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Miss Widdecombe: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but one has to consider normal practice. If one is dealing with a normal legal practice,for example, the normal practice is to send documents that relate to a case to the legal practitioner. I have already told the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) that I will set out the rationale for our position, and I will ensure that the hon. Member for Walthamstow(Mr. Gerrard) receives a copy. We can manage that duplication on this occasion.
Mr. Vaz: I am sorry to prolong this point, but does the Minister accept that, when a Member of Parliament writes to a Minister to makes representations on a case, and the letter is sent on by the Minister to the immigration and nationality department, it is absolutely vital that that hon. Member should be informed of the outcome of the case? If not, we are left to track cases with our very limited resources.
I have an on-going case load of about 2,000 immigration cases, and it is simply not possible to track each one of them, whereas the IND will have a file and will know when an hon. Member has written about a case. It would be ever so easy to inform that hon. Member of the case's outcome.
Miss Widdecombe:
I must tell the hon. Gentleman that, although I cannot boast a case load of 2,000, as a constituency Member of Parliament I also deal with immigration cases. My practice is very simple: I ask the constituent to let me know as soon as there is any development, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. That is how I operate.
Miss Widdecombe:
Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman again, and I shall do so, I should like to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Bradford, West, which was whether we could simply duplicate the correspondence to representatives and to applicants.
If an applicant asks for it, he can, of course, have a copy. We restrict our communications to the applicant's representative, because he has appointed the representative to act on his behalf. Therefore, to all intents and purposes, the representative is the applicant--in the legal sense of word.
Miss Widdecombe:
I now have a queue. I shall first give way to the hon. Member for Blackburn.
Mr. Straw:
I understand the point that the Minister is making, but will she acknowledge that the Inland Revenue's practice, for example, is quite different, in that, partly to protect itself--I think that this would be a protection for the Home Office as well--it has a standing rule by which it copies the notice to the taxpayer whenever it writes to a taxpayer's adviser?
Miss Widdecombe:
I acknowledge the Inland Revenue's practice, but the Home Office's practice is under discussion. I have said--I do not think that I can improve on it--that I will set out our rationale in writing. I shall take one more point from the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), and then leave this point and proceed with the debate.
Mr. Vaz:
I think that the Minister acknowledges that these matters are very serious and important.
Mr. Vaz:
If a constituent receives a notice saying that he is about to be deported, the difficulty in getting in touch with an hon. Member who is in the Chamber--or for an hon. Member from a constituency outside London to see his constituent--to take fresh representations, and to pass those on to the private office and from the private office to Castle Donington, for example, is a long and complicated route.
Miss Widdecombe:
At the risk of becoming repetitive, which I am sure that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, would not approve, I have said that we will communicate with hon. Members who have raised points on this issue, explaining the full rationale as to why we implement the practices that we implement and have implemented for some time.
I now come to the essence of new clause 1, much of which is the same as new clause 7. The distinction between the two is that, in the Opposition's amendment, an authority would be created, whereas, in the amendment my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth, a council would be set up to distribute licences.
We had a full discussion in Committee about licensing immigration practitioners, and I explained then that we shared many of the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth. Indeed, I was joined in that concern by my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) and for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman). I am delighted to see them here today.
We made it clear that a statutory scheme, such as that envisaged by the Opposition, would not necessarily be the best option, nor did the scale of the problem merit a response based on a statutory scheme. I pressed just one small example with the hon. Member for Blackburn about tests of competence, and he acknowledged absolutely, as did the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), that it would have to be worked through and that it was not entirely straightforward.
The setting up of bodies--examining bodies, qualifying bodies and the rest--is quite a complex procedure. We are not convinced, for example, that it could be done without expense, at least not at start-up, and at the moment the Bill has no money resolution attached, so it would give us a major problem.
Mr. Nirj Joseph Deva (Brentford and Isleworth):
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is difficult to quantify the extent of the problem, because sometimes the person has gone away, has left the country, has not arrived in the country, or has been deported and has no recourse to complain negligence or tort because he or she does not know how or where to go to complain, or is not here?
Miss Widdecombe:
I acknowledge that that is one of the complications. A further complication is that much of the information we have is anecdotal rather than empirical and fully worked out. We need to examine the scale of the problem. We also need to examine what protection already exists.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) raised a point about a poster that advertised success.I must point out the obvious, that there are controls on misleading claims in advertising, and it should be possible for anyone who is misled in such a way to seek redress under that part of the law. We also have a clear law on trade descriptions, and a number of other perfectly reasonable devices are in place to try to control such activities. That needs further examination.
Mr. Alton:
It seems to me that the Minister is saying that, if the empirical evidence can be provided, at least the Home Office might have an open mind. I want to be clear whether that is really what she is saying. Will she ask Mr. Justice Sedley, to whom I referred, to give evidence to the Home Office on his recommendation,and undertake to look at the Australian scheme, which functions perfectly properly?
Miss Widdecombe:
If only the hon. Gentleman were patient, he would hear what I am going to say. Although it may not meet his requirements precisely, I hope that it will go some way towards doing so.
Along with the Law Society and the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, we have already been considering the best solution. As the hon. Member for Blackburn acknowledged, the Lord Chancellor's Department also has an interest in the matter, not least because of the supervisory role envisaged in both the Opposition's and my hon. Friend's new clauses. The discussions that we have had so far have not suggested a clear way forward, which is why I must resist the new clauses.
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