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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 775-vii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Tuesday 9 May 2006 MR DOMINIC SCOTT and DR KAREN WILSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 633 - 677
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 9 May 2006 Members present Mr Richard Benyon Mrs Ann Cryer Mrs Janet Dean Mr Shahid Malik Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell Mr Richard Spring Mr Gary Streeter Mr David Winnick
In the absence of the Chairman, Mr David Winnick was called to the Chair
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Memoranda submitted by UKCOSA and Dr Karen Wilson
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Dominic Scott, Chief Executive, UKCOSA, and Dr Karen Wilson, gave evidence. Q633 Mr Winnick: Good morning. Thank you very much for coming along. If you have no objection, we will come straight to the questions, unless you are very eager to make a statement. We have had your paper, so perhaps we could come straight to the questions. Dr Wilson: Yes. Q634 Mr Winnick: First of all, perhaps you could introduce yourselves for the record. Mr Scott: I am Dominic Scott, Chief Executive of UKCOSA, the Council for International Education, which is the UK's main advisory body on international students. Previously, I have 20 years working overseas with the British Council, where I worked closely with energy clearance officers but was generally promoting UK education. Dr Wilson: I am Dr Karen Wilson, I am a director of a company called Odyssey Consulting which is a medical recruitment company based in London. I have a background in medicine myself. Q635 Mr Winnick: Mr Scott, there has been a steady rise in the number of applications for student visas in the last few years, people who want to come and study at various colleges in the UK. On the information we have, over a third of these are now refused but a quarter of those refused are successful when it comes to their appeal against the decision to refuse them permission to come and study. In the experience that you have, and you have just explained you have much experience in this field, what are the reasons for the rise in applications and the reason also why so many are able to overturn the decision to refuse them permission to come and study here? Mr Scott: Could I clarify. Is it the rise in applications for visas or the rise in the numbers of appeals? Q636 Mr Winnick: The two. Over a third of those who apply are refused permission to study, but at least a quarter of those who are refused succeed in their appeals. Mr Scott: The rise in applications is, of course, a result of the success of the UK's recruitment strategy at the moment, with increasing numbers wanting to come to the UK, although there are worrying signs now that the market is shrinking for the UK and we are being overtaken by some competition. Of those who apply for visas and then have them refused our concerns have been that many of these are because entry clearance officers are taking subjective decisions about whether there is a legitimate intention to study in the UK and sometimes looking at whether they have the academic ability to follow a course. Many in the sector believe those are decisions which the sector should take, not entry clearance officers and so when we move to appeals, indeed, we find, as you say, that 25-30% are successful, and you know, from the well rehearsed statistics, that the Immigration Advisory Service says of those that they represent 60% are successful, and the University of Sheffield have said that 90% are successful of those ones which they contest either formally or informally. I think we have a big difficulty here about subjective decision-making, but, as we move on, that is what many of us are keen to see is swept away in the new proposed points-based system so that we have objective, transparent criteria and we have institutions taking responsibility for academic judgments, which is where many of these decisions are questioned at the moment. Q637 Mr Winnick: When you talk about subjective judgments being made by immigration officials, basically what it comes down is to perhaps a cynical view of a number of immigration officers in certain countries, British immigration officers, dealing with applications to study here. We believe it is all a sham, that the reason that the person is applying is not really to study perhaps a few hours to try and go through the appropriate rules, but basically to find ways and means of staying in Britain working and the rest of it. Do you feel that immigration officers take that view? Mr Scott: I think immigration officers, in general, have an extraordinarily difficult task to achieve. You have heard evidence from Mandie Campbell previously about the scale of forged documentation. There are huge difficulties in making these subjective judgments, and I think the statistics show that the UK is far from a soft touch. There are a very large number of refusals, and over the last 12 months I have seen the refusal rates in some of the more challenging posts: Accra 79%, Lagos 78%, Freetown 72%, etcetera, etcetera. The UK is a pretty tough country to get into for a student, and I think that is as it should be. The area where we are sceptical is whether there is any significant abuse after entry. There is a distinction between pre-entry, where there is a very difficult task to be done by entry clearance officers, but when students pass that test and come to the UK we maintain that the vast majority are legitimate students who go about their legitimate studies, and we have got some additional statistics, I think, which would support that view. Q638 Mr Winnick: You have conceded that the entry clearance officers have a very difficult job, Mr Scott, and you give the impression that perhaps in their position you would not necessarily reach a different decision. Yet, when it comes to their cases being heard by immigration judges (who used to be called adjudicators) those judges seem to take different views and come to a conclusion, in so many of these reject cases, that the person is a potential genuine student wishing to come here? Mr Scott: I think the significant additional step is when it moves to an appeal, either the student himself or an institution is able to give more information to validate and justify the grounds for why he wishes to come to the UK. When you apply for entry clearance, it is the statistic that an entry clearance officer has three minutes to assess whether that should be accepted or not, something of that order. If, in fact, there is something ambiguous, they do not have time to go back and question it. The appeal system allows people to put forward better information so that a wider view can be taken, and that is why so many are successful. Q639 Mr Winnick: We come to a situation where, in fact, there will be a removal of being able to appeal, so, in effect, the entry clearance officer will be judge and jury, as the saying goes, in such cases? Mr Scott: That is certainly our concern. We know that the Home Office's current position is that within the brave new world of the objective, transparent points-based system there will be no need for appeals. What we have argued for is, please, would you actually run this new system, prove that there is no need for appeals and then consider their abolition, but to abolish appeals before this new system is tested, we think, is extremely unwise. Q640 Mr Winnick: And the effect? Mr Scott: The effect will be twofold. First, I think it will lead to rejection of applications by legitimate students and damage their individual careers, and, second, it will damage and have a major impact on the £5 billion income which the UK earns each year for what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has called one of the UK's most successful and dynamic export industries. The UK is a leader in this and the impact of the discussion of the abolition or removal of appeals and visa charges, etcetera, etcetera, has had a massive impact upon the perception of the UK abroad. It is that perception of the UK as a welcoming country or not as a welcoming country which underpins this whole industry, and so we are very concerned that it will have an impact on individuals but it also will have a major impact on the sector of our earnings. Q641 Mr Winnick: In your view, Mr Scott, amongst those who have a genuine wish, and only a genuine wish, to study here but are refused, these people will study elsewhere, wherever the place may be, in their own country or elsewhere, do you think that will produce a hostile feeling towards Britain? Mr Scott: That is the understanding, the assessment of the majority of people in the sector, that there has been a cumulative effect. We are not talking about the individual issue, the abolition of appeals, we are talking about a story that has run overseas and in this country for the last 18 months, perhaps until the end of 2005, which started with the statement of a crack down on bogus students and bogus institutions; it was then the imposition of visa extension charges for the first time - people who wanted to stay longer in the UK to do another course were charged for those extensions - those visa extensions were then doubled in cost and now cost between £250-500 for a student who wants to extend his visa; initial entry clearance charges then went up by 130% in the summer last year and now we have had the debate about the removal of appeals. All these things individually might have been manageable, but together they have produced a story, I think, of a very unwelcoming UK, but I say, finally, that many of us feel that over the last six months the chapter has moved on, the story has changed. The Home Office, we believe, now accept that the amount of after entry abuse is pretty minimal, that students are not in general a high-risk category, that the new points-based system will have a light touch because the majority of students are legitimately going about their studies. I feel that we have been through 18 months of dark ages, but in the last six months we have noticed a new spirit. There was a specific event for the education sector on 17 March where three Government ministers - Tony McNulty, Bill Trammel and Lord Triesman - all spoke about the value that international students bring to the UK, and that is a new spirit, we feel, that was not around 12 months ago, and we hope that is reflected in the new system. Q642 Mr Winnick: You are making representations, obviously, about the continuation of the appeal system? Mr Scott: We are indeed. I am sad to say that many people feel that we have nearly reached the end of the road on this and that we have failed to convince the Government, but we still would hold out the hope that we could have at least a test period: 12 months of running the new system to ensure it produces the results the Government says before appeals are removed, and we are very keen that we can convince the Government that that would be a sensible route to follow. Q643 Mrs Cryer: The Chairman has already asked most of the questions that I was going to cover, so I will try to be more specific. Some of us were in Lagos or Accra last week and I think there is some concern, not about sham courses, perfectly legitimate courses and universities going about their business perfectly properly in trying to attract foreign students, because that is a great help to their finances, but the concern is that no-one seems to know always what happens to those students because there is no reliable source of information from the universities to tell us when a student does not actually turn up or what happens to that student if he or she does not turn up. I wonder if either of you would like to comment on that? Mr Scott: I would be delighted to comment on it, because in previous evidence I think you heard that the Home Office was running with the sector something called the "Joint Notifications Project", which was to take a selection of students who had had visas on the basis of university offers and to try and match those names with those universities - had they actually arrived, were they there, could they be accounted for - because, as I have said in my evidence, there were some rather exaggerated claims about the area of abuse here. The report is in its final draft form at the moment, but I understand that the headline results are that out of 3,300 records which were shared with institutions, only 0.4% of students had entered the country but not enrolled and no UK address was known. This is a project which was run with the selection of universities, a selection of public sector colleges and some English language colleges and the results gave us 0.4%. There was a second rather fundamental question: not just who had arrived but, say, six months later, were they still there? Were they still studying? Were they still making good progress? I understand that 6% were identified as no longer at an institution, but, of course, under the current system it is quite possible that numbers of those had decided to go and study at other institutions, and, as this was only a pilot survey, it was impossible, but I think, having had some earlier figures, to know that of this objective assessment only 0.4% of students were not where they said they were going to be is actually a vindication for the sector. Q644 Mrs Cryer: You are quite satisfied that that is the honest, truthful position, that only 0.4% of students do not turn up to the courses? Mr Scott: The only rider I would put to that is I think the good guys took part in the survey, and at the moment we have a slightly flimsy register of education providers and there are some institutions still on that register who do not have the higher standards of academic educational quality. We know in the future, under what is unfortunately called the new "sponsors register" (a word we think is extremely misleading in the educational sphere), that it will be a far tougher regime to get onto that register. At the moment, I would concede that I think there is more abuse than 0.4%, but it is really at the margins of the rogue element of the industry, which at the moment is pretty small now that the Home Office have done their inspections, have closed down 300 colleges, as we heard. It is a pretty marginal piece of activity. Q645 Mrs Cryer: Karen, do you want to say something? Dr Wilson: No, my subject matter is something different. Mr Winnick: We have questions later for you, Dr Wilson. Mrs Cryer has some other questions which I did not ask. Q646 Mrs Cryer: We have talked about perfectly legitimate universities who were attracting a great many foreign students, which is very helpful to their finances, and we recognise that, but you did not touch on the rogue element. How bad is that rogue element? You say a lot of them have been closed down. We have been hearing about institutions that simply do not exist except to process applications and pretend to give courses, but actually there is no such institution. What has been happening is that students are simply being given assistance in applying for visas but it really is not about education. Could you talk about that sort of thing? Mr Scott: The picture I would see is that we have got incremental improvement. Two years ago, before we had any sort of register of learning providers, we had difficulty. The Home Office had its list of bona fide institutions, but it was difficult to police and control. We have now got 14,500 institutions on the current register. Twelve hundred have been visited, we have been told, and 300 were found to be suspect. Following that process, we have, as I say, a very minimal area of potential abuse, but I am as interested because the story now moves on and in 12-months' time we will have, hopefully, a new sponsors register, and this will be a tougher regime, and we have argued that not only should people have to show that they have a set of accounts and a floor plan and are legitimately established as a business, but that they have some form of educational quality control, they are accredited by a recognised agency. Once we have that in place, I think we will have all the ingredients to ensure that any areas of abuse are absolutely minimal, because institutions which lost their accreditation would go out of business very quickly. It is a good step forward. They are actually bringing quality into our immigration controls. Q647 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Scott, you have given a very rosy picture, in my view, of this whole area of visa control and your picture is of diminishing and almost marginal abuse of the system. You have been talking about the bogus end of the market in term of education providers, but let us talk about the legitimate colleges and universities. Mr Scott: Did you say legitimate or illegitimate? Q648 Gwyn Prosser: No, the legitimate, respectable universities which we all look up to. We have been told that many universities offer far more places to overseas students than they can possibly practically accommodate. When some of the members of the Select Committee were in Nigeria just last months, we were told quite startlingly that, for instance, Leeds University had 2,500 applications just from Nigeria for the foundation course, 1,250 of those were accepted by the university and the number that turned up were five. What is the problem there? Mr Scott: I have had another instance brought to my attention in Nigeria, where a further education college, having accepted 60, found that not one managed to get a visa. We have got some market economics working here, I think. If there is an acceptance that we have got a 79% rejection rate on visas, it is quite likely that institutions will offer far more places than they expect people will be able to turn up. I think that is natural. Of course, under the current system a university gives an offer, but five universities could give that same students offer, so you might only have a one in five chance that the student is actually going to come to you; so universities do over-offer at the moment. However, when we have visas linked to institutions and the University of Leeds issues an offer which is Leeds specific, which it will be under the new system, then they will be able to predict more carefully how many students might actually be coming. At the moment we have got a bit of a rough and tumble out there about how many offers are given and how many people in the end turn up. There is a bit of luck and I think people are risking things. In general we have not had reports or complaints brought to our notice that students arrive and there are 100 in the class and there is no accommodation for them. I think universities are pretty sophisticated in managing these numbers, but it is a function of the current system where visas are not linked to institutions and so you issue hundreds of offers and see who turns up. Q649 Gwyn Prosser: You are quite confident, Mr Scott, that all of those hundreds, or it might even be thousands, of applicants who were accepted for offers took up legitimate courses in universities and colleges in the UK, bearing in mind the evidence that you have given to us this morning that it is only a marginal abuse of the system? Mr Scott: Yes, but my assessment of this, without knowing any detail, would be that of the 1,500 who were given offers I would not be at all surprised if 1,000 found that they did not in the end have the funds to come to the UK. When you apply for university, when you are accepted, you do not have to pay a deposit, you do not pay fees up front. Many people accept and then hope that some agency will fund them, that their parents will fund them. In a developing country, say in India, my experience was of the same thing. Many people will try and get a place, then they will search for the money. A thousand of those might not have the money, 250 might decide to go to Australia or go somewhere else and 250 may, in the end, arrive in Leeds. That is the sort of diminishing nature of the way this system works: offers are cheap, arrivals are few and far between in comparison. Q650 Gwyn Prosser: In this case it was not 250 that turned up at Leeds, it was five? Mr Scott: What we should be concerned about, presumably, is how many arrived at port of entry and how many then registered at Leeds. That, I think, is the critical issue. If we thought 50 arrived at port of entry and only five turned up at Leeds, then we would have a very limp system, but if there is no evidence that more than five arrived at port of entry and those five got to Leeds, then we certainly do not have an immigration problem. We may have an academic admissions problem, but we do not have an immigration problem. Q651 Gwyn Prosser: I should not single out Leeds, except that the figures are so dramatic, but do you think that the universities do over-offer or are being irresponsible or are just playing the market? Mr Scott: I am sure the answer is some of one and some of the other. As I say, given the current application system, how many offers you give and ensuring that you get the right number turning up at the end is something of a jungle and a lottery. That system will be improved with visas linked to institutions. People will be able to control it. Good institutions, where they can, make sure they have a good overseas agent. When I was in India the University of Leeds opened an office of their own, staffed by Indian specialists, in New Delhi, so that they could meet applicants, get to know them, know their family, filter through to the really serious people who were coming to their institution. Nigeria is a very difficult environment, I realise, and it is difficult to do that, but at the moment I can only say that we have an advice-line for students who can pick up the phone to us, free of charge, and say, "Look, I have been ripped off by the University of Leeds. The class is absolutely full. There are too many people and there is no accommodation." We are not getting those calls. In general, universities are playing the lottery but they are quite cleverly getting the numbers that they need in the end. I am sorry if I am being too rosy. Q652 Gwyn Prosser: It is nice to have some rosy pictures, from my point of view anyway. My last question is with regard to the ease or otherwise of students extending their stay in the UK. Do you have the impression that it is much easier for a student to extend his or her stay in the UK even by switching colleges than it is to get entry in the first place? Mr Scott: It certainly should be because, having actually gone through the full record, personal details, background checks to allow someone to come into the country in the first place, to allow them to stay an extra year or move from college X to college Y should be an extremely simple process. That is why we find it rather difficult to understand why it is £85 for an initial visa and £250 or £500 to extend it. You would think actually there were merely a modest couple of additional steps to say that that person should stay on. We are particularly concerned with the new system, when visas are linked to institutions, that if a student arrives, turns up at the University of Leeds and finds that that course is not entirely appropriate for him and wishes to move to the University of Bradford, that student should not be required to pay another £250 or £500 to change the terms of his leave. I have slightly laboured this point because "visas linked to institutions" is a fundamental part of the new system. It will be very good for immigration control, it will be very good for admissions departments, but for international students who are choosing a course at long distance from Taiwan, many of them, when they arrive, will say, "I now know I would prefer to be doing the NSC in applied economics round the corner", and we think that facility needs to stay. My general answer is: £86 initial entry, big process, security concerns, let the person come in the country or not, seems to be surprising that it is £250 or £500 to extend the visa whilst you are here, and those are the people we want to encourage. Do A levels, stay on and do a degree. If you have done your degree, stay on and do a PhD. I think that system is something which could be certainly streamlined. Mr Winnick: Mr Malik is going to ask you some questions about bogus students. Q653 Mr Malik: Dominic, I think you mentioned it in part earlier, but why do you describe the recent crack down on bogus student and bogus institutions as politically motivated? Mr Scott: I am not entirely sure that was precisely the phrase I used. I am sure some of my colleagues would have struck it out if I did, but I think I suggested something of that variety. There was certainly a climate, it seemed to us, in 2004 when overseas students were seen as something of a soft target. I am not an immigration lawyer, I am not a politician, but I think issues of immigration, overseas students and asylum were confused, and in that mix overseas students were seen as something of a soft option or a soft touch, but it is quite easy to say we will crack down on this area. As I say, there was an element of marginal abuse, but it seemed that the press reporting inflated that out of all proportion. Q654 Mr Malik: Is it not the job of a responsible government to crack down on abuse of any immigration and, indeed, any other system that they might be responsible for? Is that not merely the job of a responsible government? Mr Scott: It seemed to us that in the league table of sinners overseas students should not actually feature in the high category, but it seemed at the time that they were being used to demonstrate a tough approach when they were not a high area of risk. Q655 Mr Malik: I really want to go back to something that you said earlier on. You said there were 14,500 institutions on the DfES register. I just want to be sure about this. You said that a survey was done of 1,200 of those institutions and 300 were found to be wanting. You then described that as minimal abuse. Yet, if you extrapolate those figures for the overall 14,500 on the register, you will find that there are at least 3,500 institutions on that register that ought not to be there, are completely inappropriate. I then question your judgment as a witness here if you feel that that is minimal abuse. I would say that that suggests major abuse. What would you say? Mr Scott: I would say two things. First, the areas that were pinpointed by IND inspections were clearly the ones where there was most suspicion, and, in the end, the 300 out of 14,500 is, I think, 2% of the institutions on the register. Two per cent is, I think you would agree, a modest figure. However, the major point is you cannot extrapolate that, because what IND looked at were suspect colleges. The vast majority are public sector institutions. They are our universities and colleges publicly funded and accredited. You cannot extrapolate the 2% and say, if everybody was looked at the abuse would be massive. What was looked at was the rogue element in the margins, and I think that was found, but I do not think you could extrapolate that to the University of Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds and Warwick. Q656 Mr Malik: That is clearly not what I am saying. You have named three institutions, but you have also talked about 300 that were found to be wanting. I think we can debate this, but we are perhaps, I suspect, slightly more sceptical than you are, given the evidence we have gathered so far in our inquiry, but I want to focus on this register. Do you think that the current register as it stands provides any protection to foreign students or is effective in deterring persons that might want to enter the UK without the intention to study? Mr Scott: I think I mentioned to Mrs Cryer that I saw this as an incremental process. We had minimal controls two years ago. This register has been a major step forward, because at least it ensures that people are properly established as a legitimate business. Theoretically there are difficulties, but that is the aim. Q657 Mr Malik: There were some major difficulties, as you have just said yourself? Mr Scott: There were some major difficulties, but, as I say, with stage three - and I think we ought to be looking at stage three - under the new points-based system, we will have a stronger sponsor's register. That is the area that we are focusing on now and have been spending a lot of time within the Joint Education Task Force, with the Home Office, with officials, working out how the new register could be more effective, so we are moving in the right direction. There are errors and difficulties with the current register, but we have all agreed that we are now moving on to a stronger vehicle, and it is that stronger vehicle we think we should focus on. Finally, if we go back to the point of abuse, I think the one reliable statistic that I would like the Committee to bear in mind is the 0.4% non-accounted for in the joint notifications project, and that is the only hard piece of evidence we have so far of what abuse there is after entering. Q658 Mr Malik: So you probably would agree that the current register is unwieldy, unmanageable and pointless? Mr Scott: Certainly the first two. I am not quite surety about the third, but certainly unwieldy and unmanageable and not fit for purpose. Q659 Mr Malik: You have moved to the new kind of register. What is it that you would want to see that would protect students, because we want to give students the best educational experience they can possibly have? We want genuine students to come in and to benefit from this country and to benefit this country as well. Obviously, we want to stop abuse, but what improvements need to be made then, given the changes that we know are going to take place, to both protect students and to stop abuse? Mr Scott: I think the building blocks are there to prevent abuse and, as well as the criteria at the moment, institutions will have to be accredited. I will not go into this in detail. There is an area of difficulty, an area of discussion, about what we mean by "accredited". At the moment the Home Office is suggesting accredited by a UK body. That superficially seems acceptable, but we do have a bizarre situation where this will disenfranchise all the US universities who are currently operating in this country. There are 140 US universities, who bring 30,000 students to the UK each year. They are the likes of Yale, Wharton, Harvard. They are, of course, not accredited by a UK body because we recognise their own accreditation system, so there are some areas of discussion there, but the second point that I would like---- Q660 Mr Winnick: I am sorry to interrupt, but we have quite a number of witnesses today. The evidence you are giving is very important, as I am sure Dr Wilson's will be, but I must ask you to be brief because we have got two other sets of parties, and I would ask my colleagues, and I have been guilty as well, to be as brief as possible. Mr Scott: Could I finish that in one sentence. Q661 Mr Winnick: Please? Mr Scott: The specific answer is that, in addition to the accreditation I would like to see a code of standards about what international students can expect from an institution which is on that register, and I would like some form of complaints mechanism for international students who feel they have gone to an institution on that register and not received the value or the services which they were offered and promised. An extra educational dimension to the register would seal it as far as we are concerned. Q662 Mr Winnick: Incidentally, when you talk about "political motivation", which was quoted, in your paper at paragraph eight you actually put a "political response" to public opinion. Mr Scott: That was the correct phrase, I think, yes. Q663 Mr Spring: You touched on this question of the problems at the entry point of entry clearance officers making subjective opinions. You are obviously in favour of the principle that colleges have to vouch for students who come from abroad, but, as far as the system, practically speaking, is concerned - and I know you have alluded to the complications of why so few people might pitch up at specific college, but, as far as finding a system to deal with this is concerned, I do not know if it is possible to do this, because it is a multi-faceted problem, as you have alluded to. What sort of system can we put in place to deal with this and also with students who actually drop out? Mr Scott: A system to ensure you get the right number of students that you are expecting. Q664 Mr Spring: Exactly. To minimise the imbalance? Mr Scott: I will be brief, Chairman. The optimistic and, I think, realistic view within the sector is that, by the proposals to tie visas to institutions, institutions will be able to predict the numbers coming to them. The way this will work is that the University of Warwick will issue a unique identifier offer. That offer will be live for four weeks. A student will then have to go in and obtain entry clearance within those four weeks to make that offer real. Ideally, there would be an on-line system so that university X will be able to see that the student has got a visa and that visa is Warwick specific, and then they will be able to easily predict how many are definitely coming. Q665 Mr Spring: The minute that the student decides to drop out, for whatever reason, the visa ends. That would have to be the case, would it not? Mr Scott: Institutions will be required to report to the Home Office on students who are no longer making satisfactory progress or satisfactorily attending. That is the architecture of the new system. Q666 Mr Spring: I remember some years ago being in discussion with the British Council (and I think you said you associated with them) on this whole issue of what happens when you have completed your degree. Certainly this was an argument some years ago and I think there has been some improvement on this, but one of the attractions of going to some countries is that, once you have finished your degree, you could stay on to get some practical work experience for a year or two, etcetera. What I want to ask you is how you think this system is actually working in practice, and should there be more flexibility so you could get a much freer kind of going home, coming back set up both during and perhaps immediately after studies if somebody has a work opportunity for a time-limited period? Mr Scott: I am desperately sorry to be so positive with my replies, but, again, this is something that we have been lobbying for over the last 18 months and there has been substantial movement over the last six months. First, of course, earlier than that, you will know that in Scotland now with the Fresh Talent initiative any overseas student who studies in Scotland has an automatic right to stay on for two years to work in Scotland to gain work experience, and, partly prompted by that, the Chancellor announced in his pre-Budget statement in November that all international post-graduates will be able to stay on for one year, throughout the United Kingdom, to gain work experience after qualification. I think this is an ideal situation. Students increasingly want work experience. We do not want to contribute to brain-drain and taking the best brains out, but to allow people to stay on for one or two years, I think, is the ideal situation, and the rules were changed on 3 May to allow that to happen; so those post-graduates who now come in for this year will be able to stay on and work and that will be good for business and good for contacts around the world. Mr Winnick: Dr Wilson, you have been extremely patient. I have got two last questions for you, which Mrs Dean will ask in this session. Q667 Mrs Dean: Dr Wilson, you have provided us with some evidence about alleged abuse of visas issued to international medical graduates to sit their Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board test in the UK. Could you start by telling us a bit about the background and how and why you investigated that particular issue? Dr Wilson: Yes, it was brought to my attention by a couple of Sri-Lankan doctors who came to this country to take this PLAB exam. They actually did a course in East Ham, in the East end of London, and they found there was a very large burgeoning industry of literally home-made courses. People were renting terraced houses, starting courses in the rooms of the house and some of them were forming limited companies, some of them were not, but none of the courses were actually registered with the DfES. The issue of visa abuse comes into the fact that they were sponsoring large numbers of students to enter the country linked to these courses. They actually advertised on the websites I have detailed. They issue sponsorship letters to literally anybody who contacts them and pays a fee of between £75-150, depending on the course. There are no identity checks done to check whether this person is actually a doctor, whether they are actually coming to take the exam. I do not know whether you have copies of the Sunday Times investigation done by David Leppard and Ali Hussein on 11th September last year. They did a full investigation in this area and the journalist Ali Hussein was offered three sponsorship letters for which he paid various fees. No checks were made to ensure that he was actually a doctor, which he is obviously not. He was then offered all kinds of illegal work. He was told that the sponsorship letter would get his brother a visa to come to the country and then, if he was short of funds, he would be provided with all sorts of opportunities for work. It is listed in the article, but they include things like selling mobile phone cards, working in shops, restaurants and factories, all of which could be organised by these course organisers. Q668 Mrs Dean: The two main issues that you have identified are crammer colleges which say they will sponsor PLAB candidates and then provide nothing or very little. Dr Wilson: That is right, yes. Q669 Mrs Dean: And also candidates who are working illegally in the UK while they are here and applying for a visa? Dr Wilson: Yes. Q670 Mrs Dean: Have you any feeling for the scale of either of those? What sort of numbers are we talking about? Dr Wilson: I think it was estimated, before the scam started, there were about 1,500 students entering per year. It is now upward of 6,000. Q671 Mrs Dean: How long has the scam been going on? Dr Wilson: It would seem that it started round about 1999 to 2000 and gradually increased up to about 2004 and, over the last year or so, has probably declined slightly because of the large-scale medical unemployment in the country at the moment. Q672 Mr Winnick: Dr Wilson, you became involved in this for what reason? Dr Wilson: I was told about this by two Sri-Lankan doctors who had found this out, and they said, "You must come and see this." Initially I was not particularly interested, and then they kept talking about it, so I thought, "Okay, we should go and see what it is all about." A few of us went together, a few doctors, and we went around and we saw some of these courses and we found out what was actually happening there: up to 30 people living in the house or working illegally outside, running courses within the house, all sorts of activities, and we realised it was actually quite an organised industry. Q673 Mr Winnick: You have been a medical doctor for how long? Dr Wilson: About 15 years. Q674 Mr Winnick: You are practising now? Dr Wilson: No, I am working in a company now. Q675 Mr Winnick: I see, but you can practise if you so wish? Mr Scott: Yes. Q676 Mr Winnick: You decided to tell the newspaper about what you had discovered? Dr Wilson: Yes. Q677 Mr Winnick: Are you continuing your inquiries? Dr Wilson: No. After the journalist took over the case I did not continue. They were obviously able to find out much more than I was, because they were working under cover and they had tapes. They could record what people were actually saying to them. Mr Winnick: Mr Scott and Dr Wilson, again, many thanks for coming along and giving us the evidence that you have. We appreciate it. UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 775-vii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
IMMIGRATION CONTROL
Tuesday 9 May 2006 MR MARK RIMMER, MR DEREK BEOKU-BETTS and MS PRAGNA PATEL DR JOHN SIMMONDS, MS DEBBIE ARIYO, MR NATHAN GLEW and MS OYEWO EKELEMU Evidence heard in Public Questions 689 - 740
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 9 May 2006 Members present Mr Richard Benyon Mrs Ann Cryer Mrs Janet Dean Mr Shahid Malik Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell Mr Richard Spring Mr Gary Streeter Mr David Winnick
In the absence of the Chairman, Mr David Winnick was called to the Chair ________________ Memoranda submitted by Mr Mark Rimmer, JCWI and Southall Black Sisters
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Mark Rimmer, Superintendent Registrar, London Borough of Brent, Mr Derek Beoku-Betts, Director of legal casework, JCWI and Ms Pragna Patel, Chair, Southall Black Sisters, gave evidence.
Mr Winnick: Good morning. Thank you very much for coming along to our inquiry into immigration control and the aspect of marriages. We had a brief private session beforehand and that is the reason you were kept waiting. We have a number of questions to you and I am going to ask Richard Spring to start. Q678 Mr Spring: Thank you, Chairman. I wanted to ask questions of Mr Rimmer. I have read your submission and we would just like to, obviously, deal with this question of foreigners marrying British nationals. I think the statistic you quoted in your written statement was that between 2001 and 2005 approximately 20% of all marriages in Brent were entered into for the purpose of improving immigration status. Then you mentioned a drop of 50% overall in the number of marriages taking place since the new rules were put in place. Does this mean that in addition to placing obstacles in the way of so-called "sham" marriages the new provision is also having an effect on bona fide marriages? Mr Rimmer: I think it is fair to say it is difficult to say. The 20% estimate is, of course, only an estimate because bogus marriage, of course, is a criminal activity, so it is very difficult to get objective evidence of its formation and the 20% was always an estimate, and perhaps a conservative estimate. However, I have never estimated that 50% were bogus, and what we may have lost, I think - and I will certainly give you an example - is if you had two South African students here on student visas, they may think that applying for study approval (?) at a cost of £135 for each of them to enable them to be married in the UK, they would probably choose to go back home and get married. So I suspect we have lost a lot of those. So, effectively, those will be quite legitimate marriages, and we undoubtedly have lost some of those. Certainly we have also lost a considerable number of those that were bogus as well. Q679 Mr Spring: If I can ask another question of you, which is about the evidence that the number of people applying to come to the UK as dependents of EEA nationals is rising in some countries. For example, in Ghana, there were 51 applications as the spouse of an EEA national in January to March 2006 compared with 9 in the same period last year. Do you think the new marriage rule is simply displacing the problem? Mr Rimmer: I am really not in a position to deal with that. Mr Beoku-Betts: I am sorry. Can you repeat the question, please? Q680 Mr Spring: We are just talking about the applications in Ghana as a spouse of an EEA national, in January to March 2006 there were 51 applications compared with 9 in the same period last year. So would you think that the new marriage rules have simply displaced the problem? Mr Beoku-Betts: In a sense, yes, if indeed there is a problem. I think one of the arguments that we have put forward is that the actual scale of this abuse has never been clearly evidenced. We do from time to time get high profile stories in the media saying that there is an abuse of this system; however, we do not see actual figures. Furthermore, when ---- Q681 Mr Winnick: Can I just interrupt you there? You say you do not see actual figures. Surely, you are aware of Mr Rimmer's evidence which has been well-publicised about what he considered to be sham marriages? Mr Beoku-Betts: Yes. He also said that sham marriages would be subject to criminal sort of proceedings in certain circumstances, and one would have expected that if he had had this very large number of people entering into sham marriages there would be a correspondingly high number of prosecutions, and that is not something that we have seen. Q682 Mr Spring: So you draw the inference that because there have not been prosecutions there has not been an increase. Is that what you are saying? Mr Beoku-Betts: What I am saying is that if the scale is as high as has been reported then you would see quite a few prosecutions. Q683 Mr Spring: I know Mr Rimmer has given us certain statistics but I think you said there was no assurance that these were accurate so we actually have no way of measuring this situation, do we? That is the problem. I think you have just both alluded to it in different ways. There is no basis of rational objective measurement. Mr Beoku-Betts: In a sense I must concede it is very difficult to measure, but at the same time one does not get a sense that the scale is as high as is made out by the authorities. Mr Spring: Well, it is very difficult for us. Obviously, we have to come to certain conclusions, and of course we do have tabloid stories and we have had suggestions of certain levels of this kind of thing, but it is very, very difficult - I think we can all agree - that as we have no evidence we do not know exactly the extent of the problem, but there we are. Thank you, Chairman. Q684 Mr Winnick: Mr Beoku-Betts, do you think Mr Rimmer, as a public servant, has some ulterior motive in publicising what he has done about sham marriages? Mr Beoku-Betts: No, absolutely not, but obviously he does have his suspicions. Q685 Mr Winnick: Surely, as a public servant, considering the role that he plays as the Superintendent Registrar of the London Borough of Brent, he has a responsibility, has he not, to have suspicions? Mr Beoku-Betts: Indeed, but, at the same time, we all have our own experiences. I have experiences as an immigration lawyer having practised in this area of law for well over 15 years - probably closer to 20 ---- Q686 Mr Winnick: Now representing JCWI. Mr Beoku-Betts: Yes, I am a solicitor and I am the casework director of JCWI. My experience is not that we have these very, very high levels of people wanting to enter into bogus marriages. On the contrary, what we see is people who are in genuine and subsisting marriages wanting to formalise their relationship in terms of a legal marriage. Q687 Mr Winnick: We have questions for you later, Ms Patel, unless you are desperate to come in on this. Ms Patel: No, I am not. It is not my area. Q688 Mr Winnick: Mr Rimmer, you started being concerned some years ago in your position as Superintendent Registrar at the London Borough of Brent. Is that right? Mr Rimmer: Absolutely. I have to say that it is not only in my position as Superintendent Registrar for Brent and Director of the service in Brent; I am also part of a local government co-ordinating body called LACORS under the Local Government Association, and my remit is effectively as a spokesperson for local government both on citizenship and nationality but, also, on the sham marriages issue. So it is also intelligence-based evidence from other areas of the country as well as Brent; it is not just based upon my experience in Brent, it is right around the country. Also, just to correct the gentleman here, it is not only foreign nationals or those subjected to immigration control marrying British nationals. In fact, most of the abuse that we found was foreign nationals marrying EEA nationals other than British nationals, so effectively it was not Brits at all; it was primarily the French, Portuguese and Dutch who were involved in the scam. Q689 Mr Malik: Mr Beoku-Betts, you have recently won a High Court challenge to the new marriage rules. I just wonder if you could update the Committee on the implications of that particular case and explain, briefly, why compliance with immigration law and policy should not be a legal requirement for marriage in this country. After all, Article 12 of the European Convention says that "Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right". I apologise it is a bit long-winded, but over to you. Mr Beoku-Betts: First of all, the case in which JCWI intervened was the first case in which the right to marry was dealt with in the context of immigration law. Secondly, there were a number of factual situations but what the judge did was to give general guidance to all situations where the right to marry has somehow been prevented as a result of Section 19. Thirdly (this is just a preliminary point that I would like the Committee to bear in mind), there is a difference between getting married and being allowed to stay in the United Kingdom. They are not necessarily the same. Sometimes commentary around this area, perhaps, assumes that once a person does get married in the United Kingdom automatically they are allowed to stay. It does not follow like that at all. Going into the judgment ---- Q690 Mr Winnick: Mr Beoku-Betts and all the witnesses, time is very precious to us at the moment because we have another three witnesses to see over children, so if you could make your answers relatively brief - we know there is a lot to say - and the same applies to my colleagues in asking their questions. Mr Beoku-Betts: Okay. What the courts did was to declare that the provisions under Section 19 - shall I assume that the Committee is fully aware of all of the provisions? Yes. Those provisions are incompatible with both Articles 12 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgment, however, does not render the application of that provision to be invalid. The judgment also goes on to declare the guidance that goes with Section 19 to be unlawful. So you have a very curious position of a law which is valid but no valid guidance. The effect is everybody is in limbo; we do not know on what basis applications for marriage are going to be accepted or not. There are some other matters that are going to go before the courts and those relate to the question of unlawfulness - unlawful precedence - in the United Kingdom, which obviously we cannot talk about right now. Does that deal with all of the points or is there one more? Mr Malik: I think that probably does, and even if it does not I think we have to move on. Thank you for that. Mr Winnick: Mr Beoku-Betts, if you feel there is any further written evidence you would like to send us, do not hesitate in any way at all - to the Clerk in the usual way. Q691 Mr Malik: Mr Chairman, my next three questions are relatively succinct as well. Mr Rimmer, what is your response to this particular judgment and how do you think sham marriages can be prevented without infringing human rights? Mr Rimmer: I think the initial response is very disappointed, as I and many of my colleagues are incredibly disappointed and the Local Government Association will be writing to the Minister along those lines. So we are very disappointed about the judgment. I think we can certainly understand some of the reasoning behind the judgment, in terms of it being found to be discriminatory in terms of religion because the Church of England was excluded from the provisions and because, allegedly, there was no evidence of abuse in the Church of England - nor, actually, is there any evidence of abuse in any other religious building either. I think one of the ways may be to extend the provisions to the Church of England. That would certainly help. I think the provisions have been incredibly successful in terms of reducing the problem. Certainly the evidence from my colleagues around the country is that they have witnessed very few attempts at what they consider to be sham marriages since the implementation of these provisions, and we thought that it was working very well. We would be incredibly disappointed - devastated, I think, has been the word used on many occasions - if this law was repealed. Q692 Mr Malik: I would like my final question to touch on a point that Mr Spring raised earlier on, which is really that you mentioned anecdotal evidence on several occasions. Has any thought been given to a more kind of systematic, scientific approach to collecting information and evidence, perhaps through the London registration managers? Of course, you, I understand, chair that at this moment in time. I am just wondering, by way of argument it is obviously more powerful if you have got something scientific than anecdotal. Mr Rimmer: I think, whatever we do to actually try and gather evidence, an element of it will always be subjective. Effectively, we are talking about couples who come in and try to make a judgment about the couple's behaviour towards each other. There is always going to be an element of subjectivity. However, I think it has to be intelligence-based evidence based upon the experience and integrity of officers in the field, and that is what you have at the moment. We are already required statutorily to report suspicions of bogus marriage under Section 24 of the Immigration Act. Unfortunately, the figures you may have had before you, and the substantial increase in those figures which went up to a maximum of 3,500-ish in 2004, actually grossly underestimate the problem because registrars are very loath to actually make those reports because of the subjectivity of it. Therefore, it would be very difficult to have any sort of evidence-based intelligence because we do not get the follow-up. I think the only people who could make that objective decision would be, perhaps, immigration enforcement officers checking up on marriages subsequently, but the resource implication of that is obviously huge. Therefore, we would want to try and stop it at source, which is I think what the legislation attempted to do. Q693 Mr Malik: Finally and very quickly, I wonder if you want to respond to Mr Beoku-Betts' point about the fact that there are supposed to be X-percentage of sham marriages but prosecutions do not follow. I would welcome your comment on that. Mr Rimmer: First of all, it is incredibly difficult to attain prosecutions based upon a sham marriage. Effectively, the only prosecutions that have occurred are those with organised racketeers. We have some, again, anecdotal evidence around the country over a three-month period between November 03 and January 04 whereby 3,300 of 65,000 marriages were thought to be bogus across 121 local authorities. That was quite an interesting survey I did. I think the reason is that you have to try and prosecute somebody on the basis of an attempt to defraud the Home Office, which is incredibly difficult to prove unless you actually go out and visit homes which the Home Office, I am told, have not got the resource to do. That is the reason. Q694 Mr Malik: So prosecutions are not a barometer. Mr Rimmer: Prosecutions are not a barometer; it has to be intelligence based. Q695 Mr Streeter: What are the tell-tale signs you look for in deciding whether or not people coming before you might be in a sham marriage? Very briefly. Mr Rimmer: I will try and do it very briefly, yes. There is a whole variety of things we would be looking for, and one particular aspect would not make us do a report. I think, first of all, it would be a foreign national subject to immigration control marrying an EEA national. That is the first point. After that, you are then looking for whether they can converse with each other in the same language, for a start (that is quite a significant pointer), and whether they have any knowledge of each other in terms of their names, their addresses or their dates of birth - again, quite significant. Those were the majority of cases that would be reported. Even the body language between each other is a tell-tale sign when you have worked in the service as long as myself and many of my colleagues have. So, therefore, you are looking for a combination of factors which would lead you to make the report. You would certainly not be reporting unless you had all of those factors together, and that is the reason, I think, for the gross under-reporting of the problem under Section 24 of the Act. Q696 Bob Russell: Mention has been made of individuals being required to return abroad in order to obtain entry clearance even to countries where there is no British embassy or in a post-conflict situation. In addition to the extra costs and inconvenience caused, obviously that creates problems there. You have also mentioned, I believe, a lack of flexibility on the part of Home Office officials. Putting those things together, is this because officials do not understand the practical difficulties involved? Why would they behave in that way? Mr Beoku-Betts: The thing is that the way that the provisions are designed really preclude any kind of consideration of the kind of issues that would face married couples if they did have to return to their countries of origin in order to make an application to come back in again. It does appear slightly illogical, if one has already accepted that a marriage is genuine and subsisting, to require the same person or the people to go out of the country to make an application for the same issues to be considered again. There is simply no point in that. Q697 Bob Russell: Are there any particular countries where the problem is greater, where the Home Office is insisting that people go back to their country of origin? Mr Beoku-Betts: You do have countries like Iraq, you would have countries where there have been particular political problems ---- Q698 Bob Russell: Zimbabwe? Mr Beoku-Betts: Perhaps Zimbabwe. There is another point, and that is that the immigration laws make it far more difficult for somebody who has been in the United Kingdom, either illegally or has made some kind of asylum application, to return and make a successful application to come back into the United Kingdom. Therefore, it is a bit unfair to request or require people who have been in genuine, subsisting relationships to leave the United Kingdom, only to be subjected to more rigorous procedures outside the United Kingdom. There were just a couple of points I wanted to make in terms of figures. I do understand that a figure of some 3,000 has been mentioned. I have seen statistics which suggest that the number of refusals of marriage applications has been, in one year, in the region of about 3,000, which roughly equates to the number of suspected bogus marriages. That is one point. Secondly, and I make this in conclusion, there are adequate laws and procedures in place to deal with sham marriages without the regime of Section 19. Q699 Mr Winnick: Mr Rimmer, you are keen to come back but I think we know that a lot of that you do not accept. Mr Rimmer: It was just a very quick point about subsisting marriage, on marriage law, basically, just to perhaps give some advice. I thought you said "subsisting marriage". Effectively, if a marriage is recognised in the country where it has taken place it is actually also recognised in this country also. We certainly would not be advising anybody to return to their country of origin for marriage entry clearance if they were already in a subsisting marriage that had taken place abroad. If that marriage is recognised in the country where it took place it is a recognised marriage in this country also, and therefore they would not be subject to the provisions of the new legislation. Mr Winnick: Ms Patel, you, of course, represent the Southall Black Sisters, an organisation of long standing, and Mrs Cryer has some questions. Q700 Mrs Cryer: Pragna, you are the Chair of Southall Black Sisters. I hope you will not think I am being sort of patronising if I say that I have had great admiration for many, many years for the work of Southall Black Sisters, but could I just mention, because of the question I am going to ask you, that perhaps you are dealing with a slightly different situation so far as forced marriages is concerned in the London area than some of us are dealing with in the northern towns and cities, where there is a different culture. You have suggested that instead of tightening the immigration rules as a response to forced marriages, immigration control should, in fact, be relaxed so that marriage is not seen as a route to gain entry to the UK. Could you just tell us what exactly you have in mind? Ms Patel: The first point I want to make is that the kind of marriages that we are talking about have to be distinguished from other situations. We are actually talking about the majority of marriages that are taking place which are absolutely genuine. Q701 Mrs Cryer: Arranged marriages? Ms Patel: Arranged marriages are genuine. Q702 Mrs Cryer: I am not touching on arranged marriages, I am simply asking about forced marriages and the fact that you are saying that changes in immigration laws are not addressing the problem; that perhaps a more open-door policy may be better to address the issue. Ms Patel: First of all, as an organisation, although we are based in West London we do get cases and inquiries from around the country, so we do have, through our networks and close relationships with other women's organisations, an awareness of what happens in other parts of the country in terms of forced marriage cases. What I am saying is that if there is a suspicion that forced marriage cases are taking place simply as a way of gaining entry to this country then it seems to me that one way of dealing with that problem would be actually to relax the immigration controls because it would not put people under those kinds of pressures to be forced into a marriage and, therefore, those kinds of routes which may be used by some. (I say "some" because I do not think there are any statistics available anywhere to show how many of forced marriages take place as a way of circumventing immigration rules). So a really important point to make is that we just do not have the statistics, we do not know the scale of that. My view is that there is probably an insignificant amount of forced marriages that take place purely for the purposes of entering this country. However, if that was a concern then one way of dealing with that would be, surely, to relax immigration controls because then the young people would not be put under pressure to marry for the purposes of gaining entry to this country, but there would be other means, other ways, of screening effectively people coming into this country and their motives for coming into this country. I think that already exists anyway; there is quite close, quite intrusive, screening that takes place, so I think it is quite effective as it is, the system that exists as it is, without having to link forced marriage cases with the immigration system. The other problem is that using immigration controls to deal with forced marriage actually does not deal with the whole gamut of problems that young people face when they are forced into a marriage. A lot of forced marriages take place in this country between people who are settled here, so it does not deal with that issue at all. I think there is a powerful case for de-linking issues of violence against women, forced marriage and other issues affecting women in minority communities from immigration controls. Mr Winnick: Would you like, Mrs Cryer, to go on to violence? Q703 Mrs Cryer: Yes, I can do. I was going to ask you more about that. You recognise that there have been some good developments in the Government's response to victims of domestic violence in recent years, but we understand that a victim of domestic violence who is in the UK for the two-year probationary period as a foreign spouse will, generally, not be able to get into a refuge because she is not entitled to any public support. Why do you think there is still a reluctance to provide assistance to victims of domestic violence who are subject to immigration control? Ms Patel: Simply because when we have tried to raise this the answer is that: "We want to maintain the integrity of the immigration system". What we have here is a tension between women's rights on the one hand (and the right for women to live free from violence and abuse), and those who advocate the integrity of the immigration system at any cost. What we are saying is that you can run a fair and firm immigration system but, at the same time, one has to be careful and wary of how that system impacts on other rights, or tramples upon other rights. We have a significant number of women, not in terms of numbers but actually in terms of their experiences of violence, who cannot access refuges, who cannot access the welfare system and seek ways of escaping violence because of immigration controls and, in particular, the "no recourse to public funds" requirement. That cannot be fair. It cannot be fair in a country which rightly prides itself on tackling and addressing domestic violence, and can be rightly seen as one of the advanced western democracies leading the way in terms of addressing domestic violence, that in that kind of situation we still have women who, regardless of their immigration status, cannot access safety routes to escape from violence and abuse. We believe we have put forward proposals which need not affect the integrity of the immigration system to a great extent but will, alternatively, enable these women to assert their right to live free from violence and abuse and will actually enable this country to be not discriminatory in the way that it deals with violence against women. At the moment what we have is some women are deserving of protection and some women are not because of their immigration status. That just cannot be right. We believe that one way ---- Q704 Mr Winnick: We are under tremendous pressure of time, and we have your paper, but please conclude. Ms Patel: What I would like to conclude with is to say that we believe that one way round the problem is to actually ask sponsors to pay for the costs of providing benefits to women and alternative housing to women if they escape violence and abuse. There are two important reasons for that that you should bear in mind. One is that we think it is morally right to hold culpable those who subject women to violence and abuse to be responsible in some way. Secondly, by asking them to pay for the benefits that are paid to women it will actually serve as a deterrent and, actually, if you are interested in the impact that that then has on immigration controls, it would reduce the number of abusers who feel that they could enter into trial marriages. So we believe that with the proposal we are putting forward there will not be a significant amount of cost involved because only about 500 women a year are affected by immigration control - 500 women are subject to violence and abuse, according to our survey figures. Q705 Mrs Cryer: Can I ask a really quick question: do you feel that the domestic violence concession has helped? Ms Patel: We believe it is a step in the right direction but unless there are "no recourse to public fund" requirement exemptions it cannot help because if women have nowhere to go they cannot effectively prosecute so they cannot engage in that entire criminal justice system to hold perpetrators to account. Many women do want to hold perpetrators to account but cannot because they have nowhere to go once they have reported the violence. Who is going to ensure their safety? How can they survive? So there are problems. The second problem is that until they have obtained indefinite leave to remain they have no ability to support themselves or their dependent children, and many women are pregnant or have young children. If they cannot support themselves then they are unlikely to report violence and abuse, and if they are unlikely to report violence and abuse then they cannot satisfy the evidential requirement of the domestic violence rule. So it becomes a bit of a vicious circle. The way to break that vicious circle is to allow exemptions for a category of women who are subject to violence and abuse, regardless of their immigration status, and if necessary, as long as there is no fear of reprisals, recover that cost from sponsors who, after all, have declared that they will maintain their spouses upon entry. Mr Winnick: One further question from my colleague, Mr Prosser. Q706 Gwyn Prosser: You have been mentioning some of the recommendations you have made. The recommendation to do away with the "no recourse to public funding", for instance, and the recommendation to, perhaps, do away with the two-year probation have much wider ramifications than the area you are looking at, perhaps, and it might be difficult to get the sympathetic ear of government. Do you think you might not be better directed to look to government to provide central government funding and support rather than local authority support and to, perhaps, have that challenge through a dedicated women's officer within the IND? Ms Patel: Believe me, we have tried. We have been engaged in this attempt to try and address these particular issues since 1992, effectively, and we have had negotiations with the Home Office and other aspects of the government to try and deal with this problem. We even tried to address it through the domestic violence act that has come into force. Unfortunately, our attempts to try and lift the "no recourse to public funds" requirement was met with a categorical no, but what the government did do - because the government did recognise that the situation as it is is discriminatory because some women who are subject to violence and abuse are entitled to effective protection and others are not - was put some funds into what was called the last resort fund, which enabled women to access refuge accommodation for about two months. However, that money dried up, as we predicted it would, and so the situation now is pretty desperate. We have not asked for local authorities to address this matter because local authorities' response so far has been inconsistent and some local authorities do use the Children Act or will use the National Assistance Act (?) or the Community Care Act, or a combination of these pieces of legislation, to help those who are vulnerable. On the whole, the majority of local authorities are interpreting their obligations very narrowly. So, really, there ought to be a strategy at the central level, and that strategy has to look at ways in which the Department of Work & Pensions and the Home Office can work together to address this problem. We have suggested ways forward, without in any way, shape or form really affecting the running of an immigration system that, we accept, has to be firm but it also has to be fair. Mr Winnick: We are all of us aware of the excellent work that your organisation does, Ms Patel. Mr Beoku-Betts, Ms Patel and Mr Rimmer, thank you very much for coming along and giving evidence along the lines you have done so. It has been very useful for us. Memoranda submitted by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, Africans Unite Against Child Abuse and Southwark Social Services
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr John Simmonds, Director of Policy Research and Development, British Association for Adoption and Fostering, Ms Debbie Ariyo, Director, Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, Mr Nathan Glew and Ms Oyewo Ekelemu, Southward Social Services, gave evidence. Q707 Mr Winnick: Thank you very much. Could you just introduce yourselves? Dr Simmonds? Dr Simmonds: Yes. I am John Simmonds, I am Director of Policy Research and Development at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. Ms Ariyo: I am Debbie Ariyo, I am the Director of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse. Ms Ekelemu: I am Oyewo Ekelemu, a specialist African worker for Southwark Social Services. Mr Glew: I am Nathan Glew, I manage a referral assessment team in the south district of Southwark Social Services. Mr Winnick: Thank you very much for coming along and giving oral evidence in our inquiry into various aspects of immigration control. I am going to ask my colleague Mr Benyon to lead off and ask a number of questions. Q708 Mr Benyon: My first is to Dr Simmonds. We are going to have to ask you all to be extremely brief as we have run over time, but this is a really important area. I want to start off by talking about private fostering arrangements. Could you, Dr Simmonds, give us a general picture about the relationship between immigration controls and private fostering arrangements in this country? Do you believe there are legitimate entry routes for coming into the UK as a child that is to be privately fostered? Dr Simmonds: Private fostering appeared in the 1989 Children Act and the new regulations which came into force in July 2004 as a result of the 2004 Children Act, and they introduce a notification system whereby private foster carers, where they intend to look after a child for longer than 28 days, have to notify the local authority and then become subject to a set of regulations which concern the welfare of the child. It is a system which we have had some concern about. It is different to the fostering system for looked-after children which requires local authority foster parents to apply and to be registered and subject to regulations by local authorities who then care for them. So the system of private fostering is different to the local authority system of foster care. The notification system and the registration system are actually different. In relation to immigration control, children and their parents or carers are subject to an immigration control. It is not a reason to grant a visa if a carer has the sole intention of placing a child in a private foster care arrangement, but after that visa is granted and the carer and the child are in the country then it is possible for the carer to make a private foster care arrangement. That foster carer should then notify the local authority that that arrangement has taken place if it lasts for more than 28 days. The local authority then should work with the private foster carer on the standards which have been introduced by the new regulations. Q709 Mr Benyon: Can I ask all witnesses why you believe there is a propensity for private fostering arrangements to come from Africa and, in particular, West Africa? Why is there such a huge proportion coming from here? Perhaps you can just inform the Committee about this cultural aspect to it. Ms Ariyo: Firstly, I am Nigerian British, I am from a Nigerian background. There are over 160 million Nigerians. Whether that is true or not we do not know, but that is what the official figure is. There is a large proportion of them here in the UK. Some of them are Nigerian British - that is they have settled here; they were born here or they grew up in Nigeria and came back here. Some of them are nationalised and so on and so forth. Some of them are here illegally, but there is a huge proportion of them who are of Nigerian origin. If you look at the number of children that are being privately fostered, we find a large proportion of them are of Nigerian origin. So, firstly, it could be because of the high number of Nigerians here anyway that could be the contributing factor in terms of the number of privately fostered children from West Africa. Secondly, the issue of children living with extended family members or other successful people in the community is something that is part and parcel of the culture in most West African countries, Nigeria included and of course Ghana, Sierra Leone and other countries. So it is not actually seen as wrong to give your child to an extended member of the family to look after in the hope or belief that the child will be well looked after and the child can go to school, and so on and so forth. That is one of the reasons why we are seeing a huge proportion of the children coming from that part of the world, because it is a cultural thing anyway; there is nothing wrong with it. The problem that we are finding is that a huge proportion of the children that are being privately fostered are being brought in by unscrupulous individuals who are actually bent on using those children for exploitative purposes. So a parent back home would not bat an eyelid if somebody from here came and said to them: "Okay. I live in London, I can look after your child for you". It would not be a problem. They might have an ulterior motive but a parent would not know that. That child could end up being brought here to be exploited in different ways: domestic servitude or to claim state benefit or for sexual exploitative reasons. Mr Benyon: I completely accept what you say about the exploitative nature of this, and there is lots of evidence, and we accept it, and anything that we can recommend that cracks down on that the better. Do you think that we, as a Committee, are right to question the desire of families in West Africa to send a child halfway across the world to stay with relatives or friends who that child may never have met - no doubt to get a reasonable education? To many people - to me - it seems an extraordinary thing to do. Should we be questioning that cultural aspect to this? Q710 Mr Winnick: All four witnesses. Ms Ekelemu: I agree with Debbie to a large extent. I think we, as a society, actually need to challenge and question such arrangements only because a few number - I would not say a large number because in my experience in Southwark we have not really come across a large number of children who are in private fostering arrangements who were subject to significant harm). I would say because we have that minute number of little pockets of children who have been subjected to private fostering arrangement and who have been identified to be at risk, I would say that is one of the most important reasons why we should challenge this cultural style of parenting, of fostering children. It is a cultural practice within, just like Debbie said, Africa and particularly West Africa that children will be looked after by friends or by successful individuals within the family, and it has filtered down to the UK. Inasmuch as, for example, in Southwark we do not really have a major concern, but we have been able to identify a little number of children who are in private fostering arrangements but, yet again, who are actually well looked after. I would say we need to challenge it because there is that little number who are subjected to harm. Mr Glew: I can confirm what Ms Ekelemu was saying, really. We have actually had a project running since July 05 where the National Children's Home undertake assessments for us of private fostering arrangements that come to our attention and since then they have seen 21 families. Seven of those families were from Nigeria, seven were from the Caribbean, three were white families, three were Asian and one was "black other" (I do not quite know what the "black other" category would mean in that context). There were 29 children involved in that and only one of those children ended up being looked after by Southwark as a result of those assessments. We did think that she had been involved in being trafficked to the country and being used for domestic servitude. I know it is a very small sample because it has not been running for very long but it kind of gives you a sense of what we are dealing with. Dr Simmonds: If the question is about legitimacy, we have heard from the first set of witnesses that large numbers of people come into this country to study and to better themselves and we do not know how many of them bring children along with them. It is legitimate for those people to do that and if they are accompanied by children then that may be a legitimate thing to better their prospects by education and the experience of living in the UK. I think it is a wider social question about why people migrate to countries which offer better prospects, but whether it is actually an acceptable thing then for children to be placed with strangers in risky situations - from a child's perspective that is an extremely scary thing to do - we have to make sure that if we accept that basic premise that the framework that is in place has to centre on the needs and welfare of children. I think that is where the issue is about whether the private fostering arrangements as we currently have them, even with the notification scheme, are adequate in actually doing that. Q711 Mr Benyon: A very quick question for Dr Simmonds: can you tell us why you think that the current requirements to simply notify private fostering arrangements is insufficient to protect children, in the light of your written evidence? Dr Simmonds: I think some of the situations that we are discussing are where people would either not see the advantage of notifying or that they would have reason not to notify. We are talking about a group of children who are largely invisible and there are reasons why they are invisible. So the notification system does depend on the private foster carer both understanding the reason that they should notify and actually seeing the advantage to them of doing so. I think, at the moment, although local authorities do have a responsibility to bring the notification scheme to public awareness, I am not sure for that group of people that actually want to avoid the notification scheme there is a strong enough motivation for them to actually do so. Q712 Bob Russell: Following on that line of questioning, Dr Simmonds, I find it strange you say these children are hidden, bearing in mind they have come into the country through immigration (and then that will lead on to the co-ordination or lack of it between different service providers, social services, health and education). Do you feel that immigration staff sometimes appear to be unaware of their requirement to report private fostering arrangements to the relevant local authority when a child passes through a port without their parent or legal guardian? Dr Simmonds: Yes, I think immigration officers both need to be trained but, most particularly, the immigration service needs to be brought within the duties of Sections 10 and 11 (particularly Section 11) of the Children Act 2004, which places a duty on a wide range of public authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. At the moment the immigration service is actually excluded from that. I think by including them within that section by actually placing a duty on the immigration service they would have a responsibility to think about, for those children in risky circumstances; that they have a responsibility to notify the local authority in which the child is going to move into that they are concerned. I think until the immigration service has that duty then it is going to seem too optional and then dependent on the particular training and priorities of the officer themselves as to whether they actually take that safeguarding duty seriously. Q713 Bob Russell: Have there been any improvements since the new rule came in in February? We are already witnessing, are we not, that it has to be highlighted that a child travelling to the United Kingdom has to have a special entry clearance? Dr Simmonds: I think those new rules are really helpful. Q714 Bob Russell: It is positive not negative? Dr Simmonds: Positive, yes. Q715 Bob Russell: Is that the experience of the other witnesses? Ms Ariyo: We recently had a series of consultative meetings on child trafficking to feed into the Home Office proposals for a UK action plan trafficking. We asked roughly 80 people at the meetings if they had any idea whatsoever about this new law on private fostering to notify. Nobody has ever heard of the law on private fostering or the requirement to notify. People had no idea what we were talking about. It seems to me that this issue of notification is something that is just known to professionals, without the knowledge and the awareness of the different communities who might be required to notify or be aware of what the law says. Q716 Bob Russell: As a professional, are you alarmed at that lack of knowledge, that a relatively recent piece of guidance regulation is not known? Ms Ariyo: It is frightening because if people do not know that they have to notify then it means there is potentially a high number of children who could be at risk because they do not know they have to do it. Q717 Bob Russell: I think the Committee will take seriously those concluding points. My last question is to all the witnesses. In your view, is there a link between private fostering and trafficking or are the two issues separate from one another? Ms Ekelemu: In Southwark we have not found a great link between private fostering and trafficking. We have identified a very minute number of children as having travelled unaccompanied and also having been trafficked mainly for domestic servitude, but again we have not really found that major link between private fostering and trafficking. Yes, we found a number of children who have come into the country on false passports or false documentation whom we believe are being trafficked, again for domestic servitude, but we have not found that huge link - again, I am limiting my answer Southwark - between private fostering and trafficking. Dr Simmonds: My answer would be that the potential is there for a link between private fostering and trafficking but I think my concern is that where those private foster carers have reason not to notify the local authority, but there is a private fostering arrangement because the child is trafficked or the child has been exploited in some kind of way, then that child does become invisible. We do not have very clear figures about that and I think it is on a case-by-case basis that the evidence probably exists at the moment. Mr Glew: I want to say I support that. At an anecdotal level, our experience has been that we tend to come out and discover the situations we think might be to do with trafficking through referrals from other routes. We get a referee to that child because there has been some kind of an incident or a need identified by some other professional. In terms of that issue maybe being hidden, whilst professionals like teachers, for example, may know that they should notify, they may not necessarily identify a situation of private fostering if they are presented with a child and a carer who says that they are an aunt or an uncle but nobody has inquired into or seen any paperwork to confirm that. There is an acceptance that is the arrangement and we do sometimes come across those situations where it is private fostering but it has not been identified as such. Mr Winnick: I will let you know our timetable. Q718 Mrs Dean: Could I direct my questions to Debbie Ariyo. Could you tell us more about the kinds of cases that you have come across in your work with AFRUCA and under what kinds of circumstances did children end up being trafficked into the UK and have you got any information about how they are brought here? It would also be helpful to know for the purpose of our inquiry how immigration controls are abused. Ms Ariyo: In the course of our work across the country and increasingly in one or two other European countries, firstly, children are being brought in using other people's travel documents. One of the things that really concerns us at AFRUCA, when we are talking about private fostering arrangements being hidden or not being hidden, is that we have reports of children being brought in using other children's European passports. If those children are being brought in it means they are claiming to be other people's children. For example, if a child has been brought in using my own child's travel documents and appears to be my own child it would be very difficult in that sense to identify that child as a child who has been privately fostered. Secondly, we have children who are being brought in with their details appended to other people's passports as their children because there are no photographs to show who that child could be, so any child in that sense could be used or could be brought in on that document. Thirdly, we have cases of children who are using other countries' passports, children's passports, and that is simply because the photograph on the passport does not clearly show who the child is, for example, in instances where the child has aged significantly over a period of three or four years. This is one of the instances we have come across where children are being brought illegally into the country. Does that answer your question? Q719 Mrs Dean: Yes it does, thank you very much. We understand that you have recently undertaken consultation with a number of different communities to discuss issues around the trafficking of African children into and through the UK. Could you tell us what were the key messages arising from these about what communities feel should be done to prevent trafficking and to protect vulnerable children? Ms Ariyo: We had a series of consultative meetings between February and March earlier this year. We had over 80 different people from different nationalities and African backgrounds who attended the meetings. The first message that came across was the need for the African community in the UK itself to begin to look at the issue of the vulnerability of children and what the community itself can do to protect vulnerable children, that is children in dodgy private fostering arrangements. What people are saying is that yes, indeed the children are being privately fostered and most of those children are being privately fostered as separated children and they are very prone to abuse and exploitation. I want to make a quick response to what my colleagues from Southwark said, that there is a close link between private fostering and child trafficking because a lot of the children are being privately fostered under dodgy situations. There is nobody to monitor their welfare, there is nobody to dictate to the carer how they can treat that child. I strongly believe, and this is also coming from our work, that a lot of the children in those situations in reality - there is no potential, in reality - are very, very prone to being exploited, so there is a close link there with child trafficking. These are some of the key messages that are coming out. Also there is a need as well for the Government, not just to enact these laws but to try and communicate to different people. For example, people are not aware of the notification requirements on private fostering. How are people supposed to comply if they are not aware? This is one of the messages coming out. Mr Winnick: You have certainly emphasised what a serious problem this is. Q720 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Glew, can you tell us a little more about the Operation Paladin Child? I think you were involved in that operation yourself along with Mrs Ekelemu? Mr Glew: It might be more useful for Mrs Ekelemu to answer that because she did some of the visits to some of the families involved in Operation Paladin Child. Ms Ekelemu: I was involved in undertaking not all but most of the assessments that were part of the referrals that came from Operation Paladin Child. My colleagues and I undertook the assessments at the point when the referrals came. We thought as social care workers that at the point when we were going in to visit this family the needs or concerns had not been identified per se. We were being asked by Paladin to undertake assessments of children who came into the country unaccompanied, who had non-EU passports, who were not accompanied by either a parent or a guardian, or whose addresses were known, and we were being asked to identify them and see what had happened to them in the community. As social care workers, we thought visiting these families went against our social worker rules because in terms of our role we would go and visit families who were in need, or where concern has been identified, but with regards to Paladin, needs and concerns where not identified per se and we felt that went against our social work ethos. On a personal note, I thought I was doing policing or an immigration officers work on their behalf, but having said that I do agree with some of the issues raised in the Paladin Report that if social care staff had not been used then the children who were identified to be at risk would not have been identified. Obviously the implication of that for me would be yes, in as much as I agree that social care staff should be used, at the same time, I feel that immigration officers at the port of entry would also require further training in terms of child protection, and vice versa. Social workers, also, if we are going to be used to undertake such work in the future, need to have an awareness around immigration documentation. For example, when we go on a home visit and I would be asked to look at documentation on which the child has been brought into the country, which is the passport, I would need to be educated, for example, on what exactly I am looking at in this passport. Paladin was good, I feel personally that it should be extended, but more needs to be done in regards to Paladin in terms of training and raising awareness amongst professionals. Q721 Gwyn Prosser: In terms of what it revealed, what was the main thing that the operation revealed for you? Ms Ekelemu: I think the main thing it revealed for me is that there is a huge number of unaccompanied minors travelling into the UK. There were no significant numbers of children who came in illegitimately; rather most of the children that came in naturally came in legitimately and most of them were on holidays or for educational purposes. However, a huge number of children were travelling unaccompanied particularly from West Africa and a huge number of female children travelling from Nigeria between the ages of 12 and 16 to the UK. For me, that is an eye opener, and the question again is: why is that? Q722 Gwyn Prosser: How would you like to see it extended and followed up? Ms Ekelemu: I would like Paladin extended, not limited to Heathrow because the pilot was at Heathrow; I would like to see Paladin extended to the major ports in the UK. As I said in Paladin, I would like to see a multi-agency team being part of Paladin, made up of police officers, immigration officers and social workers where it is possible. I would like Paladin to be filtered into the community so it is not just limited to the ports but for the Paladin team, or whoever is part of the team, to work within the community as well. So not just identifying the children at the port of entry but having the follow-up within Paladin. Q723 Mr Winnick: What happens in the UK itself once they are here? Ms Ekelemu: Within the UK itself. Another thing I would like to suggest is if possible, where children have been identified before visas are issued or after visas are issued even then there is scope for a link between immigration services and immigration services abroad, and consular services abroad, which identify these children for the Paladin team to ascertain whether or not these addresses they are going to are genuine or the individuals they are coming to live with are genuine. I think there will be scope for filtering out genuine cases and false cases. Q724 Mr Winnick: Of course the Victoria Climbié case is very much in our minds. Ms Ekelemu: Victoria Climbié came in on an EU passport and Paladin only looks at children that come in with non-EU passports, so I believe we do not know the scope of the problem. I think the problem is huge. If we limit it to children who are coming in on non-EU passports, again, there is a scope for children like Victoria to fall through the net. Q725 Gwyn Prosser: Finally, this is a very important part of our inquiry, are there any issues or matters in regards to children and immigration rules which you want to flag up now which have not been covered in the evidence? Mr Glew: There is one thing I would like to say which is not to do with private fostering. I think a big issue for local authorities and it is the numbers of families who have reached the ends of their asylum appeals, and so on. Q726 Gwyn Prosser: It is a very important matter but that is slightly outside our remit. Mr Glew: If I can finish that point I will keep it very brief. Those who end up being defined as having no recourse to public funds (and then we have applications to the local authority under the Children Act to support those families.) I think there is a potential for children to get lost in the system where families are not brought to the local authority's attention under the Children Act or are rejected by local authorities through that system. They are very vulnerable children and they have no access to public funding. There is a real safeguarding issue there. I think what I would like to see is there being a more robust system around the whole thing to do with deportation rather than families being left rattling around in the system, for sometimes, years before they get deported. Q727 Gwyn Prosser: Are there any other points? Dr Simmonds: Can I reiterate the point that I made earlier about the immigration service being excluded from section 11 of the Children Act 2004 because I think in all the issues that have been learned from Operation Paladin and about the importance of agencies working together, sections 10 and 11 is absolutely critical to placing a duty on the immigration service in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and the duty to work with other public bodies in doing that. I think all those issues about Paladin do need to be taken forward but unless that duty is placed on the immigration service under section 11, I think there could be a problem in pushing that forward. Q728 Mr Winnick: Presumably much more coordination through the immigration service and social services in many cases. Dr Simmonds: Yes, absolutely, all the agencies. Bob Russell: All the agencies. Q729 Mr Winnick: That might have saved the life of Victoria Climbié. Would that be the position? Dr Simmonds: I think the issues with Victoria Climbié were partly about services that knew about her that did not properly respond and evaluate the risk to her. I think that is somewhat different but the lesson that we still learn is that agencies that come into contact with vulnerable children need to work together and need to have that duty placed on them which the new act does but it does exclude the immigration service. Ms Ariyo: I think, also, it is very important to highlight that it is okay to raise awareness and to train practitioners but a lot of the children are either being privately fostered and are very open to abuse or they are specifically trafficked to be exploited within their own communities and people within the community know who these children are. They might not feel empowered to report or to make a referral to social services or to the police for a lot of reasons. For that reason I think we need to do more to sensitise different communities to the issue and to try and raise awareness and to put the onus on different communities to act to safeguard their children. Mr Winnick: All four of you have given us plenty to think about when we are drawing up our report. Many thanks for coming along, it has been very useful indeed.
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