Clause 24 - Attendance for fingerprinting
Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill
11:15 am
Andy Burnham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Leigh, Labour)
I shall seek to address all the points raised by the hon. Gentleman and by the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham, but let me begin by introducing clause 24. Asylum claimants and their dependants are issued with an application registration card—the ARC card, which we talked about previously—when they make an asylum claim. At the moment, fingerprints are taken from the claimant and their dependants and stored on the card for identification purposes; it is a biometric identity card. However, in certain circumstances it is not possible to take fingerprints from or issue claimants with an ARC card at the point at which the application is made, for a variety of reasons. They may be asked to go to an asylum screening unit. As the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham said, section 142 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 provides the Secretary of State with the power to issue a written notice that requires the principal claimant and any dependants to return to a specified place to provide fingerprints. At present, that must be at least seven days after the date of the notice. The notice must also provide the claimants with a minimum period of seven days within which they should attend. It may specify the time of day or hours during which they should attend.
Clause 24 makes two amendments to section 142 to bring it in line with our processing procedures, which have become more streamlined and more efficient since the 1999 Act was passed. First, the clause reduces the period between the date given in the notice as its date of issue and the date when an asylum seeker and any dependants can be required to attend for fingerprinting from seven days to three, as has been said. Secondly, the clause enables the Secretary of State to specify a day on which the asylum applicant must attend for fingerprinting, which cannot be less than three days after the notice’s issue date. It removes the requirement that the applicant attend at some point during a seven-day period.
The Secretary of State will continue to have the power to specify the time of day or hours—to answer the hon. Lady’s point—during which an asylum claimant and their dependants should attend for fingerprinting, as under the existing legislation.