Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made a recent assessment of whether the level of financial support available to disabled people receiving Employment and Support Allowance is sufficient to meet essential living costs.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government) (Equalities)
The benefit is generally uprated each year in line with inflation.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applicants who paid for the priority visa service in each of the last three years did not receive a decision within the published service standard; and what proportion this represents of total priority service applications in each year.
Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Information on the volume of overseas and in-country applications, and performance against published service standards, including for Priority Services, is published in the ‘Visas, status and immigration data: April to June 2026’ as part of the Migration Transparency Data on GOV.UK. The number of applications received by service type, including Priority Services, can be found in table VSI_01a. Performance against published service standards can be found in table VSI_02.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the most common reasons are for priority and super priority visa applications exceeding their published processing times; and what steps her Department is taking to reduce the frequency of such delays.
Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Priority and super priority applications may take longer than the published processing times where further information or evidence is required, the information provided needs clarification, or checks need to be completed with other government departments. Some cases may also require additional consideration because of their individual complexity.
Where it will not be possible to decide an application within the published processing time, UK Visas and Immigration will notify the customer. Priority and super priority applications are prioritised ahead of standard applications, and the Department keeps visa processing service standards under regular review.
Further information on visa processing times can be found: Visa processing times - applications inside the UK and Visa processing times - applications outside the UK
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the weight to an applicant's economic ties, such as business ownership or property, when assessing whether they are likely to leave the UK at the end of their visit in Visit Visa guidance to Entry Clearance Officers.
Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
All applicants seeking entry clearance into the UK must meet the genuine visitor requirements and will need to satisfy the decision maker that they are a genuine visitor who will leave the UK at the end of their visit, before being accepted for a visit visa.
A significant degree of weight is attributed to an applicant's economic and personal ties to their home country. Assessing an applicant’s economic ties, such as having a job or property, coupled with their personal and family ties to their home country is a good indicator of whether an applicant is a genuine visitor.
However, every application is assessed objectively on a case-by-case basis in line with the evidence provided to the decision maker. An applicant's poor economic ties to their home country will not be grounds for automatic refusal if they can provide other strong evidence that would satisfy the decision maker that they are a genuine visitor.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of standard visitor visa applications were refused in the (a) most recent 12-month period for which data is available and (b) equivalent 12-month period the year before.
Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on entry clearance visas by visa type, including Visitor visas, in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the outcomes of visa applications are published in table ‘Vis_D02’ of the detailed entry clearance visas dataset. This does not include a breakdown of reason for refusal and will include a small proportion of non-‘Standard’ Visitor visas (for example, ‘Marriage Visitors’). Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data is from January 2005 up to the end of June 2026.
To calculate the refusal rate, we recommend taking the proportion of decisions (grants and refusals) which resulted in a visa refused.
Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of Standard Visitor visa refusals in each of the last three years cited (a) insufficient family ties and (b) lack of dependants to the applicant's home country as a reason for refusal.
Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The information requested is not centrally held and could only be collected and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment his department has made of the potential merits of rebalancing policy costs levied on electricity bills across gas and electricity bills equally.
Answered by Martin McCluskey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government recognises that policy costs fall disproportionately on electricity bills and are taking forward work to ensure that prices reflect the cheaper wholesale price of clean energy.
On the distribution of costs between electricity and gas, the Government acted at the Autumn Budget to cut electricity costs in a way that makes this distribution fairer. We ended funding for the Energy Company Obligation scheme, as well as removing 75% of costs for the Renewables Obligation scheme from people’s energy bills.
The government also announced in April plans to go further and faster on delinking electricity and gas prices. We will consult later this year on arrangements to offer existing generators a fixed price Contract for Difference for the electricity they generate. In addition, the rate of the Electricity Generator Levy has been increased by 10% to respond to the high prices that generators are benefitting from due to the crisis in the Middle East.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his department plans to take in response to the consultation on the use of cages and crates for laying hens which closed on 9 March 2026.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is analysing consultation responses and will publish a formal response in due course.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 2 June 2026 to Question 3737, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a dedicated visa route for other roles that require Gaelic speakers.
Answered by Mike Tapp
We do not limit access to Gaelic-medium posts or any other roles that require Gaelic speakers, provided they meet the other requirements of the Skilled Worker route.
We have therefore not had discussions relating to having specific routes for Gaelic speakers, nor have we considered Welsh, Cornish, Irish Gaelic or Scots as the basis of language evaluation on the Skilled Worker immigration route.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has held recent discussions with the Scottish Government on the creation of a dedicated work visa for fluent Gaelic speakers to fill Gaelic-medium posts in Scotland.
Answered by Mike Tapp
We do not limit access to Gaelic-medium posts or any other roles that require Gaelic speakers, provided they meet the other requirements of the Skilled Worker route.
We have therefore not had discussions relating to having specific routes for Gaelic speakers, nor have we considered Welsh, Cornish, Irish Gaelic or Scots as the basis of language evaluation on the Skilled Worker immigration route.