Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

Currently, a migrant in the UK with temporary leave who has entered on the basis of marriage or civil partnership with a British citizen can apply for citizenship when he has been in the UK for three years without absences of more than 270 days during that period and no more than 90 days in the last of the three years. Under the Bill, an additional provision is added that he must have spent the whole of that period in a relevant family association, the definition of which is again to be prescribed in regulations that we have not yet seen under Section 41 of the BNA and, therefore, as I understand it, not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the power under Section 41 does not provide for either negative or affirmative resolution of Parliament but is at the absolute discretion of the Secretary of State. Presumably, the Government are concerned with people who use the marriage or civil partnership route as a device to gain entry into the United Kingdom without having a genuine relationship. There have been many allegations in the past about bogus enforced marriages for precisely that purpose. According to the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place, the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit deals with 5,000 inquiries and 300 cases of forced marriage each year. To quote from the summary of the committee's report, ""marriage visas are still being granted in cases where the visa sponsor has been forced into marriage and compelled to sponsor the visa. Victims are being failed by the lack of a mechanism consistently to refuse entry to the UK in cases where an individual has been forced into marriage, and this failure is compounded by the absence of a mechanism by which the Government can accept information from third parties on reluctant sponsors. We recommend that visa sponsors are interviewed where there is suspicion of a forced marriage, including where suspicion is raised through information provided by third parties. We also recommend that the Government attach a power of refusal without the need for an evidential statement to visa applications in the case of reluctant sponsors"." It seems to us that far more should have been done in the past to check the bona fides of applicants for marriage or partnership visas. To wait for three years to see whether the relationship has continued, as we will do under the Bill, is entirely the wrong approach. The resources intended to be used to check that partners are still together at the end of the three years would be far better deployed in improving checks on sponsors in the first place. In their response to the Select Committee, the Government increased the age at which someone can sponsor or be sponsored as a spouse from 18 to 21. They agreed to improve their current system for investigating allegations of abuse of the marriage route and to ensure that information and advice is available to sponsors, including awareness of the Forced Marriage Unit, by December 2008, and they promised to set out their approach to selective interviewing of sponsors. Can the Minister give us an update on those developments and tell us whether they have made any difference to the 40,000 marriage visas awarded in 2007? It is probably a bit early, but if he can tell us the number of marriage visas awarded in 2008, that will be interesting. What difference do the Government expect the new conditions to make at the end of the three years to the number who will apply for citizenship? On Amendment 63, the definition of relevant family association appears not to include dependent relatives. Are they to be covered under the Section 41 regulations? If so, why were they not mentioned in the Explanatory Notes, which lift the curtain only a little by giving the example of a partner? Will the Minister say why the dependent relative, having put in an appearance in Clause 31 of the draft partial Bill, has now disappeared without trace? Amendment 63 ensures that the migrants whose UK partners have a right of abode in the UK or have acquired a permanent entitlement to reside in the UK under European law can apply for citizenship on the same basis as if the UK partner was a British citizen or had permanent residence. We need to ask the Minister about the Government’s intentions regarding the right of abode, which the partial Bill proposed to remove altogether. I recognise that we have a Commonwealth right of abode under Clause 45(5), but since the definition is unclear, we are not certain whether every person with an existing right of abode is covered by the new status. I would be grateful if the Minister would elucidate that point. I beg to move.