Ian Murray
Shadow Minister (Business, Innovation and Skills)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what additional resources are being made available to the British Embassy in Lebanon to ensure the swift processing of visas for Syrian nationals wishing to come to the UK on spouse visas.
Mark Harper
The Minister for Immigration
holding answer
The extra Syrian spouse applications considered in Beirut as a result of the closure of the Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Damascus are a very small addition to the overall workload of Beirut, and we have not needed to send any additional staff resource to Beirut to deal with them.
The current customer service targets overseas for settlement applications (spouse applications are considered under this service standard) are to process 95% of settlement applications within 12 weeks of the application date and 100% within 24 weeks of the application date. In June 2013, 95% of settlement visa applications made at the VAC in Beirut (Lebanon) were processed within 12 weeks.
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