Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

1. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of UK Visas and Immigration processing times.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)]

UK Visas and Immigration processes millions of visa applications each year. Most of them are processed to the published customer service standards, which is a huge tribute to our hard-working staff, and indeed most straightforward applications are decided within three weeks. In the year ending March 2025, more than 2.1 million visit visas, more than 190,000 work visas and more than 22,000 health and social care visas were issued. On occasion, as the hon. Member may be aware, there are some technical or processing errors, which are resolved as quickly as possible when they come to light.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

This is not about call centre answering and application processing times; it is about the backlog in digital status becoming fully operational. A North East Fife constituent has settled status and has done all the steps in setting up her UKVI account, yet on both her recent trips abroad she was told that her passport was not linked to her e-visa. Is this a one-off, in which case can the Minister review what has gone wrong? Or is it a system failure, in which case what is the Minister doing to address it?

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the hon. Member for her question. I would be happy to look at that case. The personal details on the document associated with that person’s e-visa may well have not been updated. Updating the details may be the first step necessary, after which the issue may go away.