Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2025 to Question 76596 and the Answer of 12 January 2023 to Question 119101 on Guantanamo Bay: Closures, what assessment she has made of the potential impact on the UK's international human rights obligations of the change in her Department's policy on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Hon Member will be aware that it has been the stated intention of the US administration since January 2025 to expand the facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to serve as a large-scale migration detention centre. As stated in the answer to Question 76596, that remains a matter for the US.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2025 to Question 76596 and the Answer of 12 January 2023 to Question 119101 on Guantanamo Bay: Closures, what discussions did her Department have with its US counterparts ahead of the decision to change the UK Government's policy on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Hon Member will be aware that it has been the stated intention of the US administration since January 2025 to expand the facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to serve as a large-scale migration detention centre. As stated in the answer to Question 76596, that remains a matter for the US.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2025 to Question 76596 and the Answer of 12 January 2023 to Question 119101 on Guantanamo Bay: Closures, which Ministers were involved in the decision to change the UK Government's policy on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Hon Member will be aware that it has been the stated intention of the US administration since January 2025 to expand the facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to serve as a large-scale migration detention centre. As stated in the answer to Question 76596, that remains a matter for the US.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2025 to Question 76596 and the Answer of 12 January 2023 to Question 119101 on Guantanamo Bay: Closures, on what date did her Department change its policy on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Hon Member will be aware that it has been the stated intention of the US administration since January 2025 to expand the facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to serve as a large-scale migration detention centre. As stated in the answer to Question 76596, that remains a matter for the US.
Asked by: Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many individuals have had their No Recourse to Public Funds status withdrawn since July 2024, broken down by month.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on changes of conditions on GOV.UK within the Immigration and protection data: July to September 2025, available in tabs CoC_01 to CoC_07 of the Migration Transparency Data dataset.
When an individual is considered for assessment of Change of Conditions, various No Recourse to Public Funds conditions are checked, with ‘destitution’ being one of these conditions.
The specific information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to assess the importance of maintaining the temporary shortage list status of dancers and choreographers (standard occupational classification code 3414); and what assessment they have made of the impact of recent changes to salary thresholds and visa restrictions on professional dance companies and the UK performing arts industry.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
We have commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review the new Temporary Shortage List (TSL), which provides limited exemptions from the skills threshold. The MAC are due to report in the summer and we will consider their recommendations at that time.
An impact assessment of changes to the Skilled Worker immigration route has been published alongside the statement of changes.
There are also provisions within the immigration system for dancers to use the Temporary Work – Creative Worker and Visitor routes.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the regulatory framework governing VoIP services.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
As the independent regulator for telecommunications, Ofcom is responsible for making regulatory decisions in the fixed telecoms sector, including on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
However, while we are engaging with Ofcom and stakeholders on this issue, including with regard to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) migration to VoIP, the Department has not made any formal assessment of the effectiveness of the regulatory framework governing VoIP services.
VoIP uses fibre cables which are far more resilient than copper and offers consumers better quality calls, improved flexibility, and better protections against nuisance and scam calls. The Government is committed to ensuring that any risks from the industry-led migration from the PSTN to VoIP are mitigated for everyone. The Government secured additional safeguards to protect the vulnerable and landline dependent in November 2024. These include measures to identify the vulnerable and telecare users, timely and repeated communications, free engineer visits, and providing a battery back-up where appropriate.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to her Department publishing an open opportunity contract on 6 January 2026 entitled Home Office Returns Reintegration Programme (HORRP) - Phase 3 - 2026 – 2028, whether the funding to support legal migration pathways and recruitment in third countries will include migration to Europe.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
Support provided by the HO Returns Reintegration Programme is only in relation to potentially migrating to a third country and not back to the UK.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for government’s most important contracts, Data for July to September 2025, published on 25 December 2025, what the Key Performance Indicators are for the (a) Digitise Delivery Support contract with DELOITTE MCS LTD and (b) QAT74 End to End Testing contract with LA International Computer Consultants Limited.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
For Digitise Delivery Support contract with DELOITTE MCS LTD performance is managed through Balanced score card performance process by the Migration Border Tech Portfolio business. Performance assessed the supplier against themes :
- Performance to pay process
- Service requests and onboarding
- Delivery of the outcome of the various roles; project management, partnering behaviours and value add services and social value.
For QAT74 End to End Testing contract with LA International Computer Consultants Limited, the KPIs are :
- Partnering Behaviours
- Delivery
- Value Add
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds Central and Headingley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to improve the quality of initial decision-making in asylum cases.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
We have adopted a plan to improve the quality of asylum casework, this includes improved training for decision makers and feedback loops to ensure we are learning from appeals to get decisions right first time.
Asylum decisions are subject to stringent quality checks to ensure that claims are properly considered, decisions are sound, and protection is granted to those who genuinely need it.
Each quality assessment will rate the impact of any casework or process errors against the agreed marking standards. Asylum decision quality data is published in the ADQ_01A table found in Migration transparency data - GOV.UK of the Immigration and Protection data.
Quality assessments must adhere to Home Office interview and decision standards. These standards are shared with Decision Makers to improve understanding of quality scores when receiving feedback.