Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of asylum processing centres.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The processing centre at Manston provides suitable welfare provisions including hot food, fresh clothing, toilet facilities, sanitary packs and medical care. It provides for all the basic needs of people who will have arrived tired, cold, in wet clothing and who may not have eaten during their journey.
As the situation and needs at Manston have changed, the Home Office and its contractors have continued to innovate to meet those changing needs. Additional marquees have been erected, additional medical personnel have been contracted and improvements have been made to the catering provided. We will continue to innovate to provide for the basic needs of those in our care and to ensure the safety of everyone at Manston as a priority.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 conducting another Royal Commission on Policing.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
We recognise that crime is changing and that the future will present new challenges to policing. We are taking action to ensure that the police have the resources and tools they need to respond to the evolving profile of crime while also continuing to get the basics right and deliver safer streets for the public. This includes recruiting 20,000 additional police officers by March 2023 and increasing funding for policing by up to £1.1 billion this year, which includes over £350 million to provide police with the tools and skills they need to meet the technological challenges of the future.
A Royal Commission into policing would be a substantial undertaking that would distract policing from their core mission- cutting crime, making the safer streets the public deserve, and delivering justice and high-quality outcomes for victims.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 increasing the starting salary of police officers in order to attract more potential candidates to the profession.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The independent Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) makes recommendations to the Government on the appropriate level of pay and allowances for police officers.
The PRRB gathers and invites parties to submit evidence to inform its recommendations. This includes both written and oral evidence from the Government, police employers and police staff associations. The PRRB weighs the evidence, considers independent research, and formulates detailed recommendations.
On 19 July the Government announced that it had accepted in full the recommendations of the PRRB to award a consolidated increase of £1,900 to all police officer ranks and pay points with effect from 1 September 2022. The award is targeted at those on the lowest pay points to provide an uplift of up to 8.8%.
As at 30 September 2022, 15,343 additional uplift officers have been recruited in England and Wales through the Police Uplift Programme, 77% of the target of 20,000 additional officers by March 2023.
Nationally forces have received 244,166 applications since the start of the uplift and interest in policing careers remains strong.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 allotting targeted funding to allow for the efficient and quick analysis of (a) mobile phones and (b) computers in investigations.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government has provided a total police funding settlement of up to £16.9 billion in 2022/23, an increase of up to £1.1 billion when compared to 2021/22.
Decisions about the allocation of police resources locally, are a matter for Chief Constables and directly elected local policing bodies (including Police and Crime Commissioners, Mayors exercising with PCC functions and the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime).
Where we have identified a specific need for targeted investment, such as through the Digital Forensics Programme, the Home Office is providing funding to allow for the efficient and quick analysis of digital devices. For example, as part of commitments made under the Rape Review we provided £5m in 2021/22 to support policing to acquire technology that will enable police forces to extract data more swiftly from mobile devices belonging to rape victims, with further investment to bolster these capabilities agreed for this financial year.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 temporarily dropping (a) visa and (b) leave to remain fees for healthcare workers.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Individuals applying to enter or for limited leave to remain on the Health and Care Visa already pay significantly reduced visa fees. In addition, they are also exempt from having to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge making applications significantly cheaper. These benefits apply to main applicants and their dependants.
More broadly, fees for migration and borders products and services play a vital role in our country’s ability to run a sustainable system. We believe it is right that those who use the system should contribute to its cost, thereby reducing the burden on the UK taxpayer.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the number of people allowed to resettle in the UK through the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme in the next 12 months.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will provide up to 20,000 women, children and others at risk with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK.
The ACRS is in addition to individuals relocated through the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). We have relocated over 7,000 eligible Afghan citizens and their family members under the ARAP scheme, which remains open.
The ACRS is a bespoke scheme, which responds to a challenging and complex situation. The capacity of the UK to resettle people is not unlimited and difficult decisions have to be made on who will be prioritised for resettlement.
There are around 6,500 people in the UK who have been brought to safety during and after the evacuation and who are eligible for the ACRS under Pathway 1. They include women’s rights activists, journalists, and prosecutors, as well as Afghan families of British Nationals.
Under Pathway 2, we anticipate receiving referrals from the UNHCR for up to 2,000 refugees during the first year of this pathway. We will continue to receive UNHCR referrals to the scheme in the coming years. Under Pathway 3, in the first year we will offer resettlement places to up to 1,500 people from the three identified cohorts (British Council and GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni) and their eligible family members.
Beyond the first year of Pathway 3, the Government will work with our international partners and NGOs to welcome wider groups of Afghans at risk.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to publish a cost-benefit analysis of her Department's Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
There are no plans for a cost-benefit analysis of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda to be published.
A Ministerial Direction was issued ahead of this policy proceeding and relevant letters have been published. Uncertainty is to be expected with a partnership as innovative and ground-breaking as this. As the Permanent Secretary’s letter states, there are potentially significant savings to be realised from deterring people entering the UK illegally. However, because such a deterrent effect cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty, Ministerial Direction was required to proceed.
Actual spend will be reported as part of the annual Home Office Reports and Accounts in the usual way.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many successful appeals in the First-tier Tribunal are awaiting implementation as of 7 September 2022.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The requested information cannot be accurately extracted from our internal systems. To provide this information would require a manual trawl of successful appeals and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.
Where an appeal has been allowed in favour of the appellant, and is not subject to onward appeal, we take all reasonable steps to implement the allowed appeal in a timely manner.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the appropriateness of the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seeking families that include children with severe mental health issues or autism; and if she will review the use of hotel accommodation in such circumstances.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Hotels are an appropriate means of providing adequate accommodation in order to meet our legal obligations to support asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. Our published asylum support healthcare needs and pregnancy dispersal policy sets out that if an applicant’s healthcare need requires the urgent provision of dispersal accommodation, the application for support should be prioritised wherever possible. This guidance also provides guidelines on dispersal for those with mental health issues.
The guidance can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/496911/new_Healthcare_Needs_and_Pregnancy_Dispersal_Policy_EXTERNAL_v3_0.pdf.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of beagles being bred for use in laboratory experiments in the UK; and what steps she is taking to phase out animal experiments.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
No estimate has been made of the number of beagles being bred for use in laboratory experiments in the UK. Most dogs used for research purposes are for the toxicity and safety testing, including potential new medicines, based on internationally-set requirements for testing in non-rodent mammals, usually dogs or monkeys, to protect human health. The level of breeding is largely determined by the level of safety testing required.
The Government is clear that the use of animals in science is justified, for the benefits it brings to human, animal and environmental health and safety.
The Government is committed to assuring that those animals used in science are protected. The legal framework in the UK requires that animals are only ever used in scientific procedures where there are no alternatives, where the number of animals used is the minimum needed to achieve the scientific benefit, and where the potential harm to animals is limited to that needed to achieve the scientific benefit.
Government policy is to actively support and fund the development and dissemination of techniques that Replace, Reduce and Refine the use of animals in research (the 3Rs). This is achieved through funding UKRI who both fund the National Centre for the 3Rs and fund research through Innovate UK, the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council into the development of alternatives.