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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right. He reminds me that when my family came to this country in 1965, when I was nine, as first generation immigrants, we settled in his constituency. My mother retrained as a teacher—her qualifications from the then South Yemen and originally from India were not accepted—at St. Mary’s college in Strawberry Hill, which is another example of a higher education institution that attracts people from all over the world. The hon. Gentleman is right about visa fees. I stress that people do not mind paying fees if they get the service. They resent having to pay a fee if the service they get is bad—as it is, I am sorry to say, in the immigration and nationality directorate. The proposals will place enormous power in the hands of entry clearance officers. A couple of years ago, under the inspirational chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), the Constitutional Affairs Committee went to the sub-continent to consider immigration appeals from source. The Committee produced an excellent report, in which we considered the quality of decision making. The Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and I believe that it would be bad to take away the right of appeal. It would place more and more power in the hands of entry clearance officers. That is fine when they can make high-quality decisions that are justifiable and can be defended. Let us consider, for example, Carol Doughty, director of visa services in New Delhi. If there is a problem with which UK Visas cannot help and the appeal process does not work, one can ring Carol Doughty and get a good decision. On the other hand, I have only three cases in Islamabad—all 20,000 of my other cases are with India—and one can never get through to an entry clearance manager in Islamabad and Karachi. I cannot understand why more of my hon. Friends who represent constituencies with many Pakistani-origin cases do not complain more. One has to get up at 5 am to speak directly to an entry clearance director, who spends her entire time telling you how awful the system is and that she needs more resources. If we take away the right of appeal, we place power in the hands of unelected decision makers. That encourages us to go to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality and the Minister with responsibility for entry clearance. The work load of Ministers, not adjudicators, who will not be able to determine the cases, will increase under the proposals. We will be ringing Ministers all the time, asking for overturns because the system does not give us the right of appeal. I want to end with one example of what happens in a system that has no right of appeal. This afternoon, a constituent telephoned me because his nine-year-old nephew had come to visit him from South Africa. The nephew is of Indian origin and his name is Yash Patel. He arrived at terminal 1 of Heathrow airport and was refused admission because the immigration officers believed that there was not a sufficient programme of activities for the nine-year-old during his visit to his uncle in Leicester. They thought that he would spend all his time at the hairdresser’s shop owned by his aunt. The immigration officers also felt that it was wrong for him to come to this country because his parents are very poor and the officers wondered how he could afford the ticket. The boy has been at Heathrow airport for most of the day. I telephoned the office of the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality. As usual, it provided a fantastic service and I pay tribute to the Minister’s private office for its work. Staff gave me the phone number of the chief immigration officer. I spoke to chief immigration officer No. 1, who passed me to chief immigration officer No. 2, who would not overturn the decision. He said that he could not make the decision and he passed me to the deputy director at IND who deals with such cases. I rang her twice. On both occasions, her mailbox was full and I could not get through. Luckily, given that we are discussing Second Reading of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, I bumped into my old friend, the Minister. I told him about my problem and he behaved sympathetically. He got on to his private office and the deputy director at IND rang my office. I am pleased to say that the young boy has been allowed to stay, not for the original period that he wanted to stay for his holiday, but for two weeks on temporary admission. There is no right of appeal against refusal for temporary admission. We have to ring all those offices and get the Minister involved to deal with those cases. I do not make a personal attack on individuals in the system, who work extraordinarily hard. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, who is rightly respected and admired in the Asian community in this country for his work. However, I stress to him, the Home Secretary and other hon. Members that we are dealing not with asylum seekers but with our constituents—people who are settled in this country and are equal citizens to us. Although I cannot find any hon. Member who will vote with me against the Bill tonight—my rebellion therefore ends when I finish speaking—I urge the Minister in his winding-up speech to give me the assurances that we need to show us that the Government are seized of the issues and that there will be genuine progress to ensure that we have the necessary safeguards to protect our citizens’ rights.