Asked by: Sara Britcliffe (Conservative - Hyndburn)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the extent to which UK Visa and Immigration claims are processed to the same standard of service as they were before the covid-19 outbreak; and what steps she has taken to help ensure her Department reaches those standards.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
UKVI has faced extremely high pressures over the past two years. All visa routes have seen extremely high demand following the end of the pandemic and the easing of travel restrictions. The Home Office also prioritised capacity earlier this year to help people forced to flee their homes, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, get to safety through our Ukraine visa schemes.
UKVI has been working hard to reduce processing times and is now back within service standard across a number of our visa routes. We have updated our guidance on expected waiting times so that customers have a realistic indication of how long their applications will take to be processed. We encourage customers to continue to refer to these updates as our processing times change on a regular basis.
Asked by: Sara Britcliffe (Conservative - Hyndburn)
Question to the Home Office:
What plans her Department has to increase police funding.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
In February, the Government published a total police funding settlement of up to £15.8 billion in 2021/22.
This is an increase of up to £600 million compared to 2020/21 and cements our commitment to give the police the resources they need to keep the public safe.
Asked by: Sara Britcliffe (Conservative - Hyndburn)
Question to the Home Office:
What steps her Department is taking to increase police funding.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
This Government is delivering on the people’s priorities by giving policing the biggest funding increase in a decade.
In total we’re increasing the funding available to the policing system by over £1bn this year.
In order to help recruit we are giving PCCs an additional £700 million this year to help deliver the recruitment of 6,000 additional officers by the end of March 2021; we have already recruited 3000 new officers.
We are giving the police the resources they need to fight crime and keep the public safe.