UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester for their interest in this issue, because it is important that we consult properly and extensively and get this right with regard to students. While I may not necessarily agree with the observations made on the issue, I recognise that they may have some validity and are issues that we have to consider properly. As I made clear in Grand Committee, the Government do not have any plans to charge refugees for biometric immigration documents. In addition, short-term visitors to the UK, such as tourists, will not be required to apply for a biometric immigration document. We already talk to different stakeholder groups on a regular basis, including the Joint Education Taskforce, and take into account the views expressed by members of those groups when deciding policy. I was grateful for the noble Lord’s observation that we had carried out a more extensive consultation than his amendment in a sense permitted. We shall continue to engage in this dialogue in respect of the appropriate fees for applications for leave as a student. Migrants applying for leave to remain as a student at a UK educational establishment will in due course be required to submit their biometrics as part of the application process. During the initial years of the programme, we propose to include the costs of the biometric immigration document within the fee paid for consideration of the application for leave. The noble Lord made some observations about costs. Broadly speaking, he has helpfully reminded the House of the information that we provided in Committee about the resource costs for implementing BIDs for foreign nationals. I think that I gave the figure of some £200 million at an earlier stage, of which £40 million are for set-up costs and £160 million are for operational costs. These figures include the cost of the technology required to run the system. The costs will, of course, be regularly updated. The proposed fees payable by foreign nationals for a BID will be set out in secondary legislation and put before Parliament in the usual way when we have finally agreed an appropriate charging structure with HM Treasury. Will the fees recover the full administrative costs to the system? We usually expect to do so. It is not our intention to profit from the implementation of this measure but we are considering very carefully what the appropriate charging structure will look like. The secondary legislation debates will enable us to focus more closely on some of those issues. Consultation is a given. We will endeavour to ensure that cost recovery levels match what is reasonable and appropriate, but they must abide with Treasury rules in recovering the full administrative costs to the system. I am afraid that I cannot help the noble Lord more than that. He asked a few other questions on which I shall reflect. If I can provide more data to noble Lords who joined in this short discussion, I will.