ANNEX
Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
from Mrs Barbara Roche MP, Minister of State, Home Office
EVIDENCE SESSION 4 APRIL: JUSTICE AND HOME
AFFAIRS
When I gave evidence to your Committee on 4
April, I undertook to write with further information on a number
of points.
IND STAFFING
The Committee was interested in changing levels
of staff in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. During
the financial year 1998-99 an additional 460 staff were engaged
with a further 1,260 taken on in 1999-2000.
At the beginning of April 2000 the Staff in
Post figure for the whole of IND was 6,582 and by April 2001 the
aim is to have a workforce of around 9,700. The additional staff
are being recruited across the country at all grades through 32
recruitment and selection campaigns. A dedicated IND Staff Supply
Project has been set up to manage this delivery of this challenging
target.
CIVIL PENALTY
FOR CARRYING
CLANDESTINE ENTRANTS
The Committee asked about a Regulatory Impact
Assessment (RIA) for the introduction of a civil penalty for carrying
clandestine entrants. I enclose a copy of the RIA signed by the
Home Secretary on 12 June 1999[10]
I also enclose a copy of the leaflet aimed at informing lorry
drivers of the new penalties introduced on 3 April for carrying
clandestine entrants.
ASYLUM PRESSURES
ACROSS EUROPE
I offered to send the Committee details of asylum
pressures across Europe as a whole. I attach a table[11]
showing the number of asylum applications within European countries
expressed as a ratio of their respective population sizes and
GDP.
ASYLUM SEEKERS
IN THE
UK
I undertook to let the Committee have what more
information I could on the number of failed asylum seekers leaving
the UK, and the number who have been refused and have gone to
ground. Asylum seekers may leave the UK voluntarily, having withdrawn
their application, or by means of removal after all their rights
of appeal in the UK have been exhausted. Figures are not kept
on the numbers leaving voluntarily before enforcement action is
initiated against them.
The attached table[12]
shows the annual totals of removals and known voluntary departures
since 1992 of persons who had applied for asylum at some stage.
The figures may include some persons who withdrew their asylum
application or appeal before a decision or determination had been
reached. Cases dealt with on a safe third country basis are also
included. For port asylum applicants the figures include: persons
departing voluntarily up to and including the point of notification
of the decision on their asylum application; and persons who had
their asylum application refused and chose to leave the country
before they had exhausted their rights of appeal. For in-country
applicants, the figures only include persons departing after the
commencement of enforcement action against them.
It is not possible to give total figures for
the numbers of asylum seekers leaving the United Kingdom or for
those who stay here without permission. The main difficulties
are that reliable information is not held centrally on the numbers
of in-country asylum applicants who depart voluntarily before
enforcement action is initiated against them and, more generally,
we cannot say how many asylum applicants leave the country voluntarily
without notifying the Immigration and Nationality Directorate
(IND) of their departure. Furthermore, the disparate nature of
the established data systems means that there is no central record
of the numbers of failed asylum applicants who are subsequently
granted leave to remain in another capacity. It is envisaged that
the data systems currently being developed within IND will give
rise to fuller information on asylum seekers in the future although,
clearly, the complication of not knowing how many people leave
without notifying IND is likely to remain.
CHARTER OF
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
The Committee was interested to have details
of all the members of the Convention charged with drafting the
Charter, and the criteria for their selection. I attach a document
showing the composition of the Convention as agreed by the Cologne
European Council (which shows also the Convention's working methods),
and a list of individual members.[13]
EUROPEAN COURT
OF JUSTICE
JURISDICTION
Mr Howarth asked me whether the United Kingdom
had accepted the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice
(ECJ) to give preliminary rulings in Third Pillar instruments.
The Government is not persuaded that it would be right to make
the Declaration provided for in Article 35 of the Treaty on the
European Union, to accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ in this
area, although we continue to keep this question under review.
The United Kingdom is not alone in not making a declaration: we
understand that Ireland, Denmark and France have also not done
so.
The difficulty we see is that such a declaration
would apply to all future legally binding instruments to which
we subscribed, as well as to their implementing measures. There
can be no prior certainty what issues such instruments might cover
and how appropriate such preliminary reference jurisdiction might
be. This contrasts with the position under the Maastricht Treaty
where such jurisdiction was confined to conventions, was decided
on a case by case basis and could be subject to such special arrangements
as the Council thought appropriate.
At the end, I also touched briefly on the discussions
which have been taking place regarding the new role the ECJ has
acquired in relation to the Free Movement Chapter of the Treaty
of European Community (TEC) and, in particular, to give preliminary
rulings arising from asylum cases. The Home Secretary and I are
very concerned that adding preliminary rulings arising from asylum
cases may bring the Court, which is already having problems in
dealing with its existing caseload, to a grinding halt. This could
result in excessively long delays in resolving individual asylum
cases across all Member States whilst references involving points
of Community law move slowly up the waiting list. We are therefore
pleased to see that reform of the ECJ is part of this year's Intergovernmental
Conference and will ensure that reform of the ECJ effectively
underpins the efforts the UK and other Member States have been
making domestically to refine our procedures to streamline and
speed up our decision making on asylum cases. In addition, at
the Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council in Lisbon, the Home
Secretary also discussed with other Member States' Interior Ministers
a possible further Treaty amendment. Article 68 of the Free Movement
Chapter of the TEC at present provides for a referral to the ECJ
from the highest domestic court only; in the UK this means that
a case must go to the House of Lords before it can be referred
to the ECJ. This is of course in contrast to the provisions in
Article 234, covering the rest of the TEC, which provides for
references from any court in a Member State. We are at present
considering the merits of seeking to obtain agreement to amending
Article 68 to allow for references from any Court.
JHA COUNCIL ON
27 MARCH
May I take this opportunity to apologise for
not having drawn the Committee's attention to the reply we had
prepared to the Parliamentary Question from Jimmy Hood, asking
about the outcome of the JHA Council on 27 March. It was our intention
to have replied before the Committee's evidence session on 4 April.
The exact timing of the PQ's appearance in Hansard was not, however,
clear to me or to officials when I appeared before the Committee.
I do accept, however, that it would have been sensible to have
mentioned to the Committee that a Written Answer had at least
been cleared by Ministers. The Written Answer provides a useful
summary of those issues which there was not time to deal with
at the oral hearing.
Barbara Roche
19 May 2000
10 Not printed. Back
11
See Appendix B. Back
12
See Appendix A. Back
13
Not printed. Back
| 
