Eighth Standing Committee
on Delegated Legislation
Wednesday 7 July 2004
[Derek Conway in the Chair]
Draft Immigration
(Provision of Physical Data) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2004
2.30 pm
The Chairman: It is warm and sunny today, so if any hon. Members wish to remove their jackets, it will be perfectly in order.
I understand that there may be a Division in the House in a little less than an hour, between 3.20 pm and 3.30 pm. Hon. Members may wish to bear that in mind. If a Division is called, I shall suspend the sitting for 15 minutes.
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Mr. Desmond Browne): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Provision of Physical Data) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2004.
First, Mr. Conway, I welcome you to the Chair. I am sure that we will bend our shoulders to the wheel to such an extent that we may not need to adjourn for a Division in the House.
The regulations are made in exercise of the powers conferred on the Secretary of State by section 126 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Section 126 enables the Secretary of State, by the making of regulations, to require that an immigration application be accompanied by specified information about an external characteristic or to enable an authorised person to require an entrant to provide information of that sort. In the regulations, an ''external characteristic'' means a person's fingerprints or other biometric measurement.
Two sets of regulations have already been made under that power. The Immigration (Provision of Physical Data) Regulations 2003, which I shall call the 2003 regulations, provide that an entry clearance application made in Sri Lanka is required to be accompanied by a record of an applicant's fingerprints. The Immigration (Provision of Physical Data) (Amendment) Regulations 2004, the 2004 regulations, extended that requirement to entry clearance applicants in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania and Uganda, and to those seeking leave to enter the United Kingdom who, upon doing so, present a 1951 refugee convention travel document issued by a country other than the UK.
It may help if I set the regulations in context. In the European Council declaration on combating terrorism, a document published on 25 March, the European Commission instructed the Council to
''adopt by the end of 2004 the Commission's proposals for the incorporation of biometric features into passports and visas, with a view to the finalization of the technical specifications by the same deadline''.
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The previous European deadline for facial biometrics to be captured for visas was to be brought forward to the end of 2006; and fingerprints—the principal item for discussion this afternoon—and biometric data was to be captured for visa purposes by the end of 2007. The regulations are part of that process. The process is being taken forward by the Home Office on a risk assessment basis—discovering potential abuses of that process that can be interdicted by the capturing of such information.
Sir Teddy Taylor (Rochford and Southend, East) (Con): Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Browne: Yes, I thought that my remarks were interesting the hon. Gentleman.
Sir Teddy Taylor: The Minister rightly blames these problems on the European Union; it is where so many of our problems come from these days. However, I wish to ask a genuine question. Why were Kenya and Rwanda not included in the 2004 regulations? The circumstances of those countries were obviously similar. Making regulations is expensive and they take up the Chairman's time—and I know, Mr. Conway, that you are a very busy person. On the question of efficiency, it is obvious that Rwanda should have been included in the 2004 regulations.
Mr. Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. By predicting the issues that I thought would be interesting to the Committee, and which I had included in my notes, he has stolen the bulk of my speech. I ask him to be patient.
The hon. Gentleman and his researchers may not have had the opportunity to read the debates about the previous regulations to which I referred, but it was made very clear during them that it was our ambition to extend the regulations to Kenya. The physical structures to do the work in Kenya were simply not in place at the time, so we held off making the regulations until such time as we were able to put them in place.
I will explain why they have been extended to Rwanda. The purpose of the statutory instrument is to extend the current regime to new categories of entry clearance applicant. The new provision will, as the hon. Gentleman identifies, require those applying for entry clearance in Kenya and Rwanda to provide fingerprint data. When we debated the 2004 regulations the Government explained that to ensure consistency with applications for entry clearance throughout east Africa we would be seeking to extend these powers to include Kenya, but that we could not do so at the time as we needed to carry out some work at the high commission in Nairobi to make it suitable for the collection of fingerprints. We have almost completed that work and we will be in a position to collect fingerprints from visa applicants in Kenya from 1 September 2004.
Up until now, the British high commission in Kampala in Uganda considered applications from Rwandans, as the numbers in Rwanda did not justify a separate entry clearance section in Kigali. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that we had a mind to save taxpayers' money, and there was no necessity to introduce the infrastructure to Kigali because the numbers did not justify it. As a consequence of the
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2004 regulations, applicants from Rwanda had to make the journey from Kigali to Kampala, as their application had to be accompanied by a record of their fingerprints.
Previously, applications had been received in Kigali and couriered to Kampala, but of course the fingerprints could not be collected and people had to attend in Kampala to comply with the regulations that were made in this House. By extending the provisions to Rwanda such a journey will no longer be necessary. We can collect fingerprint data in Rwanda and courier the necessary information to and process the applications in Kampala, thus saving those applicants an unnecessary journey—if the House is minded to approve the regulations.
The regulations are a straightforward improvement to the service. They can be put in place quickly and we will be able to implement them in Kigali from 1 August and in Kenya from September. The measure will supplement our wider efforts in east Africa to combat abuse of our immigration and asylum processes. I trust that that answers the questions raised by the hon. Gentleman.
We are getting encouraging results from both Sri Lanka and the five east African countries covered by the 2004 regulations. Using the information collected under the 2003 and 2004 regulations is proving effective in revealing applicants who have sought to conceal an adverse immigration history from the entry clearance officer by using a false identity. The Government remain convinced that greater use of biometric technology will support efforts to prevent document and identity fraud. It will enable those who have an entitlement to enter the UK to do so without hindrance, while preventing those who seek to circumvent our controls from so doing.
Sir Teddy Taylor: Will the Minister explain how the regulations apply to people who do not have any hands? As he will be well aware, there are quite a few people who have had their hands cut off or have been born without hands. How do the regulations apply? If someone does not have a hand, will they not be able to immigrate?
Mr. Browne: Of course, those people will be able to come in. People who cannot provide fingerprints because of physical disabilities are exempted from the parent regulations rather than those that may be before the hon. Gentleman. That is my recollection, but I may be able to confirm that for him.
For those who recognise that reliance on a specific biometric has the disadvantage that not all people may have that biometric I can confirm that significant work is under way. In the context of identity cards, a Home Office pilot programme is gauging how successfully we can capture other biometric information by taking scans of the iris and measurements of the face. In due course, decisions will be made as to which biometric is the most suitable and whether alternative biometrics can be captured by equipment. In that way we shall ensure, so far as we can, that those who cannot give us a specific biometric can still have their identity checked against the biometric database.
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Concerns about proportionality and data protection were debated in the context of the previous sets of regulations. Having reread the reports of those debates, I am satisfied that the responses that were given appeared to satisfy all concerned. The Government consider that the safeguards built into the regime established by the regulations of both 2003 and 2004 are adequate to address such concerns. Those safeguards are designed to deal with the collection of data and its subsequent use. In the context of collection, any applicant who is under 16 years of age will have his or her fingerprints taken only in the presence of a responsible adult who is over 18 years of age and is not employed by the Government.
Turning to data usage, fingerprints collected in both Kenya and Rwanda in relation to these regulations will be added to the immigration and asylum fingerprint system database. That will allow for the identification of any visa applicant who subsequently makes an asylum or an immigration application in a different identity, and will, in turn, help to establish the nationality of those who no longer have a basis on which to remain in the United Kingdom. Such information will assist us in securing their removal, because establishing identity is paramount in re-documenting those whom we wish to remove from this country or wish to encourage to remove themselves. In common with other fingerprints collected in respect of immigration and asylum applications, the data will be shared with the police and other law enforcement agencies engaged in the prevention and investigation of crime. All such exchanges will comply with the relevant data protection provisions.
In terms of data retention, regulations 7 and 8 of the 2003 regulations require the records to be retained for a maximum of 10 years. They are then destroyed. Any entry clearance application that is not accompanied by the necessary fingerprint data may be treated as invalid. However, there are exceptions, including those applicants who, as I have already told the Committee, cannot provide a record of their fingerprints because of physical disability or injury. It is anticipated that the majority of applications that are not accompanied by a record of fingerprints will be treated as invalid unless accompanied by an explanation exempting the applicant. The consequence of an invalid application is that the applicant will enjoy no right of appeal. Nevertheless, the system will be operated in a reasonable way to limit the impact on applicants.
Short of giving the Committee an indication of the cost of the biometrics associated with visas, there is not much that I can add. The indicative information is that the Colombo pilot, which ran from July 2003, cost £800,000, and that from January 2004 to the end of the year 2004–05, the east African posts will cost £1,275,000. The bulk of that expenditure is in establishing the information technology infrastructure to collect the data. As it is estimated that an illegal applicant, or a migrant who seeks to mask his identity or to operate under a false identity, can cost the Exchequer about £9,000, the Government
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consider that that is money well spent. Consequently, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
2.44 pm
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