Immigration Rules: Statements of Changes

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I find myself in the rather curious position of greatly regretting elements of the SIs we are debating now, particularly HC 1043, while entirely disagreeing with the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Green, in introducing them. I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, and seek not to repeat it but just to associate myself and the Green group with his comments.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, just indicated, the UK is a nation of immigrants. About 9% of the UK population, or 6.2 million people, are immigrants—and if anyone perhaps is on a crackly remote line and cannot hear my accent, to be clear I declare that, yes, I am one of them. It is also worth noting that 5.5 million Britons live in other countries around the globe. It is about an equal balance. We are a nation of emigrants as well as immigrants.

Listening to the noble Lords, Lord Green, Lord Horam and Lord Hodgson, I found myself feeling that I was trapped in another age. The world has changed but we are back in the old ways of thinking. We know that a significant number of people have left the UK since Covid and Brexit, perhaps 1 million EU citizens and a significant—probably very large—number of Britons have chosen to leave as well. Just this morning I spent my time at two sessions—first with the Westminster Forum on food security, then with Building magazine talking about retrofitting our homes. Both those industries are tearing their hair out, saying, “Where are we going to find the workers? Where are we going to find the skills?” I very much agree that we need to train and develop our own workforce, but the numbers simply do not add up. We are in a situation, as the UK has been for decades and centuries, of looking around the world for people to come because we need them.

To address the point by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, about the environmental impact: the UK lives a three-planet lifestyle. We have to cut consumption, particularly by the wealthiest. Consumption and inequality are our issues. That is where the environmental action needs to be.

All those people who have been invited and welcomed to the UK, and then they face a dishonest, discriminatory and often chaotic hostile environment. I will focus particularly on those likely to be affected by HC 1043, because those seeking refuge are most likely to be affected. The invaluable Refugee Action briefing for this debate noted that with the current backlog of asylum claims, 76% of people are waiting for more than six months. Many have been in limbo for years. What does that mean?

I often think back to a young woman I met in Southampton. As a 19 year-old, she had been forced to flee Zimbabwe; she had been persecuted and abused by the security forces there. She had been in the UK for a decade, waiting to get status in an uncertain immigration situation. She said to me, “I feel like I am in a cage. I am locked into this tiny cage, and there is a person walking past outside this cage with the key for the cage hanging from their belt. I’m pretty confident that one day they will pick up that key and open the cage, but I’ve been a decade—a third of my life—waiting for the cage to be unlocked.” I very much fear that HC 1043 will bring in the same situation for many more people. If asylum claims are treated as inadmissible on the basis of the method of arrival, people are going to be left in indefinite limbo. There are not return agreements, and it looks very unlikely that there will be. Then there is case-by-case negotiation, using many resources.

The Government say they want to tackle people trafficking and are concerned about this situation. On Monday I heard some powerful testimony from young people from the Safe Passage international young leaders scheme, the Hummingbird young leaders scheme and the Kent Refugee Action Network youth forum. I asked those young people, “As you were coming here and reached the UK, what sort of decisions did you make? What sort of information did you have? What sort of choices did you have?” They said, “When you’re dashing out the back door in fear of your life and the police or the army are coming through the front door, you just dash.” Of course. All the way along the line, they have had to make calls to just seek safety. That is what people are doing and what our lack of providing them with safe routes to reach the UK is forcing them into. That is the practical reality.

My very brief final point is that, as the Freedom from Torture briefing points out, HC 1043 is in contravention of Article 31 of the refugee convention. It is a moral and practical wrong to bring this in. We are in a world in which the rule of law is under grave threat. Look at Belarus, Hungary or many other nations. We need to defend the rule of law, not go back on agreements that we have previously made.