Written Statements

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Written Statements

Wednesday 4 December 2024

SEND Capital Funding

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

Today I am announcing £740 million of capital investment in 2025-26 to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision (AP). This is alongside the previously announced additional high needs revenue funding, which will increase by almost £1 billion in 2025-26, compared with 2024-25.

This new funding can be used to adapt classrooms to be more accessible for children with SEND, to create specialist facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more intensive support adapted to suit the pupils’ needs, and create special schools places for pupils with the most complex needs.

Today’s funding announcement is part of the broader £6.7 billion capital settlement for 2025-26 so that we can deliver this Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life. Ensuring schools have the high-quality and sustainable buildings they need is a key part of that.

Allocations of this funding to local authorities are expected to be published by the end of March.

We have also confirmed that we will not enter into any more safety valve agreements for councils in financial deficits, pending wider reform of the whole system to prioritise early intervention, properly supporting councils to bring their finances under control. Over time, over 30 local authorities have been supported to manage their high needs budgets through the safety valve programme. We will continue to work with LAs with safety valve agreements to deliver their plans.

[HCWS282]

eVisas

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)]

The Home Office is developing a border and immigration system that is more digital and streamlined. E-visas—which over 6 million people have been successfully using for several years—are a key part of this transformation and will enhance people’s experience and increase the immigration system’s security and efficiency. We understand that the move away from physical documents represents a change and that this will be a significant adjustment for many. For this reason, e-visas have been, and continue to be, rolled out incrementally and with support available to help customers use the e-visa and online services. The majority of biometric residence permit cards are due to expire on 31 December 2024 and customers are being supported to move to e-visas. We welcome feedback on how we can improve our services and continue to support customers through the roll-out.

Benefits of e-visas

It is important to recognise that there are significant benefits from e-visas. Creating a UK visas and immigration account is free and straightforward, and it does not change or remove a customer’s underlying immigration status. For example, if someone has leave to remain until September 2025 but their biometric residence card expires on 31 December 2024, their leave until September 2025 is unaffected. E-visas are secure and cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with, unlike a physical document. They can be accessed anywhere and in real time.

Using their UK Visas and Immigration account, customers can share relevant information about their status securely with third parties, such as employers, landlords, travel operators or private service providers. Customers will also benefit from the secure automated access that Government Departments and partners, including the Department for Work and Pensions, the NHS, Border Force and carriers, will have to their immigration status, streamlining processes and access to key services.

An e-visa is like an electronic version of a BRP and is used to view and prove status, for example to work or to rent a home. The e-visa is created by the Home Office for each customer accurately to reflect their immigration status, in line with their physical document. The e-visa is then accessed by the customer setting up a UKVI account with their own log-in—a process which has been shown to be very straightforward in the vast majority of cases.

New statistics we are publishing today have shown that over 3.1 million people, mostly with BRPs, have successfully made the transition to e-visas from March to November this year. There are still a proportion of customers who have not yet signed up, and we would strongly encourage them to do so. We also encourage all parents or carers to create accounts for their children.

This account creation process has been more difficult for a small proportion of customers, for example where they have lost their BRP and have no other form of identity document. We have already made changes to improve the process for these customers, including creating UKVI accounts automatically for newly recognised refugees since 1 November. But we remain concerned that some of the risks of the roll-out, particularly for those making the transition from BRPs and legacy documents, were not clearly identified and managed under the previous Administration, and we have been consulting stakeholders on other issues raised by them, along with the wider concern that this change could lead to another Windrush. For these reasons, we have been working intensively since the summer to understand the challenges being experienced, to listen and respond to the issues raised, and to adjust the roll-out plans accordingly.

That is why today I am updating the House on changes we have made to the roll-out to address some of the areas of concern, and on how we will continue to engage with stakeholders and communities through the transition.

Legacy document holders

We have streamlined the process for legacy document holders making the transition to e-visas. The updated “no time limit” application process was further streamlined in October, building on enhancements delivered to the old version of the form in September, and addressing concerns about the evidential burden placed on applicants. This new form, which went live at the end of October, also creates a UKVI account as part of the process, removing the need for NTL customers to take the additional step to create their account and access their e-visa. Any customers who continue to have to use the old process because they have no valid ID document will have an account created manually for them by caseworkers. This is a big step forward in smoothing the journey for legacy document holders.

Those holders of legacy documents (such as passports containing ink stamps or a vignette sticker) will still be able to prove their rights as they do today, where their legacy documents currently permit them to do so, including the right to rent or to travel to the UK. It should be noted that stamps in expired passports have not been acceptable to prove the right to work since 2014. The position for legacy document holders does not change at the end of the year, but we encourage them to transition to e-visas by making a NTL application, to access the significant benefits that e-visas bring to customers. More information on this process is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/online-immigration-status-evisa

Working with carriers

The Home Office has developed technology to enable carriers to check immigration status automatically via systems checks. Over the course of the last three years, the Home Office has engaged extensively with carriers about the roll-out of ETA and e-visas to travel, to ensure they are fully prepared for the coming changes. This engagement has included direct communications with carriers on an individual basis, regular carrier forums, and direct training sessions for carrier staff. As we get closer to the end of the year, we have enhanced our engagement with airlines to ensure their understanding of e-visas and automated checking of status. We are training staff across the world on the options available to them to check immigration permissions, including use of direct digital checks, the online view-and-prove service, and the 24/7 carrier support hub, which they can contact to confirm a passenger’s immigration status where necessary.

We are committed to delivering an approach which enables people to demonstrate their status and access the services in the simplest and most secure way possible. We will continue engaging extensively with our stakeholders to ensure that there is a strong understanding of all changes to our border and legal migration system, and a clear messaging campaign to spread public awareness about our move to e-visas.

Extending use of expiring BRPs

While we encourage all BRP holders to switch to using their e-visa via their UKVI account before their BRP expires, if a customer has not created a UKVI account by 1 January 2025 and their BRP has expired, they will be able to do so quickly and easily next year, using their expired BRP if needed.

However, we have also listened to concerns about the risk to customers who are travelling after 31 December, where their underlying status has not expired. In order to smooth the transition to e-visas, we have decided to allow carriers to accept a BRP or EU settlement scheme BRC expiring on or after 31 December 2024 as valid evidence of permission to travel until at least 31 March, and this date will be kept under review. Customers travelling in the early part of the year are therefore advised to continue carrying their expired BRP, as this will add to the range of checking options already available to carriers.

While this will not affect the way that Border Force conducts its passenger checks, it will provide confidence and reassurance to travellers that they will not face unnecessary delays when proving their travel status with airlines and other carriers, and it reflects our strong desire to act on the concerns that have been raised with us and ensure a smooth transition with minimal disruption for travellers at a busy time of the year.

Increasing support for vulnerable people

We have a number of support services in place to help vulnerable customers to transition to e-visas. There are several national grant-funded bodies and community-based organisations spread across the UK ready to offer immediate, free and specialist support for vulnerable individuals in their transition to an e-visa throughout the rest of 2024 and beyond. Further information about the four national grant-funded organisations and the support that they can provide is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evisa-community-support-for-vulnerable-people

Customers can contact the resolution centre, which provides support via email and webchat to those creating their UKVI account, and telephone support to those using the online immigration status services. Individuals can also nominate a helper and give them limited access to their account, so that they can assist with creating a UKVI account, with completing details to access an e-visa, and with submitting any immigration application. Where a person is unable to manage their own affairs due to, for example, age or disability, a proxy, who is authorised, can create and manage the account on behalf of the person.

We recognise that some customers may need further assistance with IT-related aspects of creating a UKVI account. Assisted Digital (in-country only) is a free service provided by UKVI to support digitally excluded customers in creating a UKVI account. More information is available here: https://www.gov.uk/assisted-digital-help-online-applications

Printed documents

Successful visa applicants receive written confirmation by email or letter that they have been granted permission, which they can keep for their personal records. Where this document cannot be used as evidence of their status, these printed documents can be used when interacting with the Home Office, should any subsequent issues be encountered with their e-visa. Customers may also wish to print out their e-visa profile page, if they would like a physical version for their own records.

We have been recording immigration status information digitally since the turn of the century, and if someone encounters an issue with their e-visa, we can search those records to find their information and confirm their status. BRP holders are also able to retain their expired BRPs for their own records, and legacy document holders who make the switch to an e-visa will also still have their physical documents as evidence of their immigration status.

Customers can continue to use the online right to work and rent services, which have been used by millions of people for over two years to prove their rights. This includes using an expired BRP to access these services, provided the person has valid immigration status.

Technical issues

We have designed our digital services to be highly resilient, rigorously tested, and deployed across multiple data centres. Services are proactively monitored for failures, which will highlight any potential problems to allow support teams to resolve them as quickly as possible where they occur. We recognise that a small number of customers have experienced issues with their e-visas, which we are working hard to address. This includes a customer’s status not being visible or showing incorrectly.

We encourage any users experiencing issues to contact the Home Office to enable these to be investigated and resolved. Where necessary, the resolution centre can enable individuals’ status to be verified through alternative means. Customers can contact the resolution centre using an online webchat service or by phone.

Windrush

We are conscious of the lessons learned from Wendy Williams’s extensive review on the Windrush scandal. This Government are committed to ensuring that all customers, including the most vulnerable, are properly supported as we transform our immigration system. We understand that individuals may have concerns about proving their status in the absence of a physical document.

Many Windrush individuals had an immigration status that was automatically conferred on them by an Act of Parliament, so in some cases they had no physical proof. The transition to e-visas is in part designed to address that situation by ensuring that everyone with a right to stay in the UK has an e-visa which provides secure and permanent evidence of their status, as well as giving them access to online services which enable them to share evidence of their immigration status with third parties, such as an employer or a landlord.

We hope that these announcements demonstrate how seriously this Government take the need to ensure that everyone has a smooth transition to e-visas, and that any potential problems are anticipated in advance, as far as we are able to, or dealt with as quickly and smoothly as possible where not. Above all, we recognise the concerns that people have raised with us, and the issues that have needed to be resolved, and we are both taking action to address them, and committing to maintaining an ongoing dialogue with all customers and stakeholders to continue that process in the weeks to come. A copy of the e-visa partner pack will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS283]

Passenger Railway Services: Public Ownership

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Heidi Alexander)]

The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill received Royal Assent on 28 November 2024, putting on the statute book this important piece of legislation—one of the first Government Bills to be enacted in this Parliament. The Act enables the Government to deliver their manifesto commitment to bring passenger services into public ownership as a first step towards wider rail reform.

Following Royal Assent being granted, I am today launching the programme to transition passenger rail services currently operated by privately owned operators into public ownership and confirming that services currently operated by South Western Railway and c2c will be the first to transfer into public ownership when their National Rail contracts expire on 2 May 2025 and 20 July 2025 respectively. The Government are also announcing that, in line with our approach of transferring services as existing contracts expire, Greater Anglia’s services will be next to transfer in autumn 2025. The Government will issue an expiry notice to Greater Anglia in due course to confirm the exact transfer date.

I am determined that these will be smooth transitions for passengers and staff. Passengers who use South Western Railway, c2c and Greater Anglia’s services can be reassured that trains will continue to run as normal, tickets can be purchased and used in the same way. Tickets bought before the transfer date for travel after that date will continue to be valid.

Safety will be a priority throughout the programme of transitioning passenger services into public ownership and the Department for Transport will work closely with the Office of Rail and Road, the independent regulator for the railways, in this regard. As with any transition, and in line with normal industry practices, appropriate licences, safety certificates and system must be in place before services transfer.

I recognise and value the dedication and expertise of our rail workforce, and the Government will wish to retain the committed and talented staff that keep the railways running for passengers. We will work closely with each operator to ensure that further information is shared directly with staff and trade unions at the appropriate time. The TUPE regulations will apply in the same way as they have done in previous transfers, protecting employees’ contractual terms and conditions as they transfer.

Following Greater Anglia, the programme will continue with the transfer of one operator’s services roughly every three months. We expect these to follow the order in which operators’ current contractual minimum terms expire, unless a TOC defaults on its contract to the extent that there is a contractual right to terminate, in which case it will transfer as soon as reasonably practicable, or other extenuating circumstances arise.

I will be monitoring very closely the performance of all existing train operators who run services under contract to the Department and, as the Government made clear during the passage of the Bill, we will not hesitate to take decisive action where an operator’s poor performance means that contractual conditions for early termination of a National Rail contract are met.

The changes made by the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 make appointing a publicly owned operator the default rather than a last resort. Therefore, I am also announcing that, from today, the organisation responsible for managing the public sector operators will be changing its name to DfT Operator Ltd. I look forward to working collaboratively with them as these transfers into public ownership begin and as the work of shadow GBR continues.

Improving our railways will take time, but this is a crucial first step towards fundamental rail reform. Challenges remain in a system that is fragmented, complicated and provides little accountability. In the coming months we will set out more detail about how, through the establishment of Great British Railways, we will reform our railways to modernise working practices, make tickets simpler and fairer, deliver a better service for passengers and a better deal for taxpayers.

[HCWS281]