§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)I am pleased to be able to announce today the Government's initial response toThe New and the Old, the report of the Life in the United Kingdom advisory group, chaired by Professor Sir Bernard Crick, which was published on 3 September 2003. The group was established in order to advise the Government on the best way of implementing the provisions in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 which would require prospective British citizens to demonstrate knowledge of English, Welsh or Gaelic and of life in the United Kingdom. I repeat today the warm welcome we gave to the report on its appearance and my thanks to Sir Bernard and his fellow members of the advisory group.
I will be placing in the Library of the House our responses to each of the recommendations; I summarise below our conclusions on what we consider to be the most important of the report's recommendations.
We agree that the programme of citizenship studies should be drawn up under the six broad headings of British national institutions in recent historical context, Britain as a diverse society, knowing the law, employment, sources of help and information, and everyday needs. We also accept that a bilingual handbook on life in the United Kingdom should be prepared for the information of all who apply at posts abroad for entry clearance in a category which leads to 14WS settlement, and work on the preparation of such a handbook is already well advanced under the auspices of the advisory group.
We accept the group's reasons for concluding that the language criterion for citizenship should be satisfied by evidence that a person has made measurable progress in his or her studies, rather than insisting on a single standard for everyone. For most applicants who are not already fluent, this would mean that they would be required to progress by one English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) level. As a minimum, those with no workable English, or one of the other UK languages, would be expected to progress at least to a basic level of competence.
The advisory group also recommended that free assessments and tuition should be made available to all who have a route to indefinite leave to remain. The report points out that knowledge of English in particular greatly increases employment prospects, leading to less welfare dependence and greater integration into society. At the same time, the potential cost of full implementation is very high, and the Government cannot undertake to fund it in full in advance of the outcome of next year's spending review. We will study further both the possibility of full implementation of this recommendation and possible alternative ways of targeting our resources on those most in need of help in acquiring linguistic skills, and we will announce our conclusions as soon as possible.
In addition, and in advance of the spending review, we are continuing with development work on possible means of assessment, delivery mechanisms, and the programmes of study themselves. We will explore the practicalities of piloting language with citizenship programmes from within existing resources in some areas.
Finally, the advisory group proposed that an advisory board on preparation for naturalisation should be set up. The functions of such an advisory board would expand over time, as the 2002 legislation is implemented, but its early tasks would be to advise on the development of resources for the citizenship curriculum and to oversee the process of implementation of the 2002 legislation. The board may have a role in negotiations with the devolved areas of the UK on how they would wish these proposals to be implemented there. We have agreed in principle to the setting up of the board.