Education: Overseas Students
Lord Dholakia Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Dholakia
My Lords, the points-based system does not apply to those who come from the European Community. What is being done to measure their competence in English?
Baroness Neville-Jones
The standards that have to be met for competence in English must comply with a European framework regulation, so a student coming here to do an advanced course has to meet that European level of qualification.
Immigration: Detention of Children
Lord Dholakia Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Neville-Jones
The emphasis of our policy is obviously on keeping families together. I trust that we will not be in a situation in which children are detained for any length of period at all; but certainly if they were, education would be a very important factor.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, has the Minister taken a view on whether families should be deported to countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and particularly on the impact, which could be considerable on those being deported, of sending families with children back to those countries?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, if there are security factors in place, those of course introduce elements which are not necessarily present in all other cases.
Biometric Passports
Lord Dholakia Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I am unable to answer that question—I came here to talk about biometric passports—but I will write to the noble Lord.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, is the Minister satisfied with the security of the country particularly in relation to people with dual nationality when one passport is used for entry into the country and another for exit?
Baroness Neville-Jones
That is indeed an issue, but we do not believe that maintaining the fingerprint database of the country will help the problem. However, we do have to combat passport fraud.