Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how they assess whether a student visa sponsor remains fully compliant, and whether they plan to introduce any additional regulatory tools to address student visa misuse.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office requires sponsors to pass an annual Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) to retain their licence. Additionally, sponsor visiting teams carry out audits to ensure sponsors are fulfilling their duties.

As set out in the Immigration White Paper, we are taking action to drive responsible recruitment by tightening the minimum pass requirement of each BCA metric by five percentage points. Further details will be provided in due course.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are reviewing the quantitative thresholds of the core requirements for student visa sponsor compliance.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office requires sponsors to pass an annual Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) to retain their licence. Additionally, sponsor visiting teams carry out audits to ensure sponsors are fulfilling their duties.

As set out in the Immigration White Paper, we are taking action to drive responsible recruitment by tightening the minimum pass requirement of each BCA metric by five percentage points. Further details will be provided in due course.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to make the frequency of asylum applications from student visa holders at the same student visa sponsor grounds to suspend or revoke a student visa sponsor licence.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office requires sponsors to pass an annual Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) to retain their licence. Additionally, sponsor visiting teams carry out audits to ensure sponsors are fulfilling their duties.

As set out in the Immigration White Paper, we are taking action to drive responsible recruitment by tightening the minimum pass requirement of each BCA metric by five percentage points. Further details will be provided in due course.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many asylum claims have been submitted by visa holders with a licensed student visa sponsor in the most recent 12-month period.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office publishes data on people claiming asylum by route of entry to the UK in table Asy_D01a of the 'Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release' on GOV.UK. The latest data relates to the year ending June 2025. Between July 2024 and June 2025, 14,800 asylum claims were submitted by those holding a study visa. There is no breakdown by sponsored or non-sponsored study available. This breakdown is not available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have identified any legacy pressures arising from the centralised prisoner allocation system in regions with higher concentrations of prisoner places; and what steps they are taking to ensure that those pressures do not hinder local investment in crime prevention and rehabilitation programmes.

Answered by Lord Timpson

With the prison system routinely operating at 98% occupancy, central management of population movements is the only practical mechanism to ensure every legally committed prisoner is accommodated appropriately. This includes transferring prisoners from regions with deficits of prison places to regions with relative surpluses.

To put prison capacity on a sustainable footing, the Government launched an Independent Review of Sentencing on 22 October 2024, chaired by former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke. The review was published on 22 May this year and we are accepting, in principle, the following recommendations which will support effective crime prevention and rehabilitation:

• Release will be earned – and the most dangerous offenders excluded.

• Ramping up tagging and monitoring, with an up to £700 million uplift in annual probation budgets.

• Toughening up punishment outside of prison so offenders pay back their debt to society.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many accidental prisoner releases in that past 12 months were due to (1) human error, (2) incorrect or incomplete paperwork from the courts, (3) communication failures between courts and prisons, and (4) other administrative or operational causes; and what steps they are taking to address those issues.

Answered by Lord Timpson

Release inaccuracy is yet another symptom of the prison system crisis inherited by this Government. While the overwhelming majority of offenders are released correctly, we are bearing down on those errors that do occur, and this includes releases in error from prisons.

On 11 November, the Deputy Prime Minister announced a five-point action plan setting out initial steps, which includes strengthening release checks across prisons and an independent inquiry, which will report its recommendations to prevent further inaccuracies.

The latest data on releases in error from prisons, which we published exceptionally on 11 November, showed that there have been 91 releases in error from prisons from April 2025 to October 2025. Data on releases is based on the information available at the time. It may be the case in some circumstances that information on a case is brought to light that either confirms or disproves a release in error. Future release in error data will be published in the normal way through our regular statistics and Dame Lynne Owens will be looking at data and transparency as part of her independent investigation.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of prison capacity pressures on Parole Board decision-making or sentence progression, particularly in relation to risk assessments and rehabilitation pathways.

Answered by Baroness Levitt

The Government recognises the pressures on prison capacity but can give reassurance that it has not materially affected parole outcomes. As set out in the Parole Board Annual Report, in 2024-25 the Board concluded c.17,000 cases at either paper or oral hearing, compared to c.16,000 in 2023-24. The proportion of cases reviewed where the Board has directed the offender’s release has remained broadly similar for the last few years (since 2021): around 1 in 4 cases result in a release direction. This indicates that the release rate by the Parole Board has remained broadly stable, suggesting that recent prison capacity pressures have not significantly affected it.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential costs and practical implications for contractors delivering publicly funded projects of incorporating a requirement to use a proportion of UK-produced steel; and how that assessment informs their consideration of the role of procurement policy in supporting domestic steelmaking capacity.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)

We want to see more use of UK made steel in public projects, whilst respecting our national and international legal obligations.

Central government procurers have an excellent record of using UK made steel. In FY 2023/24, where full domestic sourcing was possible, about 97% of the steel (by value) procured was UK made, equivalent to c.£351million. That said, we continue to strengthen mechanisms to enable the procurement of UK made steel. Our steel Procurement Policy Note, introduced in June, states that all organisations in scope should consult UK Steel’s digital catalogue before making procurement decisions.

More broadly, we also welcome industry led local content targets across all industrial strategy sectors, including clean energy.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effect on the competitiveness and long-term viability of UK steelmakers of publicly funded projects specifying grades of electric arc furnace steel that cannot be sourced from British producers at scale; and whether they have made an assessment of the risk that those specifications increase reliance on imported steel and excludes domestic steel from use in publicly funded projects.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)

This government is working towards a financially sustainable future for steelmaking in the UK, and we will set out our long-term vision for the sector in our upcoming Steel Strategy.

We are designing the Steel Strategy to drive growth in the industry, ensuring the sector is competitive and is in line with our national priorities, including increasing the level of domestic demand met by domestic production, to reduce reliance on imports.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the use of domestic steel production and fabrication in taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects, and whether the financial support packages agreed for British Steel and Tata Steel UK include any procurement-related requirements, such as obligations on departments or publicly funded projects to consider the use of UK-produced steel.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)

We want to see more use of UK made steel in public projects, whilst respecting our national and international legal obligations.

To ensure that our steel producers, including British Steel and Tata Steel UK, are in the best position to bid for and win public contracts in that market, our steel Procurement Policy Note, introduced in June, states that all organisations in scope should consult UK Steel’s digital catalogue before making procurement decisions.

More broadly, we also welcome industry led local content targets across all industrial strategy sectors, including clean energy.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many (1) desks, and (2) civil servants, are assigned to the Department for Business and Trade office in the Old Admiralty Building.

Answered by Lord Leong - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade)

The Department for Business and Trade has 1058 desks located within the Old Admiralty Building.

As of the end of June 2026 there are 3,699 civil servants assigned to the Old Admiralty Building.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of increasing the HMRC late-payment interest rate from Bank Rate plus 2.5% to Bank Rate plus 4% from 6 April 2025 in reducing the incidence of late payment of tax; and whether they will publish any analysis or evidence underpinning that assessment.

Answered by Lord Livermore

As announced at the Budget in 2024, HMRC amended legislation to increase the late payment interest rate by 1.5 percentage points (ppts). This changed interest rates from Bank of England base rate + 2.5 ppts to base rate + 4 ppts.

This change took effect as HMRC’s current interest was low when compared to commercially available short-term borrowing. This creates unfairness between those who pay on time and those who choose not to, using HMRC as a form of cheap lending.

The measure aimed to address this by bringing HMRC’s rates closer to those commercially available. The late payment interest rate increase was made to encourage taxpayers to pay on time, help raise vital revenue for public services, and ensure fairness for those who pay on time.

These changes took effect from 6 April 2025 and are applied where interest is charged to existing and new tax debts owed to HMRC.

This measure encourages people to pay the outstanding tax they owe, increasing incentives to engage with HMRC and make payment arrangements, as well as complying to avoid late payment penalties.

There is no proposal to publish any analysis or evidence as HMRC continues to keep its interest rates under review.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government what revenue HMRC has received from late payment interest in each of the past five financial years, broken down by tax head; and, for each tax head, what proportion that revenue represented of total receipts in the corresponding year

Answered by Lord Livermore

HM Revenue and Customs does not hold a central dataset that identifies how many instances of Late Payment Interest (LPI) have been charged for all tax heads.

For some tax heads, such as Income Tax Self Assessment, it would be possible to produce such figures, but due to the disproportionate cost to the taxpayer, it is not possible to answer this question. This cost represents the time it would take an analyst to extract, combine, analyse and quality assure the data.

For other tax heads, even with additional time and resource, it would not be possible to isolate how many instances of LPI have been charged, due to the way that data is stored for those tax heads.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many instances of late payment interest were charged by HMRC in each of the past five financial years, broken down by tax head; and what the year-on-year change in the number of such instances was for each tax head.

Answered by Lord Livermore

HM Revenue and Customs does not hold a central dataset that identifies how many instances of Late Payment Interest (LPI) have been charged for all tax heads.

For some tax heads, such as Income Tax Self Assessment, it would be possible to produce such figures, but due to the disproportionate cost to the taxpayer, it is not possible to answer this question. This cost represents the time it would take an analyst to extract, combine, analyse and quality assure the data.

For other tax heads, even with additional time and resource, it would not be possible to isolate how many instances of LPI have been charged, due to the way that data is stored for those tax heads.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which late-payment interest on Corporation Tax arises (1) from differences between estimated and final tax liabilities, including in businesses with complex or evolving tax positions such as those undertaking significant investment or research and development activity, or (2) from late payment behaviour; and what steps they are taking to ensure that the application of such interest does not have disproportionate impacts on particular types of business.

Answered by Lord Livermore

HMRC does not routinely collect or publish data on the extent to which Corporation Tax late-payment interest arises from differences between estimated and final tax liabilities, as opposed to late payment behaviour. No specific assessment has therefore been made of the relative contribution of these factors.

Interest on tax paid late is not a penalty but rather designed to both compensate the Exchequer for late payment and to provide a measure of fairness to those taxpayers that pay what is due on time.

The Government recognises that some businesses may face greater uncertainty when estimating their final Corporation Tax liability. The Corporation Tax regime has nevertheless operated successfully for many years using broadly consistent interest rules.

HMRC keeps all aspects of the tax administration framework under review. In doing so, it is mindful of the need to avoid unnecessary complexity and to ensure that rules work effectively across the wide range of businesses that make up the Corporation Tax population. HMRC has not identified evidence that introducing different late-payment interest regimes for particular sectors, activities or business types would improve fairness or deliver better overall outcomes. The Government therefore continues to apply a broadly consistent approach across taxpayers while keeping the operation of the regime under review.

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