Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many emails to the Ukraine Urgent MP Enquires address were awaiting response as of 1 April 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office does not capture data specifically covering the number of enquiries to the urgent inbox, but all enquiries to this inbox are dealt with as a priority.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many pregnant women were allocated visas via (a) the Ukrainian Family Scheme and (b) the Homes for Ukraine scheme as of 1 April 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Information on the number of visas granted under the Ukraine Family Scheme and the Homes for Ukraine Scheme can be found in our published data on the GOV.UK webpage: Ukraine Schemes: application data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Information requested not contained within this published data is not routinely captured. To capture numbers would require a manual trawl of data and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on increasing the number of visas granted to people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Answered by Kevin Foster
We are prioritising visa applications from Ukrainians and have surged capacity to other visa application centres (VACs) in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic and Moldova.
Ukrainians with passports no longer need to go to a VAC to give their biometrics before they come to the UK.
This will mean that our VACs across Europe can focus their efforts on helping Ukrainians without passports, increasing the capacity at those centres to 13,000 appointments per week.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Ukrainian nationals are being held in Immigration Removal Centres as of 1 April 2022.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office publishes statistics on people entering and in detention in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’.
The number of people entering detention in each quarter is presented by nationality in table Det_D01 of the ‘Detention detailed tables’. The number of people in detention at the end of each quarter published by nationality is in table Det_D02 of the ‘Detention detailed tables’.
There were two Ukrainian nationals in immigration detention at the end of December 2021, before the conflict in Ukraine began. People can be held in detention for contravening immigration law or for criminality reasons.
The latest data goes up to the end of December 2021. Data for January to March 2022 will be published on the 26 May 2022.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to process outstanding applications for (a) UK citizenship and (b) indefinite leave to remain in a timely manner.
Answered by Kevin Foster
We are committed to ensuring our operational teams have the resources they need to run an efficient and effective system, and we actively monitor workflows to ensure sufficient resources are in place to meet demand.
Our aim is to process all applications for UK citizenship and indefinite leave to remain within our service level agreement (SLA) of six months. Each individual case is considered on its own facts, so may take longer dependent on the circumstances of the case, for example, if the applicant is facing an impending prosecution or has a criminal record.
If an application is deemed complex and expected to take longer than the published SLA, UKVI will write to the customer within the SLA and explain what will happen next.
Information on our immigration routes with service standards and whether they have been processed against these standards is available as part of our transparency data, at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of outstanding applications for (a) UK citizenship and (b) indefinite leave to remain.
Answered by Kevin Foster
We are committed to ensuring our operational teams have the resources they need to run an efficient and effective system, and we actively monitor workflows to ensure sufficient resources are in place to meet demand.
Our aim is to process all applications for UK citizenship and indefinite leave to remain within our service level agreement (SLA) of six months. Each individual case is considered on its own facts, so may take longer dependent on the circumstances of the case, for example, if the applicant is facing an impending prosecution or has a criminal record.
If an application is deemed complex and expected to take longer than the published SLA, UKVI will write to the customer within the SLA and explain what will happen next.
Information on our immigration routes with service standards and whether they have been processed against these standards is available as part of our transparency data, at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the statement in her Department's Detention Services Order 06/2016: Women in the detention estate report, published in June 2016, that women detainees are entitled to ask to be examined by a female nurse or doctor, what her policy is on the proportion of healthcare staff at the new Hassockfield immigration removal centre that will be women.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The safety, health and welfare of individuals in immigration detention are considered with the upmost importance. The new Hassockfield (to be known as Derwentside) immigration removal centre (IRC) will be operated in line with Detention Centre Rules 2001, published operating standards for IRCs and Detention Services Orders; a framework which ensures the safety and security of those detained in our care.
The workforce requirements for the new Hassockfield IRC will reflect the lessons learned from detaining women at Yarl’s Wood IRC and will include a ratio of female to male custodial staff that is appropriate for the specific needs of women in detention. It is our aim that around 60% of uniformed staff will be women.
Healthcare in IRCs in England is commissioned by NHS England, and the healthcare services at Hassockfield IRC will be provided by NHS England & NHS Improvement commissioned service providers and delivered in line with the national service specifications for healthcare services in IRCs. The healthcare provider will ensure that services within the IRC are delivered to meet the healthcare needs of women. As set out in Detention Services Order 06/2016 ‘Women in the detention estate’ women will be offered the option to choose to see a female healthcare professional wherever possible.