Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the correspondence sent by her Department to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak on 28 February 2023, reference MPAM/0522035/23, what the technical issue mentioned in that correspondence was; what steps her Department plans to take to rectify that technical issue; and how many other applications have been affected by that technical issue as of 8 March 2023.

The overwhelming majority of applications do not require any technical assistance. Where an application has encountered an IT issue, the Operational Caseworking teams are able to escalate immediately to the relevant IT Support team. Although there have previously been some delays to resolving issues, substantial progress has been made in strengthening processes and procedures in this area, not only to fix the immediate issue affecting an application case, but also to proactively address any root cause technical issues, and fix them as they are identified.

With regard to the case referred to in the correspondence sent under MPAM/0522035/23, work continues to resolve the IT issue affecting this case so it can be progressed and concluded.