Immigration (Biometric Registration) (Amendment) Regulations 2012

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Grand Committee

We are satisfied that the biometric residence permit scheme complies with United Kingdom legislation on human rights and discrimination, provides legitimate migrants with convenient evidence of their immigration status and right to work, and facilitates access to services. Research with biometric residence permit holders has indicated that they find them effective and have confidence in them. That is what the regulations seek to achieve and I commend them to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble kinsman for his careful explanation of the effect of these regulations: namely, that all non-EEA country nationals applying for leave to remain for more than six months under any category of the immigration rules, or outside the rules from 29 February, will have to apply for a biometric immigration document. We do not object to this proposal, but there is a problem with its implementation that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, and I hope that we will hear from my noble kinsman what the Government are doing to solve it.

The Public Enquiry Office network, where biometric measurements are taken, is not coping with current levels of demand and the situation is getting worse. At a meeting on 13 December last with officials of the UKBA, including the temporary acting deputy director of the facing teams asylum and business immigration section, and the temporary acting assistant director of the PEO, ILPA expressed grave concern about current processing delays in the PEO, pointing out that it was not meeting its service timelines even though applicants were paying a premium fee. The explanation given for the delays was even more worrying. The UKBA has 22 vacancies and is having difficulty filling the positions even in this era of high unemployment. Perhaps my noble kinsman will say what steps are being taken to ensure that the policies for recruitment, training and promotion within the UKBA will be adjusted to meet staffing needs.

Secondly, I understand that there are severe problems with part of the biometric enrolment IT system, which have led to adverse effects on the appointments system and on processing applications. Will my noble friend place a note in the Library of the House setting out the details of the IT contract for the work of the PEO, including the name of the contractor, the cost of the contract, the target dates, the penalty clauses and any remedial action being taken to deal with the problem? He mentioned the external organisation with which the UK is working to implement the system. It would be useful to have further details on all organisations involved, including the IT system contractor. Surely there ought to be enough experience in the IT industry to make the development of biometric identity systems a matter of routine. I hope that we can have an assurance that it will be fully operational before the extension now being proposed goes live on 29 February, but in a letter dated as recently as 12 January, the UKBA acknowledge that at the main Croydon site,

“the demand for PEO appointments is currently greater than our capacity”.

The letter adds that increased staffing levels are expected in the summer, without explaining why nothing is being done until then.

At some point in the not-specified future, the capacity to capture biometrics is being extended to the Post Office. My noble friend said that that would be some time in the spring but it would be useful if he could give further information about where and when these facilities will be available. Also, what is the earliest date for an appointment at the Croydon PEO for an application submitted today? What does he expect the earliest date to be for an appointment requested for somebody in the group now being required to have a biometric document for the first time on 1 March—or are they being allowed to lodge applications already for some point after 1 March?

On fees, the fee for a married tier 1 general worker and spouse applying together in person for an extension of leave to remain is £2,150. That is £600 more than if the application is made by post. Many people are prepared to pay these enormous sums because they do not want to risk sending in their passports and having them lost. At the moment I am dealing with a case where the holder’s passport was returned by the UKBA to the wrong address. When he made a special journey to that address to try to collect it, he found that the former tenant had moved to an unknown location and the new tenant was not able to help him about the former tenant’s whereabouts. Needless to say, the UKBA disclaimed responsibility for their error in sending the passport to the wrong address. Cases like that make people understandably reluctant to trust the UKBA to look after such an important document.

Finally, is this situation yet another example showing that, as I have pointed out in previous debates, the UKBA is not fit for purpose? It was a prime candidate for the bonfire of the quangos, and the right way to improve its accountability and reduce its overheads would be to subsume its functions in those of its parent department, the Home Office—as I have suggested before without getting an answer. I hope that my noble friend will be able to respond to that suggestion this afternoon but, if not, that he will kindly undertake to write to me about this and the several other points I have raised in the debate this afternoon.