Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police officers in managerial roles have faced disciplinary action as a result of inquiries into Wayne Couzens.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The IOPC carried out a number of investigations into incidents related to Wayne Couzens, including the handling of indecent exposure allegations against him and sharing offensive content via social media.
As a result, a total of eleven officers from multiple forces faced disciplinary action; ten of these were constables and one was a sergeant.
Seven of the officers were found to have committed gross misconduct at proceedings and were dismissed, or would have been dismissed if still serving. Two officers received final written warnings and two officers received reflective practice.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the potential trauma for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children of being housed in hotels.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
We maintain that the best place for these children to be accommodated is within local authority care. As part of the national transfer scheme, the receiving local authority must provide suitable support for all children being moved into their care, including health care, irrespective of the child’s immigration status.
Asylum seekers have access to health and social care services from the point of arrival in the UK. The Home Office and its contractors work closely with the NHS, local authorities and non-governmental organisations to ensure that people can access the healthcare and support they need.
The Home Office also operates a Safeguarding Hub to support vulnerable individuals in accessing these services. In addition, the Home Office contracts Migrant Help to provide advice and guidance to asylum seekers should they have an issue with their accommodation or support, and for signposting to health and welfare services. Asylum seekers can access Migrant Help 24/7, every day of the year by a freephone telephone number, via an online chat, or completing an email enquiry form, both of which can be accessed free of charge on the Migrant Help website. Interpreting and translation services are available through Migrant Help when the need arises for asylum seekers to raise any queries or concerns.
The information you have requested of the Home Office is not held in a reportable format.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied children in temporary accommodation have been provided with healthcare support in the last 12 months.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
We maintain that the best place for these children to be accommodated is within local authority care. As part of the national transfer scheme, the receiving local authority must provide suitable support for all children being moved into their care, including health care, irrespective of the child’s immigration status.
Asylum seekers have access to health and social care services from the point of arrival in the UK. The Home Office and its contractors work closely with the NHS, local authorities and non-governmental organisations to ensure that people can access the healthcare and support they need.
The Home Office also operates a Safeguarding Hub to support vulnerable individuals in accessing these services. In addition, the Home Office contracts Migrant Help to provide advice and guidance to asylum seekers should they have an issue with their accommodation or support, and for signposting to health and welfare services. Asylum seekers can access Migrant Help 24/7, every day of the year by a freephone telephone number, via an online chat, or completing an email enquiry form, both of which can be accessed free of charge on the Migrant Help website. Interpreting and translation services are available through Migrant Help when the need arises for asylum seekers to raise any queries or concerns.
The information you have requested of the Home Office is not held in a reportable format.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made an assessment of the potential factors that contribute to teenage involvement in knife crime.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Home Office analysts have previously produced a report examining risk factors for serious violence (including weapons carrying) based on two UK-based longitudinal surveys of young people.
The report is available at the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d36d7fa40f0b604d8e5fe4b/analysis-of-indicators-of-serious-violence-horr110.pdf
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he plans to take to improve the performance of the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The DBS publishes its KPIs in the annual business plan. By the end of Quarter 3 2023/24, DBS expects to have met the 85% target for Basic and Standard checks. For Enhanced checks, the DBS aims to issue 80% of checks within 14 days. In quarter 2 2023/24, the average attainment was 77.2% (noting the 80% target was met on day 17).
An Enhanced check requires the DBS to send applications to the police for local data searches and local intelligence checks. Currently some police forces’ turnaround times have been affected by increased volumes of disclosure applications against original forecasts. To improve performance, extra funding has been provided to police forces to recruit more staff to service the additional demand for Enhanced DBS checks that is being seen across the regulated employment sector. The DBS is also working in collaboration with policing partners to enhance the quality of an enhanced criminal record check referral to improve turnaround times.
The DBS continues to modernise its services through the replacement of legacy IT systems and is working to deliver further digitisation of its disclosure products to further enhance performance outcomes.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to increase the mobility of skilled labour into the UK.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Our Points Based System enables the Government to prioritise the skills and talent we need to help our economy grow and support our NHS, while encouraging investment in, and protecting, our own resident workforce.
The UK’s immigration offer enables talented individuals to come to the UK through a variety of different routes, including Global Talent, Skilled Worker, and Global Business Mobility. More recently we have added the High Potential Individual route for recent graduates of top global universities to build their careers in the UK.
The Government will continue to use the levers provided by the Points Based system to allow highly skilled workers to come to the UK, while taking decisive action against those take advantage of the system at the expense of those who play by the rules.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to increase the mobility of young people between the UK and Europe.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The UK remain open to negotiating new Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS) arrangements with other countries and territories, including EU Member States. However, as each YMS is subject to a bilateral, reciprocal arrangement which also provides benefit to UK nationals, with the details agreed between the relevant parties, we are unable to disclose the status of negotiations as they occur.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has issued recent guidance to the organisers of festivals on the use of back-of-house drug testing licences.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
There is no safe way to take illegal drugs, which devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities. The Government recognises the potential benefits of ‘back-of-house' drug checking services in the night time economy, at festivals and similar events. Back-of-house services are those which test surrendered or confiscated drugs, but do not offer individuals the opportunity to submit drugs for testing, do not return any drugs to individuals or give individuals any information on the content of the drugs following testing.
Instead, they provide intelligence to law enforcement and healthcare agencies about the kinds of illicit drugs in circulation and they enable localised public alerts if toxic or otherwise dangerous drugs are detected so that anyone at risk can dispose of those drugs in amnesty bins. This type of service does not encourage drug taking, recognising that all illicit drugs are harmful and that there is no safe way to take them.
No recent guidance has been issued to festival organisers. Organisations wishing to deliver back-of-house services have always been able to apply for a Home Office controlled drug licence and we continue to encourage potential applicants to plan ahead to ensure that they apply for a licence in good time for the festival season next year.
Guidance on applying for a Home Office controlled drug licence can be found at the following link: Controlled drugs: domestic licences - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of his Department's average response time to correspondence from Birmingham, Hall Green constituents.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We do not hold data about response times for correspondence from individual customers. The information could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps his Department has taken to help support the West Midlands Police to prevent car theft in Birmingham.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is committed to tackling vehicle crime.
The Criminal Justice Bill, introduced to Parliament on 14 November, proposes new offences to possess, import, make, adapt, supply or offer to supply an electronic device for use in vehicle theft. This proposed new legislation will make it easier for police to prevent and tackle the theft of vehicles.
The Home Office is working closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group, chaired by ACC Jennifer Sims, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime, to take forward a programme of work to prevent and reduce vehicle crime nationally. This includes training police officers on methods used to steal vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles and working with industry to prevent theft. West Midlands Police is represented on the Working Group.
A network of vehicle crime leads has been established in every police force in England and Wales, ensuring forces share information about emerging trends in vehicle crime and are better able to tackle regional issues.
The Government is pleased to be able to say that through our successful uplift programme, we recruited over 20,000 additional officers and have a record number of officers across forces in England and Wales. 1966 officers have been allocated to West Midlands Police.