Immigration Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I am rather puzzled. If conditions for asylum seekers are so difficult in this country, why are there literally thousands of people camped around Calais who appear to want to get into this country in order to claim asylum? And why is it that, of those who claim asylum, 60% have already been working before they make their claim?

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, today is a day for pithy comments rather than rehearsing arguments that I have already made on this subject, which are on the record. Amendment 59B is different from the previous amendment in that an olive branch has been offered in the shape of nine months rather than six months. We have been told that the delays in the system are historic and that the system is now under control, so it seems that there should not be a problem with six months —but there we are.

I support in particular the noble Lord’s comments about the shortage occupation list. It would be inappropriate to go through all the jobs on that list but without wanting to be too frivolous, I noticed that, for instance, string players are on the list but there is no mention of players of wind or brass instruments. That is the sort of detail and the sort of thing that really makes you wonder about the policy.

The nine months proposal would be in line with almost all other countries in the EU, so there would be no pull factor. Having spoken up and given my support to the noble Lord, I will sit down.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

The amendment your Lordships sent to the Commons on allowing asylum seekers the right to work after six months, like the other amendments carried in this House against the Government’s wishes, did not find favour with the Government or indeed receive any indication of movement by them on the issue.

As has been said, at present in most cases asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK unless they have waited over 12 months for an initial or subsequent decision, and are not considered responsible for any delay. Those who do qualify for the right to work under these restrictions are then able to apply only for jobs on the shortage occupation list. However, we are currently reviewing this issue as part of a wider policy review and consequently we will not be supporting the Motion sending the matter back again to the Commons—albeit now saying nine months rather than six months.

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[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in her place today. She understands these issues from her experience in central London and has spoken about them on previous occasions.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for seeing me yesterday to discuss domestic workers and the tied visa. I also thank the noble Earl for what he said in his introduction to this response, and I am grateful to the Immigration Minister for saying that,

“when an overseas domestic worker has been referred into the national referral mechanism during their initial six-month stay, their permission to take employment will continue while their case is assessed”.

That is helpful, and will prevent destitution. However, the Minister went on to say that,

“the measures will ensure that, when a worker arrives”—

I emphasise that word—

“in an abusive employment relationship, they can leave it with the certainty that they will be able to continue working”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/4/16; col. 1190.]

I must therefore ask: does that cover cases where the abuse or exploitation starts only after arrival here? I trust that the answer is yes and that the need to enter the NRM to get protection will be made widely known at information meetings before and after arrival, and to the relevant statutory and voluntary people here.

If the NRM application fails and the worker has to leave this country, can she know in advance that she will be able to return home if she wishes and not be left stranded somewhere in the Middle East?

Those two points are important. I have given notice of them and I look forward to positive replies.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has done a sterling job on this issue, as have others on previous such Bills. Of course, I acknowledge that the Government have made some important changes, but I have to say that I remain persuaded by the report of James Ewins—a report commissioned by the Government themselves.

The Government’s amended policy depends in particular on the national referral mechanism functioning well and there being easy access to it. I summed up in my own mind that the Government’s approach reflects prosecution trumping protection—and I do not say that lightly. The Government are concerned that if overseas domestic workers could change employers and significantly prolong their stay, they would be less likely to report abuse, and enable an employer to abuse others. I do not accept that premise in the context of what we know about this situation. The workers will remain effectively tied to their employers. They will be deterred from escaping because of the quite complex and conditional rights under the new regime, or indeed they may go underground. They need to be informed of clear, concrete rights which are readily understood, and they need to be confident about employing those rights.

I, too, have questions for the Minister. First, can he give any news of the improved functioning of the national referral mechanism, which we know has been the subject of considerable attention and new ways of working? Secondly, I understand that Mr Ewins is to be asked to make a further report. I am not sure whether, in the light of the acceptance or otherwise of his first report, he has accepted that job. But if it is to happen, when will it happen, and will it cover the use of the national referral mechanism by overseas domestic workers?

[Lord Green of Deddington]

My Lords, I do not doubt for a moment the good intentions of those who have put forward this amendment. The Government have moved a very long way to make sure, as much as they can, that overseas domestic workers are not exploited. Everyone is bound to concur with that.

The difficulty I have is that this amendment is not confined to domestic workers who are actually subject to abuse: all would be entitled to leave their employer, for any reason. Well, that is a considerable concession. However, if I have read the amendment correctly, they can stay here for not less than two and a half years. That creates a gaping hole in the immigration system. We are talking here about 17,000 people a year. Of course, word will spread very quickly that you can get to the UK on a domestic workers visa, walk out on your employer, stay here for two and a half years and then almost certainly go into the black economy and not go home. That will lead to a huge gap in our system, and I have to say that I think it is very unwise.

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There is much more I could say but in the interests of time I will conclude by emphasising again that Amendment 85C aims by means of legal safeguards to make a reality of what the Government say is their intention. I had hoped, perhaps naively, that the Government might be able to accept it, given that, and I accept there may well be technical problems with it, but these can be smoothed out. What we are concerned about here are questions of principle and even if we have had to row back on the basic principle of no absolute exclusion, important principles are involved in ensuring safeguards where we can. I argue that it does not upset in any way the balance that the Home Secretary said the Government want to achieve between protecting vulnerable women and maintaining effective and proportionate immigration control, but it would provide some assurance that the Government are really serious about protecting this particularly vulnerable group of women. This is the very least we can do while we still have the opportunity.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in his Motion and I hope noble Lords will accept that the fact that I do not repeat or expand on what he has said does not in any way reduce my enthusiasm for it.

A duty to consider bail is certainly welcome, compared with the current situation, but it is second best by some distance. But the automatic reference is to be only after six months. My Amendment 84B, proposed in Motion C2, has an awful lot of words but only two words that are different from the Government’s amendment; that is, it changes “six months” to “56 days”, which noble Lords will readily appreciate is twice 28 days—another of the olive branches coming from this part of the Chamber.

Rather than taking the time of the House to discuss the concerns about immigration detention that your Lordships have heard from me on previous occasions, I will quote a little from the report of the all-party group of which I, the noble Lord and the noble Baroness were members. The then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, was quoted with regard to his concerns about the way in which reviews were carried out. He said that,

“reviews that happen, if they do happen, are often cursory, and … the requirement that there should be a reasonable prospect of someone actually being removed if they’re going to be detained isn’t met. And an example of that is that at least a third, and getting on for half, of all detainees are released back into the community. And this poses the question: if they’re suitable to be released back into the community at that point, why do they need to be detained in the first place?”.

The report went on to say:

“This echoed a finding of the joint thematic review of immigration detention casework carried out by Nick Hardwick and John Vine, the then Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. In their report they say: ‘There was inconsistent adherence by case owners to the Hardial Singh principles that removal of detained people must occur within a “reasonable period”. Many monthly progress reports appeared to have been provided as a matter of bureaucratic procedure rather than as a genuine summary of progress, and some detainees found them difficult to understand’”.

Judicial oversight is a different animal from internal progress reports and it is important. That is why I would want to see automatic judicial oversight at a much shorter point than six months, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, gave in moving his amendment.

Turning to the guidance with regard to vulnerable people, Stephen Shaw’s report is very thorough and long. I continue to be concerned that if the guidance on the detention of vulnerable people, which we already have, did not work well last month or last year, will it work well next year?

Noble Lords may have received briefings from the organisation Freedom from Torture, which was then the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. I would like to put the questions which it has posed to the Minister. That organisation, along with the Helen Bamber Foundation and other organisations, have arrangements in place with the Home Office for the assessment of certain persons claiming asylum. Can the Minister confirm, first, whether the safeguard requiring the release from detained asylum processes of those accepted for assessment by those organisations for their medico-legal report services will be continued? Secondly, and quite obviously, can he confirm whether those two organisations and other relevant organisations will be consulted during the development of the adults at risk policy?

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

The noble Baroness is quoting at length from documents which none of us has seen elsewhere. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, have also been quoting at length arguments which have been repeated ad nauseam in this House and in the other place. May I express the hope that she will shortly bring her remarks to a conclusion?

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the questions that I asked were put to me this morning. The quotation that I read was about three-quarters of one column, on pages which are of two columns; the report continues for getting on for 70 pages. I accept that the House wishes to get on with a decision, but I do not believe that I am raising new points. I could have repeated old points at some considerable length.

I now come to the new amendment which we have, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. She mentioned healthcare at Yarl’s Wood. The Minister said in the Commons yesterday that,

“Yarl’s Wood, and its links with the health service in Bedfordshire, provide an effective join-up”,—[Official Report, Commons, 25/4/16; col. 1195.]

for the care of pregnant women. I have to query whether Yarl’s Wood will ever become suitable for that care.

Amendment 85D, which I have tabled on the second set of issues, would delete subsection (4) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 85B. Again, the amendment as it is printed appears to be very long, but that would be the only change. That subsection in Amendment 85B provides that:

“A woman to whom this section applies who has been released following detention … may be detained again under such a power in accordance with this section”.

My amendment is a probing amendment to seek to understand how this will be applied and how the time limit will operate. As the noble Baroness has described it, it looks like a cat and mouse provision, and in a democratic institution where we are reminded about suffrage every day we walk around, I hope that that is not the case. I look forward to the Minister expanding on this if he can. Can he confirm that, when that paragraph talks about detention “under such a power”—which is a power to detain—“in accordance with this section”, it means “subject to” this section? I cannot think that it means anything else, but it struck me as a slightly curious way of describing it.

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[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I was recently in northern Iraq, visiting internally displaced people and Syrian refugees. In a meeting with the United Nations office for the co-ordination of humanitarian aid, we were told that despite the generosity promised by many international donors, only 9% of the money had actually got through. That was not specifically applied to the UK. I do not know how much of the UK’s promised aid has gone but it was 9% overall. So when we hear about the amount of money that has been promised, it does not tell us how much has been delivered.

The second background point I would make is that in meeting refugees and internally displaced people, it became clear that there is a divide by generation. The older people still dream of going back home; the younger people and their children do not believe that they have a home to go back to. In the areas where ISIS has been, in many cases it has simply destroyed everything. There is no infrastructure. There are no homes or schools. What has been left has often been booby-trapped. So what does it mean to say that we want to help all these people go home, when home may no longer exist? The communities where for generations they lived together have now been destroyed because of the violence and what has gone on.

My fear in this is that we are going to have tens of thousands of children whose experience of not being welcomed when they are genuine refugees, who have shown extraordinary resilience to leave and get to where they have, will not forget how they were treated. If we want to see resentment or violence among the next two generations in that part of the world, the seeds are being sown now. I feel that the humanitarian demand outweighs some of the more technical stuff that we have heard. I applaud the Government for what they are doing, particularly in relation to the camps out in the Middle East, but they are not addressing the question on our doorstep. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, like others I recognise the contribution that the Government are making in money and personnel, so far as those are being sent. But I regard the dangers of which we have heard—the situation in which unimaginable numbers of children have been caught up—and our moral responsibility as outweighing everything. The dangers include the risks of trafficking and exploitation. Was that not precisely what the previous Government set out to counter in their flagship legislation? Prevention is the best response so relocating, supporting and welcoming children would contribute to that objective. The Minister says that this amendment is not the best or the most effective way but it is not an either/or. Whatever other countries do or do not do, the UK must not do just what is better than others but what it knows is right. This amendment is in the best interests of the children who are the subject of it.

[Lord Rosser]

I will be brief, since the arguments for this amendment have already been powerfully made. I also endorse the comments made by my noble friend Lord Dubs and other noble Lords about the measures that the Government have already taken. But while on the one hand the Government say, rightly, that we need to play a role at the heart of Europe, on the other they decline to assist over taking in unaccompanied refugee children in Europe who have fled from war, conflict and persecution and are already alone and at risk, simply because they are already in Europe.

Europol estimates that 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children went missing in Europe last year and we know that children are being exploited. The Government maintain that taking in any unaccompanied refugee children from among those already in Europe would increase the so-called pull factor—an argument for which there is no firm, hard evidence one way or the other. But at the heart of the unproven pull factor claim is a policy stance that we should leave all unaccompanied refugee children already in Europe to their fate. That is an unacceptable stance and if my noble friend decides to put his amendment to a vote, we will support him in the Division Lobby.