UK Border Agency

Baroness Hooper Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hooper]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Avebury for putting the spotlight on the work of the UK Border Agency. He has given us a very thorough tour d’horizon of the many areas that have been complained about. It is also interesting to note from the business plan just produced by the agency that it recognises that,

“its management structures need to adapt”,

and that,

“the Board is taking a fundamental look at the way they work”.

I am not sure what it means in the business plan when it says that,

“increasingly we will look for opportunities to use commercial providers, overseas counterparts, voluntary organisations and community involvement to supplement the services we provide directly”.

I am not at all happy to read that the “hubs and spokes” system that operates in regions overseas will reduce 70 hubs to around 25. It seems to me that that is a recipe for disaster and will exaggerate the problems that have already arisen as a result of that system being put in place. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can shed some light on those two general points in particular.

My interest in the work of the agency is in relation to short-term visa requirements and student visas in particular. I refer back to my short debate in January of last year when I raised a number of concerns, complaints and horror stories. I also refer to the debate introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, in March of last year. I will not go over that ground.

It is still disturbing to read in the May edition of the Diplomat that obtaining a British visa is now so time-consuming, costly and fraught with bureaucratic obstacles that potential investors are discouraged from doing business in Britain. Student visas, however, continue to give me the most concern. The British Council has researched this and lobbied hard for flexibility but so far with little success. Apparently, only last year 50 British Council scholarship students were turned down as a result of the system.

As a particular example, I should like to cite Mexico, which is the second largest economy in the Americas after Brazil. During his recent visit to the G20, in one of his meetings with the Mexican authorities the Prime Minister stated that he saw education as the main tool to increase co-operation with Mexico. He also undertook to remove unnecessary obstacles. A new Administration is about to take over in Mexico, so it is a good moment to review the situation. Currently, 3,000 students in the United Kingdom are financed by the Mexican Government or their own families. They pay the full overseas student fees and most are doing graduate and postgraduate studies. Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology, which is roughly the equivalent of our British Council, sends students to the United Kingdom and the United States to look particularly at scientific and technical areas. It has been a very successful story because, happily, the United Kingdom’s academic institutions compare very favourably with those of the United States.

There is no pattern of students overstaying. They all return to Mexico where they are needed as high-flyers to manage Mexico’s vibrant economy and to be the leaders of the future. Earlier this year, on an Inter-Parliamentary Union visit to Mexico, we met a group of Mexican alumni from the LSE. On another occasion, we met students who had studied at other universities throughout the United Kingdom. We were very impressed at their enthusiasm for the courses that they had undertaken and for their wish to continue to have links with the United Kingdom in whatever work they do.

Yet Mexico does not have most-trusted-country status, as do Argentina and Chile in terms of Latin America. I understand that the system of being a most trusted country in some ways eases the formalities. I do not understand why something cannot be done about this as regards Mexico. After all, we have only about 100 students from Argentina. The scale is very different. What about the future as regards Brazil? We have just signed up to a science-without-borders programme, which will bring 12,000 students from Brazil to British universities over the next few years. If, after going through the whole process of applying and being accepted by our institutions, students are faced with this all-too-rigorous visa application process and the costs involved, it can be very off-putting and certainly can seem most unwelcoming. When will a thorough review of this important aspect of the agency’s work take place?

This Government have been brave in reconsidering and reversing some of the previous Government’s policies and decisions, such as the closure of embassies in central and South America. I am delighted about the reopening of embassies in El Salvador and Paraguay. But this is true also in other parts of the world. Will the Government therefore not also consider reversing the decision to use the UK Border Agency to handle visa applications in regional centres and revert to the former practice whereby visa applications were handled with discretion and sensitivity in British embassies? I look forward to my noble friend’s reply.