§ Mr. Maddento ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what proposals he has for reducing the establishment of entry clearance officers in British posts in the Indian sub-continent; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Lennox-BoydThe staffing complement at posts in the Indian sub-continent is reviewed annually on the basis of demand for entry clearances. A slow-down in the number of people applying, coupled with increased operational efficiency, may lead to possible savings, but final decisions have yet to be taken. Any reductions will be phased in and will not adversely affect waiting times for settlement applicants or the ability of the post to offer a same-day service to genuine visit visa applicants.
§ Mr. MaddenTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what proposals he has for deploying entry clearance officers to British posts in the Russian federation and other states in each and central Europe; how many entry clearance officers are now in post in those countries; and what establishment in each country he proposes.
§ Mr. Lennox-BoydThere are four entry clearance officers at the British embassy in Moscow.
An entry clearance section will be established at the consulate-general in St. Petersburg as soon as suitable accommodation is available. We are considering what services our embassy in Alma Ata, to open this autumn, should provide. We will open an entry clearance section at the embassy in Kiev as soon as an office can be located.
Nationals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania travelling on national passports do not require visas for short visits to the United Kingdom. There are no visa-issuing facilities currently at our posts at Riga, Tallinn or Vilnius.
Nationals of the states of what was fomerly Yugoslavia do not require visas for short visits to the United Kingdom. Entry clearances can already be obtained from the embassy at Belgrade. Consideration will be given to the establishment of an entry clearance section at Ljubljana when we open an embassy there.
There are three entry clearance officers in Bucharest and one at each of the embassies in Belgrade, Budapest, Prague and Sofia. Following the abolition of the visa requirement for Poles, the number of full-time entry clearance officers at Warsaw will be reduced from six to two over the coming months.
Persons who require visas for the United Kingdom and who reside in a country where we do not have an entry clearance section may apply to any British visa-issuing office.