UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister said about improving the consultation process. I hope that he will particularly consider how he can bring in these hard-to-reach groups, particularly those concerned with sponsoring visits by intended spouses and other family members. I am sure that if he consulted the JCWI, for example, it would be helpful not only in responding to the consultation but in suggesting other organisations that represent the interests of family members. However, that whole process will be useless unless in the consultation itself some indication is given of the level of the intended fees. The answers that people gave to the general questions in the previous consultation were not based on knowledge of how much was to be charged and the questions were phrased in a very general form—such as, ““Do you think it’s reasonable for the Government to recover the costs that they incur in operating this system?””. Of course, the answer to that must be yes. On the face of it, all the costs that go into providing the services would make for a legitimate charge on the user. But if people thought that that meant that the existing charges were to be more than doubled, they might have a second thought about it. I hope that that notion will be taken into consideration in the consultation on the sponsorship fees. With regard to the comparisons with other countries, I do not know whether the Minister has seen the detailed correspondence that I have had with his colleague, Mr Byrne, but he asserted as a matter of fact that our charges compared favourably with those in Australia. When I asked him to give me a comparison, that was the one that he chose. We have been through that in enormous detail, and the end-to-end comparison of the cost of a spouse coming in here with the cost for Australia is extremely unfavourable to us. The Minister sought to defend that by saying that there are enormous benefits to coming here, therefore implying that the benefits to a spouse entering Australia were not comparable to those when someone enters this country. I have just written to him saying that I do not really think that he could have meant to imply that we were so superior to the Australians that we were entitled to charge much more for the equivalent services than they do. I look forward very much to further discussions on these points with Ministers. When the consultation document on the sponsorship fees is issued, I should be grateful if a copy could be sent to me so that I can comment on it. I very much hope that it will include the figures. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.