UK Visas and Immigration

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I want to talk about a single, shocking and very recent case of the American organist, Cameron Carpenter, a musician with a global reputation, whose performances include one at the Proms here in London in 2012. According to his testimony, which he put on his Facebook page, he arrived at Birmingham Airport at 10.30 at night on Monday last week to prepare for a concert on Wednesday 19 March at Birmingham Symphony Hall. Tuesday was to be his rehearsal time. He intended to come in on the permitted paid engagement scheme. My understanding is that UK Visas and Immigration officials at Birmingham did not know about the PPE scheme. He was held for seven hours by the security firm Tascor in a brightly lit room with interviews and fingerprinting during the night, and at 7.05 in the morning was escorted by armed guard on to the first plane back to Berlin.

At this stage, I think, most people would have given up. However, Cameron Carpenter is a resourceful man, who was—and I quote from his blog—

“consulting all the way”,

through his flight,

“with some of the best management the world has to offer”.

He goes on to say:

“What would become of artists not so fortunate as I am to have such representation, I fearfully wonder”.

Yes, what indeed?

What happened next was that, after landing in Berlin, he had a shower and caught the next plane to Heathrow. At Heathrow he was also detained for a shorter period but finally allowed in on PPE, as, of course, he should have been in the first place.

To my mind, there are three issues here, which are also of more general relevance. The first and most serious is that this is more than the heavy-handed treatment which we know occurs and has indeed been meted out to other artists visiting the UK. This is quite simply abuse. Cameron Carpenter arrived late at night, and was subsequently subjected to all-night sleep deprivation. The question has to be asked why a security force, Tascor, is involved in such circumstances at all. This person is clearly not a terrorist—and indeed it should not matter whether he was in the right or not. This is abuse that should not be happening to anyone who has been detained. Has this become a part of Britain where we have thrown away the principle of innocent until proven guilty, where, as long as you remain detained and beyond, you are treated as a criminal? Well, the answer is, of course, yes.

In my estimation this is unacceptable, and it raises questions about accountability. The Minister may not be able to give me the answer now, but I would request a Written Answer, placed in the Library about who is precisely responsible for what and accountable to whom, including Tascor’s relationship to the new immigration bodies at each stage of such a process as I have described. This is an important matter that needs to be sorted out urgently.

Secondly, there is the question of competence—or rather incompetence. The Minister may recall the debate we had just over three years ago, which he answered, where a real concern was expressed about the repeated poor treatment of artists visiting or trying to visit this country. The Manifesto Club, English PEN and others worked hard to have a change in the system, and we were pleased that the Government responded to these concerns with the introduction of PPE outside the points-based system in 2012. But this was two years ago. By April 2012, UKBA officials at every single port of entry should have been fully apprised of the scheme. I ask the Minister when border officials will be properly informed about PPE.

Finally, there is the matter of our reputation on the world stage. That a world-renowned artist has been subjected to this form of treatment is an absolute scandal in itself, although Cameron Carpenter’s experience, unfortunately, does not exist in isolation. As we know, there have been numerous incidents in recent years, including the case of the Sachal Jazz Ensemble, which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, raised in an Oral Question in December. But there is also a basic, bureaucratic stupidity about this, which UK Visas and Immigration must address. A couple of minutes on Google will tell anyone who Cameron Carpenter is and what his status is.

In the Government’s favour—and I am very grateful in this respect for the conversations I have had with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, and those conversations that I and others have had with the Home Office—I appreciate that we are in a period of transition. I hope very much that the Government can promise that there will be significant change for the better, and that this kind of unacceptable treatment will be consigned to history.