UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC -357-i

HOUSE OF LORDS

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

JOINT COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

 

 

Immigration and Human Rights

 

 

Tuesday 19 February 2008

MR LIAM BYRNE MP and MS LIN HOMER

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 87

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Joint Committee on Human Rights

on Tuesday 19 February 2008

Members present:

Mr Andrew Dismore, in the Chair

Bowness, L Dubs, L Lester of Herne Hill, L Onslow, E of Stern, B

John Austin Dr Evan Harris Mr Virendra Sharma

________________

Witnesses: Mr Liam Byrne MP, Minister of State for Nationality, Citizenship and Immigration, and Ms Lin Homer, Chief Executive, Border and Immigration Agency, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, everybody. This is an evidence session with Liam Byrne, Minister of State for Nationality, Citizenship and Immigration, and Lin Homer, Chief Executive, Border and Immigration Agency of the Home Office looking at human rights aspects of immigration. Does either of you want to make an opening statement?

Mr Byrne: No.

Q2 Chairman: Perhaps we could start by asking you when you make decisions about immigration policy to what extent do you think human rights considerations are a constraint on your actions and decisions?

Mr Byrne: Human rights considerations are part and parcel of pretty much every aspect of decision-making and indeed policy-making that we conduct. I will ask Lin, perhaps, to explain a little bit about how we try and weave consideration of human rights policy throughout our decision-making and our policy-making process, but an important foundation for a lot of the work that we do now is the review that was developed as part of the Ministry of Justice review last year, which was a human rights action plan. There were a number of steps that the Home Office had to take which followed on from that, including appointing a champion for human rights at board level in the Home Office who I am delighted is Lin Homer, as well as making sure there is an explicit ministerial champion for human rights at the Home Office who is Meg Hillier. Do you want to say a little bit more about the six or seven ways in which we try and structurally ensure that consideration of human rights is woven throughout our work?

Ms Homer: Thank you, Chairman. As the Minister says, the structure within it is that we work closely across government working, which is led by the Ministry of Justice, so I act as the board representative in human rights issues, so at the highest level the Home Office board discusses how we make human rights a part of how we undertake our duties. Consideration of human rights is also woven into the way that we develop policy, and our policy development is well sensitised to this issue and to the elements of both the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. At a more practical level we have also undertaken some very wide training about human rights so that both our policy-makers and our operational staff are aware of and understand how they need to consider human rights issues as they make guidance and then apply guidance. In addition to that we have created a network of people across the Home Office who can take advice from each other so that access to lawyers, experts and practitioners is well identified. As a result of that what we are seeing is an opportunity really to ensure that it is bedded into what we do rather than added on in any kind of way as an afterthought.

Q3 Chairman: Could I ask whether you or Liam have found human rights concerns stopping you from taking a course of action that you had intended to do?

Mr Byrne: There are a couple. The way that you posed the question at the outset was have human rights ever constrained you in something that you wanted to do. There are two sides of that coin; there are large parts of our policy-making and decision-taking which are about ensuring that we effectively deliver on the Government's human rights obligations and commitments, so many of the decisions that we take in the asylum system for example are about honouring many of our great traditions of ensuring human rights are observed. I am bound to say that there have been decisions that have been made often by courts which I have found very frustrating, where there have been individuals who we think perhaps should be deported and where courts have said there are human rights barriers that should preclude you from deporting that individual. British justice like British democracy I am sure could be made more perfect, but we do not necessarily live in a perfect world and that is why I often ask officials to appeal against decisions that are handed down by courts when I do not think I agree with them.

Q4 Chairman: Those are individual cases where you disagree with the courts and their views on what the human rights implications of a particular case are, but what about broader policy considerations when you are drafting new rules?

Mr Byrne: I would need to think about whether there are specific instances of policy-making where I have found that a problem.

Q5 Chairman: Can I put to you a couple of points about the new general grounds for refusal and the way these things are looked at? In the explanatory memorandum accompanying the new changes dated 7 February it says at paragraph 8 that: "An impact assessment on these changes will be published on the website of the BIA, the website of the Home Office and copies placed in the House libraries." These regulations come in at the end of the month as I understand it but the impact assessment is on neither website nor in either library; can you explain why?

Mr Byrne: I would need to check whether that was the case or not.

Q6 Chairman: We have just checked, as of this morning.

Mr Byrne: I would need to check as well.

Q7 Chairman: That does raise questions about the commitment to look at impact. Did you consider the human rights implications of the new general grounds for refusal because we have had a very clear briefing from ILPA, giving some very cogent examples of how this is very likely to interfere with rights under the Convention, particularly the right to family life?

Mr Byrne: Sure, but there are, as you know, always balances to be struck in these questions. If you take, for example, the new rule that we do not think that you should be able to reapply for a visa for ten years if you have used deception in your application, it is important that we send a very clear signal that we will not permit or tolerate deception to be used in visa applications, that is quite important. It is important to remember that the way in which we are able to check on whether deception is being used is now dramatically stronger because we now no longer issue visas without checking fingerprints, and actually when I was in India a couple of weeks ago I visited the High Commission there to talk to entry clearance officers and visa staff and we observed one particular interview where an individual swore blind that she had never been to the UK before and, as it turned out, biometric checks showed that she had. In times gone by we would not necessarily have been able to detect the fraud that people were trying to perpetrate in examples like that; we now can, but I think, therefore, there is the new opportunity to dramatically strengthen our visa rules by making sure that where we do spot cases of deception like that there are sanctions attached.

Q8 Chairman: Where is the borderline between deception by mistake or deception made by somebody else completely outwith the knowledge of the applicant, for example by an agent, which is one of the examples we have been given by ILPA, or the one I found particularly concerning is the question of a trafficking victim who is brought into the UK by deception so her entry is illegal, who manages to escape from the traffickers but she has no money to return herself to her home country, she relies on the UK to pay for her return and then she is barred for ten years because of the deception or five years because her return is paid for by the UK.

Mr Byrne: I am sorry, I missed that last bit.

Q9 Chairman: Under the new rules, because they are mandatory, because there is an element of deception she is potentially barred for ten years or at the least barred for five years because her return is paid for by UK funds.

Mr Byrne: That is why there has to be a process of appeal that is attached to these kinds of decisions.

Ms Homer: In cases involving trafficking we have generated an opportunity for reflection; I would have to say in cases involving children as well we will allow more time for a story to be told and we would accept, for instance, that a child may not be able to tell us their accurate story the first time around; a torture victim may be in the same position. We therefore try to produce approaches that take into account the circumstances.

Q10 Chairman: Could I put a child case to you that ILPA have come up with? They have given us the example of a child fleeing persecution in their home country who is smuggled to the UK through the assistance of an agent, who has no travel documentation so effectively illegal entry, has no funds of his own, given discretionary leave but when his asylum claim is ultimately decided it is refused, perhaps because the circumstances in the home country have changed. Even if he agrees to voluntary return he has got no money to pay for it, so either he is excluded for ten years because of the deception or for five years because he cannot pay for his own return. Is that right?

Mr Byrne: Without knowing the full details of the case it is impossible. We do this a lot in the House of Commons and it is impossible to discuss hypothetical cases like that.

Q11 Chairman: Take them as hypothetical cases, Liam. The point I am putting to you is that each of these examples - and I am not going to go through any more because there are loads of them - is potentially a serious breach of human rights due to the very rigid nature of the new general rules.

Mr Byrne: Which human rights are you referring to?

Q12 Chairman: The right to a family life, for example.

Mr Byrne: In the case of a child what is the Article 8 breach in that case?

Q13 Earl of Onslow: Minister, I am sorry, I find the answer difficult to get my head round in that you may have people who, through no fault of their own - and by this I am excluding the lady who you saw in the New Delhi High Commission, who had obviously cheated and told a load of porky-pies, and they have been known to happen east of Suez - and to whom the Chairman has referred who are completely blameless. Surely those blameless ones - the example of a trafficked woman, the example of the child as given - should not be subject to the same rigour of the law as if they had been deliberately cheating, deliberately getting in. That is what I certainly have become concerned about, and I think I am hunting along the same scent that the Chairman is as well.

Mr Byrne: I understand the question, but what I still do not understand is what breach of human rights you are talking about.

Q14 Chairman: We are not necessarily just talking about Convention rights relating to the case of the child, we are talking about rights of the child.

Mr Byrne: That is a different set of questions.

Q15 Chairman: With trafficking we are talking about the Council of Europe Convention.

Mr Byrne: True, but I thought you were talking about the ECHR which is where you started your questioning.

Q16 Chairman: No I started on human rights, I did not say ECHR.

Mr Byrne: There are two reviews which are currently being undertaken, first about how we implement the Home Secretary's commitment to sign the Council of Europe Convention on Human Trafficking, and that is as you will know something that we want to try and sign this year. Secondly, we are also looking at how we lift the immigration reservation on the UN Convention of the Child, so if we are to implement commitments in those two areas it is quite likely that there will have to be carve-outs across not just immigration legislation but also benefits legislation and potentially NHS legislation as well. In the cases you are citing where there are cases involving children or human trafficking, there may well be carve-outs that we have to put into effect. I apologise if I thought you were talking in general terms of ECHR.

Q17 Chairman: I can give you sample cases as well if you want, we have plenty of those here too.

Mr Byrne: The short answer is that there could well be carve-outs that are needed to implement commitments to protect children and to implement conventions on human trafficking, but broadly speaking I think the tightening up of the immigration rules that we put into effect last week is ECHR-compliant.

Q18 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: Mr Byrne, so far you have complained that the judges have found against the Home Office in cases where you disagree; in that you are in the company of many predecessor ministers who always complain in that way. I am sorry to hear you complain because of course it undermines the rule of law if ministers attack judges, but I am not asking you about. That.

Mr Byrne: I did not say I was attacking judges.

Q19 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: What I would like to ask you about is this: when you reply on human rights questions we are not asking you simply about the European Convention on Human Rights, we are really asking you about principles of justice that are in the common law and in the various treaties by which the UK is bound. Do you not realise that it is a very serious matter, for example, when you change a policy with rules that are not properly published to those upon whom they have an adverse impact, and that notion breaches the most basic principles about legal certainty? If you do realise that then could you answer the Chairman's first question to you when he asked you - and you have not replied - what constraint is there upon you, what actual constraint is there, imposed by human rights considerations? Can you give one example where you were persuaded not to do something because of common law or other human rights considerations?

Mr Byrne: No, I would need to reflect on 20 months worth of work and come back with a substantive answer.

Q20 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I am only asking for one example.

Mr Byrne: Sure, but I am not going to answer you off the cuff.

Q21 Chairman: Perhaps you could write to us and give us some examples, if you can think of any, if there are any.

Mr Byrne: I am sure there are lots.

Q22 John Austin: Can I refer to the highly skilled migrants programme. In response to this Committee's report where this Committee felt that the changes were retrospective and contravened the rights to home and family life the Government very clearly said that you did not regard it as retrospective legislation. I would like to ask you though whether you think it is fair to require a person to give a commitment to make his or her main home in the UK and then move the goalposts before they have applied for permanent residence?

Mr Byrne: Some of the misunderstandings that have arisen in some of the disputes around HSMP are that people appear to have forgotten that there was always a further leave to remain test that people would have to pass after they had lived out a period of initial leave. Very often in these debates there are quite emotional arguments about legitimate expectations and so on, but the truth is in our immigration system that people's legitimate expectations really should only extend to the period of initial leave that people have been granted.

Q23 John Austin: Not even if there is implicit in the guidance and what they have been told that provided you fulfil these requirements, after four years you will be entitled to remain - a reasonable expectation.

Mr Byrne: That is the question that is disputed in the judicial review which I think is coming up in March and so we will wait to see what the court decides in that case.

Q24 John Austin: I am sure Mr Sharma and Mr Dismore have many constituents, as I do ---

Mr Byrne: As have I.

Q25 John Austin: Who are affected by this, and I would just like to read the guidance which was given to my constituents at the beginning of the undertakings they gave. There is a section in the guidance they were given that: "You are willing and able to make the United Kingdom your main home", they were specifically asked to do that. It says: "We will ask you to provide a written undertaking to that effect, you will be expected to make the UK your country of habitual residence. Secondments abroad that are an integral part of a job based in the UK are permitted; however, they will be considered at the time outside of the UK for settlement eligibility purposes. To qualify for settlement in the UK you must have spent a continuous period of four years in the UK." You are really asking people to sign a document saying that they will give their commitment to make their habitual residence in the UK, they sign up to that, they come here in good faith, they purchase a home, they bring their children and then suddenly the Government says "Oh, sorry, the goalposts have changed". You do not think that is an infringement of their rights?

Mr Byrne: Absolutely not; no. When people applied for HMSP leave they were granted a period of initial leave and of course you would say in order to move on you will have to make the UK your main home; not to do so would be an utter nonsense, it would be to say you can come and spend a little bit of time over a period of a couple of years working in the UK, but it does not matter how much time you spend in the UK, in fact you can spend as much time of that initial period of leave as you like outside the UK. There is nothing in what you have read out that detracts from or would persuade people that there was not a further leave to remain test that they would still need to pass.

Q26 John Austin: It is your expectation that if you have fulfilled all the other undertakings they might reasonably expect that leave would be granted.

Mr Byrne: Absolutely not because you are selectively quoting from a piece of guidance and a set of rules which is actually quite long. It has always been very clear to people that there is a further leave to remain test that has to be passed, that the Government reserves the right to tighten that FLR test at any stage, and let us remember the reason that we tightened the further leave to remain requirements for HSMP was that HSMP was set up to allow highly skilled migrants to come to the UK and work in highly skilled occupations. There was evidence, which I would be happy to provide to the Committee, that a number of individuals were not working in highly skilled jobs whatsoever; indeed, in many meetings I have had with HSMP people it was quite clear that people were coming and actually spending extended periods of time without any work whatsoever. That defeats the object of the programme as it was initiated; therefore, I think it was right to tighten up the rules.

Q27 John Austin: You are there referring to people who have not fulfilled the obligations that they have signed up to; they may have been out of work, they may have left the country, they may have been absent. I am talking about people who have been here for four years, who have worked for four years, who have severed their links with their own country and bought their home here, who have got their children being educated in British schools, they are paying their taxes, they came with a reasonable expectation that they signed up to something and if they ticked all the right boxes and did their four years they would have the right for extended leave to remain; you are saying that is not the case.

Mr Byrne: Mr Austin, the question that we dispute is whether there were grounds for those newcomers to have a legitimate expectation that the FLR test would be a free ride, a green light, that actually it would just be a wave-through. That is the question that is being disputed in the judicial review in March.

Q28 Chairman: Our dispute with you is a straightforward one, it is the retrospective element of this. If you want to change the rules for the future, for new incoming people, we do not have an argument with that, subject to appropriate safeguards. Our objection is the fact that people came here in good faith, did all the things they were asked to do and suddenly find the rules are changed, the carpet is pulled from under them. That is our objection, that is what we see as a fundamental breach of their human rights and their right to family life.

Mr Byrne: I profoundly disagree with you.

Q29 Earl of Onslow: Does that mean you can actually break a contract halfway through, because that is what you are ---

Mr Byrne: It is not a contract.

Q30 Earl of Onslow: It is as near a contract as ---

Mr Byrne: No, you are absolutely wrong.

Q31 Earl of Onslow: We take the view that if you say if you do X, Y and Z you will most likely be given the leave to stay, it is when you change halfway through and you say "Sorry, mate, you have done X, Y and Z but we are not going to honour our word." I do not like my country doing that, I think it is wrong.

Mr Byrne: With respect, I do not think that is right.

Q32 Earl of Onslow: What is not right, my description of it or the morality of it?

Mr Byrne: The programme for HSMP like many other routes for economic migrants was always structured as a two-stage route where you could apply for initial leave but you always needed to apply for further leave to remain, and it was always the case and it has always been the case that the further leave to remain test can differ and can be strengthened, or indeed weakened, compared to the initial period of leave, but as I say the question that the judicial review will examine is whether there were illegitimate expectations created in the way that this route was marketed.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: In Hong Kong a precisely similar policy was adopted and held to be unlawful on the ground that the Chairman is putting to you; that was the origin of the legitimate expectation law which you are now saying does not apply so I would suggest that your advisers look at what happened in Hong Kong and what the outcome was because this is very serious indeed.

Q33 Mr Sharma: You need to look at the practice that was happening in the past and the false impression given by the authorities which forced individuals to lead into this situation. There is a general expectation that the rule says very clearly or the practice says clearly that if you are remaining in the same position, the same post, you have your family here and you have given a commitment, the person is here for the four years, in previous practices other people were allowed and that is the assumption taken by the newcomers. If, right in the middle of that situation, you change the policy and give a different impression to them, with no chance of taking on board their standard practices here or what their other commitments are in this country, that is where the questions are raised and that is where the questions by the Chairman and others are going, that previous experience and the practice, without informing individuals in advance, if you have done that okay what happened in the past we accept it, but in the future the practice will change or the policy will change. I do not think that there will be a major argument on that.

Mr Byrne: The point at which you started was a question about whether a false impression had been created.

Q34 Mr Sharma: I am saying that is what is now happening.

Mr Byrne: Sure, but that is precisely the question that the judicial review in March will examine, so if the Committee does not mind ---

Q35 Mr Sharma: Does the Department accept the mistake?

Mr Byrne: I do not accept that and that is why we are contesting the judicial review; obviously we will see what the judicial review outcome is in early March.

Q36 John Austin: The judicial review may well resolve that, but you do not accept that a legitimate expectation about the possibility of settlement was created, so you would disagree with an immigration judge who says the changes made in November 2006 now apply in effect retrospectively by completely changing the requirements which an applicant must fulfil when they have already embarked upon the programme that provides an avenue to settlement. The respondent is entitled to change the immigration rules, but not in such a way as to adversely affect so catastrophically those who are already committed under the scheme. In those circumstances it seems to me that the decision undoubtedly constitutes an interference with the applicant's right to respect for his private life; would you disagree with that judgment?

Mr Byrne: I am not going to be drawn into the business of commenting on selected quotations from judge's opinions; I have learned to my great cost over the last 20 months that that is an error.

Q37 John Austin: You do not accept that it is retrospective and you do not accept that it interferes with an applicant's family life?

Mr Byrne: I personally do not think it was a retrospective application of the rules. The Government has always reserved the right to tighten further leave to remain tests and that is what has happened in the reform of HSMP over the last couple of years.

Q38 John Austin: Could I ask you what assessment of the human rights impact of the changes to HSMP the Government made before announcing them and whether that has been released to the Committee or is published?

Mr Byrne: On that I will need to check.

Q39 Chairman: Could I ask you about this because in your reply to our report you said that changes to immigration are the subject of Parliamentary scrutiny. We all know that there is practically no scrutiny at all of the change to immigration rules because of the negative resolution procedure - and that you were not satisfied of the need for a statement of compatibility to accompany changes to the rules. If you were conducting a proper and careful assessment of the human rights impact of changes to the Immigration Rules before you make them, what is the objection to providing Parliament with a reasoned statement of compatibility in the Explanatory Memorandum, as we get with other bills and regulations?

Mr Byrne: Sorry, I did not quite follow that question.

Q40 Chairman: The point quite simply is this. We have your assertions that human rights are taken account of as a bare assertion; when we have a Bill, for example from your department, the Counter-Terrorism Bill, the explanatory notes set out in detail the human rights implications and why it is considered that the Bill complies with the ECHR, and here we have this statement of compatibility. The question I put to you is quite simple: why, when you have something that is so fundamentally likely to affect people's lives, not just their human rights but their right to a family, their right to a home and all the rest of it, why if you are doing this analysis of compatibility and all the rest of it can you not have a statement of compatibility setting out the reasons in the Explanatory Memorandum, like we have with other pieces of legislation. What is the objection to that?

Mr Byrne: I personally think it might be quite a good idea which warrants a bit of further exploration. You will know the conventions of the House better than I will, but my understanding is that the kind of requirement for an ECHR compliance statement on primary legislation is that Parliament is ultimately sovereign and therefore can make much more sweeping bits of legislation that could potentially rebalance some sort of human rights questions, whereas secondary legislation can be much more easily squashed by the independent judiciary if it is not in line with human rights legislation. Personally I think it would be quite a good idea that we should explore further.

Chairman: That is quite a helpful answer and hopefully you will come back to us before too long saying that from now on we will see that, because the difference between a Bill and a change to the Immigration Rules is that a Bill will go through the full parliamentary scrutiny process and a change to the Immigration Rules will hardly see the light of day in parliamentary terms and therefore it is that much more important that they are subject to proper consideration in their drafting and for compliance.

Earl of Onslow: May I ask a question, Chairman, and the basis of it is that I do not know the answer to this. If a statutory instrument is found to be incompatible with the ECHR by the judges does that automatically strike it down or does Parliament have to strike it down? I know it cannot strike down an Act but does it strike down a statutory instrument?

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: It depends.

Chairman: We will leave it at that and we will have a private discussion afterwards. Dr Harris.

Q41 Dr Harris: The report that we did had a section on health care where there were a number of recommendations going over nearly two pages, and your response that you sent us, which you will be aware of, to those recommendations was less in length than the recommendations themselves and did not really address many of them. Can you say why you did not feel it was appropriate to address even basic questions like the first one about whether the Government has any evidence to demonstrate the extent of what it describes as health tourism - that was paragraph 129 and your reply did not address that at all, it ignored it in fact.

Mr Byrne: You will remember we picked this up in what I thought was a very helpful debate that we had on the Committee's report a while ago, and what I said then is what I will say now, which is that this is an area that is in need of a thorough look. As much as anything else the Committee made that point with some vigour, some force and some justice, and what I did not want to do in my response to your report or in the debate or today is pre-empt what that more thorough analysis is going to present when the Department of Health report is published.

Q42 Dr Harris: Do you accept that it is not really a satisfactory situation for a select committee to report way back in the session 2006/07, for you to respond saying that you will respond when you publish the review in October, you then tell us in a debate we have had on a report that has not really been addressed, as you admit, in December in Parliament that something will be published in January and here we are in February. It is not really scrutiny, is it, because if you are just going to say "It is in a review, I am not going to make any comment on your recommendations", what is the point?

Mr Byrne: The ambitions of the report were not simply to scrutinise the Government's position. I detected in the report ambitions that were wider than that and I detected ambitions that were wider than that in the debate we had.

Q43 Dr Harris: It is our job to scrutinise you, so on the scrutiny issue how can we do that if you will not respond? You missed two deadlines for your non-response response, which is a review, and then we are still here months later and you still cannot answer.

Mr Byrne: In the rest of my sentence I was going to go on to say that the ambitions that I detected were actually to influence the shape and direction of government policy. This is a complicated area of policy, as you know, and the Committee's analysis, the Committee's recommendations and the Committee's ambitions deserve a thorough response; I am just trying to avoid a position of providing a running commentary on what is a cross-government review. I understand that we all live in the demands of the 24 hour media age and people want instant response from government on all kinds of questions, but that section of the report was considered, it was well argued, it was well analysed and the very least the Government can do is provide a thorough and considered response.

Q44 Dr Harris: You can make that argument of course and I accept what you say, but it is not so much the 24 hour media age, of which we on a joint select committee know far less than you do who is on the front line, but some of these are urgent issues. We made a recommendation about the denial of antenatal care to vulnerable women; if that is a concern that you share, and we do not know because you did not address that recommendation 18, paragraph 143 at all in your response. We said that we thought it was inconsistent with the principles of common humanity and with the UK's obligations under ECHR, and we made a recommendation that you suspend all charges for antenatal, maternity and perinatal care. That you must accept is not something that can just drift on, that is people's lives and the welfare of vulnerable people which is why, although we are grateful that our recommendations might be considered by you for the future, it is kind of urgent that there is a resolution of this.

Mr Byrne: There will be lots of different ways of tackling this subject and this question but the response is unfortunately the same. I am not going to give a running commentary on the review before it is published.

Q45 Chairman: It is over a year since we published the report so it is hardly a running commentary it is more of a snail's pace, but can you give us a date now when this review is going to come out?

Mr Byrne: No, because it is a Department of Health-led review and I am not going to answer for the Department of Health on the timetable.

Q46 Chairman: To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, "If we had but world enough and time, this coyness, Minister, would be no crime", but we do not. The fact is that a lot of people are affected by these decisions and a year from our report - a year that started effectively in 2004 - is not exactly moving with rapidity, is it?

Mr Byrne: Yes, but it is a complicated issue and we want to get the report right.

Q47 Dr Harris: It is an important issue; do you accept that in some cases it is a matter of life and death - not ministerial I mean the people involved?

Mr Byrne: I have nothing really to add to my earlier answer.

Q48 Earl of Onslow: Minister, do you not see that not passing by on the other side and leaving people basically, if they have got no money, to suffer is something which I thought the Labour Party was founded for and it was one of the things that it railed against. One of the things it was so proud of was creating - admittedly on the back of the Conservative White Paper - the National Health Service in 1949. That is the whole point of a modern, compassionate Labour Party and yet with a sick woman, who has antenatal problems, you are prepared to pass by on the other side. That is not the Labour Party that I was brought up to respect.

Mr Byrne: Maybe the Committee would find it helpful if I restate the current position of policy which is that around primary care there are no concrete rules in place. GPs have complete discretion to register patients although DoH guidance discourages them from registering non-residents. Immediately necessary treatment, including all maternity care, must never be withheld or delayed but charges due must be pursued for as long as is reasonable. Treatment for specified infectious conditions, including TB, needs to be provided free of charge to all for public health reasons. Secondary care is provided to non-residents but there are charges levied for it under regulations which date back to 1989, so we should not pretend that this is a service-free zone at the moment, but what your Committee identified is a lack of thoroughness in the regulations which are in place at the moment. I think you recommended that that warrants a more thorough review and that is exactly what the Government is undertaking at the moment.

Q49 John Austin: It is not just this Committee, there was a very important report by the Health Select Committee when it did its report into public health, and it is not the question that the Earl of Onslow raised about the issue of the individual who is suffering, there is a risk to public health if any barriers are placed in the way of access to primary care; do you not accept that?

Mr Byrne: The point about primary care is that there is a lack of rules at the moment, but GPs do have discretion to register patients at the moment and many of them do as we know, and I think you came across evidence of the same. There are rules in place around secondary care, there are rules in place around healthcare for infectious diseases, there are rules around provision for emergency necessary treatment, so actually the lion's share of the regulations are in place, but there is this lacuna in primary care and I think there is some consensus around the need to correct.

Q50 Mr Sharma: We all understand that, yes, there is a discretion on the GP's part and that the GP may be willing to register that individual after the initial asylum seeker application is refused, but can I take you away from this point to the delays in the Home Office of giving the final decision on the asylum seeker which is taking many, many years, in some cases four to five years. There are letters sent to my office which say it may take four to five years before we could come to the final decision if the initial application is refused.

Mr Byrne: That is correct.

Q51 Mr Sharma: Then when the asylum seeker goes to get the health care and is refused, GPs are reluctant to register them - I can give you numerous cases on that - and then they are suffering. As members have said, that is the danger and the threat to healthcare in that area. I can give you numerous cases on that side as well, so I think we need to look at the efficiency in that department where the decisions are taken quickly so that people know where they stand. At the moment the people are not aware what their future is in this country and so that is why the question is raised. When the initial application is accepted until the final decision is taken they should be given access to access to medical care.

Mr Byrne: That is your view and I am sure when the Department of Health's review is complete there will be room and scope for a wider debate and discussion on its conclusions, but there are two points that I think I would make. First, there are a number of provisions around providing healthcare services already in place - I will not repeat them again, I have repeated them twice already. The second point that you make, which is a point very well made and which is something I and the Committee have talked about before, is the need for faster decision-making in asylum cases and everybody here will know that one of the first things I did as the immigration minister was set out the legacy of asylum cases that we had identified under John Reid's leadership at the Home Office and, for the first time, we put in place a programme in order to address that. It is an area of the Border and Immigration Agency's business that is rightly attracting significant investment inside the UK Border Agency at the moment and I know that all of us would like the casework resolution programme to go faster. Lin, you recently updated the Home Affairs Select Committee on the number of cases which have been resolved and we will soon be up to around 10,000 case completions a month. Those are problems from the past which we have set our minds to resolving and for new cases there has had to be significant reform as well so there are now fast track teams in place all over the country. By Christmas my goal is to be making a decision on new asylum cases, whether it is to grant leave or to remove the individual from the country in under six months. When you think that back in 1997 it took 22 months just to get an initial decision, never mind complete the case, that is quite substantial progress; it has not happened by accident, it has happened because we have had to undertake some quite significant legislative changes and some quite significant organisational changes as well.

Q52 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: Could you give an assurance to the Committee that in future when we produce a report with important, pressing and detailed recommendations you will respond to us rather than simply not responding at all? I asked the question, not about just this issue but about the accountability of you as a minister to Parliament through us. Can you give an assurance that in future we will get replies from you when we make important recommendations?

Mr Byrne: Of course I will try and satisfy that reasonable request to the best of my ability, but where there are responses that require cross-government reviews of quite complex elements of policy my only caveat would be that sometimes a thorough response, which is often the response that is justified, will take a little bit of time.

Q53 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I am asking for a response of any kind, not just ignoring. We need to know what the Government's response is because we have scarce resources and we need as a watchdog to call you to account, we need a dialogue with you in order that we can do our job properly and inform both Houses of Parliament; we live in a Parliamentary democracy.

Mr Byrne: Is this a reference to Dr Harris's point?

Q54 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: Yes.

Mr Byrne: My response is not any different. Of course, it is important that we respond as fully as we can to committee recommendations but I do think that the right answer in this case is the presentation of the full review, which is something that I hope and I am sure you will scrutinise and hold ministers to account for.

Q55 Dr Harris: In conclusion have we established that it is not going to be fruitful for us to ask you any more questions about our recommendations on healthcare because it is under review?

Mr Byrne: I am happy to rehearse the answers again.

Dr Harris: The answer is that it is under review so you do not need to rehearse that much so perhaps we should move on.

Earl of Onslow: We should also note very, very firmly indeed when we report that ministers will not answer questions - that is all we can do - and it is not satisfactory. This was established in the reign of Charles I, that ministers should answer questions.

Q56 Lord Dubs: Last month you published proposals about unaccompanied children, under the heading "Improving the care of unaccompanied asylum seeking children" and one of the proposals is in fact to permit the enforced removal of unaccompanied child asylum seekers, on a case by case basis. Is this not something which threatens pretty vulnerable young people and it has after all been severely criticised by some of the NGOs who are experts in this field? What do you feel about that?

Mr Byrne: I do think that the best place for children is with their families and I do think that very often the best place for children will be in the countries that they grew up in. That is my starting point for this series of reforms. Where there has been an independent scrutiny process around a case, which has concluded that the individual is actually safe to return to their own country, then we should not actually delay in trying to reunite that child with their family or with appropriate care arrangements in the country that they came from. You immediately spot there two very significant barriers to potentially returning the child: first, identifying a family to which to return a child. Sometimes that will be possible but I suspect that in many cases it will not be possible because they would obviously have to be pretty well satisfied that the family concerned was indeed the family of the child. The second barrier is then obviously the satisfaction with appropriate care arrangements being in place in the country concerned, and again I think there needs to be a pretty high test for those care arrangements before we countenance any such removals. I realise that this is a difficult area of policy but the ambitions are quite simple, to reunite children with their families or to reunite children with the countries that they came from. The way in which we developed the policy guidance around this area is absolutely not something that should be done by the UK border agency on its own; it absolutely has to be done together with many of the refugee children's charities who have been enormously helpful in shaping much of the work of the last 20 months. The Association of Directors of Children's Services is also working very closely with us on this area of policy, as are local authorities as well, but we will need a lot of help to get this right and the hurdles will need to be quite high. Do you want to add anything to this because you have been a bit closer to the ADCS discussions?

Ms Homer: It is an area of policy that we are aware in very sensitive. I have been personally involved in some of the discussions with the chief executives of some of the NGOs and local authorities and I think there is a general professional view that supports what the Minister has said about returning children to their families and their countries of origin where we can, but everybody is very clear that we have got to build this policy with care. Perhaps the only other thing to add is we are involved in discussions with other European countries to make sure that we learn from their experience, so from countries like Sweden and the Netherlands where similar issues have been considered we are taking advice and looking at their experience as well as that of those professional advisers we are talking to.

Q57 Lord Dubs: May I move on to the question of detention of children. I realise, Minister, you have moved on this and indeed you describe setting up or having set up pilot schemes. Could you say a little bit more about how you think that will work or how it is working?

Mr Byrne: Lin would be best able to answer. I would just say this is again something that we did not do 20 months ago, but in the context of a number of other policy changes that we are making, including a new legal obligation on the UK Border Agency to keep children safe from harm I thought it was important that we did explore where there were alternatives to detention. I recently visited Yarlswood about a month ago and actually I was very impressed by the level of care that was being provided at Yarlswood. The new management is actually making quite a dramatic difference and when you look at the crèche facilities, for example, some of the community facilities, some of the educational services that have been provided at Yarlswood they are really rather good. All of that said, if there are alternatives to detention that work then we should try them. Do you want to say a bit more about it?

Ms Homer: The pilot that we are trying is hostel-type accommodation but with more intensive case management support to families to try and help the family in a sense consider and make steps for voluntary removal and/or to be assisted in an enforced removal if that is where we go, without using detention. As an agency I would be quite happy to say as the chief executive we would prefer to be able to effect family removals without having to use detention; it has not been our experience that we have been able to achieve that in the past, this is a pilot where we can look at that again. Again, we are involving the NGOs in that, they have helped us design the hostel, we have given them access to look at it as we are piloting it and we will allow them to comment at the end of the pilot period. If we can find a way that some, most or eventually all families can be helped to return without using detention, I think we would be very interested in that and this is one of the ways of working out whether we can, again built on experience internationally as well as experience of our own NGOs and professionals.

Q58 Lord Bowness: Minister, can we perhaps go back to Lord Dubs' first question where he was talking about the enforced removal of unaccompanied asylum seeking children. You said you believed that the best place for children was with their families, but of course in some instances, particularly where children have been trafficked, families have been parties to that. Also in your recommendation you say they have refused the offer of voluntary return where adequate reception arrangements exist; who is going to be the judge of that and what do you consider adequate reception arrangements are? This is going to be quite difficult in some places is it not?

Mr Byrne: You are absolutely right, it will be very difficult and that is why there is a job of work to be done with children's services directors and with local authorities, as well as with children's charities to try and get a definition of what adequate care arrangements look like. At this stage I would only specify the policy ambition and very much I think concur with your line of questioning, which is that a great deal of work has to be done in order to specify benchmarks of care before we can move further with this policy.

Q59 Baroness Stern: I would like to move on to something which I hope is easier for you to answer and that is about section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 which, as you know, enables you to stop giving any support to families of refused asylum seekers who do not leave voluntarily. I wanted to ask you, since section 9 (which is still in the law) is now available for use on a case-by-case basis how many times has it been used since your announcement in June 2007 that it would be available for your use on a case-by-case basis?

Mr Byrne: I am pretty sure the answer is zero but I will double-check on that.

Q60 Baroness Stern: You can tell me that because you are monitoring its use.

Mr Byrne: Yes, absolutely.

Q61 Baroness Stern: You are pretty sure that since June it has been zero.

Mr Byrne: Yes, but I will double-check.

Q62 Baroness Stern: And you will let us know.

Mr Byrne: Yes, absolutely.

Q63 Baroness Stern: You told the House when the discussion was taking place on section 9 that you did not want to remove it from the statute book "at this stage". Could you tell us when you might want to remove it and how you will review your decision not to remove it at this stage?

Mr Byrne: It is quite hard to see us removing it before the legacy programme of asylum cases is cleared, if I am candid, because there will be quite a large number of individuals who fall within that programme who we do think it is right to remove from Britain. It is worth just reminding everybody that we only really get to think about section 9 at the end of quite a long process, where we do work quite hard to encourage and support people to go home voluntarily, but if that hand of support is pushed away then sometimes individuals and families do not leave us with a great deal of choice for effecting their removal. We know that as we go into the case work resolution programme there will be numbers of people who will fall to be removed so I think I would be reluctant to remove section 9 availability until that programme of work is done. I know it is not a very popular thing to say, but I suspect that would be my judgment on it. I would rather be upfront with you about that.

Baroness Stern: Thank you, that is helpful.

Q64 Chairman: Can we go back to the question of trafficking, Liam. The Government is now committed as you mentioned earlier on to ratifying the Convention by the end of the calendar year; what changes to the immigration law do you think are necessary to enable ratification and when do you expect to make them?

Mr Byrne: We can give effect to the convention with reasonably limited changes to immigration law which are currently being prepared now. There will be the need, however, to just finish a cross-government review of other regulations as well as bits of legislation because there may well be changes to benefits regulations and healthcare regulations as well. Lin can say a little bit more about the immigration bit because actually that is not so big.

Ms Homer: We think that we will be able to get by with a relatively small amount of primarily legislative change, and as the Minister has said some cross-government look at secondary legislation, including a need to talk with the devolved administrations, but our plan would be to legislate to the minimum we need to be able to move to ratification.

Q65 Chairman: One of the issues that we had back from you or Vernon, when he gave evidence to us, was the so-called "pull" factor and he looked extremely sheepish when he tried to advance that argument to us that would arise from reflection periods and renewable residence permits. Do you still maintain there is a risk of a pull factor from that?

Mr Byrne: There is a risk because you can see how, if people are able to access a 30 day reflective period in which enforcement activity is suspended, detention potentially is suspended and where there may need to be changes to social security benefits, medical treatment and education, what you are doing is setting up something which could be appealing to illegal migrants.

Q66 Chairman: But to access that you have got to subject yourself to the worst form of violence probably ---

Mr Byrne: No, not to access it you have not.

Q67 Chairman: If you are a trafficking victim.

Mr Byrne: But what if you are not trafficked, what if you claim to be a victim of trafficking?

Q68 Chairman: This comes back to identification of trafficking victims, which is not so much the pull factor, identification is a separate issue.

Mr Byrne: I think you would accept that what you are creating is something which, if you were here illegally, you might try and find your way to access by making fraudulent claims. You are right to say that the gateway around identification is the key to it.

Q69 Chairman: Vernon told us you have put in place quite robust measures on the identification side already, we know that, so with that how can it still be a pull factor, bearing in mind you have to get through all those previous bands together.

Mr Byrne: I only smile because after 21 months in this job one of the conclusions I draw is that wherever there is something attractive in the immigration system then people will organise to try and access it, and that is part of the job.

Q70 Chairman: Subject themselves to prostitution, to violence, to being made a drug addict for the dubious pleasure of getting to your 30-day reflection period.

Mr Byrne: We have just gone round that loop, have we not? What I have said is that where you create structures like the 30-day reflection period de facto you create a risk that people will try and submit fraudulent claims to try and access it. The identification process has to be robust to guard against that, but the fact of that theoretical risk is there.

Q71 Dr Harris: Theoretical indeed. In our report on this issue we asked you what evidence you had from other jurisdictions, for example like Italy, and you told us that they could find not a shred of evidence that anyone was even making an attempt to pretend they had been a victim of multiple rape in order to benefit from the 30-day reflection period, let alone residence permits. Surely if you are going to risk someone's welfare who is such a victim on the basis of a concern, that other people who are not a victim might claim to be and this might wreck your figures you would need to have some evidence of that, otherwise you are sacrificing the rights and welfare of other people for something that does not exist.

Mr Byrne: We think that any theoretical risk that there might be is perfectly manageable which is why we are proceeding to implement the convention.

Q72 Dr Harris: What you are saying is that although there was talk of a pull factor it is theoretical - and I accept that in theory there is one - it is not substantiated, and therefore you can press on without worrying about that.

Mr Byrne: We think it is a perfectly manageable risk.

Q73 Lord Dubs: Can I refer to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? For a long time the Government or governments have been opposed to signing up to it and recently we have had the welcome news that you have announced a review. What made you change your mind?

Mr Byrne: Two things really. There a couple of areas of policy which are quite important to the broader cultural change of the UK Border Agency; one is the Gateway Programme where we visit refugee camps and invite those individuals who might qualify to set up a new life in Britain and the other is the children's policy. If we get children's policy right it will help with a more generalised change of culture in the UK Border Agency that is more sophisticated, more compassionate and more sensitive, and so we have in a quiet way set about a complete overhaul of children's policy in the UK Border Agency over the last 12 months, and you can see that in the new legal obligation, in the new code of practice and the determination to make sure that there is a specialist network of local authorities set up to care for unaccompanied asylum seeking children. Where there are elements of policy still hanging over from the past which may colour our determination to change children's policy, then we need to iron them out, and it just struck me and the Home Secretary when we looked at the reservation on the UN Convention that it could be something that, if we could, we should get rid of, because it is not in keeping with a more generalised reform of policy towards children. It was an anomaly that we wanted to see if we could get rid of and I think we can get rid of it,

Q74 Lord Dubs: You will therefore be contributing to the review.

Mr Byrne: Absolutely. We have gone out to public consultation now and I do not want to prejudge the outcome of it - the review might come back and say it is difficult to get rid of, there are good reasons for keeping it and so on, but my ambition is to get rid of it.

Chairman: Another positive answer; let us keep going. John.

Q75 John Austin: Can I come to the issue of sponsored family visitors? In the previous Parliament the Government did put forward proposals for a bond or financial deposit, but after consultation dropped the proposal. I am interested to know why the Government previously dropped the proposal and now proposes to introduce it, and I wonder if you could tell us what evidence you have that people overstaying on family visit visas is a serious practical problem?

Mr Byrne: The way that the question is posed, if I may, is slightly the wrong way round. This idea is not an idea that I can claim the credit for, this is an idea that my constituents have hammered me about over and over and over again, and the problem at the moment is that we refuse quite a large number of people who apply for visits and it is because we have a very old-fashioned visit visa system - it is one product and we try and fit everybody through it whether they are family visitors, tourists or business visitors. It is out of date; it dates back to the 1970s and it is not really fit for Britain and Britain's inter-dependencies in the 21^st century. We know that decisions that are made by entry clearance officers, often refusal decisions, are not often right, they are often wrong, and the reason that we know that is that if you take for example India we lose 55 per cent of appeals in family visit cases; that is telling us something, that is telling us that the decision-making process upfront is not perfect. We often lose those appeals because when it comes to a tribunal hearing the individual who is seeking to visit will be represented by a perfectly respectable, often important, member of the community in the UK. Indeed, I am currently acting for a constituent who is a multi-millionaire in Birmingham, a pretty well-established individual, has not seen a family member for quite a long time, and these individuals will often say "Look, you know me, I am a British citizen, I have worked hard, I play by the rules, I will guarantee that this individual goes home again and, you know what, I am prepared to put up a financial security to ensure that they do." Our current laws are so rigid and out of date that it is impossible for that individual to put up a financial security to allow an individual to come and visit them, and that denies choice to UK would-be sponsors.

Q76 John Austin: What about the constituent who has not got the resources to put up the deposit, who can just about scrape together enough to ---

Mr Byrne: What do you think is happening to them at the moment?

Q77 John Austin: A lot of them are being denied and they do not know where to appeal.

Mr Byrne: Exactly.

Q78 John Austin: An appeal process is not much good if it is a funeral or a wedding because it is too late by the time it is heard.

Mr Byrne: Precisely, which is why we think sponsorship arrangements would make a lot of sense because most appeals are five or six months too late for most people who are trying to come for a wedding or a funeral and so on. That is why we should be giving UK sponsors the choice of putting up a bond if they are prepared to guarantee that an individual will go home, and injecting that element into the decision-making process might help entry clearance officers make more correct decisions first time. The key difference, of course, with the way that we proposed to do this last time was that we said that the individual who was applying to come should be asked to put up a bond. If you are living in the rural Punjab, or where many of my constituents are from, in Darjeeling, Pakistan, getting the money together to put up a bond is pretty difficult. The approach that we are taking in other parts of the immigration system is to load up obligations on the sponsors based in the UK, so if there is a sponsor who is based in the UK and is a British citizen and is prepared to put up a financial guarantee then I simply think that that is an idea that is worth exploring.

Q79 Mr Sharma: Minister, I did express my concerns at different times but how do you identify the risk? You have already said that of the decisions made in the visa office, say in Delhi, already 55 per cent of the cases are wrong.

Mr Byrne: We lose the appeals.

Q80 Mr Sharma: Through the appeal system it is proved that the decision taken in Delhi was wrong, but how are you going to define the term "risk" which is that again you are giving the full authority to the same officers who in the past proved that their process of reaching the decision was wrong. That is the first question which a lot of my constituents have already started asking, and I have expressed that, so how are you going to define that risk?

Mr Byrne: Ultimately it has to remain in the entry clearance officer's hands to make an assessment of risk, but the things that an entry clearance officer will be looking at are wide and varied. They will be looking at the pattern of travel for an individual, they will be looking at the individual's financial security in the country that they come from, they will be looking at the individual's age, they will be looking at the individual's fit with intelligence-led profiles of whether someone is at high risk of overstaying, they will be looking at the documents that they submit - whether they are fraudulent or not - they will be looking at the individual who is sponsoring them in, they will be looking at the other individuals that that sponsor has sponsored in, so there will be lots of different things that an entry clearance officer will look at, but what is very hard for an entry clearance officer to do, based in a visa post abroad, is really get a good handle on the integrity of a sponsor who is in the UK. Any miscalculation is based on the quality of the evidence in front of you and at the moment we make it very difficult for the entry clearance officer to conduct a proper assessment of the integrity of a sponsor and that is one of the things that I think could change. It could well be that there are other things that we ask of sponsors to prove their bona fides if you like and that is why we are deliberately going out to consultation on this question because there may be other things that we will be asking UK-based sponsors to do as well, but I do not think I would move away from a position in which it is the entry clearance officers who are conducting the element of risk assessment because they are the guys on the ground, they are in the best position to judge.

Q81 Mr Sharma: Many of your constituents will not be millionaires, not many of mine are millionaires, they are very poor. What assessment did you make of the human rights impact of this proposal, including of its possible differential impact on different racial groups, before announcing it?

Mr Byrne: That is an assessment that we will be conducting throughout the path of the consultation process at the moment, so the consultation is still open until the first or second week of March. All we have proposed are ideas at this stage, but before any concrete proposals are put forward then obviously we would need to make sure the right assessments were done and published in good time.

Q82 Lord Bowness: Perhaps I ought to declare an interest, Minister, not because I am an immigration practitioner but because I do deal with people's declarations for family visits and sponsorships on a fairly regular basis, and most of the sponsors who come into my office are certainly not in the millionaire category, and the difficulty of actually putting up this money would be considerable for a number of them. What I am not clear about is why this proposal has come forward, what difficulty is presenting itself? Time may well have moved on and I am very prepared to be told I am out of date, but my understanding from most of the people that I see who want to bring families from Pakistan or India particularly is that they want a declaration made before a solicitor or before a notary public to present to the High Commission, and that declaration contains evidence of the capital, which does not need to be a million, the fact that somebody has got accommodation and a simple undertaking to send people home if they overstay or indeed actually, rather more distressingly in some instances, they are supposed to say that they will return the body if necessary if somebody dies. This is something which is very simple in fact; there is a form that people can fill up, they can understand, the person who takes the declaration checks the documentary evidence of the capital and the income and their accommodation and all the rest of it, your work is done for you by people practising in the high street: if it is going to be a Commissioner for Oaths for a £5 fee and if it is a notary a £60 fee - quite cheap at the price really, if I may say so, having declared my interest. It is relatively simple and goes to the High Commission, is approved by somebody who is recognised in our High Commission as being a practitioner in this country. Why do we want to move to a situation where somebody has got to actually find £1000? If they break the undertaking, yes, fine, go for them, but finding £1000 is difficult.

Mr Byrne: That is why we are having a consultation on the question. There may well be a menu of things that we should be thinking about asking UK sponsors to do and we have to ask entry clearance officers what they would find useful. There may be all sorts of different ways in which we can load up obligations on UK sponsors; there have been some proposals, for example, to send the UK-based sponsor to jail if the individual has overstayed.

Q83 Chairman: I do not think that will be human rights compliant.

Mr Byrne: Again, I cannot claim ownership of that idea.

Q84 Chairman: That is some sort of collective punishment.

Mr Byrne: The honourable Member for Ashford is the colleague who proposed that, but my point is that there are lots of different ideas at the moment and the ambition behind the consultation is to flush as many of those out as we can so we can weigh them up.

Q85 Lord Bowness: Forgive me, that was not an idea, that has been going on for more years than I care to remember.

Mr Byrne: The bond.

Lord Bowness: No, not the bond, doing it by the simple declaration, an undertaking to pay, so you can go after somebody - my colleague across the table recognises what I am saying, it has been going on without finding £1000 upfront.

Q86 Chairman: It is like bail in the criminal courts where you guarantee it but you do not have to pay the money upfront. We are in the position really where you are having to put up the cash, and if you have half a dozen relatives coming it is not £1000 it is £6000, or whatever it happens to be, or you are subject to a decision-making process which you accept is getting it wrong 55 per cent of the time. It is a bit of a Hobson's choice, is it not?

Mr Byrne: We lose the appeals, yes. My starting point for this consultation was that I think the short term visa system is out of date and it should change. It is perfectly fair for you to say why have you not sorted it out sooner; actually my priority has been putting in place the complete overhaul of the way we police border security alongside the points-based system. Now those two programmes of reform are on track and falling into place over the next year it is right that I turn my attention to short term visa systems too.

Q87 Chairman: We are way over time and there are a few other things that we wanted to ask you about, but thank you for coming, I hope we will see you at our mini conference which we will be having in a few weeks time, looking at issues to do with asylum.

Mr Byrne: Excellent. Thank you very much.