Immigration Control

I found the report useful and interesting and, as the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), said, it covers a huge range of issues. I shall not attempt to deal with all of them, but will comment briefly on two or three points and then concentrate on one issue. I am sorry if that makes my comments a little disjointed. My first point concerns appeals: how they operate and whether it would be useful to incorporate into the system a ““minded to refuse”” decision. I have read the Government’s response and understand where they are coming from—for example, on the points-based scheme. If we had a more transparent points-based scheme, it would be easier for people to see fairly quickly whether they were likely to be granted a visa. That is a small part of the system and applies only to people who apply to come here to work. However, people apply to come here in all sorts of other capacities and some make internal applications in the UK. One problem, which other hon. Members will have comes across in their constituencies, is that information that could be supplied is not always supplied. There may be simple documentation that could clear up an argument one way or the other. There is merit in considering how to avoid the present situation in which perhaps one third of appeals end up being granted because information is eventually provided but was not provided with the initial application. I hope that the Government will re-examine that. My second point concerns marriage cases. I understand perfectly well the argument about switching and queue-jumping. We introduced rules to prevent people from coming to this country on a visitor’s visa and then switching to a marriage application. I recall seeing the statistics and it was highly unlikely that so many people who visited this country met someone within a few weeks with whom they wanted to spend the rest of their lives. Some of those applications were very dubious. They did not necessarily involve sham marriages, although some undoubtedly did, but that was a mechanism for avoiding queues. If the queues had not been so long in the first place, we would not have encouraged that mechanism. What concerns me is the people who legitimately enter into a relationship in this country, but at a time when they are unable to make a marriage application, perhaps because they had come on a visit or made a failed asylum claim. There are cases of people being told that they must return to their country of origin and apply from there when it is impossible for them to do so. As the report stated, their country might be one to which the Foreign Office is advising people not to travel, or there may be no British embassy or high commission where an application could be made. We should re-examine some of those cases. There seems to be little flexibility in the way in which some cases are considered when decisions could be made outside the rules. Someone may have lived in this country for 10 or 12 years and then be told to go back to their country of origin to make a valid application when it is pretty obvious from the facts of the case that it is almost a foregone conclusion that the application will succeed. Not only does that create problems for the applicant, it creates more work for entry clearance and visa officers, and I suspect that they could well do without that.