Visa applications over the phone

In Pakistan, they have NADRA, the National Database and Registration Authority. And in the Autumn of 2005, Brigadier Saleem Ahmed Moeen (Retd), Chairman of NADRA, received an outstanding achievement award for "[fighting the] war against terror in a more effective manner" – NADRA had, at that stage, issued 60 million Pakistanis at home and abroad with biometric ID cards.

Surely UKBA should use NADRA among other resources to check visa applicants.

Or don't they trust NADRA?
David Moss - London, UK

The Home Secretary says: "I do think rather than interviews in every single case ... it's better to have the robust set of information that we now have, the biometric information, and to be able to focus interviews where necessary, telephone interviews where appropriate, on those people who are most likely to be risky."

The biometric information she refers to is flat print fingerprints. Unlike traditional fingerprinting technology, flat prints are too unreliable to be admissible as evidence in court.

The biometric information she refers to is, thus, anything but robust.
David Moss - London, UK

This reliance on telephone interviews and questionable biometrics raises again the question whether UKBA are fit for purpose.

While UKBA are devoting some resources to flimsy measures like telephone interviews and inadmissible biometrics, they are not paying attention to the basics.

It is over four years since Interpol complained that the UK don't check people against the various databases of lost and stolen passports when they enter the country.

And it is over nine years since the EU offered us access to the Schengen database of known and suspected criminals and terrorists.

We are still not availing ourselves of either resource. UKBA are still not doing their job.

The Home Secretary's defence of UKBA is admirable in its way, but in the circumstances, her loyalty is misplaced. UKBA appear to be part of the problem, and not the solution.
David Moss - London, UK