Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of response times of police forces in providing disclosure and barring service checks; and what assessment she had made of the adequacy of provision of those services to service users.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
An Enhanced disclosure check shows full details of a person's criminal record such as cautions, reprimands, warnings, spent and unspent convictions. From the period April 2021 to December 2021, over 2.91m, enhanced checks were processed by the DBS of which 2.46m, (83%), were processed within 14 days. See link for published DBS performance information on Gov.uk:
DBS and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) have service level agreements in place with the 52 police forces that DBS work with to provide criminal record checks. This ensures service delivery against quality, output, cost, and timeliness measures. Individual forces are assessed monthly against these quantitative measures, with qualitative standards assessed through a Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) that provides a consistent approach to the quality of work done across all forces. See link below for information on the QAF:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/quality-assurance-framework-version-nine-qaf-v9
Performance against targets is monitored closely by the department.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she will take steps to ensure a fast track visa process for Ukrainians who have relatives resident in the UK.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Applications for the new Ukraine Family Scheme opened on Friday 4 March. Applications made under the Ukraine Family Scheme are being prioritised by UKVI, where further information is needed on an application, UKVI will contact the customer as a priority.
The Home Secretary announced that from Tuesday 15 March, Ukrainians with passports will no longer need to go to a Visa Application Centre to give their biometrics before they come to the UK.
Instead, once their application has been considered and the appropriate checks completed, they will receive direct notification that they are eligible for the scheme and can come to the UK.
Further information can be found on the GOV.UK webpage: Apply for a Ukraine Family Scheme visa - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the visa status is of Afghan staff who have worked, or currently work, for British non-governmental organisations.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Our Afghan relocation policy is one of the most generous in the world and has already supported over 8,000 directly employed former Afghan staff and their families to start new lives in the UK through the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
The Home Office is committed to providing protection for vulnerable people fleeing Afghanistan. The Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme will welcome up to 5,000 vulnerable Afghans to the UK, who have been forced to flee the country, in its first year, with up to a total of 20,000 in the long-term.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that students from Myanmar whose visas will soon expire will be able to temporarily stay into the UK until such time as it is safe for them to return to that country.
Answered by Kevin Foster
If an individual continues to meet the requirements of the Student route, they are open to apply to extend their permission. If they are no longer students, but wish to stay in the UK, they can apply for any alternative route for which they qualify.
For individuals who are unable to return to their home country due to the impact of the COVID pandemic they can apply under the Exceptional Assurance process which can be found at the following link;
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 29 June 2020 to Question 63287 on Home Office: Overseas Aid, how much her Department spent on the (a) End Violence against Children Programme, (b) modern slavery Victim Care Contract and (c) Modern Slavery Fund in each of the last three years; and what her Department's planned spending is for those projects in the next year.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Home Office Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend in each of the last three years for the End Violence against Children Programme and Modern Slavery Fund are published to https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/department/HO.
The Department spend on the ODA element of the Victim Care Contract (VCC) in 2018/19 was £5.8m and £9.24m in 2019/20 – We began reporting the ODA eligible proportion of VCC expenditure in 2018/19.
Home Office planned ODA spend in the next year is dependent on the outcome of the Spending Review.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which Official Development Assistance programmes that her Department funds focus on supporting women and girls.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The UK’s Gender Equality Act 2014 (an amendment to 2002 International Development Act, IDA), legally requires all overseas development funding to ‘meaningfully consider’ the impact of how it will contribute to reducing gender inequality.
The programmes that the Home Office funds that focus on supporting women and girls are the End Violence against Children Programme, the modern slavery Victim Care Contract, and the Modern Slavery Fund.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to clause 20 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, whether a timetable has been agreed for the (a) application, (b) interview and (c) appointment process to appoint a reviewer for the Prevent programme in order to achieve the 18-month timeframe set by that statute.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Government is committed to the Independent Review of Prevent and launched a full and open recruitment competition to appoint the next Independent Reviewer of Prevent on 27 April 2020. Applications closed on 22 June 2020. Interviews are due to take place in July. The successful candidate will be announced in due course.
We have included in the Counter Terrorism and Sentencing Bill a measure to remove the existing statutory deadline for the Review set out in the Counter Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 while maintaining the legislative commitment to undertake it. This is to ensure that the new Reviewer has sufficient time to complete the Review. The Government aims for the Review to be completed by August 2021.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when the Government will publish its response to the Transparency in Supply Chains consultation which closed in September 2019.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
In response to recommendations of the Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, (published on 22 May 2019), the Home Office ran a public consultation ahead of potential changes to section 54 (transparency in supply chains requirements) of the Modern Slavery Act. The consultation ran from 9 July to 17 September 2019 and sought views on a range of proposals intended to strengthen the reporting requirement. The Government is currently considering the findings of this consultation and will publish a response in due course.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to review the classification of drugs following the June 2019 recommendations of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government has considered the recommendations of the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s report of June 2019. We keep drug control under constant review and work in consultation with our independent experts, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), to consider any new evidence of misuse and harms.
Following any advice or recommendation from the ACMD, the Government will act to classify substances in the appropriate way, based on an assessment of harm or potential harms.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for asylum the Home Office has received from Uighurs since 2015; and what proportion of those applications have been successful.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Home Office is unable to report on how many applications for asylum from Chinese Uighurs it has received since 2015; and what proportion of those applications have been successful, as to obtain this information would require a manual trawl of records and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. We do, however, publish data on those who have been granted asylum in the UK, with main applicants broken down by country of nationality. The latest release, published 24th May 2019, can be found in tab as_01 at volume 1 of the quarterly Immigration Statistics release:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-march-2019/list-of-tables#asylum
The UK has a proud history of providing protection to those who need it, in accordance with our international obligations under the Refugee Convention and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Where someone establishes a well-founded fear of persecution or serious harm in their country they are normally granted protection and are not expected to return there.
Our assessment of the situation for Uighurs in China is set out in the relevant country policy and information note, which is available on the Gov.uk website
All asylum and human rights claims from Chinese nationals are carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with our international obligations. Each individual assessment is made against the background of the latest available country of origin information and any relevant caselaw.