Immigration: Home Office Procedures

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I am afraid that I do not know. You will have to wait and see.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I express an interest as a lawyer whose firm does a lot of immigration and asylum work, and I preface my question by saying that what I have to ask has no effect on the numbers coming in. As my noble friend the Minister will know, the previous Government tried their best to simplify the procedure for those applying for immigration and asylum and to move to a points-based system. The situation now, however, is that the questionnaire that applicants have to fill in is 60 pages of technical, concentrated stuff. If they get any aspect of it wrong, they fail. Legal aid is being withdrawn for asylum. Will my noble friend at least review the questionnaire process in order to simplify and clarify it?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, we should try to make these procedures as comprehensible, simple and clear as we can, consistent with having to acquire the correct information. We will see what we can do.