Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to ensure prison leavers are aware of the resettlement services available.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Effective resettlement of prison leavers is a core part of our efforts to reduce re-offending. This includes making sure someone has a home, family links where appropriate, access to healthcare, a job or further education, and/or access to benefits.
Probation practitioners in the community coordinate the overall rehabilitation of offenders as they leave prison and serve their licence, supported by Pre-Release Teams (PRT) who provide support to address identified immediate resettlement needs and pre-release support for all people in prison. The immediate resettlement needs of all prisoners are assessed on entry to prison and reviewed pre-release.
Utilising both prison-based services and Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS), there is a wide range of resettlement support covering accommodation, employment, dependency and recovery, personal wellbeing and finance, benefit and debt services. CRS also offers a ‘mentoring’ service, which can be delivered pre-release and follow offenders through the gate for those being released on licence to support community integration. Community probation practitioners and PRTs work proactively with prisoners to build pre-release plans and refer into these services to ensure that the right support is in place for release.
In addition, we have also introduced employment hubs where prisoners can access job vacancies and support with applications, and Prison Employment Leads who support with work-readiness and match them to jobs on release.
To further improve awareness for prison leavers, we are introducing Resettlement Passports, which will bring together key information and services that an individual needs in one place to resettle into the community, such as bank accounts, CVs and identity documents to prove the right to work and rent, as well as appointment and contact information to enable prison leavers to engage with resettlement services available.
Asked by: Lord Allan of Hallam (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many (1) fathers, and (2) mothers, were required to provide additional consent from the other parent when applying for passports for their children in 2023, and was the total number of applicants in each group.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
There are circumstances when additional consent is needed for a passport application. This includes where there is a change of name for a child, or where one parent is attempting to declare a child’s valid passport as lost that the other parent had applied for. Further information can be found at GOV.UK: Authorisation and consent: needed to issue a passport - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Data relating to the number of fathers and mothers that were required to provide additional consent from the other parent for passport applications in 2023 is not held in a reportable format.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that support provided to prison leavers to secure available housing and potential job opportunities is coordinated.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Effective resettlement of prison leavers is a core part of our efforts to reduce re-offending. This includes making sure someone has a home and access to employment.
Community Probation Practitioners coordinate the overall rehabilitation of an offender, supported by Pre-Release Teams who provide immediate resettlement and pre-release support for all people in prison, including for accommodation and employment. This coordination continues once the individual has left prison for the duration of their license period.
In prisons, we have rolled out Employment Hubs where Prison Employment Leads work alongside DWP Prison Work Coaches to provide a joined-up approach to preparing for employment. Accommodation support and assistance includes completion of accommodation and housing benefit applications, and support and guidance to ensure continuation of an existing tenancy.
To further improve coordination and the overall offering we are introducing Resettlement Passports, which will bring together key information and services that an individual needs in one place to resettle into the community, such as bank accounts, CV’s and identity documents to prove the right to work and rent.
The proportion of prison leavers who were employed six months after release has more than doubled in the two years to March 2023, from 14% to over 30%, and the proportion of prison leavers who were homeless or rough sleeping upon release decreased from 16% to 11%, between 2019-20 and 2022-23.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what action his Department is taking to tackle potential discrepancies between UK Visas and Immigration requirements to provide a Border Force passport stamp as proof of entry to the UK for Ukrainians applying for a biometric residence permit card and Border Force practice in stamping passports.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
We are aware of occasions where Ukrainians did not have their passport endorsed by an immigration official on arrival. Measures have been taken to prevent this from occurring in the future, and steps are being taken to progress those applications affected as soon as possible.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to review the automatic algorithmic verification of passport photographs uploaded for online passport applications, to ensure that ethnic diversity does not lead to the rejection of photographs which comply with requirements, for example on the ground that eyes are closed when the photograph clearly shows that the eyes are open.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
When applying for a passport online, the photo submitted is subject to an initial check to determine if automated passport office systems would assess that the photo meets the internationally agreed standards for passports.
Where a photo is assessed as not meeting the required standards, it does not routinely mean it is rejected. Customers may override the outcome of this check and submit the photo as part of their application. On receipt of the application, the image will then be assessed by a human to determine whether it is suitable for passport purposes.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 5 November 2019 to Question 4944 on Passports: Republic of Ireland, how many British passports were printed for residents of the Republic of Ireland whose applications were processed by the Belfast passport office between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Following the introduction of a new passport application processing system that distributes work digitally across all available work locations, the data for the number of applications processed is not broken down by office. The information requested is therefore not held in a reportable format from 2020 onwards.
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make it his policy to include (a) information on and (b) opt in forms for (i) organ, (ii) stem cell and (iii) blood donation with passport application forms.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
In September the Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office jointly announced that, during the next year, adults applying to renew their passport online will be signposted to the NHS Organ Donor Register. We will continue to work with the NHS Blood and Transplant Service to look further at how the passport application process might help raise awareness of how to register an organ donation decision in due course.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passports were issued from HM Passport Office in Belfast in the last three years; and how many and what proportion of these passports were issued to people declaring that they held an Irish passport.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Passport applications are distributed across offices throughout the UK. The data for the volume of passports issued following a successful application by office, and the data for the number of applications processed by office, is not held in a reportable format.
The data for applications where the holding of a non-British passport has been declared is not broken down by the issuing country of that passport, and is therefore not held in a reportable format.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 6 June 2022 to Question 7920 on Passports: Applications, what the average waiting times were for a passport in (a) April 2021, (b) February 2022 and (c) February 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Since April 2021, passport customers using the standard service in the UK have been advised to allow ten weeks to get their passport.
The percentage of customers who received their passport within this published processing timeframe in the months requested is shown below:
April 2021: 99.4%
February 2022: 99.3%
February 2023: 99.7%
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she expects UK Visas and Immigration to complete its reconsideration of the cases referred to by the Rt hon. Member for East Ham in the letter of 28 March, reference ST103787.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
An agreement to reconsider the application was provided by the Decision Making Centre (DMC) on 25th April 2023. The reconsideration of these applications took place on 20th July 2023. The applicants were contacted by the DMC on the 24th July 2023 about the resubmission of their passports to the Visa Application Centre and on 26th July 2023 the applicants submitted their passports for the completion of the visa process. The standard time scale for reconsiderations is three months and this reconsideration was completed within that three month timescale.