Campaigning and Parliamentary Action

Migrant Voice’s ‘My Future Back’ Campaign

The charity Migrant Voice are currently campaigning together with hundreds of international students who were falsely accused of cheating on their TOEIC tests in 2014.

The ‘My Future Back’ campaign allows the students affected by TOEIC injustice to share their experiences of the devastating impact of the Home Office’s allegations on every aspect of their lives: you can read their report here.

In 2019, their campaign resulted in damning reports being prepared by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on TOEIC, of which Migrant Voice is the Secretariat.

Migrant Voice continues to support affected students and is working to achieve a political solution that allows them to clear their names and begin the process of rebuilding their lives.

If you would like to get involved in their campaign, please contact Cameron Ball and visit Migrant Voice’s website here.

Parliamentary action

The Home Office’s actions against TOEIC victims have also been publicly criticised by several Members of Parliament. In September 2018, MP’s strongly condemned the Home Office’s response and called for an independent enquiry to be established.

The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Committee subsequently produced a highly critical report in September 2019.

The report found that ‘the Home Office’s flawed reaction … has had a detrimental impact on the lives of over 50,000 overseas students’ and ‘has led to injustice and hardship for many people‘. It further concluded that the Home Office took enforcement action against thousands of individuals ‘before properly verifying evidence provided by ETS’.

The Committee also found that the Home Office has ‘taken no action to proactively identify innocent people’ and ultimately recommended that the Home Office should ‘address its lack of curiosity and establish safeguards to protect innocent people in the future’.

Recent Updates

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel MP, briefly addressed the Home Office’s response to the TOEIC scandal when giving evidence in front of the Home Affairs Committee in February 2021.

Ms Patel acknowledged that there were ‘too many people’ who had been innocently ‘caught-up in this’ and assured the committee that the Home Office would review their position following the judgments to be handed down in two TOEIC matters in the coming months.

She further stated that the Home Office must work to ‘find a resolution’ and ‘to bring not just clarification, but some justice around what has happened’.

Whilst Ms Patel’s comments to the Home Affairs Committee are welcome, it remains to be seen whether the Home Office will indeed revise their approach to victims who have been falsely accused of fraud.

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