PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

1505 UK Border Agency
26 MARCH 2013
UK Border Agency
1506
my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North
(Mr Winnick), for their work over the years in exposing
the agency’s shortcomings? I put this option to the
Minister for Immigration yesterday and he said that he
would reflect on it, so coming back in 24 hours is quite
an achievement. Will the Home Secretary give the House
an assurance that uppermost in her mind will be the
clearing of backlogs, strong and effective leadership
and strong parliamentary scrutiny? Only then will we
have an immigration system in which the British people
can have confidence.
Mrs May: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his
comments. As I said, the Home Affairs Committee has
been assiduous in its consideration of matters relating
to UKBA over the years and has had a consistent
message about the need to deal with some of the
problems. It is obviously important that we deal with
backlogs. It is also important that we ensure that the
agency makes the right decisions on an ongoing, day-to-day
basis, that those decisions are made not just appropriately
but fairly and that people are dealt with properly when
they interact with the agency. That will take some time.
I think that we share an aim about the quality of system
provided, but it will take some time to ensure that we fix
all the problems UKBA is having to deal with.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con): I welcome
the Home Secretary’s statement. Will she say something
about the staff, from Mr Whiteman, whom the Home
Affairs Committee will see at 3 o’clock to discuss his
terms and role, to staff across the agency? We have
recently returned from Abu Dhabi, where they seem to
have turned around the visa processing unit. I think that
there are really good people in UKBA who just need to
be better led.
Mrs May: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising
that issue, because it gives me an opportunity to say that
many people working for UKBA are dedicated officers
who do an excellent job. Certainly, in some of the examples
that he and other members of the Home Affairs Committee
will have seen, such as the overseas operations, real
change has been brought about. The work of the vast
majority of staff in the areas of enforcement or the
immigration and visa system will not change, but there
will of course be change for the directors general heading
up those two operations. Obviously, those are personnel
matters on which the permanent secretary will make
announcements in due course.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): I welcome
the Home Secretary’s decision to take the agency back
into the Home Office, which I think is the right one.
Which of the new units will inherit responsibility for
dealing with the backlogs, and how will she ensure that
this does not become yet another opportunity to loose
case files, passports and other documents in the ritual
buck passing with which we have all become too familiar?
Mrs May: The differentiation between the two units
will be clear: the immigration and visa section will deal
with decisions on whether people should be entitled to
enter or remain in the UK; and at the point at which
those cases are closed and people need to be removed,
cases pass to the enforcement part of the operation. I
welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments on bringing
the agency back into the Home Office—I suggest that
he has more of a policy on the issue than Labour Front
Benchers. We are very conscious that it is important to
work out that separation, which is why I think that this
clear-cut separation will help us to ensure that we do
not see the sort of losses of files, passports and so forth
that we have seen previously, so we have to look at the
processes, too.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD): It will be a
pleasure for the Home Affairs Committee no longer to
have to report quarterly on ongoing problems within
UKBA. I congratulate the Home Secretary on her
decisive action. For too long the agency has stood in the
way of a coherent, fair and credible immigration policy.
My concern is that in 2006 the immigration and nationality
directorate was spun out of the Home Office because it
was not fit for purpose, had a vast backlog and was
poorly led. We now have an agency that is still not fit for
purpose, still has a vast backlog and still has leadership
problems. How can she be so sure that it will work this
time?
Mrs May: We have spent considerable time looking at
what the right structure is for the agency. We have had
the experience of working with the Border Force. If we
look at its operation today, we see that it is in a different
place from where it was previously. That experience has
shown that if we can create a smaller entity that has a
clearer management and focus on its activities, we can
make progress, and that is exactly what we are doing by
splitting the agency in this way.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): Is it
not true that part of the problem is that ministerial
attention has been diverted to policy stunts prepared
for prime ministerial statements and speeches? Can the
Home Secretary confirm that ministerial attention has
recently been focused on discussions in the inter-ministerial
group on barring migrant children from compulsory
education? The Department for Education then intervened
and the children’s rights adviser said:
“If we were to withdraw the right of education from any
children in the UK, regardless of their status, we would be hugely
criticised for it by the UN. With the periodic review report due to
be submitted in January 2014, this would be very controversial.”
Can the Home Secretary confirm that statement?
Mrs May: We have been looking at public services
across the board in relation to what we describe as
the pull factors. We have focused on housing, health
and the benefits system. We do not propose not having
the provision of education for individual children, but
the hon. Gentleman’s opening remark, which was that
policy changes were about publicity stunts, is far from
the truth. We have been sorting out a chaotic immigration
system and immigration policy introduced by the previous
Government that led to net migration in this country
reaching hundreds of thousands a year. We aim to
bring it down to tens of thousands. We have already
seen net migration cut by a third. That is not a publicity
stunt; it is a real benefit and a policy that the people of
this country want to see.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con):
I very much welcome the Home Secretary’s statement.
Does she agree that one of UKBA’s main problems,