Asylum Seekers: Women

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

There was a change in policy as a result of legislation that went through your Lordships’ House, which said that children cannot be detained in immigration centres. Where they are in centres because their parents are there, they are more likely to be put into places such as the Cedars, which is a family-based centre where education is available on-site.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, Women for Refugee Women’s recent report highlighted how women held in Yarl’s Wood detention centre were continually humiliated by male staff while they were dressing, showering and using the toilet. Given the ongoing reports of unacceptable treatment of women for some years in this establishment, is it not time to put a stop to women in these circumstances—female asylum seekers who have been raped, trafficked, tortured and subjected to FGM—being held in detention centres?

[Lord Bates]

We are very clear that all female asylum seekers should be treated with dignity and respect. It is also true that when the Chief Inspector of Prisons visited Yarl’s Wood and produced his report, he found that it was a safe and respectful place. We have seen the report that was prepared. It contained some very disturbing accusations and we have asked its authors to share the sources of that information with us so that it can be properly investigated.

Terrorist Attack in Paris

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend referred earlier to the fact that Muslims are partners and we very much need them to work and co-operate in order to root out these extremists in our society after the terrible events in Paris. However, does he agree with me that comments such as those made by Rupert Murdoch, who lays the blame firmly on the world’s Muslims and says that they “must be held responsible”, and Nigel Farage, who said only the other day that the authorities had turned a blind eye to,

“the growth of ghettos where the police and all the normal agents of the law have withdrawn and that is where sharia law has come in”,

are unhelpful as regards promoting good race, community and interfaith relations? Will they help in what we are trying to achieve?

[Lord Bates]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that point, which perfectly illustrates the tensions. I disagree fundamentally with what has been said, both by Rupert Murdoch and by the UKIP member in the other example that she gave. Again, however, we defend the free press and its right to say that.

Asylum Seekers: Mental Health

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The numbers going into detention on what is called a fast-track process are relatively small—about 15% of the total. We contract with Migrant Help, which does excellent work in providing advice to asylum seekers during their application process—for example, helping them register with a GP or getting their children enrolled in school. Progress is being made but I accept that we are talking about very vulnerable people.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, will my noble friend clarify what he said in reply to my noble friend Lord Roberts? I thought I heard him refer to people who are here illegally. However, the Question is about asylum seekers who are here perfectly legally, waiting for their case to be heard and a decision to be made, which, as he will know, sometimes takes years. In the mean time, they are not allowed to work. Will he clarify what he said earlier about illegality?

[Lord Bates]

Absolutely; I am happy to clarify that. I was talking about people who had a legal right to seek employment in this country. They should be protected and be able to apply for jobs in the first instance.

Mediterranean: Refugees and Migrants

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that we need to be clear. There is a grave information message we need to get out here that of course there is no change in our humanitarian obligation. The only thing which is changing is that we are putting more money and resource behind it, but those obligations from a humanitarian point of view remain, in the proud tradition of this country and of seafarers.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister mentioned the increase in refugees from, for example, countries such as Syria. In statements that I have seen, Ministers have said that we encourage those people to stay in their own country. The surrounding countries have taken millions and millions of refugees. Turkey took 250,000 Syrian refugees in one week, more than the EU has done in four years. Is it not time that we stepped up to the plate and set an example, and not let people drown in this way?

[Lord Bates]

That is so, and we have introduced the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme, which is taking some of those—not enough—but of course the EU can do more. We are donating additional funds into that area but there needs to be more done to tackle the instability which is the cause of migration in the first place.

Rape

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their strategy for dealing with the increase in reported cases of rape shown in the recent Office for National Statistics report on crime in England and Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government remain committed to tackling sexual violence, as set out fully in our violence against women and girls action plan, updated in March 2014. Supporting victims is at the heart of this approach, which includes giving victims more confidence to report crimes that have gone underreported for far too long. It is encouraging that the police recorded crime figures show more victims are having the confidence to come forward.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply, but does he share my concern that, given there are more reported cases or incidents of sexual violence and rape, the conviction rate is still quite low? It has not improved in the last six or seven years. Can he tell the House what steps the Government will take to ensure that more victims will be encouraged to come forward and have confidence in the criminal justice system, so that they feel that they will be taken seriously and conviction rates will go up?

Immigration Bill

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, on a final historical note, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, probably remembers the late Lord Wilberforce sitting on these Benches. How horrified he would be to hear the statistic of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, that there is a greater number of slaves here today than in William Wilberforce’s time. I have followed this issue as a council member of Anti-Slavery International for nine years. I pay tribute to its staff for what they have done behind the scenes to educate the public and the Government.

I am impressed by the distance that the Government have travelled on this road already, not only on the conventions but in the detail that we are looking at today. It is as a result of non-governmental pressure. But there is more to be done today, so I strongly support the amendment although I anticipate that it will not be easy for the Government to accept. The Minister should accept it because of the feeling across the House this afternoon which was inspired by the moving descriptions of my noble friend and others. He should accept it because it is humane, and because it is a belt-and-braces protection for the trafficked child who will not have adequate protection from the social services or from CAFCASS despite what my noble friend has said: they are not in the position yet to cope with this. He may not want to accept it because of the constraints of his ministerial responsibility and the departmental budget, which has many calls upon it.

We are grateful for the offer of a trial for personal advocates. However, it does not go far enough because, as he has already heard, the Children’s Consortium and many others argue that there is no proper protection under the Children Act for trafficked children without a legal guardian. That argument must be correct. Perhaps the Minister will take up the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, to make a small promise and bring something out of a hat, maybe in the draft Modern Slavery Bill or a promise for Third Reading. I look forward to that event.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I shall add a few words to this important debate. There cannot be many of us in your Lordships’ Chamber who have not been moved by the plight of these very vulnerable young people and children who have been treated so badly. We know the numbers are not huge; nevertheless they are significant. I welcome what the Government said earlier about introducing a pilot system of advocates. However, I do have a problem with how far this would go, having been a local authority councillor and a cabinet member with responsibility for child protection and for unaccompanied children who have often been trafficked. We know that this problem has been going on for many years—the status quo is simply not acceptable. We must act to protect these vulnerable young people.

As I understand it, an advocate is somebody who speaks on behalf of someone else, in this case the child. However, my worry is whether the advocate would have any legal responsibility in the way that a parent would, or, under the amendment, a guardian. The amendment gives the guardian some parental responsibility to act and take decisions in the best interests of the trafficked child, and to work across agencies. We know, as has already been said, how local authorities are stretched. Often a child will have three, four or five social workers in a year. That is not unusual. Very often, they simply get lost trying to navigate a very complex system.

The attraction of a guardian, which is so compelling in the amendment, is that this person would be required by the Secretary of State to take a far more official and statutory responsibility for individual young people and to act in their best interests. I hope that my noble friend will perhaps address this when he comes to respond. Would he be satisfied? Does he think that we should be satisfied that this six-month pilot scheme with advocates will go far enough to protect these very vulnerable children and young people? Otherwise, we would have to consider this very carefully in evaluation, and it may well be too late. What worries me is that we will have a six-month pilot period, followed by the evaluation, but all the time young people are falling between the cracks, going missing, not being picked up and not being protected. At the end of the day, that is what we want—for these children and young people to be protected as long as they are here in our care in this country.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I will just pick up a point that my noble friend made about the difference in powers between the advocate on one side and the guardian on the other. The point was raised in the memorandum sent to us by the Refugee Children’s Consortium whether or not, without “legal powers”, there will be anyone,

“to instruct solicitors on a child’s behalf and ensure that decisions are made in their best interests”.

Would the advocate have those powers to instruct a solicitor on the child’s behalf? I take it that a guardian certainly would have those powers, which is an important difference between the two proposals that we now have before us.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

So while anything is better than nothing, this issue, which was raised over and again in the debates on the Children and Families Bill and previously, still has to be resolved. I hope that we can manage to do that through this Bill.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I add my voice in support of the Amendment 81, tabled by my noble friend Lord Storey and moved by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The other day I read a Children’s Society report which was produced some time ago about the journey made by an asylum-seeking child. It is as relevant today as it was then. I should remind the Committee that when the United Kingdom ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child back in 1991, it recognised that children are vulnerable and require additional care and protection, and acknowledged their autonomy as rights holders in their own right under Article 3.

Later on, in Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, certain provisions were put in place to safeguard children. At the time, in their response to the Children’s Commissioner’s independent review, the Government made clear their commitment to,

“give due consideration to the UNCRC Articles when making new policy and legislation”.

They emphasised:

“At the centre of this Coalition Government’s thinking is a determination to see children and young people achieve to their full potential, and the desire to empower individuals to shape their own future”.

This should apply equally to children and young people subject to immigration control. This is really the heart of the issue. As has already been mentioned, the children who we are seeing come from well documented war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Iran and Eritrea. These children have often fled from these countries having seen family members killed and often having escaped being recruited as child soldiers. They have seen horrific things that we can only imagine and which none of our children, thankfully, will ever have to witness. However, they then have to navigate a system whereby they have to prove somehow that they are worthy of not being sent back once they get to the age of 17 and a half, after they have lived and been protected in this country for some years.

The phrase used here, which comes up time and again, is this “culture of disbelief” that they face when they have to navigate the system. Sometimes they are given a solicitor and, as my noble friend Lady Benjamin said very eloquently earlier, they have to rely on officials, usually from local authorities, who have a responsibility as corporate parents. However, often this is not very consistent and they find themselves—like most young people, who are very vulnerable—worried. Some of them are suffering from post-traumatic stress and all sorts of psychological problems due to what they have experienced but then have to prove that they should not be sent back and are worthy of being allowed to stay here and being given protection. We need to think very long and hard about the way we treat young people. It does not matter where they have come from—as my noble friend Lord Storey said so succinctly, they are still children. These are extremely vulnerable young people, and the other thing is that they are not huge in number. There is a perception that we are talking about vast numbers—we are not, but they are very vulnerable and distinct and their cases need to be given due care and diligence when they are looked at.

The amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, spoke to on guardianship is very important as well. That would guarantee that somebody is appointed who will be looking out for and speaking and advocating on behalf of young children. We have heard from social services departments, and I speak as a councillor and cabinet member for health and social services with particular responsibility for corporate parenting. I have met many social workers who were a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to do and who felt they were subject to the legislation rather than being able to look at each individual case. I was not always satisfied that they were able to give the individual young people the care and advocacy that they needed, not because they were unwilling but because of pressures of work and sheer numbers in some inner-city areas. In particular, some very bright young people were offered university places and were unable to take them up. It was very difficult then for them to do anything further. It was almost as if their situation was parked and officials moved on to somebody else. I urge the Minister to think very carefully about this situation, where we are talking about very vulnerable young people.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for moving his amendment and to other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. Amendment 81 would allow persons who entered the UK when they were children to continue to be provided with local authority support after they reached adulthood and had all their applications and appeals to stay refused but failed to leave. The noble Earl and others illustrated some of the cases that the noble Earl had in mind. Nevertheless, I would point out that our well developed system of justice and the rule of law has determined that these people should not be here.

Under the current legislation, automatic access to support and assistance stops if the person’s asylum claim and any appeals have been rejected. However, the legislation still allows support to continue where that is necessary to avoid a breach of the person’s human rights. This would include cases where the persons cannot return to their own countries through no fault of their own; for example, because they are too sick to travel or need time to obtain a necessary travel document. The Government remain committed to ensuring that failed asylum seekers leaving local authority care do not face an immediate or abrupt withdrawal of all support. In answer to my noble friend Lord Roberts, it is important that the consequences of the failure of their asylum claims are fully explained to them at the time. It is also important that human rights factors are properly assessed by the local authority in a consistent way. My noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece expressed some concern on this point.

I understand that the Children’s Commissioner has been looking at these issues and will shortly be issuing a report. The Government will consider the report very carefully. However, I think it is wrong in principle that adults who can reasonably be expected to return to their own country should retain access to welfare support from public funds if they refuse to do so.

My noble friend Lord Storey expertly raised the issue of age on arrival. The Committee will certainly need to consider whether the amendment creates obvious incentives for young people to claim, falsely, to be under 18 when they apply for asylum. My noble friend Lord Storey suggested that there is no evidence that the amendment would lead to more asylum seekers claiming to be children. As a simple matter of fact, many local authorities have to do age assessments because some asylum seekers falsely claim to be children. If people who claim asylum before the age of 18 are allowed indefinite support, this can only add to the problem.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Benjamin for the detailed way in which she spoke to her important Amendment 81A. It is not clear what this amendment would achieve for the really important people—the young people themselves—other than by being a great probing amendment. The criteria for making the decisions covered by the amendment are already known and publicly available. As I understand the proposed new clause, the reference to,

“young people … who have irregular immigration status”,

is meant to refer to a group of young people who are entitled to indefinite leave to remain or to British citizenship because their parents had that status but, for whatever reason, those parents never got round to pursuing the applications of that kind that would benefit their children. Some of those young people will also qualify to be here in their own right because of their own length of time spent in the United Kingdom.

Publishing a report will not give those children and young people what they need. What they need to do is to come forward and apply. There are very clear routes open to them. If they were born in this country and have lived here for 10 years with only short absences, there is provision for them to be registered as British citizens. They may also apply on the basis that their family life or private life is in the UK. For private life, there is special provision for a person under the age of 25 who has spent at least half their life living continuously in the UK; and for a person under 18 there is provision for someone who has lived continuously in the UK for seven years and for whom it would be unreasonable to expect them to leave. These are generous provisions and it is difficult not to regard most, if not all, the cases behind the amendment being included here.

In addition, we are willing to make available a named point of contact for them or for the charities and NGOs working with them to approach with personal applications. This will also allow us to make formal referrals to local authority children’s services on behalf of those who need support and assistance in that way. If some of them are in risky situations, as we are frequently told, these arrangements are by far the best for them and not some kind of blanket approval without contact with us.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, there are many things that show exactly what the heart of a nation is. One is the way in which we treat children of all races and all different backgrounds.

I remember 30 years ago at the time of the Ethiopian famine being in Tel Aviv and then in the Galilee and receiving the children and the folk from Operation Solomon. They came with nothing at all: the adults in their white gowns and the labels on their foreheads indicating who they were, and the children—well, I held one or two of them in my arms and they were so different from my own grandchildren. I am so grateful that my grandchildren are robust and enjoy life; these little children had nothing to enjoy.

Children are children wherever they are, whatever their background, and they need to be treated with respect and kindness wherever they happen to be. One reason I supported the coalition when we had those votes in 2010 was that the declaration came that we as Liberal Democrats would end the detention of children for immigration purposes. I am not sure that I would be in the coalition if it was not for that promise. Now we are on the last lap, I think, of showing that we really believe that.

In 2009, 2,000 children were detained for immigration purposes. In December last year, 22 children were detained some time or other during the month—not for days but for hours. There is the last lap, as has already been mentioned, where no child should be detained, but we are on the right course. I do not often compliment the Minister—although I hope he is a very good friend—on what is happening with the end of detention of children for immigration purposes.

Imagine a child—one of my own or your Lordships’ grandchildren, whoever they might be—waiting with their parents. The stress that their parents feel, which of course is transmitted to them, is terror. We are removing that terror. There is more to be done. Looking at the measures proposed, is this still the last resort, as it was previously? How and where can we bring this to fruition, so that our nation—I should say four nations: Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland—will be shown to be a nation with real heart and real concern? I will be so happy if that can be the case.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the comments that have just been made on this important area by my noble friends Lord Avebury and Lord Roberts and by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who always speaks so eloquently on these matters. I apologise in advance if the points have already been covered, but I think that they need to be underlined further and made very clear.

We have had excellent briefings from Barnardo’s, which we know does so much work for these children. We know that unaccompanied children have been temporarily admitted to the United Kingdom, but they are not routinely detained prior to their return. There is concern, and government assurances have been sought, as to whether this situation could change in the future. It is worth making sure that unaccompanied children who are admitted temporarily will not start being routinely detained. I speak as somebody who in their previous role was a councillor in a local authority which had to deal with a fair number of unaccompanied children. All councils have responsibility as corporate parents to those children because they come into their care. My experience of those children who came into our care was always positive. I remember attending award ceremonies for children some of whom had come from worn-torn countries in a vulnerable and traumatised state but had gone on to become academically so proficient that they gained places in universities. They had turned their lives around with the right support. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, when these children go before any panel that is to decide their future, it is important that councils in their role as corporate parents ensure that they are properly supported and represented, as any parents would do for their own children. They should get the right support and advice when it is being determined whether they remain or are returned, or whatever is best for their future. I would like an assurance on that.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I always say that childhood lasts a lifetime, and all children need the best start in life. These amendments will give these children the best possible start and I congratulate the Government on putting them forward. I want to raise just one point on behalf of Barnardo’s—I speak as a vice-president of that organisation. I congratulate Barnardo’s on having made an important effort to make sure that all children are taken care of if they happen to come to this country in unfortunate circumstances. Although Barnardo’s welcomes the 28-day reflection period being enshrined in the law, it is concerned about the drafting of the clause, as it would allow one parent to be returned within the 28-day period as long as there is another parent to care for the child. This in effect allows any family to be split and for the child to be separated from one of their parents, with no restrictions on the circumstances in which it should happen. Barnardo’s believes that a child should be separated from their parent against their will only if it is in the best interest of the child; for example, if there are safeguarding concerns such as domestic violence. It wants appropriate safeguards to be put in place to prevent children being separated from their parents and traumatised in any way. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this issue.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, it has been a pleasure to listen to this very important debate in your Lordships’ House. We have heard some wonderful speeches and I feel privileged to take part. Successive Governments have sought to grapple with immigration legislation, increasingly in a hostile environment. We all rightly want a fair and just system to protect those who are genuine migrants or asylum seekers and to treat them in a humane way in accordance with the proud traditions which our society has established for many years: namely, traditions of tolerance, integrity and fairness.

Unfortunately, in the race to be seen to talk tough on immigration, the whole debate and language has become toxic and xenophobic. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, who is not in his place, reminded us that we live in a world in which we have responsibilities that we cannot duck. He talked about what is happening in the Middle East, in dysfunctional countries such as Syria, and about how poorer countries are rising to the challenge. He mentioned Turkey, a country to which I have ethnic links, which is currently looking after about 560,000 Syrians. It does not call them refugees; it calls them guests and it treats them as guests. It does not stigmatise them. Many thousands are being looked after in the homes of Turkish people in a very different way from here. We have our duty but we must remember that other countries are doing far more than us. Some of the language suggests that somehow everyone is coming to this country and we had better pull up that drawbridge or we are going to be swamped.

Those of us from immigrant families who arrived in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, will remember the language and the discrimination endured by our parents and family. Many of those migrants came on the invitation of the Government of the time to rebuild and contribute to the UK’s post-war services, infrastructure and economy. Waves of migrants have continued to make an enormous contribution to this country. Instead of the debate on immigration being framed around establishing a fair and just immigration system and ensuring that the system is not abused, we see the debate being framed in a quite different way. Unfortunately in recent years it has been more about chasing negative and extreme headlines, as other noble Lords have said.

A number of noble Lords have mentioned the shameful language used about Bulgarians and Romanians in the run-up to 1 January. Last week I asked an Oral Question in your Lordships’ House on the impact that that is having on the communities here. There is strong evidence that it is impacting on the children from those communities. They are living here, their parents are here and they are in our schools. They are being discriminated against. As ChildLine reported, there has been a 69% increase in children from those communities facing racism in schools. How must it feel to be a child these days from a Bulgarian or Romanian background? They have been talked about as if they are somehow inferior and not worthy of coming to this country, and not making a valuable contribution. I have an interest because my mother is 82 and her last two care workers were Bulgarian, as is the current one. They are fantastic people—hard-working, committed and cannot do enough. I am a bit biased when it comes to that sort of language.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Hamwee and other noble Lords. I wrote this at the weekend and many of us are thinking very similarly when we say that the debate must be about showing leadership. Those of us in Parliament and in positions of power and influence must be more responsible in the language that we use. There has to be responsible leadership. We need to lead and not follow. It is not a race to the bottom.

We know that all political parties look at the polls very closely and nowadays immigration is being talked about. If you ask people what their top concern is—surprise, surprise, it is immigration. In years gone by I remember it was the NHS, education, crime or community safety; now, apparently, the majority of people in this country are worried about immigration. When you ask them how it personally affects them, the figures are rather different. That is the test we need to apply when people are afraid of immigration. The impact is not as great as is being dictated by sections of the media.

I have real concerns about the negative impact and effects on some of the checks mentioned earlier by noble Lords, and I want to highlight housing, which was set out eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I have been told that many landlords who will be asked to do the job of immigration officials may well bypass taking part in the bureaucratic checks—they might be too expensive or time-consuming, or the landlords may not want to risk fines. If someone looks or sounds like a person from an ethnic minority or a migrant of dubious background we could well end up with a situation of ethnic profiling that our long-standing equalities legislation was designed to end. This would be extremely damaging to race relations and community cohesion. We could have a situation where we go back to the days I mentioned earlier. When my parents came to this country they were confronted by signs saying, “No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish, no foreigners”—that sort of thing. It was legal then. We could start rolling back hard-fought-for equalities legislation if we go down that road and I am very worried about that.

I am also concerned about the inappropriate detention of vulnerable asylum seekers, particularly women—a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, set out very clearly. Many of these women have been raped or trafficked or indeed are pregnant. Recent reports show alarming abuse by male guards. In 2012, 6,071 women sought refuge as asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. Almost 2,000 of them were held in detention centres and the bulk of these vulnerable women—some 85%—said they had either been raped or tortured. Many had severe mental health problems.

According to the UK Border Agency, its policy where there is evidence of this type of abuse is that an individual should be detained only in exceptional circumstances—but in far too many cases detention is indefinite and is taking place and is unacceptable. Some 40% of women are being held for more than a month—and for some people it is up to a year—in degrading conditions. Does the Minister expect that the Bill will go some way to addressing that? How will the Bill tackle human trafficking victims? How will it tackle the exploitation of migrant workers by gangs, which we hear is taking place far too frequently?

I welcome proposals to tackle the bogus so-called immigration advice centres. Some of these are pop-up advice centres, and I have certainly seen them in my part of London over the years. They prey on vulnerable asylum seekers, charging large sums of money for often unhelpful advice that prejudices their cases. Regulation of those bodies is important, and I welcome that.

All too often, the rhetoric around immigration becomes inflated with negative language about criminals, bogus asylum seekers, health tourists, scroungers and so forth, but little is made of the enormous contributions made to the United Kingdom by migration over the decades. There have been contributions to the health service, as has been mentioned already, the economy and social and cultural aspects—the very fabric of the society that we now enjoy. Not all are or need to be the brightest and the best, but although we welcome them, we should also look at our social care sector, which I touched on earlier. We have an ageing population and the vast majority of care workers working in challenging jobs in care homes and in homes are migrant workers. They are working for the minimum wage doing thankless jobs in conditions that many people from the host community do not want to do. That has been the situation over many decades. Migrants come over here and do the jobs that other people do not want to do.

We should value the work that they are doing in the NHS and the care sector. They work in their thousands as care workers and cleaners in the NHS, and without their labour the social care services would undoubtedly collapse. Fairness, which befits our country—a country of great tolerance and a role model around the world—is vital. The Bill, as others have said, needs proper scrutiny and I hope that it will get it.

My real worry is that while we all want a fair and proportionate enforcement of immigration control, and it is important to have confidence in the system, a policy of forced destitution through the combined effect of homelessness and perhaps lack of healthcare, as we have already heard, as a tool of immigration control for those who may already be highly vulnerable and facing exploitation, has obvious and grave ethical implications for our society, and I hope that we will be vigilant before we go down that route.

Female Genital Mutilation

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The medical profession has done much to address this issue. In London alone there are 11 clinics dealing with this situation. However, the problem is extensive in some parts of the world, where high proportions of the population are subject to this regime.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I mentioned the Health Minister, Jane Ellison, who on Monday is meeting healthcare professionals and stakeholders to take forward this work on data sharing and to make sure that we are properly informed on this subject.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords—

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I think we will hear from my noble friend.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend the Minister is aware that there are people who want to perpetrate this terrible abuse against young girls who consider some regions of the United Kingdom to be a soft touch. Reports show that girls are being taken in particular to Scotland and parts of the Midlands, where such people think that there is less enforcement. Will the Minister reassure us that there will be consistency in dealing with this child abuse? This has nothing to do with religion; it is child abuse and should be recognised as such.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The Government are active on this issue at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, Norman Baker has a meeting on Thursday of next week in which he will be discussing exactly this issue. I suggest, as so many noble Lords want to ask questions, that we should try to get a debate on this matter.