Immigration Service

I do not know whether I will disappoint my hon. Friend, but by and large at the moment we do not take those decisions. We reserve the right to intervene, and I do not envisage that we would lose that right, but at the moment we try to use that sparingly, not least because it is one thing—a difficult thing—to have an indiscriminate number of letters sent in about cases—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) keeps intervening from a sedentary position and referring to cases that have been delayed or files that have been lost. I have already been absolutely clear on that. It is a sine qua non for looking at the relationship and the practical implications of intervention that we remedy the very defects that are causing hon. Members to intervene on so many occasions, causing legal difficulties in removing people because of the inordinate and unjustifiable delays. I fully accept that, and part of the deal has to be that there is a better performance and a speedier turnaround, and that at the end of the day Members and Ministers reserve the right to intervene and to make representations. All I am saying is that as we improve the system, I hope that we will thereby reduce the scale of intervention by Members and Ministers, because the inadequacies, unjustifiable delays, lost cases and miscarriages of justice on these matters will be diminished.