Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
FOREIGN AND
COMMONWEALTH OFFICE,
UKVISAS, AND
THE HOME
OFFICE
21 JUNE 2004
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts, where today we are looking
at the subject of visa entry to the United Kingdom. We are delighted
to be joined by Sir Michael Jay, who, of course, is the Permanent
Under-Secretary of State and Accounting Officer for the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office. I think it is your first visit to the
Committee of Public Accounts.
Sir Michael Jay: It is, Chairman.
Q2 Chairman: I hope it will be very enjoyable
for you. We welcome Mr Robin Barnett, who is Director of UKvisas,
and Mr Bill Jeffrey, who is Director General of the Immigration
and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office. I do not know
whether it is your first visit or not, but thank you for coming
this afternoon. Sir Michael, could I please ask you a general
question to start with? The reference for this is contained in
the Comptroller General & Auditor's Report paragraph 1.6-1.10,
pages 13-15. Without having to plough through all those paragraphs,
I can put it to you very simply: I accept that your new system
is more efficient; that comes out quite clearly from the Report,
but does it mean that you are not giving enough time to scrutinise
applications?
Sir Michael Jay: I do not think
it does, Chairman. I think at the heart of the visa operation
is finding the right balance between service delivery and control.
Neither is more important than the other. They are both essential,
and there is no alternative to doing both. That is the short answer
to the question. Strong control is essential on immigration and
on counter-terrorism grounds, and I think UKvisas are putting
some important new measures in place to achieve that. Maintaining
a good service to visa applicants is crucial as well, not least
because if the service declines, the pressure on staff rises;
they spend more time dealing with complaints, they become stressed,
and the decisions tend to get worse rather than better. It is
in that context that the sorts of measures which are being introduced,
such as out-sourcing, streamlining, getting rid of queues, help
ensure a good service to our customers and a better balanced visa
operation all round.
Q3 Chairman: That sounds fine as far
as it goes. What I am going to be putting to you over the next
few minutes is that all the pressure on your officers out in the
field is to achieve this efficiency and streamlining, avoiding
queues and the rest of it. Let us look, for example, at paragraph
2.8 on page 22: "UKvisas has established a benchmark that
entry clearance officers should process 8,000 applications per
year." That is 40 applications a day, Sir Michael, which
equates to one every 11 minutes. Do you really think that, on
average, you can properly consider an application for a visa in
just 11 minutes?
Sir Michael Jay: I think it entirely
depends on how straightforward the visa application is, Chairman.
The 40 cases that you mention is a productivity guideline, which
refers to 40 straightforward applications per ECO per day, and
I think that is a reasonable guideline, but of course, that is
always subject to local circumstances. I have to say that in the
60 or so visa sections that I have visited over the last couple
of years or so, I have often sat beside ECOs and seen them process
straightforward visa applications sometimes in a matter of seconds.
I have also seen them have real difficulties over the complicated
cases. What we need to try to do is to sort out the procedure
so the straightforward ones can be handled straightforwardly,
and leave time for the more complicated ones, including those
that should not be granted, to be handled properly.
Q4 Chairman: That is obviously true,
but what information can you give us as to the procedures you
have to actually sort out these more difficult applications from
the easier ones? What sort of evaluation is going on?
Sir Michael Jay: Could I ask Mr
Barnett to answer that one, Chairman?
Mr Barnett: Chairman, we begin
the visa application process by getting locally engaged staff
to do basic checks. So even in the most straightforward of cases,
initial information and checks will have been carried out and
the ECOs will be able to check the information that is before
them. Secondly, we are doing a great deal in the area of well
managed risk assessment. In high-risk posts we have begun to introduce
new risk assessment units with full-time UK-based officers in
charge of them. In many posts we have already been operating a
risk assessment system based around ECOs spending some of their
time leading a risk assessment effort, therefore what we are doing
when we select straightforward from non-straightforward applications
is operating on a risk assessment and intelligence-led basis.
Q5 Chairman: Mr Barnett, I wanted to
ask you to look at page 11, paragraph 1.2, where you will see
the overall demand: "UKvisas received 1.94 million visa applications
in 2002-03, which represents an increase of 33% over five years."
I just wonder whether this increase in demand—which is not
your fault in any shape or form; we all accept that your staff
are under tremendous pressure and do a very good job, and we congratulate
them on a very difficult job they do—is overwhelming your
resources?
Sir Michael Jay: Could I take
that? I do think the question of demand in the longer term is
one of the key issues, clearly, for UKvisas, and they are doing
quite a lot of thinking about the longer term. There is a lot
more that needs to be done. I do not think that there is a risk
of the service being completely overwhelmed, but I do think it
is important to look ahead quite imaginatively at different ways
of doing this. There are proposals such as the e-Borders programme,
which is referred to in the Report, which does offer a real chance
to change quite radically the shape of visa issuing in the future
and cope with a rising upward trend. Meanwhile, there are ways
of increasing productivity, better processes, better training
of our entry clearance staff, making better and more effective
use of IT, alternative methods of helping hard-pressed posts trying
to look at applications being handled by hubs overseas, not always
in individual countries, in which we can hope to meet at least
some of the increased demand. But I do think that these are issues
which we and Ministers are going to have to look at hard.
Q6 Chairman: What is absolutely essential
is that you have adequate evaluation and feedback of what is going
on. Can you please turn to page 28 and look at paragraph 2.33?
You will see there that there is virtually no evaluation of these
people who are given visas once they get into this country. "The
Home Office does not collect this information." How can your
entry clearance officers be confident that they are making the
right decisions when apparently there is no feedback which is
sent back to them?
Mr Barnett: It is true that since
October 2000, when visas became leave to enter, there are fewer
checks carried out on arrival, but what we have sought to do is
to put in place a series of alternative measures. As the Report
points out, we carry out follow-up exercises, we carry out checks
on visa issuing, and we work very closely with IND to monitor
what is happening to assess trends. The solution to monitoring
and control is not solely a specific control target.
Q7 Chairman: Rather than deal with trends,
why not just check when people leave the country? That is how
most people understand what a visa is about. Your passport is
stamped when you come in and it is stamped when you go out, and
then you have a rough idea of what is happening. Can I please
put one example to you, Sir Michael, a case example in Accra?
If you look at page 23, paragraph 2.12, you will see one example
there. "For example, a tracking exercise carried out in Accra
found that 37% of a sample of students who had been issued with
a visa could not subsequently be traced." I put it to you
that that is quite possibly, although only a single tracking exercise,
something which may go on in other areas with other groups of
students but, as we simply do not know what is happening to these
people—most of them seem to vanish once they get into this
country—there is no proper evaluation and we do not know
what is going on, do we?
Sir Michael Jay: As far as students
are concerned, it will be easier to track students when we have
a proper registration scheme, which is due to be in place shortly.
Mr Jeffrey: It is certainly the
case, Chairman, that we no longer check people's departure from
the country, as was done a number of years ago. There was an embarkation
check system, which was overwhelmed by numbers and was essentially
paper-based and did not enable us in the early Nineties to make
these sorts of connections and establish whether people had left
the country or not. These checks were withdrawn gradually, initially
in 1994 at ferry ports and small airports, and then completely
in 1997. I think, short of the kind of electronic system that
the e-Borders programme will bring us, there is no point in doing
this partially.
Q8 Chairman: It is better to do something
partially than not at all, I would have thought.
Mr Jeffrey: It is certainly the
case that, as we work up to the e-Borders programme, we will be
looking at whether there are some routes that we can pilot the
approach on, but the intention is certainly in the next few years—
Q9 Chairman: Mr Jeffrey, now that you
have taken the floor, perhaps we can deal with the scam that was
going on in Romania and Bulgaria. If you look at page 29, paragraph
2.37, you will see it deals with that. 26,500 applicants were
granted entry to the United Kingdom. Entry clearance officers
out in the field in Romania and Bulgaria estimated that they would
have approved only 10% of these. So it is not surprising that
morale is poor in Mr Barnett's operation if you are overturning
nine out of 10 of his decisions.
Mr Jeffrey: You will be aware,
Chairman, that Mr Ken Sutton has done an investigation of that
sequence of events.[1]
What essentially happened was that over a period we operated on
an unduly restricted view of the scope for refusing applications
of that sort. It is worth remembering that the agreements are
unusual in that they confer entitlements on people from accession
countries to be allowed to establish themselves here on the same
basis as a British citizen.
Q10 Chairman: I thought you might say
that because that, of course, is in the Report, that you, the
Home Office, considered that they could not treat Bulgarian or
Romanian nationals differently from United Kingdom nationals.
I think Mr Sutton said that actually that is not entirely true,
is it? You could have done a different process if you had wanted
to, could you not?
Mr Jeffrey: I was going to come
on to say that, and to say very clearly that there were mistakes
made over this and it is a serious failure that we do take seriously.
What Mr Sutton found was that, on the basis of legal advice that
he took in the course of his investigation, it would have been
possible to have adopted a more robust approach to deciding these
cases than was in fact taken. That is not to say that the nine
out of 10 cases that entry clearance officers would have wished
to refuse would be refused under the new approach, but it certainly
means that we were too ready in the past to accept that these
applications were essentially unrefusable because of the nature
of the agreement.
Q11 Chairman: The reference is in Appendix
7, page 50: "Applications were approved against the advice
of entry clearance staff. Some applicants had no appropriate skills
in their chosen business. Applicants had no idea of what was in
their business plan. Many applicants could speak little or no
English. Some applicants were accepted who had previously entered
the United Kingdom illegally" etc. These are the people you
were letting in against the advice of your entry clearance officers.
Mr Jeffrey: I agree, and I very
much regret that that was happening. On the other hand, it has
to be said that the view of the law which is now being taken,
and which we will very quickly translate into guidance so that
we can re-start the system in Bulgaria and Romania, is one that
still does not say that simply because someone does not speak
very good English or someone has not formulated a business plan,
they can be refused on that ground alone. We will be guiding our
staff in future, as we should have been doing all along—and
I entirely accept this—
Q12 Chairman: The obvious question is
why did it take you so long to address this lack of understanding
between the officers working for Mr Barnett's organisation and
the officials working for your organisation? This is supposed
to be joined-up government, is it not?
Mr Jeffrey: It is, and I think
it is more joined up in the sense that we work very closely with
UKvisas now and have done for some time, but it took longer to
address than it should have done. I readily accept that.
Q13 Chairman: Sir Michael, lastly, when
were you aware of Mr Cameron's concerns? Were you aware of them
before he made them public?
Sir Michael Jay: I was first aware
of his concerns, as far as I have been able to ascertain from
the papers and as far as my own memory recalls, when I was told
on 19 March this year that a member of our embassy in Bucharest—
Q14 Chairman: When did it become public?
Remind me of the date.
Mr Jeffrey: I think Mr Davis published
his email on the 29th.
Q15 Chairman: So you were aware on the
19th?
Sir Michael Jay: The 19th was
the day on which we became aware that a member of the embassy
in Bucharest had told a member of staff that he had been in touch
with Mr Davis and at that stage we became aware that this issue
would arise.
Q16 Chairman: Do you accept that this
NAO Report, together with Mr Sutton's report, confirms in broad
terms what Mr Cameron was alleging?
Sir Michael Jay: I think what
the Report shows is that the embassy in Bucharest and Mr Cameron,
and indeed the embassy in Sofia, had been telling the Home Office
for some time, drawing their attention to the fact that entry
was being granted under the scheme to people who the embassy themselves
would have refused. The Home Office's response to that was that
they believed in good faith that they had very little if no room
for manoeuvre under the terms of the ECAA and therefore they could
not respond to the embassy's concerns. That was the basis. What
Ken Sutton's report has shown is that the rules would, in fact,
admit a more robust interpretation, which would allow normal entry
clearance considerations to be taken into account. I do think
that Mr Cameron brought the difference between the embassy and
the Home Office out into the open. What I would like to do is
to reiterate what Bill Jeffrey has said about the extent to which
the Foreign Office and the Home Office and UKvisas both before
but also since this matter came to light have changed and strengthened
our procedures, I believe in some important fashions, and I think
it now extremely unlikely that an issue of this kind would continue
for so long without it being brought to the attention of senior
management and Ministers. It is certainly our intention to ensure
that that is the case.
Q17 Jim Sheridan: Can I follow up the
issue of lack of traceability when people come into the country
on a visa? You may recall the 21 cockle pickers who died on the
beaches at Morecambe. Basically, there was some concern that no-one
knew who these people were, where they came from and who was responsible
for them. Do you have any advice on how this could be put right
for the future?
Sir Michael Jay: It is a matter
for the Home Office.
Mr Jeffrey: As I was saying in
response to the Chairman's question earlier, I think the best
way in which we can deal with this is to have the kind of electronic
system that the e-Borders programme would offer for recording
movements in and out of the country, and we will then know who
has over-stayed their legitimate visa. What is much harder to
deal with are people—and the cockle pickers may have been
among them—who enter the country illegally. There are fewer
of these than there used to be, because we are working hard at
the channel ports, but our best means of doing that is by deploying
enforcement effort, by working very closely with the police, by
making visits to places of employment where we think we may find
illegal workers, for example, and we are building on that.
Q18 Jim Sheridan: You indicated just
now that there are fewer illegal immigrants than there used to
be. Do you have any evidence to substantiate that?
Mr Jeffrey: We certainly believe
that there are fewer clandestine, illegal migrants coming across
the Channel. There was a time in the latter part of 2002 when
very large numbers were coming through the Tunnel, or smuggling
themselves across the Channel. We have now effectively exported
this, working with French officials on the French side, we have
more detection equipment, and as a consequence, it is one of the
things that has contributed to the very substantial reduction
in asylum claims. There are now fewer people being detected in
the Dover area, for example, as having come across the Channel
clandestinely. One can never be certain, but we do feel that we
are making a difference.
Q19 Jim Sheridan: I understand them coming
through the Dover entrance, but there are other entry points throughout
the whole of the UK.
Mr Jeffrey: We are trying to close
them down. There are other ports where there is a possibility
of displacement, and we are trying to anticipate that displacement
by applying staff to routes where it is taking place.
1 Inquiry into handling of ECAA applications from
Bulgaria and Romania, Ken Sutton, 17 June 2004 Back
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