The Westminster lensArchive · Written questions · 707 tabled · 667 answered

Written questions by O'Brien.

Every parliamentary written question tabled by Neil O'Brien this session, with the full answer and department. See how every department answers, or back to the MP page.

Department:All (707)Department for Education (123)Department for Work and Pensions (92)Home Office (70)Ministry of Justice (62)Department of Health and Social Care (55)Treasury (41)Department for Transport (37)Department for Business and Trade (27)Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (27)Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (27)Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (25)Ministry of Defence (24)

Showing 6180 of 707 · this parliament

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20 Apr 2026·Home Office·Answered
Asked

How many grants of indefinite leave to remain have been revoked and have lapsed in the most recent year or quarter for which data is available.

Reply

The information requested is not available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate costs. Under section 12(1) of the FOIA, the Home Office is not obliged to comply with an information request where to do so would exceed the appropriate limit.

20 Apr 2026·Home Office·Answered
Asked

How many grants of indefinite leave to remain have been revoked this month

Reply

There were 8 grants of ILR revoked in March and 5 grants of ILR have been revoked in April 2026 to date.

20 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

What the total value of court-imposed fines outstanding in England and Wales is.

Reply

Financial penalties imposed by the courts will often consist of multiple elements including, amongst others, compensation, victim surcharge, prosecutor’s costs and a fine. The imposition is enforced as a whole, and any receipts received are applied to the offender’s account in accordance with a strict legal hierarchy. This ensures that the victims receive any monies they are due first, with the fine element being the last to be collected. This can result in the fine element, which is the punitive element of an imposition taking longer to be paid.The Government takes the recovery and enforcement of all financial impositions very seriously and remains committed to ensuring impositions are paid. The courts will do everything within their powers to trace those who do not pay and use a variety of sanctions to ensure the recovery of criminal fines and financial penalties. These sanctions can include deducting money from an individual offender’s earnings or benefits, if they are unemployed, or issuing warrants instructing approved enforcement agents to seize and sell goods belonging to the offender. If the offender does not pay as ordered and the money cannot be recovered by other means, then the court can take other actions which includes sending them to prison for non-payment of the financial penalty including a fine.The value of outstanding fines is reported annually in the HMCTS Trust Statement, the information can be found on page 35 in table 4, using the link below, the outstanding value at 31 March 2025 was £1,139,192,851 We anticipate the data for the 31 March 2026 being published in July 2026.HM Courts & Tribunals Service Trust Statement 2024-25

13 Apr 2026·Cabinet Office·Answered
Asked

Whether civil servants relocated to Canary Wharf count as having moved out of central London for statistical purposes.

Reply

Civil servants who have been moved to Canary Wharf do count as having been moved out of Central London. Utilising estate capacity in Outer London reduces pressure on Whitehall estate and ensures that we have accessible working spaces across the capital. However, only roles which move out of London entirely are counted as role relocations under the Places for Growth programme.

13 Apr 2026·Department for Work and Pensions·Answered
Asked

How many Universal Credit households in the most recent quarter for which data is available are undergoing a third party deduction for the purpose of paying a court fine.

Reply

Around 250,000 Universal Credit households had at least one third party deduction for court fines in the quarter ending in November 2025.  Notes:1. Figures have been calculated by identifying Universal Credit households with at least one thirdparty deduction for court fines during any month within the quarter. Households with a court fines deduction in more than one month of the quarter have been counted once only, to reflect the number of unique households affected during the period.2. Data up to November 2025 has been provided in line with the latest available Universal Credit Deductions Statistics.3. Figures have been provided for Universal Credit households in Great Britain.4. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.5. Numbers are rounded to the nearest 10,000.

13 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

How many children aged (a) under one, (b) one, (c) two, (d) three, (e) four, (f) five, (g) six, (h) seven, (i) eight, (j) nine and (k) ten and over years old were (i) adopted and (ii) subject of a Special Guardianship Order in each year since 2021.

Reply

Data on age of children subject to adoption and Special Guardianship Orders is routinely published in the quarterly Family Court Statistics and the relevant tables are attached.

13 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

How many children aged (a) under one years old, (b) aged between one and four years old and (c) aged five years and older were (i) adopted and (ii) given a Special guardianship order in each year since 1996.

Reply

Data on the age of the children subject to adoption and Special Guardianship Orders is routinely published in Family Court Quarterly statistics and the relevant tables are attached.Data prior to 2011 is not readily available and to source it would incur disproportionate costs.

10 Apr 2026·Department for Education·Answered
Asked

With reference to her Department's press release entitled Interest rate cap introduced to protect Plan 2 borrowers, published on 7 April 2026, what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the public purse of capping interest on Plan 2 and 3 student loans at 6% for the 2026/7 academic year.

Reply

I refer the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to the answer of 22 April 2026 to Question 124528.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

What the total annual cost of administering the Community Payback scheme was in each of the last five years; and what the average cost per (a) sentence and (b) completed hour of unpaid work was in each of those years.

Reply

Financial Year Total Community Payback Unpaid Work Spend (£) 2021/22£47,340,4922022/23£77,175,8932023/24£89,614,9152024/25£96,014,945In terms of what the total cost covers, it is things such as staffing costs, fleet (vans) and tools.We do not hold information on average cost per sentence in the format requested.The average cost per hour of Unpaid Work credited was £17.15 (2022/23), £19.14 (2023/24) and £21.24 (2024/25). Data are not provided for the performance year 2021/22 as this is only a partial year of data following the reunification of the Probation Service.The average cost per hour credited is calculated by dividing the total spend by the number of hours credited in each year.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

How many hours of unpaid work were (a) sentenced and (b) credited in each of the last five years.

Reply

Between July 2021 and June 2025, a total of 24,341,125 hours of unpaid work were sentenced in England and Wales. In the same period, 17,614,065 hours of unpaid work were credited in England and Wales.By Performance Year Hours of unpaid work sentenced Hours of unpaid work credited July 2021 to March 2022*4,351,6552,769,930April 2022 to March 20235,943,4554,499,655April 2023 to March 20246,108,4054,683,290April 2024 to March 20256,273,2904,520,280April 2025 to June 2025*1,664,3201,140,910Periods marked with an asterisk (*) indicate incomplete performance years.Hours sentenced are the number of hours that the offender is required to work as part of the sentence of the court.Upon attendance of the unpaid work session, the time the offender spends working will be credited towards the number of hours they have been ordered to complete. This includes where a person attends a session and subsequently fails to comply with instructions or is sent home due to poor behaviour, or where service issues during the day cause a session to be cancelled.Data from April 2022 to June 2025 sourced from the latest published statistics on unpaid work. A link can be found here - Unpaid work management information, update to June 2025 - GOV.UKData from July 2021 to March 2022 sourced from nDelius on 13/04/2026. While these data have been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.Data from the biannual Unpaid Work publication are rounded to the nearest five hours worked for data suppression purposes and yearly totals are calculated on the rounded values of each quarter. To be consistent with the publication, the same principle has been applied to data between July 2021 and March 2022.The next publication is due on 14 May 2026.Data are provided from July 2021, the month following the reunification of the Probation Service.

10 Apr 2026·Department of Health and Social Care·Answered
Asked

What assessment he has made of the equity of the process for accessing the General Dental Council's Overseas Registration Examination; and whether he has assessed the potential merits of introducing a queuing system.

Reply

The General Dental Council (GDC) is aware that the booking process for its Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) can be challenging for candidates due to the very high demand for exam places. The GDC’s recently concluded procurement exercise has resulted in new contracts for ORE provision that will substantially increase capacity of the exam, with places for Part Two increasing from 720 to 944 in the first year of the contract, and to 1,500 by year three.The GDC currently offers priority booking to candidates approaching their five-year time limit to pass the ORE exam, as well as to candidates with refugee status, as they are particularly disadvantaged by their inability to return to their country of origin to practise as a dentist.The Department has asked the GDC to develop an improved booking system as part of the new ORE contract arrangements and to consider what measures could be taken to support candidates on the waiting list who are resident in the United Kingdom.

10 Apr 2026·Home Office·Answered
Asked

How many grants of indefinite leave to remain have been revoked and have lapsed in each year since 2004.

Reply

The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate costs. Under section 12(1) of the FOIA, the Home Office is not obliged to comply with an information request where to do so would exceed the appropriate limit.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

How many community sentences were passed in each of the last ten years; and what proportion of these included an unpaid work requirement.

Reply

The data requested are provided in the attached excel tables.The decision as to what type of order to impose at sentence, or when imposing any other type of Order in court, is a matter for our independent judiciary, taking into account all the circumstances of the case before them.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

What proportion of individuals sentenced to an unpaid work requirement last year were given a (a) community order, (b) suspended sentence order, (c) youth rehabilitation order, (d) enforcement order and (e) supervision default order.

Reply

The data requested are provided in the attached excel tables.The decision as to what type of order to impose at sentence, or when imposing any other type of Order in court, is a matter for our independent judiciary, taking into account all the circumstances of the case before them.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

What proportion of people who received a sentence of unpaid work failed to (a) start and (b) complete their sentence in each of the last five years.

Reply

The data requested can be found in the following table:Sentence Financial Year% individuals who failed to start UPW% individuals who failed to complete UPW2021/22*8.4%40.7%2022/237.8%36.4%2023/246.2%34.2%2024/256.1%36.7%Periods marked with an asterisk (*) indicate incomplete performance years. The data provided is from July 2021, the month following the reunification of the Probation Service.All data has been sourced from nDelius on 13/04/2026. While this data has been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.Please note, data relating to those sentenced in 2025/26 has not been provided as recording of this period is still ongoing and it would therefore not portray a true reflection of current performance.

10 Apr 2026·Department for Transport·Answered
Asked

What the cost was to the public purse of graffiti removal across the Network Rail network in each of the last five years.

Reply

The cost of graffiti removal across the Network Rail network is available on Network Rail’s website.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

How many Community Payback supervisors have been employed in each of the last five years.

Reply

The number of band 3 Community Payback supervisors employed by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service in each of the last five years is given in the following table. Figures are provided for 31 December each year and are on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis.Table: Number of FTE band 3 Community Payback supervisors in post on 31 December: 2021 to 2025 Date Number (FTE) 31/12/202141931/12/202257031/12/202363231/12/202462331/12/2025584Notes:1. Only includes band 3 staff with the job title of ‘community payback supervisor’. Any staff with that job title but are not band 3 are not included.

10 Apr 2026·Ministry of Justice·Answered
Asked

How many and what proportion of sentences given in each of the last five years included an unpaid work requirement.

Reply

The data requested are provided in the attached excel tables.The decision as to what type of order to impose at sentence, or when imposing any other type of Order in court, is a matter for our independent judiciary, taking into account all the circumstances of the case before them.

26 Mar 2026·Department for Work and Pensions·Answered
Asked

Of the households exempt from the Benefit Cap due to receipt of the Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) element of Universal Credit, how many contain a second working age adult who is not in receipt of LCWRA.

Reply

The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

24 Mar 2026·Home Office·Answered
Asked

With reference to sheet Ret_04 of the data release entitled 'Returns summary tables, year ending December 2025', updated on 26 February 2026, if she will publish a further breakdown of the nationalities currently grouped under "Other” for asylum-related returns in 2025.

Reply

As you are aware, the Home Office publishes statistics on the number of returns from the UK in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. The latest data on returns from the UK, by nationality and asylum and non-asylum is published in table Ret_04 of the ‘Returns summary tables’. The latest data goes up to the end of December 2025.Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, the resources required to compile the statistics, as well as quality and availability of data. These reviews allow us to balance the production of our regular statistics whilst developing new statistics for future release.

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