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Written Ministerial Statements
Thursday 22 April 2004
HOME DEPARTMENT
Chairman of the Service Authorities (NCIS/NCS)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): I have appointed Paul Lever as the Chairman of the Service Authorities for the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad from 1 April 2004.
I have also reappointed Caroline Burton and Jennie Harvey as independent members for a further two years from the same date.
These appointments will continue until such time as the arrangements for the Serious Organised Crime Agency are established.
Managed Migration
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): I am today announcing a series of measures to prevent abuse of immigration routes open to those wishing to come to the United Kingdom to study, work and marry here. These measures build on work which IND has been taking forward over several months, together with other departments, and which I indicated to the House on 30 March when I set out the next stage of policy in this area. They have been finalised by a series of managed migration taskforces, which we have set up to bring together policy, operational and intelligence personnel, enabling better co-ordination and focus. I am confident that the resulting package of measures achieves the necessary balance, in these areas, between facilitating the vast majority of genuine applicants from whom this country derives enormous benefits and protecting the system against actual and potential abuse. Other areas remain under review.
The Government will establish a list of accredited private colleges. Discussions are already well advanced with the British Council and others on accreditation of English language schools. We will establish a scheme to broaden this to other colleges.
By the end of the year we will be in a position of only issuing visas to students attending accredited colleges. In the meantime, where there are doubts about whether a college not on the list is bona fide, applications will be put on hold while the Home Office investigates them. An urgent programme of such investigations will begin next week.
We will be consulting on introducing a requirement for all educational institutions to notify the Home Office where a foreign student does not enrol, or enrols and then disappears.
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We will also step up enforcement. This will include targeted multi-agency enforcement operations to disrupt proprietors of sham institutions and remove illegal staff and/or students. We will create more Risk Assessment Units in Embassies abroad to work alongside entry clearance staff and improve the flow of intelligence on fraud and abuse.
We will consult on a requirement on foreign students to demonstrate self-sufficiency, and ability to meet the financial requirements of the course before granting entry clearance.
I am announcing today that we will legislate to restrict the capacity to authorise marriages involving foreign nationals from outside the EEA to a number of designated register offices. We are consulting with registrars about the most effective means of doing so. This will enable expertise to be built up on abuse and mean that we can focus our enforcement efforts. Clearly not all marriages involving foreign nationals present the same level of risk in terms of immigration abuse: for example, foreign nationals who have been resident here for many years. We will be working with registrars to refine our proposals to achieve the necessary balance between facilitating the vast majority of genuine applicants and protecting the system from abuse.
We will also consult on making further changes to the marriage laws to reinforce these proposals, including empowering registrars to refuse to conduct a marriage they suspect is being carried out for the purposes of illegal immigration, until it has been properly investigated by the immigration authorities.
The Government will underpin these changes through a better co-ordinated intelligence-led focus on marriage abuse supported by an effective enforcement response where cases of abuse are detected.
In the coming months there will be a major new enforcement effort targeting sham marriages and those who organise them with the aim of arresting those engaged in such marriages and, where appropriate, prosecuting the organised criminality behind them.
We are strengthening current arrangements for joint working between caseworkers and immigration officers to ensure a better focus on analysing intelligence, and more effective following up reports, for example from Registrars about suspicious marriages.
We will set up a joint working group between the Home Office and Registrars to share intelligence and enable the enforcement effort and other counter-measures to be better targeted.
The temporary quota based schemes for the hospitality and food processing industries are due to be reviewed at the end of May in the light of EU enlargement. I have also ordered a review of the quota based scheme for agricultural workers, for the same reason—around a third of these places were filled last year by nationals of the new EU accession states.
I have decided that in consultation with industry, we will at the end of May be setting reduced quotas for these schemes to reflect the fact that from 1 May accession nationals will be able to come and work
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through the planned workers registration scheme. We will be able to take account of early information from the registration scheme in revising the quotas.
We will at the same time review control of both schemes.
We will also be looking at the rules and practices for ECAA applications, from the remaining countries who will be covered by that scheme after 1 May, taking account of the outcome of the investigation, which Ken Sutton is undertaking, of procedures for dealing with ECAA applications in Bulgaria and Romania. In the meantime, ECAA applications from Romania and Bulgaria continue to be suspended.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Food Safety Promotion Board
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Angela Smith): Copies of the Food Safety Promotion Board annual report 2002 incorporating financial statements to December 2001 have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
This document provides details of the Food Safety Promotion Board's activities, its performance to the end of 2002 and its expenditure to December 2001.
Waterways Ireland
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Angela Smith): Copies of the Waterways Ireland Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2002 have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
This document provides details of Waterways Ireland's activities, its performance, and its expenditure for that year.
DEFENCE
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram): The following key targets have been agreed for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) for Financial Year 2004–05.
At least maintain overall customer satisfaction and understanding of Dstl; by 31 March 2005 implement new methodology and set the baseline against which Dstl will monitor and improve its customer relationships in the future.
Maintain and by the end of a three-year period show an increase in score for scientific and engineering capability in the technical benchmarking exercise from 67 per cent. in 2002–03 to 72 per cent. in 2005–06.
By 31 July 2004 publish an update of Dstl's technical strategy that identifies the key technical issues and Dstl's role in addressing them, and by 31 March 2005 agree with MOD a future process that ensures that Dstl aligns itself with MOD's S and T outputs.
Achieve planned progress to meet the completion date of 2008 for the transfer of Dstl onto three core sites at Porton Down, Portsdown West and Fort Halstead. Key milestones in 2004–05 are: issue the invitation to tender for the site rationalisation and facilities management contract
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- (December 2004); pilot office layout options (March 2005); produce a plan for site remediation at Porton Down (October 2004).
Pilot at least three areas of category management—procurement of manpower technical support, travel and laboratory equipment—to achieve cost and efficiency savings of £5.5 million by 31 March 2005.
Maintain the average charge rate for manpower for 2004–05 and beyond below that for 2001–02 uplifted by GDP deflator.
Achieve a ROCE of at least 3.5 per cent. and a MOD dividend of £3 million 1 .
1 In addition to the 2004–05 ROCE target of at least 3.5 per cent. Dstl will aim to achieve a ROCE of at least 3.5 per cent. averaged across the period 2004–05 to 2008–09, as agreed with HM Treasury.
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