Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 15 November to Question 458 on Immigration: Families, if he will make an estimate of the (a) number of family reunion cases that have been expedited to decision-makers in the last year and (b) average time taken for decisions to be made after they have been expedited in the last year.

The Government’s refugee family reunion policy provides a safe and legal route to bring families together.

Information regarding processing times is not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

We are committed to improving and speeding up processing times for family reunion applications. We are reviewing processes to streamline decision making to enable us to provide a better service to our customers.

We prioritise all applications where the application has been made by an unaccompanied child, under the age of 18. We will also prioritise applications where there is an evidenced urgent or compelling reason.