Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how (a) temporary accommodation use and (b) all forms of homelessness were factored into assessments of levels of need in the Fair Funding review of local authority needs.

Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

The government has set out our proposal for consolidating funding across all forms of homelessness, through the first multi-year settlement in a decade, in the Fair Funding Review 2.0 consultation on gov.uk here.

The Fair Funding Review 2.0 includes proposals to roll funding for Temporary Accommodation, currently part of Homelessness Prevention Grant, into the Local Government Finance Settlement Revenue Support Grant and the creation of a consolidated Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Grant thematic pot.

Taking this approach of separating out temporary accommodation funding will end the current tension that forces local authorities to choose between investment in prevention and meeting current temporary accommodation costs, creating dedicated ringfenced funds for the prevention of homelessness and rough sleeping.

This follows the government’s consultation on the Homelessness Prevention Grant. You can read the response to this consultation on gov.uk here.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when her Department plans to launch its consultation on changes to indefinite leave to remain for Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa holders; and how long her Department expects to run that consultation for.

Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

The Government is committed to supporting members of the Hong Kong community who have relocated to the UK and those who may come here in future.

I welcomed the opportunity to listen to the views of Members around these subjects in the recent 8th September Westminster Hall Debate on settlement.

We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year, and the length of the consultation will be announced at that point. All will be welcome to participate. We will provide details of how the scheme will work after that consultation.

We regularly engage with representatives of the Hong Kong diaspora in the UK on issues related to the BN(O) visa and will continue to do so.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of exempting people with experience of transnational suppression from proposals to increase the qualifying time for Indefinite Leave to Remain to ten years.

Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year. All will be welcome to participate. We will provide details of how the scheme will work after that consultation.

Any attempt by any foreign power to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated.

Wherever we identify such threats, we will use all measures, including through our world-class intelligence services, to mitigate risk to individuals, and we will continue to ensure that robust systems are in place to detect, deter and counter such activity.

Found: Neil Coyle (Lab) and Gregory Stafford (Con) called for the amendment to be retained.51 However, Sojan