Points of Order
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker
Thank you. The business to be taken in Westminster Hall is determined by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Backbench Business Committee or the Petitions Committee, not by Ministers or their officials. While the content of Ministers’ responses to debates in Westminster Hall is not a matter for the Chair, I would obviously expect those responses to address the content of the speeches in those debates. If the hon. Lady feels that the Minister’s responses to the points she made in the debate were unsatisfactory, I am sure that the Table Office will be able to advise on how best to pursue the matter. I do not know if the Minister wants to make any comments—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
indicated dissent.
Changes to Immigration Rules
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is today laying before the House a statement of changes in immigration rules.
The changes reflect amendments to the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme to allow children who are not applying with, or to join, their parent or legal guardian in the UK to qualify for a visa.
As the Government announced on 22 June 2022, these changes are designed to ensure, where a Ukrainian parent or legal guardian confirms it is their child’s best interests for the child to come to the UK without them, there is a route for them.
In these cases, the sponsor will need to give a greater commitment to support the child for three years or until the child turns 18 (so long as the sponsorship lasts at least six months), whichever is soonest. The local authority will conduct safeguarding checks and pre-approval of the sponsor before the visa application can be made, and there will need to be parental consent which, in line with the Ukrainian Government’s requirements, will need to be certified by an authority approved by the Ukrainian Government.
There have already been applications from children travelling without their parents. These applications were on hold while the Government carefully worked through the challenges around allowing children to travel without a parent. On 15 July the Home Office published a concession to the immigration rules to allow these cases to be prioritised once they have the necessary approval from the local authority.
We have also introduced an additional safeguarding requirement to ensure if a sponsor is not approved by the local authority under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, they cannot sponsor the same or another child under this scheme or the Ukraine family scheme.
The Homes for Ukraine scheme will be opened to new child applicants applying without their parents or legal guardians on 10 August.
[HCWS248]
Asylum Accommodation: Barry House, East Dulwich
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing the debate. The United Kingdom has a long and proud history of helping the world’s most vulnerable and desperate people to seek safety and sanctuary here, as we have seen most recently through the schemes we launched in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, with over 155,000 visas now having been issued to those arriving under those schemes.
We recognise we have a duty to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. As part of that, we provide support and accommodation until an individual’s claim is fully determined. Local authorities play a very important role in providing that support, including the London Borough of Southwark. My officials, and those at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, therefore work closely with local authority partners on this and a range of topics, and we are genuinely grateful for their support—in the case of Southwark over many years, including as a dispersal area.
I have previously said to the House that our asylum system is broken. That is felt most keenly in the accommodation space. The aftermath of the pandemic, combined with the unprecedented and unacceptable rise in dangerous small boat crossings, has increased demand for support. That has had a cumulative impact on the overall asylum estate. One critical impact is on the increased requirement for dispersal accommodation. We are procuring dispersal accommodation as quickly as possible, but we accept that some people are remaining in initial accommodation, such as Barry House, for a longer period than we would wish or would have expected. We have also, as was touched on, had to procure hotels. Published data as of March 2022 shows an increase in demand for asylum support of about 50% since the start of the pandemic, with accommodation now required for more than 80,000 asylum seekers while their claims are considered. That is unacceptable. For the individuals concerned it is not the best outcome, for taxpayers it is not the best outcome, and it is not the best outcome for local communities either. That is why we are committed to fixing it.
First, I will highlight the move to full dispersal. I announced in April that the Home Office would immediately move to a nationwide full dispersal model, so that asylum pressures are more equally spread across all local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, as the hon. Lady might be aware. A large number of local authorities, unlike hers, were not participating in providing dispersal accommodation, limiting our options. I used to mention the oft-quoted figure that 31 out of 32 local authority areas in Scotland were not participating, so we are moving to all local authorities—all areas—being part of the system.
We have begun procuring asylum accommodation in co-operation with local authorities in areas that have not participated before. That will help us to move from contingency accommodation, such as hotels, to less expensive but, crucially, more suitable accommodation, particularly for families. This will also see our initial accommodation estate return to being the short-stay solution that it was always designed to be, rather than being used for longer-term accommodation, to which the hon. Lady referred. We do not want that, which is why we are moving to implement full dispersal.
To deliver the new change, we are working in partnership with local authorities to develop regional plans. Between 9 May and 1 July, we held an informal consultation with local authorities and other interested parties to help to shape the design of a reformed asylum dispersal system that is fair, sustainable, innovative and responsive to changing demands and needs, and which, crucially, covers all immigration demands in a local authority area. The focus today is on asylum accommodation but we are conscious—local authorities make this point—that such things as accommodation for Afghans arriving under the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, or who had arrived under Op Pitting, resettlement routes and asylum have traditionally been dealt with separately, and it makes sense to bring them together, particularly in areas such as Southwark, which has regularly played its part following requests that we have made.
Full dispersal will provide local authorities with more control and autonomy at a regional level by asking them to collectively agree an approach to dispersal in their region. We are in the process of analysing the evidence gathered through the informal consultation and I look forward to working with local authorities in the coming months following their contribution to this process. We are keen to work with them to agree how this will work and how we fairly allocate the level of accommodation that there should be in local communities, while being clear that full dispersal means that there is not an option for a local authority to walk out of the door and decide not to take part. To be fair, London authorities have worked together in this area for many years and we want to try to move that model to the rest of the United Kingdom.
Part of this is about funding, which the hon. Lady touched on. The full dispersal system will be funded by a model designed to recognise the contribution of areas that have had a long-standing track record of supporting this work, while encouraging the provision of new dispersal accommodation in both new and existing areas where dispersal is applied. Each local authority in England, Scotland and Wales that was accommodating asylum seekers under dispersal on 27 March this year will receive a £250 one-off payment per asylum seeker accommodated in their local area. To date, we have paid 101 local authorities about £14 million to implement and/or bolster services in new and existing areas.
Encouraging the use of new accommodation is part of that. Funding will be available up to 31 March next year to provide £3,500 to the local council for each new dispersal bed space occupied in new and existing dispersal areas, further alleviating pressures on the system. That funding is not ringfenced, which will allow flexibility in its use, recognising the different priorities that local communities may have about how to spend it.
To implement the full dispersal model, we are undertaking a new burdens assessment as part of the informal consultation process. That will provide an opportunity to better understand the costs associated with asylum dispersal and engage with the local government sector. I hope that gives the hon. Lady reassurance that we are looking to move away from a dependency on contingency accommodation.
Despite the challenges, we have consistently met our statutory obligations towards destitute asylum seekers. We expect clear standards from our service providers and monitor them closely to ensure that they meet those standards. When essential living needs are not provided for in hotels, a cash allowance is provided. Extra assistance is provided for those who can show that they have exceptional needs. Additional support is also available for special cases; for example, further top-ups are available for families with pregnant mothers or very young children.
All asylum seekers have access, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to the advice, issue reporting and eligibility service provided by Migrant Help, where they can raise any concerns regarding accommodation or support services and get information about how to obtain further support.
Turning to the specific subject of the debate, I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting the issues with the Barry House site, as she did in late 2018 during a Westminster Hall debate. There have been important developments since that debate. In September 2019, the Home Office started working with our contractor, Clearsprings Ready Homes, in London and the south. That has enabled significant improvements to service delivery, accommodation provision and collaboration with local partners.
We believe that Barry House has been improved and offers a good standard of accommodation and support. It has kitchen facilities on each floor, a spacious dining room, communal spaces, and dedicated areas of privacy for breastfeeding mothers and multi-faith worship. Bedrooms also offer wet rooms and wheelchair access throughout. I heard the concerns that the hon. Lady raised, and we will of course look into them. I am happy to meet her separately, with the Home Office team, to go through them in a little more detail, particularly if there are points about individual cases that she did not want to share in a public forum. We take our responsibilities in this area seriously.
I hope the hon. Lady will have noted that some of the times of stay are not times that we are looking to be the standard but reflect the pressures in the system. Those pressures are motivating our move to things such as full dispersal. We will continue to have a close and collaborative relationship between Home Office officials and senior officials in Southwark. Again, we are grateful for the local council’s support.
On some of the wider points that were raised, we are recruiting more asylum decision makers. Traditionally, there have been about 400 to 500. We are rapidly approaching having 1,000 in post—obviously, there is a process of training and mentoring to go through—and we will look to go beyond that, because we are conscious that we need to get the number of people waiting down. As I have said at the Home Affairs Committee, too many people are waiting too long for a decision. That is not in their interests, it is not in the interests of the immigration system and, ultimately, it is not in the taxpayer’s interests. That is why we are bringing in more people and more resources, and looking at how we can make our teams more productive, learning from other European systems that are able to process decisions more quickly, partly through investment in digital transformation.
Let me conclude by expressing my gratitude to the hon. Lady for raising this important issue. I am grateful to all in her community for the support that they provide to those who are accommodated among them while waiting for a decision on their asylum claim. We are reforming the asylum system to make it fairer and more effective. I suspect that the hon. Lady and I disagree about some of the moves we are making to do that, but there is no doubt that an overhaul is needed, not least to put an end to some of the lengthy delays people face while waiting for determination of their asylum claim, and to reduce the time people spend in accommodation that was only designed for them to spend a short period in before moving on to dispersed accommodation. We are committed to making this happen, and we remain committed, as ever, to meeting our statutory duties to support those who would otherwise be destitute and delivering the decisions they require in a timely way.
Question put and agreed to.
Leaving the EU: UK Language Schools
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU on language schools in the UK.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. It is that time of year again when in seaside towns or big cities, the traditional sight of be-rucksacked groups dressed in fashionable attire—often pastel colours—descending on the streets is common.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
There are loads in Torbay.
Dr Huq
There are loads in Ealing as well, although a lot less than there used to be. Local householders—as the Minister will know as a local—also get leaflets through the door asking for a spare room or two, saying there are posts going as host families and promising pretty decent money. The reason for all that is English language teaching and English language schools. It is a phenomenon that peaks in the summer months. They offer an all-round experience, typically to teenagers, for a number of weeks. Students get the full immersion: an English breakfast with a typical English family, English lessons during the day, perhaps a spot of early evening work as a barista or pulling pints before dinner en famille and then a bit of sightseeing and cultural programme built in as well—maybe visiting London, Oxford and Southend.
Either side of the weekend I have had an insight into that subculture. I visited two English language schools in Ealing: Edwards Language School and West London English School. They tell me that the two weeks from now are set to be the busiest of the year for them. However, the story is mixed. At WLES, where I was yesterday, I saw multiple classes. It has outgrown the couple of rooms it takes in an office block on Uxbridge Road. Edwards Language School is in a large Victorian house on the same road—although the road is called something else at that point. It used to span two houses, but it is in one now. It has halved in size. The school was set up by lecturers from the University of West London, which is also in my constituency, 30 years ago. It then got swallowed up by a chain, and that chain’s operations in Brighton have not survived.
I keep saying what used to be because although in 2019, the sector’s last normal year of trading, there were 550,000 students, half of them under 18, contributing £1.4 billion into the UK economy, supporting 35,000 jobs and underpinning the wider £20 billion education market, it feels dangerously at risk of decline because of the end of freedom of movement and visa changes. After I spoke to the trade body English UK, and exchanged emails with the Association of British Travel Agents, the Tourism Alliance and the British Educational Travel Association—they have all been falling over themselves to brief me for this short debate—some startling figures emerged.
The BETA says that between 2019 and 2022 the number of student groups coming from the EU dropped by 84%. In Ealing, not that long ago, I would have had a choice of five different schools to visit and sample, but two of them—one had been there since 1980—have completely bitten the dust. A third exists on paper as an online operation, leaving only its Wimbledon branch; the Ealing branch has gone.
For context, while West London College, which has an Ealing campus, offers some English language teaching, and some universities offer it too, the bulk of the provision locally and across the country comes from private businesses. That means they have sometimes been viewed with suspicion, although the British Council accreditation—the regulatory framework that they have to go through—is among the most stringent in the world. To attain trusted status is not cheap either; it weighs in at £20,000.
Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)
The sitting is resumed and the debate may continue until 5.6 pm.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I thank the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) for securing the debate. This is a subject that I have a strong personal interest in, as my Torbay constituency is home to several excellent English language schools. The Government and I therefore fully appreciate the important contribution they make to the economy and the cultural value of all educational visits and exchanges between the UK and other nations.
I suggest from my own experiences that simply focusing on language schools and the issues raised today misses the range of factors that affect the sector. I noticed that the hon. Member referred in her opening speech to institutions that have closed in my constituency. I am not sure whether she is a regular reader of our newspaper Herald Express. Sadly, one language school closed down following a significant fraud involving one of its employees, which has been well publicised, and another building is hosting a local state school. Looking at things in isolation and then drawing conclusions from them may not be the best approach to this type of debate, without the local knowledge that a constituency Member of Parliament has.
Dr Huq
There may be bad apples out there, but that does not detract from the fact that during the votes my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) were saying there has been a contraction in numbers. There is a problem—let us not ignore that.
Kevin Foster
Again, when we cite specific examples, we perhaps need to check them out first.
In terms of understanding the pressure on the visitor economy, we have ambitious plans for the improvement and digitalisation of our future border and immigration system, alongside its simplification to make the UK an increasingly attractive destination for visitors from around the world and to support our tourism and language teaching sectors. Reference was made to processing passports, but those coming to the UK to study on a language course—the hon. Member focused mostly on EEA nationals—would not be applying for a UK passport, so those would not have any impact either.
Ending the use of EU/EEA national identity cards was touched on several times, and we have moved to end their use at the border. It is worth noting, however, that some EU identity cards were among the least secure documents seen at our border, and until this policy was implemented, they absolutely dominated detection figures for document abuse at the border, with just under half of all false documents detected at the border being EEA identity cards. To deal with this oft-abused hole in our border security, since October 2021, EU, EEA and Swiss visitors, like all others entering the United Kingdom, have been required to have an individual passport.
Kevin Foster
I will not continually give way, given that I have already had the time reduced for my reply as the intro was slightly longer than the normal 15 minutes. I will go through my next arguments, then perhaps I will have the chance to take some more interventions.
We provided a year’s notice for the change to allow people and groups in Europe to plan ahead and obtain passports before they travelled. The indications are that the change has been understood and complied with. I note that before the change, the vast majority of EU, EEA and Swiss citizens arriving in the UK were already using their passports. One of the biggest benefits of using a passport is that it enables people to use the e-passport gates available at many of our ports. To link directly to the debate, we are actively working to change the system to allow the minimum age for their use, which is 12, to be reduced. That has the welcome side effect of reducing queues at immigration desks on arrival by using a more automatic process, rather than people needing to be seen in person by a Border Force officer.
Looking at the issue in isolation misses the chance to look at some of the wider changes we are making to the immigration system, particularly in relation to this sector. I highlight our extension of the electronic visa waiver scheme to Saudi and Bahrani citizens. That simplifies and reduces the cost of the visa process by allowing them to obtain an online visa waiver, rather than going through the full visa application process. Put simply, instead of paying about £100 and going to a visa application centre, they pay £30 and apply from home. I know Saudi nationals have been regular customers of language schools in Torbay, so this measure will help the sector.
In 2021, directly linked to feedback from the language sector and universities, we changed the immigration rules, to allow for most short-term study activities to be included in the general visitor category, under which most tourists arrive in the UK, reflecting that much of this activity is more like tourism than coming to study a degree for three or four years. Now, non-visa national students coming for a course of study of up to six months do not need to apply for a separate short-term study visa, and visa nationals can simply apply for a visitor visa, or if they already hold one, arrive under a long-term visitor visa.
We are introducing a permission to travel requirement, which will eventually require everyone travelling to the UK, except British and Irish citizens, to seek permission in advance of travel. Those permissions will include electronic travel authorisation for passengers visiting the UK who do not need a visa for short stays, or do not have an immigration status prior to travelling. Similar systems are used by the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The EU is also planning on introducing its own system for the Schengen zone.
We recognise there will be challenges around electronic travel authorisation and a need to engage with sectors about how it will be used, just as many of those sectors already engage with the US electronic system for travel authorisation, but there are also clear benefits. The Government have announced that citizens of the Gulf Co-operation Council nations will, in 2023, be able to obtain an electronic travel authorisation rather than have to use the current electronic visa waiver, simplifying the process and making the UK a more attractive destination for them. To be clear, permission under the electronic travel authorisation will be similar to arriving as a non-visa national now, giving up to six months under the visitor route. That all links to our move towards increased automation.
We are clear that we have a global immigration system. We moved to end the use of the list of travellers system, which is an EU scheme allowing visa nationals to travel to another EU member state. It should be noticed that we provided a slightly longer grace period for people coming to the UK than was allowed for our residents travelling to Europe. That was an EU system and we have now moved towards a single global system.
There was some reference to collective passports. It is probably worth noting that we remain a signatory to the 1961 Council of Europe treaty, which provides for collective passports for young people. The Council of Europe is separate from the European Union. We continue to accept passports from those who have ratified the treaty, although it is worth noting that few countries other than the UK continue to issue them. A number of EU countries have declared that they will no longer accept UK collective passports. It is worth considering, with the EU’s European travel information and authorisation system and our ETA system coming in, how much longer travel documents based on a treaty that is now more than 60 years old will continue. That has to be seen alongside the various issues that can come with issuing collective passports. However, we continue to issue them for now.
I feel this debate was a slightly missed opportunity for a sector that plays a large part in the economy of my constituency and our country. By simply focusing on the Home Office and immigration requirements, we miss the range of factors that drive student choices to study, from the quality of the course to the types and quantity of accommodation available—something that I know is a challenge for language schools in my area. Many families have hosted in the past and more have come forward. It is again about how we move forward, for instance, to having dedicated student accommodation, particularly for those coming for a longer period, who will still use the short-term study visa if they are looking to study a language course of up to 11 months.
We must not send out unhelpful, inaccurate and counter-productive messages of it being hard to come here, when in reality our short-term study rules are some of the most generous globally, allowing up to six months’ study without applying for a separate visa to do that. I contrast that ability to be in the UK for up to 180 days, including doing a short English language course for up to 180 days, with the Schengen area’s 90 out of 180 days applying to non-visa nationals, or the US visa waiver system, which is 90 out of 180 days and a maximum stay of 90 days. Our system is much more generous.
That is driven by the type of open economy we want to have, and as we move forward with ETA, we expect slightly more countries to move to non-visa ETA national status, which will benefit the sector directly. I want to make it very clear that the rules on ID card use at our border will not be changing, but our generous short-term study offer will remain and that is what the focus of future debates should be.
Question put and agreed to.
Economic Crime: Law Enforcement
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
This is certainly an interesting day to be responding to a debate. As is the case with the shadow Minister, this is not my usual field, but I agreed to respond to this debate about a week ago. [Interruption.] It is always nice to have those comments from the Deputy Leader of the Labour party. It is always a pleasure when she joins us.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) for securing this debate, and all the other Members who have contributed. It was good to have the rare chance of hearing from my good friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).
We all agree that economic crime poses a threat to the integrity of our economy, and to the security and prosperity of the UK and our allies. Let us not forget the innocent victims who suffer both emotionally and financially at the hands of unscrupulous fraudsters. Economic crime, as outlined by many who contributed, affects more UK citizens more often than any other crime type, and we have heard many examples of that today.
The UK has one of the world’s largest and most open economies, and London is one of the world’s most attractive destinations for overseas investors. Those factors make the UK attractive for legitimate business and contribute to our prosperity, but the Government accept that they also expose the UK to the risk of money laundering via some of those processes.
The public/private economic crime plan published in 2019 provided impetus and direction for our collective efforts in this area, including strengthening law enforcement and increasing domestic and international co-operation. There has been progress in tackling the threat. For example, in recent years we have built some key capabilities, including the creation of the National Economic Crime Centre and substantial reform of the suspicious activity reports regime.
As a number of hon. Members touched on during the debate, we have enacted the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, introducing reforms to enable law enforcement to take more effective action against kleptocrats who launder their funds in the UK. We have also legislated for a levy on the anti-money laundering regulated sector, which from next year will raise £100 million a year to help us to combat economic crime.
I hear some of the concerns expressed by colleagues about the potentially fragmented nature of the enforcement landscape, yet I would emphasise that that does not mean there is not joint and co-ordinated working between the law enforcement agencies concerned. The ever-evolving and clandestine nature of economic crime requires a multi-agency response, drawing together the relevant expertise, capability and resources to effectively tackle this challenge head-on.
The Government believe that the National Economic Crime Centre plays a leading role in setting strategic priorities for the enforcement response to economic crime and bringing agencies together. The NECC leads intensification campaigns to prevent, prepare for and protect against economic crime and to pursue those responsible for it. Co-ordinated by the NECC, the joint money laundering intelligence taskforce serves as a world-leading model of best practice, enabling tactical and strategic intelligence sharing between the public and private sectors to better tackle economic crime and support high-priority operations. However, we recognise the need to go further, as many hon. Members have set out.
Dame Margaret Hodge
I note the Minister’s theoretical description of what happens, but the practice, for anybody who puts any allegation that we get from whistleblowers into the system, is that it just gets passed from one agency to another and it then falls down a black hole and we never hear about it again. While theoretically co-operation and co-ordination take place, in practice they do not. The other thing I would say is that, if in practice the system is working so brilliantly, why are prosecutions and convictions down by so much when we know economic crime is going in the opposite direction?
Kevin Foster
We would accept there is a need to go further and certainly, following today’s debate, we look forward to the debates we will have on the forthcoming Bill. From what we have heard today, I think Members across the House will have thoughts, opinions and valuable contributions to make on how we can strengthen our regime, in both its legal construction and its direct impact.
We recognised in the 2021 spending review the need to invest in this area. The economic crime levy, combined with public contributions, is now an overall package of £400 million to tackle economic crime over the next three years. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the National Crime Agency established a new combating kleptocracy cell specifically to combat corrupt elites, their dirty money and those who enable them to abuse our financial system. We also recognise that we need to further empower law enforcement through the forthcoming economic crime and corporate transparency Bill, which will be designed to tackle economic crime and protect our national security while supporting enterprise. The Bill will include much-needed reforms to Companies House and limited partnerships, with additional powers to seize suspect crypto assets more quickly.
Alison Thewliss
I welcome all reforms of Companies House, but will the Minister put it on a proper footing and make Companies House an anti-money laundering supervisor in its own right, so that it does not have to rely on third parties to fulfil that function?
Kevin Foster
We will set out the details in the Bill and we look forward to the debates on it, but certainly we are clear that the registrar of companies should become more of an active gatekeeper for company creation and a custodian of reliable data, including powers to check, remove or decline information submitted to it. In her contribution, the hon. Lady rightly gave the example of someone setting up a company in the name of “Donald Trump”. Clearly that was not a legitimate company being established—[Interruption.] Some hon. Members may have missed that particular example.
Some of the changes are on identity verification. In my normal role talking about immigration, we do quite a range of work on ensuring that people can validate who they are and what their status is, and we want to bring a lot of that practice into the area of company formation to remove some of the worst examples we have heard about today. I accept that many people will see that as overdue, but it needs to be done and it is something we intend to legislate on and bring forward as a key change to our enforcement structure, to ensure there are fewer opportunities to abuse the system of company registration here in the UK.
Comments have been made about the resources of the National Crime Agency. We have increased its budget year on year since 2019. Taking all NCA funding into account, its budget has increased by 32% since 2019.
In response to concerns on corporate criminal liability laws, which a number of colleagues picked up on in the debate, we have sought to establish whether there is a case for change. I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) who referred to the Law Commission and the review we asked it to undertake. As he rightly says, it sets out several options for reform; he outlined his view that he would like to see us accept them, and we are assessing them. Certainly, that is something we specifically asked the Law Commission to do because we believe it is an area that needs careful consideration.
Sir Robert Neill
I know the Minister wants to assess the options, but he will be aware that that debate has been ongoing for a number of years now, well in advance of its referral to the Law Commission. The matter has been debated in political circles and in legal and judicial circles for a great deal of time and there is a huge amount of information there, so I hope he can come to his assessment very quickly.
Kevin Foster
Obviously, it would be tempting for me, at the Dispatch Box in the current situation, to make a raft of pledges on behalf of the Government about all the things I might like to see happen. At this stage, I will say that I share my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm for coming to a conclusion on our assessment fairly quickly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) in particular talked about whistleblowers. We recognise the value of whistleblowers’ being prepared to shine a light on wrongdoing and we believe they should be able to do so without fear of recrimination. I want to make it clear that workers can seek redress through the whistleblowing regime if they are dismissed or suffer detriment because they have made a protected disclosure. It is worth noting that uncapped compensation can be awarded by an employment tribunal to reflect this.
If a whistleblower does not feel they can blow the whistle to their employer, they may make a disclosure to a prescribed person. There are over 80 prescribed persons and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy regularly publishes guidance for them and updates the list of prescribed persons.
Kevin Hollinrake
I appreciate the fact that the Minister is covering this brief. On the point he makes, if whistleblower legislation works, then why has my constituent Ian Foxley, who blew the whistle on GPT Special Project Management in 2011—a company that was found guilty last year and faced £28 million in financial sanctions—been without a single penny of compensation or a single penny of earnings for 11 years? The legislation is not broad enough or all-encompassing, and it needs urgent reform.
Kevin Foster
As always, my hon. Friend makes a powerful case for going further. He will be aware that the Government have committed to a review of the whistleblowing framework, and we are considering the scope and timing of that review. We would certainly be happy to engage with him about how that could be taken forward effectively, particularly given examples such as the one he has cited, although he will realise that I do not necessarily want to comment on individual cases from the Dispatch Box.
This has been a helpful and productive debate. I reassure colleagues that the Home Office and the Treasury, when leading the policy response for Government, ensure that we do so through a governance structure that oversees activity across the system. This is not the only area where our two Departments work together in the national interest to deliver the overall objectives we wish to see.
In closing, I again thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to this debate. This is an immensely important subject and an area in which we will shortly see significant legislation brought before the House for colleagues to scrutinise, examine and develop, as I know they will want to. Certainly, from what we have heard in this debate, there will be many positive and constructive engagements in that debate. That is something we very much look forward to, because, as has been said, this is not just about tackling crime; it is ultimately about keeping our nation and its allies safe.
Windrush Review
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) for securing the debate, and all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions, many informed by their own, in some cases, very personal experiences and memories of the impact of the Windrush generation. Although she is not in her place now, I was struck by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) recalling her family’s experience in the 1950s and ’60s.
Although I might not agree with the hon. Member for Edmonton on every aspect, I know from my regular engagement with her on casework issues that she is a committed representative of her constituents and all those affected by the Windrush scandal. Wendy Williams’s report outlined that that scandal was formed under successive Governments and over many decades. This is not about one particular period but an accumulation of issues. Those who read the physical version of the report will know that the case on the front page is from 2009. This is an immensely important subject, and I welcome the chance to debate it again.
With this debate taking place so soon after Windrush Day, I want to take this opportunity on behalf of the Government to pay tribute to the Windrush generation. They are an essential part of our national story, and we should recognise, cherish and celebrate the enormous contribution that they and subsequent generations have made, and continue to make, to our country. As the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) and others have outlined, Britain would not be what it is today without them. As the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) pointed out, many viewed themselves as British, coming to the mother country, having been invited here.
Many, particularly from the Caribbean, had already been here defending this country in its darkest hours. Our democracy survives partly due to the immense contribution of many members of the Commonwealth who volunteered to come thousands of miles, under no compulsion, when this country faced its darkest hours, to stand on our shores in the face of a potential Nazi invasion. They felt that this was their country, not a country that they were migrating to. This was not a matter of arriving in a foreign land for them.
I will turn to the core focus of today’s debate. In September 2021, Wendy Williams and her team returned to the Home Office to assess the progress made since the publication of her original report in March 2020. The progress update, which was published in March this year, found that there are several areas where good progress has been made, noted that structures have been put in place that should provide appropriate levels of oversight of the Department in the future, and also commended some excellent behaviours and initiatives from members of staff and teams.
In her original lessons learned report, Wendy Williams made 30 recommendations. Her progress update assesses that eight have been met, a further 13 partially met, and the remaining nine not met. I certainly recognise that there is more work to be done. As the update report acknowledges, change on the scale required takes time. It is also right that the Home Office is held to account on recommendations where sufficient progress has not been made. I want to be clear that it remains our commitment to deliver each and every one of the recommendations.
Regarding training, significant progress has been made, as has already been touched on. For example, training has been developed that covers the history of the UK’s immigration and nationality system from 1960 to 2020. This training has been delivered to policy makers and continues to be undertaken by operational staff across the Department. Colleagues may be aware that, following a campaign by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), we are seeking to add to that the experience of Chinse seamen who faced deportation shortly after world war two.
As has been said, it is also important that senior leaders are at the forefront of the effort to drive change across the Home Office. Abi Tierney, the director general of Her Majesty’s Passport Office and UK Visas and Immigration, has taken on the role of ethics adviser to the Home Office board, in which she will champion ethical behaviour and systems, advise on ethical considerations and spearhead the roll-out of a new ethical decision-making model, making clear that this is at the core of what we should be doing and at the core of how our systems should function.
As has been touched on, it is also vital that we continue engaging outwardly and openly, and not just with people who are likely to agree with the Home Office or to share the views and opinions of any particular party or Government. Earlier today, I welcomed to the Home Office some of the groups that have received funding from the Windrush community fund, both to thank them for their fantastic efforts in helping to promote the Windrush compensation scheme and to hear their views on where we can go further and what more work we can do to reach out to more people. We are clear that we work with those groups—the funding is supplied to support their work for their community.
We remain committed to the relationships we have formed with these hard-working grassroots and community organisations. Their insight and experience are invaluable, and we will ensure that the Home Office is proactively listening and learning all the time from their experiences and comments.
Understandably, a lot of people have focused on the Windrush compensation scheme. Indeed, among the reasons I regularly meet some of the Members present is to discuss individual cases. We recognise that although financial compensation is an important part of this process and is necessary, it is, as has been touched on in other debates, only part of it. For many people, this issue was about not just the monetary impact on them but feeling that their identity had been taken away. We must recognise that as well.
We have made significant progress and have now paid or offered a total of more than £48 million in compensation. We have also made changes to the Windrush compensation scheme in order to ensure that people receive the compensation to which they are entitled as quickly as possible. In many cases, those changes were made in direct response to feedback we have been given, including from Members of Parliament.
I was pleased that we were able to welcome members of the Home Affairs Committee and other stakeholders to the Windrush compensation scheme office in Sheffield on 14 June, following the invitation that I extended during a previous Westminster Hall debate. Again, I say to Members who have a particular interest in this issue—particularly those who represent areas with a number of Windrush communities—that we are very happy to welcome them, subject to all the usual arrangements that people would expect to put in place, to meet our team so that they can understand the work they are doing.
Stephen Kinnock
Before the Minister moves off the compensation scheme, he will know that at the end of January only 960 people had applied to the scheme, which is only about 20% of those eligible. Those statistics are in the Home Affairs Committee report on the compensation scheme, which he just mentioned. Does he agree that putting the compensation scheme into the hands of the Home Office—the very institution that is so profoundly mistrusted by the Windrush generation—was a grave error, and that the only way this will get sorted is by moving it out of the Home Office and into an entirely independent organisation?
Kevin Foster
I am not sure where the shadow Minister gets his figures from. He said that 960 claims have been made, but the actual figure is 3,878, and more than 1,800 had been made by 1 January 2021.
On the engagement figures, we continue to encourage people to apply to the compensation scheme. I have visited some of the community fund groups in Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Nottingham and London. It was evident during those visits that innovation and collaboration are helping to support local communities and raise awareness of the Windrush schemes. We have also written to 6,200 individuals to encourage them to consider applying. In January, we launched the second phase of our national communications campaign, which featured new content to address misconceptions that could prevent people from applying to the scheme. It included campaign videos that have been played across community TV stations.
Marsha De Cordova
I want to take the Minister back to the work that the Home Office is doing to deliver the scheme. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and I talked about the representation issues surrounding those actually delivering the scheme. I wondered whether the Minister heard that and wants to respond to the point about having people deliver the scheme who are more empathetic and representative of the groups they are seeking to compensate.
Kevin Foster
As Members are aware, we are recruiting additional people into the compensation scheme team, so we are increasing the number of staff working on it. To be clear, despite recent pressures, the area we never took people from was Windrush work, because we thought it was appropriate that that was seen as a priority. It is important that our caseworkers can empathise with people’s situations, which is why we have programmes of engagement. We want them to work proactively with the community groups, hear their experiences, and listen and understand where people are coming from. I understand that this is about not just immigration status, but people’s very strong identity; they felt—this was eloquently put earlier—that they were British. We recognise that it is important to ensure that that experience is there for all caseworkers.
I want to address the idea that there are tens of thousands of applications outstanding. The number of applications received so far is just under 4,000, which would make that rather difficult numerically. There are not cases that are “unallocated”; we understand that that point arose from a misunderstanding. All cases are being worked on and pursued, and in some cases we are waiting for responses or, for example, for probate to be resolved so that we can take things further. I will be writing to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee shortly to confirm that.
Kevin Foster
We had a letter from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee following the visit. We will shortly be replying, and I will be happy to reply in further detail to those points when I receive them.
One of the points that has been focused on is whether the Windrush compensation scheme should be transferred to an independent organisation. I understand why that might sound appealing, but it would risk delaying payments to people even further, and many cases would have to come back to Home Office records and other parts of the Home Office, which would mean that we would still be heavily involved. I do not believe for one minute that anyone is suggesting that we should contract this out—that might have been partly suggested—to a private sector operator. It is right that we have a team who operate separately and independently from other areas of the Home Office and are able to take matters forward with clear delineation. Certain information supplied to the Windrush team is not available to wider Home Office operations. The focus needs to be on paying compensation and moving the scheme forward, rather than on who is actually administering it.
Kevin Foster
I will give way one last time; I am conscious that I need to allow time for the hon. Member for Edmonton to wind up.
Marsha De Cordova
I will try to make my point succinctly. No one is asking for any scheme to be contracted out to a private company. The point is about the scheme being independent from the Home Office. The Home Office administers the policy, so how can the people who have to do the marketing videos and everything else be the ones administering it? People are still reluctant and fearful due to the hostile environment. It is about the scheme being independent, but it could be an independent charitable organisation, not a private company.
Kevin Foster
I hear the hon. Member’s point; we all agree that a private company would not be the right option. Setting up a different organisation would clearly take time. Again, it would be reliant on the vast majority of records and processes coming from the Home Office. However, we recognise that people will not necessarily want to approach the Home Office in the first instance, which is why we work with community groups, and are having some helpful and productive conversations with some of the high commissions in London about whether they could host events, particularly now that we have returned to having drop-in events. We all know why, over the past two years, the ability to hold drop-in events has been far more limited than we would have liked, but our focus is on getting on and making the compensation payments.
One point that was picked up was on the migrants commissioner. I recognise that Wendy Williams mentioned her disappointment on that matter. I reassure colleagues that a substantial amount of work has been done on options to deliver this recommendation. We are working with external stakeholders and have set up a sub-group of the Windrush cross-Government working group to advise on the function of a migrants commissioner. The sub-group has submitted its recommendations on what the functions should look like, including the scope of the role and the best model for delivering it, and we are now considering those views. To be clear, the suggestion is that it may not necessarily be an individual but could be a group that fulfils that role. Certainly, we are keen to take it forward, but in a way that builds confidence.
I want to thank the hon. Member for Edmonton for securing the debate and all hon. Members who have contributed. As I have set out, we have taken some important strides forward in responding to the Wendy Williams report, but we recognise there is still a lot of work to do in the Home Office—work that is always enhanced by constructive challenge, such as that which we have received from hon. and right hon. Members today. The failings of the past were unacceptable, and I know there is a real determination across the Home Office to learn the lessons of Windrush.
There is a strong focus across the Department on delivering the improvements set out in the Wendy Williams review and, as colleagues and the public would expect, the implementation of her recommendations is closely monitored. Concerted action is taking place to drive cultural change and make a Home Office that is fit for the future—a Department that is open and outward working, that views people as faces not cases and as individuals not numbers, and that is committed to making fair and just decisions and ensuring that we treat people as they have the right to be treated. The injustices of the Windrush scandal should never have happened. That is why we are wholeheartedly committed to doing all we can to right those wrongs.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
Our immigration system works in the interests of our whole United Kingdom by covering a broad range of occupations across many sectors for firms looking to attract the talent that they need, while ensuring that the domestic labour market is supported—yet recruitment issues are not unique to the UK, and immigration must not be seen as an alternative to improved pay, conditions and training for key workers.
Wendy Chamberlain
There is a severe shortage of care workers around the UK. In St Andrews in my constituency, a social care business had to shut down recently because of staffing issues. My inbox is increasingly full of messages from people who are waiting for care-at-home packages. One way of helping would be to allow asylum seekers to work while their claims are being processed: it would allow them to support themselves and would mitigate the worst of the shortages. Will the Secretary of State and the Minister consider that?
Kevin Foster
That is an interesting one. Those whose asylum claim has been outstanding for more than a year can take jobs on the shortage occupations list, which has included care workers since February. One of the slight issues, of course, is that until very recently, 31 out of the 32 local authority areas in Scotland, including the hon. Lady’s, refused to be part of the dispersal accommodation system. Now that we have made the change to full dispersal, some of those people will actually be living in those areas.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
If I give the Minister the details, will he kindly take a personal interest in the unusual plight of two young Russian charity volunteers who are now stranded in my constituency through no fault of their own? They are not supporters of President Putin. They have the opportunity to work as care workers, but in their present plight they cannot do so. They cannot be the only people caught up in such a situation. I would be very grateful if the Government looked sympathetically on their plight.
Kevin Foster
My right hon. Friend will appreciate that I cannot give comments and pledges from the Dispatch Box, but I am very happy to meet him, and he highlights a valid point. Russia is not Putin. Putin likes to say that he embodies everything Russian, but he does not. There are plenty of Russians who have suffered under his regime and are vehemently opposed to his illegal and disgraceful actions in Ukraine.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The reality out in the country is that we have labour shortages across multiple sectors, 1.3 million job vacancies, the most persistent post-pandemic drop in employment in the G7, operations not being carried out in our hospitals, restaurants and the hospitality industry being unable to recruit staff, and a shortage of drivers to drive produce around the country. Why will the Minister not act pragmatically and immediately, introduce more work visas where are there shortages, lift the ban on asylum seekers working and have an independent review of the impact of ending freedom of movement?
Kevin Foster
The hon. Member might benefit from taking some time to look at the labour markets across most of the developed world, including the European Union. He will see that shortages in many areas, such as hospitality, are not unique to the United Kingdom. I find interesting his calls for the resurrection of free movement, given what we understand his party’s emerging policy to be.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
UK Visas and Immigration is prioritising applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the invasion of Ukraine, so applications for other visas are taking longer to process, particularly when combined with surging demand globally for visitor visas. We understand the impact of delays to customers, so resources are being returned visa routes impacted by these prioritisation decisions, with a focus on visit, work and study routes. We will also prioritise any compelling or compassionate cases.
Greg Clark
I recognise the extraordinary efforts that the Department has made to process tens of thousands of visas for Ukrainians, and I pay tribute to the staff who have based themselves in Portcullis House to provide updates to Members. My office is dealing with many applications from people from other countries, such as Afghanistan and India, and they are not getting the updates and information that applicants from Ukraine are getting. Will the Minister consider applying some of the positive lessons to make sure that other applicants at least know that they are not being forgotten, and so that they get updates on their cases?
Kevin Foster
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I know the team in Portcullis House will appreciate his praise. We are looking at the learnings from the hub-style approach in Portcullis House, which I think has been useful. Feedback from across the House has been very positive about its ability to chase up casework for Members. As we modernise our immigration system, we are also looking at how to give people an experience like that on our modernised routes—for example, the skilled worker route and applications from European economic area nationals via AUK2—which provide a range of updates automatically without applicants having to ask for them, and we are considering how we can apply that when hon. Members or customers get in touch. We want to make the process much more automated, so that there is less need for people to request updates.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
Across March, April and May, Her Majesty’s Passport Office completed the processing of approximately 3 million passport applications, with 98.5% of those from the UK being completed within the published processing time of up to 10 weeks.
Richard Thomson
It is quite remarkable, is it not, that six days on from an Opposition day debate where the Minister was asked that very question three times and failed to give a figure for the size of the passport backlog, he is still unable to give us an answer? I put it to him that perhaps the thing that would most cheer those who are languishing in that backlog—the one official piece of documentation that he could ensure is issued quickly—is his own ministerial P45.
Kevin Foster
As we saw last week, those who have nothing to offer by way of policy like to go personal. To help the hon. Member, the question was about the proportion of passport applications received. He got an answer to it, but his supplementary makes it clear that he has no ideas of his own to offer.
Deidre Brock
The Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents the staff at Her Majesty’s Passport Office, has commented that the backlog is due to a number of issues including
“lack of staff, poor management and failures”
on the part of contractors. Rather than blaming staff or suggesting more privatisation, will the UK Government meet union representatives in order to learn what action is needed to ensure that the Passport Office is properly funded and staffed?
Kevin Foster
We are certainly grateful for the hard work that staff are putting in, and, as I said last week, it is a pity that we are seeing their efforts being rubbished for political ends. We have been recruiting more staff at the Passport Office and investing in the modernisation of processes, and we engage regularly with senior HMPO officials, as well as ensuring that union officials can have their say. We should bear in mind the current record output from the Passport Office, which is dealing with a surge of applications. I must say that it is striking to note the sudden interest expressed by Opposition Members who said very little about this last year.
Patricia Gibson
Civil servants working in the Passport Office are under huge pressure, and staff morale is reported to be understandably at an all-time low, owing to a lack of Government preparation for the up to 9 million passport applications or renewals expected following lockdown. Meanwhile, my constituents face intolerable delays and the prospect of missing much-needed holidays and family events. We have been promised repeatedly in this Chamber that things will improve, but the 10-week target continues to be too often missed. How much longer must we wait for passport offices to be fully staffed and resourced, so that my constituents are not subjected to yet another aspect of Backlog Britain?
Kevin Foster
Dearie me! In fact, we have been increasing the number of staff at the Passport Office rather than reducing it as the hon. Lady has implied. We have dealt with 3 million applications in three months, and soon we will have dealt with more in six months than we did in the whole of last year. It was fairly obvious that 5 million passports had not been renewed during the pandemic, and we started to plan for this last year. In April 2021, we changed and clarified the service standard and began preparations to deal with the surge. We hear these attacks from Opposition Members, but what we never hear from them is an idea.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
A month ago, a dozen passport cases a day were pinging into my office. That number has now fallen to just two or three a week, and my caseworker Zach and I are very grateful for the improvement that the Home Office has brought about. However, once those passports are handed over by the Home Office to the private delivery companies, can the Home Office do more to ensure that each one reaches the intended household rather than a random neighbour, a random bush or indeed a random river, which is where these passports seem to end up?
Kevin Foster
It is concerning to hear of those examples, because there are clear standards and procedures for how passports are delivered: they cannot, for example, just be left in a communal area. We have engaged DHL, which is normally our international agent for domestic deliveries, and have also used Royal Mail to return documents. However, I should be interested to hear some specific examples from my hon. Friend, and I am grateful for his comment that he and his caseworker have noticed improvements in recent weeks.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I know that the Minister has worked hard to reduce the backlog, and I am grateful to him for that, but, as I am sure he knows, there are still some issues. Can he tell us what proportion of Passport Office staff are back in the office, and, while he is at it, can he help me with the case of Wendy, who is still waiting for a passport? Her father died suddenly abroad, and in order to attend his funeral she needs to have her passport today. After the Minister has finished his duties in the House, would he mind helping me to chase up Wendy’s case so that she can try to get to her father’s funeral?
Kevin Foster
As we have said a couple of times before at the Dispatch Box, people involved in the passport operation have been back in the office for some time. However, we are happy to expedite cases like that of my hon. Friend’s constituent, when there are reasons for travel that are both compelling and compassionate. I am very sorry to hear of the bereavement that Wendy has suffered, and will be happy to look into how we can get the passport expedited for her.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
We have already recruited another 650 staff and are in the process of recruiting another 550. Obviously, where people have been waiting over 10 weeks and have travel booked, we will look to expedite their application for free.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Kevin Foster
I am happy to take the details of that individual case from the hon. Member. We are aware of an issue with the MPs’ hotline this morning; the hub and email are unaffected. Home Office Digital, Data and Technology is currently working on a solution and we expect the issue to be resolved shortly.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
Kevin Foster
I am happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss this matter. As other colleagues will know, I have already dealt with a number of groups in relation to Ukraine, and there are exceptional circumstances in which the process may need to be expedited.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
Kevin Foster
A lot of work is being done to catch up on passports. I think it is safe to say that to go back to a system that was fundamentally paper-based would bring quite a range of security issues, not least at the border—that is why it was discontinued. I assure my hon. Friend that a wide range of work is being done and, as I have said, we are still doing roughly 98.5% of passports within the advertised 10-week service time.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I was pleased to see that the Home Office finally published details of the remaining pathways for the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, but just hours later the Ministry of Defence revealed that around 10,000 people—many of whom are at risk because they stepped forward to serve when we asked them to do so—were still left behind but eligible for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme. What additional capacity is going to be put into the Department, both to clear the backlog of outstanding applications and to process thousands of new ones?
Kevin Foster
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. To be clear, the MOD processes ARAP applications and deals with eligibility. Given our expertise in that area, we are certainly happy to offer what support and assistance we can from UK Visas and Immigration to help to get applications through, because like the hon. Gentleman we do not want to see stuck in Afghanistan people who bravely stood alongside our forces.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
My constituent faces losing her job with the NHS and is unable to visit a seriously ill close relative abroad because the Home Office has failed to deal with her visa, which was requested last year. I have raised this four times with the Home Office urgent inquiry line and have received no response for two months. Will the Minister look at this particular case, which I wrote to the Home Secretary about last week, and, more generally, at the service, or lack of service, that the urgent inquiry line is providing to MPs?
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The school holidays in Wales and England start on 22 July. There are nearly 30 million visits abroad by air in quarter 3, which includes those school holidays. To help families get away, will the Passport Office backlog be cleared by 22 July?
Kevin Foster
We have already made clear the actions we are taking. Since April last year we have been advising people to allow up to 10 weeks for an application, although 91% of people get their passport back within six weeks of applying. The hon. Member will also be aware that in some instances, such as school trips, collective passports can be used, subject to those being accepted by the country they are travelling to.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Earlier in the year, Parliament repealed the antiquated Vagrancy Act 1824. It was an important step in our journey to ending homelessness for good. Imagine my surprise when I reviewed the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to see that that repeal was repealed and that the Secretary of State will be given unlimited and unspecified powers to recriminalise homelessness. I know my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary cares about this, and she has been superb in supporting me and other Ministers in this mission. May I ask her to deal with this and ensure that we can get on with the job of ending homelessness?
HM Passport Office Backlog
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
It is an absolute pleasure to respond to what we just heard. From the motion and the opening speech, it is obvious that this debate is focused on not the practical or even items particularly relevant to my brief, but the party political—there were no ideas, no plans and no alternative offered.
Let us start with some facts. Prior to the pandemic, Her Majesty’s Passport Office routinely processed approximately 7 million passports each year. Due to covid-19 and the necessary restrictions on international travel, only 4 million people applied for a British passport in 2020 and 5 million in 2021. As highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), that means that we will soon have dealt with more passports in the first half of this year than in the entirety of last year.
This year, many customers who delayed their applications are returning. It is therefore expected that 9.5 million British passport applications will be made this year, which will require a record output. That is a major surge in demand that we are planning for and have dealt with. Extensive preparation, including a regular ministerial board, started long before the Labour Front-Bench team started to show an interest a few weeks ago. Although we have heard attacks today, I thank those from HMPO who have worked hard to prepare for the surge and to deliver record output levels.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
In general, the hard-working staff at passport offices, including Glasgow, who have been really good at helping my team to resolve some of the passport issues, and on the MP hotline, are dealing as well as they can with what are difficult circumstances. We all know that happy and healthy staff lead to better outcomes, so can the Minister confirm that staff are being provided with the necessary stress management tools and care for their wellbeing?
Kevin Foster
I thank the hon. Member for her comments and join her in paying tribute to the staff at the Glasgow passport office, who are working hard to deal with applications, including more complex applications—not every applicant is immediately entitled to a British passport. Ensuring that support is there for staff is one of the things that we discuss with senior managers.
Some staff have worked through weekends as well. We obviously do not enforce weekend working, but there have been overtime opportunities for some months for staff who wish to take them. Alongside that, we are ensuring that there is support for members of staff, because working seven days a week for months on end is not healthy. I thank the hon. Member for the tone and nature of her intervention.
Kevin Foster
Even though this is not an Adjournment debate, I will give way to the hon. Member.
Jim Shannon
I, too, put on the record my thanks to the Minister and his staff for their responses, and to the Belfast office. Hon. Members have talked about people going from London to Belfast. There is nothing wrong with going to Belfast; I am pleased that people are going and I hope they go there more often. The staff and the offices have done excellent work and they respond very quickly.
To look forward constructively, will the Minister consider increasing staff numbers, increasing the pay band for those working overtime or giving staff a bonus? Those things could help to alleviate some of the concerns and the waiting lists, although I am ever-mindful that the Belfast office is going above and beyond.
Kevin Foster
I join the hon. Member in paying tribute to the staff at the Belfast passport office, who are working hard and delivering a strong service. I am pleased to hear about the engagement that he and his colleagues have had, which reflects some of the comments of other Northern Ireland Members about support in a previous exchange on passports. There is incentivised overtime, but obviously there has to be a balance in terms of wider pay policies. As I touched on, we need to ensure that people are working sensible amounts of overtime, because working seven days a week for months on end is not healthy or appropriate.
We are certainly looking at the future and what the capacity is in particular locations. We looked to see how we could maximise that, particularly as social distancing regulations ended. We dealt with something like 60,000 people at the counters in March and 74,000 last month. Although that is not the majority of our applications, it is certainly a service that we have looked to expand, as I will come on to in a moment.
Nick Smith
I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he please tell us how big the backlog at the Passport Office is at the moment?
Kevin Foster
We continue to work through a large number of applications. As said, we advise customers to allow up to 10 weeks; however, the vast majority are dealt with well before that, with a quarter of a million applications coming out each week.
I was talking about the actions we have already taken, such as adding over 650 staff since April 2021—not the figure the shadow Minister gave—with a further 550 to arrive into the summer. These actions have been successful: they have increased capacity and output is higher than ever before. Across March, April and May, Her Majesty’s Passport Office completed the processing of approximately 3 million applications. In addition to extra staff we have also brought in additional delivery capabilities, such as working with Royal Mail on the return of documents.
With this level of demand, applications will inevitably take longer—an experience not unique to the UK, despite the picture painted by the Opposition. In April 2021—
Kevin Foster
Not at the moment.
In April 2021, guidance was therefore changed to clearly advise customers to allow up to 10 weeks to get their passport, despite the comment made during the shadow Minister’s speech. This change to processing times has been communicated widely and over 5 million text messages were sent to UK customers who had an expired or soon-to-expire passport informing them of the need to allow up to 10 weeks to renew their passport. The vast majority of passport applications are being processed within the 10-week published processing time.
Kevin Foster
In a moment.
Across March, April and May 98.5% of the applications processed were completed within the 10-week standard and, even against the backdrop of such large demand, most applications are processed much more quickly than 10 weeks, with over 91% of applications completed within six weeks.
Several hon. Members rose—
Kevin Foster
I will give way first to the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) and then come to those on my own Benches.
Daisy Cooper
I thank the Minister for giving way. He mentioned the 10-week period during which most passport applications are dealt with. A constituent of mine applied for a straightforward passport renewal 13 weeks ago; she has to know today whether to cancel her holiday or try to wing it and possibly lose £3,500. My team of caseworkers have been to the hub in Portcullis House a number of times but were told this morning that there is no guarantee she will get an answer today. What does the Minister think I should tell her?
Kevin Foster
If the application has been outstanding for over 10 weeks and travel has been booked, we can expedite the process, as I will come on to later in my speech. It is not appropriate for me to discuss the details of an individual case on the Floor of the House, but if the details are supplied to me after the debate we will be happy to follow up.
Several hon. Members rose—
Kevin Foster
I will now give way again, as promised, this time to my colleague from Bournemouth, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood).
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful to the Minister. I should first declare an interest: I am a US dual national and have to replace my passport soon, and I have been warned to anticipate an 11-week wait for it to be replaced. As this debate demonstrates, we all want the process to be sped up as much as possible. Can the Minister say whether staff working in the office, rather than from home, would help increase the number of passports processed?
Kevin Foster
I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of Passport Office staff have been back in the office for some time; indeed, as I have touched on, some of them have been in the office for seven days a week working overtime. There is a very small cohort employed specifically to handle digital work that is wholly online and can be dealt with purely online. Mostly that will be what we call simple renewals, where it is not necessary to look at documents—to prove citizenship, for instance. We have done pretty much all we can in getting people back into the office, although we did not exactly get a great deal of support for that approach from the Opposition. I am satisfied that the vast majority are now working in the office; anyone who needs to be in the office to do their work has been in the office now for some time.
Kevin Foster
The hon. Gentleman has already intervened once so I will continue.
HM Passport Office endeavours to process all applications as quickly as possible. The simplest of applications submitted online can be processed with fewer manual interventions, as I have just said, meaning a passport can be issued much more quickly. To help customers submit a simpler application, HM Passport Office is currently delivering a digital marketing campaign across social media with some basic tips such as applying online if possible and using a photo code from a photo booth or shop, including the photo booth we have here in Parliament.
It is worth noting, however, that the standard service does not have a guaranteed timeframe as a British passport cannot and will not be issued until all checks are satisfactorily completed. If further information is needed or an application is complex, the application will take longer, especially if there is doubt about whether the applicant is a British citizen.
Liz Saville Roberts
I am afraid the Minister’s previous answer to the backlog question did not travel across the Chamber: what is the backlog of passport applications?
Kevin Foster
We continue to get through a very large number of applications. We get through 1 million a month, which speaks volumes about where we are going, and 98.5% of people get their passport within the advertised service standard.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on his diligence in tackling this difficult problem. Will he continue to help the constituents of Telford in the way that he has? Every single one of my constituents has received their passport when I have approached the Minister. Will he continue to offer that level of assistance across the House to all Members who approach him?
Kevin Foster
That intervention serves as a reminder of the effectiveness delivered by my hon. Friend and the wise choice Telford residents made at recent general elections in electing such a hardworking Member of Parliament to advocate on their issues in this place. I must say that I have not done what my hon. Friend says only for Conservative colleagues; I have also assisted on issues raised by other Members, including one or two who left the Chamber at the start of the debate potentially because of what it was about.
We are keen to get on with delivering services but colleagues will recognise that there is a very great surge of demand. It was interesting to hear the example from the US; there are plenty of other examples of this problem from around the world despite the interesting comments we have heard that have tried to make out that it is somehow unique to Britain. Some Members need to visit a website or two or read an international newspaper; they will then find out that such things do actually happen across the world, not just in the United Kingdom. We will certainly carry on our work, and we are grateful for my hon. Friend’s support.
HM Passport Office provides an expedited service where an application from the UK has been with it for longer than 10 weeks. Where a customer in those circumstances can provide evidence that they are due to travel within the next fortnight, their case will be prioritised. That helps to ensure that the small percentage of people whose application has taken more than 10 weeks will continue to receive their passport ahead of their travel. I must stress that this expedited service comes at no additional cost to our constituents. For those who require their passport sooner than 10 weeks, Her Majesty’s Passport Office offers urgent services, available for a further fee.
Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)
I want to put on the record my thanks to the Belfast office, which went over and above what could be expected to handle the deluge of applications. Mention has been made of a mechanism for elected Members to access help on passport applications, but the telecommunications aspect of that is not working very effectively as we are not getting a response. Can the Minister say whether adequate numbers of lines are available, because we are getting engaged tones and being held waiting on the line for hours—not minutes, but hours? Could this issue be addressed through additional staff?
Kevin Foster
The simple answer is that, yes, more staff are being recruited but I will address that in more detail later.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
This issue has undoubtedly caused a great deal of distress, with many people having had to wait up to the wire before getting their passport. Like others, I am grateful to the Minister, the hub and the Passport Office for working with my staff to get the best for my constituents. I want to say thank you on behalf of one of my constituents, who applied for his British passport on the day of his citizenship ceremony in May and, with the help of the Passport Office, was able to get his passport and travel abroad on business.
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend; the team who dealt with the application will greatly appreciate her giving that example.
Kevin Foster
I turn to priority services, for which appointments are released three weeks in advance. Although appointments are released daily, there is currently high demand, so we are exploring and implementing a range of options to help support people who are seeking access to those services. That work led to the recent opening of an eighth public counter offering urgent service appointments, in Birmingham, and a further increase in appointment availability to help support those people who need their passports quickly.
Kevin Foster
There is, though, one area of the service that we recognise as being not up to standard: the advice line. Teleperformance, which operates the passport advice line, has not achieved the required standard to support customers seeking to make contact about their applications. Officials have worked constructively with Teleperformance towards a rectification plan and, mostly, through the addition of more than 500 staff since mid-April. Its performance has improved significantly, but it remains short of where it needs to be. Officials and I remain focused on ensuring that that is resolved as quickly as possible.
Suppliers have previously been able to resolve issues facing their services through such constructive work. FedEx, the parent company of TNT, resolved the delivery delays experienced at the end of last year and is currently delivering within its contractual service levels. As mentioned, in anticipation of the surge in demand and to provide greater resilience to the delivery network, some domestically delivered passports are arriving via DHL—HM Passport Office’s partner for international deliveries—and supporting documents are being returned via Royal Mail.
Alison Thewliss
I have a constituent who had three attempted deliveries from TNT, but he was not informed and did not receive the passport, which was returned to Peterborough. As far as I know, he is still waiting to receive that passport. What should he do?
Kevin Foster
First, the constituent made the right choice by contacting his Member of Parliament, who I know will raise his case diligently. We will certainly be interested to hear the example. Our evidence is that the vast majority of passports are delivered successfully and appropriately, but, where something has gone wrong, we are concerned to hear about it. If the hon. Member provides me with the details afterwards, I will be more than happy to follow up.
Kevin Foster
The failure of the telephone line means that constituents have waited longer than they should have done. There have also been difficulties in receiving prompt updates to inquiries made by right hon. and hon. Members on their behalf. The number of HM Passport Office staff supporting the Home Office’s MP hotline and offering input and surgeries at Portcullis House has steadily increased. That will be monitored to ensure that those services to colleagues continue to improve. I am advised that people are now waiting much less time.
Madam Deputy Speaker
First, that is not a point of order. Secondly, I am sure that the Minister is well aware of the calls for him to give way, but it is entirely for him to decide whether to do so.
Kevin Foster
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for helping to advise the Chamber, as always. I have heard mutters about my taking interventions from friends, but anyone who has been in the Chamber to hear me and the SNP debating matters in the last few years could hardly accuse us of having a great friendship.
Kevin Foster
I will happily take an intervention from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson).
Munira Wilson
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to me. Much of the discussion so far has been about delays, and most of my cases are about delays. However, I have one constituent whose original passport and application have been lost by the Passport Office, and he stands to lose his holiday. It is now the subject of a police investigation. As my constituent is waiting for the second application to be processed, will the Minister clarify whether the 10-week clock starts again? What recourse is there for my constituent if he loses his holiday because the Passport Office lost his passport and application?
Kevin Foster
The hon. Member will appreciate that, as I am a Home Office Minister, I should not comment on matters relating to a police investigation from the Dispatch Box. However, if she shares the details with me separately, I will happily look into that. It is rare for there to be a direct police investigation into the circumstances around a passport application, but it is best if I do not speculate from the Dispatch Box.
Several hon. Members rose—
Kevin Foster
The routes that colleagues can use to get in contact should not be used to expedite a passport application ahead of a holiday, particularly if the application was submitted only recently, because that is to the detriment of other customers who have been waiting longer and who have no lesser need for these services. Yet, we will always react if we can when there are compelling and compassionate circumstances, as hon. Members have highlighted, or, as several hon. Members will know already from their dealings with me, where there are family funerals or compelling reasons for international travel or where matters could not have been foreseen.
Kevin Foster
I am also grateful to colleagues who are giving advice to their constituents in these circumstances as well as for planned travel and for reminding constituents that contacting the passport advice line continues to be the best way to discuss options to get a passport soon. However, as we have made clear, the service standard needs to improve. A “Dear Colleague” letter has been circulated to provide help to right hon. and hon. Members in assisting their constituents.
I must pay tribute again to the staff at HM Passport Office who are working tirelessly to process approximately 250,000 passport applications each week. I am grateful for their continued efforts. It is a pity that others wish to rubbish those, despite not having any ideas or proposals of their own—they are doing so merely for their own political end.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for giving way and echo his comments on the staff who are working hard to turn the backlog around. I have just received an email from my constituent Tracy Shelbourn, who said:
“Sadly, the problem is not with the US embassy but with our UK Passport Office. I simply need my passport returned, which they retained when I applied for a new passport, so that I can travel to the US.”
What more will the Minister do to address the issues and backlogs that still exist?
Kevin Foster
I have already outlined several things. We are recruiting more staff, we have opened a new inquiry counter, we are having increased delivery capability, and we have been planning for some months.
Kevin Foster
I pay tribute to HM Passport Office, where people are working hard—many have been working at weekends as well. Many people are continuing to receive their passports in good time ahead of their holidays this summer.
Kevin Foster
Well, what I am happy to keep confirming is about the massive output, the hard work of HMPO, and the plans, which, I must say, were put in place long before Labour Members showed any interest in the subject at all—[Interruption.]. They shout, “It was predictable,” but they did not predict it.
Kevin Foster
To let others speak, I need to come towards winding up, but I will give way briefly to my hon. Friend.
Sir Christopher Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He has described the current situation. Will he accept that some people, through no fault of their own, have been suffering as a result of the chaos? Will he apologise to those people unreservedly?
Kevin Foster
Look, no one wants to be in a situation where we have a service level of 10 weeks. We would much rather be back at our traditional service level. However, we have had literally millions of additional applications coming in this year, and I have seen the service and the teams nearly quadrupling output in a couple of months—my hon. Friend and I could probably think of some examples of where we would love to see output quadrupled in a public service—so it is difficult to stand here and say that that is all wrong. We appreciate that there are issues and that work is needed to ensure that people do not go over the 10 weeks—unless there is an issue, such as someone making an application when they are not entitled to a British passport. In some cases, we will need to establish that the person is who they say they are—it is their photo, and they are a British citizen—which will inevitably take longer, but I hope my hon. Friend will accept that a lot of work is being, done and has been done for many months. Yes, in individual cases there will of course be difficult circumstances, but we will attempt to respond where we can.
I feel sorry for those on the Labour Front Bench in some ways. They were told to come up with something on passports. Having said “Yes, captain” to the request, the shadow Home Secretary got her team together to come up with some ideas. First, they tried to think of a better way of delivering the service, but had no alternative to what we have done already. Then they looked to see what ideas they had put forward last year, but realised they had not said a word—the claim that it was predictable rather contrasted with their own lack of prediction. Perhaps they wondered whether they could demand that passport staff be in the office, but then remembered that they already are and what they said when the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) suggested that about other public services. Perhaps they could have demanded that the contractor who prints the passports be nationalised, but realised that that sounded a bit too much like Jeremy. Maybe they could have pointed to output being higher under Labour, but then they realised it was not, due to the record outputs now being achieved. Then, with a deflated sigh, one of them must have said, “How about we just have a pop at the Minister?” which they all agreed was the only thing they could come up with, hence their motion today.
The role of Immigration Minister is never an easy one. It brings challenges. It is certainly a role where you cannot please everyone. But it speaks volumes when Labour Members have so little to offer that they resort to a motion attacking the person not the policy. That is not uncommon. We see it on a raft of issues in my brief, where the Labour party has no policy, only political points. From the immigration health surcharge to our migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda, it has no clear view. On the changes needed to tackle abuse of our immigration system and evil people-smuggling gangs, it offers nothing but criticism. For all the Labour shadows I have had since December 2019, and there have been a few, we have not seen one coherent plan come forward. [Interruption.] There have been four choices to change. In short, they are only left with the personal, in the absence of any policy alternative.
Members might wonder why I look happy in the face of today’s motion. It is because I am reminded of a quote by our greatest post-war Prime Minister:
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
How right she was.
Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme: Launch Pathways 2 and 3
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
My noble Friend the Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Home Office, Lord Harrington of Watford, has today made the following written ministerial statement:
I am pleased to announce to the House today the opening of the two remaining referral pathways to the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.
Last August, as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated rapidly, this Government worked at great speed to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan within a fortnight. This was the biggest mission of its kind in generations and the second largest evacuation carried out by any country and we are rightly proud of what we achieved.
The evacuation included British nationals and their families, Afghans who had loyally served the UK, and other vulnerable people. Since the events of last August, we have continued to support those at risk with over 4,000 more people being brought to safety.
In January 2022, the then Minister for Afghan Resettlement announced the launch of a new Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which will resettle up to 20,000 eligible people over the coming years. This is in addition to those who have been relocated under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
There is no application process for the scheme, instead eligible individuals will be referred for resettlement via three referral ‘pathways’.
The first of these referral pathways offers a place on the ACRS for some of the individuals and families who were brought to safety in the UK under Op PITTING. We will honour our commitments to eligible people who were called forward or specifically authorised for evacuation, but who were unable to board flights.
Today, I am pleased to announce the opening of the two remaining referral pathways onto the ACRS.
Firstly, under pathway 2, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will refer for resettlement to the UK, refugees who have fled Afghanistan. UNHCR has the global mandate to provide international protection and humanitarian assistance to refugees. We are pleased to announce that we are now ready to begin receiving referrals. We anticipate receiving referrals from UNHCR for up to 2,000 refugees during the first year of this pathway, although this number will be kept under review. We will continue to receive UNHCR referrals to the scheme in coming years.
Under pathway 3, we committed to considering eligible at-risk British Council and GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) will refer up to 1,500 people from Afghanistan and the region to the Home Office for resettlement, including any eligible family members. The FCDO will launch an online system on Monday 20 June, where eligible individuals will be able to express interest in UK resettlement.
Expressions of interest will be considered in the order they are received, although some groups will be prioritised because the role they performed or the project they worked on mean they are particularly at risk, or because there are exceptionally compelling circumstances. Expressions of interest will be accepted until Monday 15 August 2022, when the online system will close. Guidance on the expression of interest process is available on www.gov.uk, from Monday 13 June.
Any offer of resettlement under the ACRS will be contingent on security screening, including checks against security and other databases, and provision of biometric information. In the interests of public safety, it is right that individuals who are found to have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism or other serious crimes will not be eligible for resettlement.
While we recognise the plight of many vulnerable individuals who remain in Afghanistan and the region, the capacity of the UK to resettle people under this scheme is not unlimited and difficult decisions have had to be made on who will be prioritised for resettlement. Nevertheless, we will continue to be committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan and after the first year of the third referral pathway, we will continue to work with international partners and NGOs to welcome wider groups of Afghans at risk.
Resettlement is just one element of the UK Government’s response to the situation in Afghanistan, in addition to our diplomatic efforts and international aid in the region, working alongside like-minded states and as part of the international community.
Through the ACRS, the United Kingdom continues to offer safe and legal routes to those in need of protection. The scheme provides another demonstration of our New Plan for Immigration in action.
We are proud to provide those affected by events in Afghanistan with a route to safety and look forward to warmly welcoming individuals and families into our communities across the UK.
[HCWS91]
Draft Passport (Fees) Regulations 2022
Kevin Foster Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Passport (Fees) Regulations 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Cummins, as always.
Before I move on to the draft regulations themselves, I will touch briefly on the issue of passport applications to put the regulations into context. I hope that colleagues understand that I will not get into specific or individual cases in a public forum, but I remind Members that they may use the dedicated MPs’ hotline and, for the most urgent cases, the passport surgeries at Portcullis House, to which staff of Her Majesty’s Passport Office have been deployed to answer passport-related inquiries.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
I am sure that every Member present has dozens and dozens of cases outstanding with HM Passport Office. I thank the staff—they are at home and doing a fantastic job—but it still is not working. Hundreds of people are without their passports. This draft delegated legislation is about premium and fast track, but none of it is working at this moment in time.
Kevin Foster
Perhaps I should go on to point out what HMPO staff are doing. At the moment, they are working hard to process approximately 250,000 applications per week, and have been doing so since the beginning of March this year. That is a large increase in the number of applications and in output since January, when latent demand started to return. They are focused on maintaining a high level of service and on ensuring that people receive their passports in good time for the summer holidays.
In the vast majority of cases, applications are being processed within the advertised 10 weeks. Nearly 2 million passport applications were dealt with in March and April alone. For the benefit of the Committee, HMPO usually deals with 7 million in a year—that is the scale of the numbers. Our advice, however, remains to allow up to 10 weeks when applying and, if planning travel this summer, to apply now if a new passport is needed.
The draft regulations will set the fees payable for products and services offered by HMPO, as well as providing for fee waivers in a number of circumstances. The regulations revoke and replace the Passport (Fees) Regulations 2018, making minor changes to the fees schedule and specifying priority services fees, including a booking fee, which will not be refunded in certain circumstances. At the outset, I want to make it clear that no fee levels are being changed. The cost of applying for a passport is not increasing under the draft regulations.
For customers requiring a passport more quickly than can be provided under the standard service, HMPO has for many years offered optional priority services that are available for an additional fee: the fast track service and the premium service. For background, given the intervention of the hon. Member for Wansbeck, between 6 February and 8 May 2022, on average, 9,000 fast track applications were submitted in person per week, and 4,000 digital premium appointments were booked online per week.
Frustratingly, given the demand for the services, over the past year about 5% of customers have not attended their priority service appointment. When a customer simply does not attend their appointment and fails to notify HMPO, the slot cannot be reused. That has a knock-on effect for others seeking to use the priority services, especially when there is high demand for slots. For that reason, the priority service fees will now include a booking fee, which will not be refunded where a customer cancels their appointment with less than 48 hours’ notice—that is, too late for us to be able to readvertise the appointment to those seeking to book one.
The booking fee will be £30, which reflects the costs incurred by HMPO up to the point of the appointment and as a result of not being able to reuse the appointment. As I said, that will not result in an increase in the total fee; it forms part of the existing priority service fee and will not lead to customers being charged more for their appointment, provided that they keep it and use the service.
If a customer misses their appointment and fails to notify HMPO altogether, HMPO will retain the whole fee. That incentivises customers to ensure that they notify HMPO when they are not able to attend, and helps to provide a service that is more cost-effective for the taxpayer while ensuring much wanted slots are not wasted. To clarify, if the customer does not attend their appointment but meets the compassionate criteria—for example, there is a medical or family emergency that means they cannot attend their appointment—HMPO will refund the full fee.
We are also making minor drafting changes to the descriptions of our priority services. The changes will not impact on the services provided to customers, nor the cost to them. We have also made several amendments to the regulations to make them simpler, more concise and transparent for customers. The regulations set out clearly what actions are taken as part of the administration of an application, when an application is deemed to have been made, and when a fee will be retained by the Passport Office.
The schedule of fees has been reduced in length, and we have made the cost of priority services clearer by setting the fees separately. Previously, the fees set in the regulations included the cost of administering a passport and a priority service. Again, we now want to make it much clearer what people are paying for when they pay for the priority service that they book through that system. I hope the Committee will accept the regulations.
Kevin Foster
I thank my two shadows, the hon. Members for Croydon Central and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, for the overall constructive nature of their remarks. Perhaps I can start on the question whether we are slowing the fast track through these regulations. What we are actually doing is providing clarification. This partly reflects a longer-term policy for customers of the service whose appointment is after the local cut-off time. The fast track performance is measured as the passport being printed within 144 hours —to be exact—of the application being received, which also allows the 24-hour delivery service level. There was a query about what this says about the target and whether we are meeting it. Between January and April, 94% of fast track application passports were printed within these times. Again, it is perhaps more of a clarification than an actual change in the time within which people will receive their passports.
In a fair challenge directly related to the draft regulations, I was asked why keep the whole application fee, rather than just the priority fee. Fundamentally, if someone does not turn up, it is not just the appointment slot that is wasted; it is a slot in which we would have considered a passport. Literally, a decision maker might have to sit there when they could have been processing and dealing with a passport for someone. That is why we believe the measure to be proportionate if someone simply does not turn up and does not tell us in advance that they will not be there, even within 48 hours. So, before 48 hours, free cancellation and, within 48 hours, 30 quid booking fee. If someone just does not show up, it is not unreasonable—as with many other services many of us use—for them still to pay the fee for the service, because in effect that service has been wasted.
Will we draw up a full list of all the circumstances? No. As with our exchanges about the EU settlement scheme and late applications, in particular with the SNP spokesperson, we could probably all sit here and draw up a reasonable list of good reasons why someone did not attend a passport appointment—an unwell child, an emergency care reason or an urgent work thing that day—only for someone to walk in the door and give another example that could also be a fair reason. The classic example is someone, or their close relative, being taken into hospital, which is a compelling circumstance. But if we draw up an exhaustive list, we might end up being harsher than if we have a clear set of principles for when we will refund the fee.
Andrew Bridgen
Will the Minister explain to the Committee what happens when someone does not show up without notice for their appointment? How is their application dealt with following that? Are there instances of people making another appointment and again not showing up? How is that dealt with?
Kevin Foster
People have not made the application, if they do not show up—we have no application to consider, but they have just wasted a slot. In particular for showing up in person to make an application, it is not as if we can sit there and progress something that has already been received; in most cases, we will have literally nothing to process. Have there been examples in the past? Going back some years to before we changed our booking system, there were examples of people repeatedly not attending appointments. Fundamentally, time gets wasted, so the measure is proportionate, subject to being clear that if someone has good reason why they could not attend their appointment, it is fair to give them a refund. It is not unreasonable to ask people to do the simple job, one or two days before, of ringing us up to say, “Actually, I can’t make that day. May I make another appointment?”
Stuart C. McDonald
I want a little clarity. At one point, there was reference to compassionate circumstances, which to me sounds rather more limited than “good reason”, such as a broken-down train or whatever.
Kevin Foster
For example, someone might have glued themselves to the road outside or to the door, or witnessed a crime on the way. Again, we could get a very long list of reasons why people, through no fault of their own, were unable to get to an appointment. However, we will not draw up an exhaustive list, because we could be here all day doing that, only for someone to say, “Have you thought of this?”—so no. We intend to be generally flexible, but if someone just forgets, does not bother or whatever, that is the point at which we have to say, “Well, I’m sorry, but public resource was wasted. A slot that could have been used to process a passport for someone else was wasted.”
Furthermore, the issue formed part of our planning to deal with the surge: we felt that it was appropriate to be clear and proportionate. If someone rings us up beforehand, it is £30, and if someone rings us up more than 48 hours before, completely free of charge, because someone cancelling with 48 hours’ notice allows us to readvertise the slot and, at the moment certainly, we know that other people will be only too happy to take up the slot. We felt that that was proportionate, because most people will ring up and cancel. We feel that £30 is not a huge cost barrier, but is enough to be an incentive to ring up and cancel at a point when we can readvertise the slots to someone else.
I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire that all appropriate security checks continue to be done on all passport applications. A number of checks are in place. Colleagues will appreciate why, for example, child passports might take slightly longer—certain checks apply for travel by under-18s.
James Sunderland
I have two quick questions. First, when will the policy take effect, and will customers be given sufficient notice of the change in policy? Secondly, if an appointment is cancelled with sufficient notice, is the Minister completely confident that that appointment will be reallocated to somebody else in the queue?
Kevin Foster
The regulations will come into force 20 days after they are made. It is only fair that we make that clear so that people can book appointments. At the moment, we can say that slots will definitely be readvertised, and if there is high demand it is very likely that people will book them. In more normal circumstances, will every slot that is freed up be booked? Possibly not, but if there is less demand on the day for fast-track or priority, people can be reallocated to do other work in the Passport Office, rather than work on the counters and potentially spend all morning wondering where people are. We cannot say that absolutely every slot will be used, but the Passport Office will at the very least be able to plan the day more effectively rather than have people sitting and waiting for applicants who do not turn up.
Are we confident about the wider system? I have been asked about getting through 9.5 million applications this year. We have got through 2 million in two months, and I am sure that most of us can calculate what 1 million a month equates to. On staffing numbers and preparation, we have already increased staffing in the Passport Office by more than 500 since last April, and a further 700 are on the way and will have joined by the summer.
Kevin Foster
What “summer” means? Well, it is a time of year when it is nice and warm. In terms of the backlog, we are getting more applications every day, and the sheer volume of passports we are getting through is such that demand in March was almost unprecedented and more than 1 million were dealt with. The vast majority —98%—are dealt with within the service level agreement. I have heard media reports, but they are not descriptions that we recognise, given the scale of the Passport Office’s output.
I think that everyone recognises that these regulations are a small part of our service. They release some capacity—potentially hundreds of appointments a week—against the backdrop of hundreds of thousands being dealt with overall. We disagree with some of the points that have been made, but we welcome the broad support for the regulations.
Question put and agreed to.