Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help refugee families reunite in the UK.

The Government provides a safe and legal route to bring families together through its family reunion policy. Under our refugee family reunion policy, we have granted visas to nearly 26,000 partners and children of those granted protection in the UK in the last five years.

Our policy allows immediate pre-flight family members of those granted protection here to reunite with them. It also includes a provision to grant visas outside the Rules in exceptional circumstances; this enables reunion between family members who otherwise do not qualify under the Rules. However, we are listening carefully to calls to expand the scope of the refugee family reunion rules and continue our productive discussions with non-governmental organisations in this area.

Family reunion is only part of the Government’s wider package of support for refugees and we have resettled a total of 5,702 people under our resettlement schemes in the year ending June 2018.