Mr David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mr David Hanson on 2014-02-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to investigate the English language test results of students who completed English language tests organised by ETS in each of the last three years.

James Brokenshire

The Home Office has suspended acceptance of all ETS tests taken and used in the
UK whist the scope of the issue is ascertained and to determine the number of people who
have taken a test and been involved in fraud. We have specialist teams in place
to undertake this analysis.

We are looking at all current and past applications. Anyone who is found to
have used or is currently trying to use evidence that they obtained dishonestly
can expect to have their leave curtailed and be removed from the UK or have any
outstanding application refused and leave the UK. We will also seek criminal
prosecution where appropriate and use all of the measures that we have
available.

Our reforms have curbed abuse by closing bogus colleges, making the application
process more rigorous and imposing more rules on colleges to improve course
quality. However, as the recent BBC Panorama programme highlighted, much more
needs to be done.
The Government will take all necessary steps, but our approach also requires
the education sector, particularly private or further education colleges and
those providing secure English language testing, to take on their
responsibility to tackle abuse.