DNA Testing (Hansard, 13 April 1989)

§ 5. Mr. Madden
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to make an announcement concerning a Government DNA testing scheme to assist those seeking to settle in the United Kingdom.

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Tim Renton)
We are considering introducing a centrally run DNA scheme, the cost of which will not fall on the general taxpayer. The use of such a scheme would not, of course, be compulsory for settlement applicants. We hope to make an announcement shortly.

§ Mr. Madden
Why are the Government dragging their feet about the introduction of a DNA testing scheme? Is the Minister aware that there is a widespread suspicion that the Government are reluctant to introduce the scheme because DNA testing offers reliable evidence to prove the genuineness of applications from families who wish to be reunited in this country and that that is why the Government are wasting so much time? Over the past 12 months, the Minister has been saying that he hopes to make an announcement "shortly" and "as soon as possible", and last weekend, he said that it would be made within weeks. It is high time that the announcement was made and that families were able to take advantage of the scheme to be reunited in this country.

§ Mr. Renton
The hon. Gentleman is taking his usual blinkered and biased view about anything to do with immigration. In the past four months alone, the immigration and nationality department has accepted 750 DNA test reports showing whether the relationship is as claimed, but of the reports submitted to us some 12 per cent. have shown that the parents and children are not related as claimed. One in eight couples thus find that one of them is not the parent of the child although both had thought that they were. That produces many problems 1045 —in relation to the admission of illegitimate children, for example—which must properly be considered before we take a final decision on the matter.

§ Mr. Gale
The hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) has shown his faith in the infallibility of DNA—a faith that I share. Given that faith, can my hon. Friend say when he intends to introduce DNA fingerprinting not only for immigration cases but for everyone convicted of crime?

§ Mr. Renton
As my hon. Friend knows, DNA fingerprinting has already been used successfully in homicide cases. The figures that I quoted to the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) were intended to show that we are already accepting the test in immigration cases. We are now bending our minds as to how to introduce a centrally run scheme which will be fair to all applicants and will avoid erecting financial barriers which could be a deterrent to genuine applicants, without causing the general taxpayer to pay. That is a difficult problem, but we are setting about solving it.

§ Mr. Pike
Will the Minister recognise the problem of people paying for DNA testing themselves whereby it has been shown that decisions to refuse entry taken by the Government in the past were clearly wrong? Should not those people be allowed immediate, priority admission to this country—even if they are now 18 if they should have been admitted in the original instance?

§ Mr. Renton
The hon. Gentleman must consider the fact that when those children were under 18 they applied as dependants. That is the basis in our immigration rules on which children under 18 are normally allowed into this country. The hon. Gentleman must consider whether it is right that those who may already be married, heads of families, with many children living abroad should be introduced with their families into the United Kingdom simply because a DNA test shows that the father is related as claimed. That is the issue to which we must give close attention.

§ Mr. Watts
Is my hon. Friend aware that his answer deserved a rather more fulsome welcome than it received from the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden)? My hon. Friend is right to believe that such a scheme should be voluntary. If DNA testing became widely available on a voluntary basis at the earliest possible date to establish conclusively the blood relationships which need to be proved in the case of dependants seeking settlement, it would be welcomed by the ethnic minority communities in this country.

§ Mr. Renton
I accept fully what my hon. Friend has said. We accept DNA testing now when the results have been voluntarily produced, but the cost of producing them is a serious financial burden. That is why we are trying, with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to arrive at a scheme that would avoid the burden falling on the ordinary taxpayer but would not financially harm individual families too greatly. We hope to do that and to announce the results as soon as possible.

§ Mr. Darling
As DNA testing has shown that many people were wrongly refused entry to this country, does the Minister accept that DNA testing could eliminate queues and paperwork and save vast amounts of money and that to impose high charges will simply erect a financial barrier 1046 in place of a bureaucratic barrier? The Minister says that the test may not be compulsory, but does he not accept that it may be necessary because of the haphazard and inefficient way in which entry clearance officers work? Will he not reconsider allowing entry to those dependants who are now over the age of 18? A manifest injustice has been done to them. The Minister should not seek to stand in the way of family unity—a cause that I should have expected the Conservative party to espouse.

§ Mr. Renton
The hon. Gentleman's attack on members of the immigration service was totally unjust, although I would not expect him, from his hideout in Edinburgh, to have great experience of immigration matters. DNA testing will not, as the hon. Gentleman put it, eliminate queues if the Labour party sticks to the policy to which it was committed in 1987 of repealing the immigration and nationality Acts. All the fair but firm immigration controls that we have introduced would disappear overnight.