Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My noble friend kindly invited me to make any comments that occurred to me after the noble Baroness had spoken. There is very little that I need to add, but I mention particularly our support for the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, in her amendment, which at least tries to specify who we are actually talking about. I think I am right in saying that my noble friend did not mention the likelihood of many human rights appeals from close relatives affected by this clause. This is one of the many instances that occur in the Bill where human rights appeals will be provoked, and we had some discussion on that the day before yesterday. I do not think that the Minister had a chance to respond to what was said about clogging up the machinery with a vast number of human rights cases. That probably was not the intention of the Government in drafting these provisions, but certainly when a parent, partner or child is denied a visit, that would undoubtedly raise human rights concerns. That would be an obvious route for the person to take if they felt that the decision was contrary to their rights under the convention. The only other thing that I want to say is on Clause 18. My noble friend has already mentioned the incapacity of entry clearance officers to make decisions in 10 minutes, as they do at the moment. Again, I invite the Minister to say something about that, because she was loquacious about the improvements that had been made in the system when we were talking about Clause 1. However, I did not notice anything about the number of entry clearance officers, the length of their training, or their ability to cope with existing practice, let alone incorporating the objective assessments that they will have to make as a result of these provisions. Although criticism has been made of entry clearance officers, and my noble friend has drawn attention to the remarks in the report of the independent monitor, we are being unfair to them. You cannot ask people to do that; even the appeals that are decided on paper take 10 minutes. They are going to have to look at the intention of someone coming here as a visitor and try to work that out in 10 minutes, in addition to examining all the documents to find out whether they are forged or in some way defective. If they have also got to address their minds to the question of what a person intends to do in the United Kingdom, I can only think that is asking too much of people who are not very highly paid, who are given a minimum of training, and who are already being asked to do much more than they are capable of.