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  • David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the statement of 24 June 2014, Official Report, column 206, on student visas, what due diligence tests her Department undertook on the Educational Testing Service prior to awarding the company a contract for delivering language tests for visa applications.

    James Brokenshire

    The licence with Secure English Language Testing providers is clear that
    providers must put measures in place to combat abuse and any concerns regarding
    fraud or abuse should be reported to the Home Office. All third-party service
    providers, whether they are employers, education establishments or test
    providers, must take their obligations seriously or face the removal of their
    licence to work with us.

  • David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the statement of 24 June 2014, Official Report, column 206, on student visas, how many students wrongly awarded language certificates (a) remain in the UK, (b) have an address known to her Department and (c) have been deported.

    James Brokenshire

    As I stated on 24 June in my statement to Parliament, the Home Office will provide regular updates to the House on progress with work to remove these students and on further information we receive from ETS.

  • David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the statement of 24 June 2014, Official Report, column 206, what the terms of reference are of the working group established, who the members of that group are and when that group is first expected to meet; and if she will make a written statement to the House on the conclusion of that group’s work.

    James Brokenshire

    The initial members invited to join the working group are:
    • Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS)
    • Universities UK (UUK)
    • UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA)
    • Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
    • Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCEW)
    • Scottish Funding Council
    • National Union of Student (NUS)
    • British Council
    • UCAS
    • Association of Colleges (AoC)
    • Guild HE
    • Russell Group
    • Welsh Assembly Government

    The first working group meeting took place on 7 July.

    The draft terms of reference were discussed at the first meeting and will be
    finalised in discussion with working group partners. Once finalised, a copy
    will be placed in the Library of the House.

    As I stated to the House on 24 June, the Home Office will provide regular
    updates to the House on progress with this work.

  • David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the statement of 24 June 2014, Official Report, column 206, on student visas, on what date her Department first became aware of the systematic cheating taking place in the tests of the Educational Testing Service.

    James Brokenshire

    Since the last election, the Government has taken action to reduce and control
    immigration and to crack down on the abuse of the system which the previous
    government failed to address. We have kept the main immigration routes to
    Britain under review and remain vigilant against abuse of the student visa
    system. Around 750 education sponsors have been removed from the register of
    those entitled to bring overseas students to the UK. We now know that almost
    400 of these were linked to the sponsorship of people who obtained invalid ETS
    certificates. Abuse of the student visa route has been the subject of various
    lines of inquiry for some time, but Immigration Enforcement officers, together
    with officials from UK Visas and Immigration and with the support of the
    National Crime Agency, began conducting a detailed and wide-ranging
    investigation into actions by organised criminals to falsify English language
    tests provided by ETS at the start of February.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the cost was of renaming (a) the Case Resolution Directorate in 2011 and (b) the Case Assurance and Audit Unit in 2013.

    Karen Bradley

    It is not possible to answer the question, as information is not held in the
    appropriate format and to extract the data would incur disproportionate cost.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many full-time employees were employed in (a) the Case Resolution Directorate and (b) the Case Assurance and Audit Unit in each year of those bodies’ existence.

    Karen Bradley

    The Case Resolution Directorate (CRD) employed a total of 1300 caseworkers in
    40 regional teams during its existence. It is not possible to provide a
    breakdown by each year that CRD was in existence.

    The Case Assurance and Audit Unit (CAAU) employed 98 Full Time Equivalent (FTE)
    staff in 2011, 134 FTE staff in 2012 and 224 FTE staff in 2013. FTE means that
    part time employees are counted by the proportion of full time hours they work,
    so that staff working half the time of an equivalent full time colleague would
    count as 0.5 FTE.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many contract or temporary employees were employed in (a) the Case Resolution Directorate and (b) the Case Assurance and Audit Unit in each year of those bodies’ existence; and what proportion of the overall staff of such bodies were contract or temporary employees.

    Karen Bradley

    The Case Resolution Directorate (CRD) employed a total of 350 temporary staff
    during the summer 2011. It is not possible to provide a breakdown of how many
    contract/ temporary employees were employed for each year that CRD was in
    existence.

    The Case Assurance and Audit Unit (CAAU) employed 98 Full Time Equivalent (FTE)
    staff in 2011, 134 FTE staff in 2012 and 224 FTE staff in 2013. It is not
    possible to break this down by how many were contract/temporary employees or
    employed full time. FTE means that part time employees are counted by the
    proportion of full time hours they work, so that staff working half the time of
    an equivalent full time colleague would count as 0.5 FTE.

  • Richard Harrington – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Richard Harrington – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Harrington on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps UK Visas and Immigration can take to prevent no cases of Ebola reaching the UK.

    James Brokenshire

    The UK does not specifically screen pre or at entry for Ebola.

    Public Health England has assessed the risk of importation of Ebola in the UK
    as very low. It is extremely unlikely that an outbreak of Ebola would occur in
    the UK even if there was to be an imported case, as there are factors operating
    in West Africa which would not be seen in the UK. The outbreak in West Africa
    is driven by person to person spread in the absence of any infection control
    precautions. Human cases of Ebola virus disease have never yet been exported
    from an outbreak zone to a European country.

    All UK ports have systems and plans for dealing with issues of public health
    concern. However, they all require that the public health system is firstly
    notified of the arrival of someone with a suspected disease of concern. Crew
    are trained to do this by their respective companies and an example of the type
    of guidance that they work towards can be found on the International Air
    Transport Association (the international airline trade body) website at:

    https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/safety/health/Documents/health-guidelines-cabin-cr
    ew-2011.pdf .

    At all UK ports, there is a system for routing reports, produced by the
    commander of a craft, to a local health protection team who are available on a
    24/7 basis throughout the year. Health protection teams have generic
    responsibility for managing incidents of public health concern in all settings
    including our ports. They will then take the lead in managing the incident from
    a public health perspective with the NHS being responsible for the provision of
    healthcare.

    The International Health Regulations (IHR), which entered into force on 15 June
    2007, require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health
    events to WHO, including Ebola.

  • David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her contribution of 12 June 2014, Official Report, column 693, which countries have agreed to accept the one year extension passports to be issued to UK citizens living abroad.

    James Brokenshire

    The list of countries that will accept British passports extended by 12 months
    is set out out on the .GOV.UK website and can be found at:
    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/list-of-countries-that-will-accept-pa
    ssports-extended-by-12-months.
    The following table sets out the current list of countries which have already agreed to
    accept the extended British passports.
    The list is updated on a daily basis.

  • Stephen O’Brien – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Stephen O’Brien – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen O’Brien on 2014-06-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the explicit monetary value per quality-adjusted life was in the context of Homicide and crime categories of wounding, sexual offences, common assault and robbery, as quoted as part of her Department’s submission to the Inter-Departmental Group for the Valuation of Life and Health review in 2008.

    Norman Baker

    A copy of the Home Office’s written response to the 2008 Survey of Departmental
    Practice in the Valuation of Life and Health will be placed in the Library. The
    Home Office does not have a record of its response to the questions in Stage 2
    of the Survey. This is because the interviews were carried out face-to-face
    with researchers at the University of Leeds.

    The Home Office first estimated the social and economic costs of crime in 2000:
    http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/r
    ds/pdfs/hors217.pdf.

    The most recent update to these estimates prior to the Department’s submission
    to the Inter-Departmental Group for the Valuation of Life and Health review in
    2008 was published in 2005:
    http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100413151441/http:/www.homeoffice.go
    v.uk/rds/pdfs05/rdsolr3005.pdf.

    The monetary value per quality-adjusted life year used in the 2005 report was
    £80,620 in 2003 prices. This was based on a paper by Carthy et al. (1999).