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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. I begin where the noble Lord, Lord Lewis of Newnham, ended. I would like to enhance our reputation. The point that was made by my noble friend Lady Warwick on the number of decisions that are overturned on appeal is the reason and the driving force for the new system that is being proposed, which is a much better proposition. My role, notwithstanding any conventions, is to try to convince your Lordships’ House during the passage of the Bill that we have that right. One of the ways I want to do that is to make a promise. The promise is specifically directed at the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, but I believe that it will be welcomed by your Lordships’ House. I have discussed it very briefly with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and I know that she will welcome it. As noble Lords have indicated—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, used the word ““shortly””—the response to the consultation will be published. I give the commitment that Third Reading of the Bill will not take place until that is published and noble Lords have had at least a few days to consider it. I do not have a publication date yet; my pay grade is not sufficient to be given such an honour, but as soon as I have one I shall make sure that noble Lords know it. If for some reason the publication were delayed, we would move the Third Reading date accordingly. The purpose of that is to achieve precisely what noble Lords want, which is to look at the consultation and to have the opportunity to meet myself, my honourable friend Mr McNulty and officials. I was grateful for the thanks that noble Lords have given for the meetings that officials have held with them over the past couple of weeks. One should also understand that the stakeholders involved in this—I refer not only to universities but also to other education institutions and employers, large and small—played a critical part in designing the new system. They will have a continuing role to play in making sure that we get it right. Noble Lords rightly mentioned the difficulties that arise with the current system. I am sure that there are wonderful entry clearance officers and entry clearance managers and I know that noble Lords do not mean to imply that they are not, but I accept that mistakes are made and that judgments are arrived at. Largely because of the judgemental nature of the way in which decisions are made it has been important to have an appeals process. That has proved itself through the number of successful appeals. But that is not the system that we will be dealing with. The system will be specifically designed with all those factors taken out. One issue that has been raised continuously with me by representatives of Universities UK—I am always sorry to disappoint my noble friend Lady Warwick, despite my efforts to meet her concerns—members of the Chinese community and others, has been considering the subjectivity of intention to study. That will not be in the new system, because the people who will decide that someone is going to come and study in this country will be the institutions. They will determine by giving someone a place that they are qualified and able to study and that they meet the requirements, just as they do with students here. The other issue that I am often told about is that people supply many pieces of information, largely to give financial security to entry clearance officers in the sense of giving them all sorts of information that they might need. Without pre-empting what will happen, we hope that the system will streamline that process totally, so there is a transparency regarding what kind of information is needed for the individual who is seeking to apply either to come to this country as a student or who has a job offer and is coming in as a worker, so that they know what they need to supply in the points-based system and they understand the importance of supplying it. I apologise if the seven-page PowerPoint presentation did not do it for the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, but I have sought to get people—whether Members of your Lordships’ House or people outside—to understand that we have to forget the existing system and all that we loved or hated about it and think about a transparent system at which any applicant can look and work out how many points they will need and how they will gain them, and that the same system is being looked at by an entry clearance officer at the point at which the applicant is seeking to have the application ratified and to come into the country. That transparent system will do a number of things. It will prevent people speculatively trying to come into the UK, which will have an impact, because it will show people what they will need. It will enable the institutions and employers to play a far greater role. We are talking about how to make sure they have a positive relationship and we are discussing presently with Universities UK what role the institutions might play in querying if there is an issue. It will enable people to see at a glance precisely what information is required, so we do not get the bundles of paper that lead to the issues and problems that have been raised. When I talk to the officials at the Home Office—noble Lords must remember that I am not a Home Office Minister, which is sometimes an advantage in this process, because I am not part of it and can therefore ask more difficult questions—I am clear that here is a system that sounds infinitely better for everyone; not least our hard-pressed entry clearance officers in terms of being able to understand and see what will happen. It is in that context that we began to think about what kind of mistakes or issues we would need to take forward. It is not an appeal against someone’s judgment; it is looking at what might be the issues and problems. I invited all noble Lords who took part in our deliberations in Committee or whom I have met outside and the universities and other institutions to come forward with examples of decisions that have gone wrong, which might be decisions that could not be addressed by what I have described as the administrative review. I am still waiting to find one that either would happen or could not be dealt with. When we looked at what we need to do to make sure that things do not go wrong, my concern was that there was still of course the possibility of human error. Even with a system that has taken out huge amounts of judgment—I will talk about the final judgment in a moment—we still have the potential for someone to misread a piece of information; to write down the wrong number for the points, and so on. What could we do that would create a better system than the one we have currently but would recognise that that could happen? Noble Lords who have dealt with appeals will know that they can sometimes take up to two years. I want a system that means that a student, for example, is not prevented from coming to their course because someone read a number wrong. We need to design an administrative review system that has a number of elements: first, that it is free, which it will be; and secondly, that it is speedy, which it must be. We have asked universities and employers what is an appropriate length of time—I am talking days and weeks; certainly not months—to make sure that we can handle an assumption that everyone who is refused will call for a review. Therefore the time period has to be manageable within the system but the system must make sure that no one misses out on either a job offer or a university or college place because it has taken too long. How do we make sure that that is done in such a way that people have transparency? Any decision that is made that says that an applicant will not be entitled to come must give within it—the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, asked about this point in her opening remarks—the specific reason why the applicant has have been turned down. That enables the applicant, or the institution if it plays a role, to say, ““Hang on a minute, you have read that wrongly””, or, ““You have misinterpreted that information””. The review is done of a very specific, relevant piece of information or of a fact that can be looked at.