Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children granted discretionary leave to remain were subject to an enforced removal after turning 18 in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office does not return Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) whose claims have been refused, unless adequate reception arrangements are in place in the country to which the child is to be returned. If adequate
reception arrangements are absent, most unaccompanied children are granted UASC Leave (formally known as UASC discretionary leave) which usually lasts until their 18th birthday.
When a child passes the age of 18 and UASC Leave expires, they are no longer considered to be a UASC and are therefore required to take steps to voluntarily return or seek further leave to remain. If the individual does not seek to
regularise their stay through further applications or leave is not granted they may be removed in accordance with the Immigration Rules and Published Home Office policy should they fail to leave voluntarily.The table below outlines the number of individuals removed in each of the last five years who had previously been granted discretionary leave to remain as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child but has since passed the age of 18 and had
not regularised their leave or left the UK voluntarily.
Year | Total |
2009 | 3 |
2010 | 43 |
2011 | 119 |
2012 | 57 |
2013 | 88 |
2014 | 40 |
Grand Total | 350 |
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what financial and material support her Department provides to families who are removed from the UK via pre-departure accommodation.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Families removed from the UK via Cedars pre-departure accommodation are provided with an individual returns support package which can include financial assistance, based on need.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many fresh applications for asylum have been (a) made and (b) accepted, in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
There were 905 fresh claims, from main applicants, for asylum in the United Kingdom in 2009, 1,621 in 2010, 969 in 2011, 849 in 2012 and 866 in 2013 (provisional figure). This data can be found at as_01 and as_01_q at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/series/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release.
2014 fresh claims data will be released on 26 February 2015.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many individuals have applied for an administrative review under paragraph 34M of Part 1 of the Immigration Rules since 20 October 2014.
Answered by James Brokenshire
According to internal management information,138 people applied for an administrative review under paragraph 34M of Part 1 of the Immigration Rules between 20 October 2014 and 31 December 2014.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she intends to publish the findings of the follow-up audit of reports made under Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules 2001.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The results of the audit of Rule 35 processes are being considered at present. We will consider how best to make them available in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons her Department decided that further submissions on asylum and human rights cases must be made in person in Liverpool; with which bodies her Department consulted before making that decision; and what assistance her Department will provide to help individuals travel to Liverpool to make such submissions.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The changes are designed to speed up decision-making on further submissions, enabling us to grant protection more quickly to those who need it and remove those who have no right to be here.
Centralising the process will allow us to make decisions within five working days in most cases. The new process applies only to failed asylum seekers whose claims have already been refused, and their appeal rights exhausted.
There have been extensive internal discussions with policy experts, legal advisers and operational staff during the development of this policy. We believe that early public consultation would have led to a rush of further
submissions, but we notified the National Asylum Stakeholder Forum in advance of the changes. There is already a nationwide requirement for those who claimed asylum before March 2007 to lodge further submissions in Liverpool.
Travel costs will not be reimbursed. In exceptional cases where a person is genuinely unable to travel to Liverpool, for example due to a disability or severe illness, there is provision to accept further submissions by post.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for bail made under Schedules 2 and 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 or section 36(4) of the UK Borders Act 2007 were made to (a) an immigration officer, (b) the Secretary of State for the Home Department and (c) the First-Tier Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office does not record bail applications in a reportable format that shows the schedule under which each application was submitted. In order to extract this data each applicant’s Home Office file would need to be
interrogated to locate the paper copy of the bail application.
Therefore, to provide the data as requested would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people under the age of 18 have been returned to (a) their country of nationality and (b) a third country by her Department in the last 12 months.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The table below shows the removals and voluntary departures of people under 18 by destination for the 12 month period to September 2014, the latest date for which figures have been published.
| Removals and voluntary departures, people aged under 18, by destination | ||||
| 12 months to year ending September 2014 | Destination: Country of nationality | Destination: Other | Total | |
| Total enforced removals | 60 | 30 | 90 | |
| Total refused entry at port and subsequently departed | 370 | 749 | 1,119 | |
| Total voluntary departures | 1,776 | 555 | 2,331 | |
These figures are provisional and may subsequently differ when the tables are revised, due to data cleansing and data matching exercises that take place after the extracts are taken.
The Home Office publishes quarterly and annual statistics on the number of persons removed or departed voluntarily from the UK within Immigration Statistics. The data on removals and voluntary departures are readily available
in the latest release, Immigration Statistics: July – September 2014, from the GOV.UK website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/series/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will re-assess the procedures established to review the numbers of Syrians offered resettlement places in the UK as part of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme to ensure that the scheme is responsive to need.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Government is deeply concerned about the crisis in Syria, the suffering and hardship it is causing for millions of displaced Syrians in the region, and the strain it is placing on their host countries. Given the scale of the crisis,
we believe the most effective way to ensure the UK’s help has the greatest impact for displaced people and their host countries is through substantial humanitarian aid and actively seeking an end to the conflict so that refugees
can return to their homes and livelihoods safely. We have committed £700 million in response to the crisis, making us the second largest bilateral donor after the USA, and UK taxpayers' money is helping to support hundreds of
thousands of displaced people in the region, providing food, healthcare and essential supplies. Compared with aid, resettlement can only ever help a minority of those in need.
We launched the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation (VPR) scheme to complement our humanitarian aid efforts by offering protection in the UK to some of the most vulnerable refugees, who cannot be supported effectively in
the region. The scheme is based on need rather than fulfilling a quota, but we have said that we expect it to help several hundred people over three years, and we remain on track to deliver that commitment. We therefore have no current plans to change the way the scheme operates. However, we continue to monitor the situation in Syria and the surrounding region and work closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify the most
vulnerable people displaced by the conflict to ensure that the scheme remains responsive to need.
Asked by: Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat - Brent Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many requests from broadcasters her Department has received to film (a) prisons and (b) immigration removal centres in the last five years; and how many such requests have been granted.
Answered by James Brokenshire
The Home Office does not have responsibility for prisons so requests for filming would be made to the Ministry of Justice.We do not have a central record of how many times broadcasters have requested to film immigration removal centres or how many times those requests have been granted.