Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of women killed by men since 2012; and what steps her Department is taking to prevent women being killed through men's violence.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The Home Office Homicide Index shows that between 2012/13 and 2019/20 there were 1,005 female victims (aged 16 and over) of homicide where the suspect was male.
The Government takes women’s safety very seriously and is determined to tackle crimes which disproportionately affect women and girls.
We have published a new Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy and will be publishing a complementary Domestic Abuse Strategy in the New Year. The new strategies will help transform the response to these crimes, from prevention and raising awareness, support to victims and survivors, to ensuring perpetrators are brought to justice.
As part of the new VAWG Strategy commitments, work is underway to launch a national communications campaign in the New Year, which will focus on targeting perpetrators, educating young people about healthy relationships and ensuring victims can access support.
We are doing a considerable amount of work on domestic homicides which is a horrific crime that disproportionately impacts females. Homicide Index data for 2017/18 to 2019/20 show that 76% of victims of domestic homicide were female. The Home Office worked with the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s domestic abuse and homicide leads to fund a rapid review pilot at the start of the first lockdown to track domestic homicides and enable the police to respond to spikes.
We firmly believe that tackling perpetrators of abuse is key to reducing domestic homicides. In 2020/21, the Chancellor announced £10 million in funding for DA perpetrator programmes, which was the first fund of its kind. This year the funding has increased to £25 million, more than doubling the funding for addressing perpetrators of domestic abuse. Of this, over £18 million has been provided to local areas to introduce new perpetrator programmes this year.
In addition to this, Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) must be considered for all deaths involving a person over the age of 16 where domestic abuse has, or appears to have been a factor. We have undertaken to create a central repository for all DHRs which will allow us to better understand the patterns and trends of domestic homicides.
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 her Department has made of the adequacy of the resources available to tackling online and phone scammers.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office collects information from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau on the number of recorded frauds. From the information held internally it is not possible to separately identify offences of fraud in which scam phone calls have been involved.
As part of the 2020 Spending Review, the Government committed a further £63m to the Home Office to tackle economic crime, including fraud. This is in addition to the funding the Home Office commits each year to the National Crime Agency, National Economic Crime Centre and police forces, including the City of London Police as the national lead force for fraud and the operator of the Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau services.
The Home Office and DCMS are in regular discussion with the telecommunication industry on ways to tackle scam phone calls and protect the public. The Government has taken a range of actions to reduce the number of these calls. We have supported the National Trading Standards Scams Team to roll out call blocking devices to vulnerable people, helping to protect them from nuisance calls and scams. In addition, the City of London Police, the national lead force for Fraud, has partnered with Law Enforcement and Industry to combat call centre fraud from overseas jurisdictions.
However, the best way to tackle this problem is to try and identify the sources of these calls and stop them. We are encouraging the public to forward suspicious text messages to 7726 (which is free of charge) and continue to encourage anyone who has been a targeted by a scam to report it. Action Fraud is the central police reporting point for all victims of fraud and can be contacted by phone on 0300 123 2040 or through their website: http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud.
Using this information, City of London Police, the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency are able to facilitate numbers being used for scam calls/texts being blocked or removed.
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 her Department has made of trends in the number of scam phone calls being reported to Action Fraud in each month since March 2020; and what steps she is taking bring the perpetrators of those scams to justice.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office collects information from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau on the number of recorded frauds. From the information held internally it is not possible to separately identify offences of fraud in which scam phone calls have been involved.
As part of the 2020 Spending Review, the Government committed a further £63m to the Home Office to tackle economic crime, including fraud. This is in addition to the funding the Home Office commits each year to the National Crime Agency, National Economic Crime Centre and police forces, including the City of London Police as the national lead force for fraud and the operator of the Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau services.
The Home Office and DCMS are in regular discussion with the telecommunication industry on ways to tackle scam phone calls and protect the public. The Government has taken a range of actions to reduce the number of these calls. We have supported the National Trading Standards Scams Team to roll out call blocking devices to vulnerable people, helping to protect them from nuisance calls and scams. In addition, the City of London Police, the national lead force for Fraud, has partnered with Law Enforcement and Industry to combat call centre fraud from overseas jurisdictions.
However, the best way to tackle this problem is to try and identify the sources of these calls and stop them. We are encouraging the public to forward suspicious text messages to 7726 (which is free of charge) and continue to encourage anyone who has been a targeted by a scam to report it. Action Fraud is the central police reporting point for all victims of fraud and can be contacted by phone on 0300 123 2040 or through their website: http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud.
Using this information, City of London Police, the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency are able to facilitate numbers being used for scam calls/texts being blocked or removed.
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 her Department has made of the efficacy of Government communications on publicising the requirement for EU citizens living in the UK to hold Comprehensive Sickness Insurance.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Guidance on which groups of EEA nationals required comprehensive sickness insurance, as well as the types of documents accepted to meet this condition, has always been publicly available. This can currently be found from page 38 of the guidance on ‘qualified persons’ available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/european-economic-area-nationals-qualified-persons.
The requirements to naturalise as a British citizen remain unchanged by our exit from the European Union or the implementation of the EU Settlement Scheme. This includes requirements to normally have been free of immigration time restrictions for 12 months before applying, and to have been lawfully in the UK throughout the residential qualifying period.
There may be cases where nationality caseworkers need to satisfy themselves the person was here lawfully. This is not a new requirement and was an assessment we have always been making. It is also a statutory requirement and cannot be ignored. The same applies to all applicants, EEA or not. We have recently amended the application forms to ensure we can gather as much of this information upfront at the application stage where possible.
Guidance on GOV.UK sets out when we might exercise discretion where a person did not meet the lawful residence requirements. This includes where it is because the applicant did not meet an additional/implicit condition of stay under EEA Free Movement Regulations, rather than illegal entry or overstaying, such as an EEA or Swiss national living or studying in the UK, rather than working, not having CSI.
As has previously been confirmed I am not aware of any application for UK Citizenship being declined purely on the basis of the CSI requirement under EEA Free Movement Regulations and it should not deter anyone from making their application. The guidance can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department plans to take to tackle the matter of self-sufficient individuals of EU nationality who were not informed of requirements to hold comprehensive sickness insurance but who now require such insurance to apply for British citizenship.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Guidance on which groups of EEA nationals required comprehensive sickness insurance, as well as the types of documents accepted to meet this condition, has always been publicly available. This can currently be found from page 38 of the guidance on ‘qualified persons’ available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/european-economic-area-nationals-qualified-persons.
The requirements to naturalise as a British citizen remain unchanged by our exit from the European Union or the implementation of the EU Settlement Scheme. This includes requirements to normally have been free of immigration time restrictions for 12 months before applying, and to have been lawfully in the UK throughout the residential qualifying period.
There may be cases where nationality caseworkers need to satisfy themselves the person was here lawfully. This is not a new requirement and was an assessment we have always been making. It is also a statutory requirement and cannot be ignored. The same applies to all applicants, EEA or not. We have recently amended the application forms to ensure we can gather as much of this information upfront at the application stage where possible.
Guidance on GOV.UK sets out when we might exercise discretion where a person did not meet the lawful residence requirements. This includes where it is because the applicant did not meet an additional/implicit condition of stay under EEA Free Movement Regulations, rather than illegal entry or overstaying, such as an EEA or Swiss national living or studying in the UK, rather than working, not having CSI.
As has previously been confirmed I am not aware of any application for UK Citizenship being declined purely on the basis of the CSI requirement under EEA Free Movement Regulations and it should not deter anyone from making their application. The guidance can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason fire fighters have been offered a pay award below that offered of teachers, doctors, dentists, police and prison officers.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The pay awards announced on 21 July 2020 related to workforces covered by Pay Review Bodies (PRBs) which are: the armed forces, teachers, police officers, the National Crime Agency, prison officers, doctors, dentists, the Judiciary, senior civil servants and senior military personnel.
Pay awards for firefighters are agreed independently outside this process by the National Joint Council (NJC) for Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services which include representatives of employers, devolved administrations and trade unions.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to increase the number of fire fighters.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office has no role in making decisions on the number of firefighters employed by fire services.
It is the responsibility of each fire and rescue service and authority to ensure that they have they have the appropriate number of firefighters to deliver their core functions across prevention, protection and response.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many notices have been issued by police forces in England under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 in each of the (a) last three months for which such information is available and (b) corresponding three months in (i) 2019 and (ii) 2018.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Home Office is currently collecting information on authorisations made under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and the data will be published in due course.
The Home Office routinely collects and publishes statistics on the number of stop and searches under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Data are published annually in the ‘Police Powers and Procedures, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, the latest of which can be accessed here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales
The next bulletin is due to be published in October 2020.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Prime Minister, what meetings his special advisors have attended with (a) developers or (b) their representatives on the Westferry Printworks development, (PA/18/01877/A1 which was granted planning permission by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on 14 January 2020.
Answered by Boris Johnson
Ministers and special advisers act in accordance with the MHCLG Guidance on Planning Propriety Issues. In that light, No10 Ministers and special advisers would not discuss the details of live planning applications with MHCLG Planning Ministers. Any representations by other Government departments to a called-in or recovered planning application being considered by MHCLG would be disclosed as part of the evidence to the planning inquiry.
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 he has made of the (a) ability and (b) capacity of voluntary sector organisations to assist (i) the police and (ii) other authorities in tackling serious violence.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Serious Violence Strategy sets out the importance of a multi-agency approach to tackling serious violence which involves a range of partners and agencies. The strategy places a strong emphasis on early intervention and tackling the root causes of the problem to prevent young people from being drawn into violence in the first place.
Voluntary sector organisations are essential in helping the Government to deliver on our commitments in the strategy. We have provided support to a number of voluntary sector partners to help tackle serious violence, including through the £1.5m we made available for grassroots projects through our anti-knife crime Community Fund in 2018/19 and making available £22m through our Early Intervention Youth Fund through which we have already invested £17.7m in 29 projects across England and Wales. We will be evaluating the projects and sharing information and learning across all areas to assist voluntary and community sector organisations to continue to provide the best support to young people to tackle serious violence.
In addition, the £200m Youth Endowment Fund, announced by the Home Secretary last October, will deliver a ten-year programme of grants that will enable interventions targeted at children and young people who are at most risk. It will act as a centre of expertise; finding out which approaches are most effective; generating, disseminating and promoting new knowledge and practice to transform local and national responses.