Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that every child in care has their immigration status resolved before turning 18.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Secretary set out in the Immigration White Paper published on 12 May that the Home Office will ensure children who have been in the UK for some time, turn 18 and discover they do not have status, are fully supported and able to regularise their status and settle where appropriate. This will also include a clear pathway for those children in care and care leavers.
As part of this, separate targeted engagement will take place with external stakeholders to help us to understand the challenges in this area and develop a policy solution which supports children in care without status while upholding the need to have a robust and coherent migration system. Children who have claimed asylum are dealt with under separate provisions.
A range of reforms are underway across the immigration and asylum system, and the development of a clear pathway to settlement for children in care and care leavers must be considered alongside these changes.
Further detail on this will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many civil penalties have been issued to employers sponsoring workers under work‑related visa routes since 4 July 2024 by a) visa route and b) sector.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Information on illegal working civil penalty statistics has been published since 2016 as part of the Home Office Immigration Transparency Data. This can be found at immigration-enforcement-data-jul-sep-2025 on tab CP02.
To identify specific employers sponsoring workers under work‑related visa routes would require collating and verifying individual data from different records, which could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.
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: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what follow‑up actions the Government will take following 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: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether digital ID was discussed 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: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department monitors divorce filings to check visa compliance for family visa holders.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Family migration must be based on a genuine and subsisting relationships. The current probationary period before a spouse or partner can apply for settlement is a minimum of 5 years and requires more than one grant of permission to enter or stay to test whether a relationship is genuine and continuing to subsist.
If the marriage or partnership breaks down permanently while the migrant partner still has limited permission to stay, or once the migrant partner has obtained settlement, the sponsoring partner can write to the Home Office and provide any information relevant to the migrant partner’s continued immigration status.
The Home Office will consider this information and may cancel the former partner’s permission or revoke any settled status if it can be established this permission was obtained by deception.
Asked by: Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party - Arbroath and Broughty Ferry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has considered continuing the Gaza student scholarship scheme.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government is reviewing the impact of the policy implemented to date. Any decision on future support will depend on the evolving international situation. We will continue to keep the policy under review.
Asked by: Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to protect children in private messaging spaces from computer-generated child sexual abuse material.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
Under the Online Safety Act, all regulated services must implement proportionate safety measures across all spaces. Platform design cannot be used as an excuse to avoid detection and reporting obligations.
Section 121 of the Online Safety Act allows Ofcom to issue ‘Technology Notices’, requiring in scope platforms to use their best endeavours to develop or adopt accredited proactive technology to detect child sexual abuse and exploitation in private messaging spaces.
The Government expects Ofcom to exercise its powers under Section 121 of the Online Safety Act where needed.
As part of the work to implement this, Ofcom ran a consultation on minimum standards of accuracy for accredited technology and draft guidance for providers, which closed in March 2025. Ofcom will publish their advice to the Government by April 2026.
The Crime and Policing Bill further strengthens protections for children against computer-generated abuse by:
We will also ban those abhorrent tools which are designed to generate non-consensual intimate images. Anyone who designs or supplies these vile tools will face time in prison.
Privacy and public safety are not mutually exclusive: we can, and must, have both.
Asked by: Max Wilkinson (Liberal Democrat - Cheltenham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what data her Department collects on how migrant survivors of trafficking in the National Referral Mechanism entered the UK.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
This dataset only covers small boat arrivals and does not include other methods of entry. The published figures currently cover arrivals up to the end of September 2025.
The Home Office does not publish age-related statistics for individuals supported under the Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract (MSVCC).
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion Preseli)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she made of the potential merits of including provisions for a statutory Independent Child Exploitation Advocate, modelled on section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act, in the Crime and Policing Bill.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The government is not currently exploring separate exploitation advocates as the Independent Child Trafficking Guardianship (ICTG) service exists as an independent source of advice, advocacy and support for potential child victims of modern slavery, exploitation and human trafficking in the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).
In line with Section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the Government is committed to providing a national ICTG service in England and Wales.
The ICTG service was initially introduced in 2017 and a staggered approach to rollout was taken to allow time to trial an effective model of delivery. This has enabled the Home Office to test and evaluate different models of service delivery, expanding and adapting as necessary to develop a model that is suitable for national provision. In September 2025, the invitation-to-tender for the national contract was launched, which will expand the current service coverage from two-thirds of local authorities to all child victims referred into the NRM in England and Wales. The tender process is now underway and updates to legislation are currently being considered.
Statutory first responders must refer all potential victims of modern slavery, trafficking and exploitation into the NRM to ensure they are appropriately identified and provided with support. Whilst local authorities are responsible for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children in their area, referring a child potential victim into the NRM ensures that child potential victims of exploitation, modern slavery and human trafficking in the NRM will also get support from the ICTG service.
Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs) also play a critical role in supporting victims and survivors and their families. We have commissioned a rapid assessment of the current ISVA support service and resource landscape, specifically for children and young people who are victims of grooming gangs, including technology-facilitated abuse.