Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent changes his Department has made to minimise the chance of errors occurring in relation to a person's immigration status.

The Home Office recognises the importance of good data quality to support its decision making and we are continuing to work to improve and assure both our historic and present data quality.

We are in the process of deploying a new immigration data platform and digital casework applications to each area of the immigration system, and we are improving the accuracy and completeness of records held on immigration databases through user training and rigorous quality assurance.

We have created a Chief Caseworker Unit within UK Visas and Immigration and a ‘safety valve’ mechanism within Immigration Enforcement to bolster caseworking expertise and ensure that caseworkers have a clear escalation route where they have a concern or require specialist guidance. This is in addition to a number of new working process trials to help reduce the number of refusal decisions overturned at appeal. In addition, we are increasing face to face engagement between staff and individuals in both immigration reporting centres and immigration removal centres to ensure that vulnerability issues are identified and managed at the earliest opportunity