Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of Foreign National Offender Asylum Interview Records were conducted within her Department's target in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The information requested is not available from published statistics. There is no individual Key Performance Indicator relating to conducting asylum interviews for foreign national offenders.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much the resettlement grant under the Facilitated Return Scheme was in each year since 2015.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Information requested about the Facilitated Return Scheme since 2015 is not available from published statistics.
Information on the number of foreign national offenders that were returned from the UK under the Facilitated Return Scheme is available from Table FNO_09 in Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of contracting (a) rehabilitation, (b) therapy and (c) other similar services for frontline staff.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has in place an evidence-based Health & Wellbeing Strategy with annual performance targets which applies to all employees.
This strategy includes the provision of an Occupational Health Service and Employee Assistance Programme which offers counselling services and other support in accordance with clinical need.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has taken recent steps to ensure that fire service employers hold discussions with representatives of the Fire Brigades Union on a settlement to avoid potential industrial action.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
Setting firefighter pay is the responsibility of employers, working through the National Joint Council: the Home Office does not fund firefighter pay.
A significantly increased 5% pay offer has been made by employers and I hope that industrial action can be avoided.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how long is the average wait for applicants to the online pathway of the Ukraine Family Scheme Visa between uploading the supporting documents and UKVI contacting the visa applicant about the decision.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office does not capture the average wait times for applicants to the online pathway of the Ukraine Family Scheme, which could include additional steps like contacting applicants to request further information to progress their case.
To capture these numbers would require a manual trawl of data and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the current Minister of State for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service has met representatives of the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service; and what plans he has to meet those representatives in the future.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
I have recently received an invitation from the Chief Fire Officer of Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service, but no meeting has yet been arranged.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Minister of State for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service has met representatives of the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
I have recently received an invitation from the Chief Fire Officer of Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service, but no meeting has yet been arranged.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when he plans to publish the Government's cross-departmental alcohol strategy.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government is currently working closely with a range of partners to develop a new alcohol strategy which we aim to publish early next year.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many meetings his Department had with representatives of the alcohol industry in (a) 2017 and (b) 2018 to date.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government considers it important to meet with all stakeholders in working to tackle alcohol-related harms. Home Office officials regularly meet with representatives of the alcohol industry. In developing a new alcohol strategy officials will continue to meet with representatives of the alcohol industry and with many other stakeholders.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to criminalise the practice of gay conversion therapy.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
This Government is clear that a person’s sexual orientation is not an illness to be cured and we are not prepared to see such activity continue either in the regulated professional sector or outside of it.
The Government has already taken steps to prevent the practice of gay conversion therapy in the UK. We have worked with the main registration and accreditation bodies for psychotherapy and counselling practitioners to develop a Memorandum of Understanding to put a stop to this bogus treatment.
We do not currently have plans to introduce new criminal offences for practising gay conversion therapy, but we are keeping the issue under close review.
In 2017, the Government Equalities Office carried out a survey of the experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the UK, which included several questions about gay conversion therapy. The survey received more than 100,000 responses, making it one of the largest surveys of LGBT people’s experiences ever conducted.
The results of the survey are currently being analysed and the Government’s response will be published later this year. Due to the significant response rate to the survey, we believe this data will give us a much better view of the scale and significance of conversion therapy in the UK, and it will allow us to investigate further the steps that Government as a whole could take to address this issue.