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

Debate between Baroness Pitkeathley and Lord Bishop of Durham

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

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)]

We shall try to return to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I call the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I support Amendments 30 and 68. I declare my interest as recorded in the register as receiving research support from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project. That project, RAMP, involves a diverse network of parliamentarians working together. There are four principals: myself and three from the other place, one each from the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. We work together to support constructive and practical changes to ensure that the UK has a migration system fit for a successful and integrated Britain. As noble Lords can imagine, with such a diverse group of parliamentarians we do not agree on everything, but we have consistently agreed that the charging of excessive fees for citizenship is simply unacceptable.

It is a straightforward principle that those to whom Parliament has granted a right to citizenship should not be barred from registering that right by its cost. Citizenship is not a product to be sold; it is a right. As they aspire to be outward-looking and global, this Government should be seeking to make it more straightforward for people to exercise their rights to register their status as citizens.

I wish to speak specifically about the issue of children who, although they fairly regard themselves as British, may not even realise that they are not in fact properly registered as British citizens. When they realise it, prohibitive and regressive fees of more than £1,000 can prevent them from then exercising their right to registration. We have already been reminded that last November the High Court found what it called a “mass of evidence” that a significant number of children in particular cannot afford the citizenship registration fee.

Amendment 68 would specifically require that no fee for someone to register as a British citizen is set above the administrative cost to the Home Office. We have heard the figures already so I will not repeat them. It is a surplus that is indefensible for those who have a clear right to British citizenship, and to use that as a cross-subsidy of the rest of the Home Office’s work leaves many of us deeply uncomfortable.

Some may regard the price as a good deal for British citizenship. I am afraid that for many affected, such a price is simply unaffordable. It is the poorest who will be most affected. Moreover, it is iniquitous to charge a high fee simply to register a status that is a person’s right. The role of the Home Office is simply to recognise the rights granted to these people by Parliament and get them registered as citizens.

I specifically draw attention to the situation of children in local authority care, and I pay tribute to the ongoing work of the Children’s Society on this issue. These are among some of the most vulnerable children among us and are already marginalised. There should simply be no fee for such a child to register their citizenship. Where children cannot afford even the administrative cost of registration, they should not be excluded from their citizenship rights.

We have already heard powerfully from others the parallels with the Windrush scandal, the shame of which still hangs over the Home Office. We really must avoid any repeat.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to these amendments. I hope she will agree with me that the Home Office has no business erecting barriers, financial or otherwise, that prevent people registering as British citizens, particularly children, when those people have been granted that right by this Parliament.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)]

We shall go back to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Pitkeathley and Lord Bishop of Durham

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I encourage the Minister to at least agree to go away and think very seriously about these amendments. The paramountcy of the welfare of the child, I am sure, we are all entirely agreed about. We know that the first two years of life are absolutely crucial to long-term life chances. The next two years matter as much again. So how we behave towards children in the first four or five years of life, before they go to school, is the most significant factor in their long-term life chances.

A crucial part of this is the child bonding with the parent or parents, and family stability. We will all have spoken to parents who are doing an extremely good job, and who feel deeply pained and anguished as they decide to return to work part time, because they believe that will be best for their child and for themselves. Yet it is not an easy decision to make, because many of them would prefer to be at home with their child full time.

So, closeness of work matters deeply. It would be entirely unreasonable to ask a parent of a three or four year-old to travel too far, as has already been noted. The clause is designed to help to think through the paramountcy of the welfare of the child and, equally, the availability of good, suitable, affordable childcare. We accept that provisions are coming, although there are concerns about how they will be paid for. If a parent feels that the childcare is good, they feel better; they have a sense of well-being, which they pass on to their child, and the child itself feels better in that provided childcare. However, if a parent is uncertain about the level and standard of childcare, they are very anxious. They pass that anxiety on to their child, which damages the child’s welfare.

In the drive to encourage people to return to work, which most support fully, great care must be taken that, in that drive, the balance is not tipped towards a lack of parent/child contact that will actually lead to diminishing the child’s life chances, and thus have the exact opposite impact to the intention of this Bill. My deep concern is that without serious safeguards in the Bill there is a danger that we will place children at risk when we intend to place them in safety. We must ensure that the proper and right relationship between the parent and the child is not overstretched by the provisions in the Bill.

I hope that the Minister will be prepared at least to agree to go away and consider the amendments in the light of the possibility that they might be better for the welfare of the child than if they were not in the Bill. Will the Minister be prepared at least to take time to consider whether these might be in the best interests of the child?

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

I shall speak to Amendment 55, which was so ably spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Earlier today, many hours ago, my noble friend Lady Lister reminded the House that caring for people is part of how society works. Nowhere is that more true than those parents who are looking after a disabled child. So the proposed changes on conditionality for responsible carers, which would see carers with a child aged three or four being allocated to the work-related requirements group—requiring them to look for, and be available for, work—are of great concern.

Many parents and carers of disabled children aged three to four will be unable to fulfil these requirements because, as we have heard, there is a great lack of childcare for disabled children. Research shows that only 21% of local authorities say that there is sufficient childcare for disabled children in their area, a situation that is bound to get worse with the cuts to local authority funding. A recent Contact a Family survey showed that only 60% of parents with disabled children were able to fully access the current entitlement of 15 hours’ free childcare every week.

As we have heard, while carers of children in receipt of the higher-rate or middle-rate care component of DLA are exempted from these requirements, many children under five do not receive the benefit anyway because of the time taken to identify that child as disabled. Speak to any parent of a disabled child and they will tell you a long saga of how long it took to get a diagnosis, with administrative delays on top of that, so it often takes years to get that identification. Surely the carers of disabled children under five should be exempt from the additional conditionality unless appropriate childcare is available.

When this was debated in Committee in the Commons, the Minister agreed that appropriate childcare was critical—I emphasise again, childcare appropriate for children with disabilities—and I hope that the Minister today will be able to give an undertaking that the condition will not apply unless appropriate childcare is available.