Forced out: Beverley Hughes

The National Audit Office has expressed serious concerns about the management of visa applications in overseas embassies.

The watchdog was investigating the work of the UKvisas agency before the scandal over the fast tracking of immigration bids from eastern Europe - which cost former minister Beverley Hughes her Home Office job - broke in the media earlier this year.

Meanwhile, a separate Home Office investigation into the issues found "serious failings" in how some visa applications were assessed.

UKvisas

UKvisas was established by both the Foreign Office and Home Office in 2000 to provide greater efficiency in the immigration system.

However the NAO found that there are wide discrepancies in the quality of decision making between and within British embassies.

Last year half of decisions on family visit cases led to the original decision being overturned on appeals.

And the NAO criticised the lack of information on whether immigrants actually do in the UK what they said they would when applying for a visa.

"A full assessment of whether the objectives of entry clearance are being met would require better information on the actions of visa holders after they enter the United Kingdom," the authors said.

Romania and Bulgaria

An additional section on the Romanian and Bulgarian cases also slams an apparently lax attitude within the Home Office to allegations of fraud.

"Entry clearance officers told us that had their standards applied, they would have issued visas to less than 10 per cent of the applicants that did actually receive them," the report found.

"Although there was regular communication between staff on individual cases and some communication on the wider picture, the lack of a shared understanding on the standards required for a visa to be issued was not resolved and there was little feedback from the Home Office.

"Entry clearance officers in Bulgaria and Romania did not generally receive explanations from Home Office staff when their recommendations not to approve the application were not acted on.

"Instead they received a standard letter instructing them to issue the visa. In addition they did not receive feedback when they had issued visas to Bulgarians and Romanians as tourists, students or seasonal workers but these visa holders 'switched' to the European Community Association Agreements [ECAA] when they were in the United Kingdom...

"We found that in many cases the communication did not achieve effective results and staff remained unclear on key issues relating to the agreements."

Lack of knowledge

Auditor general Sir John Bourn said without better information the government cannot judge how well its policies are working.

"It is government policy to facilitate entry of those qualifying for visas as quickly and simply as possible while turning away unqualified applicants," he concluded.

"Entry clearance staff have done much to achieve ease of entry.

"Adequacy of controls has been more difficult to achieve because there is no comprehensive feedback on whether visa entry conditions are obeyed by those receiving them; nevertheless improvements are possible even so and are recommended in this report."

Internal review

Also on Thursday, the home secretary published an internal report from senior civil servant Ken Sutton into the visas scandal.

It acknowledged that immigration policies were being abused in eastern Europe but concluded that Immigration and Nationality Directorate staff decided on their own accord that the law prevented them from doing anything about this, absolving ministers of blame.

"The report shows that there were serious failings in how ECAA applications for self-employment from Bulgaria and Romania were handled. This is clearly unacceptable and something ministers and managers alike are determined to take responsibility for and sort out," David Blunkett said.

"I am pleased, however, that the central allegation made in late March - that the Home Office was aware of systemic organised criminality and did nothing about it - has been proved wrong.

"Neither does the report find that Home Office officials knowingly processed applications based on forged passports, or that they were complacent about organised criminality in Romania and Bulgaria."

Report reaction

The reports prompted criticism from the opposition parties.

David Davis said that looking at two countries alone was inadequate.