Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Clancarty

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 30th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, at the previous stage of the Bill and very late in the debate on this amendment, which was then in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Flight—I am glad that he is able to be here this evening—having listened to the Minister I asked what she would advise a couple living in the EU, one British and one an EU national, if they both have elderly parents, on one side of the family in the UK and on the other in that EU country. They would be—they are—faced with not just the end of free movement but an impossible choice: not just where they should live after March 2022 but which parents they should decide to care for personally. They will have to make that decision within the next 18 months—15 months after the end of the transition. The Minister had an impossible task in responding to my question as to whether picking between parents was a humane response. She argued that people will have had plenty of time, but does that really address the point?

Since Committee, I have had so many emails, as no doubt have other noble Lords, making it clear how many different family situations there are, but all presenting families with similarly impossible choices. I thank everyone who has written to me and to other noble Lords. They have taken such care to contact us, not with standard formulaic emails but with powerful descriptions of their situations, their concern and their distress. Noble Lords will understand that I want to read some of them into the record, and that I cannot read them all. As examples, however, there is a lady of 75 living in the Netherlands supporting a Dutch companion, and vice versa, whose mother is 96 and in a care home there. There is a lady of 79 in the UK who expected to receive support and part-time care from her daughter, who would be prepared to give it provided that her French husband is able to move to Britain. A couple in France with a 12 year-old son are faced with whether to uproot him from school. There is a family in Italy, one parent British and one Italian, with two teenagers of dual nationality—one of whom has just started at university in the UK, while the other may want to make her life here; the parents may want one day to follow their daughters. And so it went on.

We are a global society. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and in all places. Many people make the point that their residence outside the UK makes them feel no less British and that they are surprised to find themselves writing as they do. Many say that the prospect of separation from family is unbearable. All say that when they moved abroad, they had no idea that there could be restrictions or conditions on returning as a family.

The amendment provides that the regulations

“must make provision to enable UK citizens falling within the personal scope of”

the agreements referred to

“to return to the United Kingdom accompanied by, or to be joined in the United Kingdom by, close family members”

without

“conditions on the entry or residence of close family members … which could not have been imposed under EU law relating to free movement … on the day on which this Act comes into force.”

I have been asked about a detail of the amendment: the reference to “close family members”. As it happens, in a Select Committee yesterday the Immigration Minister used exactly that phrase in discussing family reunion. I suppose the technical answer is that these provisions would be implemented by regulations which would be precise, but by anyone’s definition partners and parents “where that relation subsisted”, which in the case of parents it obviously would, at the end of the year and continues to do so would fall within it, as well as children.

The Minister explained in the context of various amendments in Committee that the Government were seeking to be not discriminatory but to end discrimination between, on the one hand, EEA/Swiss citizens and, on the other hand, other citizens. But the Government’s proposals for ending the current arrangements in March 2022 would discriminate between those families of mixed nationality who happened to have settled in the UK and those who settled elsewhere in the EU. They would require Britons who wish to return to meet conditions for sponsoring a spouse and children.

The financial requirements—the minimum income requirements—are not easy nor by any means available to everyone. Some 40% of UK workers could not reach the minimum income requirement, and the non-British partner’s income can be taken into account only after six months, assuming he or she can get here in the first place. If you want to bring elderly parents, they have to be so much in need of care that, according to evidence given to a working party that I chaired some years ago, they would probably be unfit to travel. If you yourself are older and no longer earning, can you reach the income threshold? This would be discrimination against our own citizens, imposed retrospectively on citizens who had no expectation that this choice might lie ahead.

Lifting the end date would not mean unlimited numbers of people coming here with their families. As I have explained, we are talking about people who fall within the agreement, their families and children, and others with whom the relationship subsisted before January 2020. I asked rhetorically in Committee if this was really humane. I ask now whether it is the right approach—to ask that, I think, would also be rhetorical. Since Committee, I have begun to realise just how inhumane it is, so I give notice now—I suppose it is notice for Monday—that, barring assurances which I cannot say I anticipate, though they would be very welcome, I will press the matter to a vote in accordance with current procedure. For the purposes of the debate this evening, I beg to move.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. When I spoke to it in Committee, I genuinely thought that this was something the Government had overlooked. I discover that this is not the case and that there is some history behind the Government’s position. The reason perhaps for my naivety is that the argument as I saw it, and as I still see it, is very simple: it would be wrong to put a deadline on British citizens returning to the UK with their families. It would be deeply unfair to do so, and I am glad that the noble Baroness intends to press this to a vote if the Government do not accept the amendment.

The Minister cited in Committee the case that the Conservative Government of the day brought against Surinder Singh in 1992, and said at the beginning of her reply that the amendment

“refers to a specific cohort of people relating to what is known as the Surinder Singh route for family immigration.”—[Official Report, 9/9/20; col. 827.]

I fear that this statement betrays an element of cynicism in government thinking about this issue—for which I of course do not blame the noble Baroness. However, this is an inappropriate analogy, in the sense that the Government have clearly not accepted the decision made in Surinder Singh’s favour. It is an inappropriate analogy for a couple of other reasons. One is that there is a universal cut-off point that applies both to British and European families, which is of course the end of this year. We will not then be part of the EU and there will be a limit on the number of families, European and British, who might then come to this country from Europe.

The second thing to say is that we are talking about many British citizens who have been married for many years, often to other European partners—though it should not matter where in the world their partners have come from—and often they are building families with strong and complex roots in the UK and the rest of Europe. They have done so believing at the time that they had a settled life in Europe, wherever that may be in Europe; that was their bone fide position. Yes, people get divorced—and indeed married—for all kinds of reasons; that is life. But this Government are applying the Government of 1992’s perception of that case to generalise about all British families living in Europe. British citizens and their families in Europe are not that cohort, as this Government perceive it, and it is insulting to all British families currently living in Europe that they should draw that analogy.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Clancarty

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and thank Brexpats—Hear Our Voice for the excellent “British in Europe” briefing. I will be brief because there is a straightforward argument here.

This is a simple matter of humanity. We are talking about British citizens living in Europe, who, like the rest of us, had no inkling up to four years ago of the significantly changed circumstances in which they would find themselves. Many have raised families in EEA countries with the reasonable expectation that their and their families’ mobility around Europe—including the UK—would not be affected in the future. Of course, Brexit has changed that.

We need to help our fellow British citizens and ensure that those who wish or need to do so can return to the UK with their families without deadlines being put on that return or any other conditions, such as the MIR, needing to be met. Indeed, as it stands, as the noble Lord, Lord Flight, said, we are discriminating against our own citizens if EU citizens who moved to the UK before the end of 2020 can, according to the withdrawal agreement, bring family members here for life and return to their own countries with their families. This is a clear discrepancy.

I cannot see any good reason why this amendment should not be accepted. I hope this is a matter that has just been overlooked. I will listen with interest to the Government's response.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD) [V]]

My Lords, some years ago I chaired some work on the minimum income requirement affecting British people who, as has been said, never thought that they would be affected by their own country’s immigration laws.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned someone from south Wales. I encountered someone from south Wales, David, whose second wife was a teacher from Canada—I do not think that you can get more respectable than being a teacher from Canada. By his first marriage he had a disabled daughter. Had he been able to bring his wife to the UK to share the care of his daughter, that, among other things, would have saved the state a lot of money. Instead, he had to limit the amount of work and the kind of work that he did and so did not meet the minimum income requirement. She was appallingly treated. I do not believe people in British society would support this, were they to know about it. Many do not until they are brought up against it personally. I have long thought that the answer to all this will be found only when a son or daughter of a Cabinet Minister finds himself or herself in this situation.

The focus at that time was largely on spouse visas and what can be taken into account in calculating incomes. That has been changed somewhat, but the issue remains. The rules about leave to enter for an individual’s parents are so harsh that they really amount to saying, “You need to be so much in need of care and support that you probably would not be fit to travel.”

The reality of this is striking home, as noble Lords have said. One of my noble friends received a letter, which she passed on to me at the weekend, from a UK citizen who has found herself in this situation. I shall read some short extracts: “As someone who married a non-UK EU national in the UK but then moved to his country to live as his parents were already elderly, never was it in my worst nightmares that I would not be able to do the same and I might be forced to choose between caring for him and caring for my mother. When I left, returning was always an option, as I work remotely, to be able to return to care for my parents. My parents are now on the brink of their eighth decade. My mother has lung issues. My father has prostate cancer. It is inevitable that I will want and need to return at some point. What child does not want to care for their parents themselves?”

She goes on: “I and many of the more than 1 million UK citizens living in the EU will not have that right. If we do not return before the end of 2022, our fate will become income-dependent. How is it conceivable that the British Government’s approach involves discrimination against its own citizens? Surely, the family is as sacrosanct in the UK as in the rest of Europe.” I am pleased, from our Benches, to support this amendment.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Clancarty

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for not having spoken before on this Bill. I will be brief. I have put my name to this amendment and want to talk about fairness.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, mentioned, we had an excellent debate on immigration last week in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Much of that debate was full of individual cases. Someone afterwards said that it was a sad debate because of the frustration felt on all sides of the House for those they knew or knew of who suffered difficulties or injustices as a result of the immigration system or regulations as they currently stand, or as likely from mistakes being made. The large proportion of appeals that succeed is testament to that.

Those who work in the area of our domestic legal process, which has developed over centuries, understand well that the system is not perfect, that it can be improved, that mistakes are made and, more than that, that significant safeguards need to be built in that are, crucially, an open aspect of the system. As a society, we are by and large grown-up and realistic enough to accept that. Surely those principles that currently exist in relation to immigration appeals and have now stood for more than four decades should in the same way be, at the very least, preserved and protected. The Government may baulk at the openness of the tribunal system when so many mistakes are clearly revealed to the public, but if the process is taken back in-house—as it were—as an administrative review, we will lose that openness, independence and accountability that we currently have, as my noble friend Lord Pannick said.

The Government wish to replace the current system with one that will be more complicated and inefficient. In addition to limiting the process, it will fragment it and be desperately unfair for the person concerned because that person would quite rightly—this should be a democratic right—want to hear the entirety of their case presented at a tribunal. I can understand the desire of the Government here. They are under considerable pressure to get immigration right, get a grip on it and put an authoritative stamp on it. However, if that is a spurious authority, which, through lack of independence, institutionalises mistakes—that is what will happen—it will be worthless. Whatever good intentions the Government may have, Clause 15 remains on Report a threat to our fundamental notions of fairness in this country. There is a world of difference between aiming for a perfect system, which is laudable, and attempting to construct in the here and now a system that assumes perfection. If we so significantly limit the right of appeal to tribunals, we will surely set off down the latter, dangerous and misguided, road.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I was not sure whether to speak yet; I was looking for a Bishop. Amendment 14 in this group is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Avebury. I have been torn over this issue. Of course, the lawyer in me wants to see access to the courts or tribunals but the pragmatist in me says, “Get it right first time”, especially when it is something where arguably the person involved does not start with having rights. I distinguish between human rights interests, family interests and, at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps permission to come and work in a different country. At issue here is a very wide range of types of decision. Also, of course, the pragmatist says, “Find ways to improve the process to get it right”.

I have to assume that the Secretary of State is satisfied on the basis of the current out-of-country process that what is proposed will be “efficient”, “effective” and “fair”—in the words of one of the amendments. I hope that effectiveness always means fairness. I do not know that one can become satisfied that the process is efficient, effective and fair on the issue raised by the possibility of shadow working and the two systems working in parallel. I know that there are different views about that. Frankly, I doubt that it is practicable. At the previous stage, I raised the issue of reviews of procedures and—particularly important to me —independent oversight and reports to Parliament. I welcome government Amendment 12. Could my noble friend confirm, because it does not quite say this, that what is intended is a report on the first year? It says that, “Before the end of” a year the Secretary of State will commission a review.

My Amendment 14 would introduce a two-stage process, the second of which would be the chief inspector reviewing the first year of operation, and the first of which would be an opportunity for Parliament to consider the procedures after the Government have consulted on them. I am grateful to my noble friend for a letter that I received following Committee and which was copied to other noble Lords. I hope that this will be a useful opportunity for him to explain from the Dispatch Box the Government’s proposals for consultation on the proposed rules—a targeted consultation, as I understand it. There might be, if you like, a pre-consultation of noble Lords as to who might be involved in that process. I am sure we would all have ideas as to who could usefully contribute.

Since Committee, I have seen the information given to those who seek an administrative review out of country under the current procedure. I had been concerned about how representations could be made to the reviewer and what representations could be made. I can infer that from the current information but I am sure that there is scope for spelling it out more clearly. That is a matter for the practitioners, really. I was also relieved to see information on something that had popped into my head and bothered me a lot: whether there would be a charge for an administrative review. I see that that is not the case. That reminded me that this is another reason for the Home Office getting it right first time, as it will not be able to get any income from that administrative review. As it were, it funds it—rightly—from its internal resources.