11:00 Angela Eagle (Labour)

In this House yesterday, Christian Aid held an event to highlight the impact of climate change in some of the poorest countries of the world—I am not sure whether the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) was able to attend. There was due to be a representative from Malawi at the event. As the Leader of the House will know, Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa and one of the most reliant on agriculture. However, the representative was unable to secure a visa and, sadly, that is not an isolated incident. Huge numbers of teachers, charity workers and people working with churches have been unable to fulfil long-standing partnership engagements in my constituency and across the UK because of the move to a cashless system via Pretoria for applications for visas from Malawi. I am sure that the Leader of the House is aware that international credit cards are simply not available to almost everybody in Malawi, so they have real trouble in accessing the system. May we have a statement or a debate from the Home Office on ensuring that the visa system is fair and equitable for people wishing to come to the UK for entirely legitimate reasons?

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