Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many General Aviation Reports were submitted in (a) 2017 and (b) 2022.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Home Office records indicate that approximately 87,795 General Aviation Reports were submitted in 2022.
The data from 2017 is not held in a reportable format.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will consult representatives of the retail trade sector on the potential merits of introducing a Protection of Employees Bill in the context of tackling assaults on employees.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is clear that violence and abuse towards any worker is not acceptable. The offence of common assault carries a maximum penalty of six months.
Additionally, the Government has already legislated to introduce a statutory aggravating factor for assault against any public facing worker via section 156 of the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This legislation extends to England and Wales. The statutory aggravating factor applies in cases of assault where an offence is committed against those performing a public duty or providing a service to the public and ensures the courts treat the public-facing nature of a victim’s role as an aggravating factor when considering the sentence for an offence.
The introduction of the statutory aggravating factor sends a strong message that violence and abuse against retail staff will not be tolerated.
The Home Office continues to work closely with retailers, trade associations and policing through the National Retail Crime Steering Group to ensure the response to retail crime is as robust as it can be.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to undertake a comparative review of the cost of (a) getting and (b) renewing a child's passport in (i) the UK and (b) similar sized European countries.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
British passport fees are set to recover the costs of providing related services, in line with HM Treasury Managing Public Money Guidance.
Passport fees levied by overseas issuing authorities have no bearing upon the fees agreed by Parliament for applying for a British passport. As such, there are no plans to conduct a comparative review.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the transforming forensics programme in strengthening forensic services.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has funded multiple programmes to strengthen forensic services. The programmes all undergo monthly assurance. The Transforming Forensics Programme, which concluded in March this year, has:
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 6 June 2022 to Question 7920 on Passports: Applications, what the average waiting times were for a passport in (a) April 2021, (b) February 2022 and (c) February 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Since April 2021, passport customers using the standard service in the UK have been advised to allow ten weeks to get their passport.
The percentage of customers who received their passport within this published processing timeframe in the months requested is shown below:
April 2021: 99.4%
February 2022: 99.3%
February 2023: 99.7%
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) adult and (b) child passports her Department has processed in the last twelve months.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The number of passport applications received is published quarterly in HM Passport Office’s transparency data. The most recent published data can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-passport-office-data-q4-2022(opens in a new tab)
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, How much funding has the Government allocated to tackling cyber crime in the next twelve months.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Tackling cyber crime is at the heart of the Government’s National Cyber Strategy which is supported by £2.6billion of investment over the three year Spending Review period. The National Cyber Strategy (2022-2025) has set the direction and ambition for investment and efforts across the UK cyber ecosystem. Delivery of the Strategy is being supported by the National Cyber Fund. This programme has allocated investment to lead government departments to support delivery of the objectives set out in the strategy.
In the financial year 23/24, the Home Office is receiving £18,243,506 from the National Cyber Fund to provide a range of capabilities and resource to tackle cyber crime. The National Crime Agency receives a further £30,300,000 from the National Cyber Fund, which includes building and maintaining high-end capabilities that allow a cross-system response to the most harmful cyber crimes, such as ransomware.
This funding is supplemented by a further £16,103,000 of Home Office funding under the Police Settlement Programme. This funding continues to build law enforcement capabilities at the national, regional and local levels to ensure they have the capacity to deal with the impacts of increasing volume and sophistication of cyber crime. This includes ensuring local police officers have the skills to investigate these crimes.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether Operation Gull is still operating in Northern Ireland.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Operation Gull is an intelligence led operation and is deployed on that basis.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have settled in the UK with a British Nationals (Overseas) visa in each of the last three years.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on the number of applications and grants of leave of people from Hong Kong on the British National Overseas (BN(O)) route in the “How many people come to the UK each year (including visitors)?” topic and underlying datasets of the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’(opens in a new tab).
The latest data for the BN(O) route relates to the year ending March 2023. These statistics include data on main applicants and dependants.
The Home Office publishes data on the number of grants of settlement, broken down by category of leave, in table Se_D02 in the Settlement datasets(opens in a new tab). The latest data relates to the year ending March 2023.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 5 November 2019 to Question 4944 on Passports: Republic of Ireland, how many passport applications from residents of the Republic of Ireland were processed by HM Passport Office in each year since April 2019; and how many such applications were processed by each regional passport office in each of those years.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The data requested is not held in a reportable format.