Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how she plans to maintain the integrity of UK borders while fulfilling international obligations towards asylum seekers, in the context of evolving security risks.

All asylum and human rights claims are carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with our international obligations so that we do not remove anyone to a country where they would face persecution or serious harm. All asylum claimants are subject to mandatory security checks to confirm their identity and to link it to their biometric details for the purpose of immigration, security and criminality checks. These checks are critical to the delivery of a safe and secure immigration system.

The Home Office conducts mandatory identity and security checks on all irregular arrivals. We capture the given identity, and biometric (facial and fingerprint) data. This biographic and biometric data is checked and compared against relevant Home Office systems and police databases, including domestic and international data so we can establish whether the person is a known threat to public safety.

Checks are conducted by the Home Office for a number of purposes, primarily for effective immigration control, safeguarding national security, and preventing, detecting and investigating serious and organised crime.

Anyone convicted of a ‘particularly serious crime’, defined as being convicted by a final judgment and sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least 12 months, and are considered a danger to the UK, will be denied asylum and considered for removal from the UK.