Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of delays in providing short term visas to visiting academics who are on international research commissioned by UK universities; and if she will make a statement.

Performance has been impacted by a significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including the unprecedented amount of correspondence about the situation in Afghanistan and more recently in Ukraine.

The Department continues to prioritise enquiries related to Ukraine and recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in other cases. MPs can escalate urgent and compassionate cases via the team at Portcullis House.

The Department continues to recruit additional resources and has recently been loaned staff from non-operational areas to assist in clearing the backlogs. A detailed recovery plan to support a return to an acceptable service standard is being prepared.

Data about intake and performance in answering Hon. Members correspondence are published quarterly with the latest Quarter available at:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/customer-service-operations-data-q1-2022

We do not publish average waiting times for substantive responses to correspondence.