Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress the Government has made on integrating vulnerable refugee Syrian families into society.

This Government is committed to ensuring that refugees can take positive steps towards integration as they rebuild their lives in the UK. All refugees in the UK have access to mainstream benefits and services to enable their integration; and we are working across Government to ensure services meet the needs of refugees.

Local authorities resettling Syrian and other refugee families through the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) are provided with funding from the Government to support integration, including to enable access to additional language tuition. The VPRS is being evaluated through a programme of quantitative data work and qualitative research with refugees and key delivery partners. A key focus of this work is examining integration progress to learn what works.

More broadly, the Government published the Integrated Communities Action plan in February 2019, which includes a commitment to increase integration support for all refugees in the UK. We will focus on supporting refugees with English language, employment, mental health, and cultural orientation to life in the UK.