Immigration Service (Hansard, 23 June 2004)

§ Mr. Browne

[holding answer 18 June 2004]: To support the "top to bottom" review of the immigration system called for by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary set up managed migration taskforces.

The taskforces work across the whole of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) and with other departments and stakeholders to identify and 1419W address any areas of abuse of managed migration routes, drawing on intelligence, the experience of front line staff and management information from across the system. In this way, the Department is building on what worked to reduce abuse of the asylum system, in a comprehensive monitoring and reporting framework. This will allow resources to be properly directed to target potential abuse even before problems arise.

Based on the work to date, we have already announced a number of steps to tackle abuses of the marriage, students and employment routes. These include:

To date the student taskforce has visited 401 colleges about which we had suspicions and applications to those institutions clearly found to be bogus are now being refused. A registration scheme is being established for genuine colleges and will be operational by the turn of the year. Once this has been done, student visas will not be issued in respect of colleges not on the register. We are discussing with the education sector how best to implement arrangements for notifying us of overseas students who fail to turn up for, or drop out of, a course.

To tackle the increasing problem of sham marriages being used to circumvent immigration controls, the Government are bringing forward legislation to establish powers to restrict the authorisation of marriages involving foreign nationals from outside the EEA to designated register offices and to introduce a pre-marriage eligibility requirement for such cases. IND officials have already formed a cross governmental joint working group made up of officials from the Offices of the Registrars General for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Department of Constitutional Affairs, the Church of England, LACORS, and registrars from across the UK. The Group is working on identifying strengths and weaknesses of current systems and will facilitate the introduction of the aforementioned designated centres.

Based on the analysis and recommendations of the employment and business taskforce, the Sectors Based Scheme quota has been cut for the year beginning 1 June 2004. The Scheme has been reduced from a total of 20,000 to 6,000 in food processing and 9,000 in hospitality. The Government have also announced that the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme quota will be reduced in 2005 by 35 per cent. These cuts reflect the proportion of the previous year's quotas taken up by workers from the accession countries, who are now entitled to come and work in the United Kingdom under the worker's registration scheme. The taskforce is currently consulting on introducing country-specific quotas which will be dependent on countries having satisfactory returns agreements with the UK.