Letter to the Chairman from the Immigration
and Nationality Directorate, Home Office
During my evidence on 21 June to the Committee
on the issue of visa entry to the UK, you and Committee Members
asked me to follow up a number of points of detail in writing.
I apologise for the delay in responding, and hope this note provides
you and your colleagues with all the information you require.
As recorded at Question 64 in the uncorrected
transcript, you asked for a note on the copy list of the letter
from Bob Ainsworth to Beverley Hughes dated 4 March 2003, when
both were Ministers in the Home Office. This matter was covered
in Ken Sutton's report of his investigation, at paragraph 3.17
(see Annex 1). As this makes clear, when Bob Ainsworth's letter
was received in Beverley Hughes' office, an e-mail was sent to
relevant IND officials seeking urgent advice on it. That e-mail
was copied to the Home Secretary's office, but not to him personally.
In response to Question 89 from Richard Bacon,
I undertook to provide a full list of the membership of IND's
Intake Reduction Secure Borders Sub-programme board. The current
membership is:
— Chair-Senior Director, Operations
— Director, Border Control
— Head of Asylum Policy and Programme
Division, DCA
— Director, Asylum Casework
— Director, National Asylum Support
Service
— Director, Enforcement and Removals
— Director, Immigration and Nationality
Directorate Intelligence Service
— Director, International Policy
— Director, International Delivery
— Director, HR Operations
— Director, Finance & Planning
— Director, Business Systems &
Technology
— Director, Joint Delivery Programme
— Secure Borders Customer Account Manager
— Deputy Director, Border Control
— Two of IND's Non-executive Directors
Mr Bacon also asked (at Question 110) why the
"Flexibility Guidance" issued to caseworkers in IND's
Sheffield Office, which was the subject of Mr Sutton's first inquiry,
stated that no expiry date should be placed on the GCID system
(IND's electronic database) when initial leave for 12 months was
granted. The reason no expiry date was to be placed on the system
by a UK based caseworker was that it would not yet have been returned
to the Entry Clearance Officer (ECO) at the post. It was only
when the ECO issued the entry clearance visa, that the applicant's
12 months leave began.
Finally, at Question 169, you asked for further
details on the sample of applicants that Ken Sutton referred to
at paragraph 1.27 of his report. During his visits to Bucharest
and Sofia and separately to Sheffield, Ken Sutton and his team
reviewed the cases of a number of applicants. The main profile
of these was that they were mostly, but not exclusively, young
men—this supported Ken Sutton's impression that those applying
through the ECAA route largely comprised an economically active
cohort coming here to work rather than seek benefits. To follow
this up, he asked the Immigration Service to visit a small sample
of applicants to check whether, contrary to his impression, the
people concerned, when in the United Kingdom, had reverted to
dependency on state benefits. Although too small to draw definitive
conclusions, this exercise found no evidence that this was the
case and again tended to confirm Ken Sutton's recommendation to
re-allocate some of IND's resources to carrying out checks, on
a risk basis, to establish whether individual ECAA applicants
who have been granted leave are complying with the requirements
of the Immigration Rules for the ECAA category.
Mr Bill Jeffrey
Director General
Immigration and Nationality Directorate
30 September 2004
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