Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for the fire and rescue service.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Overall, fire and rescue authorities will receive around £2.87 billion in 2024/25. Decisions on how their resources are best deployed to meet their core functions are a matter for each fire and rescue authority based on its analysis of risk and local circumstances.
The Home Office will continue to work closely with stakeholders across the sector to ensure fire and rescue services have the resources they need to protect communities.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of the level of the backlog in Home Office asylum cases in (a) England, (b) North West region and (c) Runcorn and Helsby constituency.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum seekers awaiting an initial decision is published in table Asy_D03 of the ‘Asylum applications, initial decisions and resettlement detailed datasets’. This table is not broken down by constituency.
Data on asylum seekers on support by local authority is published in table Asy_D11 of the ‘Asylum applications, initial decisions and resettlement detailed datasets’. Please note that not all asylum seekers awaiting a decision will be on support.
Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans for disabled residents.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The previous Government consulted on Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans, identifying concerns over their practicality, proportionality and safety.
Following further consultation, Government has committed to introduce legislation later this year to mandate an alternative package of measures called Residential Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans for mobility-impaired residents of high rise residential blocks, and of 11-18 metre high residential blocks with a simultaneous evacuation strategy in place.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to end the use of hotels in Runcorn and Helsby constituency to house people and families seeking asylum.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain, with tens of thousands of people stuck in limbo without any prospect of having their claims processed. At their peak use under the previous government, in the autumn of 2023, more than 400 asylum hotels were being leased by the Home Office, at a cost of almost £9 million a day.
We took immediate action to resolve that chaos by restarting asylum processing, establishing the new Border Security Command to tackle the people-smuggling gangs, cracking down on illegal working across the country, and increasing the return and removal of people with no right to be here.
Inevitably, due to the size of the backlog we inherited, the Government has been forced to continue with the use of hotels for the time being. This is not a permanent solution, and the small increase in the number in use at the end of last year was just a temporary but necessary step to manage pressures in the system, which is now in the process of being reversed. The number of hotels in use at present is 218. Since the General Election, there has been a net increase of six hotels in use; however, nine are scheduled for closure by the end of March 2025.
It remains our absolute commitment to end the use of hotels over time, as part of our reduction in overall asylum accommodation costs. In the interim, we are also continuing to increase our operational activity against smuggling gangs and illegal working, and we have increased returns to their highest level since 2018, with 16,400 people removed in the first six months this government was in office.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she expects the recommendations of 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation to be implemented.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Tackling child sexual abuse is a cross-government priority and we are working at pace to identify how we can best deliver against the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
The Safeguarding Minister has met Professor Alexis Jay and victims and survivors and has convened the first dedicated cross-Government group to drive forward change and deliver an ambitious programme of activity in response to the inquiry. To ensure that victims’ voices remain at the very heart of this process, we will set up a new victims and survivors panel to work on an ongoing basis with the inter-ministerial group and will set out more details and timescales based on that work in due course.
The Government has already announced action on three key recommendations on mandatory reporting, making grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences and introducing a new performance framework for policing.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of regular health checks for fire fighters.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Fire and rescue authorities, as employer, are responsible for the health and wellbeing of the firefighters they employ, and so it is for those authorities to take the appropriate action to conduct health checks on their workforce.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the University of Central Lancashire's report entitled Minimising firefighters’ exposure to toxic fire effluents, published in November 2020.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office takes very seriously the health and safety of those firefighters who risk their lives for our communities every day.
The Home Office is reviewing recent academic research to evaluate risks posed by contaminants and the effectiveness of decontamination procedures, and we will share our findings with the Fire and Rescue Authorities, who hold the legal responsibility to protect firefighters against those risks.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the number of battery fires there have been relating to electric (a) cars, (b) bikes and (c) scooters since 2022.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Home Office collects data on incidents attended by Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs), with this data including the cause of the fire and the source of ignition. This data is published in a variety of publications, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fire-statistics.
Data collected through the Incident Recording System (IRS) does not include data on whether fire incidents attended were caused by or involved batteries, for electric cars, electric bikes or electric scooters.
We are in the process of replacing the IRS, and intend to update the data it collects, covering both the questions and answer categories included within the forms. Adding new categories, including lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles, e-scooters and e-bikes, to the data collection are options beings developed to reform the IRS with a modern, secure, and flexible system.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of giving health and care workers on Tier 2 visas a certificate of common sponsorship.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Skilled Worker immigration route, which includes the Health and Care visa, relies on the sponsorship system to ensure that international recruits are coming to a guaranteed job and will not be abused in terms of salary and conditions.
A core tenet of the immigration system is the recognition that those who most directly benefit from bringing workers to the UK must play a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the system, including meeting all of the duties of sponsorship to ensure that the migrants they are bringing to the UK are genuinely intending to work.
There are over 105,000 licensed sponsors and workers can apply to change sponsors as they wish.
Last week we announced our commitment to minimising abuse of the visa and immigration system by unscrupulous employers. Further details can be found here: Written statements - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament.
Allowing migrants into the UK without the protection of genuine guaranteed employment, and no access to public funds should that employment cease, would create a cohort of people who could become destitute. Open or unsponsored work permits could also lead to this state.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, i if she will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of changes in the level of thefts of farming GPS equipment.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This Government is committed to reducing crime and disorder in rural areas, given the devastating impact rural crime can have on communities. Under our reforms, rural communities will be safeguarded, with tougher measures to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, strengthened neighbourhood policing and stronger measures to prevent farm theft and fly-tipping.
The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will deliver thousands of additional neighbourhood police, police community support officers and Special Constables, across England and Wales, including in rural areas, to speed up response times and build public confidence.
Removeable GPS units are particularly vulnerable to theft and can massively disrupt day to day farming operations. The National Farmers Union (NFU) reports the UK cost of GPS theft increased by 137% to £4.2 million in 2023.
We are committed to implementing the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, which aims to prevent the theft and re-sale of high-value equipment, particularly for use in an agricultural setting. The Act requires secondary legislation before it can come into effect. We are carefully considering the views of those who may be affected by the legislation and its regulations, to understand the potential implications and determine the scope of the legislation.