Immigration Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare immediately that I am involved with a number of charities dealing with refugee matters: the Cardinal Hume Centre already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and Women for Refugee Women—I am a patron of both. However, today I will mainly draw on my role as chair of Justice, which is an independent all-party law reform and human rights organisation that works on strengthening the justice system here in the United Kingdom. It is also the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists.

Luckily, we have a whole set of wonderful researchers and young lawyers who work for us, who have been looking avidly at the Bill because of concern expressed to Justice by practitioners and others—lawyers who are members of Justice who are concerned about the Bill’s implications for our society.

I say immediately in tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is one of the great moral voices in this House, that his is the speech I would have liked to have made in this debate, because he speaks about the actual experience of people, the need for us never to lose our compassion when dealing with the issue of immigration and how we must remember the stories. People say to me, “How come you are a human rights lawyer? What made you a human rights lawyer?”. I always say, “It is the stories of my clients”. My clients were my way into human rights law, because you only have to hear the stories of persecution, suffering and abuse—whether domestic violence or abuse in countries beyond these shores—to know why we need law that is strong but tempered by protection of human rights.

I want to refer to the concerns that we at Justice have about the Bill. We are very concerned about a number of the provisions, and recommend that the offence of illegal working be removed from the Bill altogether. I say that because we already have power to deal with people who are here illegally. It is a criminal offence to overstay or to find a way in to this country that is not licit, and we can prosecute. We are in fact burdening the legal system with yet more criminal processes when they are unnecessary. It will also, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, undo so much good work by the Minister himself and others around the House and the whole of this Parliament on the Modern Slavery Act. That will be undermined by making people fear that they are going to be prosecuted for the meagre money they earn if they find some sort of work to help support themselves. We are talking about taking those earnings from people, which will all go into the coffers of the United Kingdom. I suspect that it will cost us more to do that. To confiscate what are usually miserable, meagre, lowly earnings from those people seems to me a terrible statement of where we have got to with immigration issues.

Justice also recommends that the offence of leasing premises to those disqualified from renting be removed from the Bill, pending a comprehensive evaluation of the law that we introduced only a year ago and which, as others have mentioned, has introduced a whole civil process for people who are leasing premises to those who should not be in the country. An assessment of that is important to see whether it is undermining good race relations in this country. As others have mentioned, there is serious concern about discrimination. People with a foreign name who apply for housing and approach letting agencies already face problems even getting on to lists and seeing premises. We should be most anxious about the ways in which this undoes the mortar of a civilised society.

Justice also recommends that we look again at the provision in the Bill that would enable the Secretary of State to challenge the decisions of the courts, of the First-tier Tribunal, in respect of bail. Just because a Secretary of State might not like a court’s decision should not mean that a power be vested in him or her to intervene, save in the most exceptional circumstances. Mention was made in the House of Commons of a circumstance where a flight to remove someone from the country is changed, and it was said that bail should therefore be removed to enable that. We could put such an amendment into the Bill, but we should be most concerned about the idea that there should be a readily available right for the Secretary of State to overcome a court’s decision, given what that means for the rule of law.

Justice also recommends that the proposal to extend the “deport first, appeal later” powers to all human rights-based immigration appeals should be a source of alarm to anyone who cares about the law and the rule of law. How can people outside the country assert their rights and appeal in the way that we think is appropriate under the rule of law? It is unimaginable. We can already see that the huge drop in numbers is not just because some applications or appeals would have been unjustified but because many people do not understand the process and therefore cannot complete and submit the relevant forms, do not have legal representation, or have difficulty arranging and paying for representation and liaising with any legal representative thereafter. They have difficulty obtaining, translating and submitting evidence to the tribunal. Just think through the practicalities of doing that, as someone who is here and for whom a decision has been made, which can often be wrong. The practicalities tell you just how ludicrous it is to extend that provision to all human rights bases for appeal. To insist that it be done from somewhere else is to operate serious injustice in ways that should be a source of shame to us.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others have mentioned the business of turning people into destitute persons living on our streets and in our doorways. The idea that we are going to make it so hard for people to access some sort of minimal support is something we should be ashamed to be even considering. The support is already minimal, but making the situation even harder is never a good way of dealing with false claims to the right to stay. Destitution should not exist in Britain in these times.

I want to mention Yarl’s Wood because I am a patron of Women for Refugee Women. You just have to see the conditions these women have experienced in their own countries and hear of the horrors they describe—we cannot allow that to continue. Unlimited detention has a terrible psychological consequence, and we should really put a time limit on it: of 28 days, I hope.

This is a shocking Bill. It is morally disgraceful, mean-spirited, near-sighted and speaks to our lesser angels. Of course we have to have proper immigration procedures and systems, and they should be clear and just; but they have to be imbued with humanity and decency. We are better than this.