UK Parliament / Open data

Immigration Controls

Proceeding contribution from Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 21 October 2008. It occurred during Opposition day on Immigration Controls.
No, I will not give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman. If he wanted to have his say, he should have spoken in the debate. The hon. Member for Ashford made a point about marriage and made quite heavy weather of the need to strengthen the rules to prevent marriage from being used as a means of avoiding immigration controls. He needs to pay more attention. We are already doing that. We are already raising the age of sponsorship and the age for applicants coming to the UK on the basis of marriage. We expect to have those rules in place by the end of the year. What is more, we are ensuring that spouses coming to the UK will need to enter into an agreement to learn English as part of the visa application process, in keeping with our goal of requiring all spouses to speak English before they come here.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
481 c176 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Back to top