§ 3.16 p.m.
§ Lord AVEBURYMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the average length of time between the date of application for registration as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and the date of the interview for the applicant when the applicant 1162 is resident in the Greater London area; and why, if this figure is at least three times as great as that quoted in the Answer to my previous Question on this subject on 1st February (Lords Hansard, col. 838), the size of the discrepancy was not made clear in that Answer.
§ The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich)My Lords, as I explained in my earlier Answer, the interval between the date of an application and the interview varies from time to time according to the nature of the application and the numbers on hand. In Greater London it is also affected by variations in the numbers of staff available to conduct interviews at different times of the year. For those reasons it is not easy to give an average comparable with that elsewhere in the country, but I accept that the interval can be much longer in Greater London cases than in others, and I am sorry that my previous Written Answer was misleading in this respect.
In the case to which the noble Lord has now directed my attention the application was made in July 1976 when there was a large number of cases on hand, and I regret that people who applied then are having to wait up to 16 months. We are exploring whether, despite staffing restrictions, we can reduce the delay, but this may not be possible for some little time. We accept that this applicant may have been misled by a Home Office letter; as a result we have now decided to bring forward the date of interview. I will write to the noble Lord about this.
§ Lord AVEBURYMy Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for bringing forward the date of the interview in the particular case to which I have drawn his attention. I should be grateful if the noble Lord would let me know on what date the individual can now expect to be interviewed. If the interval is something like three times as long in Greater London than elsewhere in the country, would it not be possible to re-deploy the staff so that additional interviews could be conducted in respect of this long queue of applicants in Greater London, and therefore equalise the delay period between the capital and the rest of the country?
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, the difference in the situation is this. In Greater London this job is carried out by immigration officers; in the rest of the country it is dealt with by the police. Inevitably the workload in London is a great deal larger than it is in the rest of the country. In the public expenditure constraints under which we are operating it is extremely difficult to make more staff available for this difficult and important work. So far as the average is concerned, I do not want to make any more statistical predictions given the fact that we were wrong on the last occasion. Nevertheless, 16 months is at the longer end of the period of waiting. The period, I understand, is now significantly shorter, particularly in the winter months when the pressure on the immigration service is not as serious as it is in the summer.
§ Lord AVEBURYMy Lords, will the Minister kindly answer my other question? When will the applicant, whose case I drew to the Minister's attention, be interviewed?
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, as soon as possible. That was the point about which I was going to write to the noble Lord.