Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what was the average waiting time at UK airport border control in each of the last twelve months.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Resource and staffing requirements at every port are continually reviewed by Border Force who work closely with port operators to ensure resources are deployed flexibly as and when they are required.
Performance against our passenger wait time SLA can be found in Border Force Transparency data available at:
Border Force transparency data: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/border-force-transparency-data-q4-2021
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Civil Service staff have been seconded to the Passport Office to resolve application backlogs; and how much those secondments have cost the public purse.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Her Majesty’s Passport Office routinely uses flexible resource from HMRC to support with peaks in passport demand. In May 2022, 82 full-time equivalents from HMRC were supporting passport services.
Staffing costs, including the use of flexible resources from other government departments, are met by passport fee income.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what is the total cost incurred for the flight that was scheduled to take asylum seekers to Rwanda on 14 June 2022.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The costs of our broken asylum system are at a 20 year record high, currently costing the UK taxpayer over £1.5bn a year, with £4.7 million a day being spent on hotels alone. This cannot continue – and the partnership with Rwanda is a key part of our plans to reform the system and put an end to the unsustainable costs which impact the taxpayer.
The Government’s efforts to facilitate entirely legitimate and legal returns of people who have entered the UK illegally are too often frustrated by late challenges submitted hours before the flight. These claims are very often baseless and entirely without merit, but are given full legal consideration which can lead to removal being rescheduled.
Costs for individual flights will vary based on a number of different factors and are regularly reviewed to ensure that best value for money is balanced against the need to remove those individuals with no right to remain in the UK.
We do not routinely disclose commercial or operational information relating to individual charter flights.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what is the total cost of keeping individuals notified of removal to Rwanda but not relocated on 14 June 2022 in immigration detention.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
All individuals who were not relocated on 14 June 2022 had undertaken dangerous journeys across the Channel and had been detained since their arrival in the UK.
The Home Office publishes statistics on immigration detention in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release ’. This includes data on people:
Information on the average cost per night to hold an individual in immigration detention can be found at Migration Transparency data. As at Quarter 1 2022, the average cost per night to hold an individual in immigration detention was £107.23. The average cost per night is not impacted by the immigration circumstances of those in detention and no new accommodation has been opened to hold those who were not relocated on 14 June.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many individuals notified of removal to Rwanda but not relocated on 14 June 2022 were placed in immigration detention since their arrival in the UK.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
All individuals who were not relocated on 14 June 2022 had undertaken dangerous journeys across the Channel and had been detained since their arrival in the UK.
The Home Office publishes statistics on immigration detention in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release ’. This includes data on people:
Information on the average cost per night to hold an individual in immigration detention can be found at Migration Transparency data. As at Quarter 1 2022, the average cost per night to hold an individual in immigration detention was £107.23. The average cost per night is not impacted by the immigration circumstances of those in detention and no new accommodation has been opened to hold those who were not relocated on 14 June.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passport applications processed by her Department missed the 10-week processing target in each year since 2015.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic.
Between March and May, over 90% of applications processed were completed within six weeks, with approximately 98.5% completed within ten weeks.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many UK passport applications her Department processed in each quarter since 2015.
Answered by Kevin Foster
I would refer the Rt Hon Member to the published transparency data which she can find via the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-passport-office-data-q4-2021
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many UK passport applications her Department processed in each quarter since 2015.
Answered by Kevin Foster
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passport applications processed by her Department missed the 10-week processing target in each year since 2015.
Answered by Kevin Foster
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether spending on the UK-Rwanda Migration Partnership will be counted as Overseas Development Assistance.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
The funding for the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda is not from the Official Development Assistance budget.