Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Bruiser? Moi? Surely not. I will at some point potentially bruise the noble Lord once again, but today I am trying to find the sensible middle way.

Let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Murray, that I have already recognised that there are issues with the numbers. When he intervened at Second Reading and asked the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the numbers, there was a potential vacuum for an assessment of what those numbers would be. Again, any sensible Government would have to take those matters into account, which, to answer the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is why I indicated at Second Reading that we had concerns about the additional numbers, the assessments of those numbers and the criteria for granting them. As I said then and reiterate today, there are legal reasonable routes for other family members to join after a proper assessment. Without repeating it all today, I referenced that very strongly in the debate at Second Reading.

The government response today is that I wish the amendments to be withdrawn. But that is a matter for noble Lords. As we progress, in Committee, on Report, at Third Reading and when the Bill goes to the House of Commons, we as a Government will, in between, reflect on these matters.

I hope that is clear, even if it is slightly in the middle. Maybe in the middle is not such a bad place to be. That is my view on the amendments and on the Bill. I can add nothing more than that today than to allow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to respond to amendments that were designed—as appears to be the condition of current Opposition Members—not to help clarity, were perhaps for a little further discussion or perhaps a little obfuscation. Ultimately, the House will determine these matters in due course.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Schwab and Westheimer Trust, which supports young asylum seekers in education. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for his compliments about persistence. The compliments should be directed at previous Home Office Ministers, who waived the Bill’s predecessors through to the Commons in a very similar form and did not seek to obstruct them. I applaud the Minister’s elegant negotiation of a tightrope. As he says, there can be further opportunities for discussion, and of course sending the Bill to the Commons gives those opportunities.

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I certainly had not intended a discourtesy. There was not a vacuum as regards the numbers; it was my inability immediately to find the briefing we received from the Red Cross, Safe Passage and the Refugee Council, which was sent to those who had their names down to speak at Second Reading. Had I realised that he wanted to pursue that point, I would of course have handed on my copy of the briefing. That briefing included a number of other issues.

I will make a few general points that are relevant to all the amendments in this group. The Bill is to put into statutory form provisions for family reunion that are currently in the rules, because statute is more stable than rules. We are adding siblings, for reasons that we will come to, and provide for children to sponsor family members, including parents, whom they cannot currently sponsor. The cost of supporting unaccompanied children is obviously high. My view is that reuniting families would lead to savings: parents would support their children.

We want to see more safe and legal routes. Currently, those routes are quite limited. The provisions we are proposing would create a safe and legal route, subject to a visa. Applications for visas are much easier to control, oversee and assess than people arriving on our shores in an irregular fashion. Of course, children—particularly those who are alone—are in a particular position. That is why we have had a lot of support from outside the House, with many mentions of the best interests of the child. Vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation has already been mentioned.

The incompatibility of some of the amendments with many of the current rules has been mentioned. The current position is that the Secretary of State can extend or restrict eligibility through changes to the rules, so the factual position remains the same. Amendment 19 is slightly tighter than the current position, in that it suggests criteria.

I will have to keep my remarks shorter than I would like, and I hope noble Lords will understand the slightly telegraphic nature of some of what I have to say. First, making the Bill not permissive denies the whole Bill. I thought the “may” and “must” point was linked with the proviso in Amendment 5, which I had assumed was the main point. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, shows concern for services integration, which was not much of a focus for the previous Government. It is hugely important, and I encourage him to keep on urging both investment and support for the organisations involved, and to pursue the recommendations of the Woolf commission. But the conditions he sets out do not apply to grants of family reunion now.

We on these Benches are no great fans of the IMA; I hope that we will see the current Government get rid of it. The previous Government of the noble Lord, Lord Murray, consulted on a cap under the IMA, but did not include family reunion in the proposals for that cap. They listed routes to be subject to the cap and referred to other safe and legal routes.