Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of recent calls to restore the right of abode in the UK to holders of British National (Overseas) passports living in Hong Kong; and what action, if any, they intend to take as a result.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
Holders of British National (Overseas) passports living in Hong Kong do not have a right of abode in the UK, unless they are also British citizens.
Their only route to acquire the right of abode in the UK would be to apply for British citizenship. There are no plans to change the law in this respect.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the current threat posed by extreme right-wing terrorism to UK national security; and how they define right wing terrorism.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The Home Secretary has been clear: the far right has absolutely no place in Britain. The British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right, which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency, tolerance and respect.
Through CONTEST and the Counter-Extremism Strategy, we’re dealing with the threat of right-wing terrorism and the wider harms caused by the far right, including community tensions, hate crime and public order issues. This is about keeping our communities safe and secure. We have also been discussing the risk posed by right wing terrorism with our international partners.
The Government proscribed National Action as a terrorist organisation in December 2016. We’ve also proscribed Scottish Dawn and NS131 as aliases of National Action.
“Terrorism” is defined in Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Our counter terrorism strategy, CONTEST, works to reduce the risk of all forms of terrorism, regardless of ideology.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the most recent annual figures for the amount of money estimated to be laundered in the UK; and whether those figures present an increase on previous years.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The National Crime Agency has recently published the National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime, (available at http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/905-national-strategic-assessment-for-soc-2018/file) which assesses the scale of money laundering and concludes there is no reliable estimate of the total value of laundered funds that impacts on the UK.
This assessment went on to say that, given the volume of financial transactions transiting the UK, there is a realistic possibility the scale of money laundering impacting the UK annually is in the hundreds of billions of pounds.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many applications they have received for UK visas for family settlement to reunite with a partner or parent who is in the UK as a refugee or with humanitarian protection in each year since 2010; and of those, how many have been granted.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The available information is given below.
Family reunion applications from dependants of those with refugee status or humanitarian protection in the UK (made under Part 11 of the Immigration Rules) are included in the ‘Family: Other’ category within the published Home Office ‘Immigration Statistics’ visa tables, latest edition at, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2018/list-of-tables#visas.
The vast majority of the ‘Family: Other’ category relate to family reunion and hence the published figures provide a good indication of trends for family reunion cases.
The table below provides the latest data:
'Family: Other' entry clearance visa applications and outcomes: 2010 to 2017
Year | Applications | Resolved | Granted | % | Refused | Withdrawn/Lapsed |
2010 | 6,111 | 6,654 | 4,887 | 73% | 1,664 | 103 |
2011 | 5,143 | 5,536 | 4,306 | 78% | 1,093 | 137 |
2012 | 5,135 | 5,318 | 3,710 | 70% | 1,479 | 129 |
2013 | 6,064 | 6,108 | 4,211 | 69% | 1,797 | 100 |
2014 | 5,639 | 6,658 | 4,596 | 69% | 1,931 | 131 |
2015 | 8,477 | 8,283 | 4,887 | 59% | 3,267 | 129 |
2016 | 8,610 | 9,620 | 6,098 | 63% | 3,472 | 50 |
2017 | 7,439 | 7,543 | 5,237 | 69% | 2,253 | 53 |
Notes: Applications made in a given year may be resolved (granted, refused, withdrawn or lapsed) in a later year. |
Source: Home Office 'Immigration Statistics, year ending June 2018', Visas data tables volume 1, table vi_01_q. |
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Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking together with international partners, to (1) disrupt and dismantle Afghan drug trafficking organisations, and (2) separate those groups from the Taliban.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The UK works closely with international partners to disrupt serious and organised criminality linked to the Afghan drugs trade, a proportion of which is conducted by the Taliban.
This work involves operational cooperation, joint operations and the provision of capacity building. It has led to significant operational results. For example, as set out in the National Crime Agency’s Annual Report and Accounts (available at http://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/915-nca-annual-report-account-2017-18/file) 5.1 tonnes of heroin was seized in 2017 / 2018.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people have been resettled in the UK under the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme to date; and how much that Programme has cost to date.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The Home Office is committed to publishing data in an orderly way as part of the regular quarterly Immigration Statistics, in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Latest statistics published on 24 May confirmed that a total of 11,649 people have been resettled under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) since it began.
The statistics are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release
At 31 December 2017, VPRS expenditure of £157.5m had been recorded.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why they do not record data on the length of time it takes to consider individual asylum claims; and whether this information is recorded elsewhere.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
Data on the length of time it takes to consider individual asylum claims is not information that is published and could not be produced without a manual investigation of Home Office systems.
The Home Office has a Service Standard to make an initial asylum decision on straightforward claims within 182 days of the date of claim however we are aware of the number of older cases in the system. These are more complex cases which generally have barriers that prevents an initial asylum decision being made. These barriers are often varied and require time to clear.
The Home Office publishes performance against the service standard to decide 98% of straight forward asylum claims within 6 months of the date of claim.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of public spaces protection orders introduced under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The Government has not undertaken an assessment of Public Spaces Protection Orders.
The powers in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 are kept under review through the Anti-social Behaviour Advisory Group which we established to provide a forum to discuss the use of the powers with a range of police officers, local authorities, charities and government departments. We also published refreshed statutory guidance for frontline professionals on the use of these powers on 24 December 2017.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is (1) the procedure for decision-making on asylum cases, and (2) the average length of time it takes for a caseworker to consider each asylum case; and how many decisions each caseworker is expected to make per week.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
All asylum claims lodged in the UK are carefully considered on their individual merits against a background of relevant case law and up to date country information. We ensure that claimants are given every opportunity to disclose information relevant to their claim before a decision is taken.
We do not record data on the length of time it takes to consider individual cases. Decisions on asylum claims are made by Decision Makers within the Asylum Intake and Casework Unit and the Home Office has rolling recruitment campaigns to ensure the number of Decision Makers are maintained at a level that allows the Home Office to progress cases in line with service standards.
Data on performance against the published service standard can be found on tabs Asy 10 and 11 at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-february-2018.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the figures for the economic value of overseas students to the UK published by the Higher Education Policy Institute in its report The Cost and Benefits of International Students on 11 January, and whether they plan to take these figures into account when determining net migration targets.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The Government welcomes the contribution that international students make to the UK economy. We recognise that international students enhance our educational institutions both financially and culturally; enrich the experience of domestic students; and become important ambassadors for the United Kingdom in later life.
The independent Office for National Statistics is responsible for the production of the net migration statistics. In line with the internationally agreed UN definition, these statistics define a migrant as someone changing their normal place of residence for more than a year. Students are therefore included in the same way as other migrants. There is no limit on the number of international students who can come to the UK and there are no plans to change this. So long as students are compliant with immigration rules they should make a very limited contribution to net migration numbers.
The Government has recently commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee to undertake a study into the costs and benefits of international students.