Show Search Form

Search Results

registered interest	true false
date	exactly: or between: and
answering body
answering dept id
answering dept short name
answering dept sort name
hansard heading
house id
legislature	pref label
question text
tabling member printed
uin
answer	is ministerial correction true false date of answer exactly: or between: and answer text answering member printed question first answered answering member label
tabling member	label

Search

457348

registered interest
date	03/03/2016
answering body	Home Office
answering dept id	1
answering dept short name	Home Office
answering dept sort name	Home Office
hansard heading	Refugees: Children
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the difficulties that refugee children face in accessing legal advice or paying the fee required to register their citizenship; whether legal aid is available for those purposes; what the current fee is for registering citizenship; what proportion of that fee represents profit accumulated by the Home Office; whether they have plans to increase that fee, and if so, by how much.
tabling member printed	Lord Alton of Liverpool
uin	HL6674
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/03/2016 answer text <p>Civil legal aid remains available for advice and representation in relation to applications and appeals for asylum. The majority of unaccompanied refugee children applying for permission to remain in the UK will be seeking asylum, and legal aid will therefore be available. For non-asylum immigration matters and citizenship applications, legal aid is generally not available, although may be provided exceptionally where required by the European Convention on Human Rights.</p><p>The Government has committed to review the legal aid provisions within the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 within 3-5 years of implementation.</p><p>The current fee for a child to register as a British citizen is £749. The estimated unit cost to process this application is currently £223. For 2016/17 the fee will increase to £936 on 18th March 2016 with a rise in estimated unit cost to £272. The power to set fees that are higher than the cost of processing applications is contained within The Immigration Act 2014, which provides that the Home Office may take into account not just the cost of processing an application, but also the benefits and entitlements available to an individual if their application is successful and the cost of exercising any other function in connection with immigration or nationality.</p><p>The Home Office does not provide exceptions to the requirement to pay application fees for naturalisation or registration as a British citizen. This is because the Home Office considers that citizenship is not a necessary pre-requisite to enable a person to exercise his or her rights in the UK in line with the European Convention on Human Rights.</p><p>British nationality applications are not mandatory and many individuals with Indefinite Leave to Remain decide not to apply. A person who has Indefinite Leave to Remain may continue to live in the UK and travel abroad using their existing valid passport and residence permit, visa or travel document.</p> answering member printed Lord Bates question first answered 11/03/2016 14:42:24 answering member 1091 label Biography information for Lord Bates
tabling member	738 label Biography information for Lord Alton of Liverpool

457349

registered interest
date	03/03/2016
answering body	Home Office
answering dept id	1
answering dept short name	Home Office
answering dept sort name	Home Office
hansard heading	Refugees
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in the light of the ongoing problems faced by the Yazidi community and children affected by the conflict in Iraq and Syria, they will reassess the criteria for eligibility for the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme and other UK resettlement schemes.
tabling member printed	Baroness Berridge
uin	HL6675
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 16/03/2016 answer text <p>Under the current scheme, only UNHCR registered Syrian refugees are eligible under the Syrian Resettlement Scheme, which has been expanded to resettle up to 20,000 during this Parliament. We work closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify cases that they deem in need of resettlement according to seven agreed vulnerability criteria for the Syrian Resettlement Scheme.</p><p>The Syrian Resettlement Scheme is operated in addition to our global resettlement schemes: Gateway and Mandate, which are not nationality specific.</p> answering member printed Lord Bates question first answered 16/03/2016 15:05:43 answering member 1091 label Biography information for Lord Bates
tabling member	4218 label Biography information for Baroness Berridge

457364

registered interest
date	03/03/2016
answering body	Home Office
answering dept id	1
answering dept short name	Home Office
answering dept sort name	Home Office
hansard heading	EU Nationals: Social Security Benefits
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Lord Faulks on 2 March (HL Deb, col 928), whether they now plan to make an estimate of the likely impact on migration from the rest of the EU of the restrictions to in-work benefits that were agreed in the decision of the European Council concerning a new settlement for the UK within the EU.
tabling member printed	Lord Green of Deddington
uin	HL6690
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/03/2016 answer text <p>The Decision of the European Council concerning a new settlement for the UK recognises, for the first time, that different social security systems across Member States can attract EU workers. Government figures show that around 40 per cent of recent EEA migrants are in households supported by the benefit system. On average, families with a recent EEA migrant claim almost £6,000 per year in tax credits, and of these, around 8,000 families receive more than £10,000.</p><p>We remain committed to reforms across the whole of Government to reduce net migration to sustainable levels and to reform the immigration system so that it works in the best interests of our country. We will continue to restore a sense of fairness and to reduce the current very high level of population flows into the UK - now and in the future.</p> answering member printed Lord Bates question first answered 11/03/2016 14:35:04 answering member 1091 label Biography information for Lord Bates
tabling member	4346 label Biography information for Lord Green of Deddington