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Written Question
Visas: Married People
Tuesday 28th February 2023

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of offering a fee waiver for people with a British spouse applying for a visa renewal.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office keeps the fees for immigration and nationality applications under regular review. However, no specific assessment on the potential merits of offering a fee waiver for people with a British spouse applying for a visa renewal has been undertaken.

The Home Office provides exceptions to the need to pay application fees in a number of specific circumstances. These exceptions ensure the Home Office's immigration and nationality fee structure complies with international obligations and wider government policy.


Written Question
Home Office: Correspondence
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of urgent cases submitted to the Home Office via the dedicated MPs' written enquiries route are responded to within the twenty working day target.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Member’s written correspondence within 20 working days.

Performance against target has been impacted by an unprecedented increase in MPs queries following the Afghan evacuation, Ukraine crisis and HM Passport Office application surge.

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-q2-2022

The published data does not distinguish between urgent and non-urgent enquiries.


Written Question
Home Office: Correspondence
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of non-urgent cases submitted to the Home Office via the dedicated MPs' written enquiries route are responded to within the twenty working day target.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Member’s written correspondence within 20 working days.

Performance against target has been impacted by an unprecedented increase in MPs queries following the Afghan evacuation, Ukraine crisis and HM Passport Office application surge.

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-q2-2022

The published data does not distinguish between urgent and non-urgent enquiries.


Written Question
Asylum: Applications
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what percentage of asylum cases are decided within (a) six months, (b) one year and (c) over one year.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office is unable to state what the average waiting time is to process an asylum claim or how many asylum claimants were awaiting their asylum interview because this information is not held in a reportable format, not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

However, the Home Office does publish data on the number asylum claims awaiting an initial decision by duration and the numbers processed within six months, for main claimant only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the published Immigration Statistics and ASY_02 of the published Transparency Data:

List of tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Immigration and protection data: Q2 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)


Written Question
Asylum: Applications
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average waiting time for an asylum interview is in England.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office is unable to state what the average waiting time is to process an asylum claim or how many asylum claimants were awaiting their asylum interview because this information is not held in a reportable format, not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

However, the Home Office does publish data on the number asylum claims awaiting an initial decision by duration and the numbers processed within six months, for main claimant only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the published Immigration Statistics and ASY_02 of the published Transparency Data:

List of tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Immigration and protection data: Q2 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)


Written Question
Asylum: Applications
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent she has made of the average waiting time to process an asylum claim.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office is unable to state what the average waiting time is to process an asylum claim or how many asylum claimants were awaiting their asylum interview because this information is not held in a reportable format, not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

However, the Home Office does publish data on the number asylum claims awaiting an initial decision by duration and the numbers processed within six months, for main claimant only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the published Immigration Statistics and ASY_02 of the published Transparency Data:

List of tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Immigration and protection data: Q2 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)


Written Question
UK Visas and Immigration
Wednesday 26th January 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many cases referred by hon. Members to UK Visas and Immigration are pending without response after 20 working days.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Members written correspondence within 20 working days.

Performance has been impacted by a very significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including the unprecedented amount of correspondence about the situation in Afghanistan. Ministers and officials have also had to instigate a remote process for drafting and signing correspondence during the period of COVID-19 restrictions.

The Department recognises that it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance. The Department has recruited additional resources and expects to return to answering Hon. Member’s correspondence within service standard by the end of March 2022.

Data about intake and performance for answering Hon. Members correspondence are published quarterly with the latest Quarter available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/customer-service-operations-data-q3-2021 and this includes data up to and including the end of quarter 3 - 2021.


Written Question
UK Visas and Immigration
Wednesday 26th January 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many cases referred by hon. Members to UK Visas and Immigration are pending without response after 40 working days.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Members written correspondence within 20 working days.

Performance has been impacted by a very significant increase in the volume of correspondence received, including the unprecedented amount of correspondence about the situation in Afghanistan. Ministers and officials have also had to instigate a remote process for drafting and signing correspondence during the period of COVID-19 restrictions.

The Department recognises it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance. The Department has recruited additional resources and expects to return to answering Hon. Member’s correspondence within service standard by the end of March 2022.

Data about intake and performance in answering Hon. Members and Members of the House of Lords correspondence are published quarterly with the latest Quarter available at

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/customer-service-operations-data-q3-2021 and this includes data up to and including the end of quarter 3 - 2021.


Written Question
UK Visas and Immigration
Wednesday 26th January 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she plans to take in response to UK Visas and Immigration failing to meet its service standards of responding to queries from hon. Members within 20 working days.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Department recognises that it has not been able to meet service standard in some cases but has implemented an action plan to clear backlogs and drive up performance.

The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Members written correspondence within 20 working days and has recruited additional resources to help clear the backlogs. The Department expects to return to answering Hon. Member’s correspondence within service standard by the end of March 2022.


Written Question
UK Visas and Immigration: Administrative Delays
Wednesday 26th January 2022

Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she estimates that UK Visas and Immigration will have cleared the existing backlog of cases.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Home Office is pursuing a programme of transformation and business improvement initiatives which will speed up decision making, reduce the time people spend in the system and reduce the numbers who are awaiting an interview or decision. This includes increasing the number of decision makers and providing improved training and career progression opportunities to aid retention of staff. We are continuing to develop existing and new technology to help build on recent improvements such as digital interviewing and move away from a paper-based system. We are streamlining and digitalising the case working process to enable more effective workflow, appointment booking and decision-making.