Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing national minimum standards for investigations into road collisions.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Standards in relation to the investigation of fatal and serious injury road collisions is set out in authorised professional practice published by the College of Policing.
Further details can be found at: Investigation of fatal and serious injury road collisions | College of Policing
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have settled in the UK under the UK Resettlement Scheme in 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on resettlement in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on refugees resettled in the UK by scheme can be found in table Asy_D02 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks.
The latest data relate to the year ending December 2022. Data for the year ending March 2023 will be published on 25 May 2023. Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons the rates of approval for asylum claims made by people from Albania are different in the UK to those of other countries in Europe.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Other countries in Europe have legal migration routes that may impact the number of asylum claims lodged and subsequently granted. For example, Germany pursued a Western Balkan strategy which included issuing of 250,000 work visas from 2016-2020 and subsequently saw a 90% reduction in total asylum claims from the region across 2015-2017, from 120,882 first time applications in 2015 to 10,915 in 2017. Asylum grant rates can fluctuate for a number of different reasons, for example prioritisation of certain case types, including those more vulnerable for safeguarding or health-related reasons, and changes in country situations. Within a nationality, the grant rate can also vary. For example, despite the overall grant rate for Albanians in the year ending September 2022 being 51%, for Albanian adult men the grant rate was 13% and for Albanian women and children it was 88% (How many people do we grant protection to? - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)).
The domestic UK case law of TD and AD (Trafficked women) CG [2016] UKUT 92 (IAC) sets out the current approach to assess asylum claims from Albanian females who claim to be a victim of trafficking. It details the likelihood of risk on return, vulnerability factors that must be taken into account, and whether there is sufficiency of protection in Albania. Other European countries are not bound by this, or any other UK case law.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether asylum seekers have absconded from the Dilkhusa Hotel in Ilfracombe since the hotel was adopted by the Home Office.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office has no power to hold asylum seekers in hotels or any temporary accommodation if they wish to leave.
The Home Office does not publish a breakdown of statistics which disaggregates the number of adult asylum seekers leaving hotels. These figures are not available.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to process the asylum claims for vulnerable refugees in the Dilkhusa Hotel in Ilfracombe.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office is developing comprehensive plans to improve processing times.
The Asylum Transformation programme aims to bring the system back into balance and modernise it. It is focused on increasing productivity by streamlining, simplifying and digitising processes to speed up decision making to increase efficiency and output.
We have increased the number of asylum caseworkers by 80% from 597 staff in 2019/20 to more than 1,000 today. We are on course for a further 500 people by March 2023, which would take our total to approximately 1,500. We are planning fresh recruitment of decision makers to ensure that vacancies can be filled quickly, and to build a sustainably resourced decision-making system. In addition, we have implemented a recruitment and retention allowance which has reduced Decision Maker attrition rates by 30%, helping us maintain experienced asylum Decision Makers.
For safeguarding reasons, we do not publicly comment on individual hotels which may or may not be utilised.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the police took to (a) ensure safety and (b) enforce the law during celebrations in London of Albanian Independence Day on 28 November 2022.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Metropolitan Police Service is operationally independent of government. They confirm that they responded quickly to deploy spontaneous resources in response to a large no-notice event in London, celebrating Albanian Independence Day. Police worked closely with partners to minimise disruption.
MPS confirmed that the force will ensure there is an adequate, appropriate policing plan in place for the next event in 2023.
The management of public processions and public assemblies is as an operational matter for the police. Ministers are unable to intervene in individual cases or in operational decisions made by the police. To do so would undermine the principle that the police are operationally independent of Government.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if the police will take steps to ensure the adequate policing of Albanian Independence Day celebrations in 2023.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Metropolitan Police Service is operationally independent of government. They confirm that they responded quickly to deploy spontaneous resources in response to a large no-notice event in London, celebrating Albanian Independence Day. Police worked closely with partners to minimise disruption.
MPS confirmed that the force will ensure there is an adequate, appropriate policing plan in place for the next event in 2023.
The management of public processions and public assemblies is as an operational matter for the police. Ministers are unable to intervene in individual cases or in operational decisions made by the police. To do so would undermine the principle that the police are operationally independent of Government.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when the UK Resettlement Scheme closed to applicants from the majority of countries; and whether she plans to reopen that scheme to applicants from all countries.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) is a global scheme with a multi-year commitment to resettle the most vulnerable refugees in need of protection. It has not closed. It continues to offer a safe and legal route to the UK for some of the most vulnerable refugees around the world.
The UKRS is not application based. Instead, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) identifies and refers refugees for resettlement to the UK using its established submission categories.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of disposable BBQs on wildfires.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is looking at the impact of disposable barbecues, as part of a research project led by Defra. The contract has now been awarded and the research is underway, due to report early next year.
Should the evidence indicate that these items represent a risk, we will of course examine the most appropriate options available to protect our precious natural environment for ours and future generations.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff in her Department work on processing asylum cases.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office currently employs circa c. 1176 asylum decision makers. There are recruitment strategies in place, with the aim of increasing staffing and reducing the number of cases awaiting a decision and increasing outputs.