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Session 2009 - 10
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Delegated Legislation Committee Debates



The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairman: Mr. Nigel Evans
Crausby, Mr. David (Bolton, North-East) (Lab)
Engel, Natascha (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Green, Damian (Ashford) (Con)
Grogan, Mr. John (Selby) (Lab)
Harris, Dr. Evan (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD)
Harris, Mr. Tom (Glasgow, South) (Lab)
Huhne, Chris (Eastleigh) (LD)
Jenkin, Mr. Bernard (North Essex) (Con)
Linton, Martin (Battersea) (Lab)
McCabe, Steve (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)
McCafferty, Chris (Calder Valley) (Lab)
Main, Anne (St. Albans) (Con)
Morgan, Julie (Cardiff, North) (Lab)
Newmark, Mr. Brooks (Braintree) (Con)
Swire, Mr. Hugo (East Devon) (Con)
Woolas, Mr. Phil (Minister for Borders and Immigration)
Gosia McBride, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee

Seventh Delegated Legislation Committee

Wednesday 24 February 2010

[Mr. Nigel Evans in the Chair]

Draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2010
2.30 pm
The Minister for Borders and Immigration (Mr. Phil Woolas): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2010.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2010.
Mr. Woolas: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Evans, especially as a fellow Lancastrian MP. I will speak on the draft order before moving on to the draft regulations.
The draft order will facilitate the entry of automated gate users into the United Kingdom by amending the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000. Automated gates, which are already in use at some UK airports, speed up the passage through the border of legitimate travellers by allowing permitted passengers lawfully to enter the UK without having to queue up at the manual immigration control.
The gates work by verifying a person’s identity and making checks against our Home Office systems to ensure that they are eligible to use the gate and enter the country. If the person is eligible, the gates open and allow the person to come in. If not, the gates remain closed and the person is required to seek entry at the manual immigration control. I emphasise that use of the gates is entirely voluntary. They have two main benefits: they allow eligible users to enter the UK quickly and efficiently and reduce the number of low-risk passengers queuing up at the manual immigration control, allowing our UK Border Agency officials to focus staff resources on the higher-risk passengers at the primary checkpoint.
There are currently two automated gate schemes in operation. The first is called the e-passport gate and can be used only by European economic area nationals who hold a second generation biometric passport. The gates, which do not require any pre-enrolment by users, are being trialled in 10 UK airport terminals. To date, more than 1 million of the crossings of the UK border have been made using that method.
The second scheme is IRIS—the iris recognition immigration system—and is available to all traveller categories. A person wishing to use IRIS must go through an enrolment process that includes a face-to-face interview with a UKBA officer. If the person is considered suitable, their biometrics are taken and securely stored. IRIS is also installed in 10 UK airport terminals. More than 350,000 passengers have enrolled on to the IRIS scheme since January 2006, and collectively they have used IRIS gates 2.7 million times—they are the frequent travellers. Hon. Members may be familiar with the gates if they have signed up to IRIS; I certainly find them convenient.
Future automated gate schemes are being developed with the British Airports Authority. We will roll out a new pre-enrolment automated gate scheme, the automated clearance system plus, at Heathrow airport; it is due to go live this year. Like IRIS, nationals of all countries can apply to enrol on to ACS plus. Again, as with IRIS, UKBA officers will interview every applicant to assess a person’s suitability. If someone is approved, their fingerprints and an image of their face will be taken and securely stored before they are able to use the scheme’s gates. I ought to explain that the “image of the face”, which to the layperson might be a photograph, is, in fact, a geometric map of a person’s face which enables us to secure identity.
The order is necessary because the current method of granting leave to enter to non-visa nationals who use automatic gates is inefficient and out of date. Non-visa national Irish users are currently granted leave via a paper notice printed by the gates. When the gates’ printers break down, which they do on occasion, or run out of paper, the whole gate system is shut down and cannot be used by any passengers. Users also regularly forget to take their written notice from the gate, which then retracts the printout for security reasons, again taking the gates out of operation.
The order provides a better and more efficient method of granting leave to non-visa national gate users. The order allows the UKBA officers to authorise a person as someone who may obtain leave by using the automated gates following satisfactory screening. Thereafter, each time the person uses the gates to enter the UK, he or she will automatically be granted leave to enter for six months, on the same basis as leave granted at the manual immigration control to non-visa nationals who seek to enter as a visitor. In both cases, recourse to public funds and employment is prohibited. The only difference is that gate users will not receive written evidence of their leave when they use the gate.
In practice, the order needs to apply only to non-visa nationals, as other types of traveller do not require leave to be granted when they seek entry to the UK. British citizens and EEA nationals do not require leave to enter the UK, visa nationals are granted leave in the form of a visa before they arrive in the UK, and foreign nationals who are settled in the UK already have limited or indefinite leave to remain in the country. I trust that hon. Members will join me in supporting such pragmatic, sensible measures.
The draft regulations deal with fees. The UK Border Agency is equipped to protect our border in the 21st century—it says here. We have 25,000 staff—in fact, it is 23,000—including more than 9,000 warranted customs and immigration officers. They work in local communities, at the border and in 135 countries around the world. Maintaining our immigration system costs more than £2 billion per year. This year we have made significant progress and extended the number of visitors who require a visa—that is, the countries with the visa-waiver test that we have put in place—so more countries require visas for their nationals.
We have already enrolled more than 5 million sets of fingerprints and thereby detected thousands of false identities. So far, we have issued more than 130,000 identity cards to foreign nationals—we exceeded our target by 15,000 a month ahead of schedule—and we continue to work with the French Government to build on our joint operations to reduce further the number of illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border to the United Kingdom. To fund that, we consider that those who benefit directly from our immigration system should contribute towards the costs of running it, so that we can balance that with the interests of the general UK taxpayer, who will continue to support the immigration system. This year’s fee review takes place against a difficult financial context for the UK Border Agency.
The draft regulations are made under section 51 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and in accordance with the powers granted in section 42 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, as amended by section 20 of the UK Borders Act 2007. Under section 42, the Secretary of State can set a fee for an application at a level that exceeds the administrative cost of determining the application. By charging above the administrative cost, the UK Border Agency is able to generate sufficient revenue to secure the border and control migration for the benefit of our country.
The way our legal powers are defined means that we must also specify fees in separate regulations under the powers in section 51 of the 2006 Act. The regulations are to set the fees for applications, processes and services that are provided at or below the administrative cost of determining the application. The regulations were laid in Parliament on 10 February; they are subject to the negative procedure and not debated. I recognise that having two sets of regulations makes the legislative process complicated. We are trying to improve this as part of our work on the draft immigration simplification Bill that is before the House.
This year, for the majority of our application routes we propose a maximum inflationary increase in fees of 2.5 per cent. We have succeeded in limiting the extent of our general increases by taking a more targeted approach to fees adjustment, which is consistent with our strategic principles. We have also introduced some new chargeable services. The targeted increases include settlement visas, which better reflects the value of the product we offer and aligns the fee with the amounts paid by migrants coming to the UK under economic routes. We have increased the fee for long-term visit visas to reflect the value that such products represent to applicants.
There is a £50 increase to the fee for the tier 1 post-study route, which better aligns that fee with that paid by other applicants under tier 1. I informed the House previously of our intention to do that. There is an above inflationary increase for all applications made at a public inquiry office to reflect better the benefits associated with the applications.
New fees include a fee for all UK-based dependant applications and a new pilot service for premium biometric enrolment and case-working. That is offered in response to customer demand from individuals who are cash-rich but time-poor—chairmen of city firms or premiership footballers. Essentially, I propose that we charge them £15,000 for a premium service so that we can provide—am I allowed to say the redistribution of wealth? Strike that from the record. New fees also include a new dependent relative settlement fee covering parents, grandparents and certain other relatives joining family members who are already settled in the UK. The new fee reflects the benefits to applicants, including the right to stay in the UK.
The overall aim is to ensure our fees make an appropriate contribution to the end-to-end costs of the immigration system. I believe the fees are in the best interests of the United Kingdom, maintaining what I believe to be one of the world’s—I should say the democratic world’s—most secure borders and bringing with it a basic core of cost, especially as we seek to improve the speed and quality of decision making on our visa functions. I therefore commend instruments to the Committee.
The Chairman: Let me make a procedural announcement. As the Committee knows, both statutory instruments, being taken together, can be debated now. At the end of the debate, however, I will put the Question on each separately, so please stay for both Questions.
2.42 pm
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con): It is always life-enhancing to serve under you, Mr. Evans. The Minister prayed in aid your fellow representation of Lancastrian constituencies, so I feel I should retaliate by praying in aid our fellow Welshness. It is a particular pleasure to serve under you.
I was struck by two elements of faith in the Minister’s opening remarks. He announced that we have one of the safest and most secure borders in the world, which struck me as optimistic. In relation to the gates he has introduced, he said that he proposes to extend the use of faith in technology and systems. I applaud his optimism. I hope that he is right in both cases, particularly in respect of the gates, because this country will become increasingly dependent on technology as we remove the human element for the convenience of travellers. He, like me, will be conscious of the expertise and the experience that has been built up by the UKBA and those who stand at borders and make judgments about people in queues. We are taking that out of the system, so let us hope that the technology works. As I said, I am not expressing a principled view against it.
I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation of the roll-out, but I have some questions, the first of which relates to the e-passport gate for EEA nationals with the second-generation biometric passport. It would be helpful if he explained the balance of the cost in installing the gates between the UKBA and the airport operator, which I assume is the other side of the equation. How much is the taxpayer paying for the new system?
The Minister is confident about the absolute safety and security of the biometric passports issued by all the other EEA countries. Are the Government sure that everyone else in the EEA matches the standards that we would like to see, as we are granting travellers from those countries a huge privilege, in that they will not be interrogated by a human as they enter this country? The Christmas day bomber boarded his last plane at Schiphol, so extremely dangerous people can clearly board planes with murderous intent within the EEA. I appreciate that that did not relate to passports, but it did relate to airports within the EEA. It is an important and practical issue, and the public will want to be reassured that the other countries that enjoy such a privilege have appropriate standards of security.
Another issue that I hope the Minister will deal with is database security—security of individuals’ data and the ability to withstand hacking by criminal or terrorist elements. I want to know, in particular, whether there is a single database in this country or whether we are sharing information with all the countries of the EEA. If it is the latter, are we confident about the security of the databases?
My second set of questions relates to the IRIS pre-enrolment gates. What is the balance of their cost between the UKBA and the airport operator? Will the Minister deal with reliability? He spoke to some extent of the reliability of the new system, but he will be aware that apparently the existing machines have broken down more often than they have worked. I have had many conversations with travellers who have enrolled for the system and who think that it is great in theory but that it never works. They say that the system is always closed when they turn up at airports.
 
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Prepared 25 February 2010