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Operation Pathway

I start by thanking the Home Secretary for giving me an advance copy of her statement. May I join her in congratulating the police on the work that they did, both in the investigation and in making the arrests promptly and without incident following the extremely unfortunate leak in Downing street? I was asked after the event in an interview whether I blamed the Home Secretary for the fiasco. I said no—for once she was blameless, and I am glad that she recognised immediately that Bob Quick had to go. Such a blatant breach of the relevant protocols meant that his position was completely untenable. That is as far as I am going to go in praising the Home Secretary. The past few weeks have been another chapter of chaos in the Home Office. We have warned for years about abuses of the student visa system for immigration purposes, but the emergence of a terror threat within the UK from this system is a worrying but perhaps unsurprising new development. Will the Home Secretary confirm that the security services have in the past year issued a number of warnings about flaws in the student visa system? Can she explain why the Home Office’s response to these warnings has been to cut back the visa operation in Pakistan? The UK Border Agency’s monthly report for February says:""The UK hub started handling all…settlement applications from Pakistan…from 26th January. This will enable us to fully test the concept of the UK hub…whilst enabling a reduction of staff in Islamabad (along with the hubbing of all other application categories in Pakistan to Abu Dhabi)."" Before she picks up the phone to Scotland Yard again, I reassure her that the document I am quoting from was not leaked to me—it was published on the internet. So why are student visa applications from Pakistan being handled not from Pakistan but from Abu Dhabi; and why is Pakistan, of all countries, being used to "test a concept"? Is the Home Secretary not aware that high-quality fake documents that will help applicants get visas are on sale for £100 in Pakistan? Is she aware that there are companies doing what one described to a national newspaper as a "roaring business" in helping student visa applicants? Will she confirm the extraordinary fact that under this Government, the British high commission in Pakistan previously estimated that half of all students to whom it grants visas disappear after reaching the UK? If the security services say there is a big problem, why is the right hon. Lady cutting front-line staff in Pakistan, so that we cannot do adequate local verification? Why does she think that people in Abu Dhabi are better placed to judge an application? Will she confirm that one of the suspects in the case was allowed into Britain even though he had suspect papers? If that is the case, does it not blow apart the absurd claims made by the Immigration Minister that all this will be solved by the e-Borders database? And is it not true that even biometric data will not help us catch previously unknown terror suspects? As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) knows, this Home Office is paranoid about bad news. Is it true that three years ago, a chief immigration officer who wrote an internal report criticising the way in which student visa applications in Pakistan are handled was disciplined and the report suppressed? These are key issues that the Home Secretary has to address in relation to national security, but it is to her discredit that her statement today fails to address many of the problems that her Department faces. This should have been a statement that allowed the House to ask her why her Department made wildly exaggerated claims about leaks and national security, which led to the utterly unjustified arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford—the stuff of police states, not democracy. It should also have been an opportunity for the House to question her about the worrying issues that have arisen as a result of the policing of the G20 protests. However, this is hardly surprising. The right hon. Lady is the latest in a series of beleaguered Home Secretaries—three already in this Parliament. If we believe the Downing street rumour mill—despite everything, it still appears to be operating—she will be on her way before long, as well. Of course, the truth is that we do not need just a new Home Secretary. What we need is a new Government, if we are to sort out all this mess.