Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Forced Marriage Unit plans to take steps to publish data on the number of cases of female genital mutilation it is supporting.
Answered by Sarah Dines
The Government’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) supports British nationals (including dual nationals) overseas who are at risk of or who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM).
The FMU’s published annual statistics, which provide information on the numbers of victims and potential victims (generally of forced marriage) for whom it has provided support, have since 2020 included figures on the numbers of victims and potential victims of FGM for whom support has been provided. The figures for 2021 showed that, out of the 337 victims and potential victims for whom support was provided, three were victims or potential victims of both forced marriage and FGM, and 18 were victims or potential victims solely of FGM. The statistics can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/forced-marriage-unit-statistics. Statistics for 2022 will be published in the coming months.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of her Department's response rate to enquiries from hon. Members.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Performance against target has been impacted by a significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including the unprecedented amount of correspondence about the situation in Afghanistan and more recently in Ukraine.
The Department continues to prioritise enquiries related to Ukraine and recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in other cases. Actions are being taken to clear backlogs and drive-up performance. MPs can escalate urgent and compassionate cases via the team at Portcullis House.
The Department continues to recruit additional resources and has recently been loaned staff from non-operational areas to assist in clearing the backlogs.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of enquiries from hon. Members to her Department received a response within 20 working days since 1 January 2022; and how many and what proportion of enquiries awaiting a response were received more than (i) 20, (ii) 40, (iii) 60 and (iv) 80 working days ago as of 20 June 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Performance against target has been impacted by a significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including the unprecedented amount of correspondence about the situation in Afghanistan and more recently in Ukraine.
The Department continues to prioritise enquiries related to Ukraine and recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in other cases. Actions have been taken to clear backlogs and drive-up performance. MPs can escalate urgent and compassionate cases via the team at Portcullis House.
The Department continues to recruit additional resources and has recently been loaned staff from non-operational areas to assist in clearing the backlogs.
Data about intake and performance in answering Hon. Members correspondence are published quarterly with the latest Quarter available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/customer-service-operations-data-q1-2022
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many callers spoke to an agent on the MPs' enquiry line in April 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
1967 callers spoke to an agent on the MP enquiry line in April 2022.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many calls made to the MPs' enquiry line had a waiting time of greater than (a) one hour, (b) two hours, (c) three hours and (d) four hours for a caller to speak to an agent in April 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
905 - We do not collect data in this format.
904 - Calls have been longer than we would wish, but we have brought in an additional 16 dedicated passport staff to support the MP hotline, reducing wait times significantly.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average waiting time to speak to an agent on the MPs' Enquiry Line was for each week in April 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
905 - We do not collect data in this format.
904 - Calls have been longer than we would wish, but we have brought in an additional 16 dedicated passport staff to support the MP hotline, reducing wait times significantly.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when the Ukraine community sponsorship visa system will be open for applications.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government’s Homes for Ukraine Scheme launched on Friday 18 March.
Potential applicants and sponsors should visit homesforukraine.campaign.gov.uk for further information.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of Ukraine Family Scheme Visas granted to date are for three years; and what proportion of those visas have been offered for shorter periods of time.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Information on the number of applications which have been granted under the newly launched Ukraine Family Scheme can be found in our published data on the GOV.UK webpage: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukraine-family-scheme-application-data
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the Independent Office for Police Conduct's independence from police forces to deliver full and unprejudiced investigations and just outcomes.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government implemented reforms in February 2020 to streamline the decision-making processes and increase the effectiveness of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
Further to this, the Home Secretary announced last year that she was bringing forward a periodic review of the IOPC. This review will be led by an independent reviewer and will consider the IOPC’s efficiency and effectiveness, including its decision-making processes.
The review will start this year. The IOPC is an investigative body and is not itself responsible for the outcomes via the police misconduct system and the criminal justice system.
Asked by: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many refugees have been taken by each Local Authority under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme as of 27 January 2022.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Home Office is committed to publishing data in an orderly way as part of the regular quarterly Immigration Statistics, in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
The next set of figures will be in the quarterly release in February 2022 and will cover the period October-December 2021. These numbers are updated each quarter.
This adheres to the standard practice for the release of information about the work of the department, both through the quarterly national statistics and the additional transparency data that is released, which ensure that statistics are published properly in a way which is open and accessible to all. Statistics on the number of people resettled under the scheme in 2022 Q1 will be included in subsequent edition of Immigration Statistics.