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

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Oates

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

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I was prompted to speak in support of the amendment by an email that I received this week from a British citizen born of British parents in Britain. During voluntary service overseas, she met and married an Italian. She lived in Italy, working for a UN agency for 30 years. They adopted a boy whose nationality is Italian. After her husband died, she hoped to return to the UK, where her brother and sister live. However, this would now mean her leaving her son behind, which, she writes,

“I could never do. We are very close. I could never leave him behind, with me in one country and him in another.”

Both she and others in a similar situation cannot believe that their families will be split up in this way in future.

I refer to what the Minister said in Committee at the end of the debate on another amendment relating to family reunion. She appeared to agree with the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, for raising the minimum income threshold—referred to earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—from £18,600 to £25,700, or even £38,000, to cover the cost of public services or make a net contribution to public finances. I know that these figures came from the Migration Advisory Committee but they are premised on a narrow understanding of what constitutes a contribution to our society. It is the same kind of thinking that will exclude care workers and other key workers from immigration, as we heard during the debate on a previous amendment. The argument discounts the importance of the right to family life. I hope that the Minister will say now that I misread what she was saying and that she was not supporting the suggestion to raise the threshold.

The damaging impact of the minimum income threshold has been documented in a number of studies, most recently from the University of Bristol. It wrote of

“not just emotional impacts of separation, but financial, mental and physical hardship.”

The family reunion rules divide far too many families already. They need reviewing. For now, we can at least prevent even more families—like those of the mother who emailed me and the many other people who have emailed other Members of your Lordships’ House—being split up in this cruel and heartless way. We can prevent that happening by supporting this amendment.

[Lord Oates (LD) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee has already eloquently set out the powerful arguments for this amendment, as have the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Lister of Burtersett.

As my noble friend Lady Hamwee told us, in Committee she asked the Minister how she would advise a couple, one British and one an EU national, who both have elderly parents, in which country they should choose to live. Which set of elderly parents should they pick? In response, as my noble friend reminded us, the Minister said that the Government had given people “plenty of time”, but that is not an answer. It does not matter how much time they have had; they could have had all the time in the world. It does not change the fact that the Government are forcing them to make an invidious choice, to make it by 2022 and to live with it ever after. If they need to stay in the EU member state of the EU national to look after his or her parents, after 2022 they will no longer be eligible to return to the UK together. I ask the Minister once again: how should that family make their choice? I would like her to provide an answer to that essential question—which she failed to give to my noble friend—because it goes to the heart of the issues and the terrible choices that will be inflicted on our citizens and their families as a result of the Government’s policy.

The Government have made much of taking back control. This is a test for Ministers of what that control will mean in practice. Will they act with compassion or with cold-hearted indifference and in doing so inflict intolerable injustice on thousands of families of our citizens? I am sure I am not alone—and we have heard testimony from previous speakers—in having been contacted by numerous British citizens with heartrending stories of the misery that the Government’s present policy will cause to them and their loved ones. People who settled as British citizens in the EU and who made their lives there with their partners, who now, through no fault of their own, face their future plans being torn up by ministerial obduracy and callousness.

One such example is Fiona, who lives in Luxembourg with Miguel, her German-Chilean husband. He studied his O and A-levels in the UK, where his father was a professor. He later took a job as a translator in Luxembourg, where Fiona joined him. They have now been married 25 years and have lived in Luxembourg all that time. They always assumed they would be able to return together to the UK, as Miguel was an EU citizen, and they made their life plans on that reasonable assumption. Now—through no fault of their own—unless they return before 2022, Fiona would only be able to do so alone. In theory, her two children could come with her, as they are dual nationals, but if this is the way the UK intends to treat their German father they have no wish to do so, and I cannot say I blame them. Fiona says: “As a British citizen, I feel exiled from my country of birth and the rest of my UK family.” That is the reality of the Government’s position: to de facto exile British citizens from the land of their birth.

The only argument I have heard Ministers advance to justify the injustice they are about to inflict is that somehow maintaining the existing position would not be fair on British citizens living outside the EU who are married to non-UK nationals. This is the hollowest of empty arguments. British citizens moving to live in an EU member state had the reasonable expectation that they would be able to return to the UK with their partner at any point. The gross injustice lies in the fact that existing rights are being stripped away. If the Government do not move on this policy, British citizens will face a very stark choice come 2022: they will either have to return alone, without their wife, husband or other family members, or not at all. That is the reality.

I hope that all Members of the House will be clear, when they eventually get to vote on this amendment, that they will not be voting on some abstract piece of policy; they will be deciding the future of thousands of British citizens and their families. They will be deciding whether those families have to pick which elderly parent they will stay to care for, or which life plans they have to tear up. Above all, they will be deciding whether to lift a massive burden of anxiety from the shoulders of our citizens in the EU or to impose a further weight of misery upon them. Even at this late stage, it remains in the Government’s hands to show, by accepting this amendment, that they have a human face. However, if they do not, I hope that they will be resoundingly defeated when the virtual Lobbies function once again.