§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)Today my right honourable friend the Home Secretary (David Blunkett) announced a series of measures to prevent abuse of immigration routes open to those wishing to come to the United Kingdom to study, work and marry here. These measures build on work that the IND has been taking forward over several months, together with other departments, and were indicated to the other place on16WS 30 March when he set out the next stage of policy in this area. They have been finalised by a series of managed migration taskforces, which we have set up to bring together policy, operational and intelligence personnel, enabling better co-ordination and focus. I am confident that the resulting package of measures achieves the necessary balance in these areas between facilitating the vast majority of genuine applicants from whom this country derives enormous benefits and protecting the system against actual and potential abuse. Other areas remain under review.
Students
The Government will establish a list of accredited private colleges. Discussions are already well advanced with the British Council and others on accreditation of English language schools. We will establish a scheme to broaden this to other colleges.
By the end of the year we will be in a position of issuing visas only to students attending accredited colleges. In the mean time, where there are doubts about whether a college not on the list is bona fide, applications will be put on hold while the Home Office investigates them. An urgent programme of such investigations will begin next week.
We will be consulting on introducing a requirement for all educational institutions to notify the Home Office where a foreign student does not enrol, or enrols and then disappears.
We will also step up enforcement. This will include targeted multi-agency enforcement operations to disrupt proprietors of sham institutions and remove illegal staff and/or students. We will create more risk assessment units in embassies abroad to work alongside entry clearance staff and improve the flow of intelligence on fraud and abuse.
We will consult on a requirement on foreign students to demonstrate self-sufficiency and ability to meet the financial requirements of the course before granting entry clearance.
Marriage
I am announcing today that we will legislate to restrict the capacity to authorise marriages involving foreign nationals from outside the EEA to a number of designated register offices. We are consulting with registrars about the most effective means of doing so. This will enable expertise to be built up on abuse and mean that we can focus our enforcement efforts. Clearly not all marriages involving foreign nationals present the same level of risk in terms of immigration abuse; for example, foreign nationals who have been resident here for many years. We will be working with registrars to refine our proposals to achieve the necessary balance between facilitating the vast majority of genuine applicants and protecting the system from abuse.
We will also consult on making further changes to the marriage laws to reinforce these proposals, including to empower registrars to refuse to conduct a 17WS marriage that they suspect is being carried out for the purposes of illegal immigration, until it has been properly investigated by the immigration authorities.
The Government will underpin these changes through a better co-ordinated intelligence-led focus on marriage abuse supported by an effective enforcement response where cases of abuse are detected.
In the coming months there will be a major new enforcement effort targeting sham marriages and those who organise them, with the aim of arresting those engaged in such marriages and, where appropriate, prosecuting the organised criminality behind them.
We are strengthening current arrangements for joint working between caseworkers and immigration officers to ensure a better focus on analysing intelligence, and more effective following up reports, for example from registrars about suspicious marriages.
We will set up a joint working group between the Home Office and registrars to share intelligence and enable the enforcement effort and other countermeasures to be better targeted.
Quota-Based Schemes
The temporary quota-based schemes for the hospitality and food processing industries are due to be reviewed at the end of May in the light of EU enlargement. I have also ordered a review of the quota-based scheme for agricultural workers, for the same reason—around a third of these places were filled last year by nationals of the new EU accession states.
I have decided that, in consultation with industry, we will at the end of May be setting reduced quotas for these schemes to reflect the fact that from 1 May accession nationals will be able to come and work through the planned workers registration scheme. We will be able to take account of early information from the registration scheme in revising the quotas.
We will at the same time review control of both schemes.
EGAA
We will also be looking at the rules and practices for ECAA applications from the remaining countries that will be covered by that scheme after 1 May, taking account of the outcome of the investigation, which Ken Sutton is undertaking, of procedures for dealing with ECAA applications in Bulgaria and Romania. In the mean time, ECAA applications from Romania and Bulgaria continue to be suspended.