Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he has taken to assess the potential (a) social and (b) economic impact of possible policy changes to the graduate route visa for international students; and whether his Department assesses the potential impact of such proposals at the constituency level.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
We are committed to attracting the best and brightest to study at our world-class universities, whilst maintaining the integrity of our immigration system, which is why the Home Secretary commissioned an independent review of the Graduate Route.
The MAC reported back on 14 May and the review’s findings are currently being considered very closely.
The Home Office produces impact assessments as a matter of course when policy proposals are developed.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when his Department plans to respond to the letter of 21 February 2024 from the Hon. Member for Hull West and Hessle on behalf of a constituent regarding protocol for notifiable associations.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire responded on 16 April 2024.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he has taken to help reduce (a) advance fee fraud and (b) other consumer retail scams.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat
As part of implementation of the Government’s Fraud Strategy ‘Advance fee fraud’ has decreased by 33% since the year ending September 2022 from 546,000 to 367,000 offences (CSEW data). We have introduced a series of sector charters with industry to agree voluntary actions to protect consumers. Last year, the Government published the Online Fraud Charter which seeks to block fraud at source, making reporting fraud easier for users and decreasing the time it takes to remove content and advertisements found to be fraudulent.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to tackle hate crime against LGBT+ people (a) nationally and (b) in Hull West and Hessle.
Answered by Laura Farris
There has been an overall reduction in police-recorded hate crime in the year ending March 2023, including a 6% reduction in sexual orientation hate crimes. Whilst an 11% increase in transgender hate crime was seen, and this may partly be due to a genuine rise, the biggest driver is likely to be general improvements in police recording along with increased victim willingness to come forward.
We are supporting the police by providing them with the resources they need. Part of this necessitates police recruitment and training – that is why we have the highest number of police officers on record in England and Wales. Humberside now has 2,294 officers (headcount as at 31 March 2023), the highest number ever. Funding for Humberside will be £252.6 million in 2024/25, an increase of up to £15.5 million when compared to 2023/24.
The Home Office continues to fund True Vision, an online hate crime reporting portal, designed so that victims of all forms of hate crime do not have to visit a police station to report. We also fund the National Online Hate Crime Hub, a central capability designed to provide expert advice to support individual local police forces in dealing with online hate crime.
The Government is providing over £3m of funding, between 10 August 2021 and 31 March 2024, to five anti-bullying organisations to support schools to tackle bullying. This includes projects targeting hate-related bullying and homophobic, biphobic and transphobic based bullying.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of asylum seeker (a)age verification and (b) identity checks.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
Where an individual claims to be a child without any documentary evidence, and where there is reason to doubt their claimed age, there is a need to assess their age. Determining the age of a young person is an inherently difficult task. Recent legislative reforms aim to make assessments more consistent and robust from the outset, with any disputed decisions resolved quickly and conclusively.
This includes establishing a decision-making function within the Home Office, called the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB). The NAAB consists of expert social workers whose task is to conduct Merton compliant age assessments, increasing capacity and expertise in the system. The NAAB is in the process of recruiting and training suitably experienced social workers who can carry out age assessments on behalf of the Home Office and will expand into wider regions as social worker capacity builds up. We will continue to review and monitor the impact of this board.
In addition, regulations laid by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice were approved by Parliament in November 2023, which will authorise the use of X-rays in scientific age assessments, paving the way for the Home Office to improve their ability to effectively determine the age of illegal entrants making disputed claims to be children.
As part of an asylum seeker’s identity checks we capture their biometric and biographical information and check them against a range of domestic and international law enforcement databases. We enrol the fingerprints of all asylum seekers aged five years or older and who are physically capable. This helps us to establish whether we have encountered them previously and helps to ensure they do not make multiple applications using multiple identities, and to identify those who pose a threat to public safety, our national security, or are likely to breach our laws. We can also check any documentary evidence they may have and authenticate them against document image archives and whether they have been reported lost or stolen.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seeker children have been (a) wrongly assessed to be above eighteen and (b) housed in accommodation with adults in each of the last five years.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
These figures are not available in a reportable format and to provide the information could only be done at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many licenses for animal testing of cosmetic ingredients have been issued since 2019 as a result of the European Chemicals Agency ruling; and to whom those licenses were issued.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat
Animal testing of cosmetics for consumer safety has been banned in the UK since 1998 and this remains in force.
On 17 May 2023 the Government announced it is going further by banning, with immediate effect, licences to test ingredients exclusively used in the production of cosmetics for the purposes of worker safety.
The Home Secretary has issued a Written Ministerial Statement, which can be found here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2023-05-17/hcws779.
Since 2019, the Animals in Science Regulation Unit has granted seven project licences, or amendments to licences, that specifically authorise the testing on animals of chemicals for use as ingredients in cosmetics under the REACH regulations.
The Home Office does not publish details of licensed establishments.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 September 2022 to Question 47636 on Dublin Regulations, how many and what proportion of asylum claims have (a) been declared inadmissible and (b) resulted in the return of the applicant on the ground of inadmissibility in each of the last three years.
Answered by Robert Jenrick - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
The Home Office publishes data on asylum and resettlement in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on cases considered under inadmissibility rules can be found in table Asy_09a of the ‘asylum and resettlement summary tables’. The latest data covers 1 January 2021 to 30 September 2022.
Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answers of 16 November to Question 83744, and of 31 October to Question 72434, on Migrants: Employment, if she will make available the data she has on the record of the Employer Checking Service in meeting the response times set out in its Service Level Agreement.
Answered by Robert Jenrick - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
A reliable calculation of response times would require a case by case review, which would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in which quarters has the Employer Checking Service response times failed to meet its Service Level Agreements since 2018.
Answered by Robert Jenrick - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
The information is not available in the format requested and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.