Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]
Monday 2nd September 2024
(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text
Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]
Friday 18th October 2024
(3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, perhaps I should start my speech with, “As I was saying,” given that this is the fifth such Private Member’s Bill from these Benches since 2017. My noble friend Lady Ludford introduced numbers 3 and 4.
I declare an interest as a trustee of a trust established by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, which has introduced me to a number of young asylum seekers applying for funding to attend university. Like so many young refugees I have met, they have impressed me by their resilience and their determination to contribute to the UK.
The first purpose of the Bill is to provide in primary legislation, not just in amendable rules that can be changed without Parliament’s involvement or scrutiny, the rights of people who seek safety in the UK to be joined by their family. It is not enough to hope that the Home Office will use its discretion. The second purpose is to define “family”. It is an unambitiously narrow definition, in the hope that the Government will see this extension to enable children to sponsor immediate family to join them as modest and doable—she says looking straight at the Minister. The right to sponsor applies to people with protection status—that is, refugees—and those with humanitarian protection who are at real risk of harm if returned to their country of origin but not for the specific reasons which bring them within the refugee convention. I shall refer to them all as refugees. The third purpose is legal aid.
Since 2017, when the first Bill was introduced, the plight of refugees has not changed, nor have the UK’s moral obligations or the importance of family, which politicians continue to emphasise. However, the political context has not stayed still: the areas affected—afflicted —by conflict; the greater politicisation of immigration; the conflation of asylum and immigration; and small boats have succeeded the lorries and trains used by desperate asylum seekers. Last year, 7% of asylum claims were from unaccompanied children. The academic think tank UK in a Changing Europe reports that 33% of the public think that the figure is not 7% but 40% or more. There is a huge leadership role for government to be clear here.
This Bill sits squarely within calls for safe routes for refugees; I acknowledge that we have some, mostly very specific. I acknowledge that, under the new Government, families separated during the evacuation from Kabul airport will benefit from an expansion of the ACRS and that a child evacuated without his parents will be able to make a referral to relocate them or—GOV.UK says “or”—his siblings. But there is so much more to do to put safe routes in place.
Today is Anti-Slavery Day. We know the dangers of being in the hands of traffickers—a very real risk for children alone—and of extreme exploitation. The organisation Missing People is clear that being missing very often means harm. I hope the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, with her experience, will expand on this. Her report seven years ago found that closing off safe routes feeds the trafficking and smuggling networks.
Last year the Justice and Home Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House, which I had the privilege of chairing, published a report on family migration. We were all affected by the evidence about children seeking asylum. A young Eritrean reached the UK alone after the sort of journey that is hard to imagine. His brother made it to Libya, which is not a good place to find yourself; he was picked up by traffickers. His sister was picked up at the border of Egypt and imprisoned there for two years. That committee is one of a number—in the Commons too—to have called for an extension to family reunification.
The Government’s response was:
“Our policy is not designed to keep child refugees away from their parents, but in considering any policy we must think carefully about the wider impact to avoid putting more people unnecessarily into harm’s way”.
Well, they are in harm’s way at home. There are plenty of “push factors”, but that Government often deployed the “pull factor” argument. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has said, it is “inherently implausible”. That Government’s attempts at deterrence in other contexts were not notably successful. We cannot prove a negative, but various respected organisations have reported that they cannot find support for the contention. It does not seem to me a compelling argument; indeed, there is evidence of children not wanting the Red Cross to trace their family in their country of origin for fear of endangering them.
What is compelling is the importance of family. They may not always be perfect, but being separated from your parents in childhood tends to have a significant impact on your mental health and well-being, indeed your very development. I know that other noble Lords will refer to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. Siblings, too, are hugely significant; what a difference it must make in a strange country if you are with your brother or sister.
Our rules reflect a very westernised view of family. In many cultures, it is common for children of both sexes to live with their parents until marriage, and for three or four generations to stay together as a unit. Dependants are not as limited a cohort as we think of them. I have been urged to add more relatives to the list, and I well understand that; my own aunts were hugely important to me. I have said that the Bill is deliberately unambitious but, under it, the Secretary of State could add to the categories: criteria would include risk to physical, emotional or psychological well-being, and the interests of the child. I have heard the term “unexpressed grief” in connection with mental health, and “the freedom to be a child”.
There are benefits to society of supporting the integration of refugees. A moment’s thought will confirm what being settled means, in the non-technical sense, for refugees and for the rest of the population. It means stability; you can focus and achieve. If you are a child, you can focus on your education rather than being one of those described as “challenging” because you are always on edge, hoping your mother might be able to phone you.
Would there be a cost to the UK? Common sense tells me the contrary. Parents can take care of their children. We all know of the costs to local authorities of looking after children they are required to accommodate and support.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Perhaps the noble Baroness could inform the House how many people she envisages, on an annual basis, would be granted refugee family reunion status under these measures.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
I will not go into that now; I do not have it in my speech. I am time limited and conscious of other people’s need for that time. I will happily tell the noble Lord later. From the tone of that question, he obviously opposes what I am saying. I will go into that with him later, but he does not have his name down to speak.
In 2018 the UK Government requested information from EU member states about the impact of their family reunion policies. The UK is quite an outlier in Europe. There was little assessment about public services or the costs to Governments, but Italy reported that it had seen no financial effect on public resources. If the noble Lord who has just intervened is worried about numbers, he might think about costs, which are another factor. I can tell the noble Lord that the Refugee Council and Safe Passage estimate an additional 240 to 750 visa grants—not sponsorships—a year.
I turn lastly to legal aid. Yes, of course, there is a shortage of lawyers, but family reunion needs to be in scope. Exceptional case funding is so exceptional as to be well-nigh invisible. The current rules are a maze, almost impenetrable to applicants and to many lawyers.
I urge noble Lords to see this Bill all the way through, and the Government to accept what it provides. At the last iteration, the Labour Front Bench was very supportive. I will not name the spokesman for fear of embarrassing him, but he was very senior.
I have received a lot of support from outside the House. The International Rescue Committee says that it
“welcomes and strongly endorses this Bill which would see children and young people, who have fled conflict and persecution, finally reunited with their loved ones in the UK”.
In 2020, 14 children from a London primary school who had read the book The Boy at the Back of the Class—I commend it to noble Lords—told me how sad they were about the plight of lone refugee children. The boy at the back of the class was an unaccompanied asylum seeker. They were happy, though, that the book had a happy ending. In fact, the fiction involved the intervention of the late Queen Elizabeth. One child wrote:
“It must be very scary … to be in a big new country surrounded by new people. A strong country like ours can help”.
I beg to move.
Baroness Mobarik (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on putting forward this important Bill and on her eloquent and forceful introduction. I intend to make just a few remarks with regard to unaccompanied refugee children having the right to bring their siblings or parents to join them, something currently disallowed under the refugee family reunion rules. My immediate concern on learning of this was that it would potentially be a pull factor, something we can little afford considering the current stresses and strains of migration.
However, looking at the facts and figures, it became clear to me that this reaction on my part was a reflection of the general narrative in recent years on the issue of migration. In fact, a report by the House of Lords European Affairs Committee categorically came to the conclusion that there was no evidence provided by EU member states where children are allowed to sponsor family members that they had in some way been coerced into going ahead with the rest of their family to seek refuge, and for others to follow on the back of that. In other words, there is no evidence to support the pull-factor premise. In fact, this gap in the UK family reunion policy of refugee children in the UK being unable to sponsor any family members under the Immigration Rules is out of step with every country in the European Economic Area other than Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
The Bill would expand family reunion and allow refugee children to sponsor their parents and siblings. Importantly, in 2016 the Home Affairs Committee recommended this policy change, as did the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee in 2023. We may ask what the estimated result would be in terms of numbers if this rule were to be implemented; the noble Lord asked that very question. On average it would increase family reunions by as many as an additional 750 visas. To put that in context, that is around two people in each of the council areas in England and Wales. However, statistics obscure the reality of the people behind them and how they are affected. There are many examples of depression and thoughts of suicide.
Any such measure would of course have to be carefully monitored, but I hope it will be given serious consideration. This change to the refugee family reunion rules would have a huge and positive impact on the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our country.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as vice- chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation.
Unaccompanied refugee children, the subject of the Bill, are not well cared for in this country. There are many dangers for all of them. There is a particular danger for a certain group of the children about which we should all be very concerned: the possibility of being exploited and trafficked. This is not a vain concern; it happens, and that is what the Government need to recognise. Between 2021 and 2024, such children were being placed in asylum hotels, and 440 children disappeared, 132 of whom have not yet been found. Where are they? Almost certainly they have been trafficked.
There is very little help at the moment. Asylum hotels are not used, and local authorities are expected to take over the children. Anyone who reads the news knows that Kent is completely overwhelmed and unable to deal with the children who flow into its care. It cannot look after them. These are all unaccompanied refugee children.
There is what is called a national transfer scheme, but it is utterly inefficient. Children are not kept track of. Independent child trafficking guardians—something Lord Field put forward in the report of 2019, with which I was involved and which, thank goodness, the previous Government took on board—do not look after refugee children. They look after them in Scotland, so why on earth do they not look after them in this country? There are not so many such children that there could not be guardians to do it. In Scotland that is done extremely efficiently; not everything in Scotland is, but that certainly is.
The previous Government had a series of adverse High Court decisions that it would be illuminating for the present Government to read. These children need families, not care homes. It would save a lot of money if the present Government looked at the cost to the country of the care of each individual child.
This is a situation that is drifting. The Bill is timely, welcome and important. Not only should this Government listen; they should act.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing forward this important Bill, and I acknowledge the work of other noble Lords on similar Bills.
The sustained interest in a Bill of this kind should tell us something: that the current route to family reunion is unduly restrictive and prohibitive. Government data shows that in 2023 there were over 7,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the care of local authorities in the UK, 141 of those in the communities that I serve as bishop in Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield.
Despite the best efforts of dedicated professionals and public agencies, the care system is simply not the right place to house children, least of all children seeking asylum. It is deeply regrettable that so many are in care when they have family members only too willing to come and look after them—if the family reunion routes only made that possible.
These are just the children we know about—just the children on the books, as it were. The risk that unaccompanied children will go missing outside the legal process, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, just reminded us, and fall into the hands of exploitative gangs is horrendous and simply unacceptable.
Of course borders need to be managed. The strains on host communities are real, and we should not minimise or overlook them. Resources are needed to help host communities and incomers to live with dignity side by side and integrate well. However, the reality is that families can be separated on their journeys to safety, and we strengthen communities when we strengthen families.
In July this year the Government allowed children who were separated from their parents during the evacuation from Kabul in August 2021 to apply to have their parents join them in the UK; the last Government deserve credit for that. Will the current Government afford that same right to children from other countries?
I very much support the Bill and hope it makes good progress through the legislative process.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hamwee on introducing this Bill. Her commitment and that of my noble friend Lady Ludford to the cause of those seeking refuge in our country is as impressive as it is long- standing.
Over the many years that I have been involved in advocating for those entangled in the immigration system, I have been baffled by its unfathomable complexity and its inability to resolve cases, leaving applicants in limbo. Applicants are told one day that they have been granted refugee status, but the next day that that was an error. People are told that they have the right to work, then that they do not, and then told again that they do, but it will take months to get the residence card they need. In all these unfathomable difficulties, I have always been grateful for the help of the former Immigration Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe; and now the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, is proving very helpful as well.
Above all, I have been disturbed that often the system seems so disconnected from human feeling or human understanding. Nowhere is that lack of human feeling more apparent than in the effective prohibition of children granted refugee status in the UK sponsoring the immigration of their close family members. It is hard to imagine the deep emotional trauma that this must cause for child refugees already traumatised by the process that led them to seek refuge in the first place, now discovering that they are barred from ever reuniting with close family in the UK. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, gave us compelling statistics on the real consequences of this in terms of children who have gone missing.
The position taken to date by the UK Government goes entirely against the interests of these children and is in contravention of our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UK’s own expressed policy that the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration. We have already heard that the reports of the Commons Home Affairs Committee in 2016, the European Affairs Committee and, most recently, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee have concluded that this change in the law is essential and there is no evidence to support the argument that this would be a pull factor.
My noble friend described this as a modest Bill, but it would restore some humanity to our immigration system, and as such I warmly commend it.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I begin as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, did by suggesting that I could say, “As I was saying before”. I was delighted in 2022 to bring the Green group’s strongest possible support to the Bill presented then by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. We are now in a new political environment. I would have hoped that I would not have to be here strongly backing the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but that I would be able to welcome a government Bill to deliver the same things as this Bill. As that is not the case, however, I can promise that we will work as hard as we can to promote the Bill’s progress and hope to see it on the statute book as a Private Member’s Bill.
While I have the Minister’s attention, I should like to raise an issue about not refugees but workers who came to the UK before 11 March. These are workers who, because they had sole responsibility for children, had the right to bring their children with them. I met the group Women of Zimbabwe, part of the Care for Someone charity, and met scores of mostly women to whom the Home Office is clearly unjustly and inaccurately refusing the right to bring their children.
This is relevant to the Bill because, in the Tory Government’s response to this debate last time, we kept being told, “There is, under exceptional circumstances, the possibility that the Home Office will provide legal aid and support”. But I am afraid that this case—of workers rather than refugees—shows that the Home Office still cannot be trusted to behave with humanity and justice. Therefore, we need this legal provision.
I shall make one more point, which I am not sure has already come out in this debate, powerful though it has been. It is a simple fact that the UK has far fewer rights for child refugees than nearly all of the rest of Europe. That point needs to be hammered home. I said last time that we were
“world-leading in cruelty to child refugees”.—[Official Report, 8/7/22; col. 1237.]
I very much hope that the new Government do not want to keep that same label.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hamwee on introducing this Bill, which I support, and assure the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I will carry on hammering the point. Since the Children Act 1989, all legislation must primarily consider the best interests of the child. This comes almost word for word from Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the UK has long been a signatory.
However, this does not always underpin policy. Article 10 of the convention states that
“applications by a child or his or her parents to enter or leave a State Party for the purpose of family reunification shall be dealt with by States Parties in a positive, humane and expeditious manner”.
Current policy is not humane. Under Article 22, Governments must help refugee children separated from their parents to be reunited with them. That means they should get legal aid too. As we have heard, currently the UK is the only major European country that refuses this, and it is directly at odds with the best interests of the child.
This policy is leaving some of the most vulnerable children separated from their families at a time when they need their parents most. It puts child refugees in the care of local authorities, which, as we have heard, can ill afford to support them. This leaves parents with an impossible choice: never to see their closest family again or to embark on a dangerous journey to try to reach them. This is contrary to the Government’s own policy of reducing the incentives for people to attempt to enter the UK illegally. The Government have recognised these children as refugees, stating that it would be unsafe for them to return to their country of origin, yet, unlike adult refugees, they are denied the opportunity to be joined by their closest relatives.
Child refugees should at least be treated as equal to adult refugees under the Government’s family reunion policy. Indeed, they have more need for family reunion than any adult. The last time this was debated, the government spokesman claimed that a similar Bill would undermine government “safeguarding responsibilities”. I believe it would do the opposite. Having one or more parents with them in the UK is more likely, as long as checks about their best interests are made, to improve the safeguarding of children who are vulnerable, as we have heard, to recruitment by criminal gangs for modern slavery, sexual exploitation or illegal work.
The UK Government have argued that changing the rules would encourage parents to send their children on unsafe journeys to secure refugee status to enable families to join them. There is no evidence to support this argument. Family separation is not only not in the children’s interests, it is not in anyone’s interests.
Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I very much welcome and support the Bill. It takes a common-sense approach to the definition of family—what the person on the Clapham omnibus would reasonably consider, were the family to be in the United Kingdom, to be a family member who should be with other members of the same family. The public would, I believe, regard any of the family members described in the Bill as “close” rather than “extended” family.
There are not enough safe and orderly routes. According to the family reunion in the UK organisation, outside the three nationality-specific schemes, fewer than 500 people were brought to the UK by any other safe route in the year ending June 2024. The International Rescue Committee is clear that expanding safe and orderly routes, such as family reunion provided by this Bill, is the best way to ensure that people can safely access protection in the UK so that they do not have to resort to dangerous journeys.
To suggest that allowing those aged under 18 to bring close family members to this country will encourage parents to endanger their own children’s lives—sending vulnerable people on perilous journey’s just so that, if their children make it, they can apply to bring their parents to join them—risks further demonising asylum seekers as heartless, reckless and less worthy of our compassion. As a number of briefings that we have helpfully been provided with say, there is no evidence that families are sending children as—I think the word is regrettable in all the circumstances—anchors, as the House of Lords European Union Committee termed the alleged practice in its 2017 report Children in Crisis. The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, mentioned this.
Asylum seekers, by their very nature, at the very least in the early stages of their time in this country, are likely to be unfamiliar with the legal system that stands between them and family reunion. Therefore, there is a compelling fairness argument that legal assistance to help refugees navigate this system should be provided.
We need asylum seekers who have been given refuge in this country to feel welcome as full members of society and to be fully integrated, enjoying the same entitlements and privileges of those around them—including being able to be with close family members. They are likely to be happier, more productive and more loyal members of society if they can have their close family members with them, not to mention reducing the dangers of trafficking and exploitation highlighted by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.
Not only is the Bill common sense in its scope and the legal aid it seeks to provide, it is common sense in ensuring those granted sanctuary are even more loyal and productive, and in helping to put the criminal people smugglers out of business by providing a much-needed safe and orderly route for refugees’ close family members.
Baroness Neuberger (CB)
My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in the Bill—again. I will say something about why it is important. We know that, for children, bringing in family members—notably parents, but sometimes siblings—would make them feel safer. We have heard why that is important in graphic detail. It would allow them to thrive. I declare an interest as chair of the Schwab and Westheimer charitable trusts, which give young people access to education. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I too have been impressed by the resilience in appalling circumstances of some of these young people, many of whom came on their own without their parents.
This problem will not go away and the Bill will not solve it for everyone, but it will help some children significantly and it takes note of the best interests of the child. It would not only allow children to sponsor parents and siblings but allow legal aid for family reunion purposes. It is not a big ask, and here is why we should do it. In the case of the Kindertransport, so often cited in this House as astonishing British generosity before the last war—bringing 10,000 children to this country from Nazi Europe—we often hear those who came, grateful as they are, ask why the Government could not have allowed their parents to come too. In the memoirs of many of those Kindertransport children, they never got over their parents not getting out.
Andrea Hammel of Aberystwyth University puts it brilliantly, stating that
“in the last 20 years, extensive research has shown that the legacy of the 1938/39 Kindertransport should be seen in a more critical light … Most of the children who travelled to the UK on Kindertransport left their parents behind on the continent … only about half … saw … their parents again … Where parents and child refugees were united after 1945, it was not usually a straightforward happy ending. In most cases … children and parents had lost their emotional bonds and common cultural and linguistic backgrounds … Even those families that were able to reunite were often broken beyond repair”.
We know this about separated children and about long periods of separation. Why, then, will we not accept the evidence and put it into policy, allowing children to sponsor parents and siblings, giving them legal aid to do so, and allowing family reunion that way round? This is a relatively small ask of the Government, who, in opposition, sponsored this move. I very much hope they will still support it.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have played a relay with Private Members’ Bills on this important subject of refugee family reunion. She has explained the history, going back seven years and now five Bills. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield noted, the sustained interest in this cause should tell the Government something. My noble friend’s expertise and commitment to this cause, and many others in the field of asylum and immigration, have inspired me and continue to do so.
The Bill would address some of the key gaps in eligibility and remove some of the existing barriers to family reunion. Notably, it would enable child refugees to sponsor their close family members—parents and siblings—as well as cautiously expand the range of family members that adult refugees are allowed to sponsor to include siblings, parents and adult dependent children. The core proposition is that families belong together and that we should do what we can to mend the effects of war and persecution that tear them apart. It is simply inhumane to keep families apart.
This Government are, thankfully, committed to the European Convention on Human Rights. What about its Article 8, on the right to family life? What about the Convention on the Rights of the Child? My noble friend Lady Walmsley asked why the Government are not prioritising the best interests of the child.
Family ties are a key reason why people risk their lives on dangerous journeys to reach the UK, so safe and legal family reunion routes provide a vital alternative to life-threatening channel crossings, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick—still my friend—stressed. Restricting family reunion drives vulnerable women and children into the hands of ruthless people smugglers and traffickers, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, so forcefully reminded us. Family reunion accelerates refugees’ integration in the UK. Permitting a refugee to be with their family will greatly improve their chance of leading a stable and productive life, without threats to their well-being and mental health. Imagine trying to move forward with your life and work while worrying about the safety of family back home.
Family relationships can be key to the psychological recovery of a child refugee. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, referred to the grief of the Kindertransport children. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, reminded us, family unity may save the public purse; it costs £30,000 a year to look after a child in a residential home or foster care who might be supported by parents and other relatives if they were allowed to come to the UK—memo to Rachel Reeves.
In 2022, the previous Government demonstrated an admirable awareness of how refugees need their families by introducing the Ukraine family scheme, as has already been referred to, which allowed Ukrainians to sponsor a wide range of extended family members. This Bill suggests definitions of family that are not nearly as broad as the Ukraine scheme.
The previous Government defended the ban on child refugees sponsoring their parents or close family members to join them—in which we are an outlier in Europe, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, stressed—by claiming that it would act as a pull factor, encouraging more children to make dangerous journeys to the UK. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, and my noble friend Lord Oates cited, in 2016 the EU Committee of this House categorically concluded that there was no evidence provided by EU member states operating the family reunification directive, which permits children to sponsor family members but which the UK declined to opt into, that children had been exploited by being sent ahead for other family members to join them. Its report on child migrants said:
“We received no evidence of families sending children as ‘anchors’ following the implementation of the Family Reunification Directive by other Member States”.
The Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place reached a similar conclusion under the chairmanship of the right honourable Yvette Cooper, now Home Secretary. In any case, the deterrence argument assumes it to be morally as well as legally sound to block the right to family reunification in order to send signals to prospective immigrants to give it up. This is surely not going to be the new Government’s position.
It is important to note that, while the Bill would make a big change for the families able to be safely reunited, the increase in the number of refugee family reunion visas issued would be relatively small. My noble friend answered the noble Lord, Lord Murray, who made an intervention without a speech. The Refugee Council and Safe Passage have estimated that allowing children to sponsor close relatives could result in between 240 and 750 family members being granted visas each year.
Just over two years ago, during Second Reading on a similar Bill that I introduced, there was an important contribution from the then shadow Chief Whip—I will name him—the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, now the actual Chief Whip. He said:
“I support the Bill and hope that we will get a positive response from the Minister … This issue is not going to go away until the Government deal with the question of how we can have proper safe and legal routes and deal with the criminal gangs. This Bill is one attempt to deal with those problems”.—[Official Report, 8/7/2022; col. 1242.]
I rest my case. This remains the case in October 2024. If the new Government are serious about strengthening safe routes, supporting women and children, endorsing family life and tackling the smuggling and trafficking gangs, they will back this Bill. I sincerely hope that the Minister can give us a positive response today to this modest and doable Bill, as my noble friend says.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who has been a very strong advocate for family reunion over many years and a number of Bills. She will recall that the previous Conservative Government did not support this or other similar Bills, and we still have concerns about the likely impact of this Bill. This is on the grounds that it would potentially jeopardise vulnerable children’s safety, as well as having substantial implications for our already stretched public resources, including legal aid and other budgets.
I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that families belong together, but our view in government was that this Bill is too wide in scope because it gives the Secretary of State enormous discretionary power to grant people leave to remain in this country. The Bill is not limited to granting leave to enter to family members but also to any
“such other persons as the Secretary of State may determine”.
Clause 1(4) says that
“‘protection status’ has the same meaning as in the immigration rules, meaning a person with … permission to stay as a refugee … humanitarian protection … temporary refugee permission, and … temporary humanitarian protection”.
That is potentially a very large—indeed, an almost impossible to predict—number of people. The Library briefing note has published data released by the Home Office on family reunions. It shows that 16,244 people were granted family reunion visas in the year ending June 2024, which suggests that the system is not as dysfunctional as has been painted.
We are clear that significantly expanding our policy to enable children to sponsor family members goes against our safeguarding responsibilities. It is highly likely that, if passed, the Bill would create further incentives for more children to be encouraged, or even forced, to leave their families and risk extremely dangerous journeys to the UK in order to sponsor later relatives. I accept that the committee has said that that is not the case, but it is very interesting that a number of the EU countries that it cited as providing no evidence are, as we speak, busily setting up what they are calling return hubs. Poland has shut its borders, and France, Italy and Germany are all looking at these sorts of things. I suggest that what they are doing and what they are saying are not necessarily entirely the same.
Of course, it is not possible to prove this—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, you cannot prove a negative—but she should be under no illusions that the criminal people smugglers will be watching developments with considerable interest and an eye to profit. I was watching Sky News recently and one Yemeni male said, “The previous Government, they wanted to deport us, but now they are making the process easier”. What happens here is noted and it does change behaviour. As we have seen—including, I believe, overnight—that can have fatal consequences.
As we have seen in a number of EU states, rules such as the one this Bill seeks to implement would open up children to huge exploitation risk. That completely contradicts the hard work and commitment of the previous Conservative Government in protecting children from modern slavery and exploitation. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, illustrated some of the practical difficulties with regard to this work—work that I know the current Government are committed to maintaining and no doubt building upon. We refused to play into the hands of criminal gangs, and therefore we should not extend this policy to allow child refugees to sponsor family members into the UK.
On legal aid, I reassure noble Lords that the Conservative Party fully supports the principle of family unity and shares the concerns for those families who have been separated by conflict or oppression. The Bill proposes reinstating legal aid in family reunion cases, but I remind noble Lords that legal aid for refugee family reunion may already be available under the exceptional case funding scheme. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said that that was very difficult to access, but again the statistics surely indicate that it is not that difficult if 16,244 people were able to achieve family reunion visas in the year ending June 2024.
Failure to provide legal aid would mean risking a breach in the individual’s human rights, subject to the means and merits test. In 2019, the previous Government amended the scope of legal aid so that separated migrant children are able to receive civil legal aid for applications by their family members and extended family members. This includes entry clearance and leave to enter or to remain in the UK made under the Immigration Rules or outside the rules on the basis of exceptional, compassionate or compelling circumstances. We must remember that legal aid is paid for by taxpayers and resources are not limitless. It is important that it is provided for those most in need, including those who seek protection.
I shall finish here, but on the subject of scarce resources I will stray a little from the brief, if I may. I was reading yesterday that the Development Minister is on record as saying that the Government intend to reverse the previous Government’s policy of using some development aid to pay for migrant and refugee housing. That is allowed under the rules. Nevertheless, the previous Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, provided a top-up to mitigate some of the effects. Will the Minister shed any light on the Government’s intentions in this area? Will development money be used? If yes, will the Treasury provide a top-up, as has reportedly been requested by the Foreign Secretary? I mention this against the backdrop that I was reading that hotels are being reopened and, no doubt, the daily costs are rising.
This country has a proud record of supporting refugees, from the Kindertransport, as has been mentioned, to the Homes for Ukraine scheme and ACRS, but we must ensure that the rules are not abused. We must also ensure that the safeguarding of children is enabled by our legislation and that taxpayers’ interests are paramount. For the reasons I have set out, we on these Benches will be unable to support the Bill.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing the Bill before the House today. I feel a bit of a latecomer to the debate, having heard that there have been four or five previous attempts to cover this issue, before my membership of this House—indeed, before my membership of another place ceased in 2019. I appreciate the tenacity of the noble Baroness and will certainly reflect on the comments made not just by her but by Members across the House today.
This Government are trying to reset the debate on migration issues as a whole. We are undertaking some significant policy changes which will come before this House, on a range of issues to do with gangs, boat crossings and border security, which will reflect the change of tone in the approach to tackling some of these difficult migration issues. I understand and respect the reasons why the noble Baroness has brought this Bill forward today and hope I can answer some of the points that she raised.
Perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that we are still in the 106th day of the Government. There is therefore an opportunity to look at a four-year plus programme, not just at what happens in the first 106 days, which have already been a time of significant challenge for the Home Office on a range of issues and will continue to be so.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for raising this very important issue. I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful and passionate contributions to our debate today and for their analysis of some of the reasons why those drivers are present. I reassure all noble Lords that the Government fully support the principle of family unity and share their concerns regarding families who have been separated by conflict or persecution. It is for precisely that reason that the Government support what has been referred to already: an existing comprehensive framework for reuniting refugees with their families in the UK. I emphasise to the House that this framework is set out in the Immigration Rules, which a number of noble Lords have referenced today, and in our refugee family reunion policy.
The Government fully recognise that families will become fragmented and that the nature of conflict and persecution, referred to by a number of noble Lords, will continue to cause difficulties. However, the family reunion policy allows those with protection status in the UK to sponsor their spouse or partner and children under the age of 18 to join them here in the family unit, when an individual has fled their country of origin to seek protection in the UK. That family reunion policy has seen more than 62,605 individuals reunited with their family members in the last decade, when the party of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, was in power. Over half of those individuals are children and this significant number highlights the policy’s success in providing a vital safe route.
There is no fee for family reunion. Sponsors are also not required to meet any financial or maintenance requirements. Immediate family members, such as partners and children under 18, are entitled to that sponsorship and protection status. It is very important to recognise the baseline from which this House begins, which is that the UK’s refugee family reunion policy is in this regard at least as generous—in some cases, more generous—than European and non-European countries.
I also invite noble Lords to consider the range of routes across the Immigration Rules through which family reunification can be sought. In addition to the refugee family reunion policy, the UK wants to meet its international obligations, and this Government certainly want to continue to meet theirs, so that close relatives with protection status in the UK can sponsor children where there are serious and compelling circumstances. This can be in situations where the child has no family other than a non-parent relative in the UK, who they could reasonably expect to support or care for them. Furthermore, individuals with that protection status can sponsor adult dependent relatives living overseas to join them as well.
There are issues already in place where those international obligations can be met and, in line with those obligations, this Government recognise that some applicants do not meet those current rules. None the less, in exceptional circumstances their applications will be granted by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, where a refused application would mean a breach of their family life and responsibilities. I recognise the difficult situations for people whose protection status in the UK means that they find themselves across the world from their family members. I take this moment to make clear the Government’s commitment to reuniting families whose lives have been disrupted due to conflict or persecution.
Ministers always come to a “However”, and I now come to mine. However, there are challenges in this Bill that the Government need to reflect on, some of which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, in his contribution. I see some of them in the Bill. The focus of today’s debate has been on children; I understand that, but the Bill is about not just children but the wider family, and there is no assessment or acceptance of what the parameter of that might be. That needs reflection by the Government as part of their consideration of today’s debate. It is essential that this Government take time to reflect on the issues that have been raised in this House, give thoughtful consideration to them and look at them in the context of the wider government policy we are now undertaking.
This Government are trying to establish a border force and put some real action against the criminal gangs to stop them operating. They are trying to disrupt the gangs through ways that have not been utilised before. They are trying to ensure that we have in place a speedier, more efficient and more effective asylum and refugee system than we had previously. They are trying as well at making sure that we look at using immigration for the wider good of the economy. All those issues are currently on the table, and it is important that we examine the concerns that a number of noble Members have raised in this House in the context of that wider policy. In looking at any policy changes, the Government have to strike the right balance between what they want to do as the right thing—ensuring the protection of children and reuniting refugees and their family members in the UK—and, difficult though it is to say this from the Dispatch Box, the issues around local authorities, public services and the pressures on them. They have to take into account the way this Bill will impact the wider government policy on asylum, migration and the other issues before this House today.
Expanding the policy to extended family would—undoubtedly, in my view and in those of my colleagues across the Home Office—have a significant and difficult impact on stretched public resources. It would also mean that we have to bring more people into scope of the policy, including those who may not necessarily need international protection themselves. I want to make sure that we examine in detail the points put before the House today and the points in the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. We need to do that in a way that makes sure that we maximise the best use of our resources and efficiencies within the complete picture of the Home Office’s approach to this issue.
We are clear that significantly expanding the policy to enable children to sponsor family members would also potentially cause difficulties around safeguarding responsibilities. Again, I am acutely aware of and have looked at—and will look again at —the issues raised by committees of this House and the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place. But on our 106th day in office, it would be rash to take those steps today without a reflection on that as a long-term responsibility. It is important that we make sure that we safeguard our own responsibilities, as well as safeguarding the children who will come here as refugees, by looking at that in a clear and open way.
While the issue of children being sent as a magnet for their parents may be controversial and have no merit—some discussions may be needed—it is important that we reflect on that and look at it in detail. We must make sure that the policy we bring forward as a Government meets the obligation of safeguarding children while meeting our international responsibilities and doing what we said we would do: ensuring that, wherever possible, family reunion is important. Again, there are criminal gangs which will watch this debate and the Bill’s progress and seek to exploit these issues. It is important that we reflect on that in a sensible and productive way, hearing what the House has said while looking at that in detail downstream.
Family unity is a key priority under the Government’s policy and there are ways through which we can do that. Mention has been made of Article 8 of the ECHR. I am proud to say today that this Government will not withdraw or scrap the ECHR; we are committed to its implementation. The right to family and private life is a qualified right, however. It is therefore the prerogative of a responsible Government to consider the economic well-being of the country and to balance Article 8 with the interests of maintaining effective immigration control and protecting the public purse. That is not to say that we rule out the points made by the noble Baroness, but we have to reflect on them, look at them and understand what the Bill means in practice.
The Bill would reinstate legal aid in family reunion cases. I remind noble Lords that legal aid for refugee family reunion can be applied for under the exceptional case funding scheme, where failure to provide legal aid would risk breaching an individual’s human rights. Under the scheme, separated migrant children are able to receive civil legal aid for applications made by their family members and extended family members. This includes support for entry clearance and permission to stay in the UK made either under the Immigration Rules or outside the rules on the basis of exceptional circumstances or compassionate and compelling circumstances. However, as has been mentioned, legal aid is paid for by the taxpayer. As noble Lords will understand, we will shortly come to a Budget and resources are not limitless. It is important that we examine the demands made today in the light of those resource pressures, ensuring that we still support those who need and seek our protection.
The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, made some points on discussions that he has read about overseas aid and development. Some of those points relate to Budget discussions and, again, the House will understand that I am not at liberty to discuss those today, but I will reflect on what the noble Lord said. If there are points that I can share with him, I will certainly write to him in due course.
As I set out, the Government’s family reunion policy is designed to welcome the immediate family members of those recognised as needing protection in the United Kingdom. We also provide protection to the most vulnerable people in areas and regions of conflict and instability. That global humanitarian need will continue to grow: the UNHCR has assessed that, by the end of June this year, more than 122 million people around the world had been forced from their homes, with 37 million of them now refugees.
This Government have a generous UK resettlement offer, which is an integral part of our challenge in addressing the needs of vulnerable refugees. The UK will continue to provide safe and legal routes for tens of thousands of people to start new lives here through the UK resettlement scheme, as well as community sponsorship and mandated resettlement schemes. Take the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme as an example: it has now provided support for more than 28,000 people, including women and children. The Ukraine family resettlement scheme and the Homes for Ukraine scheme have also enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals to seek sanctuary in the United Kingdom.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for raising this issue and thank noble Lords for contributing to our thought-provoking discussion today. This will remain an emotive issue—one that it is important to consider and one on which the Government, in particular the Home Office, will reflect in future. I look forward to continuing the debate and listening further when this Bill progresses in this House.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in support of the Bill. I know that, for at least two, being here was not straightforward. I also put on record the support that I have been asked to mention by four who have had to be elsewhere—the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard and Lord Purvis of Tweed.
I thank the organisations that have briefed Peers for this debate and the individuals in them for all their work in the sector. I know how pressed they are. I will not name them all, other than to thank the Refugee Council—Jon Featonby has helped me so much to get this Bill and its predecessors to Second Reading.
I am sorry that, over the years, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and I have been put into oppositional positions, as it were. It is not something that I wish at a personal level. He said that the system is not as dysfunctional as it has been painted, but I think that it is dysfunctional for the children whom we have been talking about.
The noble Lord also talked about playing into the hands of smugglers. It is widely regarded that establishing safe routes is the best way to address smuggling. I and the whole House look forward to a policy from the new Government on this. The Minister referred to a change of tone; I look forward to a change of policy and a change of law. The Government accept the importance of family reunion, but it is more than children joining their parents. It is illogical that it does not apply the other way round.
The term “exceptional” is prayed in aid, in respect of both legal aid and how the rules can be disapplied. I think that this separation should always be regarded as exceptional; it is the separation that is exceptional. I hope that there may be an opportunity to reflect with the Government, not against them. I anticipated a number of the objections that were made but, on resource pressures, several noble Lords made it clear that those pressures are best reduced by simplifying the rules and procedures. My noble friend Lord Oates referred to the processes; if they were smoother, that would save everyone an awful lot.
I am not going to take the time to refer to all the points that have been made but I realised that, since I have to wear spectacles, I could not see that I had rather more time left at the beginning. So I will take a moment to share with the House the responses that I received from the Migration Observatory, which I contacted to ask about numbers in preparation for this debate. It said that, as so many factors influence asylum migration, isolating the impact of family and reunion rights on asylum flows would be difficult statistically. However, it gave me two examples that it thought were instructive.
In 2016, Ireland changed domestic policy to enable children to sponsor family members and saw no significant change in numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the two years following the change. Very properly, the Migration Observatory said that one could always argue that, absent the change, numbers would have been smaller, but this is again impossible to verify statistically.
The example of Norway, which has family reunion for these children, suggests that a small share sponsor family members to join them—just 12% from 1990 to 2015. The Migration Observatory also refers to a report by the Refugee Council and Safe Passage, which said that this small percentage is supported by anecdotal evidence from service providers in the UK, which say that separated children are often unable to locate their family members. This makes sponsoring them very difficult. I beg to move.
Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]
Friday 17th January 2025
(4 days, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 13-I Marshalled list for Committee - (15 Jan 2025)
Lord Murray of Blidworth
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, which is tabled in my name, I will speak in support of the other amendments in this group, all of which relate to Clause 1.
It is worth pointing out in a sentence that the present position under Appendix FM of the UK Immigration Rules is that a person granted refugee or protection status is entitled to make an application for family members to join in two circumstances. Depending on eligibility requirements, they must be a partner—that is, someone in a genuine relationship—or a child under the age of 18 who is not married or in a civil partnership. That is the present legal position. This Bill would have the effect of broadening that application, and we are going to look at that in a second.
At the Second Reading of this Bill, which was held on 18 October, I intervened on the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to ask whether she could inform the House of how many people she envisaged would be granted refugee family reunion status on an annual basis under this Bill. Her answer was:
“I will not go into that now; I do not have it in my speech. I am time-limited and conscious of other people’s need for that time. I will happily tell the noble Lord later”.—[Official Report, 18/10/24; col. 360.]
I have yet to be told how many people the noble Baroness envisages would be admitted on an annual basis under these measures.
Clause 1(1) provides that:
“The Secretary of State must, within 6 months … lay … a statement of changes in the … ‘immigration rules’”.
That would have the effect, as per the wording in subsection 1(3), of requiring that there be leave to
“enter and remain in the United Kingdom for family members of a person granted protection status”.
Nothing in that clause suggests that there is any control on the number of people who may be admitted.
The term “family members” is specifically defined in Clause (1)(5)(a), which provides that it includes a person’s
“parent …. spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner … child, including adopted child, who is either … under the age of 18 or … over the age of 18, but dependent on the person… sibling, including adoptive sibling”.
Clause (1)(5(b) states that it includes:
“such other persons as the Secretary of State may determine, having regard to … the importance of maintaining family unity … the best interests of a child … the physical, emotional, psychological or financial dependency between a person granted protection status and another person … any risk to the physical, emotional or psychological wellbeing of a person who was granted protection status”,
and
“such other matters as the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.
This is possibly the most expansive definition of “additional family member” that could be conceived.
My amendments are targeted to address that issue in the Bill. The reason for this is that, clearly, the admission of refugees’ additional family members to this country places a strain on domestic limited resources, including accommodation, financial support, education facilities and medical facilities. As the House of Lords Library briefing noted, since 2015, some 64,000 additional family members have been admitted under the present scheme. I suggest that, under these proposals, that number would be multiplied very many times.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I ask the noble Lord, who I think has also put forward Amendment 14, whether children who have been formally adopted are contained within the Immigration Rules?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Appendix FM, as I understand it—although I would have to check—does allow for an application to be considered by the Home Office in respect of a formally adopted child. But I am sure the Minister can confirm, or otherwise, in relation to that.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Given that the last Government did not set up safe, legal routes and actually encouraged the small boats, does the noble Lord have no shame in actually suggesting that this will do the same?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Well, I am afraid that the noble Baroness is wrong: there are a number of safe and legal routes, as she will hear in a moment from the Minister. We are part of the UK resettlement scheme and there are a number of other routes, including the Ukraine family scheme and the Hong Kong scheme: these are all safe and legal routes. So I have absolutely no shame in standing here and asserting that this Bill would be contrary to the interests of this country.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to my amendments in group 1 and to support my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. I extend my apologies at the outset to your Lordships’ House for the fact that I was not able to be here on 18 October for Second Reading due to a long-standing family engagement.
Given that I have tabled a significant number of amendments, I think it would be helpful to explain why my noble friends and I are seeking to amend the Bill. First, I put on record my appreciation of the commitment and tenacity of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in seeking to get this measure on to the statute book on a number of occasions. Notwithstanding that, this is a very poorly drafted and ill thought through Bill, which is why 32 amendments have been tabled to it in Committee. It gives rise to wide-ranging ramifications in terms of public finances, the delivery of public services and community cohesion. It is a de facto legislative open door to unlimited immigration—let us be honest about that. If noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches wish to reject that analysis, I am more than happy to give way.
It is also inherently unfair on those seeking regular routes to indefinitely remain and to citizenship. Finally, more generally, I believe it is predicated on a mischaracterisation and a misunderstanding of whether the UK has indeed discharged its historic and current proper humanitarian and compassionate international duties to refugees. I think there is significant evidence that it has.
So, it is a bad Bill, but even now, at this late stage, I believe it can be improved. It is as well to say that the UK has a long and proud record of providing refuge to those fleeing persecution, including Jewish refugees in the 1930s and Ugandan Asians in the 1970s, some of whom came to my former constituency, Peterborough. Via bespoke humanitarian routes the UK actually resettled 31,000 refugees between 2012 and 2022, excluding the Afghan resettlement scheme and the Ukraine and Hong Kong programmes.
Indeed, in 2023, 62,000 grants of application for asylum were made, against 84,000 in-country applications, the second highest in the European league table. It equates to 76%: significantly higher than, for instance, Italy, Spain or France, and up from 33% in 2018. I accept that it has since dropped to around 67% but, with these numbers, the provision of basic accommodation, a weekly allowance, free healthcare and education for children is nevertheless a very significant drain on public resources, however laudable the aims are.
It would be appropriate to move to specifically consider the amendments that I have tabled in group 1. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my Amendments 3, 13, 18, 23, 26 and 27, which would all add sensible and reasonable safeguards to the Bill to ensure the integrity of our immigration system. Amendment 3 seeks to replace the proposed 21-day implementation period for changes to the Immigration Rules with a more measured timeframe of three months. Such a change reflects a pragmatic approach to policy-making, ensuring that any new rules governing refugee family reunion are implemented effectively and require sufficient time for consultation, preparation and operational adjustments, as well as for proper parliamentary scrutiny and oversight in this House and the other place.
A rushed 21-day period risks overwhelming local authorities, housing providers and other stakeholders, potentially undermining the system’s integrity. In my own home area of Peterborough, we have seen significant strains on the delivery of public services, particularly things such as GP surgeries, the provision of local authority and housing association housing, and primary school places. Three months provides a balanced compromise, enabling thorough preparation while allowing the Government to move forward in a timely manner. This measured approach ensures that the new policies will be robust and sustainable.
Amendment 13 seeks to remove “unmarried partner” from the scope of family reunion eligibility. This amendment aligns family reunion provisions with the established principles of the Immigration Rules, which prioritise formal marital or civil partnerships over less formal relationships. Quite frankly, in the real world, it would be almost impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that an unmarried partner is a bona fide claimant under these rules, and that is one of the many holes in the Bill as drafted.
So this is a matter of both consistency and clarity. Recognising only spouses and civil partners provides clear criteria for eligibility, reducing the potential for fraudulent claims. It also upholds traditional values that recognise marriage and civil partnership as the cornerstone of a stable family unit as it goes forward towards citizenship and playing a meaningful and useful role in UK society. This amendment ensures that the UK’s immigration policies remain fair, transparent and in line with public expectations. In fact, if your Lordships consider comparative regimes across Europe and other jurisdictions, they will see that this is very much in line with the practices adopted in other countries.
Amendment 18 proposes reducing the age limit for siblings eligible for family reunion from 25 to 21 years old. There is of course significant scientific data that says that a human being is not fully developed—certainly, their brain is not fully developed—perhaps until their mid-20s, but that is contested. It is generally accepted across the world that you are an adult either at 18 or, in the case of some legislation, at 21. Such a change reflects the practical realities of adulthood and independence. At 21, individuals are generally expected to be self-sufficient and capable of making their own rational decisions and establishing their own lifestyle.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
It is an advisory time limit. I thank the noble Lord for that.
It would also be impossible to ascertain the veracity of a claim in foreign jurisdictions.
This amendment would ensure that family reunion rights were extended only to those whose adoptive status had been legally verified. Such a change would protect vulnerable children while ensuring that the system was not exploited; in fact, it would specifically protect children and young people from being trafficked for sexual or other exploitation.
Amendment 27 would introduce a requirement for medical health assessments for all applicants before their family reunion status was approved. This is a common-sense measure that ensures the health and well-being of those entering the UK. Early health assessments can identify any medical issues requiring treatment, ensuring that appropriate support is provided, and additionally, these assessments protect public health by identifying and addressing any communicable diseases. This policy is pursued by many countries across the world and is sensible and responsible. Such a policy is not only practical but humane, reflecting the UK’s commitment to safeguarding both incoming refugees and the wider community.
In conclusion, these amendments demonstrate a commitment to ensuring that the Bill is both compassionate and practical. They would uphold public confidence, protect national security, and promote fairness and transparency in the immigration system. I urge the Committee to support these thoughtful and necessary provisions.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, the speakers’ list for today states:
“Other speakers within each group are expected to keep within 10 minutes”.
If noble Lords could respect that, your Lordships’ House would probably appreciate it.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of the amendments in my name in this group, and to support generally the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Jackson, who have already spoken on theirs.
My amendments are Amendments 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19 and 25. Amendment 4 is designed to increase the time to a year. Amendment 7 would ensure that costs, numbers and funds were all understood by each of the bodies concerned—authorities and taxpayers—that fund the asylum system, and that they were itemised and publicly announced. Amendments 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17 and 19 are designed to tighten and clarify the provisions governing age and to tighten the provisions governing status, about which my noble friends Lord Jackson and Lord Murray have already spoken. Amendment 25 is designed to make entitlement transparent, by bringing the identity documents needed in line with existing immigration arrangements.
Amendment 4 would require one year to pass before the Secretary of State was required to provide for family reunion. Amendment 7 would ensure that costs and numbers in the arrangements for funding and accommodating family members under the Bill were fully understood and that we knew who was funding the Bill, whether already hard-pressed councils, the Exchequer or both were paying, and whether people and families covered by the Bill would have priority over other applicants for local authority housing and public services.
The other amendments aim to ensure that those covered are eligible to entitlement on clear grounds. We need a Bill to be clear about the grounds of age and status, and in accord with UK law.
My final amendment in this group, Amendment 25, aims to underpin the security arrangements for entitlement by way of specific requirements for identity under the Identity Documents Act 2010.
All amendments therefore aim to ensure that, given the very large and growing number of applicants each year, such a significant transfer of population—the entire family for each applicant, which has serious consequences, including financial and practical—is limited strictly to the immediate family, children under 18 at the time the Bill passes and parents of such children covered under the Bill. Even then, the potential cost will be significant, and it will add to the costs and demands on the already overstretched asylum system, the first focus of which must be on asylum seekers themselves. The priority must be to ensure that applications are processed quickly and efficiently. I am very glad the present Government are continuing their work to hurry up the processing.
Resources should therefore be spent on those seeking asylum. We should seek to introduce the necessary rules to supervise, limit and identify those strictly covered under the Bill and those who believe that they have an entitlement. There are complex arrangements here and they need to be clarified.
Local communities and organisations should be consulted, because we do not want to see unpleasantness and objections from local communities unprepared for housing groups of asylum seekers in small villages or towns across the country.
We have no certain idea of the numbers, and I would be grateful—I am waiting with interest—to hear the noble Baroness let us know what they are. However, we know how many people made asylum applications in the year ending September 2024—77,066 over the 12-month period, relating to 99,700 people. If the Bill proceeds and the numbers expand, we will have no idea of how many family members will be covered by the Bill in addition to those already covered in law.
We know that the costs are high. The asylum system itself costs £5 billion. It is the highest level of spending on record, and it is up by a third on the previous year. The costs of the UK asylum system were £5.38 billion in November 2024—the highest, as I have said, and 12 times higher than when these statistics were kept in this format in 2013-14.
The Home Office figure for asylum costs covers direct cash support and accommodation, wider staffing and other related migration and border activity, but not the operation of channel-crossing interceptions to the UK. We need to take account of the additional costs this measure would put on the system, in terms of both compliance and money, and whether this will take away from the rapid processing of existing asylum claims, which should be and rightly is one of the priorities this Government are focusing on. Adding family members could increase the number by a factor of anything from three upwards.
To conclude, there is no appetite in this country for further immigration of that magnitude. Our housing, education and health services are creaking at the seams, with continued pressures adding to the burden they and taxpayers face. We have already seen that the Government intend to raise tax even further, to the tune of £25 billion a year. Total immigration was in the region of 700,000 last year. Voters want it brought down.
For this reason, I urge the Government to accept my amendments and the other amendments in this group if they strengthen what I am proposing. It is in line with the Government’s promise to bring immigration down. For those for whom a statement is made that family reunion can take place, the amendments I propose will curtail it to immediate family. They require clarity and tighten up the arrangements for identifying those covered. They are in line with current UK arrangements. They would ensure that public authorities and voters are aware of the cost and that there is more time for authorities, local communities and the Government to ensure that nothing is rushed, because it will end up being a mess.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly on Amendment 19. Like my noble friend Lord Jackson, I apologise that I was not able to be here at Second Reading. I simply echo his earlier comments without going into any detail. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lawlor for tabling Amendment 19 because I have a question and I would be grateful if the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, were able to address the drafting.
Earlier today, I made the familiar comment in a Second Reading that, however good a Bill is, the devil is in the detail. I would like to address just one part of the detail to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Amendment 19 seeks to
“Clause 1, page 2, line 9, leave out paragraph (b)”.
That paragraph refers to
“such other persons as the Secretary of State may determine, having regard to—”
and it gives some exemptions. Rightly, of course, it talks about the best interests of a child. That is the crucial issue underpinning, I am sure, what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, wishes to do in bringing forward the Bill.
However, I am concerned about the drafting of Clause 1(5)(b)(iii). It applies to
“the physical, emotional, psychological or financial dependency between a person granted protection status and another person”.
This is a hugely wide lack of definition about who we are talking about. I am assuming we are talking in the first terms about a child. The person might be the child, but who is the other person?
It goes far wider than just a family connection: there is financial dependency. I feel that that particular part of this clause requires further investigation. I do not propose to extend the time today on that—I have some ideas myself about how the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, might be able to better present that part of this clause—but as it stands, I certainly would not be able to support that part of the Bill.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, I oppose the amendments in this group introduced by their three proposers. I do so for five reasons.
The first is that I believe in putting the traffickers out of business, and studies show that about half of those in the camps in Calais are family reunion cases: they are people wishing to join members of their family here.
The second is that the principal virtue, in my book, of the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is that it deals with the anomaly where we, with the Swiss and Liechtenstein, are the only countries in Europe that do not allow a resident refugee child granted asylum status to sponsor family members to come into the country. Our position is an anomaly, which, in my view, is quite unworthy of us and quite unfitting with our pride in being a sanctuary country.
Thirdly, I oppose the amendments because they are unworkable. I think the intention is probably to make them unworkable, but in practice, they would be unworkable. A good example is Amendment 7, from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, which would require the Secretary of State to publish in the initial statement and every six months how many people would be expected to come in under the Act and the approximate cost per person. We know the answer, actually. The Refugee Council study established that the numbers would be somewhere in the range of 240 to 750 a year, if we, as every other European country, except Liechtenstein and Switzerland, does, allowed a resident child granted asylum status to bring in family members. The range would be no more than 750—it might be as little as 240—and the cost would be about £1,000 a head.
So we are talking de minimis here on money but constructing extremely elaborate bureaucracy and laying requirements on local government—and central government, because we are talking about the accommodation requirements—to do an immense amount of reporting. This, for Members of this House who oppose overregulation and bureaucracy, is a rather surprising structure. I, of course, was a bureaucrat—a proud bureaucrat. I should be delighted to see many more bureaucrats given entertainment and occupation, but actually I think it is a very bad idea.
My fourth reason is that overspecifying, going into all the detail that this does, is itself a bad thing. I think it is correct that the Immigration Rules lay down the details and primary legislation should not. That is the right way of doing it, and all this heavy detail in here is making this a very peculiar piece of primary legislation and is overlapping with the existing Immigration Rules.
My fifth and last point, which relates to that one, is to ask the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth—because he is a distinguished lawyer and I am neither distinguished nor a lawyer—to think hard a contrario. If we set out such extraordinarily detailed specifications in primary legislation, what about the other Immigration Rules that do not simply copy primary legislation? Will it not be open to individuals to argue in the courts, against the authorities, that, because the specification in the Immigration Rules was not set out in primary legislation, it is in some way defective? I think it is very dangerous to get into a contrario territory, but I bow to the lawyers in this Committee who know more about it than I do.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for his kindness in giving way. Do I understand his main point to be that real-time, empirical data is inimical to the formulation of good public policy? Is he actually saying that we should not collect data in order to make policy, for the future of our country, in respect of the provision of health services, housing and all the rest? That is a very odd argument to make, if I am perfectly honest.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I regret that I was not here for Second Reading, but my Green Party colleague, my noble friend Lady Bennett, was.
I absolutely oppose all these amendments. I have been at debates on a couple of Bills in this Session where the Conservative Peers have been, I would say, playing games. That does not show respect to your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
The noble Lord, Lord Murray, gave me a very sneaky answer earlier. If he is a distinguished lawyer, I can see how he might win cases by being sneaky like that. He knows very well—look, he is laughing.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
The noble Lord has had his say.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray, knows very well that when I say “safe and legal routes”, I mean for any and every nationality—not just the few that the previous Government thought were acceptable to come to Britain.
Also, if noble Lords are rude enough to go over the advisory time limit and show disrespect to the Committee, perhaps their microphones should be turned off.
On the other Bills I mentioned, the Conservatives have been filibustering. They have been making some of these Bills quite unpleasant to sit through when one cares about the issue at hand. Personally, I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, even though he did not give way to me. He is absolutely right that this is petty bickering; I really cannot stand it. We need safe and legal routes. The previous Government did not give us those routes for all nationalities, which means—
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
No; I will give way in a moment—perhaps.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
No. The previous Government actually encouraged the small boats. They encouraged people to come by routes that were not safe.
The Green Party supports this Bill. It is time to remove the barriers so that desperate children can be reunited with their families in safety.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I declare that I—along with Fiona Mactaggart, then an MP—wrote a report on children in northern France, Calais and Dunkirk some years ago. I find this whole group of amendments to the Bill extremely sad.
I want to concentrate on a legal issue, which I raise to some extent with the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was certainly not an immigration lawyer but, as far as I understand the Immigration Rules, civil partners, who come up in Amendment 13, and adopted children, who come up in Amendment 14—both are referred to in Clause 1(5)—are already within the Immigration Rules. Consequently, if the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are right, they are trying to reduce the Immigration Rules, not increase them.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I was unable to attend Second Reading, but I have come in today especially because this debate is a very interesting one. I say to those who really want to hear a well-argued and well-reasoned debate that it is the convention of this House that, when someone seeks to intervene with a point and they ask the speaker to give way, that person should be heard. It is very sad to see the tone of this debate.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest in that I am supported by the RAMP organisation. At the outset, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, if I caught him correctly, said that it was difficult to explain why the amendments in this group were laid. That is what I heard—I apologise if it is not what he said. It seems to me, from the conversation we have had on this group of amendments, that it is primarily about making further restrictions on what is already in the rules of our system and, secondly, about creating differences in timings. Those would then make it more difficult to put forward the principles that lie behind this Bill, which of course is about filling some of the eligibility gaps that currently exist for family reunion.
On timings, it strikes me as strange that we have two sets of amendments pulling in opposite directions. In one set we have amendments from noble Lords on the Conservative Benches saying that they want to restrict the amount of time that the Home Office and the Government have to make the new arrangements, while in the other set they are trying to expand them so that they have longer to do it. I do not know whether we can make a judgment on that, but it seems to me that what is common practice in the timings for dealing with changes that the Government have to make—the current procedure in this Bill of six months for the Government to prepare, and 21 days before Parliament—
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I fear that he is wrong on this, in that we are seeking to open a larger window for parliamentary oversight, in terms of a statement laid by the Secretary of State under the conditions laid down in the Bill, but to give more time for those people more acutely affected at local level, such as local authorities, police and other agencies. That is why he may see a slight difference there, but they are not mutually exclusive ideas in respect of our amendments.
Lord German (LD)
I understand the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, but I do not understand how they can be put alongside those of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, which seek to increase the time overall. Anyway, I am sure that noble Lords in this Committee will be able to make their minds up, having heard that interjection just then.
Beyond timing, of course, there are a number of issues relating to restrictions. The issue fundamental to this is that, on the family reunion potential, those who come with family reunion protection are largely women and children. We must not forget that this is the group of people we are talking about. Family reunion costs less to the British purse than it does if you have to manage things through the state. Looking after young people by local authorities does not come cheap, and having people within their own family background certainly helps to support every aspect of family life—but particularly for young people it makes sure they have a good start in life and can proceed.
I will not repeat the numbers because I accept everything that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, but they are small. There are other numbers that might give an indication of the future—the ones that I think the noble Lord, Lord Murray, was asking about. In the past 12 months, 3,201 unaccompanied children were given protection in this country up to the year ending September 2024. Those 3,201 may have family; it is true that they may have parents somewhere, but you have to make a judgment as to how many would seek to bring their families here. We are one of only three countries on the European continent that do not operate on that potential.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of the amendments to Clause 1 put forward by my noble friends on this side of the House.
First, I speak in support of the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth that seeks to replace “must” with “may” in Clause 1. This amendment is a vital adjustment to ensure that we uphold the principles of good governance, maintain flexibility in policy-making and safeguard our national interests. First and foremost, this amendment reflects the importance of retaining the Government’s discretion in managing immigration policy. Whichever Government are in power, immigration is an ongoing and rapidly changing issue to which the Secretary of State at the time must respond with pace. The word “must” imposes a rigid timeline and an obligation on the Secretary of State to act within six months, regardless of the evolving circumstances. Replacing it with “may” will preserve the Government’s ability to assess, prioritise and implement policies based on the prevailing domestic and international context. This flexibility is especially important in a world that is increasingly uncertain and unpredictable.
Amendment 2, tabled by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, proposes replacing the six-month timeline for laying changes to the Immigration Rules with a more appropriate one-month period. This amendment is about ensuring that Parliament retains proper oversight of a Bill about which we have serious concerns. Reducing the timeline to one month ensures that any changes to the Immigration Rules under the Bill are brought back to Parliament swiftly for scrutiny. It would prevent the Government from allowing extended periods of uncertainty to shield decisions that could fundamentally undermine the integrity of our immigration system. The amendment highlights a critical point that, while we respect the intention behind the Bill, we oppose it because it fails to address the complexities of immigration policy.
Amendment 3, tabled by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, proposes replacing the 21-day implementation period with a more measured three-month period. This amendment reflects our belief that significant changes to our Immigration Rules, such as those concerning refugee family reunion, must not be rushed through without proper consideration of their implications for the UK’s immigration system, resources and public confidence. The original provision for 21 days is, frankly, far too short a period for such substantial changes to be introduced and implemented. We believe that it risks creating undue pressure on our immigration authorities and undermining the orderly processes that we have worked hard to maintain. Extending this period to three months would therefore provide the necessary time for proper evaluation, preparation and control. Family reunions must be managed in a way that ensures that we are not inadvertently incentivising illegal migration or creating vulnerabilities in our immigration system.
Amendment 4, tabled by my noble friend Lady Lawlor, seeks to amend Clause 1 by extending the period for implementing changes to the Immigration Rules for refugee family reunion from 21 days to one year. This amendment is both prudent and necessary, as it would ensure that any changes were introduced with the care, preparation and thoroughness that they deserve. The practical implications of significant policy changes must be carefully managed to avoid unintended consequences that could undermine the very outcomes that we seek to achieve. This amendment would provide the Government with the time required to conduct a comprehensive and detailed review of the potential impacts of these changes, including their effects on public services, local communities and the integration of refugees. A rushed implementation within just 21 days would fail to account for the complex and interconnected challenges of housing, healthcare, education and social cohesion that arise from any significant adjustment to our Immigration Rules.
Amendment 5, tabled by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth, seeks to introduce critical safeguards ensuring that any changes to the Immigration Rules for refugee family reunion are made responsibly with due consideration for their impact on local communities, public services and our broader immigration system. This amendment strikes to the heart of the practical realities of governing. It is our duty as legislators to ensure that our policies are sustainable and do not place undue strain on local communities or public services. By requiring the Secretary of State to assess the projected impact on local support services, housing and integration arrangements, the amendment would introduce a much-needed layer of accountability, which acknowledges that housing, schools, healthcare and community resources are not infinite and that we must carefully manage the arrival of new residents to ensure that they are properly supported. Overburdening the systems not only will undermine the successful integration of refugees but could erode public confidence in our immigration policies.
Amendment 7, tabled by my noble friend Lady Lawlor, seeks to introduce a new level of transparency and accountability to the Bill by requiring detailed information on costs, capacity and prioritisation in housing before implementing changes to the Immigration Rules. This amendment is both practical and prudent, ensuring that any changes introduced under the Bill are grounded in a full understanding of their financial and social implications. It reflects core Conservative principles of fiscal responsibility, public accountability and fairness, ensuring that we balance our humanitarian commitments with the needs of our communities and the sustainability of our public services.
Amendment 18, tabled by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, seeks to reduce the age threshold from 25 to 21 concerning the eligibility of siblings for family reunion. This amendment is a vital correction to a clause that, as currently drafted, risks broadening the scope of family reunion far beyond what is reasonable or necessary. By lowering the age threshold, we can better align this provision with the principles of fairness, practicality and public confidence in our immigration system. The age of 25 is unnecessarily high and creates significant challenges for the effective management of family reunion cases. An individual in their mid-20s is, by any reasonable standard, an adult capable of independence. Extending family reunion rights to siblings up to the age of 25 dilutes the focus of the Bill.
The proposed age of 21 strikes a more appropriate balance. It avoids creating a system that is overly broad and difficult to administer. This amendment would ensure that family reunion remains a process based on need, not convenience. Moreover, the broader implications of maintaining the 25 year-old threshold must not be ignored. Such an expansive definition risks placing additional strain on already overstretched resources, including housing, social services and immigration officials. It could undermine the public’s trust in our ability to manage migration in a controlled and responsible manner—a trust that is critical to maintaining support for genuine humanitarian efforts. I urge noble Lords to support the amendment and to reject a Bill that, in its current form, risks eroding the principles on which our immigration system is built.
Amendment 27, in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, would require a medical health assessment for each applicant under Clause 1 before their application for family reunion status is approved. This amendment is a practical and necessary addition to the Bill. It would ensure that the process for granting family reunion status is not only compassionate but thorough, responsible and mindful of the broader implications for public health and welfare. First and foremost, the amendment would strengthen public confidence in the integrity of our immigration system. By implementing a medical health assessment, we would establish a robust framework that considers the physical and physiological fitness of applicants while addressing potential public health concerns. This is particularly important to ensure that we meet our obligations to applicants and the communities that welcome them. The amendment also aligns with the principles of good governance and accountability. It would ensure that decisions regarding family reunion are made with full knowledge of any health factors that may affect an individual’s ability to integrate and thrive in the United Kingdom. It would prevent rushed or uninformed approvals that could create challenges down the line for both applicants and public services.
I commend my noble friend for proposing this amendment, which demonstrates a commitment to compassion balanced with prudence. I urge the Committee to support this sensible and measured addition to the Bill to ensure that our family reunion policies remain fair, humane and effective.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
Well, we have had some fun with the Bill and the amendments. I start by reiterating what I said on 18 October when I responded to the Bill’s Second Reading on behalf of the Government. For ease, I refer noble Lords to cols. 371-74. It is worth taking that as a starting point because the amendments and their impact on the Bill are relevant. I said very clearly at that stage:
“I reassure all noble Lords that the Government fully support the principle of family unity and share their concerns regarding families who have been separated by conflict or persecution. It is for precisely that reason that the Government support what has been referred to already: an existing comprehensive framework for reuniting refugees with their families in the UK”.—[Official Report, 18/10/24; col. 371.]
That is the principle of the Bill. At the same time, I said:
“Expanding the policy to extended family would—undoubtedly, in my view and in those of my colleagues across the Home Office—have a significant and difficult impact on stretched public resources. It would also mean that we have to bring more people into scope of the policy, including those who may not necessarily need international protection themselves”.—[Official Report, 18/10/24; col. 373.]
On 18 October, I found myself supporting the Bill and the principle of it in part, but not its extensions without further consideration. I now find myself addressing amendments which are, as the noble Lord, Lord German, said—let us be generous—somewhat contradictory in parts. There is no coherence from the Conservative Back Benches or Front Bench in relation to all those points, and different places and policy principles are put onboard.
I find myself looking at all the amendments and thinking that these are not designed to help the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, they are probably not designed to help the Government come to sensible suggestions on these points, and they are certainly not designed to help those who might face persecution or refugee status and need those supports. Can I support the amendments? No, I cannot. Can I support the noble Baroness’s Bill in its current form? No, I cannot. I find myself in the very strange position of being the Government of the day and coming to a sensible position, perhaps; Members will judge that in due course.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I will give way in a moment. Let us see whether the noble Baroness wishes to accept any of their amendments.
I think the Government are in broadly the right place. We understand the pressures. We have a good set of rules in place. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, before he intervenes, that we are committed to publishing a migration White Paper very shortly that will look at a range of other issues debated in this House and in the House of Commons that government policy considers. The impact of asylum and refugee status, although not migration, is still an important issue because additional individuals coming in on family reunion is a form of migration. All these matters have to be considered. As I said at Second Reading and say again now, these are matters the Government need to reflect upon in slower time. But I will certainly hear what the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, wishes to say.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I thank the Minister for giving way. I am worried about his reputation as a bruiser from the other place because he sounds dangerously consensual and collaborative this afternoon, which is always worrying coming from him. The Minister has been speaking for 10 minutes and has not alighted on the challenge thrown down by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth concerning the overall generic numbers—the universal numbers—that are likely to come as a result of the Bill as unamended. Surely that is something the Government will take an interest in, if he makes a judgment on, for instance, the provision of public services in future.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Bruiser? Moi? Surely not. I will at some point potentially bruise the noble Lord once again, but today I am trying to find the sensible middle way.
Let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Murray, that I have already recognised that there are issues with the numbers. When he intervened at Second Reading and asked the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the numbers, there was a potential vacuum for an assessment of what those numbers would be. Again, any sensible Government would have to take those matters into account, which, to answer the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is why I indicated at Second Reading that we had concerns about the additional numbers, the assessments of those numbers and the criteria for granting them. As I said then and reiterate today, there are legal reasonable routes for other family members to join after a proper assessment. Without repeating it all today, I referenced that very strongly in the debate at Second Reading.
The government response today is that I wish the amendments to be withdrawn. But that is a matter for noble Lords. As we progress, in Committee, on Report, at Third Reading and when the Bill goes to the House of Commons, we as a Government will, in between, reflect on these matters.
I hope that is clear, even if it is slightly in the middle. Maybe in the middle is not such a bad place to be. That is my view on the amendments and on the Bill. I can add nothing more than that today than to allow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to respond to amendments that were designed—as appears to be the condition of current Opposition Members—not to help clarity, were perhaps for a little further discussion or perhaps a little obfuscation. Ultimately, the House will determine these matters in due course.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Schwab and Westheimer Trust, which supports young asylum seekers in education. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for his compliments about persistence. The compliments should be directed at previous Home Office Ministers, who waived the Bill’s predecessors through to the Commons in a very similar form and did not seek to obstruct them. I applaud the Minister’s elegant negotiation of a tightrope. As he says, there can be further opportunities for discussion, and of course sending the Bill to the Commons gives those opportunities.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I certainly had not intended a discourtesy. There was not a vacuum as regards the numbers; it was my inability immediately to find the briefing we received from the Red Cross, Safe Passage and the Refugee Council, which was sent to those who had their names down to speak at Second Reading. Had I realised that he wanted to pursue that point, I would of course have handed on my copy of the briefing. That briefing included a number of other issues.
I will make a few general points that are relevant to all the amendments in this group. The Bill is to put into statutory form provisions for family reunion that are currently in the rules, because statute is more stable than rules. We are adding siblings, for reasons that we will come to, and provide for children to sponsor family members, including parents, whom they cannot currently sponsor. The cost of supporting unaccompanied children is obviously high. My view is that reuniting families would lead to savings: parents would support their children.
We want to see more safe and legal routes. Currently, those routes are quite limited. The provisions we are proposing would create a safe and legal route, subject to a visa. Applications for visas are much easier to control, oversee and assess than people arriving on our shores in an irregular fashion. Of course, children—particularly those who are alone—are in a particular position. That is why we have had a lot of support from outside the House, with many mentions of the best interests of the child. Vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation has already been mentioned.
The incompatibility of some of the amendments with many of the current rules has been mentioned. The current position is that the Secretary of State can extend or restrict eligibility through changes to the rules, so the factual position remains the same. Amendment 19 is slightly tighter than the current position, in that it suggests criteria.
I will have to keep my remarks shorter than I would like, and I hope noble Lords will understand the slightly telegraphic nature of some of what I have to say. First, making the Bill not permissive denies the whole Bill. I thought the “may” and “must” point was linked with the proviso in Amendment 5, which I had assumed was the main point. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, shows concern for services integration, which was not much of a focus for the previous Government. It is hugely important, and I encourage him to keep on urging both investment and support for the organisations involved, and to pursue the recommendations of the Woolf commission. But the conditions he sets out do not apply to grants of family reunion now.
We on these Benches are no great fans of the IMA; I hope that we will see the current Government get rid of it. The previous Government of the noble Lord, Lord Murray, consulted on a cap under the IMA, but did not include family reunion in the proposals for that cap. They listed routes to be subject to the cap and referred to other safe and legal routes.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, I shall be very brief. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this interesting debate on this group of amendments, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who, with her customary elegance, has outlined her response to the amendments. I am particularly glad to note that we agree on the importance of integration in relation to additional family members—if not on too much else.
I am also pleased to note that I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on his matter of principle that the detail should be in the Immigration Rules. That is one of the reasons why I, like the Government, oppose the Bill in total. But, if we are to have the Bill, I suggest that we need the amendments. As I understand it, the Government remain against the Bill, notwithstanding the very elegant tightrope on which the Minister trod.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for his speech. Possibly one might have thought, from listening to it, that the purpose of the Bill was solely in relation to children, but of course we can see that Clause 1(3) relates to family members of
“a person granted protection status”.
So that is all people, not just those under 18.
To the question from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I agree with her too. I certainly do not intend by my amendments any alteration to the present scheme in Appendix FM. It works well and allows the Secretary of State to amend the scheme, which is the correct way that these things should be done.
Lastly, turning to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I obviously do not accept that the Government caused the small boats crossings; they sought very hard to address them and succeeded in bringing them down, and they brought in the Rwanda scheme to stop them. I still maintain that, had it been switched on, it would have achieved its deterrence objective, but that is a debate for another day. The noble Baroness suggested that the term “safe and legal routes” should be defined in the way she suggests: as a route open to anyone for application. I am afraid that that is not the meaning of safe and legal routes. It is a term used in statute and means just what it says on the tin: a route that is safe and legal.
This Government, and the previous Government, have welcomed a great many refugees: over half a million in the last 10 years, including refugees from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. These are great things that we can all be proud of. However, through these amendments I say that the Bill would unfortunately overwhelm our resources to deal with this sort of migration. With that, I will withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I would like to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Murray, for being so rude about him. I like to think that I speak the truth, but sometimes the truth verges on utter rudeness, and I am extremely sorry for saying that.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very grateful. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I will be brief. It is very gracious of the noble Baroness to apologise—
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
I think we need to look at the time and bring the Committee to a conclusion fairly quickly. If the noble Lord would help us by not speaking to his amendment, then we can get on with that.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
On the basis of being as collegiate and collaborative as the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment—before I have even spoken to it.