Immigration

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, on this debate. I agree with all the points that have been raised about the tier 1 and tier 2 people and how important it is. I know so many young bright Australians who come over and not only learn a lot but make a great contribution to science here.

In the title of the debate, “Economic and cultural impacts of immigration in the United Kingdom”, the word “in” makes it easy to spread the debate a bit. Is it on, into or within it? It could be anything. So, I intend to talk about a basic group that is already in the UK: the invisibles. I am not for a moment suggesting a general amnesty; I am not going into that. However, we had a question only yesterday about tax avoidance and tax evasion. We have thousands of people, long-term residents in the UK, who are totally invisible. They could be people living next door to you. If we could bring those people forward—I am talking specifically about long-term residence, which is a qualification for the right to settle in the UK, or at least to be here with indefinite leave to remain—this would be a great source of income tax and national insurance. These people are certainly not paying those things now because they have no idea how they would even get on to the ladder and into a position where they were entitled to be here legally.

During the time that I have handled one particular case—the only case that I have ever dealt with; it has taken three years, but the person has now obtained indefinite leave to remain—I have come into contact with quite a lot of the Latin American community. They have brought to my attention an issue that is important for the Government to look at. They say that if you arrived 10 years ago, the goalpost for long-term residence was 10 years. They quoted one person who, after nine and a half years, found that the goalpost was moved to 12 years. After eleven and a half years here, he found that it had moved to 14 years, which is where it is now. It is a bit of an injustice, rather like an employment contract where your employment arrangement is based on the laws and rules at the time of your engagement, that people should be moving the goalposts like that, as well as wrong and a bit anti-British. The Government should look at that. This is just a small thing.

I asked a Question in this House in June 2007 about how one helped someone, and the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was interesting. He said that the person I referred to,

“should apply to the Home Office Border and Immigration Agency … for indefinite leave to remain; that is, to settle in the United Kingdom entirely legally. The Immigration Rules allow for that”.—[Official Report, 25/6/07; col. 410.]

Sure enough, they do allow for that, but there are difficulties. This person was referred regularly to pro bono advisers who, after she met them, then told her that it would cost about £10,000 to deal with her papers. That is how I got stuck with her case in the end, and I found that it took three years.

Another thing that the Home Office needs to look at is the wording of some of the documents regarding evidence of residence. The department says that it requires 10 documents for each year of your time here, and it sends you an unbelievable list of the sort of things that it would like you to send in: your credit card, your bank statement, your insurance policies, payslips, P60s and so on. This is for people who are invisible here; they have none of these things, so how on earth could they possibly produce enough of them? Then the Home Office says, “The evidence cannot be from a friend”, although it could be from a doctor or a vicar or something. Eventually we sent in 26 documents, and the Home Office wrote back and said, “Not enough”. We started looking for more. Then I wrote to the Minister saying, “Most people are advised not to hang on to all these documents for years and years, and this woman has been here for 27 years”. Incidentally, the department wanted documents only for the previous 14 years, although she had plenty of documents for the period before then. The situation was extremely difficult. I wrote to say, “How is one expected to produce 140 documents?”. The Home Office replied saying no, that was not what its letter meant—it meant 10 documents in all, covering the whole 14 years. I wrote back to say that I thought it would be a good thing if the department sorted its English out a bit so that what it said it wanted was what it actually wanted.

After all this time, this person has managed to get her leave to remain, and I am so pleased that she has got it at last, but the application form is 20 pages long and unbelievably difficult to complete. So many people in this country could make a contribution, and would welcome the opportunity to become legal taxpayers and become part of this society, if only these things could be made clearer. I understand that representatives from other countries—I am talking about Latin Americans in particular, but this probably applies to all—say that if only they could have meetings with the Minister, they could sort out the things that can be done and the things that they find impossible to do. Any additional income from people who are already here, not occupying any additional accommodation because they are already in accommodation, and in so many facets of the system—although they are not already with a medical doctor because they cannot be; they have to pay their own bills—would be welcome. It would cost this country nothing, and we might get the benefit from it.