Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am coming to an end. I understand the noble Lord’s point and I am endeavouring to explain that I think those international agreements are being used in a particular political way on this issue. I have suggested that breaching promises to the British electorate—I was trying to give some examples across party lines, so that nobody would think I was having a go at any one party—is leading to cynicism and bitterness in the electorate. The low turnout at the local elections was an indication of the fact that many people feel politically homeless.

I do not necessarily support the Bill. I want it to be scrutinised by this House, but I felt that the amendments I was referring to were almost avoiding scrutiny by simply ring-fencing the whole nature of the Bill and saying, “You can’t do that because of international treaties”. That would seem to render us even trying to scrutinise the Bill a waste of time and it will lead to even more cynicism about the lack of democracy. That is my point and it has nothing, as it happens, to do with Brexit or the EU. Although the desire to control one’s borders and one’s laws was undoubtedly part of that, I was not making that point in this instance.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords—

Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. She has raised some of the issues that have prompted me to speak today. I have had a slight change of heart or mind—or my mind has been changed—which is why I am speaking, rather than repeating everything that I previously said.

My concerns about these photo IDs have fairly consistently been that there is no evidence of voter impersonation; it is not an issue. I do not like any move towards a “show us your pass” society. I worry about the unintended consequences of the Government pushing voter ID. In itself, it implies a problem which might then undermine trust in the democratic process. In particular, I echo the query from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the consequences of people being turned away from polling stations. I have raised that before.

I am not very good at paperwork. I am the kind of person who gets it wrong. We have only to look at the best-intended interventions in Ukraine, or in Poland with the issuing of visas to Ukrainian refugees, to see that paperwork can go wrong. I am concerned about people turning up with the wrong thing and being sent away when they only have that day to vote. It would imply to fellow citizens that something dodgy was going on—that they were cheating, rather than just having the wrong piece of paper. What does the Minister advise in this instance?

In following the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, the problem is that we have probably got to a point where the ship has sailed regarding trust in democracy. Something has gone wrong. A constant theme in commentary on elections is that too many people seem to think it impossible for their side to have lost without implying that the other side has somehow won by cheating or that the vote was manipulated. I have been quite shocked by the commentary around the vote in Hungary, in which it has been implied that the only basis on which Orban won was become something dodgy happened and that it was unfair. That was said about Brexit, about Trump’s win and about Biden’s win. In all those instances, there have been implicit or explicit accusations by losers that somehow cheating has happened. There is a broader problem of the undermining of trust in democracy, which I think a lot of people in this Chamber and outside it have created, but it has nothing to do with voter ID.

When I started to talk to people after my speeches at Second Reading and in Committee, I was absolutely inundated by those who said that they disagreed with my opposition to voter ID. Those were not the cut-and-paste emails, which we all receive, or from organised lobby groups. They appeared to be from ordinary people. Pundits and loads of people contacted me—some I knew and some I did not. I have had more correspondence on this than on anything else.

I tell your Lordships this because I was taken aback, but when I started to talk to people, they said that because there is a big debate about trust in the democratic process, for whatever reason, they want reassurance that the ballot box is secure. People said that their motives were about protecting the vote and respecting democracy. I do not know that it can be described as fake news when the Government say there is a discussion about the democratic process, because it seems that there is. I suppose that has happened in the name of transparency, accountability and trying to be honest, so when people say that they want to shore up democracy through ID, I want to take at least some notice.

Another thing that was said, which fits in with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was that they felt insulted by the idea that showing ID would put them off voting. They said, “You think we have such a low view of democracy, that we are so easily put off voting. The problem is that we go out to vote and when we do, people tell us we voted the wrong way.” That was their problem.

I have thought about it a lot and am still not sure but I am prepared to consider some compromise, particularly on Amendment 8. It does the job by letting us have some ID, as wide a range of IDs as possible so we do not have the problem of turning people away at the ballot box. It is also important to recognise that, whether we like it or not, there is a debate about how much we can trust the democratic process, so if there is a way of reassuring people—although I wish we had not got to that point—then maybe we should think about this.

I would like to know what the Minister thinks about the dangers of undermining our trust in democracy by pushing this too hard. Is there a compromise that the Government can make that would, relatively speaking, satisfy all people? Even the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, said he might reluctantly go down that line, despite it going against what he wants, which is to get rid of it altogether.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I did not participate in Committee but I intervened a couple of times, most notably when the noble Lord, Lord Collins, tried to pray me in aid to something I did not say. I want to put my position on the record and, bearing in mind the strictures from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I will be quick.

I want to add a cautionary note about this group of amendments. My caution is absolutely not because I want to restrict participation in our elections in any way. The reverse is true, as evidenced by the work we have done in the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, a follow-up report to which was published a week or two ago. I was lucky enough to chair that committee and place on record my thanks to the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Collins, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and my noble friend Lady Eaton. The committee did important work and I made sure that I personally sent the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, a copy of our report last week, as he had made a powerful speech during the last stage.

I argue that our primary objective has to be to ensure that people use their vote. I come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, about declining turnout. While I understand that you cannot vote unless you are on the roll and have ways of voting, we have failed to persuade people that their vote is worth using, as evidenced by the figures laid out in the earlier remarks by the noble Lord.

I suggest that there are principally two reasons why people go out to vote. The first is that they see the act of voting as having their say—“to chuck the rascals out” is the famous phrase that is often used. We need to find ways to encourage more people to think like that, and about what is meant by being a citizen, and by rights and responsibilities. I am afraid that the Government’s response to our work to try to encourage citizenship education can so far be described only as desultory. I think I speak for all members of our committee when I say that we do not intend to give way on this. However, equally, nothing in these amendments deals with the question of participation. That is the problem, and that is what I am really interested in getting at.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 80, which I am pleased to support—and I also support Amendment 81 very strongly as well. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe is a demon for data, as she has just demonstrated in the House, as a basis for good decisions and keeping the public well informed about what is going on around them while avoiding rumour and anecdote, which takes us to a bad place, particularly in areas as sensitive as immigration. Therefore, I particularly share her view, and the view of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, that the Government’s decision to reduce transparency about the flow across the English Channel is regrettable. It is clearly an area of considerable public concern and, for better or worse, we will not solve it by not publishing the figures—that is likely to make it worse.

I shall add one thing on the international passenger survey, when we come to relaunch, refocus and redesign it. I was once questioned as part of that survey, when I was travelling through Heathrow, and I was very pleased to answer the lady, who was very good and helpful. I went on and talked to her a bit about her job, and I can offer the House three take-aways. First, under no circumstances do you cross-question; so if someone says that they are coming here to be a plumber in Cardiff, a plumber in Cardiff they are—there is no question of whether they might be something else. That is not your job; you just write that into the form. The second was that you tended to have a predominance of older people answering the form. She said that younger people would be in a hurry, pushing on, and they tended not to want to stay and answer her questions —or there were not many of them. Older people seemed to have more time and, therefore, she felt that the survey was biased towards older people. Thirdly, and finally, on the issue of the early morning or transcontinental flights, known as the red-eye flights, unsurprisingly those people coming off those flights did not want to answer a survey—they wanted to get to a shower, a bed or their office. She told me that so difficult had it been that they had started reducing the number of staff who were on the early shift, and they brought full staffing on at about 8.30 am or 9 am, when people were in a more helpful mood—perhaps that is the best way of putting it.

I leave it to the House, and to my noble friend the Minister, but with that sort of anecdotal background, this can hardly be a system that inspires confidence as to the accuracy and value of the data that it collects. If we are going to relaunch it, we need to think much more clearly about how we are going to gather data in a way that creates confidence and trust.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 80 and, partially, Amendment 81. On Amendment 80, it is common sense—and would be helpful to all sides of the debates on this Bill that arose in Committee and on Report—that we should know more. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has said, whatever our analysis or principles, we would all be helped if we had reliable data in the public square on asylum and immigration because we could then perhaps do some myth-busting.

When you talk to people outside of this House, there are a range of responses to this issue and, indeed, to our discussions here on the Bill. There is some perception that borders are open, and that there are too many people flooding into the UK for society to cope. Some people will even go so far as to say that we are full. I do not think that we are full but, as far as some are concerned, it looks as though we are being overwhelmed. They use the evidence of their own eyes, watching people crossing the English Channel weekly, sometimes daily, with a perception that nothing is being done. I know that this Bill is trying to do something about precisely that, but the perception is that all these people are coming in and nothing is being done.

I have said before that I do not believe that the people making those observations in public are motivated by xenophobia. I have a number of observations. The UK may not be full—it is not full—but if you live in one of the many towns where there is a chronic housing shortage, you are near the top of the housing list and then you get bumped, you may have a perception that it is to do with immigration because some refugees have been given housing. British citizens from all ethnicities can become frustrated and can feel as though there are indeed too many people coming to the UK. We need to have the figures to be able to refute that, or to do something about it. Also, as it happens, you need the figures to plan how we can get more housing and deal with the lack of services—because, actually, the problem is not too many people but not enough services. We need to know, and that is why the data would be helpful.

My second point is about lack of trust, a sense that those in authority are not prepared to tackle this issue; that it is too difficult. Often, that takes the form of people believing that lies are being told about the figures and the real numbers are being hidden. It is in all our interests in restoring trust that we are not hiding any figures. Also, confusion remains over different categories of people wanting to come to the UK. Even in this House, throughout this debate there has been slippage in talking about migrants, immigration, asylum seeking, refugees and so on; they are all too often conflated.

This is further confused by reality. For example, in my view, there are not enough opportunities for unskilled economic migrants to make their life here. I have to persuade my fellow citizens of that; they do not necessarily agree. Regardless, many undoubtedly present themselves as asylum seekers here because of the confusion. I know that it is not a clear picture; none the less, it would surely help to detoxify the issue if politicians were open and honest. That would mean our having much more granular information about the numbers of all types of people living in the UK and their status here.

Finally, I have reservations about Amendment 81 asking for weekly figures of the numbers entering the UK across the English Channel. My reservations are based on the image of some ghastly nightly announcement like those Covid death announcements, which were so often demoralising and not necessarily very reliable. I do worry about scaremongering, or that stats might be used as a substitute for analysis or context, but, on balance, I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant and the more information in the public realm, the better. This is not because I am particularly enthusiastic about data or into number-crunching, like some other noble Lords. No nation state can claim to have meaningful sovereignty if it does not know or check, or has no control over, the number of people living within its borders. It comes over as indifference to the worries of people who are already citizens here if it looks like we are being evasive about those numbers, or not openly telling them the truth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid I have to plead guilty as charged to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, since I was chair of the committee on citizenship and citizenship engagement that he was referring to, which had among its extremely able members the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and my noble friend Baroness Eaton.

We came across this issue, so I have some sympathy with the direction of travel of this amendment. In simple terms, while our committee was sitting the fees for naturalisation were raised to £1202, with an extra £80 if you wanted to have a citizenship ceremony. We were told that the cost of administering was roughly half that, so there was an override of about £600.

To be honest, to forgo the citizenship ceremony, which we were able to attend, would be to miss something. It was an extraordinarily moving experience to watch the people enter enthusiastically into their new life. In the margin of the meeting, they did, of course, tell us about the costs that they had to incur along the way. My major reason for supporting the direction of travel, though, is the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. We are trying to promote people to come forward and anything that dissuades them is a mistake. I am not sure that we must have regard to what other countries are charging. That seems to me not necessarily something that will add to the sum of human knowledge; nor do I think there is necessarily not some room for a bit of a surcharge for the overall administration. But the underlying point is that the margin between the cost of providing the service and the cost being charged is too great.

In my view, this amendment—not in this form, but something like it—would impose some financial discipline at a lower operational level because it would impose some direct responsibility. Once it becomes a sort of global figure, nobody cares about it, is responsible for it or does anything to improve the service it is providing. That is why I think this is going in the right direction, even though I do not agree with all the detail.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to support Amendments 83 and 84 and really thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for putting them forward. I do not know whether she will be grateful but I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Whether she wants me or not, I am one of the terriers she has managed to inspire in this instance. I have tried to pursue a bit of theme—I raised it at Second Reading and in Committee—that the Bill should have been used, apart from anything, to send a positive message about the benefits of being a citizen and those special rights and duties characteristic of any nation state. I feel the Government have missed a trick.

It seems to me that these modest amendments could punch above their weight by, on the one hand, removing entirely unnecessary barriers to citizenship but, on the other, making a positive case that we care about citizenship by doing so. It is a reminder that the barriers we are talking about here are not necessary. They are just financial ones. These are people whom the British state, according to its own British Nationality Act, says are entitled to citizenship, so that is not even in dispute. That is what is so irritating about this.

The fees are undoubtedly causing people problems and putting them off realising their citizenship rights. We have already heard the details. But the fact that you can be charged well over £1,000—despite the Home Office estimating that it takes only £372 to cover costs—just makes it feel like a rather grubby money-raising scheme. The amendment rightly tackles the fact that you should restrict any fee to just covering the real cost. I worry that it sends a message that citizenship is being cheapened morally by charging too much.

This goes beyond money because we need to consider what it means. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the right reverend Prelate both referred to what this means politically. It is completely counterproductive that citizenship is treated in this financial way because of the impact it has on social bonds and cohesion. Rather than citizenship which allows a sort of national solidarity of citizens—as we have inspiringly seen among the citizens of Ukraine—instead we are socialising new generations into a kind of shadow citizenship status that is fracturing and creates cynicism in the UK’s very commitment to the belonging, to equal rights and virtues and to the promise of what it means to be British.