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11.6 pm
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West): It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra). On his last remark, may I suggest that the
Home Office considers using Dame Elizabeth Anson to do the review? She has concluded distinguished service reviewing the system. I think that she has the confidence of people in the service and right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. It might be suitable if the great Dame--as I call her--is asked to review the situation, preferably after six months rather than a year.Missing from the Home Secretary's speech was any indication of the numbers who have used the new system of appeal.
Fiona Mactaggart: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bottomley: This is the only time that I will, because I know that others want to speak.
Fiona Mactaggart: I am informed that the user panel was told earlier this week that 18 appeals had been received.
Mr. Bottomley: The hon. Lady's answer has helped. That may have been the point that she wanted to put to the Home Secretary when he indicated that he would give way to her. I am glad that she has been able to give a partial answer. In the extra week, the number may have gone up from 18 to 20, 30 or even 50.
There is no suggestion that the Home Office wanted to impose fees at this level. It has clearly been imposed by the Treasury and no doubt the Home Office will say that there was a deal and it managed to get more money for other things. The fewer the appeals, the greater the overhead cost, and costs will not be covered at the level suggested by the hon. Lady.
The Home Secretary spent some time explaining the terrors that would result if the measure were rejected by the House. It will not be rejected by the House. The real question is how many abstentions and how many Labour Members voting against the Government it will take for the Government to take the question of fees rather more seriously. My estimate is that if the analysis shows that 30 Labour Members abstain and 70 vote against the Government, Ministers will start to say that they have it wrong when the review takes place.
The Government have accepted that the costs have had to be reduced from those in the draft consultation document. This is not the time to go into the method of consultation, why the document came out at the beginning of the summer recess and why we had to ask the voluntary associations--which were the most concerned--and some of the professional advisers to appeal groups to start giving their views. Heaven knows what opportunity was supposed to have been given to those representing the rejected applicants in overseas countries--whether Commonwealth or foreign--if they heard about this at the end of July and had to get their representations in by the middle of August.
We should pay tribute to Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff for dealing with the applications. The total number that they must consider--whether they grant or refuse--is high. Even if one person in five is rejected from a country from which a relatively high proportion is rejected, they are approving many applications.
There are difficulties for the staff, but also for the applicants. A man in my constituency--a father and a son--told me that his mother was eventually given permission to come to the UK, but his sisters were not. His mother is not enjoying the visit because she lives with her daughters and wants to be with them and her son. He pointed out that the fee was not the only problem. There is also the 10-hour wait once an applicant gets to the mission--the high commission in his mother's case. We must understand that a shortage of cash is not the only problem, although a £500 charge would, in effect, double the cost of visiting for many people. Another problem, which the Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) have mentioned, is that of reaching a mission, then waiting up to 10 hours or having to come back another day or another week. In addition, there may be something wrong in the paperwork.
None of that qualifies the thanks that we should give to the staff who deal with these matters. Ministers' private offices also deal with a great deal, both in running Departments and in behaving courteously to Members of Parliament who put forward questions on this and other matters. The burden on Home Office officials is as great as that on any other Department.
Finally, I pay tribute to the voluntary organisations that have helped to alert people to these proposals. Members of Parliament are sensitised to it by our constituency case work, but I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) for being the first Member to put down a prayer against the regulations, and to the Liberal Democrats for joining him. We have heard proper protestations from Labour Members, too, but they would have come better if those Members had put down a prayer alongside my hon. Friend. That would have produced an all-party set of questions to Ministers and helped to ensure that this debate was held.
11.12 pm
Mr. George Mudie (Leeds, East): I shall be brief because there is little time left. I find myself in the same position as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall), who intends to vote against the Government. I see no reason to do otherwise. Any review would take us past the next election, and we would have to go to the polls having let people down, and done so deliberately. Two months into the operation of the system, the review has not even started. The terms of reference have not yet been agreed. That is not much of a review and not much of a promise.
In 1993, the Conservative party abolished appeals. Members have example after example of what has happened since. A dad who lived three doors along from me died, and his young lad applied to come to his dad's funeral and was turned down. I telephoned the high commission at length, and won an agreement that, if he turned up the next morning, he would be put on the only plane that would guarantee his presence at the funeral. He did so, but he had to wait five hours before he was given a visa, and he missed the plane.
A woman in Leeds was dying in a hospice. She was expected to go into a coma and wanted to see her sisters and brother from Bangladesh. For some reason, the entry clearance officer allowed one sister in and refused both other siblings. That sort of arbitrary, cruel behaviour has
more than once affected our constituents. That is why the decision to ban appeals was so disgraceful. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) should have had the humility and decency to apologise for it.We fought the election pledged to reverse that decision. I ask the Home Secretary to read our manifesto commitment. It contains not one word about fees. Those fees relate to the poorest communities in our cities--the Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Afro-Caribbean communities. The Bangladeshi community in my city are among the poorest, and £500 is beyond the earning power of anyone living in Bangladesh. So they look to their sponsors in this country. But are the sponsors well-off and affluent? They are members of the poorest community. How can the Lord Chancellor defend in another place the imposition of a £500 fee? He is wholly out of touch with life in this country--especially in the Bangladeshi community.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor); he was right on the button. Those hon. Members who were in the House in 1992 will remember our "rainy day in Nottingham" exchanges with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. When he abandoned some of his election promises, he passed it off by saying that they were just remarks he had made on a rainy night in Nottingham and that we should not pay any attention to them; they had got him past the election. Such behaviour gives all of us a bad name--whatever our party--and causes youngsters to look at politicians with distaste.
There have been two similar occasions in a week. The first was when we thought that our air was not for sale, but suddenly it was for sale. Last week, Ministers were asked about our manifesto for the last general election. I saw nothing in that manifesto about selling off the National Air Traffic Services.
Tonight is the second time. In our manifesto, we told the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities that we would restore the right of appeal--they thought it was marvellous that we were delivering a promise--but we did not tell them that it would be at a price. Will the Home Secretary read out that part of our manifesto? We did not mention a word about price: "streamlining"--the word used by the Home Secretary--now means price. Can he tell me how to read into the word "streamlining" that it would be a cost for members of the poorest community in the land?
I do not blame the Home Secretary; he is one of the most decent members of the Cabinet. I know who to blame--the Lord Chancellor. It is because of the Lord Chancellor and that £10 million that my word to my Bangladeshi community will mean nothing--nor will the next election. That is why I have the deepest objection to the order. It is a matter of our integrity; we should not let the Government get away with it.
11.17 pm
Mr. Barry Gardiner (Brent, North): Many of my colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King), are desperate to contribute to the debate; it is a tragedy that such a short time was allocated. I shall try to be brief.
We have restored a right--it is good to have a right. We have restored the right to appeal when a visitor visa is denied. However, to have a right when there is no means of enforcing it is to have no right at all. That is the trouble with the proposals under this statutory instrument.
I was proud to support the Labour Government in reinstating that right of appeal, which had been taken away by the Conservatives in 1993. Our manifesto commitment was to
- reform the system in current use to remove the arbitrary and unfair results that can follow from the existing "primary purpose" rule. There will be a streamlined system of appeals for visitors denied a visa.
In the other place, Lord Bassam said that most appeals would be by paper, but I cannot agree with him. In a letter dated 16 November to the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mr. Lock), the Immigration Advisory Service said:
- Our experience of conducting a large number of visitor appeals in the past is that an oral hearing with the sponsor giving evidence is often the only way in which to address criticisms by the entry clearance officer about the credibility of the applicant.
It is said that those most likely to be deterred by the fee would be entitled to have their appeal funded by the Legal Services Commission. The idea of a constituent's relative in Calcutta or Ahmedabad having access to the list of solicitors that is approved by the Legal Services Commission and being able to contact one to advise him and to lodge an appeal within 28 days is preposterous. Even if that were to take place, the relative would be paid retrospectively. But that is to ignore the fact that the whole problem in the first place is that he does not have the money to lodge with the entry clearance office when the application is made.
I seek two assurances from my right hon. Friend. First, will he honour the system whereby Members of Parliament can continue to make representations on behalf of applicants? Secondly, will he assure us that, if the Government press on with the fees, they will monitor the number of appeals as a percentage of the refusals from each country? They will see that the percentage of appeals from the poorest countries is the lowest, and they will then be able to assess whether there is a racist implication to the legislation.
There is one good reason why I cannot support the Liberal Democrats in the Lobbies tonight. If SI 2446 is annulled, my understanding from the Journal Office is that it will be replaced either by SI 2302, which imposes yet higher fees, or it will leave us with no right to appeal because both statutory instruments will have fallen. I ask my right hon. Friend to correct that understanding if it is wrong.
11.22 pm
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