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Written Question
Mosques
Thursday 11th January 2024

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times (a) he and (b) his predecessor made an official visit to a Mosque in the last three years.

Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)

In the last three years, the current Home Secretary has visited numerous mosques both in the UK and overseas in his roles as Foreign Secretary, Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, and Member of Parliament for Braintree.

Home Office has no record of an official visit by the former Home Secretary to a mosque in the last three years.


Written Question
Fire and Rescue Services: Costs
Thursday 26th October 2023

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of increases in costs on fire and rescue services across England.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work. Overall, fire and rescue authorities (FRAs) will receive around £2.6 billion in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, which includes West Yorkshire, will see an increase in core spending power of 8.1 per cent in cash terms compared to 2022/23.

On 6 February 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) published the final Local Government Financial Settlement setting out the referendum principles for Local Authorities in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, including West Yorkshire, will be able to increase their Band D council tax by £5. This will raise c£67 million if all standalone FRAs choose to make full use of the flexibility.

The final settlement also confirmed that Revenue Support Grant and Baseline Funding Levels would increase in line with September 2022 CPI (10.1%). This will help FRAs to manage their inflationary pressures.

Ahead of the 2024/25 Provisional Local Government Financial Settlement, the Home Office worked closely with the National Fire Chiefs Council to review evidence of inflationary pressures facing fire and rescue services.


Written Question
West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service: Finance
Thursday 26th October 2023

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to increase funding for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work. Overall, fire and rescue authorities (FRAs) will receive around £2.6 billion in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, which includes West Yorkshire, will see an increase in core spending power of 8.1 per cent in cash terms compared to 2022/23.

On 6 February 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) published the final Local Government Financial Settlement setting out the referendum principles for Local Authorities in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, including West Yorkshire, will be able to increase their Band D council tax by £5. This will raise c£67 million if all standalone FRAs choose to make full use of the flexibility.

The final settlement also confirmed that Revenue Support Grant and Baseline Funding Levels would increase in line with September 2022 CPI (10.1%). This will help FRAs to manage their inflationary pressures.

Ahead of the 2024/25 Provisional Local Government Financial Settlement, the Home Office worked closely with the National Fire Chiefs Council to review evidence of inflationary pressures facing fire and rescue services.


Written Question
Knives: Organised Crime
Wednesday 5th July 2023

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion street-based knife crime incidents (a) were and (b) were not the result of gang activity in each of the last five years.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office does not routinely collect information on whether offences involving knives or sharp instruments occurred on the street, or if they were related to gang activity.

Violent crime as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales has fallen by 41% between the year ending March 2010 and the year ending December 2022.


Written Question
Knives: Crime Prevention
Wednesday 5th July 2023

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what resources her Department plans to allocate to support anti-knife crime initiatives during the school summer holidays.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

Tackling serious violence, including knife crime, is a key priority for this government and we are doing everything we can to keep young people, families and communities safe.

We know that violence often increases over the summer months. The government is taking concerted action to try and mitigate any spike in violence and tackle its underlying causes, deploying a twin-track approach of tough enforcement to remove dangerous weapons from the streets with programmes that steer young people away from crime.

This financial year, the Government has made over £110m available to tackle serious violence. This includes continued investment in our Violence Reduction Units (VRUs), located in the twenty areas most affected by serious violence, which bring together local partners to tackle the drivers of violence in their area. VRUs continue to deliver preventative activity to young people at-risk of involvement in violence over the summer, providing early intervention programmes to divert young people away from a life of crime.

We are also continuing to invest in our ‘Grip’ hotspot policing programme, which operates in the same 20 areas as VRUs, and which will help to drive down serious violence this summer through using data to identify serious violence hotspots – often down to individual street level – and target operational activity in those areas. The combination of these two programmes have prevented an estimated 136,000 violent offences in their first three years of operation.

We are also supporting the police every step of the way in their efforts to crack down on knife crime. We have given them more powers and resources to go after criminals and take knives and other dangerous weapons off our streets, including through the recruitment of 20,000 additional officers and increasing police funding. New powers like Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) have been introduced to tackle repeated knife carrying, giving police the automatic right to search convicted offenders with an order.

Police recorded crime showed offences involving knives or sharp instruments decreased by 9% for the year ending December 2022, compared with the year ending March 2020.

The Crime Survey of England and Wales finds that violent offences have fallen by 41% and homicides by 11% since 2010.


Written Question
Knives: Crime
Tuesday 27th June 2023

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will provide a list of projects funded by the £340 million allocated to tackle knife crime in last three years; and if her Department has allocated any additional funding (a) to tackle Serious Violent Crime, (b) to tackle Knife Crime and (c) for crime prevention activities in the last three years.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

Since 2019 the Home Office has made available £340 million in the 20 police force areas of England and Wales (18 areas until 2022) most affected by serious violence, including knife crime, to support the work of local partners and the police in tackling these appalling crimes.

This includes £170m that we have made available for the Home Office Violence Reduction Unit Programme and £170m that we have made available for the Grip programme (previously known as Surge) hot spot policing programme. Violence Reduction Units bring together key partners including representatives of local authorities, health, education, and policing to identify the local drivers of violence and agree and deliver a programme of action in response to these. Through the Grip programme, we are funding additional, visible policing patrols and problem-solving activity in the streets and neighbourhoods most affected by violent crime. The police force areas in which Violence Reduction Unit and Grip projects are being delivered are: London, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Northumbria, Thames Valley, Lancashire, Essex, Avon & Somerset, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, Sussex, Hampshire, South Wales, Cleveland, and Humberside. Violence Reduction Unit and Grip funding will continue in the 23/24 financial year.

In addition to this, there is other funding from the Home Office for crime prevention activities.

Information regarding all Government grants statistics can also be found on Gov.uk.

The Government’s Spending Review announcements can also be found on Gov.uk.


Written Question
Asylum: Rwanda
Tuesday 20th September 2022

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 25th May 2022 to Question 5436, on Asylum: Rwanda, what criteria will be used to assess the mental and psychological health of persons seeking asylum when determining their eligibility for relocation to Rwanda.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Decisions on whether to relocate individuals to Rwanda are made on a case-by-case basis depending on the individual circumstances at the time, and in accordance with the inadmissibility guidance available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inadmissibility-third-country-cases.

Everyone considered for relocation will be screened and have access to legal advice, and nobody will be removed if it is unsafe or inappropriate for them.

No changes have been made to legal aid for asylum applications or appeals. Legal aid has been, and will always be, available in asylum cases.

The Government is investing over £8m in legal aid through the Nationality and Borders Act, where legal aid will be available for potential victims of modern slavery and where individuals have been served with a priority removal notice.


Written Question
Asylum: Applications
Thursday 8th September 2022

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an estimate of how many people have been waiting more than six months for a decision on their asylum claim.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum applications awaiting an initial decision are published in table Asy_D03 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates to 30 June 2022. Data as at 30 September 2022 is set to be published on 24 November 2022.

Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.


Written Question
Asylum: Rwanda
Thursday 8th September 2022

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 25th May 2022 to Question 5436 on Asylum: Rwanda, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of cuts to legal aid for asylum applications on the ability of people to adequately make representations where they feel deportation to Rwanda would be detrimental to their physical or mental wellbeing.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Decisions on whether to relocate individuals to Rwanda are made on a case-by-case basis depending on the individual circumstances at the time, and in accordance with the inadmissibility guidance available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inadmissibility-third-country-cases.

Everyone considered for relocation will be screened and have access to legal advice, and nobody will be removed if it is unsafe or inappropriate for them.

No changes have been made to legal aid for asylum applications or appeals. Legal aid has been, and will always be, available in asylum cases.

The Government is investing over £8m in legal aid through the Nationality and Borders Act, where legal aid will be available for potential victims of modern slavery and where individuals have been served with a priority removal notice.


Written Question
Police National Computer
Wednesday 27th April 2022

Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she will review the national retention rules for the police national computer system to bring them in line with the management of police information principles of proportionality and necessity.

Answered by Kit Malthouse

The retention rules for the Police National Computer are set by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), and are currently under review.

The NPCC, working closely with criminal justice partners, the Home Office, the Information Commissioner’s Office as well as key stakeholders, are exploring as part of this review whether any changes should be made.

In doing so, the review team will consider the implications of the five chief constables case and the more recent Broadfoot judgment (2021 PNC retention judgment).