Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
FOREIGN AND
COMMONWEALTH OFFICE,
UKVISAS, AND
THE HOME
OFFICE
21 JUNE 2004
Q40 Mr Steinberg: What you are saying
is that Ministers did not know before then what was going on?
Mr Jeffrey: Ministers were aware
in very general terms from the fact that Mr Ainsworth picked up
some of these issues when he was in eastern Europe, but the detailed
allegations that Mr Cameron made were—
Q41 Mr Steinberg: Come on! Now you are
saying that Mr Ainsworth picked up these details when he was in
eastern Europe. When was he in eastern Europe?
Sir Michael Jay: This was in February
2003. He visited Bulgaria and Romania.
Q42 Mr Steinberg: You are saying he picked
it up then?
Sir Michael Jay: The concerns
were raised with him then, and on his return he minuted to Beverley
Hughes, so at that stage those two Ministers were aware of the
issue.
Q43 Mr Steinberg: When was that?
Sir Michael Jay: That was in February,
March and April 2003.
Q44 Mr Steinberg: One of the things that
worries me about the whole system is how haphazard it is, Sir
Michael. I believe that lots and lots of cases are unfair. I do
not personally get many cases in Durham, because we do not have
a large immigrant community, but the cases that I do get are sometimes
very heart-breaking, and sometimes I wonder who is making the
decisions wherever it is, in India, for example. I have doctors
working at my local hospital—and the hospital would not
function if it were not for the fact that they are here—who
may have children that their parents have never seen, and their
mothers, perhaps in their Seventies, are refused admission to
this country to come and see their grandchildren. To me, that
is heartless and unfair, and considering that you make mistakes
in 50% of cases anyway, according to the Report, or 50% of appeals
find decisions to be wrong, it makes me wonder how fair the system
is in the first place.
Sir Michael Jay: I would not accept
that the system is haphazard, Mr Steinberg. The NAO Report on
the whole is rather complimentary about UKvisas operations, and
I personally believe is rightly complimentary about them. It is
also, if I may say so, a very helpful Report to us generally.
I think the figures show that 90% of straightforward visa applications
are processed within 24 hours, which shows that there is an efficient
system at work here. But we have to remember two things: firstly,
there are now upward of 2 million visa applications a year around
the world. The people who are processing these are, I believe,
professional, on the whole well trained, but they are operating
often under great stress, a lot of pressure, and inevitably, given
the number of applications that there are, there are going to
be some mistakes. Some of the mistakes will be heart-rending mistakes;
we have all been rung up and been approached by people who have
had genuine mistakes made in heart-rending circumstances, but
the aim of UKvisas is to keep those to an absolute minimum, and
the appeal system is there to ensure that when there has been
a mistake, it is rectified as soon as possible. What I do not
accept is that the system is haphazard, nor indeed, the earlier
point made that morale is low. Actually, morale in the visa service
as a whole is pretty high. If I can just quote one statistic from
the Report, the fact that it showed that 80% of customers are
satisfied with the service provided is a very encouraging and
morale-boosting statistic for the service.
Mr Steinberg: If you look at page 27,
figure 19, in 14% of cases that are turned down, the decision
is not even in accordance with Immigration Rules, so they are
actually making decisions that are illegal. So I do not know how
you can say what you have said.
Chairman: Take that as a comment.
Q45 Mrs Browning: I would like to ask
some questions about the ECAA, and my questions are really directed
to Sir Michael and Mr Jeffrey. Is it the case in both of your
ministries that when Ministers minute each other across departments,
there is a circulation list within your ministries of those who
would also see that correspondence?
Sir Michael Jay: That would normally
be the case, yes.
Q46 Mrs Browning: Would that include
the Permanent Secretary?
Sir Michael Jay: It would depend
on the circumstances. It often would, but not always.
Q47 Mrs Browning: Would it include other
Ministers?
Sir Michael Jay: It often would
but not always. It would depend on the case.
Q48 Mrs Browning: Do you know whether
that was the case in the case of the minute from Mr Ainsworth
to Ms Hughes?
Sir Michael Jay: That was an internal
Home Office minute.
Q49 Mrs Browning: But it would have been
circulated as internal minutes are within the Department.
Mr Jeffrey: Yes, that is correct.
Q50 Mrs Browning: Would it have been
circulated to the Permanent Secretary in the Home Office?
Mr Jeffrey: I do not know offhand
whether it was or not.
Q51 Mrs Browning: Would you have thought
something of that nature would have been circulated both to officials
and other Ministers?
Mr Jeffrey: Yes, it was.
Q52 Mrs Browning: Normally, what happens
within ministries, is it not, is that when Ministers correspond
with each other in this way, it is circulated internally and Ministers
and other senior officials sign it off with initials on the side,
so it is not just between those two people?
Sir Michael Jay: The first part
of that is right, Mrs Browning. Certainly a minute would normally
be circulated to Ministers and senior officials. The second part,
I am afraid, is not necessarily right because the sheer volume
and weight of paper that is circulated means that we do not have
the chance to read all the papers that are copied to us. If, for
example, I am travelling, if I am out of the office, my office
will decide, rightly, that it needs to cut down the number of
papers for me to see on my return, and I will not therefore see
every paper that is copied to me. That is just a fact of our lives
these days.
Q53 Mrs Browning: But we do know from,
for example, Mr Ainsworth's visit that this was a matter that
was clearly understood between your two Departments that there
was a problem and there was a difference of view between your
two Departments in terms of the legal interpretation as to how
these applications would be handled. Is that correct?
Sir Michael Jay: Yes.
Q54 Mrs Browning: When we look at the
NAO Report on page 29, it says at the end of paragraph 2.37 "Communication
was incomplete or ineffective in resolving difficulties."
What did your two Departments do to resolve this legal difficulty?
Sir Michael Jay: Let me answer
that question, if I may, because what happened was clearly not
entirely satisfactory. Perhaps I can answer it in a slightly different
way. There is a point when I think, in retrospect, that I would
like to have been involved in this issue. There was a time, which
is detailed certainly in Mr Sutton's report, when John Ramsden,
who was the head of the Foreign Office Department concerned, wrote
to the Home Office drawing attention to the concerns of the entry
clearance officers about the practices as they saw them, and there
was a reply which came back which said that the Home Office interpretation
of the law was such that they did not feel they had any alternative
except to process the applications in the way that they had been
doing. That in a sense was confirming a difference of view between
our two Departments. With hindsight, I would like to have been
involved in that myself at that stage, talked to John Gieve, and
we would have tried between us to have resolved what was clearly
a serious difference between our two Departments. I think it is
in order to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen in
the future that we have set in place the new arrangements so that
when there is a difference of this sort, it is brought to the
attention of senior officials and Ministers straight away.
Q55 Mrs Browning: Ministers already knew.
We know that because we know that in 2003 Mr Ainsworth's visit
precipitated correspondence, so Ministers were aware.
Sir Michael Jay: In the Home Office,
yes.
Q56 Mrs Browning: Did nobody in either
the Home Office or the Foreign Office seek to take further advice
from somebody to arbitrate in this legal difference of opinion?
Did anybody in either Department seek the advice of the law officers?
Mr Jeffrey: No, they did not,
is the answer to that question.
Q57 Mrs Browning: Why was that?
Mr Jeffrey: I think it was seen
in the Home Office at the time as being, as Ken Sutton's report
brings out, almost close to self-evident that the view that was
being taken was the correct one.
Q58 Mrs Browning: I am sorry to interrupt
you. They were sure of their views, but you had a dispute with
another Department. You were receiving in the Home Office presumably
business plans that were pro formas, and on the basis of that,
you were quite sure that in the Home Office view you were right
and therefore you were overturning nine out of 10 cases that were
sent to you by the embassies.
Mr Jeffrey: The difficulty is
that the dispute was resolved, but it was resolved in favour of
what was the Home Office view at the time.
Q59 Mrs Browning: Tell me who resolved
it.
Mr Jeffrey: If I take the example
of the correspondence with John Ramsden and IND, Sir John received
a reply from an IND official which reflected the conventional
wisdom about what the law did or did not allow at that time, and
he decided that this was an explanation that he was not particularly
happy with, but he did not pursue it. Just to be clear about the
second exchange, Mr Ainsworth visited the posts, and saw in quite
general terms, not making the sorts of allegations that Mr Cameron
made, but in general terms the fact that staff were saying that
these cases were being resolved as they were by the Home Office.
He received a reply from Beverley Hughes. As to your question
about whether that correspondence was copied, yes, it was copied
within the Home Office but not within the Foreign Office. It came
to my office but, for reasons Sir Michael was hinting at, I have
no recollection of seeing it. The volumes are such that it was
not for me to deal with personally, and I very much wish I had
identified it as something that was a source of concern, but I
did not and the fact is that the response that Mr Ainsworth received
from the Minister was one that simply said that our view of the
law was as it was, and that our obligations under the international
agreement were such that these cases had to be dealt with in the
way they were being dealt with.
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