Migrants will be allowed to sit their British citizenship tests online rather than at a test centre – raising fears of cheating.
The Home Office is spending £110million turning its in-person exam into one that applicants can sit from home.
The Life in the UK Test (LITUK) is given to immigrants wanting to become citizens and is an opportunity to demonstrate a knowledge of British values, laws and history.
Multiple-choice questions include ones like: ‘Who was the King of England at the time of the Norman invasion in 1066?’
Applicants must be physically present at one of the 30 test centres around the country and bring a passport or eVisa documentation to confirm their identity to staff on the day.
They have to remove bulky items like scarfs and jackets, and undergo a security search to check for concealed devices or notes that might aid a cheat.
Friends or relatives are barred from being present, and there are CCTV cameras and microphones set up for observation.
But now the Home Office has decided to make the test ‘digital by default’ next year. Applicants will be able to take the exam remotely from a computer which in theory might be anywhere, even abroad.
Shadow Home Office minister Blake Stephenson said: ‘It’s incredible. You can’t sit your GCSEs or your driving theory test from home, but this Labour government thinks it is perfectly reasonable to grant British citizenship following remote ‘Life in the UK’ testing.
‘We know that at-home tests are easier to scam. Mexico’s top university recently made 58,000 people resit their first attempt at a remote entrance exam because of widespread cheating.
‘Rather than addressing the repeated warnings from us on remote testing, Home Office ministers are clearly content to risk opening up British citizenship to scammers and cheats; the very people we do not want here in the UK.’
The Home Office which oversees the tests wants companies to bid to provide the new service, saying they will pay up to £110million for a five-year deal starting next year with the possibility of a further two-year extension.
The tender document says: ‘LITUK aims to move to a ‘Digital-by-Default’ approach, while upholding the rigorous standards necessary to support UKVI immigration decisions.’
It said the successful company would have to ‘deliver a service that combines technological innovation with security assurance, enabling customers to demonstrate their knowledge of life in the UK with confidence and convenience throughout their UK immigration journey’.
The test, which was originally introduced in 2005, costs applicants £50, takes 45 minutes and has a 75 per cent pass mark.
The Government recently recommended questions should be asked on more taboo topics such as domestic violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, ethnic diversity, the slave trade and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Home Office said: ‘We will continue to have advanced security measures to detect and prevent cheating in the Life in the UK Test. Anyone found to have cheated in their test will have their test invalidated and their immigration application refused.’
They added that no final decisions have been made regarding how the refreshed test will operate, but it will be required to meet ‘appropriate integrity and anti-fraud requirements’.
Earlier this year there was uproar when the Government proposed making the English language test for tens of thousands of foreign workers, students and other migrants from up to 150 countries, seeking to come to the UK also ‘digital by default’.
In a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) consortium, which oversees two-thirds of UK language tests, said the Government’s proposed fully-online approach would expose the immigration system to ‘weaker security and more opportunities for malpractice‘.
