Immigration Control

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate. I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) for helping, guiding and leading us throughout the inquiry. He certainly tried to keep us timely and in order when we were having our meetings in Pakistan. I also thank the Committee’s officers, who are very good at keeping us in line. In particular, I thank them for all their effort in organising our work throughout the inquiry. Finally, I thank those whom we met in this country and abroad for their help, support and advice. Our inquiry emphasised how important and necessary it was to go abroad and visit the visa posts. If we had not, we would have had a distorted view of our immigration service. I have a large community from Pakistan in my constituency, and some of my constituents are from India, so the visit to Pakistan and India was informative. It was certainly good to see Gerry’s FedEx, for instance, because I had only heard about it, and it was great to visit it. I endorse what the Chairman of the Committee said about the people we met. Wherever we went, we saw people who were dedicated not only to providing individuals with a good service, but to protecting our borders from those who have no right to enter the UK. It is important that we look at the immigration service in the context of the numbers who are entering and leaving the UK. It is also important, as the Chairman of the Committee said, that we bear in mind the need to ensure that people can travel freely, while those who are not entitled to be here or to stay here are dealt with accordingly. Some 97.2 million passengers arrived in the UK in 2004. Of them, 68.2 million were British citizens, 17 million were from the European economic area and nearly six million were from the US, Australia and Canada. All those people want to come here when they like, just as we want to return from abroad without too many problems crossing the border. In that respect, it was interesting to hear on the news today that more than 1,000 people a day are leaving the UK—half of them are UK citizens going abroad for more than a year—and that 1,500 people are estimated to be entering. The programme also said that we have the lowest number of asylum seekers for 15 years. Getting decisions right at the initial stage is key to making sure that the system works well, and one of the main issues is ensuring that applicants know what is required. We must ensure that they know which forms they need to bring with them and what evidence they need to provide. One issue that was raised with us in Pakistan was the need for entry clearance officers at our visa posts to be given feedback on cases that they have dealt with so that they can learn from their decisions when handling future cases. We also need to ensure that those working in the appeals system gain experience of initial decision makers’ work and that initial decision makers are more aware of those working in the appeals system. Another key issue in the report is the need to enhance training for everyone working in the service, whether abroad or in the UK. As my right hon. Friend said, it is vital to give decision makers sufficient time to make the necessary inquiries. The UK has tighter targets than most other countries, and we need to balance that with the need to get the decision right in the first place. As we said in the report, seven minutes is not long enough to decide a case, even for straightforward applications. It is important that there is sufficient time for decisions to be made to ensure not only that inquiries can be made into whether the case is genuine, but that the decision is accurate. By allowing enough time and making inquiries, we might prevent refusals from being made mistakenly. Getting the information right can therefore work both ways. The report also focuses on the quality of immigration decisions taken in the UK. We suggest that it would be helpful to introduce a network of immigration application centres, perhaps in post offices, which we already use for checking passports. It would certainly help my constituents if they could go to the post office to have their documents checked. That would help to prevent failures in the system and relieve the burden of financial administration on the IND. That would be similar to the situation with Gerry’s FedEx and other agents overseas, which help to relieve the administrative burdens involved in supplying UK visas. Indeed, using such agents prevents the backlogs that would otherwise occur when security problems prevent people from going to the visa post. Work can carry on because it is transferred from a safe place—the agents—to those dealing with UK visas. The vast majority of students who come to this country bring income to our colleges and universities. They come here because we have a good education system. They complete their course, abide by the conditions and return home. However, there is a problem with students coming to universities or colleges that do not really exist or which are in the upper room of a shop. Such places cannot offer students anything and students who really believed that they were genuine are disappointed. I therefore welcome the Government response to our recommendation and the fact that the managed migration intelligence unit will have increased resources and staff. When we went to Croydon, we saw that the unit could manage only a tiny proportion of the inquiries that it needed to make. As my right hon. Friend said, the Department for Education and Skills has a great responsibility to ensure that there is no fraud, that institutions are genuine and that the register of genuine institutions is corrected to ensure that the institutions on it are genuine. That is important now, but will be vital when the points-based system is introduced, because we will be relying on colleges to ensure that students attend and that the education on offer is genuine. If we do not ensure that those institutions are genuine, we will not be able to rely on the information that they provide. To pick up one or two key issues about spouses, I commend the work that is being done here and overseas to protect those who are, or are likely to become, victims of forced marriages. When we were in Pakistan and India we heard of work that is being done there, on occasion, to rescue people who are likely to be forced into marriage. We recommend, at paragraph 311, further steps that the Government could take to protect young British people. The report states:"““Forced marriage cases are now handled more sensitively than before, but better arrangements should be made for refusing spouses’ visas or settlement applications on the basis of confidential information from a reluctant sponsor. The Government should consider further steps which might protect young British people from forced marriages, including interviewing all visa applicants for marriages which have been arranged at short notice. The Government might also consider encouraging visa applications for arranged marriages to be submitted before the British spouse leaves the UK.””" I hope that the Government will consider that. Other Members have touched on the question of people having to go abroad. Paragraph 300 of the report states:"““In view of the serious difficulties caused to some applicants by the requirement to return home to apply for permission as a spouse, we recommend that where the Foreign Office advises against all travel to a particular country, applications for leave as a spouse or unmarried partner from nationals of that country who are already living in the UK be decided in the UK with an interview.””" We have all come across cases of people being advised that they must go home to apply to marry or to stay here, if they are married. We heard evidence about that matter in the inquiry. We also came across people with health problems. It is not always a matter of people having difficulty going back to a country because it is not a place that one would want to send people back to. Some people have health problems. Sometimes a couple with children is being asked to go back to a country that none of us would want to go to, and to which they certainly do not want to return. I hope that the Government will look again at the help that might be given in such instances. The Chairman of the Select Committee has referred to the ““minded to refuse”” issue. That is another key issue, and many appeals could be saved if people were warned that they had not provided sufficient information and that without it the case might be turned down. Again, in our constituency work we have all come across such cases. Ideally, people should provide everything necessary in the first place. however, for those who do not, appeals could be avoided if there was the option to provide the material before that stage was reached. I have picked up on only a few issues in the report, but I hope that the report will go some way to helping the Government to continue to improve the system.