Home Office written question – answered am ar 21 Chwefror 2024.
Stephen Timms
Chair, Work and Pensions Committee, Chair, Work and Pensions Committee
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of people from Sudan applying for entry clearance to the UK have requested that (a) the Biometric enrolment process be excused and (b) the application be predetermined since April 2023.
Stephen Timms
Chair, Work and Pensions Committee, Chair, Work and Pensions Committee
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and in what proportion of cases he has (a) excused the Biometric enrolment process and (b) predetermined the application for people applying for entry clearance to the UK from Sudan since April 2003.
Tom Pursglove
Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office does not routinely publish data on the number of applications that are excused from the Biometric enrolment process and those that are pre-determined due to applicants undertaking unsafe journeys.
Biometrics, in the form of fingerprints and facial images, underpin the current UK immigration system to support identity assurance and suitability checks on foreign nationals who are subject to immigration control. They enable comprehensive checks to be made against immigration and criminality records to identify those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, immigration controls, or are likely to breach our Laws if they are allowed to come to the UK.
The threshold in the unsafe journeys guidance for excusing the requirement to attend a visa application centre is deliberately set at a high-level because of the need to protect the integrity of the UK border. If we do not know about a person's identity we are less able to assess the risks they may pose to the public. This is why we would only excuse applicants from being required to attend a visa application centre to enrol their biometrics in circumstances that are so compelling as to be exceptional.
Yes1 person thinks so
No1 person thinks not
Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
A measured and/or recorded biological parameter. Example: passport-type photo, finger print, iris detail, retina blood vessel detail, voice pattern, and DNA signature. Technically speaking, mentally stored information is also biometric, so this includes: signature or monograph, PIN number, password and passphrase.
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
