Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 308)
TUESDAY 17 JANUARY 2006
MR KEITH
BEST, MR
COLIN YEO,
MR CHRIS
RANDALL AND
MR MATTHEW
DAVIES
Q300 Mr Winnick: What I do not quite
understand, leaving aside the possibility that any such organisation
could be another CSA, which is not perhaps the best example, or
organisations that follow, but if there was such an independent
making body, surely at the end of the day such a body could only
work on the basis of rules decided by Parliament, like now?
Mr Best: Yes.
Q301 Mr Winnick: I do not quite see
the difference. If Parliament decides, rightly or wrongly, Mr
Best, to have, as now, a rule that says, in effect, "If you
want to visit the United Kingdom you have to demonstrate that
you have an intention to leave", if that stays—it may
not, but if Parliament decides as a result of the Government's
wish, that is a policy that ought to remain—how would this
independent organisation in any way change the present situation?
Mr Best: I do not extol the virtues
wholly of the Canadian system because it has some flaws as well,
but, as you will be aware, they have an independent board making
decisions. It is more the question of the culture. Where you have
an independent organisation, it would have its own career structure,
you would have people joining that organisation to actually do
the work that they wanted to do; you would not have an executive
officer who comes in to doing this work for a few months maybe
or for a year or so then moves on and does not see it necessarily
as a very important part of their career development. It is a
question of getting people who are committed to doing that sort
of work because that is the work they want to do. They can develop
expertise in the asylum side on countries of origin, for example,
and can actually bring a pride to bear in dealing with these matters.
I have some considerable confidence in the development at the
moment of the new asylum model which the Home Office is piloting
and you may be aware of the details of that. They are taking longer
over decisions but they are being more careful about decisions.
They have case owners who take charge of a particular case throughout
its passage through the whole process. That hopefully is going
to lead to much greater cooperation and correspondence between
advocates on behalf of applicants and appellants and Home Office
officials so that you can begin to discern where the true disputes
are, more akin to my practice at the Bar where you would actually
get in touch with the other side beforehand and distil what are
the real issues at stake and save a lot of time and money.
Q302 Mr Clappison: Could I turn to
the ILPA witnesses, particularly to Mr Randall. A few moments
ago you expressed some surprise that work was being moved from
the work permits organisation to the entry clearance post. I wonder
if you could say a little bit more about that and, particularly,
if you could say what you find satisfactory about the work permits
organisation, which I believe many of your clients do?
Mr Randall: One of the attractions
of the work permits system is that you could ring up a caseworker
and speak to them about the case. That is very attractive. There
is a two-tier review system, so if there is something that you
are not happy about it will be reviewed internally, which is helpful,
so you have immediate access. That is perhaps the most important
thing. Although there are some issues about the quality of decisions
at the margins, broadly you put in a sensible application and
you get a sensible decision, and you get it quickly, generally
within three weeks. That is all very attractive. That is one of
the bits of the migration system which is working best. To export
that to a variety of posts abroad where there is not that expertise,
where you cannot ring people up and where there is a rather different
culture, a much more negative culture than Work Permits UK, seems
to me counter-intuitive.
Q303 Mr Clappison: Do you have any
understanding of the reasons why this is being done?
Mr Randall: I think one argument
is that it is going to be cheaper, because people cost less to
employ abroad, and I think that generally there has been an approach
of externalising applicants so that you are waiting abroad before
coming here rather than waiting here whilst you get a result,
which greatly reduces the incentive of an applicant to delay.
I think the idea is that it is easier to control somebody waiting
at a High Commission door than it is living in London waiting
for a result; but certainly for practitioners it is hard to see
the business logic for it. It is hard to see how it would work
in practice.
Q304 Mr Clappison: Could I ask Mr
Best on a slightly different point, you were asked earlier about
communications at a central level within the system. Could I ask
you about the problem of communication with different posts, because
this is something you have drawn attention to in your evidence,
the differences between different posts, some of which you describe
as being impervious to communication. Why do you think standards
vary so much?
Mr Yeo: We cannot explain why
the standards vary so much. That is not something we have direct
knowledge of. Certainly we can report that there are extremely
wide variations in the accessibility of different posts and that
if you are able to communicate with somebody, if somebody will
respond to phone calls, faxes or e-mails, then also their willingness
to negotiate. One of the points that was raised earlier is should
we not be advising our clients to make fresh applications rather
than pursuing lengthy appeals. We would love to, but we know that
there are many posts around the world that we deal with where
it is just pointless. The ECOs just will not be interested in
overturning their original decisions once one is made.
Q305 Mr Clappison: Can I put one
final overall question to Mr Best, if I may, and I will begin
my question by saying I am not somebody who stays awake at night
worrying that what I say in opposition will be quoted against
me when I am Prime Minister! I am somebody who is concerned about
what I regard as the high level of legal long-term net migration
into the country, and that is undoubtedly added to by illegal
migration. A lot of the questioning that has been put to you today
has been about the need for strictness and scrutiny within the
system so as to prevent unlawful migration, and yet at the end
of the day one is left with the impression that whilst the system
is being strict towards people with dishonest intentions who either
have dishonest intentions in the first place or form dishonest
intentions when they come here and abuse the system and overstay,
yet there are many other people within the system who have honest
intentions who are losing out because of that and in some cases
suffering within the system. I am thinking particularly of people
who want to pay family visits to this country. They lose out and,
of course, their families in this country lose out. What I am
getting at in the round is: do you think we should have an aspiration
to move towards a system which is easier for people who have genuine,
legitimate, honest intentions, who are not looking to abuse the
system, are not looking to settle here but simply want to pay
visits to this country?
Mr Best: Yes, I concur entirely.
Unfortunately, the nature of the solutions that have been found
to deal with abuse has necessarily affected a very wide category
of people, including perfectly genuine ones, and I think that
is what has upset a lot of people about the marriage conditions,
for example, because it discriminates equally against the genuine
marriage as it does against the one which is slightly dodgy, and
also these other categories that we mentioned. There does need
to be a much greater focus on where the abuse is and trying to
deal with that particular abuse. There may be some comfort in
the way the Government is approaching this through its risk assessment
and trying to focus more on where the abuse is, trying to elicit
exactly what that abuse is and how local mechanisms can be used
to overturn that, but I would strongly urge that you do not use
a sledge hammer to crack a nut. First of all, you have got to
ascertain exactly what the nature of the abuse is and its magnitude
so that you have a fair debate about that, you recognise that
the great majority of people who apply to come to this country
apply successfully and, indeed, there is no question asked about
their bona fides and you make sure that you have a system which
is sufficiently flexible to meet the socio-economic needs of the
country and is not an inhibition on that. I do not believe that
it is beyond the grasp of politicians and the Government to be
able to achieve that, but we have not seen that degree of focus
so far and that is what really needs to change.
Mr Clappison: I was trying to get a direction
of progress from you. I think that is helpful.
Q306 Mr Winnick: Do you accept—both
organisations this is really meant to—that one of the ways
to maintain good race relations in Britain is the need for people
to recognise, and I am not talking about the fringe minority,
the racist gangsters and the rest, but for reasonable people to
accept that effective immigration controls are in place?
Mr Best: Yes. Certainly they need
to know that—that is the only way you are going to have
public confidence in the system—but you need to be able
to achieve that by better verifiable statistical information and
maybe more apparent disinterested statistical information; and
I know you have asked questions about this of previous witnesses;
so that is a very important aspect.
Q307 Mr Winnick: Effective immigration
control inevitably means that a good number of people, some no
doubt with good intentions certainly to live here, simply will
not be able to do so. You accept that?
Mr Best: That is inevitable, but
hopefully that is applied in a way observing natural justice and
the ability of people to challenge adverse decisions if those
decisions are wrong, and we come back to an earlier discussion.
Q308 Mr Winnick: Effective immigration
control does mean that people who want to come and live here perfectly
lawfully cannot do so because Britain has a policy of immigration
control. You accept that?
Mr Best: Not necessarily in the
way you put it. What I do accept is that the public have to have
confidence in the system. It may be that if people realise the
true nature of immigration at the present time, then there would
be less concern about it. I think it was The Economist
that pointed out on 10 February 2005 that the number of people
who are admitted for permanent settlement to this country every
year represents less than one-third of 1% of the total adult population.
Mr Randall: I think there is also
a duty on government to educate, and government has sent out mixed
messages in the very recent past. In particular the notion of
"economic migrant", which is used as a term of abuse,
to describe asylum seekers who have failed. At the same time,
when they tried to sell a managed migration policy when migration
was required, the public found it very difficult to understand
why economic migration might be a positive benefit in one sense
where it was a term of abuse before. So I do think there is an
onus on government as well to do work in this field.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
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