UK Visas and Immigration: Customer Charges
Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Manzoor
Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much UK Visas and Immigration charges its customers applying from outside the United Kingdom for making enquiries by (1) telephone, and (2) email; and how much money they have collected from those charges since 1 June 2017.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, forgive me. This is like buses: nothing happens and then two come along at the same time.
For overseas customers, UK Visa and Immigration has a chargeable call rate of £1.37 per minute and a £5.48 email charge. The Home Office has a contract in place with Sitel UK Ltd for the provision of contact services for both UK and international inquiries. It is not possible to provide data requested on how much money has been collected since 1 June 2017 due to commercial sensitivity.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, £1.37 per minute plus the carrier costs and £5.48 for an email? This issue was drawn to my attention by a postgraduate researcher based in India seeking to clarify their visa position. The costs are not insignificant to such a person. The Minister mentioned commercial sensitivity because this is a privatised service. Presumably that means that, in this case, a graduate student would not even be talking to Home Office officials to get the answers they wanted. Can she place on record the equality impact assessment that was carried out when this was introduced, and tell us where the liability lies in the event of bad advice being given? Is it with the Home Office, the contractor or the graduate student in India?
Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, certainly if a quality impact assessment has been done we will make that available. To be clear, I should say that the Government believe that it is right for those who use and benefit directly from the UK immigration system to make an appropriate contribution towards meeting the costs. Fees set by the Home Office border, immigration and citizen services are set at a level that partially funds the immigration system; the remainder is funded through general taxation.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018
Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Manzoor
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing this important debate and on the way she advanced her arguments. No one can be in any doubt about the strength of her feeling or her concern for the well-being of children, and I pay tribute to the tenacity she shows in furthering this area of work. It is laudable. I am also very grateful to all other noble Lords who have contributed to what has been a thoughtful and compassionate debate. My thanks also go to my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, who of course was, as he said, a Minister for the Home Office, so has great experience and expertise in this area.
I must declare an interest: I came to the United Kingdom as a child and had my first encounter with the immigration system here as a four year-old. So how the immigration system treats children is a subject close to my heart.
I will deal with the specific issues raised by the noble Baroness in her Motion in a moment. Before I do, I will say a few things about the issue at the heart of this debate—the welfare of children. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, raised this in her contribution. There is no greater test for any society than how it looks after its most vulnerable members.
I remind the House that our immigration, asylum and nationality functions are already delivered with a requirement to take account of the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Indeed, Parliament has explicitly to give statutory effect to that requirement through Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, words in statute are not enough: it is actions that matter.
The Government fully accept the need to be concerned about the plight of migrant children. We understand that children are often caught up in situations and circumstances not of their own making. That is why it is important that I put on record that we have acted and granted asylum or another form of leave to 51,000 children since 2010, and we have committed to resettling 3,000 children and their families fleeing the Syrian conflict under the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme by 2020. This is in addition to the 20,000 individuals, who will include children, under the wider Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. Since 2010, more than 180,000 children have been granted settlement, giving them the right to remain in the UK permanently, through our routes for children and families. These are not insubstantial numbers.
I also reassure the House that the Home Office has regular meetings with a range of children’s charities and advocacy groups in order to understand children’s needs and ensure that there are ways of meeting them—the Children’s Society in particular but also Barnardo’s, Save the Children and other smaller groups that are in contact with these young people.
I turn to the issue of the fees that the immigration system charges for those who want to come to the UK, whether as visitors or as workers, and for those seeking to make their stay in the UK permanent. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, and other noble Lords raised these important issues. Again, I want to make some general observations. It is essential that we have a sustainable and well-resourced border, immigration and citizenship system that is fair to all who use it and who are affected by it—both issues that my noble friend Lord Kirkhope raised in his contribution.
Income from fees charged for visas and for immigration and nationality applications plays a vital role in such a system and in minimising any additional burden on the taxpayer. It is for that reason that the fees for any individual application are likely to be in excess of the cost of processing an individual application. To put it simply, the fee for an individual application not only pays for the cost of that application but also makes a contribution to the wider cost of operating the border and citizenship system—for example, the Border Force officers who staff the desks at ports and airports. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said he understood the case for charging.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
Would the Minister explain why it is relevant to the cost of these children getting citizenship, when they have lived their entire lives in this country, to pay for the borders when they have probably never crossed them?
Baroness Manzoor
I will come to that point in a moment. The noble Lord makes a very relevant point.
As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said he understood the case for charging. It is only right that immigration fees should contribute to funding an effective and secure immigration system to support the prosperity and security of the UK. This approach, which has been in place since 2004, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, herself acknowledged, was endorsed by Parliament through the enactment of the Immigration Act 2014 and in previous primary legislation, which the 2014 Act replaced.
I shall put this into context. To reset fees for child registration so that they cover just the costs associated with processing an individual application—a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven—would reduce fees to below the level that they were in 2007 and reduce the amount of funding that the Home Office has available to fund the immigration system by about £25 million to £30 million per annum. However, I take fully on board the other points that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, made in relation to this.
I turn to the issue of child registration fees. Let me be clear at the outset that, far from wanting children and young people who regard this country as their home to leave, the Government strongly encourage them to make appropriate applications to make their stay here lawful. The most compelling reason for this is that these children are at risk—at risk of being exploited by adults and of being led into unofficial work that is neither safe nor properly rewarded, and without proper status they could easily be led to look to the wrong social groups for support. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, alluded to this.
Stalkers: Electronic Tagging
Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Manzoor
Baroness Manzoor
I will clarify what I said to the previous question. I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said: there needs to be much more joined-up thinking about electronic tagging. Indeed, this is what the Government are doing. It may be necessary to have primary legislation to ensure that electronic tagging can take place. What I meant by voluntary is that, at the moment, the Met can ask both the perpetrator and the victim if they wish to be tagged.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I do not think that the noble Baroness answered the question from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. Will it be possible for the police to have real-time monitoring or will it be subcontracted to a third party—when, inevitably, the notification that a stalker is close to somebody will come much later?
Baroness Manzoor
The short answer is that I am not clear about outsourcing. It is right to say that, when police forces have the funding available, how they carry out that particular activity will be a matter for them. I will write to the noble Lord to clarify that situation.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Manzoor(11 years ago)
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Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, I should start by saying that I am very sorry that I was not able to speak at Second Reading. However, as I am keen to make a contribution, I hope that the Committee will excuse and indulge a new girl. My noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, who has added his name to this amendment, has asked me to apologise for his being out of the country.
My noble friend Lord Lester was, of course, the author of the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007, which has been such a huge success in using the family courts in a sensitive way to address a serious and complicated problem that particularly affects young British Asian girls, women and boys. I pay tribute to him and other noble Lords who have worked so hard on this issue over the years.
Amendment 14 comes from the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Bill. It requires the Secretary of State to report annually on the effectiveness of the criminalisation of forced marriage. This is only right if we are to ensure that the law has been effective and to aid transparency.
Along with the JCHR, I understand the Government’s reasons for criminalising forced marriage but am concerned about whether criminalisation is a step too far and whether this is the most effective method for dealing with this issue. One needs only to look at the case of female genital mutilation to see that criminalisation is not always sufficient. As the JCHR report points out, there has not been a successful prosecution for female genital mutilation in 28 years—although I take my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s point and am not quite sure what that shows. Can the Minister explain why the Government believe that the criminalisation of forced marriage will be different?
It is very important that nothing is done to undermine the effectiveness of the 2007 Act in enabling the victim to apply to the family courts to obtain a forced marriage protection order. I am concerned that if a young child knows that her parents may be criminalised as a result of such protection, she will be alarmed by the involvement of the police and the criminal courts, as well as by the publicity and the dishonour to her family that the stigma of a criminal offence will bring. Invariably, it will affect, in negative ways, not only the victim but other siblings and family members not party to the forced marriage decision. I hope the Minister can assure the Committee that the civil protection route will remain the preferred way forward and that clear guidance will be given to the CPS and the police that everything should be done to use the family courts for civil protection first and that the criminal process will be used only as a last resort.
Even if the Minister can reassure me on both those points—he has already gone a long way in this discussion to show the Government’s commitment—I believe there remains a real need to monitor the effect of criminalisation to ensure that we can evaluate the progress being made. If the Minister is minded to accept my proposal, the annual report should include, for example, the number of cases going to the family court, to allow benchmarking, the age, sex and ethnic origin of the victims, the number of cases sent to the CPS, the number of people convicted, and what financial or other aid has been given to the victim, including accommodation and legal aid to support individuals through the criminal court process. I also look forward to seeing the Government develop these ideas in their response to the JCHR. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain what steps the department will take, if it is unable to accept the proposals in my amendment for an annual report, to ensure that the effect of criminalisation is kept under review so that, if there are unintended consequences, they are identified quickly and can be dealt with.
Finally, I believe that it is important that we also look at other approaches, including working internationally, and do not just focus on criminalising the practice as the only way forward. As the Forced Marriage Unit knows well, victims can be taken to Pakistan, India or Bangladesh and coerced into so-called marriages. They may be victims of rape and bodily injury; if they do not comply, they may be victims of what are disgracefully called honour killings or of forced suicides. Tackling these issues through working with international partners is, in many ways, more important than criminalisation here in the UK, as we already have laws in place in relation to this heinous crime. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that criminalisation will form only part of our approach to tackling forced marriage, and that Ministers will continue to work internationally to put an end to the practice across the world and ensure a more joined-up approach to the criminal justice system in the UK on this issue. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, has put forward an interesting amendment. The principle behind it, that Governments ought to report to Parliament regularly on the effectiveness of pieces of legislation, is one that I am sure that we would all wish to see more widely spread. However, I have a reservation about the terms in which the amendment has been put.
The noble Baroness said that she has reservations over whether criminalisation will have the desired effect. She implied, and I believe that all of your Lordships would agree, that criminalisation is not a panacea as far as this problem is concerned; it will not solve all the issues. Therefore, I would hope that if we were to receive a report to Parliament, it would look at not just the effectiveness of criminalisation but also at the effectiveness of the totality of policies on forced marriage.
My noble friend Lady Thornton moved an amendment earlier that would have broadened the scope of this and placed obligations on various public authorities in terms of the actions that they should take. I hope that the report requested by the noble Baroness would look not just at whether criminalisation makes a difference for good or ill, but also at whether all the other activities that the Government and public agencies undertake to try to eliminate forced marriage are effective. I think that that would be very valuable in terms of taking these matters forward.