Westminster Hall Petitions debate on Family Visitor Visas - July 9

It is truly a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, in this important petition debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for the way she presented the issues. I have put a pen through quite a lot of my speech, because I do not believe in repeating things that have already been said very well. 

I will start where my hon. Friend left off, which is with thinking about how this feels. I have an Indian father, an English mother and a sister who lives in America. Every year, without fail, I—along with my mother and husband—apply for, and am granted, a visa to visit India, where I have a great many relatives, including a much-beloved, now quite elderly, aunt in her 90s, whom I completely adore. She is a role model to me, and has been since I was a small child...

...Of course the Home Office needs to be satisfied that the visitor has sufficient ties to their home country, but the Indian visa system does not ask me for very much. It asks me to name my profession, and in my previous job I once provided a letter from my employer, but I have not been asked to provide a letter from Parliament. I understand why the Home Office is asking for sufficient evidence that the person will return to their country of origin, but the amount of proof required is so high that it seems that people from certain countries, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North said, feel bound to fail...

...I understand that the Minister might wish to introduce other requirements, but the requirements at the moment seem terribly, heartbreakingly unfair for the relatives of British citizens. For instance, I know, because I have looked into this, that were I to try to bring over my cousins from India, whom I am able to get a visitor visa to visit, the requirements would be very high. I am afraid even to ask for a visa, because I am terribly afraid of disappointing them...

...Basic errors resulting in outright rejections are not unique to the visitor visa system. I will discuss later wider failings in the Home Office, but from highly skilled migrants to the Windrush scandal, the Home Office cannot seem to get even the most basic information and checks consistently correct. The rate of refusals for visitor visas cannot be blamed solely on mismanagement and inefficiency. The assumption behind many of refusal letters is that, given the chance, nobody from Africa or the Indian subcontinent—such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka—could possibly want to return home at the end of their visit to the UK. That is deeply offensive, not to mention plainly wrong...

...My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) touched on the introduction of e-visas in India, which is proving effective. I hope the Minister will elaborate on that and tell us whether e-visas will be rolled out to Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries...

To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE