Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 28 February 2023 to Question 150499 on Refugees: Afghanistan, whether interviews remain part of security checks for Afghan refugees arriving through safe and legal routes; and what assessment her Department has made of the importance of interviews in ensuring a consistent level of security checks.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
All individuals applying to resettle in the UK undergo security checks and may be required to undertake an interview when additional checks, such as the need to establish their identity, are required. This includes those applying under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme. Further information on this is set out in the GOV.UK guidance.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 2 March 2023 to Question 153774, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of resuming its investigation into an early intensive language offer for refugees, following the conclusion of the Integration Fund.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We recognise that the ability to speak English is key to helping refugees integrate into life in England and become self-sufficient. That is why the Refugee Employability Programme includes English language training to enhance the support provided to refugees arriving through safe and legal routes. We expect this service to start later this year. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/refugee-employability-programme/refugee-employability-programme-policy-statement.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of English lessons on the ability of refugees residing in hotels to integrate into the local community.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Councils with bridging hotels in their area have been commissioned by the Home Office to deliver hotel wraparound support to people on the Afghan resettlement schemes. As part of the wraparound support, Local Authorities should provide English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) support for residents to support integration and enable guests to move on to permanent accommodation and settle into new communities, access jobs and services.
Local Authorities who resettle families will also receive £850 for English language provision for adults requiring this support. This funding is available to Local Authorities who resettle families under the 3-year ACRS/ARAP scheme with effect from 1 September 2021.
Those over the age of 19 will have immediate access to funding through the Department for Education’s Adult Education Budget and be eligible for fully funded ESOL courses.
Additionally, DLUHC is supporting the Home Office to develop an integration package for the Afghan families, which includes a further 12-month support package for English (ESOL) of £850 per adult.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 26 January 2023 to Question 129806 on Asylum: Children, whether she plans to launch an inquiry into missing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
When any young person goes missing the ‘missing persons protocol’ is followed and led by our directly engaged social workers. A multi-agency, missing persons protocol is mobilised involving the police and the local authority, who have a shared statutory responsibility to safeguard all children including missing migrant children in order to establish their whereabouts and to ensure that they are safe.
The MARS (Missing After Reasonable Steps) protocol is followed for any looked after child who goes missing from a care setting, including the unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) hotels.
The Home Office and Department for Education (DfE) have established a UASC taskforce which was convened in November 2022 which has been meeting regularly. This multiagency taskforce includes representatives for the Home Office, DfE, Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUCH), the Association of Directors if Children’s Services (ACDS) and the Local Government Association (LGA) to consider strategic and tactical solutions to the management of UASC. It is co-chaired by DfE Permanent Secretary, Susan Acland-Hood and Home Office Second Permanent Secretary, Patricia Hayes.
The Home Office will continue to address risks of young people going missing and work with partners to locate them if they do.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 30 January 2023 to Question 129805 on Asylum: Children, whether her Department has a risk register on unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We monitor risks towards unaccompanied asylum seeking children via a number of channels, including operational risk registers.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 30 January 2023 to Question 131189 on Asylum: Children, whether she plans to hold discussions with the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees on missing asylum-seeking minors.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office engages with a range of internal and external stakeholders in relation to the provision of support and accommodation to destitute asylum seekers, through a variety of channels.
UNHCR attend the Strategic Engagement Groups (SEG) which, together with the associated sub-groups, are the Home Office’s (HO) principal engagement forums with external asylum and resettlement Non-Government Organisations (NGO) and voluntary sector stakeholders.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 26 January 2023 to Question 129806 on Asylum: Children, if she will provide an indicative timescale for making an assessment of the potential merits of establishing an inquiry into missing asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors
Answered by Robert Jenrick
When a young person goes missing the ‘missing persons protocol’ is followed and led by our directly engaged social workers. The MARS (Missing After Reasonable Steps) protocol is followed for any looked after child who goes missing from a care setting, including the unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) hotels. When used correctly, similar protocols within police forces have safely reduced the number of missing episodes from placements by 36%.
The Home Office and Department for Education (DfE) have established a UASC taskforce which was convened in November 2022 which has been meeting regularly. This multiagency taskforce includes representatives for the Home Office, DfE, Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC), the Association of Directors if Children’s Services (ACDS) and the Local Government Association (LGA) to consider strategic and tactical solutions to the management of UASC. It is co-chaired by DfE Permanent Secretary, Susan Acland-Hood and Home Office Second Permanent Secretary, Patricia Hayes.
The Home Office will continue to address risks of young people going missing and work with partners to locate them if they do.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To the Secretary of State for the Home Office, if she will publish a copy of her Department's questionnaire to be completed by refugees from (a) Afghanistan, (b) Eritrea, (c) Libya, (d) Syria and (e) Yemen as an alternative to being interviewed.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
There are no plans to publish the questionnaire at this time; instead, it will be sent to eligible claimants from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya Syria and Yemen
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish (a) reports published by and (b) minutes of any meetings since January 2019 of the Migration and Border Analysis Home Office Science Group which relate to the investigation into the benefits and merits of early intensive language courses for refugees, as referenced in the ad hoc query of 29 January 2019 to the European Migration Network made by the UK EMN National Point of Contact.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We recognise that the ability to speak English is key to helping refugees integrate into life in England, as well as to breaking down barriers to work and career progression. Home Office officials explored an early intensive language offer as part of a wider investigation into English language support for refugees. Exploration of the intensive offer was paused to avoid duplication with the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for Integration Fund (EFIF) launched by the Department for Levelling Up in August 2020. EFIF supported one of the key commitments in the 2018 Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper by supporting individuals to be able to meaningfully integrate and participate in society boosting English language proficiency. The programme trialled a new approach to funding ESOL, adopting a localised place-based design, providing community-based English language sessions, social mixing clubs and activities to individuals with little or no English.
In the same period, the Home Office funded the development of English language teaching resources to support refugees with their early integration.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 18 January 2023 to Question 126658, how many of the remaining places on Pathway 3 in Year one will be (a) filled and (b) carried over to Year Two.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Under Pathway 3, in the first year, up to 1,500 places will be offered to eligible at-risk British Council contractors, GardaWorld contractors, and Chevening alumni in Afghanistan or the region. This includes their eligible family members.
This route was open for expressions of interest between 20 June and 15 August 2022. We received over 11,400 expressions of interest which have had to be assessed individually.
The FCDO are assessing eligibility and communicating decisions on eligibility in principle to those who submitted an EOI. To date, over 1000 of the 1500 places available in the first year of Pathway 3 have been allocated, subject to security checks.
If an individual is offered a resettlement place in the first year but is unable to travel, we will honour the commitment to resettle them to the UK [subject to completion of the necessary checks] up until the end of the Scheme.