Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what his planned timetable is for the publication of guidance for employers on the operation of the Immigration Salary List.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) published its rapid review on 23 February. The Government intends to lay rules in Parliament on 14 March to enact changes to the Immigration Salary List, along with the other changes announced by the Government on 4 December 2023 to reduce net migration.
Guidance relating to these changes will be published when the rules come into force on 4 April.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what his planned timetable is for the Migration Advisory Committee to complete the rapid review of the Immigration Salary List.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) published its rapid review on 23 February. The Government intends to lay rules in Parliament on 14 March to enact changes to the Immigration Salary List, along with the other changes announced by the Government on 4 December 2023 to reduce net migration.
Guidance relating to these changes will be published when the rules come into force on 4 April.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of Police Officer hours spent in (a) Nottinghamshire and (b) England in the last month accompanying energy company agents or debt collection agents acting on behalf of energy companies, enforcing warrants for the forced installation of pre-payment meters.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not collect data on the number of hours police officers have spent accompanying energy company agents or debt collection agents acting on behalf of energy companies, enforcing warrants or the forced installation of pre-payment meters.
The Government expects suppliers to take proactive steps to identify vulnerable consumers and offer them the necessary support. Suppliers can only install prepayment meters without consent to recover debt as a last resort. Ofgem Standard Licence Conditions require suppliers to ensure that prepayment meters are only installed where it is ‘safe and reasonably practicable’, including consideration of whether a consumer’s vulnerability makes a prepayment meter a poor choice.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to support survivors of domestic abuse in Nottingham South during the cost of living crisis.
Answered by Sarah Dines
Tackling domestic abuse is a priority for this Government. A central part of this is making sure victims and survivors get the support they need.
The Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, which we published in March, invests over £230 million, including over £140 million specifically for supporting victims and survivors. Its commitments include doubling funding for the National Domestic Abuse Helpline and providing multi-year funding for support services. This avoids services being dependent on yearly grants. This will help to ensure delivery of high-quality support throughout any increases in the cost of living
The Plan also committed to establish trials of a ‘flexible fund’, which charities could use to provide extra money to victims and survivors in light of cost of living pressures.
Locally, the Home Office has recently awarded the Police and Crime Commissioner for Nottinghamshire over £1 million, through the Children Affected by Domestic Abuse Fund, to provide specialist support to children and young people affected by domestic abuse in the area until 2024/25.
For the current financial year, the Home Office has also provided over £135,000 to the Police and Crime Commissioner for Nottinghamshire to support the delivery of a programme that aims to change perpetrator's behaviour, which can help to reduce reoffending.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Second Special Report of Session 2022–23 of the Home Affairs Select Committee entitled Spiking: Government Response to the Committee’s Ninth Report, HC508, when she plans to update Parliament on whether the Government intends to introduce a specific criminal offence for spiking; and for what reason her Department did not update Parliament on that matter before 26 October 2022 as set out in that Government response.
Answered by Sarah Dines
The government is absolutely committed to updating Parliament on the need for a specific criminal offence for spiking.
The Home Office informed the Home Affairs Select Committee on 11 October that the update, while forthcoming, is to be delayed. This is due to recent changes in government and the death of Her Late Majesty.
We are aiming to provide this update before the Christmas Recess.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to (a) monitor and (b) evaluate the impact of the Forced Marriage Unit’s outreach programme in (i) raising awareness of forced marriage and (ii) delivering training to statutory agencies and voluntary and community organisations.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to tackling forced marriage in all its forms. The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), a joint Home Office and Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office unit, leads on the Government’s forced marriage policy, outreach and casework. It operates both inside the UK (where support is provided to any individual) and overseas (where consular assistance is provided to British nationals, including dual nationals).
One of the FMU’s core activities is to undertake an extensive training and awareness programme targeted at statutory agencies and voluntary and community organisations. This approach aims to ensure that people working with victims are fully informed about how to approach cases of forced marriage. The unit runs monthly workshops, alternately for police officers and social workers, and the FMU also delivers bespoke presentations to individual organisations and fora on request. Through these activities, the FMU reached 1,014 professionals in 2021. The unit has also developed a free online forced marriage e-learning course for relevant professionals, which aims to enable them to recognise the warning signs of forced marriage and ensure that appropriate action is taken to help protect and support all those at risk.
The FMU solicits feedback from the attendees of its workshops, to help to ensure that it is having the greatest possible impact; as an example, feedback from the last workshop held in September 2022 for social care staff showed that:
- 76% of those who responded found the workshop extremely useful and 24% found it very useful.
- 87% of the respondents also stated that they were extremely likely to recommend the workshop to a colleague and 10% said that they were very likely to do so.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how her Department is using the 2019 consultation on mandatory reporting of forced marriage to safeguard victims of forced marriage and understand the scale of forced marriage in the UK.
Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is absolutely committed to tackling forced marriage in all its forms, and to safeguarding victims. The joint Home Office/Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Forced Marriage Unit provided support for 337 victims or potential victims of forced marriage in 2021, as well as handling 868 general enquiries, and in the same year it delivered training and outreach activity to 1,014 professionals. The Government also provides a free e-learning course about forced marriage for professionals, a victim-focused leaflet available in 12 languages, and a handbook for survivors.
The Government supported the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, which expands the scope of the forced marriage offence to cover all instances of causing a child to marry, even when coercion is not used. The Act is planned to come into force on 27 February 2023.
To understand the scale of forced marriage in the UK, as set out in the July 2021 Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, the Home Office is exploring options to estimate the prevalence of forced marriage (and female genital mutilation) in England and Wales, given their hidden nature and the lack of robust estimates.
In working to safeguard victims of forced marriage the Government pays attention to a range of sources of information, including responses to consultations and other engagement with stakeholders and experts.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she has taken to implement the recommendations of HMICFRS's July 2020 report, Roads Policing: Not optional - An inspection of roads policing in England and Wales.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Two of the recommendations of the HMICFRS Roads Policing Report were addressed directly to the Home Office.
The Home Office considers that using the powers under section 7(4) of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 to require locally elected PCCs to include specific policing issues in their Police and Crime plans needs to be balanced with a proper regard for local autonomy and the will of local voters. PCC’s are directly elected and must consult their communities in developing a Police and Crime Plan that reflects local circumstances.
The Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR) will set clear direction to policing on the contribution they need to make to respond to priority national threats including terrorism, serious and organised crime and child sexual abuse. Following the SPR review that we concluded last year, we are considering the national threats and policing capabilities, such as roads policing, that are included in the SPR. The revised SPR will be published in due course.
The remainder of the recommendations were addressed to the Department for Transport, Chief Constables and the College of Policing. The Home Office is committed to working closely with these bodies to consider what further improvements can be made to the effectiveness of roads enforcement in England and Wales and reduce road traffic casualties.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has issued guidance to people in Afghanistan who are eligible for a visa under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy on obtaining a visa in a third country.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Details of the how to apply for relocation under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP), including for those in third countries, can be found in the Afghanistan Resettlement and Immigration policy statement.
Guidance was published on 1 September 2021 providing details on how to make ARAP applications from third countries.
The policy statement can be viewed here: Afghanistan resettlement and immigration policy statement - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The guidance can be found here: Afghan locally employed staff - relocation schemes.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when her Department will open the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme; and what her timescale is for commencing processing of referrals from people currently (a) in Afghanistan (b) in other countries outside the UK.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Through the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), the UK will relocate up to 20,000 people at risk, including women and girls and minority groups, so they can rebuild their lives in safety.
The first to be resettled through this scheme will be those who arrived in the UK under the evacuation programme, which included individuals who were considered to be at particular risk – including women’s rights activists, prosecutors and journalists.
We are working urgently to stand up the remaining elements of the scheme, amid the complex and changing picture. We are working closely across government and with NGOs, charities, local authorities and civil society groups to ensure support is provided to people who are resettled through this route.
Further information on the eligibility, prioritisation and referral of people for the ACRS is set out in the policy statement published on gov.uk on 13 September, available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghanistan-resettlement-and-immigration-policy-statement.