Foreign Office and UKvisas publish new report on entry clearance

UKvisas published the report of the Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance on 11 January. The report examines how British embassies and consulates abroad are deciding applications to come to the UK in cases where the person has no right of appeal if refused. The UK government made a statement about the report in parliament on 15 January.

The Independent Monitor, Mrs Linda Costelloe-Barker has visited Kiev, Harare, Lilongwe, Pretoria, Tsilisi and Tashkent and has examined files from a wide range of posts. She notes a ‘lack of consistency’, and ‘worrying variations’, especially in the way applicants’ financial resources are assessed. She expresses concern about the way in which complaints are handled, and about the insufficient time spent reviewing cases that have been refused. Her own research has caused her to question whether UKvisas statistical information is reliable.

The Independent Monitor is critical of cases in which applicants have been told that they have limited rights of appeal against the decision, when in UK law they have full rights of appeal. She agrees with previous Independent Monitors, and disagrees with UKvisas, about the large number of cases in which this mistake has occured.

The Independent Monitor has considerable praise for the best work in dealing with entry clearance applications abroad, but notes that consistency must be achieved. She makes a number of constructive recommendations for improvement.

The UK government has proposed that under the new Points-Based system applications will be dealt with by entry clearance abroad, rather than by Work Permits UK based in the UK. For this reason, the quality of decision–making in posts is a matter of concern not only to individual applicants, but also to businesses in the UK.

The Report published this month deals with applications in 2005 and is dated October 2006, showing that long-standing problems with delays in making public the reports of the Independent Monitor, to which she refers in her report, have not yet been solved. UKvisas has said that the report on applications in 2006 will be published in 2007 so there is hope that progress is being made.
Alison Harvey, Gherson and Co.