Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many cases of (a) suspected and (b) confirmed exploitation involving holders of work‑related visas have been recorded since 4 July 2024 by (i) visa route and (ii) month.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on Visa Sponsors that are B rated in the ‘Register of licensed sponsors: workers - GOV.UK’.
Please note - published data shows the number of licensed sponsors over time but does not include the number of visas associated with each organisation.
The Home Office publishes data on the number of visas sponsored by organisations over the past 10 years, as well as data since 4 July 2024, in the ‘Migration transparency data - GOV.UK’.
Data on the number of visas sponsored by licensed organisations is published in table SP_01 of the ‘Sponsorship transparency data: July to September 2025’.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data is from 2014 Q1 up to the end of 2025 Q3.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of organisations on the register of licensed sponsors have sponsored visas a) in the last 10 years and b) since 4 July 2024.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on Visa Sponsors that are B rated in the ‘Register of licensed sponsors: workers - GOV.UK’.
Please note - published data shows the number of licensed sponsors over time but does not include the number of visas associated with each organisation.
The Home Office publishes data on the number of visas sponsored by organisations over the past 10 years, as well as data since 4 July 2024, in the ‘Migration transparency data - GOV.UK’.
Data on the number of visas sponsored by licensed organisations is published in table SP_01 of the ‘Sponsorship transparency data: July to September 2025’.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data is from 2014 Q1 up to the end of 2025 Q3.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many visa-sponsoring organisations are B-rated; and how many visas those organisations sponsored as of October 2025.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on Visa Sponsors that are B rated in the ‘Register of licensed sponsors: workers - GOV.UK’.
Please note - published data shows the number of licensed sponsors over time but does not include the number of visas associated with each organisation.
The Home Office publishes data on the number of visas sponsored by organisations over the past 10 years, as well as data since 4 July 2024, in the ‘Migration transparency data - GOV.UK’.
Data on the number of visas sponsored by licensed organisations is published in table SP_01 of the ‘Sponsorship transparency data: July to September 2025’.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data is from 2014 Q1 up to the end of 2025 Q3.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she plans to take to help tackle the issues relating to frontier worker permits that were raised at the Citizens’ Rights Specialised Committee meeting on 18 December 2025.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Information on matters discussed at the Specialised Committee on Citizens’ Rights is available here: Citizens’ Rights Specialised Committee meeting, 18 December 2025: joint statement - GOV.UK. The UK and the EU are committed to working cooperatively to ensure full and faithful implementation of the citizens’ rights part of the Withdrawal Agreement.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent the use of Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories as safe havens for ultra-high net worth individuals with significant political exposure; and how they are enforcing any preventative efforts.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
Corruption and illicit finance undermine effective governance in the UK and penalise legitimate UK businesses overseas.
While the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories are distinct, largely self-governing jurisdictions with elected governments responsible for their own domestic affairs, the UK Government is committed to working with these international financial centres to tackle corruption and prevent money laundering.
The Home Office and the Foreign Office work with the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories to help strengthen their approaches to beneficial ownership transparency. The Government’s ultimate expectation remains the introduction of publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership registers; however, the steps they are taking to implement legitimate interest access to their registers are welcome. Minister Doughty recently met with the Overseas Territories at the Joint Ministerial Council; the communique, which was published on November 28 2025, outlines the Overseas Territories’ progress.
This remains a priority for the UK government, reflected in a commitment within the recently published 2025 Anti-Corruption Strategy to strengthen beneficial ownership transparency across the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.
The UK also supports the Crown Dependencies and all Overseas Territories with financial centres commitment to uphold international tax standards, including the tax transparency framework and the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Framework.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to extend the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme to include offences such as stalking, sexual assault and harassment.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The scale of violence against women and girls in our country is intolerable, and this Government is treating it as the national emergency that it is.
The Government committed in its manifesto to giving stalking victims the right to know the true identity of their online stalker. Through the Crime and Policing Bill, we are introducing statutory guidance to support the police to release identifying information about a stalker to a victim, so victims can know who is threatening them.
The Crime and Policing Bill will also enable the Home Secretary to issue statutory guidance about the disclosure of information to prevent sexual offending. This will ensure the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme and any similar schemes in the future are delivered consistently by all forces.
The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme currently enables the police to disclose information to a victim or potential victim of domestic abuse about their partner’s or ex-partner's previous abusive or violent offending.
In the recently published Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy we committed to exploring the potential to expand both the stalking Right to Know scheme and the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme to other forms of violence against women and girls.
Asked by: Alex Easton (Independent - North Down)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she expects the independent inquiry into grooming gangs to commence taking evidence; and what steps she is taking to support cross-Government cooperation with the inquiry.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
On 9 December 2025 the Home Secretary announced Baroness Anne Longfield as Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs, alongside panellists Zoë Billingham CBE and Eleanor Kelly CBE. She also published the draft Terms of Reference, which she has asked the Chair to consult on. The final version will be published by 31 March 2026, after which the inquiry will formally commence. Under the Inquiries Act 2005, the conduct and procedure of the inquiry are a matter for the Chair.
The Home Secretary has been clear that the inquiry will act without fear or favour, identifying individual, institutional and systemic failure, inadequate organisational responses, and failures of leadership. The government is fully committed to supporting the Inquiry.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce identity theft by ghost brokers selling fake car insurance policies.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Home Office works closely with law enforcement and industry partners to reduce fraud, including in the insurance sector. In October 2024, the Home Office also launched the Insurance Fraud Charter with major insurers to strengthen action against illegal intermediaries.
Operationally, the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department investigates referrals from insurers and runs targeted operations, alongside public awareness campaigns delivered with the Insurance Fraud Bureau and the Association of British Insurers. The Insurance Fraud Breau also launched its, Avoid Ghost Brokers, campaign in May 2025 to warn the public about fake car insurance deals.
The Motor Insurance Taskforce, has also set out measures to tackle fraud and ghost broking in their report published in December 2025. The report is available online at: Motor Insurance Taskforce: Final Report and Actions.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when part 2 of the Independent Review of Fraud Offences will be published.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Government has recently received the second and final report from Jonathan Fisher KC, Chair of the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences.
We are now carefully considering the Review’s findings and recommendations and will respond in due course.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the average cost to the public purse of deportations in each year since 2020.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information you have requested about the average cost of deportations of foreign national offenders (FNOs) is not available from published statistics, as we do not publish these costs.
The Home Office publishes all available information on expenditure in the Home Office Annual Report and accounts, which can be found here: Home Office annual reports and accounts - GOV.UK.
Over 7,000 FNOs have been returned from the UK under this government, and we will continue to do everything we can to remove these vile criminals from our streets.
Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced and, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation.
The Home Office makes no apology for the fact that its priority will always be to keep our communities safe. As such, we are fully committed to making our communities safer by deporting foreign nationals who break our laws.