Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many illegal migrants were apprehended between Stranraer and Belfast in each of the last three years; and how many of those were apprehended during a) daytime and b) evening sailings.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
To maintain the highest standards of accuracy, the Home Office prefers to refer to published data, as this has been subject to rigorous quality assurance under National Statistics protocols prior to publication.
Information about illegal migrants encountered specifically at the Port of Cairnryan and between Stranraer and Belfast is not available in our published data.
Our published national data on enforcement activity is available at the following link and includes data on irregular migration: Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2025 - GOV.UK
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many illegal migrants have been apprehended onboard ferry sailings between Stranraer and Belfast in each of the last three years.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
To maintain the highest standards of accuracy, the Home Office prefers to refer to published data, as this has been subject to rigorous quality assurance under National Statistics protocols prior to publication.
Information about illegal migrants encountered specifically at the Port of Cairnryan and between Stranraer and Belfast is not available in our published data.
Our published national data on enforcement activity is available at the following link and includes data on irregular migration: Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2025 - GOV.UK
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many illegal migrants have been apprehended at the Port of Cairnryan in each of the last three years.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
To maintain the highest standards of accuracy, the Home Office prefers to refer to published data, as this has been subject to rigorous quality assurance under National Statistics protocols prior to publication.
Information about illegal migrants encountered specifically at the Port of Cairnryan and between Stranraer and Belfast is not available in our published data.
Our published national data on enforcement activity is available at the following link and includes data on irregular migration: Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2025 - GOV.UK
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of Border Officers employed at the Port of Cairnryan a) during the day and b) in the evening.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
In the interests of maintaining border security, Border Force does not routinely disclose information of a port-specific nature.
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many permanent civil servants in her Department are staff without assigned posts; and how many are placed in an equivalent (a) people action team, (b) priority movers list, (c) redeployment register, (d) talent pool and (e) skills match hub in the most recent period for which data is available.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The exact number changes on a day-to-day basis. At any point in time, there is likely to be a small number of individuals who have been displaced due to restructures within their business units or, for example, have been on loan to another department during which time their role has been phased out.
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much (a) his Department and (b) each of its arm’s length bodies has spent on external communications through (i) Crown Commercial Service agreement RM6125 and (ii) other agreements since 5 July 2024; and which firms have received funding.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
To identify the information requested would require a manual review of all transactions made in communications related account categories in the Home Office’s financial system since 5 July 2024, to confirm if they related to Crown Commercial Service agreement RM6125 and other agreements, and then to collate and verify relevant data.
This could only be done for the purposes of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department is taking steps to ensure that retired police officers affected by the 2018 McCloud judgment receive a Remediable Service Statement by the 31 March 2025.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
While the Home Office has responsibility for overarching policy and legislative changes to the police pension regulations in England & Wales, the police pension scheme is locally administered by individual police forces. The Home Office is working with the policing sector to support the effective implementation of the McCloud remedy for all affected individuals.
It is for each Chief Constable, in their role as scheme manager for their force, to determine their administrative timetable. This includes the timetabling of when scheme members’ Remediable Service Statements will be distributed, which are produced for each scheme member by the relevant scheme administrator.
The devolved governments have overarching policy and legislative responsibility in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much (a) her Department and (b) each of its Arm’s Length Bodies has spent on external public relations since 5 July 2024; and which firms that funding went to.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public relations activity is a subset of communication spend. As such, this data is not held. The Government Communication Service encourages the prioritisation of low and no cost public relations activities wherever possible.
It is recommended that all external communications support should be procured through approved government frameworks, with strict controls in place to ensure cost-effectiveness.
Asked by: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much their Department spent on (a) media and (b) voice training for Ministers since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There has been no spend on media or voice training for Ministers since 5 July 2024.