Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stephen Timms and Chris Philp(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Chris Philp
As the hon. Lady knows, the total funding going into policing this year is £16.9 billion, which is a £1.1 billion increase on last year. I have said it once or twice before, but I will say it again: come April next year, when those 20,000 extra officers are hired, we will have a record number of uniformed officers serving on our streets.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Scheduled Mass Deportation: Jamaica
Debate between Stephen Timms and Chris Philp(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Philp
I am sure the Opposition Members who voted for the 2007 Act are extremely grateful for my hon. Friend’s reminder and thanks, but the thrust of his point I completely agree with. It is right that where someone endangers our fellow citizens, we act to deport them, because if we do not do that, we are exposing our constituents to ongoing risk. That is completely unacceptable, and this Government will take action.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Minister is making it clear that he and his Department find it irksome having to comply with the current requirements of the law. Thank goodness they do, because the law is there to protect everyone, and I get the impression that a number of Government Members do not approve of that. What access have those who were due to be on this flight had to legal advice prior to the flight’s departure?
No Recourse to Public Funds
Debate between Stephen Timms and Chris Philp(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Philp
Let me finish the point and I will give way in a moment. The success rate for those applications is very high. The most recent figures, which I think the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) has seen, show a success rate of 89% for those applications. That has increased in the last year. It was 79% and it is now 89%, and the time taken to make those decisions on average is 30 days—not quite five weeks, but 30 days.
The hon. Member for Brent North said, “Well, these are often quite pressing circumstances. What can be done to make that decision, which is successful in 89% of cases, faster?”. That is an entirely reasonable question. One of the actions I will take away from this afternoon’s session is to probe a little further on the question of speed. Someone mentioned 48 hours. Clearly, we have to make sure that people qualify for the condition to be lifted, and I would suspect 48 hours would not afford time to do that, but I will certainly see if anything can be done to expedite it, for the reasons the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
On the topic of children, the shadow Minister talked about free school meals, and I entirely sympathise with her point. I know that the Department for Education is conducting a review into the interaction of NRPF and free school meals. I hope it will report back on the result of that review as quickly as possible, because I understand entirely the hon. Lady’s point.
I am conscious of time, so perhaps I ought to say a quick word about data. I should congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham on his terrier-like tenacity on the question of data. In relation to the total number of people who are subject to the NRPF condition, we do not hold that data, as has been explained previously. There are a couple of issues. First, in relation to visa applications made out of country, the data is not recorded.
Secondly, there is obviously a continual coming and going of people—it includes people who are here on holiday visas and so on, who come and go the whole time. Some come and go via the common travel area, or via Ireland, so we do not have an exit check. That number is a moving feast. It includes people who come here on holiday for two weeks and then go. The right hon. Gentleman said that in relation to people who had made an in-country visa application, he had received a reply saying that that data was collected and held, but he had not received any further information.
Stephen Timms
The letter from the Home Office chief statistician dated 3 July, which is on the UK Statistics Authority website, states:
“Home Office administrative data only captures information on whether visas are subject to NRPF conditions for in-country extensions.”
I have asked how many there are, but received no answer.
Universal Credit
Debate between Stephen Timms and Chris Philp(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) is absolutely right to say that change is urgently needed, and I hope that her Front-Bench colleagues will have heard that. Of all the many flaws in universal credit, the worst is the five-week delay between claiming and being entitled to benefit. Ministers can justify this—the Secretary of State had a go at doing so again yesterday—only in the case of people who have just left a monthly paid job and therefore have a month’s salary in the bank. The reality is that a very large number of people do not have a month’s salary in the bank when they make a claim for universal credit. Many are paid weekly or on zero-hours contracts; for all sorts of reasons, many are simply not in the position to have that much money in the bank. I spoke to a claimant on Merseyside at a time when the delay was even longer than it is now. She told me that the jobcentre had sent her away to live on water for six weeks. She reached the point at which she attempted to take her own life. Five weeks without support is not a realistic or acceptable feature of this benefit.
Chris Philp
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that important case. Would his constituent not have been eligible to receive an advance payment, had she applied for one? They are now available at 100%.
Stephen Timms
She was not told about the availability of an advance payment. They are now being better publicised than when she made her claim, but the problem with advance payments is that people are being plunged into debt right at the start of their claim. For many, it is impossible to get out of debt once the system has forced them on to that slope. The result is that they have to go to food banks. We know that food bank demand rockets when universal credit comes in, because people get behind with their rent and other debts mount. I say to Conservative Members—many of them are fully aware of this—that this is not the way to treat our fellow citizens. Universal credit must be changed to stop this happening.