Louise Haigh – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-10-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason people with indefinite leave to remain have been granted certificates of travel with validity of less than five years.

James Brokenshire

Certificates of travel (COT) are normally issued for 5 years to individuals with indefinite leave to remain. COTs may be issued for a shorter duration where

• There are Security or criminality reasons to do so

• The applicant has lost or abused previous documents

• The COT is being issued solely to facilitate the applicant travelling to their country of nationality to obtain a national passport.

• There is an urgent short term need to travel, and the applicant’s embassy cannot process a passport application fast enough.

The table below shows the number of COT valid for 12 months or less where the applicant has ILR for each year since 2010.

This data only counts people who have submitted applications for ILR in country. It excludes people who have ILR on Asylum grounds. The data also excludes any people with an ILR grant which pre dates the Case Information Database.

Year Number of Cases

2010 50

2011 50

2012 15

2013 15

2014 35