Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 29 April 2025 to Question 47655 on Sexual Harassment, what progress she has made on implementation of the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a top priority for this Government and we have committed to an unprecedented ambition to halve VAWG within a decade.
Public sexual harassment is a crime that often leaves victims, who are disproportionately likely to be women, feeling very unsafe. That is why tackling it is an integral part of our mission on VAWG.
The VAWG Strategy will set out the strategic direction and concrete actions to deliver on the Government’s VAWG ambition, including action to tackle public sexual harassment.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the minimum salary floor as part of the Health and Care visa salary requirements on staff retention in the North West.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Higher pay encourages staff retention. Since the introduction of the Skilled Worker route, the salary requirements dictate that a migrant must be paid whatever is higher out of the general threshold for the route or the ‘going rate’ for that occupation, with an absolute minimum salary requirement an overseas worker has to be paid. This is designed to place a ‘premium’ on recruiting overseas, maintaining access to international talent for firms, but also ensuring this is never a cheaper alternative to fair pay and that UK resident workers undertaking skilled work are not undercut. It also helps ensure overseas workers can support themselves and any dependants without access to public funds.
We have commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee to review the salary requirements for Skilled Workers, including Health and Care Workers, and we expect their recommendations to be published shortly.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has considered allowing people with Health and Care Worker visas to change employers within the care sector without requiring a new sponsorship certificate.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office is exploring ways of making changing employers easier. However, a Certificate of Sponsorship is the means by which an employer confirms they have a job for a worker which satisfies the requirements of the Immigration Rules and by which that sponsor confirms they are taking responsibility for them.
The Home Office has made no assessment of the of the potential impact of visa sponsorship restrictions on (a) staff availability and (b) continuity of care in the social care sector. That is a matter for the Department of Health and Social Care.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of visa sponsorship restrictions on (a) staff availability and (b) continuity of care in the social care sector.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office is exploring ways of making changing employers easier. However, a Certificate of Sponsorship is the means by which an employer confirms they have a job for a worker which satisfies the requirements of the Immigration Rules and by which that sponsor confirms they are taking responsibility for them.
The Home Office has made no assessment of the of the potential impact of visa sponsorship restrictions on (a) staff availability and (b) continuity of care in the social care sector. That is a matter for the Department of Health and Social Care.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the suspension of refugee family reunion routes on trends in levels of people attempting to cross the Channel in small boats.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office recognises that the suspension may affect families seeking reunification, particularly women and children.
However, the suspension is temporary and our approach still considers the overriding objective of family unity as alternative family routes will continue to be available. A partner or child of a person with protection status can apply under Appendix FM.
It is not possible to estimate the potential impact of the suspension on family migration applications or small boat arrivals, as there are a significant number of variables, including the measures we are putting in place as part of our wider strategy for preventing illegal and irregular migration, to stop individuals making these dangerous journeys across the Channel and risking lives in the process.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the suspension of refugee family reunification routes on the safety of (a) women and (b) children seeking to come to the UK.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office recognises that the suspension may affect families seeking reunification, particularly women and children.
However, the suspension is temporary and our approach still considers the overriding objective of family unity as alternative family routes will continue to be available. A partner or child of a person with protection status can apply under Appendix FM.
It is not possible to estimate the potential impact of the suspension on family migration applications or small boat arrivals, as there are a significant number of variables, including the measures we are putting in place as part of our wider strategy for preventing illegal and irregular migration, to stop individuals making these dangerous journeys across the Channel and risking lives in the process.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the National Youth Agency’s document entitled National Youth Sector Census Snapshot Report - Summer 2025, published in September 2025, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help (a) increase the level of targeted youth work and (b) improve referral pathways to safeguard young people from violence and exploitation in (i) deprived areas (ii) all areas.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
We welcome the National Youth Agency’s (NYA) National Youth Sector Census Report.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) Million Hours Fund provides youth organisations with funding to deliver over a million additional hours of positive activities for young people in areas with higher levels of anti-social behaviour. It gives young people more places to go and positive things to do. Announced in July 2025, Phase 3 of the Million Hours Fund will receive a £19 million joint investment (£12 million from DCMS and £7 million from the National Lottery Community Fund). In addition, DCMS are working across government to develop a National Youth Strategy due to be published this Autumn, to set out a new long-term vision for young people and an action plan for delivering this.
Through its Young Futures Programme the Government is intervening earlier, to ensure Children and Young People (CYP) who are facing poorer outcomes and are vulnerable to being drawn into crime are identified and offered support in a more systematic way. As part of this, we are already piloting new Young Futures Panels – new local multi-agency approaches to proactively identify and support those young people at risk of being drawn into violence and crime. Alongside this, we are launching our first early adopter Young Futures Hubs next year to ensure that the right support is available to the right young people in the right places.
As committed to in the Government’s manifesto, we are also introducing a new offence of criminal exploitation of children in the Crime and Policing Bill to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime. We are also delivering new civil preventative orders to disrupt and prevent child criminal exploitation from occurring or re-occurring.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle (a) extremist radicalisation and (b) forms of non-ideological violence.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Government is committed to tackling those who spread views that promote violence and hatred against individuals and communities in our society, and that radicalise others into terrorism. To understand such threats, we maintain expertise and capabilities to understand terrorist and extremist online communications, in order to produce rapid, high-quality assessments designed to support the Prevent programme.
The Prevent programme tackles the ideological causes of terrorism and provides early intervention for people at risk of radicalisation. The programme deals with all forms of terrorist ideology, including Islamist, Extreme Right-Wing, other threats.
We work closely with law enforcement and multi-agency partners to respond to any such activity which may pose a threat.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, where AI is being used in the immigration system; and whether she plans to extend the use of AI in the immigration system.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
AI is used in multiple areas within the immigration system, for example in relation to image recognition, summarisation, triage, matching and analysis. We plan to continue to test and pilot how we can use AI, where appropriate to do so, to support effective and efficient operations.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding has been allocated to community safety initiatives in (a) Greater Manchester and (b) Manchester Rusholme constituency in the 2024-25 financial year.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office does not have a defined range of initiatives that fall under the umbrella term of ‘community safety’. Greater Manchester Police’s funding will be up to £871.2 million in 2025-26, an increase of up to £55.6 million when compared to the 2024-25 funding settlement.
It is for locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners, or in this case the Mayor of Greater Manchester, to make decisions on how they use their funding and deploy their resources using their knowledge of local need.