UK Visas and Immigration

Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Baroness Neville-Jones

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Grand Committee

[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.