The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:Chairman:
Mr.
David Marshall
Allen,
Mr. Graham (Nottingham, North)
(Lab) Battle,
John (Leeds, West)
(Lab)
Blackman-Woods,
Dr. Roberta (City of Durham)
(Lab)
Campbell,
Mr. Alan (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's
Treasury)Clegg,
Mr. Nick (Sheffield, Hallam)
(LD)
Creagh,
Mary (Wakefield)
(Lab)
Fabricant,
Michael (Lichfield)
(Con)
Goodwill,
Mr. Robert (Scarborough and Whitby)
(Con)
Hillier,
Meg (Hackney, South and Shoreditch)
(Lab/Co-op) Holloway,
Mr. Adam (Gravesham)
(Con)
Hunter,
Mark (Cheadle) (LD)
Laxton,
Mr. Bob (Derby, North)
(Lab)
Helen
Jones (Warrington, North) (Lab):
Mahmood, Mr. Khalid
(Birmingham, Perry Barr)
(Lab)
Mercer,
Patrick (Newark)
(Con)
Penning,
Mike (Hemel Hempstead)
(Con)
Ryan,
Joan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department)Mrs. Commander, Mr.
Whatley, Committee Clerks
attended the Committee First
Standing Committeeon Delegated
LegislationWednesday 7
June
2006[Mr.
David Marshall in the
Chair]Draft Immigration (Provision of Physical Data) Regulations 20062.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Joan
Ryan): I beg to
move, That the
Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Provision of Physical
Data) Regulations
2006. It is a
pleasure, Mr. Marshall, to serve on this Committee under your
guidance. The
regulations enable an authorised personin practice, an entry
clearance or immigration officerto require any person who
applies for entry clearance to provide a record of his or her
fingerprints and a photograph of his or her face. The regulations also
enable an authorised person to require any person in possession of a
1951 refugee convention travel document who seeks leave to enter the
United Kingdom to provide a record of his or her fingerprints and a
photograph of his or her
face. The
regulations are made under section 126 of the Nationality, Immigration
and Asylum Act 2002. Section 126 provides that the Secretary of State
may, by regulations, require an immigration application to be
accompanied by specified information about the external characteristics
of the applicant, or enable an authorised person to require an
applicant to provide such information. The power conferred by section
126 has previously been exercised to make the Immigration (Provision of
Physical Data) Regulations 2003, which have since been amended three
times. The 2003 regulations require an application for entry clearance
made in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Kenya, the Netherlands, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda or Vietnam
to be accompanied by a record of the applicants fingerprints. A
person seeking leave to enter the UK who presents a 1951 refugee
convention travel document issued by a country other than the UK is
also required to provide
fingerprints. Results
from the entry clearance posts are encouraging. The operations have
proved to be an effective and successful way of tackling abuse of the
immigration system, and are an integral part of the Governments
policy of further securing our borders. Through the collection of
biometrics at posts overseas, we have been able to identify visa
applicants who have sought to conceal an adverse immigration history,
including previous asylum applicants. In the UK, we have been able to
identify asylum applicants who sought to conceal their identity to
frustrate the proper consideration of their
claim. The
Government are committed to collecting biometric information from visa
applicants in all countries by 2008. Building on the success of the
current operations, we now seek the ability to manage the roll-out of
biometrics in a sensible and flexible manner. The order
in which entry clearance posts are to be equipped with the necessary
fingerprinting and digital photography technology is being determined
according to immigration, asylum and counter-terrorist
priorities. Michael
Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): The
Minister will be aware that similar photography and fingerprinting
requirements have been initiated in the United States as of the
beginning of this year and have been adopted in all its main airports.
Can we assume from what the Minister said that London Heathrow, London
Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow will be equipped
with such facilities
henceforth?
Joan
Ryan: The issue that we are discussing today is people
applying out of country for a visa or entry clearance to come to the
UK. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that all British
passports issued as of August this year will contain a biometric. That
is intended to maintain the integrity of our passports but also to meet
the requirements of the United
States.
Michael
Fabricant: I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying
that issue. Is she saying that the regulations do not mean that we will
have the same system as in the US, whereby foreign nationals are
fingerprinted and photographed so that we have a record of them when
they enter and re-enter the United Kingdom? Or will there be other
regulations?
Joan
Ryan: The regulations are about foreign nationals from
countries for which we have a visa requirement being fingerprinted
before they enter the country. Therefore, the record will be in the
database, should they attempt to re-enter after their visas expire when
they leave.
Joan
Ryan: I am pleased to have been able to explain that to
the hon. Gentleman.
We have taken into account
local security concerns and the ability of individual posts to adapt to
the processes required. We also intend to adopt a regional approach to
avoid any displacement of fraudulent visa applicants to non-biometric
posts in neighbouring countries.
Under
regulation 6 an applicant who is required by an authorised person to
provide his fingerprints or photograph may be required to submit to a
specified process for his fingerprints and photograph to be taken. To
make enrolment more accessible to applicants, the regulations provide
for three different processes. The security and integrity of the
process will be paramount in all circumstances.
An applicant
may be required to attend a British diplomatic or consular post, where
fingerprints and photograph will be taken. Where the UK has limited or
no consular representation in a country, an applicant may be required
to attend the consular post of another state. The applicants
fingerprints and photograph will then be taken by an official of that
state on behalf of the authorised person, and transmitted securely to a
UK post for processing with the rest of his visa application.
Mike
Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con): One of
the aspects of the existing legislation is that the information can be
given to a third or fourth person within Government or outside. I
understand that permission for that can be given by the Secretary of
State under special and specified purposes that do not relate to
immigration. However, the provision states clearly that the data must
be destroyed within 10 years. Does anything in this statutory
instrument fulfil that regulation and that
commitment?
Joan
Ryan: Those are important points, and I
am coming to them They are integral to the regulations and, as the hon.
Gentleman said, to the previous regulations that these are to replace.
We are developing with our EU partners a model for working with states
in which we do not have a mission. Where the volume of applicants,
geographical or other concerns make enrolment in a consular post
impractical, and would adversely affect our service to applicants,
enrolment may take place at other premises nominated by an authorised
person, where visa applicants fingerprints and photographs will
be taken on behalf of an authorised person. The other premises may be
the offices of a commercial partner, and that will be for the purely
administrative function of collecting the applicants
information. We will
put in place technology that will prevent commercial partners from
accessing, retaining or reusing copies of fingerprints or photographs,
and we shall ensure that the data is protected and processed lawfully.
It is also worth noting that UKvisas has used commercial partners to
collect biographic data from visa applicants since 2002 and has seen
significant improvements in its performance as a
result.
Michael
Fabricant: The Minister is being very
kind in giving way. I very much support the regulations, but I wonder
to what extent it is future proofed. The Minister talks about
photographs and fingerprinting. However, in the future we might use
corneal recognition and other types of biometric recognition that we do
not know about at the moment. Would that require more regulations, or
is there provision in these regulations for other criteria to be used
in future within the same framework as the photograph and
fingerprinting?
Joan
Ryan: There are no plans at the moment
to go beyond the biometrics of face and fingerprint. However, we remain
open minded about that. Going by his question, the hon. Gentleman knows
that we already have projects such as Project IRIS up and running. For
the future, we are considering the three biometrics of facial image,
fingerprints and the iris for the national identity register. Yes,
further regulations would be required.
Should an
entry clearance applicant not provide a record of his fingerprints or a
photograph of his face in accordance with a requirement imposed under
these regulations, his application may be treated as invalid. That
would not attract a right of appeal. We recognise that there will have
to be exceptions for applicants who, because of physical disability or
injury, cannot provide a record of their fingerprints. Such applicants
would still be required to enrol a digital photograph, and the absence
of fingerprint data would be recorded with their applications. Those
important decisions will always be made by visa officers and will not
be delegated to commercial or other partners.
Furthermore, as certain
categories of people are exempt from immigration control, as determined
by section 8 of the Immigration Act 1971, we will not collect biometric
data from them. We also propose to continue to fingerprint holders of
all 1951 convention travel documents issued outside the UK when such
people apply for leave to enter this country.
There is evidence to suggest
that individuals who have been granted refugee status elsewhere are
making asylum applications after arriving in the UK by destroying the
documents on which they have travelled. Continuing to fingerprint such
people on arrival allows us to identify the basis on which they entered
the UK if they subsequently claim asylum. If such an applicant for
leave to enter does not comply with the requirement imposed under these
regulations, his application may be refused and he will then have the
right of appeal against that refusal.
It is
important to be clear about how the biometric data will be handled and
for what purposes it will be used. Records will be transmitted over a
secure network and stored on the immigration and asylum fingerprint
system database. The data will then be checked against the existing
data on that database and a result returned in real time to assist the
entry clearance officer in his decision.
The retention of the data for
future verification will enable the identification of any visa
applicant who subsequently makes an application for either asylum or
immigration in a different identity. That in turn will help to
establish the nationalities of those who no longer have a basis on
which to remain in the UK, and so assist with securing their
removal.
I would also
like to make it clear that the regulations make provision equivalent to
that in the 2003 regulations to ensure that photographs and records of
fingerprints are destroyed after 10 years at the latest or as soon as
reasonably practicable if the applicant shows that he is a British or
Commonwealth citizen with a right of abode. It is also important to say
that the regulations include safeguards equivalent to those in the 2003
regulations for the taking of fingerprints and photographs of those
under the age of 16. In common with other fingerprints collected in
respect of immigration and asylum applications, the data will be shared
with the police and other law enforcement agencies. I think that that
covers the points made by the hon. Member for
Lichfield. Patrick
Mercer (Newark) (Con): For the record, can the Minister
assure me that the security service is one of those
agencies?
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