Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am very aware of the importance of this issue, and I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that a strategy has been in place for some time. For example, the Olympic project team at UKBA has carried out over 8,000 identity assurance checks on contractors and workers on the Olympic site and have arrested 20 people as a result in the current financial year alone. In total, the team have carried out over 60,000 ID assurance checks and made over 300 arrests since 2008. The kind of proactive strategy that the hon. Gentleman wants is very much in operation..

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. On this question, the wish of the right hon. Gentleman might or might not be satisfied.

[Nicholas Soames]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in the Olympic year, the work of the border agency will be of the first importance? Does he agree, since the agency is likely to come in for some stick later on this afternoon, that its individual officers do a remarkable, vital and very important job for this country, and that that needs to be officially recognised?

[Damian Green]

rose—

Metropolitan Police Service

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

None whatsoever.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Labour Government’s failure to do anything about the Information Commissioner’s report in 2006 was compounded by the fact that they backed down under the lobbying of the Society of Editors over clause 77 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which means that a fine of £150 is the average fine for someone found guilty of stealing personal information? Will she review the section and see whether the offence should be made punishable by imprisonment?

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point and reminds us that at stake are some very serious issues, not just about the operation of the police and of the press, but in relation to personal information. I will certainly look at the issue he raises. As I said, the trade in personal information was raised previously by the Information Commissioner as something that should be looked at, and we should take that forward.

Student Visas

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We have already introduced some English language requirements for people coming here to marry somebody in the UK, but the English language requirement relates to the postgraduate student who will be at university, not to a spouse entering as the dependant. It has been put to me that there are potentially a small number of cases of people who are extremely bright, but who do not have the correct level of English. My answer to that is twofold. First, it will be open to those people to go through a pathway course to the university. However, secondly, we will retain a small margin of flexibility where academic registrars have an individual student who is particularly brilliant but whose English they do not think will improve to the necessary level within the time scale required.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

May I congratulate the Home Secretary and her Minister of State on this important and long overdue measure to put right years of neglect in the system? After the system has had time to settle down, will she consult the Migration Advisory Committee and ask for any recommendations it might have on how to tighten up on bogus students?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for his welcome for the statement. We are asking the Migration Advisory Committee generally to look annually at the immigration arrangements that we are putting in place, but it will be consulted, as I made clear in my statement, if we find that the number of students staying on for post-study work rises unexpectedly and significantly. We would ask the MAC to look into such a situation and to determine whether any abuse was taking place, and that could include the possibility of a limit.

Controlling Migration

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because she gives me the opportunity to say that we will be making initial changes to the settlement proposals, but that we also intend to consult more fully on exactly how we will introduce changes to settlement more widely. The initial changes will relate to the language requirements, but we will also look at the salary levels required for a sponsor to bring somebody in for settlement, and at the criminality thresholds. Those are the immediate issues that we will consider. I also intend to ask the Migration Advisory Committee to do some more work on changing the settlement requirements in the longer term.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I congratulate the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration on this admirable programme and the excellent start made. May I press her a little further on the breaking of the link between settlement and people coming here to work temporarily? At what stage does she expect to introduce the measures necessary to achieve that?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and echo his thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration for his sterling work. We are keen to look at these other routes, particularly the settlement route, as well as at the other aspects, and over the coming months, as I indicated in response to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), we will be asking the Migration Advisory Committee to consider the matter so that we can introduce the changes. I hesitate to put an absolute date on that, but I hope that we will be able to announce something next year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The right hon. Gentleman is always energetic in pursuing individual cases for his constituents, and I will of course look closely at that one, as he knows I always do.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Department’s work on this difficult matter? Does he agree that one of the most important steps he could take is to break the link between people coming to work here and people’s ability to settle here? That would very substantially reduce numbers.

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend has done distinguished and sterling work on immigration with the all-party group on balanced migration in the past few years. I hope to reassure him by saying that in the speech I will make at the Royal Commonwealth Society this evening, I will make the point that we need to look at all routes to migration—not only the work route, but the study route and other routes that lead to settlement—so that we can achieve not an immigration policy that is discussed in the usual way, when we ask whether it is tougher or more liberal, but a smarter immigration policy. That is what this country needs.