Dawn Butler – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dawn Butler on 2016-04-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Equality (Language Analysis – Palestinian, Syrian and Kuwaiti Testing) Authorisation (No. 2) 2013, whether the Government plans to revise the existing three exceptions.

James Brokenshire

The Government has no current plans to revise the existing Equality Act exemptions relating to language analysis testing.

No further nationalities have been added to the Equality Act exemption authorisation since it was introduced in 2013.

A review on language analysis use was undertaken in 2011 and published in 2012.

(https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/257177/language-analysis.pdf).

No further such review is presently planned. However, we do monitor the use of language analysis regularly to ensure it is used as effectively as possible and to identify new trends in nationality swapping.