Probation Services: Prisoner Early Release Scheme

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Come on, it is Labour’s turn. We have not had a question.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

It is the turn of the Labour Benches now.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I think my noble friend would agree that the role of a probation officer is complex and requires a high level of skill. He has talked about recruitment. Can he share with the House a bit more about how that recruitment process is being conducted, where the search is going on and what the minimum requirements are for people who might apply for it?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that question. If I may, I shall reflect on that and raise those points with the Minister, my noble friend Lord Timpson; he will have the detail of the recruitment exercise, which I do not have before me today. I ask her to rest assured that the 1,000 new officers are on track for March 2025, and quality is key to the delivery that those probation officers are seeking to ensure.

Care Worker Visa Regime

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Lord develops on a theme explored earlier, in a question I could not entirely answer. I will come back to him with a better answer in due course.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Minister in effect embedded the idea of care work being low paid, in the answer he gave earlier about salary caps in relation to visas, does he think that £23,500 is an adequate reflection of the real value that any individual care worker provides through their work?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I did not embed anything; I was just restating a fact. Whether or not I think it is the right number for the sort of work that is done, obviously there is considerable variety in the type of care that is given. I do not think it would be appropriate to comment on the number in its totality.

Immigration Act 2014 (Residential Accommodation) (Maximum Penalty) Order 2023

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, the purpose of these two orders is to create a more hostile environment for those who seek to enter this country by routes other than the ones that are available to them, which are very limited indeed. I have a range of questions but my principal concern regards the perverse impact of these orders and how they will act as a deterrent to people who are legally entitled to stay in this country, have been given the right to remain and are seeking to establish themselves with a new life here.

My comment is based on the evidence provided to us. There is limited evidence that the current regime is not working. Of course, I understand that one might wish to increase the fees in line with inflation each year, which has not happened for 10 years, but one necessarily has to ask oneself this: if it is working, why does it need this extra change to make it happen? I will come back later to the evidence that the Government have provided. Without that strong evidence, there is an indication to me that this is an income stream for the Government. I am not necessarily going to complain about that but it certainly does not seem absolutely critical to the ambitions laid before it.

I want to look at the perverse impact on those who have been given the right to remain: those who are starting out on a new life here in the United Kingdom and are faced with the difficult, dual challenges of finding both a home and work. In the rented sector in particular, we currently have a housing crisis, with the private rental sector incredibly competitive for renters. Tenant demand for rental property was up by 54% in July last year. In that context, will landlords choose a tenant who may need to go through the right-to-rent checking process and risk a fine? Or will they opt for someone who has the right to rent, such as someone who has a passport versus someone who does not—or, more worryingly, someone who is of a different ethnic background?

This is a similar problem for jobseekers, who require an employer to check their right to work. We have to be live to the fact that certain profiles of people are at risk of discrimination as a result and will find it harder to find accommodation and employment than their white British counterparts. Protections and remedies need to be real and effective, and we need to consider whether this indirect impact is proportionate to achieving the stated aim of the policy: to deter irregular migrants.

The stated aim of the increase in these penalties is an effort to deter irregular migrants from entering the United Kingdom in the first place, as well as to encourage those without legal status to leave the United Kingdom. This policy has now been in force for 10 years, since 2014. Therefore, we should by now have some evidence of whether the policy works—that is, whether it has contributed to a reduction in people remaining in the United Kingdom after their leave has expired or to fewer people entering the United Kingdom without leave in order to work. My first question to the Minister is this: what is the evidence that this policy has had the desired impact on deterrence since it was introduced in 2014?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord but there is a Division in the Chamber. The Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.

Refugees: Notice Period for Home Office Accommodation

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an interesting point, and I will take that back to the department.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to hear that the Minister will take that point back, but it is entirely salient and, if I may say so, I am surprised that he does not have a slightly more substantive answer. Does he also agree that one of the difficulties that many of these people face is that English is not by any means their first language and sometimes they do not have reasonable fluency in it after several years in this country? Does he accept that these additional challenges make the timeframes extremely difficult for people to manage?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I acknowledge that nothing in this particular space is easy, but there are many organisations that provide support to individuals to arrange their onward support. That includes Migrant Help, accommodation providers, DWP and jobcentres. I made the point earlier that most of the people we are talking about have been in this country for a very long time, and one would hope that they at least had some English.

Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Safe Routes

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I do not know that that is true. I have not seen any evidence that we have turned down French offers. I will investigate again, and if I am wrong, I will definitely correct myself.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, referring to the Question from my noble friend concerning young people stuck, as she put it, in Pakistan, to which he said he did not have any information; he did not volunteer to try to find any. Can he do so?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the thing with the Pakistan situation is that we are involved in negotiations with the Pakistani authorities about getting these people out. I think the priority has to be to get them out as safely as possible and as quickly as possible, rather than worrying too much, at this point, about exactly how I report the statistics to this House. I will do so, but I want to make sure those people get out safely.

Public Order Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, we are debating stop and search. I am not quite sure where strip and search came into this, I am sorry.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

With respect to the Minister, that was not an entirely adequate answer. He was probably quite clear on what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, was asking him.

That said, the Minister has relied very heavily in what he has said to the House this afternoon on existing protocols that the police are expected to use. We have just been told through the Casey report, using very recent evidence, that those protocols are substantially ignored by the police. Does he have an answer for that?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I apologise if I misunderstood my noble friend. I was basing my answer on the fact that a report was published yesterday by the Children’s Commissioner that specifically related to young people and strip search. If I misunderstood, I apologise. With regard to stop and search, I would argue that all the criteria for establishing the cordon and the area and so on would mean that the circumstances described by my noble friend would be highly unlikely.

With regard to the Casey report, as I have already said, both the Government and the Met police are taking it very seriously. These are rules that we expect to be followed.

Black and Minority-ethnic Children: Police Strip-searches

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, for the benefit of those of us who have not yet been able to read the report, will the Minister tell the House what proportion of those nearly 3,000 children who were strip-searched during that period were charged with any offence?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid I do not have those details. I will have to write to the noble Baroness.

Public Order Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, in view of the fact that Amendment 1 has been agreed, for the convenience of the House, I remind the House that I shall not subsequently be able to call Amendments 5, 14 or 24, by reason of pre-emption.

Clause 1: Offence of locking on

Amendment 2

Moved by

Asylum Seekers

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am sorry to hear that the noble Lord has yet to receive an answer. I will chase it and endeavour to get a response to him as soon as I can.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, in his reply to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, the Minister referred to a judgment which no doubt is available for anyone to read. However, for the benefit of the House, would he be prepared to summarise it? That would give an answer to the noble Lord’s question: what, in particular, allows the Government to discriminate between asylum seekers who arrive by one method and those who arrive by another?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The 1951 convention describes the categories of people who might seek protection from their native country, and, as a result, they are entitled to make a claim for asylum. There is nothing in the text of the convention which limits the receiving nation state’s obligation to consider applications from various classes of nations. That is why we have international agreements; for example, when we were members of the European Union, there was an agreement that other European Union member nations were not able to lodge asylum claims within the United Kingdom.

Net Migration

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The position is that the types of students who are now availing themselves of British educational opportunities tend to be older, and there are restrictions around the provision of visas for family members. They are restricted to those on a postgraduate course—broadly, not undergraduate courses—and to a course of nine months or longer, if the course of study is with an accredited institution with a track record of compliance with immigration requirements. It appears to be the case that, of the visas issued to students and dependants, about one in five go to dependants and there is no reason in the Government’s view to change that position at this time.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has been asked several times a question that, with great respect, he has not answered: why are international students, who bring significant income to our universities and are an ornament to them in many other ways, included in migration statistics, with or without dependants? They distort those statistics, which, frankly, does not serve the Government’s purposes very much. Why are they still part of the immigration statistics? He has not given us an answer to that.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for the opportunity to clarify the position. The ONS prepares these estimates in its own way, and it is utilising on this occasion a new methodology derived from various sources to estimate, effectively, emigration as well as immigration. The choice is taken to include students, for reasons of transparency, and that seems to me entirely sensible. The number of visas issued to students is available to the Home Office as a figure. That is only a part of the picture when considering the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Green, was referring to in his Question, which are of course the estimates provided by the ONS.