Asked by: Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people who were given (a) entry clearance and (b) leave to remain on the grounds of family life as a partner under Immigration Rules Appendix FM were granted access to public funds following a successful change of conditions application in each year since 2012.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The number of applications for Entry Clearance and to stay in the UK that are made on the basis of family life as a partner or parent and any exceptional circumstances in compliance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the number of applicants granted access to public funds following a successful entry clearance or leave to remain change of conditions application, do not form part of any current transparency data or migration statistics and is not published.
The transparency data does, however, include a range of processing data and the latest data can be found at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data#uk-visas-and-immigration.
Asked by: Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been given leave to remain on the basis of (a) family life as a (i) partner and (ii) parent and (b) exceptional circumstances in compliance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in each year since 2012.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The number of applications for Entry Clearance and to stay in the UK that are made on the basis of family life as a partner or parent and any exceptional circumstances in compliance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the number of applicants granted access to public funds following a successful entry clearance or leave to remain change of conditions application, do not form part of any current transparency data or migration statistics and is not published.
The transparency data does, however, include a range of processing data and the latest data can be found at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data#uk-visas-and-immigration.
Asked by: Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been given entry clearance to the UK on the basis of family life as (a) a partner, (b) a parent and (c) exceptional circumstances in compliance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in each year since 2012.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The number of applications for Entry Clearance and to stay in the UK that are made on the basis of family life as a partner or parent and any exceptional circumstances in compliance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the number of applicants granted access to public funds following a successful entry clearance or leave to remain change of conditions application, do not form part of any current transparency data or migration statistics and is not published.
The transparency data does, however, include a range of processing data and the latest data can be found at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data#uk-visas-and-immigration.
Mentions:
1: Kate Hollern (Lab - Blackburn) In 2023, the Home Office refused around one in three visitor visa applications from Palestinians. - Speech Link
2: Olivia Blake (Lab - Sheffield, Hallam) worker dependent visas, but to make those applications is nearly impossible. - Speech Link
3: Nadia Whittome (Lab - Nottingham East) Lady knows, the Home Office allows applications for family visas only for immediate relatives, defined - Speech Link
4: James Murray (LAB - Ealing North) He is a British citizen and his parents had visas to visit the UK last autumn. - Speech Link
Mentions:
1: Lord Lilley (Con - Life peer) Rather than raising incentives to entice new workers to seek training to fill the empty slots, visas - Speech Link
2: Lord Baker of Dorking (Con - Life peer) We have 10 schools that want to do it and applications have been made to her, but there has been no reaction - Speech Link
Mentions:
1: Lord German (LD - Life peer) These amount to 21,313 applications as of 14 April this year. - Speech Link
2: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bshp - Bishops) Act, those whose applications were made from 28 June 2022 to 6 March 2023, the group between 7 March - Speech Link
3: Lord Hussain (LD - Life peer) Will their applications be sorted here, or will they also need to be sent to Rwanda? - Speech Link
4: Lord German (LD - Life peer) For example, those who overstay visas have not come via a third country but have arrived directly. - Speech Link
Mentions:
1: None question, 38 per cent responded by saying that they were experiencing skills issues due to a lack of applications - Speech Link
2: None that looked at skills and talent acquisition, and similar conversations came out about the need for visas - Speech Link
3: Gallacher, Meghan (Con - Central Scotland) There have been challenges related to Brexit and labour market visas. - Speech Link
4: None Brazil and it is having to pay £500,000 for 50 staff—it is paying £10,000 per employee—for sponsorship, visas - Speech Link
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he has taken to mitigate potential delays in visa application processing for people affected by merged identities.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) holds millions of identities that have been submitted, or otherwise provided, in support of immigration applications.
The ‘merged identities’ issue affects around 0.02% of PCDP customer records; over 99.98% of records are not impacted by this issue. We have identified around 46,000 records with an identity issue, of which over 13,000 have already been resolved and we have a dedicated team working on the remainder.
The Home Office takes data security and accuracy very seriously. We continue pro-active analysis to identify potentially erroneous records so that appropriate remedial work can be undertaken as quickly, and as carefully, as possible, and ideally before the individual is even aware.
Where customers identify an issue with their data, we encourage them to contact the UK Visas and Immigration Contact Centre so this can be investigated and resolved.
As part of the Identity Document Linking change, we pro-actively highlighted a small number of records which were sent for manual resolution through our existing processes. We expect that most of these records would have been corrected before the person themselves would become aware.
We do not hold information on how many people have contacted the Home Office due to a merged identity issue which is directly related to the document linking change.
We are not aware of any significant delays to visa application processing as a result of this issue. UKVI also have a triage process in place so that where there may be an outstanding application, cases can be escalated for immediate resolution.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been affected by merged identities created in the Identity Document Linking change.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) holds millions of identities that have been submitted, or otherwise provided, in support of immigration applications.
The ‘merged identities’ issue affects around 0.02% of PCDP customer records; over 99.98% of records are not impacted by this issue. We have identified around 46,000 records with an identity issue, of which over 13,000 have already been resolved and we have a dedicated team working on the remainder.
The Home Office takes data security and accuracy very seriously. We continue pro-active analysis to identify potentially erroneous records so that appropriate remedial work can be undertaken as quickly, and as carefully, as possible, and ideally before the individual is even aware.
Where customers identify an issue with their data, we encourage them to contact the UK Visas and Immigration Contact Centre so this can be investigated and resolved.
As part of the Identity Document Linking change, we pro-actively highlighted a small number of records which were sent for manual resolution through our existing processes. We expect that most of these records would have been corrected before the person themselves would become aware.
We do not hold information on how many people have contacted the Home Office due to a merged identity issue which is directly related to the document linking change.
We are not aware of any significant delays to visa application processing as a result of this issue. UKVI also have a triage process in place so that where there may be an outstanding application, cases can be escalated for immediate resolution.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been affected by merged identities in the Person Centric Data Platform.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) holds millions of identities that have been submitted, or otherwise provided, in support of immigration applications.
The ‘merged identities’ issue affects around 0.02% of PCDP customer records; over 99.98% of records are not impacted by this issue. We have identified around 46,000 records with an identity issue, of which over 13,000 have already been resolved and we have a dedicated team working on the remainder.
The Home Office takes data security and accuracy very seriously. We continue pro-active analysis to identify potentially erroneous records so that appropriate remedial work can be undertaken as quickly, and as carefully, as possible, and ideally before the individual is even aware.
Where customers identify an issue with their data, we encourage them to contact the UK Visas and Immigration Contact Centre so this can be investigated and resolved.
As part of the Identity Document Linking change, we pro-actively highlighted a small number of records which were sent for manual resolution through our existing processes. We expect that most of these records would have been corrected before the person themselves would become aware.
We do not hold information on how many people have contacted the Home Office due to a merged identity issue which is directly related to the document linking change.
We are not aware of any significant delays to visa application processing as a result of this issue. UKVI also have a triage process in place so that where there may be an outstanding application, cases can be escalated for immediate resolution.