Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of people from Sudan applying for entry clearance to the UK have requested that (a) the biometric enrolment process be excused and (b) the application be predetermined since April 2023.

The Home Office does not routinely publish data on the number of applications that are excused from the biometric enrolment process and those that are pre-determined due to applicants undertaking unsafe journeys.

Biometrics, in the form of fingerprints and facial images, underpin the current UK immigration system to support identity assurance and suitability checks on foreign nationals who are subject to immigration control. They enable comprehensive checks to be made against immigration and criminality records to identify those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, immigration controls, or are likely to breach our laws if they are allowed to come to the UK.

The threshold in the unsafe journeys guidance for excusing the requirement to attend a visa application centre is deliberately set at a high-level because of the need to protect the integrity of the UK border. If we do not know about a person's identity we are less able to assess the risks they may pose to the public. This is why we would only excuse applicants from being required to attend a visa application centre to enrol their biometrics in circumstances that are so compelling as to be exceptional.