Digital Evidence

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: there has to be consistency and training has to be sufficient across the piece. The CPS, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are working through this together. The rape review, led by the Home Office, the Attorney-General’s office and the Ministry of Justice, is considering fully the reasons for a drop in referrals, to which the noble Lord has alluded in the past, and whether the digital disclosure is part of this.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con) [V]]

My Lords, earlier in my career, from 1982 to 1988, I was the UK representative on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Interestingly, when we had meetings in Brasilia and in adjoining countries in South America, I was very impressed by how much more real help was available for the victims of such bad situations. I support the view that we should do everything we can to stay ahead of these needs. While I have listened to the various technical points raised, will the Minister bear in mind that this would really help women who are in a very desperate situation?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend is right that this could indeed help to clinch a case one way or another. At the heart of this is that police and prosecutors have a duty to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry in every investigation. Increasingly, evidence is coming digitally. In response, the police have to ensure that they are acting in a way that is proportionate, but which also protects privacy, as talked about by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

Domestic Abuse

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 29th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am very sorry to hear the right reverend Prelate’s story. I most certainly will meet with him.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con) [V]]

My Lords, having been talked out of the last two or three questions that I have attempted to ask, I am glad to be still within the time. No one could have been better at putting this Question than the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, who has done a huge amount to help people in the past. I have always been very impressed by the work that she has done, originally with women and now more generally.

Carers are a very important part of this, and they certainly are aware of what is happening and whether someone is being maltreated. The Government giving £76 million is excellent, but we want to see that it really happens and that it is put to good use. Many suggestions have been put forward today. I am just up to the 10 minutes so I will not go on any longer.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am not sure that there is a question to answer. I agree with my noble friend, and the reason that she got in is because the Minister was so quick at answering the questions.

Banks: Immigration Act 2016

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Home Office has a list of people who are here illegally. Exit checks are only one part of the information we have to hand on who has left this country; the International Passenger Survey is another. Exit checks are therefore only one part of providing details of who is here illegally.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, like most Members of this House, I am a politically exposed person. Although I downsized my house and cleared everything through all these financial records four years ago, I am now being asked to do it again although the same money is sitting in the account that I put in there four years ago. Is it because of that, or because I am an immigrant and not British, that I am being subjected to these checks, or is it for both reasons?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Like my noble friend, I am an immigrant and a PEP. I think that my noble friend refers to banks’ anti-money laundering obligations. However, I am absolutely sure—I would vouch for her—that she is not an illegal immigrant.

Calais Camps: Unaccompanied Minors

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is estimated that there are approximately 1,300 children in the camps in Calais and that about a third of that number may be eligible to come here under either Dubs or Dublin. As I have said to the House on previous occasions, since the beginning of the year 140 children have qualified under the Dublin regulations and most of them have been transferred. In addition, this week 14 children were transferred on Monday, 13 on Tuesday and 12 today, so the actual number is estimated to be around three times the number that the noble Lord has stated. However, whether under Dubs or Dublin, we are absolutely determined to get those children here. The noble Lord will know—because I have stated it previously—that the Home Secretary regularly presses for those children, first, to be brought here and, secondly, if they are not here, to be put in places of safety before the camp is cleared.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, a lot of dissatisfaction has been expressed in the paper today with people saying that these are adults rather than children. The paper went on to say that the best way of identifying age is through a dental examination, as wisdom teeth are highly significant, and that is why I am asking this question. It also said that a dental examination could not be done without parental consent, although of course various X-rays can be done without even opening a child’s mouth. There is something very strange about that. I wonder why it has not been possible to come to an agreement whereby, if you want to come in, you are obliged to give consent to be checked regarding your age.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I confess to being 49 years of age and still not having wisdom teeth, but that probably says something about me. We are working very closely with the French authorities and their partner agencies to ensure that all those who come to the UK from the camps are eligible under the Dublin regulations. All individuals referred to the UK authorities by the FTDA are interviewed by French and UK officials and, where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age. That is the process in France and I want noble Lords to be quite clear that we are bound by the French system of assessing age in France. When those children come to the UK, we do not use dental X-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum. The British Dental Association is vigorously opposed to them and has described them as inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical.

Student Visas: Pilot Study

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord in his role, because St Andrews is an excellent university. The universities of both England and Scotland want to attract the brightest and best talent from around the world—and they do.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, will student exchange schemes be at all affected by this? They are wonderful schemes—and I declare an interest in that one of my daughters went on an exchange to Monash from Warwick University. Will those people have any problem in future?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, student exchange schemes should not be affected by this at all, given that they are in the education system.

Immigration: Detention of Pregnant Women

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

There is a clear and unambiguous presumption against the detention of pregnant women.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

Can the Minister assure us that these pregnant women will have adequate access to full medical care at any time that it is needed?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It is intended that even before a pregnant woman is detained, her welfare will be taken into consideration. Consideration of her welfare will include the question of whether adequate facilities are available to that woman if she is detained. In the event of detention in an immigration centre such as Yarl’s Wood, there are adequate facilities to deal with pregnant women.

Asylum: Processing of Applications

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The short answer, of course, is that it is not enough—and, of course, that five weeks is then followed up by a period of at least six months when they receive close mentoring and all their decisions are checked. Also, in the cases that the noble Baroness mentioned, when there are areas of particular sensitivity, when people have been victims of torture or violence, or where there are LGBTI issues, there is also the provision of a second pair of eyes, which means that, even when an experienced person has done the evaluation, another experienced person will look at it. Of course, in the extreme situation that that person disagrees with the finding of the decision-making officer, they and their legal advisers will have the opportunity to appeal.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

What is the position regarding the phone helplines that we discussed with regard to the Immigration Bill this week? Is the same type of education or training given to people whatever phone line they work on—health or immigration? How qualified are they? Are they like insurance companies, which have a list of answers, and if you ask a question outside the list they have no answer? I do not think that we got an answer on that from the Minister the other day.

[Lord Bates]

I am trying to remember the immigration phone line to which the noble Baroness refers. I assume that she means the right-to-rent checks, for which there is a helpline charged at local rates. That is simply just to check immigration status. It is almost a binary issue of whether the person is legally entitled to be here or not. We think that it can probably be dealt with at that level.

Immigration Act 2014 (Commencement No. 6) Order 2016

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

I would just add that, if this proposal had come from the European Union, there would have been uproar, at the idea that this amount of bureaucracy and red tape was being put on landlords, with the potential for discrimination. Everybody in this House would have fallen on it, torn it apart and, hopefully, voted against it.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, my interest as a small landlord is on the register. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, I have let properties in a small way for a very long time, probably 40 to 50 years, starting with the basement of a house that I lived in. It is unfortunate that this clause comes in an immigration rather than a housing Bill, where so many of these issues are addressed and more is known about the real problems involved.

A pilot evaluation as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is at least desirable and even essential. Like others on this side of the House, I shall not vote in favour of her Motion, but I want to make an input on the subject. Checks on tenants all sound very desirable, and I have always had checks on them, but I cannot tell noble Lords how difficult it is becoming. Nowadays people either want to hide their identity for some illegal reason of their own or they simply do not even know how to produce identification. I have had a very charming and completely reliable girl take a small flat that I had. The previous tenants were expecting a child and needed more space, so they moved out. She wanted to come, but to try to get any suitable identification and proof that she was actually going to the university here that she claimed to be going to took over six weeks. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, six weeks’ loss of rent to a landlord is quite a lot of money and certainly pushes the rent up for the next person who comes along, because you have to compensate for the money that you have lost in that period. In the end, we had to get a letter from her embassy to prove that she really was legitimate.

I was quite fussy about this because we had at least six people presenting themselves to take that flat who were definitely not what they said they were and wanted it for illegal purposes. Other flats in the block have been let out on an Airbnb basis; the council used to be able at least to find out who was living in those flats. They were bussing in 10 people at a time for two weeks’ holiday. They came into a one-bedroom flat, which was not allowed to be sublet. In the end, the whole thing was sorted out in terms of those units, but the same people who had successfully run that—the court demanded that they give up that illegal subletting—were putting up front men to ask for my flat so they could do the same thing there. It is so very hard to detect these cases, and it takes a lot of time and consideration.

When residential landlords are given the responsibility to check immigration things, it will be a bit like the National Health Service. We are meant to check on who is entitled to national health treatment, but people do not have the time or ability to access the information and a tremendous lot of health tourists come here for that reason.

What are reasonable requirements? I can understand that it would be easy if we had national identity cards, although I have never really been in favour of them. Then, at least we would know whether someone was genuinely in the country, and that would cover one little thing, but that is not enough. For us to have passed the Deregulation Act, taking away the controls on people subletting or letting on short tenancies, at a time when New York and Paris were introducing such regulations was insane, but there is nothing we can do about it.

The point that this does not address at all is illegal landlords. Legal landlords are doing their best to abide by whatever the law is, but I know so many people who have a room in a house that is divided into six or eight rooms. You are meant to have a certificate if it is a house in multiple occupation and to know who is in it. Instead, these people are let rooms with no rent book or security, with nothing at all. In one case, someone has asked me to help. She is very concerned because someone has a key to her door and comes in and steals her things, yet she is told by the landlord that if she goes to the police, he will put her out instantly. That sounds unbelievable, but it is absolutely true. There will be at least six people living in a house where the landlord does not declare that he has anyone. I do not think he pays any income tax or anything else. The more we put greater and greater demands on legitimate landlords which are almost impossible to satisfy, the more we are going to push the enterprise underground. That is a very undesirable situation, and we do not want to see it.

I understand that the question of discrimination might be why this provision has been put into the Immigration Bill, but I am not involved in that Bill and I had not realised that it had housing implications. I am very impressed by the work being done by a lot of people, such as the noble Lord, Lord Best, who is a real expert on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said that there should be no further action before there has been a full consultation and evaluation, and the Liberal Members said the same thing.

It must be remembered that this is making it a criminal offence for landlords. It is not turning it into some light-hearted thing that will be dismissed. They say that you will be able to ring a helpline but, from my national health experience, I do not have a huge amount of faith in helplines. Every day in the paper there is a story about something that has gone wrong with a helpline. Why do we think a helpline would be any better manned or more efficient in this field than in other fields? Human nature is able to copewith only a certain amount, and most people staffing helplines have a list of questions and answers beside them. If you do not fit into that pattern, they might not be able to give you the appropriate answer because the question is not one that they have been given an answer to.

The Government need to make the situation much clearer to landlords. I think it is true that people have not had any notice about this—I certainly have not. The same applied over carbon monoxide monitors; the measure was introduced with two weeks’ notice and no one was told anything about it. It is no good asking people to follow a law without them having any idea that it is coming in. It is only through the National Landlords Association that I have come about this knowledge at all.

This is an important issue. I feel that it could go disastrously wrong, and it would be far better for it to be fully evaluated and dealt with perhaps in the housing Bill rather than in the Immigration Bill.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken in this debate. I begin by putting on record that my wife is a small-scale private sector landlord; I want to draw that to the attention of the House.

In considering these matters, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that we had a substantial debate on this issue on 20 January on Amendment 148 to Clause 13, which was from, as I recall, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. That went on for some time and raised many of the issues that have been raised today. If, because of the hour, I touch on a number of the issues lightly as we go through, I think it will be helpful for those who have genuine concerns about this to look again at the Official Report for the second day of Committee, and I am sure we will have the opportunity to revisit this on day one of Report on 9 March. For those reasons, I trust that the House will bear with me if I try to deal with some of the headline issues that perhaps have not been raised before.

First, I shall deal with the context of this measure. The context to legislation is very important. This is a commencement order, Commencement Order No. 6, for a piece of legislation that was passed by the coalition Government. The changes about which many concerns have been raised relate to the Immigration Bill currently going through your Lordships’ House but this relates firmly to the Act that was passed by the coalition Government.

It has to be said that the notion that landlords should have a duty to check that those to whom they rent properties are legally entitled to be here was first introduced by the then Labour Government in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which introduced a duty on social landlords to undertake checks to ensure that they were letting properties only to people who had a legal right to be here. This measure simply extends that further across.

We are of course talking here about human beings and I think that we all recognise the humanity of this, but we are also talking about real problems that are faced in this country. We talk constantly about pressures in the housing market, and it could be that part of that pressure is because a number of properties in the private rented sector are currently rented out to people who have no legal right to be here, which means that they are here illegally and therefore breaking our laws. The question is: should we as a Government, and indeed as a Parliament, be endorsing and basically offering protection to people with no legal right to be here, who are breaking our laws and abusing our hospitality and should leave, to the potential disadvantage of people who are legally here and entitled to rent a property? That is the first point.

The second point, to which a number of issues relate, is on the timing, and I recognise that that is a key point. The original announcement about the pilot exercise was in September 2014—I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Best—and the original pilot or phased introduction was undertaken some time ago. I readily accept that it was undertaken as a concession to arguments made, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Best, at various stages during the passage of the Immigration Bill through your Lordships’ House. The pilot was set up in the West Midlands, which is the second largest conurbation in the UK and quite an ethnically diverse area. It was therefore deemed to be an appropriate setting in which to test out how this would work. On top of that, an independent panel was set up, which of course the noble Lord, Lord Best, co-chairs. The panel includes representatives from the British Property Federation, the Residential Landlords Association, which has been referred to, the National Approved Letting Scheme, the UK Association of Letting Agents, the Association of Residential Letting Agents, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the National Housing Federation. It also includes Shelter, Crisis, Universities UK and, crucially, on the element of discrimination, the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Why, then, was the decision taken to do this—a point which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, rightly sought clarification on? The answer is that it was in the Conservative Party manifesto. We stood at the election and our manifesto said that we would clamp down on people who are here illegally to stop them being able to work, rent properties, open bank accounts and obtain driving licences. We said that we would do all those things. Therefore, when we were elected by the people to do that, we announced that we would get on and do it. This is not happening across the country, to take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. We introduced it in the West Midlands and that pilot has now been running for over a year, during which we have been gathering the evidence of how it has been operating and evaluating it. This order will enable it to be rolled out to the rest of England but of course further orders will be required for it to be rolled out into Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

On the timing, I took on board the points that were made by my noble friends Lady Gardiner, Lord Hailsham and Lord Cathcart, among others, who were concerned about the time it takes to get documents. That is why a lot of this information can be checked online: there is an online checking service, which is not a premium service, as we said the previous time we discussed this, but a local-rate number that people can ring up. At the moment, that government service delivers 100% as regards its target time, turning work around in 48 hours. When people obtain references at present when a landlord lets out a property, surely they want to establish whom they are letting out the property to. They require some identification and may require proof of employment, with a reference from the employer or from previous landlords. All of that takes time. This part simply checks that the person who is there is legally entitled to be in the UK, and I would have thought that that would be a standard part of due diligence that should be happening in most cases. Therefore that element is there.

I recognise that we all have a deep concern about discrimination in the housing market. That was one of the reasons why the mystery shopping exercise happened there. That sounds like a trivial thing, but it is an established procedure used by all retailers around the country. We used an external firm to undertake the exercise and half the visits were undertaken by BME couples, who were seeking accommodation. What they identified was, sadly, that there is still discrimination— that we know—but that the discrimination levels experienced in the West Midlands control area or pilot area were similar to those in the other areas being used as a comparator. We have to make sure that landlords are more aware of the duties that they already have under the Equalities Act 2010 and the racial discrimination Act of 1965 to ensure that there is no discrimination.

The discrimination point is a key area. We are determined to go much further on this and I know that the independent panel is keen to do that as well. We are updating the code of practice to ensure that landlords know their duties and obligations to ensure that properties are fairly let to people, irrespective of their background. We have done that with great assistance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which of course is part of that panel.

A number of noble Lords referred to asylum seekers and refugees. The legislation exempts refuges, hostels and student accommodation, and, where there are vulnerable people who may have lost documents and what have you, there are special procedures to ensure that they are protected.

The target of this legislation is two groups of people. The first group is those who have no right to be here and should leave, and therefore should not be occupying premises that should be made available to people who have a legal right to be here. The second group, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, was right to point out, are the unscrupulous landlords who charge extortionate rents for appalling accommodation—I have seen reports on that type of accommodation that people are actually living in. These are the people we have in our sights. All a landlord needs to do is undertake a basic check of the documents and keep a copy of them. They then have a statutory defence that they have complied with the law.

A number of very specific points were raised. Perhaps, if the House will allow me, I can undertake to cover those in communications. We are having ongoing conversations about this: we have had several meetings at the Home Office and other meetings. We are going to come back to this. There are some areas where I think we can get some movement to make sure that there is greater reassurance. However, this particular element relates to legislation from 2014 for which there has been a pilot and a phased introduction. We are confident that the safeguards are in place, but it will continue to be kept under review. Therefore, I commend the commencement order to the House and urge the noble Baroness to reconsider pressing her fatal Motion.

Population Increase: Migration

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the High Commissioner for New Zealand made a speech deploring the fact that New Zealanders who come under the highly skilled category have to go all the way back to New Zealand to get a renewal? He thinks that is particularly hard—certainly, no one has to go further than New Zealand. A lot of these people may eventually become immigrants: I came for six months and I am still here 60 years later. Will he give thought to changing these regulations so that people do not have the great disadvantage of having to go long distances simply to renew whatever they already have?

[Lord Bates]

I hope that was not an admission that my noble friend is an overstayer; if so, she is a very welcome one. For most Commonwealth countries, no visa is required, and it is absolutely right to recognise the special relationship we have with them. When people come on one type of visa, it is normal in most jurisdictions around the world that once the purpose for which they were granted access has expired and they wish to change it, they go back and reapply. We are simply saying that that ought to remain the case.

Domestic Abuse

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that Britain was the first country to bring this into public notice, at the United Nations conference for women, and that because of this, other, smaller countries which had had terrible violence against women for many years were no longer ashamed for it to be known about? There is still a lot to be done but we have made considerable progress over those 20 or more years.

[Lord Bates]

That is a very important point because this is a UN international day, which is in its 17th year. We also remember the work done through DfID and the Girl Summit, which was hosted in this country last year, to get to grips with this issue in other countries as well. But we also have a great deal more to do in our own country to ensure that we have the response absolutely right.