complement our humanitarian aid efforts by offering protection in the UK to some of the most vulnerable refugees, who cannot be supported effectively in
the region. The scheme is based on need rather than fulfilling a quota, but we have said that we expect it to help several hundred people over three years, and we remain on track to deliver that commitment. We therefore have no current plans to change the way the scheme operates. However, we continue to monitor the situation in Syria and the surrounding region and work closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify the most
vulnerable people displaced by the conflict to ensure that the scheme remains responsive to need.
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 requests from broadcasters her Department has received to film (a) prisons and (b) immigration removal centres in the last five years; and how many such requests have been granted.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office does not have responsibility for prisons so requests for filming would be made to the Ministry of Justice.We do not have a central record of how many times broadcasters have requested to film immigration removal centres or how many times those requests have been granted.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how much has been paid by the Treasury Solicitor's Department in legal costs relating to the case of the Public Law Project v. The Secretary of State for Justice ([2014] EWHC 2365 (Admin)).
Answered by Robert Buckland
The only sums paid to date by the Treasury Solicitor’s Department are disbursements in the sum of £61,229.59. There are additional disbursements paid by the Ministry of Justice direct.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average cost of transferring a person between immigration removal centres is.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office has a contract with Tascor in respect of the transfer of immigration detainees between immigration removal centres. This is based on a rate per mile, the detail of which is commercially confidential.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much compensation her Department has paid for unlawfully detaining individuals under immigration powers in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The amounts paid by the Home Office in compensation following claims for unlawful detention were as follows:
2011-12 £4.5 million
2012-13 £5.0 million
2013-14 £4.8 million
It is not possible to provide similar information for earlier periods, as data are not held in the appropriate format and to extract them would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will halt any expansion of the immigration detention estate until the report from the inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration has been published.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Capacity of the detention estate is kept under rolling review. Decisions will continue to be made according to operational priorities.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the annual running costs of the immigration detention estate are.
Answered by James Brokenshire
In 2013/14 the total cost of running the Immigration Detention Estate was £164.4m. This includes all costs, including running costs, rent, depreciation and other costs, for all Immigration Removal Centres, Short Term Holding Facilities
and amounts paid for spaces in the main prisons estate.
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 Syrian nationals have been returned under the Dublin Regulation to (a) Bulgaria, (b) Italy and (c) Greece in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The number of Syrian nationals transferred to Bulgaria, Greece and Italy under the Dublin Convention and the later Dublin II Regulations, because those States are responsible for examining their asylum claims, is shown in the
table below:
2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | |
Bulgaria | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | * |
Greece | * | * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Italy | 0 | 0 | * | * | 12 |
*represents a figure below 5.
The figures quoted have been derived from management information and are therefore provisional and subject to change. This information has not been quality assured under National Statistics protocols.
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 assessment he has made of the ease with which Syrian nationals can cross the Lebanese border.
Answered by Tobias Ellwood
Lebanon is currently hosting over 1.3million refugees and has shown enormous generosity in welcoming those in need which the UK has consistently welcomed.
The Lebanese cabinet agreed new guidelines on Syrian refugees on 23 October saying that new arrivals would be restricted to "special humanitarian cases". The Government of Lebanon is also trying to reduce numbers of refugees already inside Lebanon, partly by encouraging displaced Syrians to return to their or another country. We assess that current restrictions have resulted in a reduction of 75% in those entering Lebanon over the last month.
The UK continues to urge Lebanon not to return Syrian refugees as we do not judge it safe to do so at present.
The UK has so far committed £140m in humanitarian and development assistance to Lebanon since the start of the Syria crisis, much of which is to assist with 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 were moved between different immigration removal centres in each of the last six months.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The information requested cannot be provided without collation and examination of individual records at disproportionate cost.