Mrs. Batool Bibi Shah (Hansard, 20 February 1990)

§ Mr. Ken Eastham (Manchester, Blackley)
I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the case of a constitutent of mine, Mrs. Batool Bibi Shah. I fully recognise that other Members of Parliament have to deal with immigration cases and that it is not possible to raise every individual case in the House as I am doing today. Nevertheless, this case is an exception. I am not seeking privilege for my constituent, but I am pursuing a right to which she is entitled.
Mrs. Shah has lived continuously in the United Kingdom since 1975 where, other than during a brief period of maternity leave, she has worked for the past 14 years as a machinist for an employer in Manchester. She also holds a British passport.
As is quite common in her culture, Mrs. Shah took part in an arranged marriage to Mr. Munreed Hussain Shah in Pakistan in March 1985. Since that time, as her Member of Parliament, I have been involved in making representations to different Departments for Mr. Shah to be permitted to reside with his family in the United Kingdom.
I have in my possession numerous exchanges of correspondence with the Home Office and the Foreign Office dating as far back as July 1985 on this case. Some of the Departments have not always been over-efficient. At times, they came back to me for information which I had already given them. That surprises me, given that nowadays most information is held on computer. No doubt the Minister will have all the answers when he comes to reply, so presumably the computer was working efficiently for the purposes of this debate.
Mrs. Shah was born in March 1955 and her husband in May 1960. I mention that now just in case the Minister intended to make that point himself. I make the point also that in this country there must be hundreds of thousands of wives who are older than their husbands—and few people would consider that factor as of any importance.
After returning home from the wedding, in December 1985, Mrs. Shah gave birth to a daughter, Nuissa. She visited her husband in Pakistan in 1986, and subsequently a second daughter, Mariam, was born in the United Kingdom in February 1987.
No one should attempt to make the case that the relationship is casual. Nor could the marriage be claimed to be bogus. Each time Mrs. Shah wishes to visit her husband in Pakistan, it costs £600 in travel and a further £400 in expenses. On her last visit, in April 1987, she took her youngest daughter, at additional cost. Unfortunately for the family, the father has never seen his second child.
Mrs. Shah occupies a large, three-bedroomed house which is kept impeccably and has been completely refurbished structurally with the assistance of a housing grant which had strong Government support. Mrs. Shah's aged mother, who lives with Mrs. Shah, is a diabetic and unfortunately suffers declining health.
I cannot allow this occasion to pass without referring to statements made by the Prime Minister claiming that the Conservative party is the party of the family. Those 908 sentiments were echoed by the chairman of the Conservative party in an article in The Daily Telegraphas recently as 31 January 1990: Family values were the key political issue of the 1990s, Mr. Baker, Conservative party chairman, said last night in a fresh assault on the legacy of the permissive society. He warned that the erosion of the pre-eminence of the natural family unit of the past 30 years had created serious consequences for the social and moral fabric of the nation." The article went on to note that Mr. Baker had said: Not only is it just that fathers should contribute to the upkeep of their children; it is also crucial that we begin to break the culture which views it as acceptable for a man to walk away from the consequences of his own actions in this way. The article continued: underlining the Prime Minister's concern at the growth in the number of single-parent families, which had doubled to more than a million since 1971 and now represents one in seven families, Mr. Baker insisted that nature had intended raising children to be the work of two people That is precisely what this debate is about—it is about a whole family.
Article 8 of the European convention on human rights states: Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life; his home and his correspondence. In article 12 the convention states: Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right. That obviously means nothing if the husband, wife and two children cannot live together.
We hear so much nowadays about womens' rights and about equal opportunities, but very often that does not seem to work when we make representations on behalf of women against the interests of men. Equal opportunities do not seem to exist when it comes to women's rates of pay and promotion, and I believe that the same is true when the Home Office deals with cases such as the one that I am presenting to the Minister tonight.
The Shah family are not a drain on state funds. I have in my possession a letter from Mrs. Shah's employer, firmly offering her husband a job when he is given permission to join her. They are a law-abiding family, with no history of any offences whatever, and one could claim that Mrs. Shah has exercised great patience throughout the whole affair, which has lasted five years.
Therefore, I want to know whether the family has any rights, and I also want to know whether their two young children will he condemned to live their lives fatherless. Those children have lived in the United Kingdom all their lives, growing up with our ways and knowing only our style of living. I find it deeply embarassing when I meet the mother month after month at my surgeries and have to give her the same reply, which causes her great depression, as one would expect.
The family are entitled to better treatment than they have been receiving, and I call on the Minister to reconsider the case of Mrs. Batool Bibi Shah and her family, who have been making representations for five years. My submission to the House is that they are entitled to much better treatment than they have received from the Government so far.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peter Lloyd)
I listened most carefully to what was said by the hon. Member for 909 Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham), and I appreciate the reasons for his determination to draw the House's attention to his constituent's case.
The case concerns a decision to refuse entry clearance to the spouse of a person settled in the United Kingdom—the husband of the hon. Gentleman's constituent, Mrs. Batool Bibi Shah. The application was refused because the Secretary of State was not satisfied, as he must be, that the marriage was not entered into primarily to obtain admission to the United Kingdom. Parliament has provided a right of appeal to the independent appellate authorities against such decisions. Mr. Shah exercised that right, but his appeal was dismissed first by a single adjudicator and later by the immigration appeals tribunal. He has therefore exhausted the normal processes for contesting an adverse decision.
I have taken note of what the hon. Gentleman said about the distressing situation in which Mrs. Batool Bibi Shah finds herself. While it is impossible not to sympathise with her, the burden of proof as regards satisfying the requirements of the immigration rule in question rests squarely on the applicant—in other words, her husband. As the hon. Gentleman is, I am sure, aware, the independent appellate authorities, after carefully weighing all the evidence, concluded on two occasions that Mr. Shah had not discharged that burden.
The hon. Gentleman has presented his case very thoroughly, but I am sure that he will not mind if I go over some of the facts that had a special bearing on the refusal of Mr. Shah's application. The application was made barely 12 months after the death of another woman settled in the United Kingdom, whom he had applied to join for marriage and settlement. His engagement to Batool Bibi Shah was arranged little more than six months after his previous fiancee's death, and the marriage took place about three months later.
Mr. Shah's sister was involved in arranging the engagement. It is, I believe, rather unusual for a sister, herself resident in the United Kingdom, to be charged with arranging her brother's marriage—a social duty normally performed by parents, both of whom were alive in this case. The immigration appeals tribunal also remarked that point, and drew its own conclusions. Another factor that was taken into account at all stages of the case was the wife's professed reluctance to join her husband in Pakistan, and the lack of mutual support and communication. Those and other considerations weighed heavily against Mr. Shah.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the marriage rules, and I am glad of the opportunity to put the operation of the primary purpose rule into context. We are not the first Government to act to prevent the use of marriage as a means of settling in the United Kingdom. The Labour Government, in 1977, introduced the first tests to stop marriages of convenience, which had by then become a real problem. Since 1983, the onus has been on the applicant to satisfy the entry clearance officer that the primary purpose of the marriage, or intended marriage, is not to obtain his or her admission to the United Kingdom.
It has been suggested elsewhere that that test is too difficult to pass, because it requires the proof of a negative. Practical experience shows, however, that that is not so. In 1988, some 7,300 spouses were accepted for settlement from the Indian sub-continent on the basis of marriage, representing about 15 per cent. of the acceptances for settlement that year.
910 Nor do I accept that the test itself is unworkable: it should not be difficult for someone whose marriage was not entered into for the purpose of immigration to explain to the entry clearance officer how he or she met the partner involved, how the marriage was arranged and why the couple propose to live here rather than overseas.
The test is not intended as an attack on the Asian custom of the arranged marriage; rather, it seeks to expose those who exploit it for immigration purposes. In many such cases, admission to this country is an important factor, as the independent appellate authorities have themselves stated, but there is often objective evidence indicating that the applicant's admission was the primary purpose. That may include—as in the present case—a previous attempt by the applicant to come to this country.
It is entirely reasonable, surely, that someone claiming an important benefit, such as admission to this country with a view to settlement, should have to demonstrate his eligibility. Under other provisions in the rules—and, indeed, with respect to many other functions of Government—people must show that they are entitled to the benefits they are claiming. We believe that there is a need to guard against the abuse of the marriage rules by those who do not qualify for admission to this country, and who enter into marriages as a device to obtain settlement.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to what is known in legal jargon as "intervening devotion". The primary purpose rule relates to intentions at the time of marriage, but the actions of the couple after the marriage may suggest whether the requirement has been met. For example, a couple who have shown devotion and have what seems to be a genuine and soundly based marriage will probably satisfy the entry clearance officer that the primary purpose of the marriage was not to obtain admission to the United Kingdom. Among the factors taken into account will be the duration of the marriage and any time spent together outside the United Kingdom.
In this case, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will recollect, the question of intervening devotion was fully explored by the independent appellate authorities, but they did not consider that it was sufficiently demonstrated in this case and merited a recommendation to the Home Secretary.
Let us, however, consider again the question of intervening devotion in this case. Mrs. Shah came to this country from Pakistan in 1975 when she was 20 years old. The way of life in Pakistan is therefore not unfamiliar to her. However, when she was interviewed in January 1987, she said that she was not prepared to join her husband there, even for a holiday. So far as we are aware, she has visited her husband in Pakistan only once since returning to the United Kingdom after their marriage in 1985.
The hon. Gentleman has referred several times to Mr. and Mrs. Shah's two children. I agree that that is an extremely important aspect that needed to be very thoroughly considered by the appellate authorities. I believe that it was. Despite the children, however, the couple do not appear to have made any attempt to live, even for a short time, as a family unit outside the United Kingdom, apart from the visit in 1987 to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

§ Mr. Eastham
I referred earlier to the fact that Mrs. Shah's aged mother still lives in my constituency. She is a diabetic and needs care. Mrs. Shah has also incurred 911 certain financial responsibilities. She obtained a Government grant to modernise her home. Is the Minister suggesting that she should walk away from her responsibilities and debts, just to comply with the recommendations?

§ Mr. Lloyd
I am not suggesting what Mrs. Shah should or should not do. I am suggesting that she failed, because of what she did or did not do, to convince the appellate authorities. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that she remained in Pakistan for a considerable time when she married and that she made another visit later. Arrangements must have been made then for her mother. Presumably, therefore, it would be possible, in some way or another, to make similar arrangements now.
I cannot simply ignore a point that appeared to be in the mind of the appellate authorities. When Mrs. Shah was interviewed in 1987, there was little evidence of any 912 communication between her and her husband; neither was providing the other with support. All these factors, taken together, do nothing to strengthen the case.
I have to repeat that it is impossible not to feel sympathy for Mrs. Shah. I cannot believe, however, that either she or her husband were entirely ignorant of the immigration rules requirements when they entered into the marriage. It is my responsibility to maintain firm and fair immigration control. The majority of spouses who apply for entry clearance to join persons settled in the United Kingdom are able to satisfy those requirements. Mr. Shah has, I am afraid, failed to discharge that burden before the appellate authorities. I regret that nothing that the hon. Gentleman has said persuades me that there are new of exceptional circumstances that would justify my intervention. I am sorry to have to give such a disappointing reply to him.