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Written Question
Home Office: Training
Wednesday 7th October 2020

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much the Department spent on unconscious bias training in each of the last five years.

Answered by James Brokenshire

The table below shows the spend for the last two financial years. There was no spend for the financial years 16/17 or 17/18. Figures for the financial year 15/16 are not available.

Spend on Unconscious Bias Training

Period

Spend

1 April 18 to 31 Mar 19

£7,949

1 April 19 to 31 Mar 20

£46,131


Written Question
Home Office: Staff
Friday 18th September 2020

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many members of staff in their Department have one or more of the words equality, diversity, inclusion, gender, LGBT or race in their job title.

Answered by James Brokenshire

With regard to the Honourable Members question about the number of staff with the words equality, diversity, inclusion, gender, LGBT or race in their job title I refer him to the response given to his question of the 9th September 2020, UIN 83931.


Written Question
Home: Staff
Wednesday 9th September 2020

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many members of staff in her Department have equality, diversity or inclusion in their job title

Answered by James Brokenshire

Job titles are not held centrally and could only be retrieved at disproportionate cost.

The Home Office central Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) team has 18 staff who work across the organisation for its workforce of nearly 37,000 staff. The team are responsible for setting the strategic direction for diversity and inclusion as set out in the Home Office D&I Strategy 2018-2025: Inclusive by Instinct.

The Home Office is committed to becoming a more diverse and inclusive Department and going beyond the mandated requirements established in EA2010. This inclusive approach will make the Department a stronger organisation that is better equipped to develop and deliver policy and services for the public we serve. Achieving this ambition requires action from everyone in the Department.

In addition to the central D&I team there are further roles which whilst not exclusively working on diversity and inclusion do have responsibilities for realisation of the D&I strategy, and delivery of D&I interventions. These roles are distributed across the HO, and include staff support network chairs/leads who have between 20 – 50% of their time allocated to this role, as well as some HR Business Partners that have specific D&I responsibilities.


Written Question
Home Office: Training
Tuesday 1st September 2020

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff in her Department have undertaken unconscious bias training in each of the last five years.

Answered by James Brokenshire

1.) Training on unconscious bias is primarily provided through the Unconscious Bias eLearning package on the Civil Service Learning site. The table below shows the number of individual Home Office staff that have undertaken this course in each of the last five financial years:

Table 1: Take up of Unconscious Bias eLearning

Period

Number of staff

1 April 15 to 31 Mar 16

1,893

1 April 16 to 31 Mar 17

2,862

1 April 17 to 31 Mar 18

5,179

1 April 18 to 31 Mar 19

7,925

1 April 19 to 31 Mar 20

15,306

2.) In addition to the Unconscious Bias eLearning package the subject of unconscious bias has been included in the Diversity & Inclusion eLearning package on the Civil Service Learning site from May 2019. The table below shows the number of Home Office staff that have undertaken this course from 1 May 2019 to 31 March 2020:

Table 2: Take up of Diversity & Inclusion eLearning

Period

Number of staff

1 May 19 to 31 Mar 20

14,460

3.) Civil Service Learning also provide a half day workshop on unconscious bias, aimed at Senior Civil Servants. A total of 23 Home Office Senior Civil Servants staff have attended this workshop as shown below:

Table 3: Take up of Unconscious Bias workshop

Period

Number of staff

1 April 18 to 31 Mar 19

2

1 April 19 to 31 Mar 20

21

4.) It should be noted that all figures include permanent Home Office Civil Servants only; contactors working on behalf of the Home Office are not included.


Written Question
Immigrants: Health Services
Monday 8th June 2020

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the amount of revenue that will accrue to the public purse from the Immigration Health Surcharge in each of the years to the end of the current forecast period.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Home Office does not routinely publish data relating to financial forecasts. Income data for the Immigration Health Surcharge is published annually in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts.

Please see page 137 of the Home Office 2018-19 Annual Report and Accounts for the most recent disclosure of Immigration Health Surcharge income

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/807126/6.5571_HO_Annual_Report_201920_WEB.PDF


Written Question
British National (Overseas): Passports
Thursday 4th June 2020

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people hold valid British National Overseas passports.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The number of valid British National (Overseas) passports in circulation as at 17th April 2020 was 357,156.


Written Question
101 Calls
Thursday 25th July 2019

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of calls to the 101 service were (a) answered in under 30 seconds, (b) answered between 30 to 60 seconds, (c) answered between 60 seconds and 120 seconds, (d) answered between 120 and 180 seconds, (e) answered between 180 and 300 seconds (f) answered between 300 and 600 seconds (g) answered after 600 seconds, (h) unanswered in each of the last three years for which information is available; and how many calls there were in total in each of those years.

Answered by Nick Hurd

The Home Office does not collect data on the 101 service, this is an operational decision for individual forces.


Written Question
Security
Monday 15th July 2019

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which security tools and data systems the UK will no longer have access to in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

Answered by Nick Hurd

The Government’s position remains that leaving with a deal, which includes ambitious internal security arrangements, is in the UK’s and EU’s best interests. If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, then we would cease to cooperate through the EU’s internal security tools and data systems upon exit.

The Home Office continues to work closely with operational partners to ensure readiness for a range of possible exit scenarios in October, including no deal. We have been working intensively with these partners for some time to transition cooperation with EU Member States to alternative, non-EU mechanisms, should that be needed in a no deal scenario. In the security and law enforcement space, this would include making more use of Interpol, Council of Europe Conventions and other forms of cooperation, such as bilateral channels.


Written Question
Immigration
Tuesday 19th March 2019

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment the Government has made of the changes to the immigration system that reduced net immigration since 2010.

Answered by Caroline Nokes

Impact Assessments associated with legislation or rules changes are publicly available on gov.uk.

We keep all immigration policies under regular review including the impact that they are having on net migration.

The introduction of major immigration policies are accompanied by published impact assessments where appropriate, and the Government also commissions the Migration Advisory Committee to advise on immigration policy. Recent changes proposed in the Immigration White Paper, ‘The UK’s future skills-based immigration system,’ were accompanied by an analytical assessment which was published as part of the paper.


Written Question
Immigration
Tuesday 19th March 2019

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment the Government has made of the changes to the immigration system that increased immigration since 2010.

Answered by Caroline Nokes

Impact Assessments associated with legislation or rules changes are publicly available on gov.uk.

We keep all immigration policies under regular review including the impact that they are having on net migration.

The introduction of major immigration policies are accompanied by published impact assessments where appropriate, and the Government also commissions the Migration Advisory Committee to advise on immigration policy. Recent changes proposed in the Immigration White Paper, ‘The UK’s future skills-based immigration system,’ were accompanied by an analytical assessment which was published as part of the paper.