Lord Steel of Aikwood
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the operation and accountability of UK Visas and Immigration.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
My Lords, I do not intend to have a great debate on immigration. I put down this Question for Short Debate as a result of two recent experiences of dealing with individual cases, about which I would like to inform the Committee. Last August, I received a letter from a small charity, the Friends of Meisori School. This is a group of schools and churches that have got together to help sustain a primary school in Kenya with scholarships and that kind of thing. It had invited the headmaster of the school to come to Britain and conduct a programme of visits to schools in York, Hereford and Bristol. At the last minute, it found that he could not get a visa and his whole visit fell to the ground. The charity wrote to me angrily because it had seen my name on the foundation stone of a library, which I had laid some years before. I had no connection at all with the charity.
I wrote to Mark Harper, who was then the Minister for Immigration, to ask for reasons why the visa had been refused and I was completely dismayed by his reply, which simply told me about the visa requirements. I wrote to him on 30 October last year to say that I was dismayed. My last sentence was:
“I feel a parliamentary question coming on unless I can get a clear reason why the visa for Mr Lekae was refused”.
Well, 2013 came and went and I had no reply so I duly put down a Written Question which was replied to by our good and noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach. He simply said that:
“Due to its obligations under the Data Protection Act, the Home Office is unable to comment on an individual case”,—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. WA68.]
without the permission of the applicant, so that did not get me anywhere.
I then wrote to Mr Samuel Lekae and asked for his permission to pursue the case. He sent me that permission and, eventually, having failed to get a response, I put down a Question and wrote to the Minister again. He replied on 10 January and, to be fair to Mr Harper, he wrote a very nice handwritten apology at the bottom of the letter. He gave the same argument about the Data Protection Act, so having got the authority from the headmaster to act on his behalf I wrote to the Minister again on 27 January. To date, I have had no reply. Of course, that Minister has disappeared and been replaced by another one, but that is not really an excuse. However, I visited the school last month and met the headmaster. The point I want to make is that it is in a remote area and he had made several visits to Nairobi to try to get the visa. That is four or five hours by car each way but, at the end of the day, the visa was refused.
The other case was just last month. I was taking part in a conference to commemorate the bicentenary of David Livingstone, organised by the Scotland Malawi Partnership. That body has government funding and the conference was co-sponsored by the Open University, which is also a body with public funding. A distinguished lady from Malawi was invited to be one of the speakers and, at the last minute, she was refused a visa. The charges that they have to pay—£400 a time—are of course lost but so is their airfare for which we, the taxpayer, had paid. The attempt to raise money by raising the fees is negated every time there is a refusal, while the public body which has invited and sponsored a visitor ends up paying for an abandoned airfare.
The timescale involved is ridiculous. It usually takes three weeks to get an answer, in the case of Malawi. In December last year, just three months ago, a new system was introduced by e-mail but it seems to be entirely dysfunctional. The website is an embarrassment. It routinely crashes and there are sections that simply have not been finished. For example, the user has to state which country they are applying from by using a drop-down menu, within which the only information is the starting letter of the country. If you are looking for Malawi, you look for the letter M and you then have to guess how far down the list it might be and what other countries there are whose name begins with M, and then you tick the right box. There seems to be an assumption that all applicants will have regular and easy access to a computer, to an internet connection with strong bandwidth and to a printer. That effectively rules out almost everybody in Africa except the urban elite.
It appears that the Government have outsourced their legal responsibilities on immigration to a private company which was the cheapest bidder. It is almost impossible for an applicant to contact the private company, because, in the case of Malawi, the private company is in Pretoria in South Africa, which handles all UK visa applications for the whole of southern Africa. Even if they could make contact, the company closes all its offices at midday on Fridays for an early weekend, irrespective of the workload or the urgency of applications. Being a private company, it is not governed by the same standards of delivery, service and transparency which one would expect from a government department.
There is a further complication in the case of Malawi. As all its visa applications are handled in South Africa, significant delays are caused, as passports, birth certificates, bank details and other documents are sent backwards and forwards across the continent. It also means that decisions are being made remotely by people who have do not necessarily have intimate knowledge of the country from which the application has been made.
In the case of Malawi, there is a further, peculiar difficulty. The applicant has to pay for a visa application using a credit card and pay in the currency of the country where the regional visa-issuing centre is based. That means paying in South African rand. The Scotland Malawi Partnership has been advised that it is illegal in Malawi to make online payments in a foreign currency unless you have specific permission from the Reserve Bank of Malawi. We are also informed that almost no Malawians have international credit cards that would be suitable for the purpose. My argument to the Committee is that the system is not conducive to visitors coming to this country, and I think that the reputation of the country is being damaged by the incompetence and cost of it.
I raise with the Minister one particular query about rule 41(vii) of the Immigration Rules, which insists that visitors to the UK have evidence of sufficient funds to cover the cost of their visit and their return to their country of origin. That is apparently UK policy, but a recent conference in Cardiff was told that that was not the case and that it would be sufficient if the sponsor had enough money to cover the costs of the applicant. So there seems to be an element of confusion even about what the policy is.
I end by making three suggestions to the Government. First, before the Commonwealth Games start in Glasgow in a few months’ time, the agency must make it clear that people attending from Africa—in this case, athletes, their trainers and so on—will require visas. The Commonwealth Games will be disrupted if many of the applicants are not able to get there because of visa restrictions. How many short-term applications have been turned down? How many applications have been received and what percentage of them were rejected?
Secondly, it should be an instruction to the agency that, when visitors are being sponsored by reputable bodies in this country, there should be an obligation on it to contact the sponsors and double-check. It can do that quite easily by e-mail quite and check the bona fides of the applicant, rather than go on demanding more and more visits to a remote centre and more and more fees. I would not object even if we were to introduce a system of bonds, whereby sponsors could give—let us say—£1,000 as an assurance that the person concerned would return. That is a suggestion which the Minister might like to pass on to his colleagues in the Home Office.
I mention in my QSD the question of accountability. I do not think it is good enough to hide behind the Data Protection Act and I think that any MP or Peer who raises a question about a visa application is automatically doing so on behalf of the applicant and should not be put off by being told that the Data Protection Act is in the way. When I was an MP, it was possible in visa cases to write to or even phone a high commissioner and ask them to examine a particular case. Sometimes the visa was refused for good reasons, which would be explained, and other times the decision would be overruled. There is a total lack of accountability now and it is that that I am really complaining about.
Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)
I thank my noble friend for enabling us to bring some of those cases to the attention of the Minister. I have a case to raise that has many characteristics in common with what we have just heard. It also concerns immigration, or at least visitors, from Africa.
I have the impression that it is becoming very hard to visit this country unless one is well off. I know that we want to attract the well heeled but I wonder whether it is right that we should get into a position where only the well-off can come here. In Hereford—it is Hereford again—there is a linking charity that, since 1985, has with other linking charities sponsored short visits, typically of four to six weeks, of more than 100 mid- career health professionals from Tanzania to come to see how we do things here and then, with that knowledge, go back to improve the functioning of their own institutions. These people are obviously not students in the formal sense. They come on ordinary visas, fully sponsored, with all costs paid by the British organisers. They are therefore of no burden to the British taxpayer. On the other hand, without that sponsorship, they most certainly would not be able to come because they could not afford to.
What has happened to this little programme? Beginning about three years ago—in other words, I fear, under the present Government—the already onerous and intrusive visa paperwork became even more so. My noble friend set out the costs involved for those who have to go a distance, and in this case I think it was to Nairobi. In 2012 and 2013, two of the four applications relating to the Hereford-Muheza link—Muheza is in Tanzania—were turned down. In relation to other link programmes over the past four years, there have been 15 rejections, which is a pretty high rate considering the overall annual numbers coming in. That has a pretty destructive effect on the link programmes and involves a great deal of wasted effort because these refusals come through only after a number of tractations and a lot of effort on the part of those who are then turned down.
Rather like the cases raised by my noble friend Lord Steel, this has also led to correspondence with the Home Office. One of the organisers, Dr John Wood, wrote to Mark Harper in February 2013. He did not, however, get a letter back from the Minister. He had one from a Ms Ioannou in May 2013, explaining that it was only right that the UK welfare system should be protected from non-genuine visitors, that visitors should be able to show that they could maintain and accommodate themselves while in the country and indicate, with a return ticket, that they intended to return to the country with which they had demonstrably genuine ties—the same reasoning that we have heard. These stipulations are, I agree, reasonable. They are tough but they are certainly reasonable and defensible. However, the link programme, in all its years of operation—now 13—has never had an absconder and there is no reason to believe that it would have one now or that the conditions would not have been met. Also, in shades of what was said by my noble friend, Ms Ioannou said, “flexibility in the Immigration Rules for visitors exists, if they can be maintained and accommodated by relatives or friends where they do have the financial means to support their visit”. Is that not exactly the same thing as being told that there is a way through? That is precisely what the link programme provides: maintenance and accommodation while in the country.
Subsequent to this correspondence, the link programme’s postbag is still full of rejections on the grounds of the inability to guarantee return, which appears, in turn, to be related to suspicion about the consequences of the inability to self-fund. Of course, if those visitors could fund themselves, they would not need sponsorship. It is a Catch-22. The fact of costs being fully covered and sponsorship by an impeccable organisation—which I think it is—appears to be irrelevant to the refusals. They have sponsors, but the fact that they could not pay for themselves were they not being sponsored, although they are, means that they get turned down. As regards the inability to guarantee return, what guarantees beyond having your costs being covered, your return ticket and your ties to your homeland are good enough for the Home Office? Does it want an armed guard throughout the visit and to the airport? That is what it begins to amount to. What has happened to the flexibility in the rules alluded to at the conference and in correspondence with Dr John Wood? Is it ever exercised and what does an applicant or the sponsoring organisation have to do to bring it into operation?
The Government have managed to devise a list of reputable colleges to which overseas students may apply without the vires of the application immediately being brought into question. The penalty is, of course, loss of status for the college if the students do not leave at the end of their study period. Is it beyond the wit of our immigration system to devise a similar list of sponsoring organisations in good standing which the local immigration office can hold and with which there can, if necessary, be dialogue in individual cases by e-mail, as my noble friend suggested?
The system as presently operated frustrates charitable activity, which cannot be good, and, in my view, it also fails the test of proportionality. Unsurprisingly, it has now got to the stage where it has given rise to an application under the Freedom of Information Act by angry sponsors who want to know how many invited visitors of this type have actually absconded. The application has not been answered on the grounds that the cost of collating the information exceeded the cost limit specified in the regulations. My last point is: what about this cost limit? Is it so low that even the collation of extensive and readily available evidence is precluded by it or, as is perhaps more likely, is it that the evidence is too scanty to provide convincing support for refusal decisions? I hope that in reply the Minister will be able to give an undertaking that the operation of the Immigration Rules in relation to these charitably sponsored visits will be looked at in a fresh light with a view to devising a solution which will enable them to continue to operate under rules which are reasonable in principle—
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I apologise, but we are risking not having a full quota for the Minister at the end. There is no slack in the timing.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I apologise. I will finish my sentence. I am sure that the intention behind our legislation was that it should be reasonable.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for obtaining this debate. I am afraid I have to agree with both speakers that this is a shambles and probably just the tip of the iceberg.
I shall talk about UK immigration problems on the cross-channel rail services. It is worth recalling that the Channel Tunnel was built—I played a small part in it—to create seamless travel to the continent. We have somehow substituted for a physical barrier an administrative blockage which is an absurd obstruction to travel to and from the continent.
Starting 25 years ago, you had the juxtaposition of French or Belgian and British immigration at London, Paris, Lille or Brussels. Sometimes immigration checked passengers on the train coming back into this country. That may be fine for those cities with quite big volumes, but now that the operators want to move to the south of France, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and many stations in between, it just does not work. The latest situation is that if Eurostar is running a train from the south of France, going out it is fine—you can get out of this country all right, for the moment anyway—but coming back the train stops at Lille and everybody has to get out with their suitcases, go upstairs, through security and immigration and back down again. The train leaves an hour later. So many more passengers go out than come in by train, which is no great surprise.
The same will apply to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Cologne, Aachen, Schiphol or wherever we want to go. DB, the German railway, has said that it would like to come to London but it is not going to because it just does not work. That is because, in addition to what I have explained, immigration will not allow you to mix domestic passengers with international passengers. Therefore, if the train is coming from Frankfurt, it cannot carry passengers from Frankfurt to Brussels because they might leave a bomb on the train or have the wrong passport. It is also expected that on every station at which the train stops there should be an immigration officer checking people’s passports, followed by security. What operator is going to fund that? It is totally uneconomic.
The same will apply with HS2. There are supposed to be international services going from places north of London—such as Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Leeds—to Paris perhaps. This will not happen because we will not be allowed to carry domestic and international passengers on the same trains. I can assure noble Lords that there will not be enough people travelling from Birmingham to Paris to fill a complete train—it will need London passengers as well—and I suppose that they will all have to get out at London and go through security and immigration again. This is killing international rail travel. I do not see any way at the moment in which things can change.
I have had several meetings with Ministers. They have been very helpful but they cannot offer any solutions. I have three solutions. The first is very tongue in cheek but it is made on the basis that we will have to be checked going out of the country. I am told that it will be like using an Oyster card, which takes half a second to get through a barrier. A passport check going out will take 12 seconds. Imagine taking 12 seconds to get into Holborn station in the rush hour. The queues will go all the way round the block. We put chips in dogs to make sure that they are rabies-free. Would it not be better if we all had chips and could walk straight through? The Government know everything about us—they spy on our e-mails and so on—so it would not make much difference. So that is my first suggestion. I am not sure that the Minister will accept it but it is always worth a try.
My second suggestion is that we could join Schengen, but, with this Government, that is pie in the sky. The third suggestion is that we check passports on the train. It used to be done, as I have said. I have been told, “Oh, it takes much too long and we cannot get the latest signal that Mr al-Qaeda suddenly might be coming. Five minutes from getting into the tunnel he will get in and claim asylum”. There should be the technology to do this online and on the move reasonably quickly. It is the only thing that will work when coming in and going out. It behoves the Government to develop a system and make it work.
Something needs to be done. The immigration and security services are not achieving anything. Parts of the Conservative Party seem to want total physical as well as economic separation from the continent but, as I have said, it is bad for business and for Britain’s reputation. We must do something about it.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood for this debate. It is couched in extremely wide terms and I may introduce two subjects that no one else may consider come within its purview, but I think they do.
The first thing I wish to say in this short space of time concerns universities and overseas students which, as everyone knows, is a vexed subject at the moment. It is of huge importance for this country in that we have, for our size, the most successful university sector in the world in attracting overseas students, particularly non-EU students. It has quite extraordinary benefits for us, and not only the obvious financial and economic ones. One cannot put a finger on the cultural value of having in our midst these amazing overseas students who bring to us all their particular knowledge, culture, language, arts and so on. Most important are the friendships created by this mingling of British students with overseas students. That has value for the future in terms of one’s personal development, in terms of knowledge and understanding between different cultures and countries, and in terms of affection and friendship, which spills over into all sorts of economic outlets and manifestations.
I put it to the Minister, as it has been put to many other Ministers, that bundling up overseas students at our universities with other economic migrants who are here permanently and equating the temporary, three-year undergraduate to a permanent economic migrant for the purposes of our immigration figures is wrong. It gives a wrong impression and creates unnecessary tensions within this country. I know that the UN has a definition of students that would pull in the temporary, learning immigrant coming to university, but we do not have to use that UN definition for our own internal purposes. Indeed, it is different from the OECD definition. It is a simple but important point. We have not got through the Immigration Bill and I hope that the Government will be moved to exclude university students from its purview in terms of immigration figures.
The other thing that I want to talk about in the three minutes that I have left is the report that came out in February called Tier 1 (Investor Route): Investment Thresholds and Economic Benefits, produced, as it was, by the Migration Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Professor Sir David Metcalf. It had a brief to look at the economic benefits of these tier 1 immigrants. Most here will know that, under that arrangement, if one invests £1 million, one can have an unlimited right to remain in this country—in effect, becoming a permanent migrant resident in the UK. There is a residence test and you have to spend at least 180 out of 365 days here, but that, as it stands, is the rule.
I put it to the Minister that I think the Migration Advisory Committee did its very best. In its final report it expressed all sorts of reservations about some of the assumptions underlying this scheme, but one thing that it was not asked to do but which I think it is absolutely essential is done before the outcome of its consideration is finalised in any change to the tier 1 scheme is to consider the serious damage to our reputation as a financial centre from the fact that this scheme encourages some of the biggest rogues on earth to come to this country. Black money in tens of billions has flooded into the UK because this scheme gives the so-called owner of this black money the right to permanent residency here. One thing is clear from the report: people bring their money here for non-pecuniary reasons. They do so because this is a safe and stable country, it has relatively incorrupt markets and, interestingly enough—this comes on everybody’s list of factors—there is an excellent private education system to which they can send their children.
I have not got long anyhow, but I do not think that one needs to labour the point that the reputation of this country, through all the awful things that have happened in the City in the past six or eight years, is already seriously damaged. In looking at the report of the Migration Advisory Committee, the Government should look at the whole issue of due diligence to make sure that money that comes in is good money and not corrupt money, and is properly owned by the people who invest it here.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I want to talk about a single, shocking and very recent case of the American organist, Cameron Carpenter, a musician with a global reputation, whose performances include one at the Proms here in London in 2012. According to his testimony, which he put on his Facebook page, he arrived at Birmingham Airport at 10.30 at night on Monday last week to prepare for a concert on Wednesday 19 March at Birmingham Symphony Hall. Tuesday was to be his rehearsal time. He intended to come in on the permitted paid engagement scheme. My understanding is that UK Visas and Immigration officials at Birmingham did not know about the PPE scheme. He was held for seven hours by the security firm Tascor in a brightly lit room with interviews and fingerprinting during the night, and at 7.05 in the morning was escorted by armed guard on to the first plane back to Berlin.
At this stage, I think, most people would have given up. However, Cameron Carpenter is a resourceful man, who was—and I quote from his blog—
“consulting all the way”,
through his flight,
“with some of the best management the world has to offer”.
He goes on to say:
“What would become of artists not so fortunate as I am to have such representation, I fearfully wonder”.
Yes, what indeed?
What happened next was that, after landing in Berlin, he had a shower and caught the next plane to Heathrow. At Heathrow he was also detained for a shorter period but finally allowed in on PPE, as, of course, he should have been in the first place.
To my mind, there are three issues here, which are also of more general relevance. The first and most serious is that this is more than the heavy-handed treatment which we know occurs and has indeed been meted out to other artists visiting the UK. This is quite simply abuse. Cameron Carpenter arrived late at night, and was subsequently subjected to all-night sleep deprivation. The question has to be asked why a security force, Tascor, is involved in such circumstances at all. This person is clearly not a terrorist—and indeed it should not matter whether he was in the right or not. This is abuse that should not be happening to anyone who has been detained. Has this become a part of Britain where we have thrown away the principle of innocent until proven guilty, where, as long as you remain detained and beyond, you are treated as a criminal? Well, the answer is, of course, yes.
In my estimation this is unacceptable, and it raises questions about accountability. The Minister may not be able to give me the answer now, but I would request a Written Answer, placed in the Library about who is precisely responsible for what and accountable to whom, including Tascor’s relationship to the new immigration bodies at each stage of such a process as I have described. This is an important matter that needs to be sorted out urgently.
Secondly, there is the question of competence—or rather incompetence. The Minister may recall the debate we had just over three years ago, which he answered, where a real concern was expressed about the repeated poor treatment of artists visiting or trying to visit this country. The Manifesto Club, English PEN and others worked hard to have a change in the system, and we were pleased that the Government responded to these concerns with the introduction of PPE outside the points-based system in 2012. But this was two years ago. By April 2012, UKBA officials at every single port of entry should have been fully apprised of the scheme. I ask the Minister when border officials will be properly informed about PPE.
Finally, there is the matter of our reputation on the world stage. That a world-renowned artist has been subjected to this form of treatment is an absolute scandal in itself, although Cameron Carpenter’s experience, unfortunately, does not exist in isolation. As we know, there have been numerous incidents in recent years, including the case of the Sachal Jazz Ensemble, which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, raised in an Oral Question in December. But there is also a basic, bureaucratic stupidity about this, which UK Visas and Immigration must address. A couple of minutes on Google will tell anyone who Cameron Carpenter is and what his status is.
In the Government’s favour—and I am very grateful in this respect for the conversations I have had with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, and those conversations that I and others have had with the Home Office—I appreciate that we are in a period of transition. I hope very much that the Government can promise that there will be significant change for the better, and that this kind of unacceptable treatment will be consigned to history.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I associate myself very closely with all that has been said, although the second half of the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, focused a bit too much on mammon for my level of expertise. However, I take him as an authority on that aspect. The introduction the noble Lord, Lord Steel, gave, was powerful and shocking in equal measure, and made the case on its own. I can say to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that I am aware of the Hereford situation; indeed, clergy are among those who are able to come under the scheme she mentioned.
I have been looking at the painting up there; we often have it above us in this Room without realising that it portrays an innocent and rather vulnerable girl there who is being misused by the authorities of the day—a rank case of injustice. I have never sat here debating a subject more relevant to “The Judgement of Daniel”, the painting we have had above us all these years.
As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, says, we could talk about a whole range of things, but I will talk about how this impacts upon the church in particular. The church is an international body, and intrinsically so: Christianity spread through missionaries travelling to other countries. A great deal of interchange has ensued over the years in both directions, which has caused no difficulties but has been a source of mutual enrichment in all sorts of ways. New rules, as well as the inefficiencies and delays in the system, are now making things very problematic.
I will take an example, not from the Church of England but from the Salvation Army. Last year a British Salvation Army minister, if I may call him that, married someone from outside the EU, but could not return with her from his honeymoon because while he was abroad the rules had changed, and the salary—or stipend—he had from the Salvation Army did not meet the £18,000 threshold. The fact that he was given a house and a car was not apparently taken into account, so he was allowed back in but his wife was not. It was an awkward choice; they simply ended up going somewhere else, abroad, to work with the Salvation Army where they were welcome.
Another area of growing difficulty is exactly that of obtaining visas for people who are of relatively poor means themselves to visit the UK under the various partnership arrangements that exist. Most of the 43 English dioceses have active partnership arrangements with churches abroad, often in Africa because of the links between the church in this country and Africa. Again, that provides huge mutual enrichment, and Africa needs that more than anything, not least at present.
In Africa, the level of documentation we take for granted just is not there. People do not always have birth or marriage certificates, or bank accounts so that they can demonstrate that they have the money we expect them to have. It is a different culture—a different world. A visit from someone who comes from one of those overseas churches will typically be paid for in advance, and underwritten and guaranteed by a perfectly reputable body—I hope that the Church of England can still count as a perfectly reputable body—which will pay its debts if necessary. I put the question to the Minister: why should there be any difficulty? What has happened to cause all those difficulties? There should not be a problem. Can the Home Office give us a single example of somebody who has come on one of these short-term visits and who has not gone back when they have been sponsored by one of the mainstream churches? That is the question, exactly in the spirit of the introduction the noble Lord, Lord Steel, made to this debate.
I will finish with an example in a slightly different form, from my own diocese, relating to someone from Zambia. He came to the UK—I think he may have been in the UK beforehand, perfectly legally, but was then sponsored for ordination and studied that here at one of our theological colleges. He and his wife wished him to be ordained and to serve a title of curacy in this country, and I was delighted to offer that to him. He has had a splendid two and a half years’ curacy in one of our parishes. In the mean time, his wife has been training as a nurse, paying overseas fees; the money has been got together and they are paying every penny they can out of his stipend towards his wife’s fees for the nursing course. I hope that, in due course, they go back to Zambia. In many ways, it would be a good thing if they took back the skills that they have learnt here. But, equally, if he wants to spend more time working in this country, that to me is a thoroughly good thing that should also be possible.
However, when we try to get the visa and immigration authorities to tell us what we have to do as a diocese and what the conditions are, we find that letters get lost. My colleague who deals with this is in despair. We write letters but nothing comes back. Time is ticking away and the training curacy of the chap I am talking about is coming to an end. I want to know the conditions under which I can offer him a post. I need some advice on that from the immigration authorities. Even if the advice is that the rules say he cannot stay here under any circumstances, at least that would be an improvement in that we would know where we were. I think that it should be possible for him to be offered the post, providing there are no other applicants, but getting to the starting gate with the authorities is extremely difficult. Part of the problem is that the church does not “tick the boxes”. Clergy are treated as if they are just factory workers or employees of any sort. We need a lot more flexibility, sensitivity and common sense in the system.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for raising this issue today and for his introduction to the debate. He highlighted the danger of losing sight of the personal or wider impacts that policies may have, particularly when they are ineffective or inefficient or, as he said, impractical or dysfunctional.
This has been a wide-ranging debate in which we have benefited from noble Lords’ expertise. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoke modestly of his involvement with Eurotunnel, and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, spoke of his experience of dealing with overseas students. I would like to pick up on a few of the points that were made.
As regards overseas students, I have never understood the reasons for a net migration figure. The fact that many professional people are leaving the UK and there is a big reduction in the number of overseas students coming here and paying fees constitutes a success in the Government’s mind because it reduces the net migration figure. That is a nonsense.
It is good that we are discussing this Question today against the background of the Immigration Bill that is going through your Lordships’ House. One of the issues that concerns me, and which has been brought home in this debate, is the Government’s proposal to abolish the right of appeal against visa decisions and to rely instead on administrative review. The Minister is aware of our opposition to that stance and he understands the reasons for it. It is clear from the reports of the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration and from other reports that the Home Office is struggling to deliver a quality service and that there are huge casework backlogs, as we have heard today. Therefore, a system which allows for appeals, and for mistakes to be addressed, is even more important when we recognise the problems in the current system.
I have gone through the relevant figures before and do not want to do so again. However, more than 12,500 asylum cases are still awaiting an initial decision. That is a 17% increase on the previous quarter. The Home Affairs Select Committee revealed a previously undisclosed backlog in permanent and temporary migration decisions of 190,000. I understand that the total immigration backlog at the end of 2012 was some 502,000. The Independent newspaper has calculated that it will take 40 years to clear that backlog.
However, more important than the backlog is the quality of decision-making. The latest statistics reveal that 32% of deportation decisions, 49% of, managed migration appeals—that is, work and students appeals—and 49% of entry clearance applications were successfully appealed last year. We have heard that for some people appeals are impossible—the opportunity to appeal is just not there. Given that most of the appeals allowed are due to simple casework errors in the initial decision-making, to remove the right of appeal and go for administrative review seems to us totally wrong. The Government’s priority should be to improve the efficiency of these initial decisions, make sure that there is no need for appeals and try to ensure that we have a fair and effective system. As we have heard, we are judged on how our visa system operates for people across the world. Mistakes can have serious implications for the individuals concerned.
The cases mentioned by noble Lords raise a number of issues. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, referred to a particularly pertinent issue concerning a private company undertaking such checks—the same issue raised in the case referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I am curious as to the standards that the Government expect private companies to adhere to, and whether they are open to the same checks and monitoring that they would have been had they remained government agencies.
We have had some powerful examples of what seem to be incredible and unreasonable decisions that have been hard for noble Lords to understand. The Minister could take away from today how many of these cases are known to noble Lords personally and how many other noble Lords and members of the public can give similar examples. I have dealt with two similar cases which I find incredible. One is a small business man known to me personally. His wife has been applying for leave to remain for some time. I have confirmed that I know it to be a genuine existing relationship. They have a child. He has been back and forward to get a decision made. The latest news is that they have given her indefinite leave to remain because they have lost the documents, but she has not heard anything about it yet, so that poor family is living in limbo.
A friend of mine who has businesses in this country and in India wanted to bring the man who cared for his father when his father was dying over for a holiday to thank him. Immigration did not understand why he did not have enough money in the bank. He had a job, a home and family to go back to, but he did not have enough money in the bank. Every time he appealed against the decision, he had to make a journey of several hundred miles. There has to be some humanity, some practicality and some common sense in our decision-making.
To come back to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, I am also aware of the case of Cameron Carpenter. It worries me enormously that people acting as immigration officials on behalf of the Government do not seem to know what permitted paid engagement is. An important point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, was that our reputation could be damaged by incompetence and the cost to the system. That is the message that we should take from today: we want a fair, efficient system and one that works in our interest. There are some wise decisions and some wacky ones, such as chipping us all as we leave the country, but I hope that the Minister will assure your Lordships today that he will give all those matters his full consideration.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Steel for initiating this Question for Short Debate. It is vital for the security and prosperity of this country that we have a visa operation which is effective and transparent.
The subject for this debate is quite wide-ranging but I have very good advice. As we have heard, it will take some time completely to fix the system but I think it is important that we acknowledge the progress that has been made since we took the decision to scrap the UK Border Agency almost exactly one year ago. The international visa operation, as many, including the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, have recognised, is working well. Our standard service compares favourably with those of competitor countries but I accept that the system is not error-free. Last year, we processed almost 2.5 million applications overseas. The average processing time was seven and a half days—well within the service standard. This is despite significant rises in demand from some of our key growth markets. For example, last year in China applications rose by almost 40% on the year before.
We are also increasingly leading the world in the provision of high-quality tailored visa services. For example, we now offer priority three-to-five-day services in 70 countries, which will be expanded to more than 90 by the end of the year. We have also introduced a same day, super-priority service in India, which will be rolled out to China this summer and other countries later this year.
The Committee should be aware that none of this is at the expense of security. In the past year, we have interviewed more than 100,000 people applying to come to the UK as students to check that they are genuine and have the required language skills. I will say more about the speech of my noble friend Lord Phillips in a moment. We are also doing more detailed checks, including sharing details with other government departments, such as HMRC, to deal with those applicants who seek to abuse the immigration system.
This is not only overseas. We are also increasing interviewing and the checks that we do in our in-country operations. This is the part of the business where we have had the biggest problems in the past. Under the UK Border Agency, sadly, a lack of proper planning meant that there simply was not enough resource in place to deal with the level of work coming in. A lack of proper performance management arrangements in business areas meant that this was not spotted until it was too late, leading to the build-up of backlogs. The UK Border Agency’s closed, secretive and defensive culture then meant that Ministers and Parliament were not told the full extent of these problems early enough.
All of this, I am pleased to tell the Committee, is changing. The Government’s decision to scrap the UK Border Agency’s agency status means that UKVI sits in the Home Office and reports directly to Ministers. We have also brought in a completely new leadership team, led by Sarah Rapson, who was previously the chief executive of the successful passport service. It is instilling a much greater grip throughout the business and is committed to creating a culture which is consistently competent, high performing and customer-focused. We are seeing the results of this in performance improvements. Backlogs in temporary and permanent migration are down significantly and we are on track to completely clear workable cases by the end of this month. We have brought in new service standards that are much clearer about what customers can expect. If one was to apply today and complied with the rules one could expect to get a decision within the service standard.
We have also focused on clearing smaller backlogs that previously were not given enough priority. These include MPs’ correspondence, complaints and FoIs where poor performance contributed to a sense that the organisation was neither open nor transparent. We are clearly not yet perfect in the way we respond to these but the situation is improving. At the same time we have made significant service improvements. We have overhauled our same-day premium service centres by extending opening hours and tackling appointment harvesting. As a result, availability has increased and customer satisfaction with the service here is regularly at more than 90%. We have also launched new services such as premium postal and taken steps to tackle issues that customers have complained about, such as the fact that we hold on to their passports while we make a decision, when we do not need to.
There are, of course, still challenges. As we said when we abolished UKBA, it will take many years to completely fix the system. Some of our big challenges are in asylum, appeals and litigation, where we are seeing big rises in volumes. This is driven by world events and the work we are doing to clear backlogs and tackle abuse. Dealing with this will be a priority next year and we are bringing in extra staff to do so. We will also be continuing to focus on making sure that we are making consistent and quality decisions about people’s right to come and stay in this country. It is important to recognise that this is not always straightforward and that when making decisions on applications, case workers must carefully consider whether, on the balance of probabilities, the applicant is likely to leave the UK when they are required to do so. I suspect that that may be relevant to the case referred to by my noble friend Lord Steel. It is a matter of judgment. That is why many appeals are successful, because it is a matter of judgment. The caseworker, on his appreciation of the evidence before him, makes a balanced judgment that the applicant is likely not to return home, but when appealed the tribunal decides that it should be granted.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I apologise for interrupting the Minister but he appears to be saying that the judgment of the caseworker is wrong in so many cases.
Earl Attlee
I am absolutely not saying that it is wrong. I am saying that the caseworker has made a judgment and the tribunal has come to a different one. The judgment they have to make is whether the applicant will return home at the end of their stay, bearing in mind the circumstances. That has to be a judgment call.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
On that very same point, what about my suggestion that the caseworker should make contact with the sponsors to double-check the veracity of their application?
Earl Attlee
I do not think I am able to respond to that question this evening but I will, of course, be writing to all noble Lords, and I will respond on that point. However, this is an issue on which I have been in discussion with officials—fairly vigorously, on my part.
My noble friend Lady Neville-Jones referred to correspondence. We need to ensure that Peers’ correspondence is being dealt with correctly and to look at the specific issues raised. I will write to her, which I am sure is what my noble friend expects. From my noble friend’s experience, she will understand that only Peers and MPs can expect to receive a reply from Ministers.
The decisions made by officials will sometimes lead to situations that people do not like but we have safeguards in place to make sure that they work properly. While there is room for improvement in both the operation and transparency of UK Visas and Immigration, this should not overshadow the fact that we are making real progress. One year on, UK Visas and Immigration is both better performing and more open than what came before.
In the remaining time, I will try to answer as many questions as I can. My noble friends Lord Steel and Lady Neville-Jones raised the issue of bonds and sponsorship. The Government considered during 2013 whether to pilot a bond scheme that would deter people from overstaying their visas. We decided not to proceed. Various considerations must be factored in when considering any such new scheme. These range from administrative complexities through to issues around fairness and whether it would be open to abuse.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I do not particularly favour the bond scheme but I think that the fact of the sponsorship is extremely relevant to an application. My anxiety is that when applications are made, only the financial circumstances of the applicant seem to be taken into account. The facts that all their costs are going to be covered and that they fulfil all the other criteria do not seem to be taken into account adequately so as to let them in. That is my worry: why is sponsorship from a reputable organisation not a sufficient guarantee, and can we not set up a system so enabling it to be?
Earl Attlee
As I said, I will be responding in detail to my noble friend but those are precisely the issues that I took up vigorously with officials.
In respect of the applicant to whom my noble friend Lord Steel referred, the applicant is welcome to make a fresh application at any time and, should he choose to make a further application, I would encourage him to address all the points made in his previous refusal. My noble friend also referred to Malawi. Our overall service overseas is good but we need to look in detail at the points that he raised. I understand his point about the loss of the visa fee but the work in assessing the application has already been undertaken and, if we were to return the fee for failed applications, we would then have to increase the fee for successful applications.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made important points about international train services and HS2. Perhaps the best way of dealing with this would be if the noble Lord and I seek a meeting with my noble friend Lady Kramer, with me wearing a Home Office hat rather than a DfT hat.
In response to my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the Committee will know that we are in the middle of the Immigration Bill. I am personally fully seized of the benefits of students for all the reasons that he gave, not least that of soft power. However, whatever the benefits of students, my noble friend cannot deny that when they are here they require accommodation and public services.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised appeals with regard to the Immigration Bill. I think we should leave that until the Report stage of that Bill. I am sure that the noble Baroness is looking forward to that stage.
I need to remind my noble friend Lord Phillips that the aim of the policy is to attract the brightest and best students. We continue to review our rules to ensure that we do this while discouraging abuse of all kinds. I am out of time but I will write to noble Lords where I have not properly answered their questions.