Martyn Day
Main Page: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)Department Debates - View all Martyn Day's debates with the Home Office
(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
I remind the hon. Lady of the numbers: 33,663 UK tests were invalid and a further 22,476 were questionable, so we are talking about 55,000 tests. The independent expert who carried out the review found that the likelihood of false matches was less than 1%. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, where individuals have wrongly been accused of cheating, it is important that they be allowed to find a means of redress, but it is absolutely not the case that this is part of a hostile environment. These numbers are part of systematic criminal fraud.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for securing this urgent question following the work that we on the APPG on TOEIC have done. I know how frustrating the process is for the innocent victims inadvertently caught up in this. Professor French’s statement that false matches were less than 1% has been quoted, but he told the APPG just last month that that statement was valid only
“if the results that ETS had given the Home Office were correct”,
and that information is seriously in question. We need to look at that again. People need to be brought out of limbo. They have waited for the Home Secretary’s statement to the House, which did not come; we have had 306 words tucked away in a written statement. We need to know when that limbo will end for them.
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary did not “tuck away” 306 words in a written ministerial statement; it was published yesterday. My right hon. Friend said that he would update the House before recess, and he has. He has also been very clear that we want to go further. That is absolutely a priority for me and my right hon. Friend, or indeed whoever our successors may be. We will take this up as a matter of urgency with the new Prime Minister.