Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-145)
HOME OFFICE
AND THE
DEPARTMENT FOR
CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
30 JUNE 2004
Q140 Mr Davidson: I do accept that. One
particular case I am thinking of is where a husband and wife,
both of whom have been refused permission to stay, are continuing
to attend and indeed have just started a new session in a further
education college. They were entitled to that at one stage while
they were under appeal, which they managed to spin out for a long
time. They have now been refused but they are continuing to sign
on for another course with no check apparently being made. What
I am not clear about is whether or not there would be a central
register which that college should have consulted, whether or
not that information has been made available by you to somewhere
which they ought to have checked.
Mr Jeffrey: In relation to children,
they go to school.
Q141 Mr Davidson: No, these are adults;
not insignificant people; big people.
Mr Jeffrey: For those who are
older it is fair to say that the system is not as systematic as
all that, for reasons which we touched on a moment ago.
Q142 Mr Allan: I did not want to let
you get away without speaking briefly to Figure 17 on page 34
which is a wonderful graph showing how you meet your 60-day target,
then as soon as you get to the 60 days it goes very, very flat
indeed. I want you to justify that. I am concerned as to whether
the target is distorting things so that cases which have not made
the 60 days get put on some second-class pile and hang around
to get picked up at the next four-month target.
Mr Gieve: You are right first
of all that we do not just have a two-month target, we have a
later target, in fact two later targets: four months and six months.
The percentages being caught at those stages are all going up.
We do not just abandon these cases. There is a proportion of cases,
often the most well-founded cases, which actually take a long
time; people are ill, or they need medical reports or whatever.
Q143 Mr Allan: This does appear to be
an extraordinary flattening, it does not look natural. The fear
is that there are some people here perhaps with well-founded cases
who are now going to have to wait 120 days, with all that uncertainty,
when their cases could be dealt with after 70 or 80, but because
of the target you are saying either 60 or 119, but do not worry
too much in between.
Mr Jeffrey: It is still a rising
trend after that. Our internal target in 2002-03, for example,
was to complete 65% within two months and 75% within four months
and by the four-month point we had completed 84%. Our target internally
for the year 2003-04 is 90% within six months and we believe we
are on course to meet that. It is true that there is a bit of
flattening off, certainly in the week or so after the two-month
period, but we are trying to clear what are in some cases very
complicated cases as quickly as possible thereafter.
Mr Allan: Thank you, that is an encouraging
answer.
Q144 Mr Williams: I ought to get a simple,
straightforward reply. Does the Data Protection Act inhibit you
at all in your work and also when you are dealing with enquiries
from Members of Parliament?
Mr Jeffrey: It inhibits us in
the sense that—and I am sure you will have discovered this
yourself as a constituency Member—when someone who is not
the applicant themselves, but who does have a very close interest
in the outcome of the case, approaches us, sometimes through the
Member of Parliament and often spouses who are separated come
into this category, we have, for reasons to do with data protection
and privacy, to decline to give some of the information which
is sought.
Mr Williams: I do not really want to
pursue it here. Could you just give us a note of any circumstances
in which it impinges on you adversely? [14]That
is all I need to know. Thank you.
Q145 Chairman: A last question from me
for Mr Magee. If you look at Figure 15 on page 31, you can see
new applications and initial decisions and an inexorable rise
in new applications from 1998 rising in 1999 to 2000. If you turn
back to Figure 12 on page 26, which deals with appeals lodged
and appeals determined, there is an inexorable rise in appeals
lodged from 1998, going up in 2000 and 2001, obviously following
on from the rise in new applications. What this leads me to feel
is that actually your department and the Home Office should have
realised what was going on, because it was as clear as daylight.
Mr Magee: I think it is very easy
to see in 2004 how we might have reacted sooner collectively to
a situation which we faced, than arguably it might have been in
2000-01, for reasons which were explored earlier. I return to
the point that, faced with this explosion in cases, and particularly
over the last 18 months or so, with Bill Jeffrey and Martin John
working closely together, we have reached a position where we
have learned the lessons from the way in which these cases might
have been dealt with before, we have more effective planning systems
in place. As the Committee has explored this afternoon, we do
not have all the answers for you today, but I think a creditable
management effort on behalf of the system as a whole to deal with
the situation we faced.
Mr Gieve: We did know what the
position was in 1999, we could see we were in difficulties and
we had to try to build up capacity in all parts of the process,
starting with the initial applications and then appeals and removals.
I assure you that we have done that as quickly as we could and
we can now show the results.
Chairman: Thank you very much gentlemen,
that concludes our hearing. Clearly in our report we are going
to have to consider the crucial point as to whether the decision
to transfer case workers into removals was actually an appalling
mistake which allowed the backlog to rise and created the situation
we are now faced with. Clearly progress has been made since then,
so at least you should be congratulated on that, gentlemen. Thank
you very much.
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