Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what action his Department is taking to tackle potential discrepancies between UK Visas and Immigration requirements to provide a Border Force passport stamp as proof of entry to the UK for Ukrainians applying for a biometric residence permit card and Border Force practice in stamping passports.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
We are aware of occasions where Ukrainians did not have their passport endorsed by an immigration official on arrival. Measures have been taken to prevent this from occurring in the future, and steps are being taken to progress those applications affected as soon as possible.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Defending Democracy Taskforce is taking to reduce the potential threat of artificial intelligence generated deepfakes being used in elections.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Government is committed to safeguarding the UK’s elections and already has established systems and processes in place, to protect the democratic integrity of the UK.
DSIT is the lead department on artificial intelligence and is part of the Defending Democracy Taskforce which has a mandate to safeguard our democratic institutions and processes from the full range of threats, including digitally manipulated content. The Taskforce ensures we have a robust system in place to rapidly respond to any threats during election periods.
Furthermore, the Online Safety Act places new requirements on social media platforms to swiftly remove illegal misinformation and disinformation - including artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes - as soon as they become aware of it. The Act also updates Ofcom’s statutory media literacy duty to require it to take tangible steps to prioritise the public's awareness of and resilience to misinformation and disinformation online. This includes enabling users to establish the reliability, accuracy, and authenticity of content.
The new digital imprints regime, introduced by the Elections Act 2022, will also increase the transparency of digital political advertising (including artificial intelligence-generated material).
Finally, the threat to democracy from artificial intelligence was discussed at the AI Safety Summit in November 2023, reinforcing the Government’s commitment to international collaboration on this shared challenge.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 14 November 2023 to Question 1202 on Members: Correspondence, if he will make an assessment of the status of the technical issue as of 22 November 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Having reviewed the system we are satisfied that this error is not part of a wider systemic issue.
The majority of all requests for Biometric Residence Permits are successfully processed, however, the case in question was part of a very small number of failures, usually because of a data entry error rather than a system issue. We are taking steps (like postcode lookup and enhanced operational guidance) to further enhance data quality to drive down the small number even further.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the correspondence from the hon. Member for Hove, reference MPAM/1005482/23, what the technical issue is that is delaying his constituent being issued with an accurate biometric residence permit card; and whether this technical issue has affected any other applications made to her Department.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
There has been a technical issue with this case matching the applicant’s biometric information with the production of the Biometric Residence Permit. This incident has now been resolved, and a new BRP will be issued shortly.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase the availability of appointments for priority services at the Passport Office before 6 May 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Appointments continue to be offered throughout this period of industrial action, and new appointments are released every day. As is always the case, for anyone that requires a passport on compassionate grounds for urgent travel, our services are available.
HM Passport Office has processed almost 2.6 million applications up to the end of March 2023, with 99.6% of standard UK applications being processed within ten weeks and over 94.6% being processed within three weeks.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of skilled worker visa applicants who applied for a faster decision received a decision within the requested timescale in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on the number of skilled worker visas which have been processed outside target processing times in our Transparency data.
The Home Office Transparency data sets out how the department is performing against its service standard, which can be found on the GOV.UK webpage: Visas and Citizenship data: Q3 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she is taking steps to increase the number of priority appointments available for priority service visa applicants.
Answered by Kevin Foster
UKVI closely monitor visa demand across all overseas locations and remain focussed on clearing the oldest applications as quickly as possible. We continue to review the availability of priority visa services and any changes will be published at Get a faster decision on your visa or settlement application: Applying from outside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Customers applying for priority visa services from within the UK to the UK Visa and Citizenship Application Service (UKVCAS) do not have to select a specific PV appointment, they can select any appointment at any site shown to them on the UKVCAS website
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the (a) average time taken to process a Turkish Businessperson visa extension applications and (b) proportion of those applications which have been refused in each of last five years.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The current average processing times of work routes visa extensions is 6 months.
The transparency data includes a range of processing data and the latest data can be found at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The Home Office publishes data on ECAA Businesspersons in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release(opens in a new tab)’.
Data on applications for ECAA Businesspersons are published in table Vis_D01 of the entry clearance visa detailed dataset. Data on the number of ECAA Businesspersons issued and refused are included in table Vis_D02. These data may be selected using the ‘ECAA Businessperson’ visa type subgroup.
Information on how to use the entry clearance visa detailed dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates to year ending March 2022.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she plans to take to reduce the 24 week processing time frame for a family visa to its original 12 week service standard.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Home Office is currently prioritising Ukraine Visa Schemes applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Staff from other government departments, including DWP and HMRC, are being surged into the department to help with Ukraine work and enable normal visa routes to return to normal service levels in due course
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that documents are returned to passport applicants as soon as a new passport is issued.
Answered by Kevin Foster
HM Passport Office prepared extensively to serve an unprecedented number of customers, with 9.5 million British passport applications forecasted throughout 2022.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office is working hard to ensure that all aspects of the processing of passport applications, including the return of documents to customers, are completed as quickly as possible.