UK Visas and Immigration: Customer Charges

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, it is a service, and many people believe it is a good service. International call and email charges are levied to fund the commercial contract, and the new service is delivered at a much lower cost to UKVI than previously. Before 2014, there were 32 centres fragmented across the country. The new contract offers a modern, streamlined service which service users find helpful.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

Why do not the Government run this inquiry service directly themselves instead of outsourcing it? Presumably the claimed difficulties over commercial confidentiality would then not arise over answering questions about the income arising from the charges made and the cost of providing the service. The reality is that the arrangements into which the Government have entered deny the public information and, conveniently for the Government, reduce their accountability.

[Baroness Manzoor]

I do not agree. There is accountability for the service. UKVI set up clear quality standards to monitor the service offered. I hope that the noble Lord will be pleased to hear that 98% of the targets for quality, timeliness and responses to issues are met. I will give an indication of the number of cases that come in: the volume of calls to the contact centres exceeds 100,000 people making inquiries per month. That is an awful lot of people wanting to come to the UK who are prepared to pay for the service.