To match an exact phrase, use quotation marks around the search term. eg. "Parliamentary Estate". Use "OR" or "AND" as link words to form more complex queries.


Keep yourself up-to-date with the latest developments by exploring our subscription options to receive notifications direct to your inbox

Written Question
Police: Demonstrations
Monday 15th January 2024

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to enable police forces to charge the organisers of marches for the cost of policing them.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental part of our democracy, but this right must be balanced with the rights of others to go about their daily lives without disruption.

The government recognises that there will be unexpected and exceptional events that can put financial pressure on forces. In these cases, Police and Crime Commissioners can apply to the Home Office for special grant funding to meet additional costs that would be incurred from policing these events.

The Government is proposing a total police funding settlement of up to £18.4 billion in 2024-25, an increase of up to £842.9 million when compared to 2023-24. This includes £34m for Special Grant funding. The core purpose of Special Grant funding is to support the police with costs of unexpected events and these are considered on a case-by-case basis.

The Government regularly reviews legislation to ensure it adequately reflects challenges that are likely to be faced today. Where gaps in the legislation are identified, we will seek to address them.


Written Question
Immigration Controls: English Language
Wednesday 20th December 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking with English-language testing organisations to help ensure that people coming to (a) study and (b) settle in the UK have attained an International English Language Testing System for UK Visas and Immigration score of at least 5.5 or equivalent.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

English proficiency levels are defined within the Immigration Rules relevant to each immigration route. Home Office commercial arrangements with our secure English language testing suppliers require all tests to meet the requirements of the relevant Immigration Rules.


Written Question
Asylum: Hotels
Wednesday 18th October 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

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 Novotel in Ipswich being taken over by her Department on (a) tourism in Ipswich and (b) the local economy.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

For the safety of asylum seekers and staff in the hotels the Home Office does not publicly comment on individual hotels which may or may not be utilised.

The Home Office recognises the strain that local authorities, are facing at this time and the challenges that hotel accommodation brings. We are committed to work with local authorities through our multi-agency meetings to ensure sites are successfully managed and the impact on the local communities is minimised.

The Home Office is committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use and limit the burden on the taxpayer. This is why we are delivering a range of alternative accommodation sites, maximising hotel space, operationalising the Illegal Migration Act and continuing our hard work to clear the asylum backlog by the end of 2023.


Written Question
Shoplifting
Monday 18th September 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress her Department has made on reducing levels of theft from shops.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

Following the recent police commitment to investigate all reasonable lines of enquiry I have made clear to forces I expect them to take a zero-tolerance approach to retail crime. The Home Office is supporting Pegasus which will provide a national picture of organised retail crime. I continue to work with the sector to tackle this important issue.


Written Question
Undocumented Migrants: English Channel
Monday 18th September 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether it is her Department's policy to assess the age of every person that arrives in the UK illegally on a small boat.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

The Home Office will only conduct an age assessment in circumstances where an individual who arrives does not have genuine documentary evidence of their age and where there is doubt about their claimed age.

An initial age assessment is conducted as a first step to prevent individuals who are clearly an adult or child from being subjected unnecessarily to a more substantive age assessment and ensure that new arrivals are routed into the correct accommodation and processes for assessing their asylum or immigration claim.

The Home Office will only treat an individual claiming to be a child as an adult, without conducting further enquiries, if two Home Office members of staff independently determine that the individual's physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggests they are significantly over 18 years of age. The lawfulness of this process was endorsed by the Supreme Court in the case of R (on the application of BF (Eritrea)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] UKSC 38.

Where doubt remains and an individual cannot be assessed to be significantly over 18, they will be treated as a child for immigration purposes until further assessment of their age by a local authority or the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) which launched in March 2023. This will usually entail a careful, holistic age assessment, known as a ‘Merton compliant age assessment’, which are undertaken by social workers and must adhere to principles set out in case law by the Courts.

Separately, secondary legislation laid by the Ministry of Justice will, once approved by Parliament, authorise the use of x-rays in scientific age assessments, paving the way for the Home Office to improve their ability to effectively determine the age of illegal entrants making disputed claims to be children. Age assessment is an important process to help to prevent asylum seeking adults posing as children as a way of accessing support they are not entitled to, and allow genuine children to access age-appropriate services.

Legislation will then be laid by the Home Office, taking forward powers under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which will specify that x-rays of teeth and bones of the hands and wrist and MRIs of knees and collar bones can be used as part of the age assessment process.


Written Question
Migrants: Housing
Tuesday 25th July 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department have made of the impact of immigration levels on housing availability.

Answered by Robert Jenrick

Net migration is too high and this Government is determined to bring it down to sustainable levels to help protect public services and housing supply against unsustainable pressure.

That is why on 23 May, the Government introduced a package of measures to help deliver its goal of reducing net migration. The package includes removing the right for international students to bring dependants unless they are on research postgraduate courses, and removing the ability for international students to switch out of the student route into work routes before their studies have been completed.

We keep all our immigration policies under review to ensure that they best serve the UK and reflect the public’s priorities.


Written Question
Shoplifting
Monday 24th July 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of levels of theft from shops (a) nationally and (b) in Suffolk.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office works closely with retailers and trade associations such as the British Retail Consortium (BRC), Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), and police partners via the National Retail Crime Steering Group (NRCSG) to understand the crime trends retailers are experiencing and to work together to tackle these issues.

The NRCSG has produced practical resources to provide guidance on partnership working and encourage engagement with Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (BCRPs) to help ensure businesses and police can work effectively together to identify the trends and types of crimes that affect businesses and to ensure incidents are dealt with appropriately at a local level.

In addition, the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) co-ordinates Safer Action Business Days (SABA), where police, BCRPs and retailers work in partnership to carry out days of action to prevent crime against businesses, including shoplifting.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of shoplifting offences reported to and recorded by the police in England and Wales, on a quarterly basis. These are available at Police Force Area and can be accessed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables

The table below shows the police recorded crime figures for Suffolk

Number of shoplifting offences recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall)

Year

Suffolk

England & Wales*

2015/16

3,707

330,622

2016/17

3,751

363,349

2017/18

4,145

374,646

2018/19

4,171

367,725

2019/20

4,155

353,053

2020/21

2,174

224,343

2021/22

2,582

270,410

YE Dec 21

2,396

251,774

YE Dec 22

3,114

309,511

Many shoplifting offences are not reported to the police. The 2021 Commercial Victimisation Survey, which provides estimates of crime against the Wholesale and Retail sector in England and Wales, showed that 25% of premises were victims of theft by customers in the 12 months prior to taking part in the survey. Of those victims, 39% said they experienced customer theft once a week or more.


Written Question
Shoplifting: Suffolk
Monday 24th July 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce levels of theft from shops in Suffolk.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office works closely with retailers and trade associations such as the British Retail Consortium (BRC), Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), and police partners via the National Retail Crime Steering Group (NRCSG) to understand the crime trends retailers are experiencing and to work together to tackle these issues.

The NRCSG has produced practical resources to provide guidance on partnership working and encourage engagement with Business Crime Reduction Partnerships (BCRPs) to help ensure businesses and police can work effectively together to identify the trends and types of crimes that affect businesses and to ensure incidents are dealt with appropriately at a local level.

In addition, the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) co-ordinates Safer Action Business Days (SABA), where police, BCRPs and retailers work in partnership to carry out days of action to prevent crime against businesses, including shoplifting.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of shoplifting offences reported to and recorded by the police in England and Wales, on a quarterly basis. These are available at Police Force Area and can be accessed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables

The table below shows the police recorded crime figures for Suffolk

Number of shoplifting offences recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall)

Year

Suffolk

England & Wales*

2015/16

3,707

330,622

2016/17

3,751

363,349

2017/18

4,145

374,646

2018/19

4,171

367,725

2019/20

4,155

353,053

2020/21

2,174

224,343

2021/22

2,582

270,410

YE Dec 21

2,396

251,774

YE Dec 22

3,114

309,511

Many shoplifting offences are not reported to the police. The 2021 Commercial Victimisation Survey, which provides estimates of crime against the Wholesale and Retail sector in England and Wales, showed that 25% of premises were victims of theft by customers in the 12 months prior to taking part in the survey. Of those victims, 39% said they experienced customer theft once a week or more.


Written Question
Anti-social Behaviour: Ipswich
Monday 24th July 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help local authorities in Ipswich to reduce anti-social behaviour in the town centre.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

On 27 March, the Government launched the Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/anti-social-behaviour-action-plan) ensuring the police, local authorities and other relevant agencies have the tools they need to tackle anti-social behaviour.

The plan is backed by £160m of funding. This includes up to £60m to fund an increased police and other uniformed presence to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, targeting hotspots. Initially we will work with 10 police force areas, but from 2024 we will support a hotspot approach across every police force area in England and Wales. We are also providing up to £50m to support the provision of Immediate Justice, by issuing out of court disposals with conditions to swiftly repair any damage – the aim being for them to start within 48 hours of referral. This will start in 10 initial trailblazer police force areas and be rolled out nationally in 2024.

On 6 July, we launched a further fifth round of the Safer Streets Fund, which will support local initiatives aimed at increasing the safety of public spaces, including town centres, by tackling neighbourhood crime, anti-social behaviour and violence against women and girls. Since the fund launched in 2020, we have invested £120 million through four rounds supporting 270 projects across England and Wales, with a range of interventions including CCTV cameras.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales indicates that in the year to December 2022, overall crime (excluding fraud and computer misuse) was 52% lower than in the year to March 2010.


Written Question
Drugs: Antisocial Behaviour
Tuesday 25th April 2023

Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress her Department has made on reducing drug related anti-social behaviour in England.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

On 27 March we published the Anti-social Behaviour (ASB) Action Plan. The ASB Action Plan commits to tackling ASB across five key themes: stronger punishment; making communities safer; building local pride; prevention and early intervention; and improving data, reporting and accountability for action.

This plan is backed by £160m of funding. This includes up to £60m to fund an increased police and other uniformed presence to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, targeting hotspots. Initially we will work with 10 police force areas, but from 2024 we will support a hotspot approach across every police force area in England and Wales.

We are also providing up to £50m to support the provision of Immediate Justice, by issuing out of court disposals with conditions to swiftly repair any damage – the aim being for them to start within 48 hours of the offence. This will start in 10 initial trailblazer police force areas and be rolled out nationally in 2024.

Specifically in relation to drug misuse, an expansion in Drug Testing on Arrest is already underway and the ASB Action Plan commits to going further, including expanding testing to all Class A drugs. In addition, the ASB Action Plan announced our intention to ban nitrous oxide. This builds on the government’s 10-year Drug Strategy ‘From Harm to Hope’. The strategy sets out an ambitious long-term vision for real change and is underpinned by a record investment of £3 billion from 2022-25. Much of this investment is in creating a world-class treatment and recovery system, including a phased expansion to deliver at least 54,500 new high-quality drug and alcohol treatment places. This will help to tackle the cycle of crime and reoffending which drugs fuel.