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British High Commission in South Africa

The right hon. Lady should not underestimate herself. I do not want to go into the specifics of the case in too much detail, and I hope the right hon. Lady also appreciates that that would be difficult for me to do. I have read the correspondence that she kindly sent to me, including the letter from the family to her constituency office and her subsequent representations. Some of the points in that letter do not square with the Home Office's understanding of what could have happened and what did happen—and, of course, the events took place within the general context of the rules. However, I will come back to her with the detail after this debate, so that she can pass that on to her constituent. That is the duty of the Minister, and I hope she accepts that I take my duties in this Chamber very seriously indeed, even if I sometimes disagree with her on policy points, although not as many as I sometimes think I should. The British high commission in South Africa is one of our most important postings. Following the changes that have taken place and the improvement of the managed migration policy, the visa operation now falls under the UK Border Agency, not the Foreign Office. There are arguments for and against that—I obviously think that it is beneficial—but people following the debate might have wondered why a Home Office Minister is responding to a debate on a high commission function. The reason is that the Government thought that in that way the right hon. Lady was more likely to get the answers she was seeking, because the case involves visas, not the general operation. Suffice it to say that relationships with South Africa are very important to us. The high commission in Pretoria has 216 staff to provide political, consular and visa services. The visa section employs 82 of those staff—some UK people, and some locally employed. There is also a consulate general in Cape Town. We did the global visa waiver test in 2008, and in March 2009 we introduced the visa requirement for travel from South Africa. The problem that we previously faced was the Zimbabwean problem that the right hon. Lady has highlighted. There was significant evidence of abuse, with Zimbabweans presenting South African documents in the UK. That was a major challenge and required the implementation of a visa regime in relation to South Africa. That was not peculiar to South Africa, as we did the same thing with a number of countries. For the past few years, all visa applicants have been required to enrol their biometrics, and the way in which that is done may be at the root of this issue. We have agents—organisations and companies to which we franchise—to take the initial visa applications, but that is not done initially at the high commission. So although anyone who has a British passport has an absolute entitlement to service at the high commission, the initial stages of visa applications are done through agents. We have invested £4 million in extending the facilities in Pretoria to provide that service. The commercial partner that provides that front-of-house service—I hate that phrase, but I think the right hon. Lady knows what I mean—in South Africa is a company called VFS Global. We have implemented what we call a hub-and-spoke arrangement, whereby visa applications can be made in one city or posting and then decided and processed in the continental hub. Pretoria is the African hub, so its operation is particularly important to us. I shall not list the benefits of that arrangement now, because I suspect that the right hon. Lady would fall asleep. She can read them elsewhere, and I am quite prepared to discuss those issues if necessary. Let me give the House an idea of scale. In 2009 the British high commission in Pretoria processed 122,609 visa applications, of which 101,200 were from South African nationals. Since the introduction of the new visa requirement for South African visitors, the British high commission has offered exceptional levels of customer service. In 2009 more than 95 per cent. of all visit visa applications were resolved within five days, two thirds of all settlement applications were resolved within 10 days, and 97 per cent. of all South African visa applications were issued. Of the 101,200 visa applications from South African nationals, 88,098 were in the visitor category. In the settlement category, 86 per cent. of the applications from South African nationals were issued. In other words, there is an exceptionally high volume of applications and, I would argue, a very good service within the commitments that we make. The entry clearance officer or the in-country official will consider the application carefully to ensure that the correct decision is made. However, the onus rests on the applicant to demonstrate that they meet the requirements of the immigration rules.