Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people claiming asylum had a criminal record before entering the UK in the most recent period for which data is available.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
All asylum claimants are subject to mandatory security checks to confirm their identity and to link it to their biometric details for the purpose of immigration, security and criminality checks. For further information regarding security checks during the asylum screening process, please see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-screening-and-routing/asylum-screening-and-routing-accessible.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department has taken to ascertain previous offences of people claiming asylum in the UK.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
All asylum claimants are subject to mandatory security checks to confirm their identity and to link it to their biometric details for the purpose of immigration, security and criminality checks. For further information regarding security checks during the asylum screening process, please see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-screening-and-routing/asylum-screening-and-routing-accessible.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of asylum seekers have had their DNA taken on arrival in the UK.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave her on 9 July to Question 63301. The current procedures are the same as those that were in place under the previous government.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department shares information with local police forces on the criminal records of asylum seekers placed in their area.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office communicates regularly with local police forces, and with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to assess the operational implications of housing asylum seekers in different areas and regions around the country, and will always do what is necessary to protect the safety and security of each local community affected.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2025 to Question 58982 on Information Commissioner's Office: Wilmslow, if he will publish the Information Commissioner’s Office's commercial analysis of the locations it considered.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) decision to relocate was approved by the Cabinet Office with no formal role for DSIT. Any request for further information about this project, including any plans to publish their commercial analysis, should be addressed directly to the ICO.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2025 to Question 58982 on Information Commissioner's Office: Wilmslow, what steps his Department took to find alternative office space for the Information Commissioner's Office in Wilmslow.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) decision to relocate was approved by the Cabinet Office with no formal role for my department. The ICO conducted an extensive search and reviewed a range of locations, including remaining within Wilmslow.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the UK Health Security Agency news announcement of 21 May 2025, how much he has spent on testing mosquitoes through the Vector-Borne Real-time Arbovirus Detection and Response programme; and what the Ct value was for the PCR tests which located fragments of the West Nile virus in two mosquitoes.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Vector-Borne RADAR (Real-time Arbovirus Detection and Response) programme is a three-year funded collaborative grant worth £1.15 million which is 80% funded by Defra / UK Research & Innovation, and 20% by each of the collaborative organisations, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Institute of Zoology and the UK Health Security Agency.
Approximately 50,000 mosquitoes across 6,000 pools in 2023 and 2024 combined have been screened from across southern and eastern England.
The programme retrospectively screened 2,000 Aedes vexans mosquitoes that were trapped in Gamston, Nottinghamshire in July 2023. These were split into 200 pools of 10 mosquitoes and screened using three separate rt-PCRs. Two pools were positive for West Nile virus (WNV) RNA (Ct values 30.7 -33.4 across all three PCRs).
More significantly, the positive RNA extracts were also submitted for GridION sequencing (an Oxford Nanopore based system). One pool amplified a 402bp region of the WNV genome, with a read depth of c500 reads which generated a consensus sequence showing a conserved section of the WNV genome and clusters with WNV lineage 1a sequences from Europe, the Middle East and North America.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department collects the DNA of people who arrive illegally in the UK.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office currently collects biometric data of small boat arrivals in the form of facial images and fingerprints, but keeps the nature of such checks under regular review.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many staff network events took place in his Department in May 2025; and what the names of those events were.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra can confirm that during May, no staff network events were recorded centrally by HR.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 18 June 2025 to Question 58584 on Undocumented Migrants: Biometrics, what the limited exceptions are where biometric data may not be collected at the time of encounter from immigrants arriving in the UK illegally.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
This would include for example, children under five, who are only required to provide facial photographs, or people who are physically unable to provide biometric information at the time of their arrival because of medical emergencies. In such cases, the requirement to provide biometric information is deferred until the individual is able to comply.