Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
FOREIGN AND
COMMONWEALTH OFFICE,
UKVISAS, AND
THE HOME
OFFICE
21 JUNE 2004
Q20 Jim Sheridan: I would like to turn
to the evidence given by Universities UK.[2]
It seems to indicate that certain students in particular are discriminated
against in terms of applying for visas when they are asked for
evidence or documents that are not under the Immigration Rules
like tenancy agreements, etc. Why are students, so-called, treated
differently to anyone else?
Sir Michael Jay: There certainly
should be no discrimination against students. Indeed, it is an
extremely important part of the visa operation that we should
encourage and facilitate students to come here, because it is
very much in their interests and our interests that they should.
Mr Barnett: I think the reality
in the student situation is, first of all, that we get it wrong
sometimes. It is certainly true that sometimes an ECO will ask
for more documents than are strictly necessary. However, it is
also true that in the case of students there are particular complexities.
One of the things Universities UK was particularly concerned about
is that we do not always issue a visa for the full length of the
course, but the fact is that, for example, where ECOs are aware
that your admission to a full course is contingent on passing
an initial exam after, say, six months, ECOs I think reasonably
conclude that they should give an initial visa for a period of
six months. I think the other important improvement is that we
have now put in place arrangements whereby, if there is an error
by an ECO, this can be rectified free of charge, which I think
was the most important criticism that Universities UK had.
Q21 Jim Sheridan: There was some £91
million raised last year from visa applications. Do you have a
figure for this year?
Sir Michael Jay: I am told it
is £100 million plus.
Q22 Jim Sheridan: That is despite the
vast increase in visa applications? That is an increase of £9
million.
Mr Barnett: I have just been told
that the figure for 2003-04 has come out at £110.7 million.
Q23 Jim Sheridan: The Report mentions
the constraints that the outposts or the visa applications centres
are experiencing. What are the constraints? Is it accommodation?
Can you give us a flavour for exactly what these constraints are?
Sir Michael Jay: I can mention
some of them. There are constraints in a number of countries where
there are great fluctuations in visa applications at different
times of the year, which means we have to try to match the resources
in the visa sections to those fluctuations. That is never easy
to do given the need for us sometimes to get visas ourselves for
our visa people to work overseas, for example. There are also
constraints on accommodation in some parts of the world. We do
not have the capital that is necessary to ensure that we can house
in the circumstances we would like all visa operations. That can
sometimes also lead to queues forming. We cannot always get entry
clearance officers with the right kind of background or the right
kind of training when we need them. There are a number of management
constraints which sometimes affect us.
Mr Barnett: Another important
issue is that of security. In places like Pakistan, more recently
in north Africa, we have found ourselves in a position where we
have had very short notice to either close posts or restrict the
ways in which we handle applications, which inevitably makes life
very difficult. A very specific example is Istanbul, where the
visa team is doing a fantastic job issuing 75% of the visas it
did before in a small number of rooms in the Hilton Hotel. We
do our best to overcome constraints but they can be very real.
Q24 Jim Sheridan: In terms of the relationship
between the staff of the entry clearance officers and the Home
Office or the FCO, is there some tension there between one making
a decision and one having a different view?
Sir Michael Jay: The visa sections
themselves are staffed by entry clearance managers and entry clearance
officers who may be from the Home Office or may be from the Foreign
Office, and a number of them will also be recruited locally. Normally,
a visa section will include, let us say, a Foreign Office entry
clearance manager, some Foreign Office and some Home Office entry
clearance officers, and local staff who will be supporting them.
Certainly, in my experience, there is very little tension on the
spot between the two. There are sometimes slight differences in
terms of service, which can cause people to wonder why they are
not getting a bit of an allowance here or there, but on the whole,
I have been impressed by the good morale and the unity of our
operations overseas.
Q25 Jim Sheridan: In terms of the Chairman's
point about joined-up government, and it is only from experience
of taking through this Gangmasters Bill, there is a distinct lack
of joined-up government, ie departments do not talk to each other.
Sir Michael Jay: I am clear, and
I know that my fellow Permanent Secretary, John Gieve, is very
clear that we need to ensure that the Foreign Office and the Home
Office work extremely closely together on these and indeed on
other issues in which the Foreign Office and the Home Office have
common interests, and there are very many of them. Ministers,
I know, are very much of that view as well. What we have done
in the last few weeks or so is to strengthen the Government's
arrangements between the Home Office and the Foreign Office. There
will be a Foreign Office Minister on the IND supervisory board.
Q26 Jim Sheridan: With the greatest of
respect, it is not the Ministers that I have difficulty with;
it is the officials. Are the officials talking to each other?
Sir Michael Jay: Yes. There is
a ministerial group now which has Foreign Office, Home Office
and DCA on it. There are official groups underneath that which
also have Foreign Office and Home Office people on them. UKvisas
of course, which Robin Barnett heads, is a joint Foreign Office-Home
Office unit. His deputy, which is a new post, Mandy Campbell,
is from the Home Office intelligence branch, and she is working
therefore very much jointly with Home Office, Foreign Office and
head of UKvisas. I accept that the ECAA case shows that the co-ordination
between the two was not what it should have been. I do believe
that at the top, both at ministerial and senior official level,
the Home Office and the Foreign Office are determined to work
closely together on these and other issues, and we are putting
the procedures in place to ensure that that happens.
Q27 Mr Steinberg: Would you look at page
25, figure 15? Mr Jeffrey, is it a coincidence that where the
Home Office is involved in processing applications, and where
they are involved in issuing work permits, the refusal rate is
very low?
Mr Jeffrey: It certainly, I would
say, reflects the nature of the applications. It may be that these
are people who have already been granted a work permit by Work
Permits UK in the United Kingdom and there is a refusal there
which is quite significant.
Q28 Mr Steinberg: Would it be fair to
say that your standards are much lower than the Foreign Office
in terms of approving an application?
Mr Jeffrey: I do not think it
would be fair to say that. It depends on the nature of the application.
That is the straightforward answer to that. Certainly, in the
case of work permits, it is a complicated process because the
work permit is issued to the employer by Work Permits UK, which
is part of the Home Office. The person then goes to seek entry
clearance at the post overseas, and the entry clearance officer
considers the case at that point. That may provide part of the
explanation for the fact that the refusal rates in this category
are lower than for others.
Q29 Mr Steinberg: Did Ministers dictate
policy in terms of how entry clearance should take place for work
permits and visas in eastern Europe?
Mr Jeffrey: The whole operation
takes place under the policy set by Ministers, clearly, and by
Parliament under the Immigration Rules. If what you are asking,
Mr Steinberg, is was the detail of how these ECAA cases were being
dealt with that were the subject of the Chairman's earlier question
directed by Ministers, the answer is no, it was not.
Q30 Mr Steinberg: What you are saying
is that officials were taking the decisions without Ministers
knowing? You must be saying that.
Mr Jeffrey: What I am saying is
that the policy in the Immigration Rules covering applications
for admission under the ECAA, the European Communities Accession
Agreement, is ministerial policy. It was Ministers who signed
up to the agreements, and it was Ministers who took through Parliament
the relevant Immigration Rules. The particular issue that the
Chairman was asking me about earlier, which was the way in which
practice developed, was not put to Ministers, and it transpires
following Mr Sutton's report that we could have been applying
a more robust standard in relation to these cases.
Q31 Mr Steinberg: I am getting confused.
So are you saying that although the policy was laid down by Ministers,
they were not supervising that policy and therefore did not know
what was going on, and Home Office officials were making the decisions
contrary to what the Foreign Office was saying?
Mr Jeffrey: I am saying that in
the particular case that the Chairman was asking me about earlier,
which has been the subject of much recent publicity, namely the
ECAA applications in Bulgaria and Romania, the specific issue
which was the subject of Mr Sutton's recent inquiry, namely how
were we dealing with these cases, what was the nature of the disagreement
between the clearance officers and our staff in IND, Ministers
were not aware of that dispute, nor of the detailed interpretation
of the law that our staff were applying.
Q32 Mr Steinberg: When it first broke,
if I remember correctly—tell me if I am wrong—it was
a Home Office official who originally blew the gaff, was it not,
a Home Office official in Sheffield, and he was suspended? Is
that right?
Mr Jeffrey: It is a slightly different
issue, but there was certainly a Home Office official in Sheffield
who published information about the way in which similar cases
were being decided.
Q33 Mr Steinberg: Ministers said at that
particular time that they knew nothing about it.
Mr Jeffrey: The then Minister
said correctly that some guidance which had been developed in
the earlier part of this year and late last year for dealing with
these cases and for clearing a backlog had been developed without
her knowledge, and that was the case.
Q34 Mr Steinberg: In other words, if
that is the case, it was officials who were interpreting the rules
and carrying out the policy, as it happens wrongly?
Mr Jeffrey: In the case that we
were discussing earlier involving ECAA applications, and this
is what I am talking about, that is correct and, as I was saying
earlier, it is extremely regrettable.
Q35 Mr Steinberg: Mr Cameron, the next
whistle blower, actually refuted this, did he not? He said, if
I remember rightly, that Ministers did know about it, did he not?
So Cameron was lying all along the line. If Cameron said that
Ministers knew about it, then Cameron was telling lies, if Mr
Jeffrey says that Ministers did not know about it. Who do we believe?
I do not think it is a very difficult question.
Sir Michael Jay: Mr Cameron and
indeed the embassy as a whole had for some time been drawing the
Home Office's attention to the fact—
Q36 Mr Steinberg: A Minister resigned,
was forced out—whether rightly or wrongly I have no idea;
all I am doing is going by what I have read in the newspapers
and heard people say. If that Minister has been forced out on
the lies of a so-called whistle blower, that is totally unfair.
On the other hand, if Cameron was right, then Ministers did know
about it. Who was telling the truth?
Mr Jeffrey: I have just checked
Mr Cameron's email to Mr David Davis, which Mr Davis released
to the public on 29 March.
Q37 Mr Steinberg: Why did Cameron not
write to you?
Mr Jeffrey: As far as I can see,
in the email that Mr Cameron sent to Mr Davis he did not allege
that Ministers were aware of this.
Q38 Mr Steinberg: So where did the rumour
come from that Ministers knew about it?
Mr Jeffrey: It is certainly the
case that, in very general terms, the then Minister had the issue
drawn to her attention by Mr Bob Ainsworth when he visited these
posts, but I cannot help, Mr Steinberg, to understand beyond that
why it has been suggested by others that Ministers—
Q39 Mr Steinberg: So when did Ministers
actually know what was going on?
Mr Jeffrey: In the Home Office,
the details of Mr Cameron's allegations first became known to
Ministers, and indeed to senior officials as well, at the point
when Mr Davis published them on 29 March.
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