Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
FOREIGN AND
COMMONWEALTH OFFICE,
UKVISAS, AND
THE HOME
OFFICE
21 JUNE 2004
Q60 Mrs Browning: But somebody must have
said to the embassies, "Look, we have taken a legal view
on this." It was quite clear from the tension building up
in the embassies and from the staff processing in the embassies
that to be asked to consistently process these pro formas, particularly
for the business applications, what must have been quite self-evident
when you see business plans that all look the same was that there
was something seriously wrong there, and if, as you have told
us, there were staff from both the Home Office and the Foreign
Office, presumably at some time they had some contact back with
their main embassies. I find it very hard to believe that these
two big government departments failed to communicate anything
other than the fact that they both knew they were locked in a
legal difference of interpretation and somehow the status quo
was allowed to proceed for so long.
Sir Michael Jay: The embassies
alerted the Foreign Office to what they thought was an inappropriate
practice. The Foreign Office referred that to the Home Office.
The Home Office replied that the way in which they were operating
the scheme was in accordance with their interpretation of the
law. The Foreign Office therefore had sought advice from the Home
Office, had got it, accepted it, passed it on to the embassies,
and the embassies were therefore instructed to continue to operate
within that framework. As we know from Ken Sutton's report, in
fact, the law could have been interpreted differently, which would
have meant there would have been a different mechanism for operating
it. As I said just now, I think that that is regrettable. It would
have been better at the moment when that reply came back from
the Home Office that the matter then be pushed further up the
tree in the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and we had at
that point resolved it. I regret that that was not the case. As
I said earlier, I do believe that we have put in place procedures
since then, both at ministerial and at official level, to ensure
that these sorts of misunderstandings will not happen again.
Q61 Mrs Browning: How many people do
you think all together have come in under what Mr Sutton describes
as an exploitation of the scheme? I will accept a ball-park figure.
Mr Jeffrey: Over the key two-year
period, just over 7,000 people from the accession countries, including
6,800 Bulgarians and Romanians, got entry clearance under the
ECAA, and there were another 17,800, including 7,400 Bulgarians
and Romanians, who were granted status within this country, switching
from some other temporary status into ECAA. That does not mean
to say that all or by any means all of these were people who were
not entitled to what they were asking for.
Q62 Mrs Browning: What changes have you
made in recent weeks in terms of applications from Turkey?
Mr Jeffrey: The position in Turkey
is governed by a different accession agreement, under which these
applications are to be dealt with consistently with the Immigration
Rules as they were at the time. There is in fact an outstanding
court case involving the extent to which people who apply under
them when they are in this country should have their cases considered
under the Immigration Rules as they were at the beginning of 1973.
So there is a bit of uncertainty around the position of Turks
but it is not the same as Bulgarians and Romanians because it
does not create the kind of absolute entitlement that the Bulgarian
and Romanian agreements do to be treated on the same basis as
a British national would be if they were trying to establish a
business.
Q63 Mrs Browning: So you could tell a
genuine Turkish business plan from one that was a pro forma?
Mr Jeffrey: I would hope so, yes.
Q64 Chairman: Just to complete Mrs Browning's
questioning, Mr Jeffrey, can you do us a note on the circulation
list of the memo from Mr Ainsworth to Ms Hughes of officials and
Ministers?
Mr Jeffrey: Yes.[3]
Q65 Mr Jenkins: Just to clarify in my
mind, I understand that the Departments were talking to each other,
or not talking to each other, with regard to the situation in
Bulgaria and eastern Europe, and it required a visit from Mr Bob
Ainsworth, a Member of Parliament, to talk to officials on the
ground, to come back, to send a memo to another Minister, and
that was the first time the Minister had heard that there was
a problem on the ground. Yes?
Sir Michael Jay: I believe that
is the case, yes.
Q66 Mr Jenkins: So your system, which
should automatically be feeding problems back, and did feed problems
back, because you discussed this between yourselves, but no-one
thought of telling the Minister that there was a problem.
Sir Michael Jay: No. As I was
saying in answer to Mrs Browning's question, I do believe that
this issue should have been drawn to the attention of senior officials
and Ministers earlier than it was. I am determined, as is John
Gieve, to ensure that the arrangements are in place to ensure
that that does not happen again.
Q67 Mr Jenkins: So, with luck, it will
not happen again?
Sir Michael Jay: With more than
luck, Mr Jenkins; I hope with the proper procedures in place and
a determination on both our parts to ensure that it does not.
Q68 Mr Jenkins: Mr Barnett, when somebody
comes here as a student, what is a student?
Mr Barnett: A student is somebody
who wishes to study at some form of educational institution in
the UK. That could be a school, it could be a short-term language
course or it could be, for example, a university degree.
Q69 Mr Jenkins: If I were to set up the
English Cultural Morris Dance Academy and Worldwide Centre for
students to come to my academy for morris dancing in the UK, they
would be officially classified as students and given visas to
come in?
Mr Barnett: Absolutely not, unless
they could demonstrate that they were high-quality potential morris
dancers, and that they could provide evidence that they had the
funds to support themselves while in the UK without recourse to
public funds. I have to say too that with an institution with
the name that you describe, we would also want to carry out at
least some checks to establish whether there was actually a global
demand for morris dancers. So we would undoubtedly first want
to check the bona fides of an institution. As you know, we have
now developed that and the plan is to have a student registration
scheme.
Q70 Mr Jenkins: That is where I am getting
to, step by step. I have seen some of the literature and I have
seen some of the applications. When they actually make an application
to come here and study at the Mickey Mouse Academy, for lack of
a better term for them, do they actually have to attend the college
once given a visa and granted entry to this country?
Mr Barnett: They are issued a
visa for the purposes of attending a college, yes.
Q71 Mr Jenkins: I did not ask that. Do
they have to attend the college?
Mr Barnett: Yes.
Q72 Mr Jenkins: Do you check, or is any
check carried out on their attendance?
Mr Barnett: I think that is a
matter I would like to pass to someone else, because I am only
responsible for the overseas end of the process.
Q73 Mr Jenkins: Surely, once again, there
must be a lack of feedback. You do not close the loop. What is
the point of attending Mickey Mouse College—and you have
granted visas to attend Mickey Mouse College—if they do
not actually turn up?
Mr Barnett: To be very clear,
there is a good deal of joined-up activity. UKvisas works very
closely with IND, and particularly with the IND intelligence service,
to examine information and investigate trends. It is true to say
that we do not have the capacity either overseas or at home to
follow each individual case.
Q74 Mr Jenkins: So you cannot follow
each individual case, but if you have got a college—and
I could name one or two, and you will be well aware of one or
two colleges—do you ever go along and check the attendance
register to see that they do attend the college?
Mr Jeffrey: This is an area that
we have got into in the last month or so much more than in the
past, and, as the Home Secretary announced a few weeks ago, first
of all, there will be a registration scheme, and the Secretary
of State for Education announced that the other day, but in the
mean time we have been visiting colleges. We have already been
to 300 or 400 of the ones that we thought gave most grounds for
doubt, and there are a number of them we have already identified
as being essentially bogus and applications in relation to them,
whether made abroad or in this country, will be refused.
Q75 Mr Jenkins: I can save you some time.
You can take Oxford and Cambridge off your list. Universities
in this country, when they have students, they do attend. But
you know and I know and any one of your people in Dhaka or Accra
know that there are sham colleges. People come here as students,
they never attend and they disappear.
Mr Jeffrey: On the sham colleges,
we are determined to end it, and to get to the point where, if
the college is not on the register, then application will be refused.
On attendance, again, as the Home Secretary announced a month
or so ago, we are discussing with the education sector and others
arrangements under which there would be an obligation on them
to inform us about the extent to which people granted leave as
students actually attended the course or not.
Q76 Let us take it the other way round:
let us take it like any good local authority would; let us create
a list. To get on the list you have to make an application and
you have to pay to be on the list, and then you can send an officer
down to check it, just like you would do a take-away restaurant
or food outlet. Do you have a list of recognised colleges now?
Mr Jeffrey: We have a list now
of recognised colleges, but we also have a list of colleges that
we will definitely refuse if we have seen applications in relation
to them. What we are trying to do is to bridge the gap so that
everything is under one thing or the other.
Q77 Mr Jenkins: If they are not on the
"recognised" list, refusal should be automatic. It is
the college's job to get on the list, and then you can send the
inspectors in and have them carry out checks on them; and they
pay to be on the list. Does that make sense?
Mr Jeffrey: Apart from the point
about payment, that will be the position we will have reached
at the end of the year because the college is not on the register
that the Secretary of State for Education announced the other
day. Then we will refuse an application made by somebody who purports
to be studying there.
Q78 Mr Jenkins: The worry is—and
there are alarm bells ringing to me—that we are always going
to do something; we are going to get there, but I want to know
when we are going to get there and why the stable door is not
shut. You know, and I know, names of colleges which have given
us problems in the past, and they are quite clearly bogus in their
arrangements. I was looking at one applicant, who says that in
order to come to London, to do a PhD at this college, the college
had indicated he would need £2,700, that is for the college
course and to keep him in the four years he would be studying
in London. Quite simply, it is just not possible; and yet that
college is continuing trading and selling its name, and undermining
the good establishments in this country; so when will it be shut
down?
Mr Jeffrey: We are absolutely
determined, and our ministers are, to get on top of this. We feel
that a lot of our effort in the last year or so has been about
getting much more on top of the asylum problem than we had been,
and we have succeeded in that in large measure. We are now devoting
a lot more effort to identifying colleges, doubtful marriages
and that sort of thing. It is important not least because many
of the prospective students are exploited by these sorts of organisations.
Q79 Mr Jenkins: Yes, and we can chew
and walk at the same time! There is no reason why, if we are doing
one function, we cannot devote some energies to another one; and
it is quite simple to set up. Believe me, I think it is very simple
to set up, and you can use the local authorities to go down that
route of setting up, because for any college established in the
local authority area, you could ask them to tackle it. They do
things like food outlets and health and safety, and they could
have gone in there and ratified whether that college was a genuine
college. They could have had the names of the students, and they
could have sent them back to you on the attendance records. When
are we going to get to that stage? It is now 2004; can you give
me a date as to when that will be in place, and be fairly watertight?
Mr Jeffrey: The key date is the
end of this year, when the register will be completed. It will
take some time to complete. But to give an indication of the progress
that we are making, in the last month or so our staff have visited
just over 400 colleges that in our minds raised some doubt. We
have already established that over a hundred of them are definitely
not genuine, and we will do something about that. There are others
that require a bit more careful investigation, so we are getting
on with this. It is an area, as you say, Mr Jenkins, where we
feel that there may well have been exploitation of the system
in the past.
Mr Jenkins: It is undermining that brand
name we have got with regard to British education, and it is time
we should take it very seriously.
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