Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, I hear what my noble friend says. I wish to find the 90 children who are still missing. I wish to ensure that we give support to local authorities and the police to do that, and it has to be the primary focus of the Home Office. I can reflect in due course on what both she and my noble friend Lord Touhig said, but ultimately our focus has to be to find those people who went missing because of the performance of the previous Government’s management of this issue.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to Kent County Council. Earlier this year, questions were asked in your Lordships’ House about whether Kent was getting extra reimbursement for the phenomenal responsibility of being the first point of call for these children. Has that happened? It is wonderful that Kent is doing all that it can, but if it cannot do it without resources then children in Kent will also suffer in the longer term.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There was an enhanced incentivised funding programme in operation for Kent County Council, which gave support of £15,000 for transfers within two working days and £6,000 for transfers within five working days. Those schemes are coming to an end because the pressure is not there as it was, but that support was put in place to help Kent to deal with the initial challenges.

Operation Conifer

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that the College of Policing has looked at investigating allegations and calls for allegations made against individuals both living and dead and is currently potentially issuing guidelines to police forces around these matters. Again, this is a complex area. I want to reflect on the points raised today, and I am open to further scrutiny from this House in due course.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, both noble Lords can get in; we have plenty of time. Shall we take the noble Baroness’s question first?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, following the publication of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in October 2022 and the government response a year later, the Government issued a consultation on mandatory reporting by professionals working with children when they suspect possible abuse. The result of that consultation has still not been published a year on. One of the best ways of ensuring that there are no malicious allegations against senior politicians is to see that result and for a government response. When do this Government plan to implement the recommendations of the IICSA report?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If I may, I will look into the issues that the noble Baroness has raised and write to her with the detail very shortly in response.

Modern Slavery National Referral Mechanism: Waiting Times

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid that is the first I have heard of it, so I have no opinion on it.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre’s paper on the 2023 national referral mechanism statistics notes with some concern that the data raises

“significant questions over the decision-making process”

as a result of changes to the statutory guidance that came in in January 2023 and not changes in the number of likely victims of modern slavery. Can the Minister say that the systems do not put victims of modern slavery at further risk?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I go back to an earlier answer I gave, that these are extraordinarily complex cases and, therefore, the guidance has to be refined in light of those cases periodically. I do not know to what specifically the noble Baroness is referring but, as far as I am aware, it does not make it any more complicated.

Asylum Claims

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I cannot answer that question in its entirety, but I can say that the number of complex legacy cases that remain has declined from about 4,500 to 3,900. Some of those are still in the country, but I do not know precisely how many.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the Oxford criminology department’s report, The Criminalisation of People Arriving to the UK on “Small Boats”, has said:

“There is no evidence that these prosecutions will have the ‘deterrent’ effect … Rather than minimising harm to people crossing the Channel, this report has highlighted the significant human impact of the current prosecution strategy”.


Will the Government review this report in light of what is happening at the moment?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Well, I will certainly commit to read it, but I wonder how on earth it can arrive at a conclusion that they will have no deterrent effect. The Bill has not been operationalised or indeed passed yet.

Former Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration: Reports

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

This is obviously a subject to which we will return a bit later, but as I said, a new chief inspector will be appointed following a full and proper process in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments. The Home Secretary is considering appointing an interim chief inspector to cover the period of recruitment. What his remit will be I do not know, but of course we will come back in due course.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, since autumn 2022, we have had a number of Questions and Statements on the status of the Home Office as corporate parent when there is a gap before the appointment of a council. Indeed, on 23 January last year, my noble friend Lord Scriven asked when the Home Office was going to become a corporate parent, and the Minister at the time said that he would take it back and discuss it. The recently published ICIBI report covering an inspection in September and October last year says that

“the Home Secretary’s use of hotels to accommodate unaccompanied asylum-seeking children was unlawful. The Home Office has been running unregistered children’s homes for two years now, when these children should be in the … care of Kent County Council”.

Can the Minister confirm that the Home Office no longer has an invisible corporate parent responsibility without actually doing it lawfully?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, as I said, we have closed the seven hotels that were used to accommodate unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, as identified in the two ICIBI inspections. As the noble Baroness will be aware, the Home Office will return to the High Court on 14 March as part of the ongoing High Court oversight of the Kent County Council case, so I will say no more on that at the moment.

Windrush

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Benjamin on securing this important debate on the Windrush scandal and the compensation scheme. I will focus mainly on the implementation and effectiveness of the compensation scheme. But first, like other speakers, I note my noble friend Lady Benjamin’s extraordinary contribution to challenging Ministers and others about the Windrush scandal over many years. The right reverend prelate the Bishop of Newcastle referred to being a “Play School” baby. I had the privilege of working on “Play School” with my noble friend Lady Benjamin as a brand-new trainee floor manager in the mid-1970s, and I have to say that it was a complete joy. As others said, and as she herself said, my noble friend Lady Benjamin chaired the Windrush memorial committee. I agree that the memorial is uplifting and moving. It is also a constant reminder, to those of us in the public eye, that something was got wrong and has still not been righted.

Others have spoken about how we have heard about the Windrush scandal in other parts of our lives. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked a question about children in schools. My noble friend Lady Benjamin’s book Coming to England is the most beautiful story about a Windrush arrival, and it is in almost all the primary schools I have heard about. I know that the children write to my noble friend Lady Benjamin because she and I talk about it. My own grandchildren were shocked by the racism that she faced as a six year-old. Our hope for the future is that, through the dramas and books, we will have a new generation who will not accept what has happened and will continue to fight.

What has happened at the hands of officials and Ministers is dreadful. As my noble friend Lady Benjamin said, members of the Windrush generation were never illegal migrants, so people being thrown out of their jobs, losing their homes and pensions, and being imprisoned and deported over many years is now a real disgrace. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, talked about plays. We have now seen documentaries, dramas, screenplays and books. The Windrush generation has shouted from the rooftops—are we listening properly yet?

The noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, rightly said that we respect the Windrush generation, and our problem remains specifically with the Home Office and successive Governments. The Windrush generation’s perseverance and contribution to our country must be noted, and we need to be reminded. It has served large elements of our public services over the last 60 or 70 years—the NHS, transport—but it is now a key participant in every part of our working, social and community lives.

I will not go into the detail of what happened after 2017—many other noble Lords have talked about it—when media coverage started to bring attention to individual cases. But the way the Home Office has reacted, then and now, means that it is not held in any sort of regard at all. I do want to mention one person: former MP Norman Baker, who was the Home Office Immigration Minister in 2014. He resigned because he was not aware of those vans going round—he was not told before he actually saw them on the streets—and he felt that the lurch to the right on immigration of Theresa May in particular, and the Conservative Government, meant he could not continue to serve.

My noble friend Lady Burt reminded us of when and how the press and wider society became aware of the treatment of the generation. She set out the timeline of the government apologies in some detail. In 2018, Wendy Williams’ review and report focused on events from 2008—well before the coalition Government came into place. But absolutely at the heart of her findings was the fact that, despite the Government saying that they were taken by surprise by the scandal, she found that, over the years, officials and Ministers repeatedly ignored the warnings. She said that

“those in power forgot about them and their circumstances”.

This was compounded by successive Governments wanting to be tough on immigration by

“tightening immigration control and passing laws creating … the hostile environment … with a complete disregard for the Windrush generation”.

As with other departments and scandals, there were also institutional blockages in the Home Office that have made everything much, much worse. Wendy Williams also said that, while she was unable to make a definitive finding of institutional racism within the department,

“I have serious concerns that these failings demonstrate an institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation within the department, which are consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism.”

As others have said, she made 30 recommendations, which have been grouped under three headings. The first was acknowledgement: that the Home Office needed to acknowledge the wrong that had been done. The second was transparency: that the department must open itself up to greater scrutiny. The third was culture changes: that the department must change its culture to recognise that migration and wider Home Office policy were about people and, whatever its objective, should be rooted in humanity.

Many noble Lords have talked about the three recommendations that the Home Office initially accepted and then rejected. It is appalling that the third one, on reconciliation and training of Home Office staff, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, referred, is gone. The ninth was on the commissioner, to which other noble Lords referred, and the 10th was on the review of the remit of the ICIBI, ensuring that it works closely with the migrants’ commissioner. These are at the heart of the cultural change of the Home Office, so will the Minister say whether those three recommendations will be reinstated now that Suella Braverman is no longer Home Secretary?

Time is short, so I will not say very much, but Wendy Williams, in her review in 2022, said that the Home Office had “obscured the full extent” of her original findings and this had led to “misunderstanding and incorrect implementation”. Can the Minister, therefore, say whether she will be asked back again, a further two years on, to complete that review, as other noble Lords have asked for, to ensure that the implementation and that change in culture do happen?

Turning to the compensation scheme, I have been speaking in your Lordships’ House on both the Post Office Horizon scandal and the infected blood scheme. There is a systemic problem in this country, with numerous Governments over many decades, about how these schemes are instituted. I absolutely agree with the recommendation from Age UK that, for this Windrush scheme, a separate, independent scheme should be set up. There is a much bigger ask—and I raised this in the Post Office compensation Bill, which went through in one day last month—that we actually need a truly independent body to oversee all compensation schemes where any public service is involved. The one lesson that we should have learned over the last 50 years is that the Government, their departments and their arm’s-length bodies cannot be independent when trying to administer compensation schemes. Will the Minister tell us if this is likely to happen?

The other points that have been made have also been covered in the other schemes. Despite people saying that the Post Office Horizon scheme is moving ahead swiftly, the postmasters are getting derisory amounts offered to them. They are still competing with a simplified form that is utterly bemusing. They still do not get any money for legal advice to help them apply. That is exactly true for the Windrush scheme as well, and this needs to be followed through.

As other noble Lords have said, the problem with a badly working compensation scheme is that it revictimises the victims. From these Benches, we absolutely want to see the Government put this scheme alongside the Post Office Horizon scheme and the infected blood scheme, at the heart of working at pace—a phrase they frequently use. The Windrush generation has supported and helped us in our country—their country too—for many, many years. Why are they still being treated as different?

Immigration Rules and Border Security

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his questions, and I will do my best to answer them all. I can reassure anyone from the public who happens to be watching: Border Force performs checks on 100% of scheduled passengers arriving in the UK and risk-based intelligence-led checks on general aviation. It is disturbing that information with no basis in fact was leaked by the independent chief inspector to a national newspaper before the Home Office had the chance to respond. As a consequence, Mr Neal lost the confidence of the Home Secretary, as he pointed out in his WMS yesterday. I cannot really improve on his words:

“I have terminated the appointment of David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, after he breached the terms of appointment and lost my confidence”.


In terms of the checks at London City Airport, Mr Neal was very aware of a specific issue with the recording of data there that meant that a large proportion of flights recorded as high risk should have been reclassified as low risk. As I have already mentioned, all notified general aviation flights are categorised as high risk or low risk based on a number of factors. These are primarily related to persons on board, but additional factors can relate to intelligence about the aircraft and other matters. A flight may be remotely cleared when it has been assessed using the risk assessment as low risk, and for high-risk flights in certain circumstances only. A remote clearance requires, as a minimum, a digital record check on Home Office systems for all passengers. Where we are notified of a general aviation flight, we clear 100% of high-risk and low-risk flights remotely or in person, in accordance with the general aviation guidance.

I am not sure when the new replacement will be recruited. It is a very important position, and an appointment will be made following robust competition in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments. As regards the publishing of the other reports, it is undeniably unfortunate that circumstances have delayed the publication of certain inspection reports. I will say that the one that was leaked was well within the time limit, and the Government had not been given an opportunity to respond and were still fact-checking, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. These will be published as soon as possible.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, why did the Government not follow the advice of the social care sector and ensure that only CQC-registered homes and businesses could accept social care workers? That would have helped overcome the problems. Will that be considered from now on? It is clearly important to the sector, which needs the employees, and everyone else.

Can the Minister also explain how Ukrainian family members whose own circumstances in Ukraine may include being bombed out of their homes, for example, will now no longer be able to join their families here under changes to the Ukrainian scheme?

Finally, the Minister referred to unpublished reports by David Neal, the former chief inspector. The Government may have been checking only the last one, but can the Minister explain why 15 reports have not been published and give us a date when they will be published by?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

To answer the last question, I say that the date is soon. I am afraid that I cannot improve on that. They all require fact checking and a variety of other things. In terms of the Care Quality Commission, that is precisely what we are doing. It was made very clear the other day that, additionally, care workers in England will be able to sponsor migrant workers only if they are undertaking activities as regulated by the Care Quality Commission going forward.

Ukrainian family members can still come. It is just that we are unifying the schemes currently in existence. The old family scheme allowed settled Ukrainian sponsoring family members to come here. That settlement used to have only a six-month qualification. They can still come under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. The sponsors can now be British, Irish or settled in the UK, and that obviously includes family members. This scheme was greeted favourably and with some very positive comments from the Ukrainian embassy, which I am happy to recount if anybody would like to hear them.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, speaks with his usual eloquence. One of the problems from our Benches is that he seems to think that it is an acceptable risk to breach the rule of law. It is that fundamental issue that my noble friend Lord German set out in his Motion, and that is why, unusually, this is something that we should vote against at Second Reading.

This weekend, the i newspaper reported:

“Four Rwandans have reportedly been granted refugee status in Britain over ‘well-founded’ fears of persecution … the cases are in addition to the six people who Home Office figures suggest had UK asylum claims approved between April 2022 and September 2023, according to the Observer”.


So how can the Prime Minister say that Kigali is “unequivocally” safe?

I want to raise a couple of issues in the short time that I have available on the details of how this will work. First, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, referred to access to healthcare, but the British Medical Association raised the important point that:

“The use of offshoring has previously led to asylum seekers being removed to countries where they are unable to access medical care they may need … Medical reviews of 36 people under threat of removal to Rwanda revealed that 26 displayed medical indicators of having been tortured”.


Is it right that people like that should be going elsewhere?

The government website on the agreement with Rwanda talks about age assessment for both accompanied and unaccompanied child asylum seekers. Article 3(4) says that the United Kingdom

“confirms that it shall not seek to relocate unaccompanied individuals who are deemed to be under the age of 18. Any unaccompanied individual who, subsequent to relocation, is deemed by a court or tribunal in the United Kingdom to either be under the age of 18 or to be treated temporarily as being under the age of 18, shall be returned to the United Kingdom”.

How is that going to work if they are assessed in Rwanda? How is the decision made on who are deemed to be under age, given the provisions of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and the arrangements set out in the Rwanda treaty? Will an unaccompanied child or young person have been entitled to appeal prior to removal to Rwanda—or will, as the latter part of the paragraph implies, they be sent to Rwanda and assessed with all other asylum seekers, and only then returned to the UK? That is against the United Nations rights of the child declaration. Will Rwanda use age assessment, as we debated during the passage of the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Illegal Migration Bill?

I particularly want to ask about those who are accompanied and remain with their families—and it is good that families are kept together. But Rwanda does not have a secondary school system, so does the arrangement that is being made with Rwanda ensure that these children will have access to education, if they are of secondary age?

Open Democracy reported that:

“LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in Rwanda have previously been given immediate verbal rejections by officials responsible for registering applications, who said it ‘is not the place for them, or Rwanda does not deal with such issues’, according to evidence by the UNHCR submitted to the Home Office”.


So is it appropriate for these vulnerable people to be sent to Rwanda?

Finally, the Illegal Migration Act stipulates that, if someone arrives in the UK irregularly, there will be a duty on the Home Secretary to detain and remove them—even those arriving who are known to be victims of modern slavery. In the passage of that Bill in the Commons, Theresa May, former Prime Minister and Home Secretary, said sending people to Rwanda would

“consign more people to slavery”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/7/23; col. 219.]

The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, asked what opposition parties would do. We would ensure swift and effective assessment of cases. What we will not do is to send people to a country where we do not yet understand how the treaty will work, because what is said in the treaty is that there are arrangements proposed, but they have not yet been sorted. For vulnerable asylum seekers, that is not good enough. It is certainly not good enough for what any British Government and British Parliament should do.

Above all, for vulnerable people, Rwanda is not a safe place. As the treaty says specifically, there is much still to be sorted out. I believe that this House should not agree to the Bill at Second Reading.

Female Domestic Homicides: Black, Asian and Ethnic-minority Overrepresentation

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am short on the detail of that specific programme, but in March 2022, we published the cross-government Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, which invested more than £230 million in tackling this crime between 2022 and 2025. This includes more than £140 million for supporting victims and £81 million for tackling perpetrators. As regards the domestic homicide review, work is under way to review, improve and update the statutory guidance on that review. The consultation on that is about to open, so if any Peers are interested and would like to get involved, please let me know and I will be happy to supply the details.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, studies have shown that ethnic-minority survivors of domestic abuse are much less likely to have previously been known to the police than white victims, often because of a wish to protect their partner from police—rather than health interventions—because of institutional racism. What are the Government doing to ensure that all police are properly trained not to move to police intervention and to be able to signpost mental health support for all victims of domestic abuse?

Immigration Detention: Brook House Inquiry

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree with the right reverend Prelate that it should not be allowed to happen again. As I say, the Government are obviously considering all the recommendations, and that will clearly be part of the considerations. I am confident that there is no way that such a situation would be allowed to happen again.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, recommendation 19 of the Brook House report is on the attitude and behaviour of healthcare staff. The use of force on one person who had a serious heart condition lasted for about 18 minutes, was positively harmful and put him at further risk. The recommendation is for immediate guidance for healthcare staff and mandatory training. Can the Minister tell us if that has already been brought into practice?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that that was totally unacceptable, and the inquiry was obviously right to highlight it a something that needs urgent attention. As regards whether advice has been issued, I will have to come back to the noble Baroness, but I am pretty sure that those recommendations are being implemented.