Clause 1 - Variation of leave to enter or remain
Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill
5:45 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
Let me return to that point. I am grateful for the hon. Lady's comments. I have never had the great pleasure—I am sure that it is a pleasure, at least a temporary one—of speaking from the other side of Committee. I am sure that if I were to, which, who knows, I may at some stage—not that I am crossing the Floor, I hasten to add—I would accept the hon. Lady's position and would not be proud about whence a victory came.
If amendments are necessary I shall endeavour, to clarify both the rules and the legislation on the gap between the serving of a notice and the final appeal of the removal stage. If we need to table new amendments, as I suspect we do, if only to bring informality into the legislative base above and beyond that brought by the amendments already tabled, I shall do that. I shall also reflect on whether any changes to the immigration rules, which are part of the basis of the matter as well as the legislation, are needed to reflect what people require—some sort of formal legislative statement that people will not be instantly criminalised during the gap between the end of leave to remain and final dispatch of an appeal. I shall happily do that.
I want to make the gap relating to the appeal process as narrow as possible. As the hon. Member for Woking said from a sedentary position, we shall probably still be considering a period of 18 months to two years from start to finish. That period needs to be put in the context of what I said yesterday. At the moment, the first decision on more than 80 per cent. of new applicants for asylum—the changes we are making to the decision-making process on the broader side are still being worked through—is made in the space of two months. Plenty of improvements need to happen outside of what we are doing in order to truncate the whole process.
Without being entirely dismissive, I do not think that the amendments offer anything, but they have prompted a good and substantive debate that has allowed me to explore and clarify the position on the gap between notice being served and the final appeal, and deal with the substantive points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow about unaccompanied children seeking asylum. I shall come back to the Committee on that as soon as I can, with the only caveat that it might be after the Committee proceedings, but I shall certainly do so before the scrutiny process is finished. On that basis, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.
While I am on my feet, I apologise to the Committee. I am not being discourteous, but about 200 people from the immigration world are waiting for me in the Home Office, so I shall tootle off for about half an hour. I shall return—as MacArthur said—if the Committee is still sitting.