Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on speeding up the processing of Health and Care Worker visas for those people roles in the NHS; and if she will make a statement.

The Home Office does not routinely publish details of average processing times and they do not form part of any current transparency data. However, information on our immigration routes with service standards and whether they have been processed against these standards is available as part of our transparency data, at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Health and Care visa extensions already benefit from a 15 working day service standard from the point of biometric submission, instead of the standard 8 weeks.