Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many agency staff were employed by her Department in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes Staff numbers including agency staff in its Annual report as exampled by the 2024-2025 Annual report, pages 165-166 inclusive at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688c9785a34b939141463e37/HO_ARA_2024-25_Book_WEB_Final_v3+CorrSlip.pdf.
Prior reports are available at Home Office annual reports and accounts - GOV.UK
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many immigration enforcement officers have left their roles since July 2024.
Answered by Alex Norris - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, other than special advisers if her Department has appointed anyone from outside the civil service since July 2024.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Candidates that have been successfully appointed to a public appointment (whether regulated or unregulated) are generally announced on the Public Appointments Service announcements page. Candidates that have been successfully appointed to a direct ministerial appointment are generally announced on the Direct Ministerial Appointments Announcement portal.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made a recent estimate of the number of people in the UK who have dual citizenship.
Answered by Mike Tapp
The data requested is not available from published statistics. Immigration statistics for the last 10 years are published at Migration statistics. While these include statistics for naturalisation/registration as a British Citizen, they do not include those who are deemed automatically a British Citizen without the need to apply.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what quantity of ketamine has been seized at the UK border in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Mike Tapp
The Government is committed to tackling drug harms through prevention, treatment and enforcement. We are working closely with police, health services and international partners to disrupt supply chains and protect communities.
Data is available via drug seizures transparency data - GOV.UK.
Ketamine seizure quantity (Kgs) (by Border Force) breakdown extracted from gov.uk statistics.
2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/2023 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
299 | 198 | 114 | 133 | 37 | 154 | 1664 | 934 | 769 | 1092 |
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help increase levels of (a) recruitment and (b) retention of neighbourhood police officers in South Holland and the Deepings constituency.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
As part of the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, the Government has committed to delivering 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel by the end of this Parliament.
Lincolnshire Police was allocated £1,663,470 in 2025/26, and £3,042,016 has been set aside in 2026/27 to support the force’s contribution to this commitment. Forces are able to determine their preferred workforce mix based on local crime demands and deployment of officers within neighbourhood policing is an operational policing decision.
Retention of officers is critical to effective neighbourhood policing. Forces should be using evidence-based approaches to support the retention and progression of existing officers, alongside local recruitment efforts. To support this, the College of Policing provides a platform offering learning, insights and guidance on attraction, recruitment and retention, which forces can use to inform and strengthen local delivery.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many political appointees have been made by her Department since July 2024.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
We have taken ‘political appointees’ to mean special advisers. A list of special advisers by department is published each year in the Annual Report on Special Advisers which is laid in parliament. The Annual Report on Special Advisers 2026 will be published in due course.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has hired external public relations consultants since July 2024.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Home Office Communications Directorate holds contracts with a roster of specialist communications agencies, which currently includes Public Relations. These contracts are utilised to deliver communications campaigns in support of the Home Secretary’s priorities. No external Public Relations consultants have been hired by Communications Directorate outside of these contractual arrangements since July 2024.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were detained for attempting to enter Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland illegally in each of the past five years.
Answered by Alex Norris - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
As part of the Common Travel Area (CTA) arrangements, the UK does not operate routine immigration controls on journeys from Ireland to the UK, with no immigration checks being undertaken on the Ireland-Northern Ireland land border.
The UK does however carry out intelligence-led operations to target potential abuse of CTA routes, including between Ireland and Northern Ireland but away from the land border. This is to detect those who intend to abuse CTA arrangements. Operational activity is intelligence led and focussed on abuse of the CTA by criminals.
There is a high level of cooperation between multiple law enforcement agencies, including Border Force, Immigration Enforcement, NCA and Police forces to achieve this. We regularly monitor and review any identified trends and we work closely with our colleagues in Ireland in taking action to address this.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been refused Electronic Travel Authorisation on the basis that their presence may not be conducive to the public good since 2024.
Answered by Mike Tapp
Between 1 January 2024 and 11 June 2026, 2,640 people have been refused an Electronic Travel Authorisation on the basis that their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good.