§ Mr. Hilary BennTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps he is taking to reduce the length of time that spouses of UK citizens are having to wait for entry clearance interviews in Islamabad; and if he will make a statement. [144724]
§ Mr. Vaz[holding answer 11 January 2001]: The waiting time for spouse visa applications in Islamabad stood at 17 weeks at 31 December 2000. This compares with a waiting time of 39 weeks at 31 December 1999. This waiting period exceeds the target time by five weeks, but is expected to be within it by the end of March. The waiting times for all other categories of settlement applications have, during 2000, been brought within the target times. These are significant reductions which have been achieved in a year during which the overall number of applications in Islamabad has grown by 28 per cent.
Staff in Post continue to do all they can to reduce further all waiting times. The Post is currently fully staffed; new procedures have been introduced to enable more decisions to be made more quickly on all settlement applications; a new standard visa software package is being installed; and the new reception arrangements introduced in June 2000 are to be further extended so that the increasing number of new applications can be dealt with on the day of application.