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Mr. Oaten: Will there be a requirement for the individuals to go to the designated areas, or could the process be carried out by post? If there is a requirement to go in person, how many designated areas will there be?
Mr. Browne: There will be a requirement for people to attend in person. A good amendment, consistent with Government policy, was tabled in the Lords, which requires the attendance of both parties before the registrar. I shall come to that in a moment. Although no definitive decisions have been taken, I am considering the possibility of about 70 such areas about the country, which I think will be enough to satisfy the needs of the people who wish to be married.
Restricting the capacity to authorise such a wedding to a reduced number of designated centres will allow the immigration service to implement its enforcement effort in a more concentrated area and allow intelligence and expertise on marriage abuse to be built up in designated centres. It is not just that registrars, whether properly trained or not, can see that something dodgy is going on in front of them, as the hon. Members for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) and for Woking suggested. It is pretty obvious if the bride and groom have never met—perhaps because the bride arrives 10 minutes early and does not know whom she is marrying—or if money changes hands in the back of the register office.
Part of the enforcement effort, however, is about building up intelligence to allow those who are behind the process to be revealed and brought before the courts for the criminal offences that they are perpetrating. We do not want to inconvenience genuine couples any more than is absolutely necessary, and I and my officials are working closely with registrars to identify the most suitable number of designated centres to assist in the enforcement effort while minimising the inconvenience caused. At the moment, we are considering the possibility of about 70 such centres, as I said.
In line with an amendment suggested by Baroness Anelay, parties to a marriage will be required to give notice of their marriage together at the designated centres. That will give registrars the fullest possible opportunity to identify any suspicious behaviour, such as how couples interact—the kind of behaviour that currently leads registrars to report couples under section 24. The crucial difference under the new provisions is that registrars and the immigration service will be better able to take appropriate action before the couple can wed.
Subsection (3) of the new clause requires that before notice of marriage involving a non-EEA national can be entered into the marriage book, the superintendent registrar must be satisfied by the provision of specified evidence that the non-EEA national has entry clearance for the purpose of marriage, has written permission from the Home Secretary, or is in an exempt category.
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The requirement in new subsection (3)(a) to have entry clearance expressly for the purpose of marrying refers to entry clearance for fiancés and marriage visitors. Applications for such entry clearance will continue to be considered in the usual way under paragraphs 290 and 41 respectively of the immigration rules. It is envisaged that written permission from the Secretary of State, as provided in new subsection (3)(b), will normally be granted if a person has been granted more than six months leave since entering the United Kingdom and where that leave is extant. In addition, we would grant an application if it is considered that it would be unreasonable to expect a person to return home or travel abroad and apply for entry clearance.
The written permission will be known as a certificate of approval and all applications will be considered and determined in accordance with published guidance, which will set out the factors to be taken into account by caseworkers when determining such applications. If an application for a certificate of approval is refused, applicants will be free to challenge the decision in judicial review proceedings—for example, on the well understood and well known Wednesbury ground of unreasonableness.
New subsection (3)(c) confers on the Secretary of State the power to exempt in regulations categories of person from the requirement for entry clearance or for Home Office permission. We have not included those categories in the Bill as we think that secondary legislation would be a more suitable vehicle for introducing the exemptions, allowing full opportunity to consider changes in trends and future changes to the immigration rules. However, at this point we envisage that any person with settled status in the United Kingdom will be exempted under the provision.
As a result of the new measures, we would expect an increase in the number of forged documents being presented to registrars—both in respect of the new certificate of approval to be issued by the Home Office and in respect of documents confirming nationality—as those engaged in sham marriages seek to avoid having to apply to the Home Office for a certificate of approval.
After three months of experience as a Minister in the Home Office, I doubt very much whether there is any organisation better placed than the immigration service of the United Kingdom to identify forgeries. Those in the service have developed expertise in that area over the past number of years that is second to none. UK immigration officers with that expertise are now travelling the world, helping other immigration services to identify forged documents.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Woking for his suggestion, but he can rest assured that, given the experience that we have in the Home Office and in the immigration service of how to combat forgeries, it was always our intention that the permission document would contain several security features. We intend that it will be granted in the form of a vignette. That will contain the same security features as our leave-to-remain vignettes, and will be equally secure. I am not sure at the moment whether it will have a specific identifying number, but it will have significant security features. Registrars at designated centres who do not have the ability at present will be trained to identify
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those documents, including fake EEA documents, and will be well placed to gain experience in identifying them.
I want to make it very clear that the Government do not intend the new provisions to lead to a return to the rightly unpopular primary purpose rule. The principal objective of that rule was to attempt to judge whether the applicant was entering into marriage primarily to gain the right to reside in the United Kingdom. People get married for many different reasons, and it is not the Government's business to interfere in what those reasons are. The new provisions are not designed to do that, but they are designed to interfere with attempted avoidance of immigration control. They do not affect the grant or refusal of entry clearance, as the primary purpose rule did. They are simply intended to make it more difficult for those who are seeking to enter into a marriage for the purpose of avoiding immigration control so to do.
Hon. Members may be aware of the concerns of others that the new requirements are unnecessary in the light of existing provisions. The new requirements in subsection (3) of Lords amendment No. 21 are designed to prevent persons who are illegally in the UK, or in the UK on a short-term basis, from marrying where it is reasonable to expect them to return home and to apply for appropriate entry clearance.
Provisions in paragraph 284 of the immigration rules, as amended by the Government in April last year, require that anyone applying for leave to remain on the grounds of a marriage to a British citizen or a person settled here must themselves have extant leave to remain in the UK, and must either have entered as a fiancé or have been granted at least six months' leave since the date they were admitted to the United Kingdom. Where a person does not meet those criteria, they are expected to leave the UK and apply for entry clearance as a spouse.
The provision does not, however, apply to spouses of EEA nationals exercising treaty rights in the UK. In those cases, it is the act of marriage that gives a right of residence. As I have already stated, those marrying an EEA national do not need separately to obtain leave to remain on the basis of that marriage. They get that automatically. That is because the right of residence obtained through a marriage to an EEA national is the subject of European law, not domestic law.
The new provisions have been framed to apply both to those wishing to marry British citizens, and to those wishing to marry other EEA nationals. It is not unusual for a person to have dual status in the UK as both an EEA national and a person settled here under the immigration rules—Irish nationals being a prime example of that. If we were to apply the new provisions only to those persons marrying EEA nationals, we would leave the system open to abuse. The intended spouses of persons who hold such dual immigration status would be free to present themselves as the fiancé of a person with settled status in the UK, forgoing the requirements applying to EEA nationals, but then as soon as they were married they would automatically gain the right to reside in the UK as the spouse of an EEA national.
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Moreover, we do not believe that we are placing too great a burden on the intended spouses of British citizens by requiring that they have more than six months' leave or entry clearance as a fiancé. Under paragraph 284 of the immigration rules, they are already required to meet that requirement in order to apply for leave to remain. The new provisions require simply that they provide for that in advance of their marriage, rather than in advance of their leave to remain application.
9.30 pm
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