Tories unveil tougher visa rules

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said he agreed with minority communities that the system was too slow, with delays preventing people attending family occasions such as weddings.

But he said the price for speeding it up was that a named sponsor would have to take "legal responsibility" for making sure their visitors returned home.

The Government has proposed that relatives should pay a bond of up to £1,000.

Mr Green's findings, which came out of a nationwide consultation, include keeping a Government scheme which has paid asylum seekers £36 million to set up businesses back in their own countries.

He recommended the voluntary return programme should not be scrapped so long as it represented value for money for the taxpayer.

Nor should a Tory government reverse Labour's 1997 decision to scrap the "primary purpose" rule, which barred entry to thousands of foreign nationals married to British citizens.

There were more effective ways of blocking sham marriages, such as English language tests and a minimum age limit of 21 for foreign spouses.

Millions of pounds spent on translation services for immigrants should be diverted to teaching them English instead, he suggested, and people already legally working in this country taken out of the scope of the Government's new points-based asylum system.

Mr Green said: "The system as it currently operates relies too much on delay and inconvenience for applicants, as a substitute for a robust but responsive system. We wish to improve controls by having clear rules enforced by competent specialists. At the same time, we want genuine applicants to be made welcome, treated courteously and competently and dealt with quickly."