Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of allowing mitigations for people facing delays in receiving biometric residence permits during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Government has implemented a range of measures to help foreign nationals during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We exchanged expired 30-day entry clearance vignettes free of charge. We also replaced the 30-day entry clearance vignettes with ones which are valid for 90 days to provide foreign nationals with a longer window of opportunity to travel to the UK in light of travel limitations due to global covid-19 restrictions. Where expired vignettes were reissued, we also reissued the biometric residence permit (BRP) to reflect the updated leave start and end dates.

Upon arrival in the UK, anyone who cannot collect their BRP from the Post Office because of Covid-19 restrictions will not be penalised, and we have extended the Post Office’s period for retaining uncollected BRPs from the current 30 days to 90 days to give people more time to collect them.

We have also put in place arrangements to reuse biometrics from certain foreign nationals who have previously provided them to speed up the processing of their applications for further leave and enable them to obtain a new BRP.

Advice and guidance for visa applicants during the pandemic is available on GOV.UK by searching ‘Covid-19 visa’.