Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right. This is an appalling abuse of young girls and we should ensure that we deal with it as such. It is right that we should not allow cultural sensitivities or concerns to get in the way of dealing with what is, at root, a crime.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

5. How many sponsor notifications of potentially bogus higher education students there have been since 2010; and how many have been actioned to date.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

UK Visas and Immigration received 315,598 notifications between 2010 and 2013 from all Tier 4 sponsors, of which 299,586 were actioned in the same period. All notifications receive an initial consideration within 28 days of receipt.

[Steve McCabe]

May I wish the Minister well in his new post? The issue of bogus students figured strongly in his recent Demos speech, even if it did not get quite the same prominence in the press. Of the backlog of 153,000 notifications that the chief inspector has identified, how many have now been attended to? When I next ask him this question, will that backlog figure have gone up or come down?

[James Brokenshire]

As I said, all notifications received from sponsors receive an initial consideration within 28 days of receipt. Notifications can be for a number of different reasons, whether that is failure to enrol or whether there is something serious that may mean students, or their dependants, have their leave curtailed. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am looking closely at sponsorship and whether the thresholds for sponsors on the failure rates for students that they put forward, are appropriate. I assure him that I am looking very closely at this issue.