Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-03-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many leave to remain applications have been refused as a result of the good character test in each year for which information is available.

Mike Penning

We are unable to supply the information requested, as Leave to Remain (LTR) applications are not assessed or refused on the basis of ‘the good character test’ . LTR applications are assessed against a range of criteria, including on the basis of the applicants suitability – which may be their character, convictions, associations or other reasons which may mean that their being in the UK is not ‘conducive to the public good’.

The specific refusal reasons entered onto the Home Office IT system during the assessment of a case, consist of a free-form text field, which can only be accessed on a case-by-case basis and therefore a wider Management Information report is not available for this question.