Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will take steps to improve his Department's response times to enquiries from Rt hon. and hon. Members.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Member’s written correspondence within 20 working days.
Performance against target has been impacted by an unprecedented increase in MPs queries following the Afghan evacuation, Ukraine crisis and HM Passport Office application surge.
We now have an operational plan to fully recover our position and I will shortly be writing to all Members setting these plans in more detail including timescales for delivery.
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.