Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
TUESDAY 13 MAY 2003
MR PETER
GILROY, MR
MARTIN HOWE
QC AND MS
HARRIET SERGEANT
Q160 Mr Watson: At Stansted Airport.
Ms Sergeant: No, not at Stansted,
I am just saying you can see how easy it is to come in on that.
I could go into this in more detail, if you want.
Q161 Mr Watson: If you have evidence
about wholesale fraud going on in France and Italy with identity
cards, we would like to see that.
Ms Sergeant: With the French identity
card, the technology behind it is about 50 years out of date,
so it is very easy to forge it. Also, you are not required to
have an up-to-date photograph on it, so, again, that is very simple—in
fact, some people might borrow their uncle's or their nephew's
or whatever. The Italian identity cards, each is different according
to the different part of Italy, and some are handwritten even,
so those are extremely easy to forge.
Q162 Mr Watson: So criminal gangs
are doing this.
Ms Sergeant: Well, actually ordinary
French citizens do it because you can be fined if you lose your
identity card. It is actually cheaper to buy a fake one in France.
Q163 Mr Watson: The point you are
making is that criminal gangs are reproducing or—
Ms Sergeant: Yes.
Q164 Mr Watson:—are, wholesale,
applying for French identity cards.
Ms Sergeant: I interviewed one
Afghan asylum seeker and on the way he went to a town on the north-west
frontier where they are faking not just French identity cards
but also British driving licences, birth certificates. There is
a huge business in forged documents. Again, I can go on about
this.
Q165 David Winnick: If we had identity
cards here, why would the same not apply?
Ms Sergeant: I hope that we would
have slightly more sophisticated ones than the French and Italians,
which are handwritten or from 50 years out-of-date in technology.
I think that is a very important point, that we must have identity
cards that cannot be forged.
Q166 David Winnick: But the gangs
would become sophisticated in the manner in which they carry out
false documents.
Ms Sergeant: This may be optimistic
of me but I am just hoping that the Home Office can come up with
something that would not be so easy to fake.
Q167 David Winnick: That would be
10 years in advance.
Ms Sergeant: Not necessarily.
There has been quite a lot of discussion about iris recognition.
There are all kinds of new technologies that are being investigated
at the moment.
Q168 David Winnick: As I understand
it, it is not intended to have identity cards, if it goes ahead,
until about eight or 10 years time.
Ms Sergeant: Well, then that is
the choice of the Government. I think it is something that could
be brought in more quickly.
Q169 Chairman: That is something
we shall be investigating. Mr Gilroy?
Mr Gilroy: I want to come back
to the evidence. We had a very strange phenomenon going on in
Kent, where we had offered phone facilities to asylum seekers.
They were phoning Italy. We did not understand why, nor did the
UK police understand why. Eventually, we decided just to go down
and have a look for ourselves as to discovering why this was going
on. It was, I have to say, a revelation. We went with the Interior
Ministry in Italy, in Rome, and they were quite clear about it:
the issues of the phone calls were simply to release money for
the criminals, because they were telling the criminals that they
had arrived and therefore the money could be released. That was
a revelation to me. The other revelation in relation to identity
cards was that another system pertained where a European passport
could be obtained—I think at that time it was for about
$3,000. The European passport was posted to the UK at an address,
the criminals would bring them into the UK, and there was a number
that would then disappear—because, remember, that many of
the people that we have looked after over the years haemorrhage
into the black economy, they just disappear. The Italians said
that you must understand that when certain people disappear they
will go into the UK address, tear up the bit of paper that they
have identifying themselves as an asylum seeker, and they will
then have a European passport. The Italians also said that the
criminal fraternity could potentially give as many as seven identities
to one individual, and that was particularly true for those that
are professionals—there are a very small number. That was
to do with the exploitation of women—which I did put in
my submission. It is a very serious issue and, again, it was a
complete shock to me to hear that we have young women who were
auctioned in the European Union, who had been raped, and the Italians
telling us that we should separate the young women from male companions—which
we were not doing at that time—because they said this was
a matter of principle for them. We did start to separate them
and we found that significant numbers were on their way to sexual
exploitation and had been raped either in Albania—this was
Albania—or Italy. So it was a very ruthless, sophisticated
process. Coming back to the issue of identities, I suppose I did
have that strong feeling about identities at one point but I have
come to the view that, whatever you do, unless you go back to
the roots, unless you go back to ask the question at the countries
of origin: Why are people moving in this way? . . . It is acceptable
if they are in danger now. I think this is why I am minded to
understand the Government's sentiment about trying to establish
where countries are safe and where they are not safe, because,
unless you go back to look at those questions and to look at your
own immigration policies, it does not matter how much you do with
identity cards because very quickly the market will create new
ones and it will always be ahead of you. I think it will not be
a solution. We really have to move beyond the identity issue and
go back to ask the question: What is it that promotes people to
move in the way they are moving across the European Union and
particularly to the UK.
Ms Sergeant: Could I just say
a bit more about corruption? Because now that the whole of our
asylum process is in the hands of criminal gangs, we have widespread
corruption. I too have found out about this prostitution. In fact
there is actually a place near my son's school, a brothel where
they have underage girls, and nothing seems to be done about it.
There is widespread corruption in this country, which does not
affect any of us but does affect asylum seekers, and it is usually
practised by former asylum seekers on new arrivals. I think we
should be really very concerned about this. Also there is widespread
document abuse. A recent raid by the police on a Nigerian couple
found that they had 13,000 fake documents of every sort that they
were making in their home. That is just in one house. They had
bank accounts, driving licences, birth certificates. The only
genuine document seemed to be from the Home Office giving the
wife indefinite leave to remain. This should be an issue we should
take very seriously.
Chairman: Yes. We are taking it seriously.
That is why we are having the inquiries. I want to go on as quickly
as possible to what we do about all this rather than just lamenting
the wickedness of it all. First, could we ask one or two questions
about the backlog. Janet Dean.
Q170 Mrs Dean: Thank you, Chairman.
There has been a backlog of asylum applications since the early
1990s and that increased from 54,000 in 1997 to 121,000 in January
2000. That has now decreased again to 40,800 in December 2002.
Could I ask all of you, but perhaps I could start with Ms Sergeant,
why did such a great backlog of asylum applications build up?
How effective has the Government been in clearing the backlog?
What further steps could be taken?
Ms Sergeant: The IND decided to
introduce computerisation in 1993. I do not know if you want me
to go into the history of this.
Q171 Chairman: No, we heard about
it last week.
Ms Sergeant: The subcontractor
producing the software withdrew from the contract, and the staff,
instead of having a nice new computer system, had nothing and
had to fall back on discarded paper files, 40,000 of which were
lost. Decisions in 1997 fell from 3,480 a month in July to 800
in December 1998. That was the main reason for the backlog. I
am sorry, the next question was?
Q172 Mrs Dean: How effective has
the Government been in tackling the backlog and what more could
be done?
Ms Sergeant: This is a difficult
question to answer. Superficially I think they have been effective.
Obviously we all have the numbers, we know what the numbers are,
but I think this is a matter of number juggling.
Q173 Chairman: Just remind us of
the numbers. I think they have fallen. The backlog fell from 121,000
in January 2000 to 40,000 by December last year. Does that sound
right to you?
Ms Sergeant: Yes. 84,000 to 37,000
in December. That is more or less what I have got. And appeals
have almost halved, which is unfortunate, I think.
Q174 Chairman: That is a fairly dramatic
fall, is it not?
Ms Sergeant: Yes. But when you
think that 33% of refusals are from non-compliance (that is, not
sending your form in on time), that can show you how those numbers
can be massaged. It is ridiculous to refuse people because their
form arrives a few days late. Immigration lawyers have told me
the Home Office simply loses it and then pretends it has not arrived.
I am a little bit suspicious. I think these numbers can be juggled
around. I think it is much more to do with what the Government
wants to happen rather than what is actually going on.
Q175 Mrs Dean: Are you disputing
the fact that there has been a fall from 120,000 to 40,000?
Ms Sergeant: I think the whole
situation is so fake anyway, it is quite easy . . . I mean, if
you say that you have refused 33% of people because they simply
have sent their form in late, it is a very easy way to get a fall.
Q176 Mrs Dean: So you are disputing
the real fall from 120,000—
Ms Sergeant: I am saying that
I do not think the Government is tackling the fundamental problem.
The fundamental problem is simply that we have an unlimited demand
of people wanting to come to this country and we try to—
Q177 Chairman: You are talking about
the backlog of appeals.
Ms Sergeant: Yes, let's talk about
that later.
Q178 Chairman: We are talking about
the backlog of applications. Clearly the backlog of applications
is of those that have not been processed at all, so what you have
just described cannot apply to them. It might apply to appeals.
Ms Sergeant: Then I will not say
anything more about that.
Q179 Mrs Dean: Mr Howe.
Mr Howe: The backlog of applications
I think is more an administrative question than a legal issue
but clearly it does have a big impact on the whole system. The
objective must be to deal with asylum claims rapidly and fairly.
The problem is once the backlog grows at the application stage:
you are then trying to investigate events which took place a year
ago, two years ago, etcetera. Then the appeals process gets strung
out as well. The practical problems of accommodating asylum seekers
whose cases are pending multiply. You are not able to use other
methods. For example, it seems to me that wider use of detention
is acceptable if cases are dealt with very rapidly but it becomes
unacceptable in everyone's mind if there are long delays. Although
the administration of dealing with applications is not directly
a legal issue, it affects the whole system thereafter, and it
is vital that that is brought down and that applications are dealt
with at the initial stage rapidly. You can then turn your attention,
if you like, to speeding up the appeals process and speeding up
the stringing out delay in deportations by judicial reviews. Because
one of the ironies is that, once you have strung your case out
for three or four years, it is then easier to come along to court
on a judicial review for the final decision to deport saying:
"It's grossly unfair to deport me now because I have put
down roots here and I've got family life" and whatever.
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