Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent public consultations she has held on plans to redevelop RAF Scampton.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
No recent public consultations have been held on plans to develop RAF Scampton.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many meetings she had with asylum centre providers to discuss reports of abductions of unaccompanied children in the last twelve months.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office engages with a range of internal and external stakeholders in relation to the provision of support and accommodation to destitute asylum seekers, through a variety of channels.
The wellbeing of children and minors in our care is an absolute priority. Robust safeguarding procedures are in place to ensure all children and minors are safe and supported as we seek urgent placements with local authorities.
We continue to consult multi-agency partners and subject matter experts to ensure our processes and procedures are robust and evolve as new trends or risks emerge. Local police forces are engaged in ongoing activity where a child fails to return to a hotel and this data is shared across the police national computer as it would be in any case where a child goes missing.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with West Yorkshire Police on knife crime in Huddersfield constituency in the last 12 months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Ministers regularly engage with policing leaders across the country on these issues, including colleagues in the West Yorkshire Police. On 16 June, 2022, the former Home Secretary met West Yorkshire Police in Leeds to discuss operational matters across the region, including knife crime.
The Government is determined to drive down serious violence by combining tough enforcement action with support for those most at risk. This includes direct funding and activity in West Yorkshire. Since 2019, the West Yorkshire VRU has received c.£16m for violence reduction activity, including £5.9m in this financial year. The VRU was also successful in bidding for an additional £450k to work alongside the police to deliver targeted youth work to high-risk young people at the point of arrest.
We have also invested over £10m in West Yorkshire through our serious violence police enforcement programmes (including a £1.6m investment through our ‘Grip’ programme this financial year). Grip uses a highly data-driven process to deliver and track additional visible patrols in the streets and neighbourhoods most affected by these devastating crimes.
In 2019, the Home Office established the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) with a 10-year endowment of £200m to build an evidence base around what works in preventing youth violence and make this accessible to practitioners. To date, the YEF has granted around £1.2m in funding across 11 intervention projects in West Yorkshire.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions her Department has held with representatives of Kirklees Council on the resettlement of Afghan refugees in Huddersfield.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office has sought assistance from all UK local authorities to help with the resettlement and integration of eligible individuals evacuated from Afghanistan or safe third countries to the UK. This has been either through direct contact with individual councils such as Kirklees or, as is normally the case throughout the country, via the regional Strategic Migration Partnership.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress has been made on the Transforming Forensics Programme; and whether she plans to provide further funding to the programme.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Transforming Forensics Programme supports the modernisation of forensic services through the development of new services, tools and applications.
Since its inception, achievements have included setting up the Forensics Capability Network which supports forensics practitioners nationally, supporting the government response to the Rape Review by rolling out specialist digital forensics equipment to 24 forces, and developing an end-to-end digitised fingerprinting app which is available to forces for adoption.
The programme will close at the end of this financial year, having transitioned its ongoing activities into the Police Digital Service.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding her Department has provided to the Transforming Forensics programme in each year since 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Since 2019, the Home Office has provided the Transforming Forensics Programme with the following funding in each year since Financial Year 2019/20:
Financial Year | Amount |
2019/20 | £16.3m |
2020/21 | £9.1m |
2021/22 | £19.8m |
2022/23 | £10m allocation – final spend to be confirmed |
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to maintain Forensic Archive Limited's forensic archive.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
There are no plans to change the way the Forensic Archive Ltd. operates.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Office, pursuant to the Answer of 2 December 2022 to Question 95780 on Social Rented Housing: Huddersfield and the Answer of 22 December 2022 to Question 111537 on Asylum: Housing, whether her Department has held recent meetings with the Asylum Resettlement Councils Senior Engagement Group on tackling the shortfall of (a) local authority and (b) housing association housing provision in Kirklees.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Asylum, Resettlement Councils Senior Engagement Group (ARCSEG) meets every 3 months, with additional meetings held outside the quarterly cycle in exceptional circumstances. The meetings are chaired by the Director of Asylum Support and Chief Executive of the Local Government Association.
Accommodation provision and shortfall, such as contingency, dispersed and resettlement cohort accommodation, have and continue to feature prominently as a core agenda item for ARCSEG meetings. This is in addition to further discussion and progress tracking through other local government engagement forums such as the weekly cross-government Strategic Oversight Group and Ministerial Task Group.
In the last ARCSEG meeting on 13 December 2022 there was a constructive dialogue between Home Office officials and Local Government Chief Executives on a range of accommodation and housing issues. ARCSEG actions are progressed between meetings through “Deep Dive” sub-groups, all of which have local government representation.
We also regularly engage with our accommodation providers to discuss any issues that arise and ensure best practice is always followed. The performance of our providers is monitored closely by dedicated staff in each contract area, who are in daily contact with them. This is supplemented by a formal governance process which includes quarterly Strategic Review Management Boards and monthly Contract Management Groups. Service credits and subsequent improvement plans are discussed and monitored as part of this process
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answers given on 2 December 2022 to Question 95780, on Social Rented Housing: Huddersfield, and on 22 December 2022 to Question 111537, on Asylum: Housing, whether her Department is taking steps through the meetings mentioned to increase provision of Local Authority and Housing Association housing in (a) Kirklees and (b) West Yorkshire.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Asylum, Resettlement Councils Senior Engagement Group (ARCSEG) meets every 3 months, with additional meetings held outside the quarterly cycle in exceptional circumstances. The meetings are chaired by the Director of Asylum Support and Chief Executive of the Local Government Association.
Accommodation provision and shortfall, such as contingency, dispersed and resettlement cohort accommodation, have and continue to feature prominently as a core agenda item for ARCSEG meetings. This is in addition to further discussion and progress tracking through other local government engagement forums such as the weekly cross-government Strategic Oversight Group and Ministerial Task Group.
In the last ARCSEG meeting on 13 December 2022 there was a constructive dialogue between Home Office officials and Local Government Chief Executives on a range of accommodation and housing issues. ARCSEG actions are progressed between meetings through “Deep Dive” sub-groups, all of which have local government representation.
We also regularly engage with our accommodation providers to discuss any issues that arise and ensure best practice is always followed. The performance of our providers is monitored closely by dedicated staff in each contract area, who are in daily contact with them. This is supplemented by a formal governance process which includes quarterly Strategic Review Management Boards and monthly Contract Management Groups. Service credits and subsequent improvement plans are discussed and monitored as part of this process
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of holding a summit with refugee and migration experts, local authorities and housing providers on potential short- and long-term accommodation options for people seeking asylum.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office already engages with a range of internal and external stakeholders in relation to the provision of support and accommodation to destitute asylum seekers, through a variety of channels. These include the Strategic Migration Partnerships (SMPs) which are Local Government led partnerships funded by, but independent of, the Home Office, whose role is to coordinate and support delivery of national programmes in asylum and refugee schemes as well as agreed, national, regional and devolved migration priorities.
The Director of Asylum Support and other senior Home Office officials engage with the Local Government Association (LGA) and UK-wide LA Chief Executives through the Asylum Resettlement Councils Senior Engagement Group (ARCSEG, formerly Home Office Local Government Chief Executive group (HOLGEX)). The Strategic Engagement Groups (SEG) and the associated sub-groups are the Home Office’s (HO) principal engagement forums with external asylum and resettlement Non-Government Organisations (NGO) and voluntary sector stakeholders.
We also regularly engage with our accommodation providers to discuss any issues that arise and ensure best practise is always followed. Providers’ performance is monitored closely by dedicated staff in each contract area, who are in daily contact with them. This is supplemented by a formal governance process which includes quarterly Strategic Review Management Boards and monthly Contract Management Groups. Service credits and subsequent improvement plans are discussed and monitored as part of this process.