Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average end-to-end time was for applications to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) processed by the Metropolitan Police Force in each year since 2010; and whether her Department makes financial support available for people who are unable to begin work pending a DBS certificate.

I refer the Rt Hon. Member to the answer I gave on 14 December 2015, UIN 18936. The DBS regularly publishes performance statistics of police disclosure units against the service level agreements. This can be accessed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dbs-dataset-5-police-disclosure-unit-performance

In the circumstance that an applicant is unable to begin work due to the length of time taken by a police disclosure unit to complete their checks, it would be a matter for the police force in question to consider the provision of a financial redress.