Family Migration (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hamwee]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Justice and Home Affairs Committee All families matter: An inquiry into family migration (1st Report, HL Paper 144).

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am sorry to have driven so many Members away. I should declare my interests: I have introduced Bills on family reunion; I chaired an APPG inquiry that reported in 2013 on the then new rules; and I am a trustee of a charity that assists asylum seekers into university education.

We had a choice of quotes to introduce this report, many of them from senior politicians stressing that family is the bedrock of society. We chose this article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”


We found that many families are not protected. This begs the question, what is “family” in the 2020s? We were clear that it is more than the traditional nuclear family of two adults plus two children. Blended families, for instance, may include children from previous relationships. In many cultures, the concept of “family” is very wide, with corresponding responsibilities to family members. The world has shrunk in terms of accessibility and experience, and relationships reflect that.

The principle of the importance of family has fallen foul of current political narratives. The Home Office takes the view that it is a matter of choice if a family cannot be together because of the rules or, as it puts it, whether a family decide to separate. In 2013, I heard a British citizen be told on a radio call-in to go and live in his wife’s country. As he said, “There’s not much call for mortgage broking in Nigeria”.

There is no consistent definition of “family” or “relative” across the immigration pathways. The Government have created bespoke pathways in response to different situations rather than applying one set of principles. Naturally, this causes confusion and resentment. Where there is an apparently family-friendly policy, it is often undermined or negatived by practice and by practical realities, especially the costs—in particular, fees and the health surcharge, which are now rising to considerably more than when they were mentioned in our evidence, as they were frequently.

Of course, the rules barely touch the sides in terms of parliamentary scrutiny. Ministers respond to criticisms of their being too restrictive by saying that, where there are compelling and compassionate factors, we can exercise discretion to grant leave outside the rules. That means uncertainty and unfairness; it also infringes on one of Lord Bingham’s tenets of the rule of law. It is hard not to regard the evidence that the committee received as compelling and requiring a compassionate response.

That is certainly the case where children are concerned. The “best interests of the child” are not just a matter of compassion; they are part of our law. A child’s interests are not paramount, but no other consideration can be treated as inherently more significant. I suggest that the Home Office forgets this last bit; they are not systematically integrated into immigration law. Family law and the family courts deal with these things much better, as they do in recognising the range of people—step-parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts—who are important to a child.

The Islington Law Centre told us:

“We have observed the incredible transformation that young people go through after being reunited with family”.


They

“experience a dramatic upturn in their mental health”

and

“are finally able to focus on their future”.

According to other evidence from professionals on the impact of separation from parents on children, adolescents and young people who have experienced human rights abuses, they are

“vulnerable to symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder and developmental difficulties in addition to centrally difficulties in the process of mourning, separation and loss”.

In theory, adult relatives have a pathway to join family in the UK if they need support, but the eligibility requirements are almost impossibly strict. No wonder they are regarded not as a pathway but as a ban. To fulfil them, it is unlikely you would be fit to travel. Responsibility and love do not feature.

One witness and her husband worked in the NHS:

“Yes I can arrange carers, help at home in India, but ask any elderly who would they like to spend time with—the love and care from one’s own children cannot be replaced with even the finest carers”.


Another witness said:

“Do I continue to let my mother get increasingly frail and isolated … with her only family half a world away? But the only alternative is to uproot my family, depriving my son of his links with cousins and maternal grandparents, forcing my wife not to see her aging parents and to abandon her successful career here (not to mention my own)”.


A requirement for an adult dependent relative visa is that the sponsor in the UK must undertake to provide for the applicant’s maintenance, accommodation and care for five years, and confirm that the applicant will not have recourse to public funds. The catch is that if they can do that, they can afford to pay for “care” abroad, which in many places must go in quotation marks because of poor standards and even abuse. Given the undertaking, why are the Government so unyielding on the cost to the state?

This is one of the rules which keeps families out of the UK and loses us valuable members of society, when middle-aged people decide they must leave to care for parents. Notably, it is why non-British citizens working in healthcare are lost to it. As of last November, non-British citizens made up 16.5% of the NHS workforce and 37% of hospital doctors. Can we afford to lose them? We deter the very people we need as part of our labour force and who would contribute to our society. I am sure others will mention postgraduate students.

The impact of the minimum income requirement for spouses and partners is considerable, and that cohort will increase because EU and EEA citizens who are not settled now fall within the rules. Let us not forget pensioners living abroad with a foreign partner who want to return. I have heard shock, distress, anger and outrage: “Is this how my country treats me?”

Women who would sponsor a partner may be at a particular disadvantage because women tend to earn less. Non-British partners who are high earners outside the UK do not have their earnings taken into account.

A partner may be faced with remaining abroad with a child or leaving the child. In 2015 the Children’s Commissioner estimated that up to 15,000 children were separated from a parent by the income requirement. We heard of a child whose mental health was so affected that she was hospitalised. She recovered when her father was able to join her and her mother in the UK after two years.

We heard a lot about

“overly strict, inflexible and very onerous”

evidential requirements for resources to count. The MIR was introduced to promote social cohesion and protect public finances. It fails—a view that the Migration Advisory Committee has recently indicated it shares.

I remember a gentleman who was living in a low-wage area with a disabled daughter who needed a lot of care, so his ability to work was restricted. He remarried to a teacher who could have shared that care and contributed to the household income. He did not reach the MIR, so they made do with her visiting. She was then refused entry because the immigration officer did not believe she would leave. She was sent to Harmondsworth, where she collapsed. There is a culture of disbelief. We recommend a rebuttable presumption in favour of applications to visit close family and the reintroduction of a right of appeal.

Let it not be said, although the Government say it, that contact online is an adequate substitute. How can it be if a child thinks that daddy has no legs because they are not visible on the screen? We heard that:

“Staying in touch online has been a crutch, a necessary evil that we hold onto, like onto a straw while drowning. It certainly does not allow actual relationship to develop and bloom”.


Child refugees cannot sponsor family members to join them. The UK is one of two outliers in Europe on this. We reject the notion of a pull factor and accept evidence of the huge detrimental impact on children who are refugees. Children need their parents and their siblings, at least. Siblings are very important. We heard distressing evidence, and the obvious point that a child’s family will normally still be in the persecuting state; the child will spend most of their time worrying about their family’s safety.

We did not call for comments on Home Office procedures, but we got a great many: about the “punitive” costs, described as some of the highest in the world, which mean some having to choose whose visas in the family can be renewed, or falling off the route to settlement because the fees are unaffordable. We heard how poor the Home Office is at communicating. It is nowhere near proactive. It fails to meet its own standards. The descriptions sounded like the worst of call centres; if you email, you get a standard reply, no matter the question. Ask any MP and you hear the same frustrations about failures to respond. The Home Office is its own worst enemy. It could reduce the burden with less frequent requirements for renewal—and I will not start on backlogs.

Even with more time than most speakers have this afternoon, this is inevitably a quick canter around some of our committee’s 61 conclusions and recommendations. We were united in our disappointment at the Government’s uniform—and, frankly, cloth-eared—rejection. I hope the Minister can be less defensive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

Are there any other bids? I am grateful to the speakers who have added their voices to that of the committee. I clearly cannot go through every point the Minister made, but I will say that my noble friend Lord Paddick’s point was not about couples who have not gone through a civil partnership but same-sex couples who cannot cohabit in their own country when a requirement for leave is that they should have cohabited.

I sincerely thank members of the committee for their work on the inquiry. The unanimity was notable; there were no fudges. I also thank our clerk David Shiels, our policy analyst Achille Versaevel, our committee assistant Amanda McGrath, our communications officer Aneela Mahmood, our specialist adviser Helena Wray of Exeter University and, of course, the 100-plus witnesses for their compelling and sometimes distressing evidence. They all helped us to stand in the shoes of the people who are affected by the rules—so far as any of us who are not so affected can.

I will have to see whether I can find any nuggets of cause for optimism in the Minister’s response. I commend to him the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt: empathy is not weakness. I well remember the occasion when the Secretary of State in oral evidence to the committee prayed in aid, “We can’t welcome everyone”. I was quite taken aback: I simply said, “No one is suggesting that”.

We clearly approached the issues from a completely different point of view from the Government and with completely different attitudes. I cannot help wondering about the reference to the rules being based on what the courts have ruled regarding Article 8. There is a series of successful appeals on the basis of Article 8 where the appellant has won against the Government. Immigration is a political issue; family should not be. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.