Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Whilst the UK Government keeps the list of proscribed organisations under review, we do not routinely comment on whether an organisation is or is not being considered for proscription.
The UK has over 200 sanctions designations in place against Iran, which aim to address Iran’s destabilising and unacceptable activities.
On the 10th October, the UK imposed sanctions on five leading political and security officials in Iran, including Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij force.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Whilst the UK Government keeps the list of proscribed organisations under review, we do not routinely comment on whether an organisation is or is not being considered for proscription. The UK has over 200 sanctions designations in place against Iran, which aim to address the IRGC’s destabilising and unacceptable activities. On the 10th October, the UK imposed sanctions on five leading political and security officials in Iran, including Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij force.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help ensure that skilled worker visa applications are processed in a timely way.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office have re-allocated resources following the conclusion of the seasonal student visa application surge and brought in additional staff to deal with the extremely high and above forecast demand. As a result, we expect the time taken to assess a skilled work visa application to reduce significantly.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance her Department provides to people with UK job offers who are awaiting a decision by her Department on a UK visa.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
General guidance on completing application forms is found on the Home Office website at How to apply for a visa to come to the UK: Choose a visa - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Customers will be contacted directly if it is discovered that further documentation or evidence is required to support their applications.
Provided that the application form has been completed and all pertinent information included, then normally the next contact from the Home Office is after we have processed the application and issued a decision letter to the applicant.
Details on visa processing times and explanations as to why the application may take longer to process than expected are published on the Home Office website at: Visa decision waiting times - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). These are updated on a regular basis to make the customer aware of any changes that may affect their applications, such as when Ukrainian applications were prioritised recently.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to ensure that target response times for visa decisions are met.
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. UKVI is working hard to speed up decision-making by rolling out better, more efficient technology, including digital interviewing, and moving away from a paper-based system, as well as recruiting more decision-making staff.
UKVI have updated 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. The link to this guidance for in-country applications is: Visa decision waiting times: applications inside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and out of country applications is: Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 June 2022 to Question 17865 on Home Office: Redundancy, what the proposed number of job cuts was submitted by her Department to the Cabinet Office by the 30 June 2022 deadline.
Answered by Stephen McPartland
All Departments, including the Home Office have been asked to develop plans to deliver against the target to return the Civil Service workforce to the level it was at in 2016.
The Home Office have completed the initial phase of its Workforce Review to respond to this ask, in line with the direction set by the Civil Service 2025 commission.
Options for headcount reductions arising from our review have been submitted to the Cabinet Office and Treasury and ministers and officials will be working over the summer to look in more detail at the deliverability and impact of those options. I will not be commenting on specific numbers while those discussions take place.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of recognising Border Force officers through awards of the Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
It was agreed across government that the criteria and eligibility for the Platinum Jubilee Medal would remain the same as for the Diamond Jubilee Medal, which Border Force does not fall under.
A Long Service and Good Conduct Medal approved by HM The Queen will be launched this year for both Border Force and Immigration Enforcement, to recognise the valuable contribution made by our staff.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership on the number of small boat crossings in the Channel.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
This partnership is part of a suite of measures in the New Plan for Immigration that we are implementing to tackle unnecessary, dangerous, and illegal journeys. There is no one single solution to this issue.
While people are dying making perilous journeys, it is only right that this Government reduces the draw of travel through multiple safe countries to claim asylum in the UK.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what was the cost to the public purse of the legal challenges faced by her Department relating to the flight which was scheduled to take place on 14 June 2022 to remove people to Rwanda.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The costs of our broken asylum system are at a 20 year record high, currently costing the UK taxpayer over £1.5bn a year, with £4.7 million a day being spent on hotels alone. This cannot continue – and the partnership with Rwanda is a key part of our plans to reform the system and put an end to unsustainable costs which impact the taxpayer.
The Government’s efforts to facilitate entirely legitimate and legal returns of people who have entered the UK illegally are too often frustrated by late challenges submitted hours before the flight. These claims are very often baseless and entirely without merit but are given full legal consideration which can lead to removal being rescheduled.
Costs for individual flights and legal services will vary based on a number of different factors and are regularly reviewed to ensure that best value for money is balanced against the need to remove those individuals with no right to remain in the UK.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people the Government has successfully prosecuted for people smuggling since 12 December 2019.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
18772:
2021 | Arrests | Convictions |
Jan | 10 | 17 |
Feb | 14 | 5 |
Mar | 15 | 9 |
Apr | 19 | 4 |
May | 28 | 7 |
Jun | 35 | 13 |
Jul | 17 | 1 |
Aug | 6 | 7 |
Sep | 20 | 11 |
Oct | 15 | 6 |
Nov | 16 | 8 |
Dec | 4 | 12 |
Grand Total | 199 | 100 |
2022 | Arrests | Convictions |
Jan | 3 | 5 |
Feb | 4 | 3 |
Mar | 18 | 5 |
Apr | 13 | 1 |
May | 10 | 2 |
Grand Total | 48 | 16 |
18773:
Criminal & Financial Investigation teams currently have 74 live people smuggling cases that are considered ‘Post Charge’. These are cases where charging of suspect(s) has been agreed by the CPS. These will be at various stages of the court process, ranging from being warned for court, to a trial being underway and to trial concluded, but awaiting sentencing.
18774:
Immigration Enforcement have 550 funded FTE for Criminal & Financial Investigation teams to tackle immigration crime.
18775:
Year | Convictions |
12th Dec 2019 Onwards | 3 |
2020 | 147 |
2021 | 100 |
2022 YTD | 16 |
Grand Total | 266 |
The 2022 total year to date only takes into account prosecutions until the end of May, which makes the number appear artificially low. There are still cases ongoing and the numbers of convictions is expected to increase.