House of Commons Hansard Debates for 7 Jun 1993

Clause 10

Visitors, short-term and prospective students and their dependants

Lords amendment : No. 10, in page 7, line 35, at end insert : ("(3AA) The Secretary of State shall appoint a person, not being an officer of his, to monitor, in such manner as the Secretary of State may determine, refusals of entry clearance in cases where there is, by virtue of subsection (3A) above, no right of appeal ; and the person so appointed shall make an annual report on the discharge of his functions to the Secretary of State who shall lay a copy of it before each House of Parliament." ").-- [Mr. Charles Wardle.] Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Allen : I beg to move amendment (a) to the Lords amendment, leave out from "appoint" to "monitor" in line 3 and insert, "the Commission for Racial Equality (hereinafter referred to as "the Commission")".

Madam Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient also to discuss amendments (b) to (g) to the Lords amendment, plus Government amendment (j) to the Lords amendment, and Lords amendment No. 11.

Mr. Allen : The Conservatives are in a terrible mess and that would normally give some pleasure to the Opposition. However, when the Conservatives make a mess they are not the people who suffer, but people outside. When they are incompetent on the economy, my constituents lose jobs or businesses, and when the Government stupidly introduce a daft experiment to pay pensions into bank accounts, it is pensioners who become isolated while postmasters go bust.

When the Home Secretary needed to impress his Back Benchers, he bolted an anti-immigration clause on to what is essentially an asylum Bill. The relatives and friends of black and Asian British people will thus find that, virtually alone in our legal system, they will be denied the right to appeal against the wrongful denial of a visitor's visa. Last year, 3,845 such wrongful decisions were overturned because people had the right to appeal. That is the only reason for those decisions being changed. It was not because of any magnanimity by the Minister or the Home Secretary. The right of appeal has been abolished, and if those 3,845 people are wrongfully denied right of access to

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this country, they will have no redress. By abolishing the right of appeal the Government are acquiescing to the continuation of wrongful decisions.

The Government need to play to several audiences and the amendments and proceedings in the Lords and elsewhere are an elaborate pantomime to try to convince the ethnic minority British that the proposals to abolish the right of appeal will not hurt them. A package of transparent concessions was offered in Committee, but it was laughed out of court. It was tragic and almost amusing to watch the Minister as he pretended to be dragged into making concessions to his Back Benchers, most of whom spent their time in Committee studying their correspondence and other papers. Suddenly they sprang to life to gain marvellous concessions which nobody believes have any substance. Having failed to carry the day with those, the Government are now offering monitoring in place of a right of appeal. But not each case or each refusal of a visa will be monitored, nor can monitoring be initiated by someone who has been denied a visa. A minute and random sample will be monitored, the exercise will be unknown to the applicant and there will be no possible redress for errors. I hope that no one in any minority community in Great Britain will be gullible enough to be bought off by such flimsy and obvious manoeuvring. When the Tory begging bowl is passed around in the Asian business community, I hope that it will be greeted with the question, "How did you vote about the right of appeal being abolished for visitors ?"

The Government have attempted to wangle their way out of the problem by promoting what they would term a friendly amendment in the Lords. It is worth considering why the amendment was proposed. The Government argued that there is an overwhelming need to end the appeal system, which we have had for 21 years and under which people have applied for visitor or student visas. In Committee, the Minister claimed that clause 12, which abolishes the right of appeal for those refused entry clearance as visitors, students intending to study for less than six months, proposed students and their dependants, is necessary to prevent the immigration appeal system from getting clogged up and thus preventing genuine appeal cases from being heard. The Opposition have never accepted that argument and its policy implications.

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Lords amendment No. 10 proposes that the Secretary of State shall appoint an individual to oversee and review

"in such a manner as the Secretary of State may determine, refusals of entry clearance in cases where there is no right of appeal". Furthermore, the appointed person

"shall make an annual report on the discharge of his functions to the Secretary of State who shall lay a copy of it before each House of Parliament."

I have a number of criticisms of the role, responsibilities and powers of the appointed person. The proposal is a weak attempt by the Government to cover up the injustice that they will serve on many people in the United Kingdom and their relatives abroad by abolishing the right of appeal.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) : My hon. Friend may or may not know that for some time I represented

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appellants almost on a daily basis. I believe that I was the person involved in the very first appeal, which was heard in July 1970, so our system has been in existence for almost 23 years.

What is wrong is not merely that the right of appeal is being abolished. As my hon. Friend said, that right allowed the tribunal to find that the decisions taken by adjudicators in a number of cases were wrong. Is he aware that, when the entry clearance officer is deciding whether to accept or reject an application, he will bear in mind the fact that he will have to justify the decision if an appeal is lodged? He will have to write an explanatory statement, which will go before an adjudicator in the event of an appeal.

Once the right of appeal is removed, the entry clearance officer will have no fear of what may happen as a result of his decision, because it will not be possible to challenge his decision in any meaningful way.

Mr. Allen : My hon. Friend brings all his experience to bear in pinpointing that important matter. The problem is not merely that decisions in a large number of applications have been rejected and overturned on appeal, but that the checking mechanism of the appeal system, which provides a stimulus to entry clearance officers to get the decision right in the first place, will be removed. The figures on that do not appear in any statistics, because that threat of appeal if people get the decision wrong exists only as an internal policing role.

Of the 13,882 people who appealed on refusal of entry clearance abroad, 3,845 had their appeals allowed. It is outrageous that the Government are prepared to see that those who are initially wrongfully refused entry to the United Kingdom can be left with no recourse to any further consideration of their cases. The Government's proposal of a monitor is inadequate for the appeals procedure. However, we are aware that the monitoring process will be steamrollered through in the normal manner this evening, so it is incumbent on us to make efforts to strengthen the monitoring process, as well as criticising the reason why we need that process--the abolition of the right of appeal.

Our amendments set out proposals to give teeth to the monitor. Initially, they are aimed at ensuring greater independence for the monitor from the Secretary of State. To start with, how independent can a monitor be if he is appointed by the Secretary of State? Our amendment would ensure that the monitor is appointed by the Commission for Racial Equality. The appointee would then have a truly independent role and he would not have his role of independent scrutineer determined by the Secretary of State.

The CRE appointee would determine which cases he investigated and would have access to the files necessary for a proper investigation of refused cases. We believe that the CRE would be the appropriate organisation to appoint the monitor and such an arrangement would ensure that the body that has experience in monitoring the actions of immigration authorities would be able to oversee the workings of the entry clearance system. Its record, and the work that it has done, speak for themselves. It would bring an element of independence to the process, thereby ensuring that all communities could have faith that the process was working on an impartial basis.

That raises the question of adequate resources. The monitor that the CRE chooses must have a properly staffed and resourced office. It is not clear whether the -up that a monitor must have if he is to be effective. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that he will have that.

The number of cases that a one-man or one-woman operation could monitor would be minuscule. With one person attempting to dip into the various files and reviews, only a tiny number of cases would be reviewed. Even with this unambitious proposal of monitoring, we should set a target of at least 10 per cent. of refusals being examined by the monitor and his staff. Anything less would render the exercise even more transparently an exercise in camouflage of the abolition of the right of appeal than it is already.

In carrying out his responsibilities, the monitor should, if necessary, be allowed to call witnesses before him to enable him to determine the reasons for refusal of entry clearances. He should have the power to refer any such refusal to the Secretary of State for reconsideration. If he is to be effective, it is essential that the monitor is able to contact those who are refused as individuals and get full access to the notes and files.

The Minister has promised that people will be sent a more detailed refusal letter, but it is not quite clear how detailed that refusal letter will be. There may be notes of an interview between the entry clearance officer and the refused visitor, as referrred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). Those notes will be set out from the entry clearance officer's point of view, and it seems unlikely that any documents presented to him will be kept. There will be no explanatory statement setting out his thought processes and, more importantly, nothing from the visitor's point of view.

In appeals that succeed, the visitor can usually explain misunderstandings or misinterpretations in the first interview or even give a more full explanation than that recorded by the entry clearance officer. However, as the Bill stands, that information will not be available to the monitor, so his decision will be given after only a cursory examination of some of the papers. We could not readily accept that. Even if, on the information available, the monitor believes that a decision is wrong, there will be no redress for the individual visitor. He will not even know that his case has been reviewed and he will not be informed of the outcome or told that entry clearance will be granted in future. Because he will not know about any review, he cannot make any representations.

If, magically, on that brief random sample the monitor decides that injustice has been done, there will be no way of redressing it. We are not talking about an odd problem or two--last year almost 4,000 individuals won their appeals. This year, people will not even know whether their cases are being reviewed. The Government's proposals will simply perpetuate injustices unless adequate information and access are provided. Indeed, the very fact that an inadequate monitoring system exists may make the position worse. The courts may feel that due process has been gone through, which will undermine the concept of judicial review. The monitor's report, especially if it is favourable, could be used to support any suggestion that decisions are generally fair. That will make it even harder for individual visitors to contest unjust refusals.

It is worth repeating that currently 20 per cent. of refusals are found to be in error on appeal. I make no apology for repeating the analogy that I used some time ago on Second Reading--imagine what would happen if there was a 20 per cent. error rate in other areas of the civil

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service, perhaps in the income tax returns of hon. Members or their constituents, or perhaps in social security claims. It would be absolutely intolerable.

The very fact that the scale of the problem has been highlighted is due to the appeals system. People can appeal, and we can find out what mistakes have been made. That will no longer be available and the monitor will not be able to overturn even the most blatantly wrong decisions. I hope that the House agrees that that is neither acceptable nor just.

Our amendments would ensure that the monitor reports to the House not once a year, as the Government propose, but monthly. That may appear to be a heavy burden, but as the monitor will have very few powers the least that we should do is to ensure that he regularly alerts the House to the high number of applications being wrongfully refused. Hon. Members can then debate the issue in the House. Of course, this is not really the place where appeals against wrongful refusal should be heard, but if it is all that is available, hon. Members should have the necessary information provided monthly. I repeat that we are talking not about the odd case, but about at least 4,000 cases a year. There would certainly be enough cases to keep hon. Members chewing over the monitor's report each month. We need to scrutinise the system as thoroughly as possible.

The amendments would broaden the scope of the monitor's investigations, which is crucial to improving his proposed role. He should investigate refusals of entry and refusals of entry clearance. We want the monitor to review and investigate the rejection of both and the latter is included in Lord's amendment No. 10. Refusals of leave to enter at airports and ports, or any refusals of students or prospective students, would not then be excluded, as they currently are, from the monitor's remit.

We are conscious of the need to give the monitor teeth. We have realised for some time that the Government's intention behind this proposal is merely to give some respectability to the withdrawal of the right of appeal for those refused entry clearance. We give the right of appeal to a common murderer, but not to a mother seeking to enter this country to be present at, for example, a family funeral, christening or other religious ceremony. In the Government's view, they are not worthy of retaining the right of appeal.

6.45 pm

The plan to conceal the abolition of the right of appeal has not worked. I call upon the Government to accept the amendments and give the monitor some genuine powers and a genuine role. If the Government do not do that, they stand accused and condemned of just carrying out a public relations exercise to limit the political damage that they have inflicted not just on themselves, but on many of our innocent fellow citizens, by abolishing the right of appeal.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris) : I must inform the House that amendment No. 10 involves privilege.

Mr. Corbyn : Over the years, I have had a great deal of experience in dealing with individual cases of immigration law and refusals of entry clearance. It takes up an incredible amount of the time of any hon. Member representing a constituency, as I do, which has people from all parts of the world. I shall not go into great detail,

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but I can tell the House of the horror and misery caused to those families who cannot be reunited because of the bureaucracy of our immigration rules.

It is fundamentally wrong that our immigration laws should be the opposite of all other presumptions of law. The presumption of guilt is on the individual, there is a lack of right of appeal, a lack of natural justice in dealing with the case and the Secretary of State is judge, jury gaoler, executioner and deportation officer. He has total power over the lives of a large number of people.

The history of the clause with which we are dealing lies in the way that good and expert immigration lawyers have, over the years, consistently challenged the nonsense of the operation of existing immigration law. They have had a number of successful judicial review cases and have also taken cases to the European Court. The Government are attempting to raise the threshold for judicial review in an attempt to evade any accountability for the decisions made by entry clearance officers. Although the Lords amendments do not go anything like as far as I would wish, at least they provide the basis for monitoring and examining what is happening. That has to be a slight improvement on what the Government initially wanted.

We must deal with a number of issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) said, those seeking entry clearance currently have a right of appeal if the decision goes against them. The appeal is heard and a decision made, albeit often in unfortunate circumstances because frequently those people have already been removed from this country and have lost their ability to return. I understand that in one year, one third of all the cases appealed are successful--yet the Secretary of State wants to remove that right of appeal.

The proceedings in Committee were farcical. It was obvious that Afro- Caribbean and Asian families resident in this country were concerned and angry at the prospect of visitors being unable to come here for happy family events such as birthdays, weddings or the birth of a child, or for sad family events such as funerals. They were alarmed by the prospects of the removal of the right of appeal and the unfettered power that that would give to officers in British missions overseas.

In an attempt to get out of that mess, the Secretary of State contacted the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Deva), who willingly went along with the nonsense of allowing a second application rather than a proper right of appeal. Presumably the hon. Gentleman presented that as some kind of victory and indication of his parliamentary skills, but the opposite is true. It made an appalling situation even worse. It was a travesty of justice in the first place, and it makes a total mockery of sense of justice to allow a second bite of the cherry if one can afford to pay for it. It is time that was made clear and put on the record.

As to the right of those from Somalia to enter the country at this time, I have been contacted by solicitors representing a number of Somali citizens who seek family reunion. As the Minister knows, if a family gains full asylum status in this country, family reunion is automatic. Increasingly, the Department is both to grant asylum to anyone. I am not sure of the process through which one must go to persuade the Home Office that one is worthy of asylum.

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Instead, the Home Office grants the lesser right of exceptional leave to remain, which means a four-year delay until such time as the application for family reunion can be considered. That is a long time in the life of a child, and is totally unjustified and unfair if the Minister knows all along that the Home Office will have to grant entry to the rest of the family at some time, so that it can be reunited.

Persons who are granted exceptional leave to remain in the country must pay the usual visa fees, which can be as much as £60 per person. Those fees are waived in respect of relatives of refugees but not of those given exceptional leave to enter. I do not understand why those persons must pay when they are granted the right of residence in this country for virtually the same reasons as relatives of refugees. It is time that the Government understood the deep anguish felt by many in this country at the way in which their relatives and friends are treated when they merely try to visit. In Committee, we warned of the implications--of the unpleasantness, and of the total lack of accountability in respect of the work done by entry clearance officers in British missions abroad.

The basic tenet of Government in a democratic society is that official decisions can be challenged at some stage. The only way that an individual can now challenge the decisions of individual immigration officers at British missions abroad or in this country is to contact a Member of Parliament. That Member of Parliament can contact a Minister, and if he does not give a satisfactory answer, the Member of Parliament can try to raise the matter in the House. That is not satisfactory, and there ought to be normal, basic rights of appeal--as there are in every other area of life.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North is attempting to improve proposals that he admits are not anyway very satisfactory. The suggestion is that just one individual will serve as a monitor. As just one constituency Member of Parliament, I cannot monitor in detail all the problems that are brought to me--and I am sure that I speak for other right hon. and hon. Members in that regard. How on earth will one individual be able adequately to monitor the situation on behalf of the Government?

The Minister has the largest private office in the whole of Whitehall, and the biggest budget. He has also the largest staff and the biggest volume of individual casework. That is because immigration law has been concocted in such a curious way. We need in its place real rights of appeal, real rights of accountability, and real rights for those who seek family reunion or who want legitimately to join relatives in this country.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North rightly pointed out, there is need also for an independent basis for the monitor. I am not happy with the idea of the Secretary of State appointing a monitor to monitor himself. I can imagine who the Secretary of State might appoint to sit at the desk in the corner of his office, whom he can tell how to monitor the work. Monthly, not annual, reports are needed, as is some form of appeal other than an appeal to the very same Secretary of State who made the original decision or on whose behalf the decision was made.

The issue will not go away. Every few years, the Government try some new means of removing the rights of those who want to join their families, friends and relatives

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in this country. We have seen various changes to immigration rules, and the curtailment of the rights of Members of Parliament and of access to judicial review and the European Court. There is now to be a lack of any form of appeal against decisions. When a totally erroneous and ludicrous decision is made, I am sure that a way will be found to have the case made the subject of judicial review--and then we shall be back on the merry-go-round. It is time to review the issue in the light of justice, equality and fair play, rather than make those affected suffer bureaucratic horrors and misery. The losers in that bureaucratic merry-go-round are the families separated by thousands of miles of sea and mountains of paperwork, and the growing children who are unable to remain with their parents, as they should rightfully do--to live happily and harmoniously. They cannot do so because of the way in which immigration law operates.

Mr. Greville Janner (Leicester, West) : I share the views so eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) but take them further. My hon. Friend said that the Government will find some way to get around ludicrous decisions, but that will not be possible. Where a ludicrous decision is made, the sufferer will be returned to wherever he or she came from, and then it will be too late to do anything. That is the basic problem of monitoring as opposed to the right of appeal.

The abolition of that right is a monstrous act for a decent country to perform. I declare a certain personal interest, in that all four of my grandparents came to this country at the end of the last century to seek asylum--whether by that term or otherwise--from the vicious miseries then imposed on Jewish people by the Tsar and his armies. As I listened to the debate, I wondered whether my grandparents would even have gained entry to this country on the terms now proposed.

If they had not done so because some official had exercised his or her power, my grandparents would have boarded another ship ; if they had the money to do so--or would have been put on another ship. Neither my revered father or I would have had the proud privilege of serving the House, whether as a Member of Parliament or as an official, or in any other capacity.

Mr. Charles Wardle : I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman is aware that we are debating the abolition of appeal against the refusal of visit visas and mandatory refusals of entry clearance. That has nothing to do with asylum applications or with appeals against the refusal of settlement applications.

Mr. Janner : The whole system of appeals should apply to everyone. My constituents complain that a relative is not allowed entry to attend a funeral--

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. What the hon. and learned Gentleman thinks is one thing but, as a lawyer, he will appreciate that the amendments are fairly tightly drawn. The hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks should remain within the bounds of the Lords amendments under consideration.

Mr. Janner : Of course I accept your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I was only responding to the Minister's intervention. I will direct my remarks with pleasure at

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clause 10, point by point--and then there can be no allegation that I am straying one inch from the path of legal propriety. Amendment No. 10 to clause 10 states :

"The Secretary of State shall appoint a person".

Why should the Secretary of State appoint the monitor? Why should the individual who is to be monitored decide who is to do the monitoring? Even with our system of appointment to Select Committees, one of which I am privileged to chair, it is not the relevant Department or Minister being monitored that appoints the members of that Committee but the Whips. They may make mistakes--for example, no woman serves on the Employment Committee. However, at least the members of Select Committees cannot be accused of being appointed by the Minister.

The Secretary of State is to appoint "a person"--one person to monitor thousands of applications. That will provide thousands of opportunities to do people harm and injustice. That person will not be "an officer of his". What good news. Thank heaven for small mercies. At least the Home Office will not be landed with a responsibility that I am sure its officials would not welcome. 7 pm

The person appointed will monitor refusals not in accordance with the interests of natural justice, but

"in such manner as the Secretary of State may determine". The Secretary of State will not only appoint the monitor, but decide the way in which that monitor will do his duty. What a travesty. The person to be put on trial will appoint the judge ; there will be no jury ; and the same person will decide the way in which the tribunal is to proceed. This is not justice, but a cover-up--an attempt to make people think that justice will be available. It is not a way of ensuring that those who come to this country have rights ; it constitutes an assurance that no such rights will exist.

The Lords amendment states :

"The Secretary of State shall appoint a person, not being an officer of his, to monitor, in such manner as the Secretary of State may determine, refusals of entry clearance".

Following such a refusal, the applicant must return to his own country, because he will have no right of appeal. The refusal will then be monitored.

Mr. Charles Wardle : That is right.

Mr. Janner : But how is the monitoring to be carried out? I wonder whether the Minister has ever stood beside such people and watched the way in which they work. Of course, there are good ones and bad ones.

Mr. Wardle : Yes.

Mr. Janner : No doubt the Minister has observed such people since taking his present post. Of course, they would not have known who he was ; they would have carried out their work in the ordinary way, because the Minister would have appeared incognito.

Can the Minister imagine what it would be like to be a relative of one of my constituents, coming over from India to attend a wedding, and to be told, "Goodbye--out you go. One day, someone will monitor the refusal of your application, and make a report a year later. Her Majesty's Government will consider the report--in such manner as they will determine--and then decide how to deal with it. Eventually, it will be laid before the House." Of course, the Government will have a big enough majority to ram through anything they like, just as they will be able to ram

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through this rubbish tonight--unless there are enough by-elections to change things : that cannot happen soon enough for me. Refusals will be monitored only when there is no right of appeal, "and the person so appointed shall make an annual report on the discharge of his functions".

What does that actually mean? The report need not be made at the end of the year ; it can be made six months later, by which time everyone who has been refused entry and has gone home will probably be dead. As Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead : certainly, the amendment is a dead measure which will breathe no life into this corpse of a Bill.

Mr. Allen : My hon. and learned Friend is being characteristically generous--even to the Government--in assuming that each refusal will be monitored. Unfortunately, that will not happen ; a random selection will be made. Only a handful will be examined, and those whose cases are monitored will be extremely lucky. Who knows what will happen then? No action need arise.

Mr. Janner : If I was trying to be generous, I covered it up as best I could. I certainly was not suggesting that every case would be considered. That cannot happen : cases will be monitored

"in such manner as the Secretary of State may determine". As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North has pointed out, the manner in which they are monitored will depend on the staff allotted to the one person who is to act as supreme monitor of the public school machinery that is being installed to determine who is allowed into the country.

What will happen to the report? The Secretary of State

"shall lay a copy of it before each House of Parliament." How wonderful. But when will that happen, and what can the House do if it does not like the report? What will happen to those who are sent home, and what will happen to their families? What misery will be caused? How many people who should have been allowed in will be excluded, and what hardship will be imposed by a bad system, a bad Bill and a clause that Opposition Members have tried to improve? No doubt even our modest amendments will be rejected.

I know that the Minister does his best to be kind in individual cases. I urge him to recognise the vast unkindness that clause 10 and the Lords amendment will do, and how little the monitor will be able to do to put matters right.

Mr. Jim Lester (Broxtowe) : I spoke about this matter on Second Reading. I share the concern of families whose connections are refused entry to attend important functions which any normal family would expect to be fully attended. When travelling in different parts of the world, I have talked to entry clearance officers ; I genuinely believe that many try to do as fair a job as possible, given the circumstances in which they operate. In some countries--in Thailand, for example, and on the Indian subcontinent--they experience real difficulties.

On Second Reading, I suggested that offence is caused to those who issue invitations in this country, and that it might be worth while to consider sponsors and their supporters. In my constituency, the cases that cause the

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gravest offence involve people who have made a considerable effort to invite visitors--parents, perhaps--and to fill in forms saying that no claim for social security will be made. They may have gone to further trouble by coming to my surgeries and asking me to countersign such forms.

Many such people are stalwarts in their local communities, and are constantly praised at various functions for being law-abiding and contributing so much to society. I sincerely believe that that is the case. When their relatives are refused entry, the impression is given that they are colluding with someone who is seeking to break the law, which gives enormous offence.

Many appeals are submitted after the wedding, or whatever, has taken place : the appellant realises that, by the time the appeal is heard, it will be pointless, but wishes to justify the original invitation. Appellants want to clear their names, and to make it clear that the invitation was genuine and that they would not collude with any illegal activity.

I have corresponded with entry clearance officers, and I know how they work. As I said on Second Reading, I want to help them. They will often set on one side the information given from this country. The applicant sitting before them may be very unsophisticated, with no knowledge with what the ECO is fishing for. The person who has invited the applicant may have a shop, and the applicant may be asked whether he will be working.

In normal circumstances, someone staying with a relative who has a shop would be odd not to help out, and that might be understood to mean work ; but it would bring about an immediate refusal, because an application for a work permit is not being made. Unsophisticated applicants may be caught out --although it may not be intended--by questions with a legalistic base, which do not relate to the ordinary existence of those who issue invitations.

I agree with what Opposition Members have said. We want justice to be done. I understand the reasoning behind the amendment : to allow appeals to be heard more quickly so that families who are settled here can bring to this country wives and others who are at the end of a long appeals system, which to some extent is clogged by people who want to make short-term visits.

People usually issue invitations for important functions well in advance, and therefore should not be faced with refusals that can cause great offence. A doctor in my constituency did not speak for three months after his parents were refused the opportunity to come here. Fortunately, I was able to intervene, and eventually his parents were allowed entry. The shock and horror of refusal, after issuing a perfectly normal invitation to his parents to come and stay with him for a short time, caused tremendous offence to that doctor. Many of us are very uneasy about there being no right of appeal. I do not know whether figures are available which show that people who came here on a visitor's visa stayed on illegally. I suspect that some have. It would be odd, given human nature, if that had not happened, but I suspect that the number is tiny, compared with the number of refusals.

I shall listen carefully to what the Minister says about monitoring and about how account is to be taken both of the invitee and of the invitations issued by British citizens, who have every right to ask members of their families to join them here for important family occasions.

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Mr. Boateng : The Government add insult to injury by their amendment of clause 10. The injury is the removal of the right of appeal. The insult is the imposition of a monitor. What we wanted, what we hoped to see, was some sort of watchdog. What we got was a poodle--not just a poodle but a blinded poodle, a poodle with its vocal chords cut, a neutered poodle, a poodle incapable of uttering so much as the barest squeak of disapproval against any action taken by an entry clearance officer or any immigration officer who determines an application to enter at a port of entry. That is not good enough.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) referred to the sponsors, to those who issue the invitations. The experience of many of us--I cannot believe that it is confined to those who sit on this side of the House--is that the most important feature of a sponsor, someone who issues an invitation, and very often the determining feature of a sponsor, is not the merits of a particular case, whether it be an invitation to a wedding, a christening or another innocuous family event, but the colour of the sponsor and the race of the sponsor who issues the invitation. There is no escaping the issue of racism that underpins this provision.

I would not be making a protest with the force and strength that I do about this amendment if I, or any other hon. Member, could be satisfied that racism was not involved in the administration of the immigration system. We all know that it is. We all know that a different standard applies to visitors from Canada, the United States and other areas of the world from that which applies to the Indian subcontinent, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. If one's skin is black or brown, the reality is that one will be treated differently. That is the truth of the matter.

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I wish that the Minister could say with conviction that that is not the case, but he knows that it is the case and that different criteria apply depending upon the origin of those in the community who issue the invitations and the place to which they are sent. That is the conclusion to which all of us, regrettably, have come. No one should easily make the charge of racism. All too often it is easy enough to cry "Racist", but those of us who deal with these cases day in, day out do not make that charge lightly. It is a charge that is borne out by the facts.

What is so nauseating about amendment No. 10 is that, having abolished the right of appeal, it proposes the appointment of a monitor. This person will be appointed by the Secretary of State. His functions will be determined by the Secretary of State. He will be resourced by the Secretary of State. He will be expected to oversee the role of the entry clearance officers.

That is not good enough. There must be a better way. Those who take an interest in these matters are left with the suspicion that an agenda has been embraced by the Home Office : to seek every opportunity to minimise the capacity for there to be some surveillance, some control over the operation of the immigration rules by entry clearance officers and others.

The suspicion is that the Home Office does not want the entry clearance officers to be scrutinised or to be accountable, and that it wants those who make these decisions to know that the opportunities for scrutiny and for people to be brought to book where there has been injustice will be minimised.

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