Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to provide support to people who are required to visit a third country for biometric checks to apply for a UK visa.

An individual must, in most circumstances, provide their biometrics, in the form of a facial image and fingerprints, when applying for a visa or a biometric immigration document before they come to the UK. This is to ensure we can confirm their identity and fix them to it, and to conduct background security checks to establish whether they pose a threat to public safety.

The Home Office contracts two commercial partners, VFS and TLS Contact, to operate its global network of Visa Application Centres (VACs) who provide application centres in over 230 locations across 138 countries. It is not economically viable for UKVI to have VACs in every city or country across the world and it may not be sustainable to open new locations where volumes are lower.

Individuals who are unable to travel to a VAC should not normally make an application until they are able to do so. We have a robust escalation process in place for very exceptional cases where a customer has a compelling reason why they are unable to travel to a VAC.