Julian Huppert
Main Page: Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat - Cambridge)Department Debates - View all Julian Huppert's debates with the Home Office
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Harper
My response to the hon. Gentleman, who takes a very close interest in these matters, is similar to the one that I gave to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). He is right: in the past financial year, those processing times increased. We have split family applications for spouses from, so to speak, straightforward applications, and we are making decisions on them much more quickly. They had been grouped with applications that were taking a great deal of time. The hon. Gentleman will see in the latest figures that we have made a great improvement, and I hope to see more of that in future.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
The Minister clearly has a personal commitment to getting waiting times down—I thank him for his recent visit to Cambridge to see some of problems there—but will he be able to change the culture within the new borders agency? After all, the permanent secretary, Mark Sedwill, said:
“Most of us will still be doing the same job in the same place with the same colleagues for the same boss.”
We want the Minister to succeed, but will he be able to?