The home secretary, Sajid Javid, feels “real concern” about the fate of international students who say they were wrongly accused by his department of cheating in an English language test and is considering whether more can be done to help them, MPs have been told.
But senior Home Office civil servants were accused of being “insufficiently curious” and “basically not that bothered” about the impact of the department’s actions.
The department’s most senior civil servant, Sir Philip Rutnam, said Javid would make a statement on the issue before parliament’s summer recess.
The Commons public accounts committee is investigating the Home Office’s decision in 2014 to accuse more than 30,000 international students of cheating in a government-approved English language test required for visa extensions.
Rutnam, the Home Office permanent secretary, said: “We recognise that there continues to be real concern that individuals may have been treated harshly in this whole process. That there are some hundreds of individuals, possibly more, who feel that they may have been treated harshly, who continue to maintain their innocence. That is of course the subject of real concern to us.”
He maintained that widespread fraud had taken place and said: “The risk of people being caught up in this wrongly has been very small.” There had been 25 criminal convictions in relation to organised fraud in the testing system, he said.
Labour’s Shabana Mahmood, a member of the committee, said: “I put it to you that it is not just really concerning but that it’s shameful, the impact that innocent people have faced as a result of the decisions and the approach taken by the Home Office.”
Students who protest their innocence have in some cases spent tens of thousands of pounds attempting to get justice through the courts. Some have become suicidal as a result of being denied the right to finish their studies after spending large sums on UK college fees.
About 2,500 students have been forcibly removed from the UK after being accused of cheating in the exam, according to a National Audit Office report. Another 7,200 left the country after being told they faced detention and removal if they stayed. Many have tried to prove their innocence in court: 12,500 appeals have been heard and so far 3,600 people have won their cases.
Mahmood said the Home Office had moved from having a very lax language testing system to a harsh clampdown and was “not sufficiently curious as to the impact on innocent people”.
She said: “Your defence, ‘well they can go to court’ … do you know how much money it costs to go to court? They’re not the children of millionaires. Who has £20,000 or £30,000 lying in a bank account? That is the cultural problem. The Home Office is basically not that bothered about the impact on innocent people.”
Rutnam said: “I hear the concern, particularly about the costs. These are very large amounts of money for almost anyone.”
Mahmood said the scandal had damaged the UK’s reputation internationally, particularly in conjunction with another recent Home Office controversy, the Windrush scandal.
Rutnam responded: “I regret anything that damages the UK’s reputation internationally. If there are innocent people caught up in the response to this, I would deeply regret that.”
In 2014 undercover filming by the BBC uncovered organised cheating in two of the 90 government-approved centres offering the exam. The Home Office subsequently asked the test provider, the US-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), to investigate whether the 58,459 tests taken between 2011 and 2014 were valid.
The US company made checks and concluded that 97% of all UK tests were in some way “suspicious”. It classified 58% as “invalid” and 39% as “questionable”. Campaigners have questioned whether it is likely that 97% of people who took the test were involved in the fraud.
