Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 5 October (HL Deb, col 407), what discussions Public Health England has had with comparable public health bodies in other countries which have restarted refugee resettlement about how they assessed the public health implications of doing so in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Due to coronavirus (COVID-19) related restrictions and pressures, both overseas and in the UK, it is not currently possible to undertake any refugee resettlement activity. We continue to evaluate how to respond given these restrictions and pressures, but we expect to resume refugee resettlement activity when safe to do so.

We are continuing to engage with international and domestic partners on plans to restart arrivals, including Public Health England who, in turn, are engaged with other Public Health bodies, both in the UK and in other countries.

To clarify, guidance from PHE is just one of the factors our plans to restart resettlement arrivals are dependent on. Other factors include the lifting of restrictions imposed by the governments of host refugee countries, local authority and central government capacity, and recovery of the asylum system from the impact of COVID-19.