Calais: “Jungle” Camp

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sheehan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what views they have expressed to the government of France about the bulldozing of the south section of the Calais “Jungle” camp.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the management of migrant camps is the responsibility of the French Government. I understand that the French authorities have increased the capacity in alternative accommodation for vulnerable groups. We are in close touch with the French Government, and the UK has pledged £7.2 million to provide help and facilities for migrants at centres in Calais and elsewhere in France.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, having visited the camps in both Calais and Dunkirk, I am more convinced than ever that the protection of children and the protection of refugees are two of the most important pillars of international law. However, the violent images on our TV screens show that the French and British Governments have failed to uphold either in Calais. Will the Minister urge the Prime Minister to set up the processes necessary to assess the rights of the estimated 300 unaccompanied children in Calais, rather than hide behind the skirts of dysfunctional Dublin III regulations?

[Lord Bates]

We are certainly aware of the situation, which is very difficult for the French Government. They have tried to deal with it correctly: they have applied to the courts for the right to take the actions they have taken and have provided another 100 welcome centres across France to look after these people. The reality is that no one needs to be in those camps. If they are seeking asylum, they should claim it in France. They will then enter the asylum system, and if they have a claim to family reunion in the UK, that can be dealt with expeditiously. We announced just yesterday that through the exchanges of key personnel, we are increasing interoperability between the two departments to ensure that that happens within two months.

Immigration Act 2014 (Commencement No. 6) Order 2016

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, during the passage of the Immigration Act 2014 through both your Lordships’ House and the other place, considerable disquiet was expressed about the right-to-rent clause.

The Liberal Democrats in the coalition Government were particularly unhappy about its ramifications. Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby a rigorous pilot scheme would take place in the West Midlands and only on its conclusion and satisfactory evaluation would a scheme be rolled out nationally. All previous speakers referred to this, but it is so important to reiterate and is the underlying reason behind my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s Motion.

Let me quote the Prime Minister’s speech on immigration in May 2015:

“The Liberal Democrats only wanted us to run a pilot … But now we’ve got a majority, we will roll it out nationwide”.

This statement contradicted assurances given to Parliament that any decision on a further rollout would take place only after a transparent and public evaluation that would allow Parliament sufficient time to debate, scrutinise and ultimately decide on any further stages of the scheme. This patently did not transpire. Thus, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for giving us the opportunity to put on record our thoughts on the inadequacy of the evaluation.

I start by examining the title of the proposal: “right to rent”. What does this mean, and what does it mean if the right to rent is not open to you? People who wish to rent a private home or a room in a house are looking for a roof over their heads. That is all. Let us put to one side for the moment the rights and wrongs of those without the necessary documentation being able to rent a home and think of them as people, rather than illegal immigrants. Are we saying that anybody—including British citizens, usually vulnerable ones—who fails to produce the paperwork set out by the Government will legitimately be put out on the streets, destitute, and that if you or I take pity on that individual, we, too, will suffer the consequences? That is morally repugnant. Will the Minister please tell me what will happen to people who cannot evidence their right to a roof over their heads?

Now let us think of them as illegal immigrants—as though they somehow cease to be human. Let us go along with it for a bit, because the Government’s argument is that these measures are acceptable because the prize at the end is worth it. I believe that the Government’s view is that creating a hostile environment that will make it difficult for illegal immigrants to have a settled life will, in time, be a deterrent, and that rogue landlords will be put out of business in the process. The Government may be right about that, but this then throws up a number of questions. Does the end then justify the means? More importantly, does the evaluation of the pilot scheme show us that there is evidence to support that the ends have indeed been met?

What are the means? They are, first, to deny a roof over the heads of those unable to produce the right papers; secondly, to get landlords to police it by forcing them to take on duties of immigration officers; and thirdly, to make sure that landlords do what is required of them by putting in place more and more draconian penalties if they get it wrong. However, I believe that the Government are playing with fire here, because creating that hostile environment to act as a deterrent risks enflaming community tensions, as people with foreign-sounding names and foreign accents without the necessary documentation, whether they are here legally or not, will be put to the back of the queue. It will be not only those with foreign characteristics but those vulnerable British people whose circumstances are such that they are unable immediately to produce the paperwork required. This includes the homeless, victims of domestic violence, victims of modern-day slavery and those caught in the mangles of the Home Office’s systems—something of which I have some knowledge, having handled immigration casework.

So far I have addressed only one half of the equation—the impact on tenants. What about the impact on landlords? Some 78% of rental properties belong to landlords who let only one or two properties. Buy-to-let landlords had not bargained on becoming an arm of the UK’s border agency. They, quite rightly in my opinion, do not feel qualified to pass judgment on the validity of documents arrayed before them. Indeed, the recent court case involving Ryanair, cited by my noble friend Lady Hamwee, illustrates perfectly the weakness of the Government’s policy of fining airlines for flying illegal immigrants into Britain. If airline staff are deemed ill equipped to scrutinise and identify forged documents, how on earth are ordinary citizens supposed to do so? The answer is: they will not. They will opt for the path of least resistance and let only to tenants who represent the least risk of them falling foul of the law.

Organisations such as Crisis, Shelter, St Mungo’s Broadway and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants have all documented their concerns on these issues eloquently. Indeed, the JCWI went to the trouble of commissioning its own evaluation of the West Midlands pilot. I wonder whether the Minister has had a look at it. It is rather a good piece of work and ought to be given serious consideration.

The Home Office’s own evaluation of this pilot is flawed on a number of counts. Noble Lords have already cited some examples, but I shall give a few as a flavour of the lack of rigour displayed. The report states that sample sizes are small—some online surveys were completed by as few as five respondents; only four voluntary and charity sector organisations and five housing associations were interviewed for research, and the majority of tenants had not moved properties since the start of the pilot and would not, therefore, have any experience of the scheme. The list goes on. Nor does the pilot definitively conclude that it has met the aims set out by the Government.

I shall finish by reading from the website of the Equality and Human Rights Commission:

“The importance of housing is recognised in the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes ‘the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate ... housing’. The United Kingdom is legally bound by this treaty. Protecting people’s human rights in housing is therefore important in its own right”.

I hope that the Government will take that statement on board and I am very sorry that Labour will not join us in voting down this order, especially since it did so in the other place.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and put on record how impressed I have been with all the other speeches so far in support of the amendment. I will focus my remarks on looking in a little more detail at the court case that the noble Lord briefly mentioned.

On 18 January, the Upper Tribunal ruled that three unaccompanied minors and a vulnerable young man with mental health problems from the camp in Calais had a bona fide case to be allowed to join relatives already resident in the UK. This case is important because it follows a legal challenge co-ordinated by Citizens UK, which cited a little-known provision in the Dublin III regulations that allows an asylum seeker to join their relative in Britain if they have already applied for asylum in France. The Upper Tribunal ruled that the Home Office should immediately allow the three children and one adult to join their families.

Although the Government had argued until then that, under Dublin III, applications for asylum must be made and processed in France, the court accepted that the reality is very different and that the French system is, indeed, broken. Applications from asylum seekers with family already resident in the UK are not being processed and passed on to the UK. In effect, the safe and legal route has been denied to asylum seekers who have done all that has been asked of them.

In this ground-breaking ruling, the court accepted that evidence of a written claim to asylum in France was sufficient to prove that the children had initially sought safety there. Therefore, the court subsequently ruled that, instead of waiting for the French Government to ask, the British Government must act. It will now be up to Britain to examine the claims of these specific cases under the Dublin regulations. This changes the nature of the debate: the Government can no longer hide behind what can be described only as a broken system. Or can they? Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are planning to, or have already, appealed this decision? If so, why?

With the release of the dreadful figures from Europol citing 10,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children having gone missing, probably into the hands of human traffickers, surely the Government should now capitulate and accept the moral and legal case for accepting the relatively small number of the 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children into Britain that we, the Liberal Democrats, other politicians of a variety of different parties and numerous NGOs have been asking for. Citizens UK has identified several hundred children in Calais and Dunkirk alone who have a bone fide case for being brought to Britain. I saw some of them when I was in Dunkirk this Sunday, just as Storm Imogen was gathering pace. There is little justification for leaving anyone to suffer those conditions, let alone the young people who have every legal right to come to Britain. Surely the time has come to get on with it. The unaccompanied children we are talking about have relatives already resident in Britain, so there would be no burden on any of the local authorities.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to inject a note of caution into the debate, which has been a little one-sided. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is right in suggesting that there is widespread support for refugees, and especially children. Nobody is more qualified to say that than he is. The question is how to do it, and that needs a little bit of thought. The proposal is to relocate 3,000 unaccompanied children from Europe, and that is entirely understandable. It is entirely right to offer refuge where that is in the best interests of the children. However, I think I have a slight difficulty over the suggestion that these children should be selected from those already in Europe. The reason for that is this: there is some risk that it would encourage families to send their children in advance in the hope that that would later open the door, as it were, for the rest of the family to claim asylum.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, did not seem to think that there was very much in that, but there is some evidence from Sweden that that has been the case, and we have had some experience with Albania, when a very large number of families got the idea that, if the children went first, they could follow. We need to be careful of that, and conscious that this could become a selling point for people smugglers in the camps around Syria itself.

Let us take orphan children, by all means, but I rather think it might be better to take them from the camps around Syria and to do so on UNHCR advice. We are doing that already with families, and I do not see why we should not extend that—indeed, I believe we should extend it—to orphan children in those camps. The UNHCR could provide an objective account of those children’s circumstances and take a view as to whether there was perhaps a better solution involving the child’s extended family. Remember, extended families in Syria are very close, very strong and very important. I suggest that we would do better to reinforce our work with the UNHCR. By all means increase the numbers, but let us be quite sure that we do it in a way that does not have a downside attached to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

It is a fast-changing situation and needs to be balanced with what we are talking about, which is wanting to ensure that we do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in need. We should also bear in mind when we talk about 3,000 children that there are currently 2.1 million children who are refugees from Syria, so 3,000 in addition is a relatively small number. You can help more in the region. I do not want to sound heartless: we talk about 3,000 people in this amendment, but our aid is providing 15 million food rations already, supporting 600,000 families, educating or supporting in education 227,000 children and providing 2 million medical interventions. I am not expecting people to say, “That’s fine, then”. The pressure needs to be maintained. It is a great humanitarian crisis and this place should be putting pressure on the Executive to take further action. I hope from what I have set out that I can go as far as to say that the Government are taking this seriously. We are not unmoved by it and Britain is doing a substantial amount of which we can be proud.

[Baroness Sheehan]

Can the Minister say a few words on his statement about most asylum seekers being 16 year-olds, at the upper age of the limit? Surely that is not surprising, because a five or a six year-old, unless he had an older sibling to help him, could not make that perilous journey. Also, NGOs on the ground have told me that 17 and 18 year-olds tend to claim to be younger than they are because they do not wish to get caught up in the dysfunctional immigration asylum system in France. I think that that argument works both ways.

[Lord Bates]

I hear what the noble Baroness says. The age verification of children is a key challenge facing all the agencies. That is why trying to establish documentation is so important. One can understand why, when someone is received into the country, they self-declare as being a child, because they may then get a different level of treatment and protection. That may be one reason why the age profile is what it is. It is difficult to know how to get around that, other than to work with the individual to identify their documents and age and to make sure that they are in the system and can get age-appropriate support.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

A civilised nation would ensure that its immigration system is fair and includes checks and balances, such as an appeals process—the ability of an appellant to give oral evidence being a central component of any fair hearing. Clause 34 violates all that, and I therefore hope that, in justifying any claim that the United Kingdom has to be thought civilised, it will be removed from both government thinking and this Bill.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 227 and to oppose the proposition that Clause 34 stand part of the Bill. During my maiden speech I referred to time spent as a caseworker and head of office for my noble friend Lady Kramer when she was a Member in another place. I will recount the salient details of an immigration case that has stayed with me for more than a decade and which will illustrate several speeches made by noble Lords here.

One morning, I received a call from a concerned friend of a young man from Chad who had arrived here as an unaccompanied minor. He was anxious that his friend, having become 18 years of age, had been detained by immigration officers and was about to be deported. To cut a long story short, I was successful in locating the young man and succeeded in getting him off the plane—just. Now, this orphaned young man eventually succeeded in getting indefinite leave to remain, but not until he had spent several months having to report to Lunar House, often having to walk there from Kingston as he had little cash.

He also endured several months in Harmondsworth, where I had occasion to visit him. It was a prison in all but name. In all that time, he lived with the constant fear of deportation. No one should have to go through such mental anguish because of poor decision-making, which was the sole reason behind his ordeal. The Home Office got it wrong. Poor judgment on the part of the Home Office is still prevalent today. If this clause were to be passed as it stands, the injustice this boy suffered would be magnified inordinately.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a brief contribution to this debate based on my own experience as the Member of Parliament for Orpington for 18 years. My experience may be the same as or different from that of other Members of Parliament in the other House, but I had so many immigration cases regularly that one out of my three caseworkers was solely devoted to dealing with them comprehensively. By the way, I think the people in these cases got a pretty good service. I am not sure that a lot of people could devote so much casework time to one particular aspect of what an MP has to face.

None the less, I want to address the question of Clause 34, rather than Amendment 227 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. However, while I understand the argument put forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the guarantee you get from having something in the Bill, my experience in relation to the handling of children is that they were handled exceptionally carefully. Whenever there was a family involved, the Home Office took particular trouble to do it properly. I felt that it pursued its statutory obligations very fully.

On the wider issue of Clause 34, my own experience was that the really difficult problem in dealing with immigration cases, whether they were economic migrants or asylum seekers, was the length of time the whole appeals procedure took. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, it is byzantine in its complexity. That is the truth of the matter. That very complexity and the number of possible appeals you could make—tier 1, tier 2 and then appeals beyond that—meant that cases went on not just for several months but for several years and individuals, whatever the eventual result of the case, were placed in a situation of great difficulty, resulting very often in mental problems and severe depression. These cases could go on for five, six or seven years before they were eventually resolved. This was the really big problem in dealing with immigrants.

Will this clause as it is improve that? Will it speed things up? We have evidence from the new procedures for dealing with visa applications, for example, on the hub and spoke principle brought in by the last Government, whereby visas were dealt with in a particular area—let us say Dubai for the whole of India, for example—and things were speeded up. Those measures were brought in so that visa applications could be dealt with more rapidly than hitherto. Great experience was developed in dealing with the paperwork, as opposed to seeing people face to face, which ordinary common sense would suggest is a better procedure than dealing just with paperwork—but none the less, that is what was developed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a means of dealing with these things more expeditiously than would otherwise be the case. If my noble and learned friend can tell me what experience and evidence we have that Clause 34 would speed things up, I would be in favour of it, because the real problem was the length of time that appeals took in immigration cases.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to lend support to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, and to my noble friend Lord Paddick, in opposing the Questions that Clauses 17 and 18 stand part of the Bill. The two clauses extend stop, search and seizure powers—powers that have a long history of being acknowledged as contributing to racial disharmony and breakdown in community cohesion. In 1981, Lord Scarman, in his reports on the Brixton riots, concluded that mass use of stop and searches were a direct cause of the riots.

As recently as 2014, announcing reforms to stop and search under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, said that,

“when innocent people are stopped and searched for no good reason, it is hugely damaging to the relationship between the police and the public. In those circumstances it is an unacceptable affront to justice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/4/14; col. 831]

BME people in Britain today suffer such affronts to justice usually with a certain amount of stoicism. However, this Bill seeks to expand powers of stop, search and seizure. It is inevitable—and I would go as far as to say it is the Government’s intent—that the number of stop and searches of those from visible ethnic minorities would increase under the powers contained in this Bill.

There is a great deal of documented evidence that current car stops are disproportionately targeted at those from BME backgrounds. I refer to the survey carried out by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, already cited by my noble friend Lord Paddick and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence. Rather than going over the figures again, I draw attention to the sample size of the survey—more than 10,000—and contrast that with the evaluation of the pilot carried out in the West Midlands, on which the Government are basing their evidence for rolling it out nationally which has happened today.

The Race Equality Foundation expresses concern that the Government have produced no policy equality statement on these stop, search and seizure provisions, and I share that concern. I hope that the Minister will address that. Such respected bodies as Liberty and the National Black Police Association have expressed deep concerns about the potential of Clauses 17 and 18 to foster distrust and disharmony between the police and the public. Both organisations express regret that the good work of the Home Secretary to date to undo some of the harm associated with previous inappropriate use of stop and search will be undermined by the proposals under Clauses 17 and 18.

It seems that a great deal of power already resides with the Home Office to revoke the licences of illegal immigrants, without resort to a measure that would exacerbate the situation and damage the public’s relationship with the police, who, as the NBPA rightly says, would become the “whipping boy” for immigration officers.

If the Government wish to tighten these measures further, perhaps they would be better to consider tightening the issuance and monitoring of licences by the DVLA, and extending the same responsibilities and duties to that body as they are seeking to deliver to private landlords.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I hope the Minister will listen, as I know he usually would, to the contributions that have been made on all sides of your Lordships’ House, but especially to those of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence.

As those contributions were being made, my mind went back to those riots in 1981, of course not just in Brixton but in Toxteth in Liverpool. I had been a young Member of Parliament for about 18 months. In the weeks before the riots occurred, I had raised on the Floor of the House in another place the dangerous relationship that had been deteriorating between police and public in that part of Liverpool. Sir Kenneth Oxford was then the chief constable on Merseyside and he took a very provocative view towards the black community in that neighbourhood. I was not entirely surprised when, on a hot summer’s night in 1981, I was asked to come urgently to Upper Parliament Street, where two and a half days of rioting began, in which 1,000 policemen ended up in the local hospital. I dread to think what would have happened if guns had been so readily and easily available on the streets then as they often are now.

As a result of those riots, I visited the home of the young man who had been involved at the very outset, Leroy Cooper, who was a constituent of mine. I sat with him and his father as they described to me how the trigger had taken place on the street in Lodge Lane in Liverpool as an overzealous policeman confronted this young man. It was a traffic incident, which plays exactly into the amendments before your Lordships’ House today—not a car but a motorcycle—and, as a consequence of the anger that had been building up for some time, it erupted and riots occurred which had a devastating effect.

The overuse of stop and search powers at that time, which had been part of the incident, was set aside in the months and years that followed and a much different form of policing emerged. Bernard Hogan-Howe, who became the assistant chief constable on Merseyside, played a leading part in the introduction of strong community policing, having learned the lessons of what had gone before. It would be a tragedy if we were now to turn the clock back. I hope therefore that the Minister will think very carefully about and look at the terms of this very good amendment, Amendment 160, which says that,

“the authorised officer has reasonable grounds to believe the power should be exercised urgently”.

It does not take away the powers. As the right reverend Prelate said, those powers already exist in plenty of statute if there is a need to intervene. But something that could be used and seen as a deliberate attack on one part of our community will do nothing to enhance community relations. It will not foster good policing in our cities and could actually have a deleterious effect.

For all those reasons, I hope that the Minister will think very carefully about the arguments that have been deployed today. If he cannot agree today, I hope he will at least hold meetings with Members of your Lordships’ House between now and Report to see whether this could be modified.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 151 in particular. The pilot scheme has done nothing to allay all the fears that have been voiced by many organisations that the policy will have unintended, discriminatory consequences, for the reasons given by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to the JCWI’s independent evaluation. I would be interested if the Minister could tell us what view the Government take of its evaluation alongside the pilot that they have prayed in aid to suggest that everything is fine.

At Second Reading I made brief reference to concerns raised by the charity Rights of Women about the possible implications for women fleeing domestic abuse. I will quote more extensively from the briefing it sent, because it is important. Rights of Women, as noble Lords may know, is a charity which specialises in supporting women who are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing, gender-based violence, including domestic and sexual violence. It says it is,

“deeply concerned that the ‘right to rent’ scheme will place already vulnerable migrant women who have experienced domestic violence at further risk of harm as a result of a scheme that creates barriers to accessing private … accommodation … Many women, including British citizens, experiencing violence in their relationships will have been deprived of access to important documents, such as passports and biometric residence permits, necessary to prove their right to rent and therefore these provisions will have a disproportionate effect on women fleeing abusive partners or other perpetrators of abuse regardless of their nationality.

Furthermore, women with limited leave to remain in the UK on the basis of their relationship with a British or settled person are dependent on that relationship subsisting for the continuation of their leave; when the relationship ends their immigration leave is at risk and women need to take steps to regularise their status in another category. Women who have fled abusive partners often need time to recover from their trauma before starting to address matters such as regularising their immigration status. It is not uncommon for a woman to find out much later after the breakdown of a relationship due to violence that unbeknownst to her the Home Office has curtailed her leave after her abusive partner informed them of the relationship ending. Without receiving notice of a Home Office curtailment decision, a woman can find herself without leave in the UK, unable to work or access housing.

Many of the vulnerable migrant women we advise on our telephone legal advice line have left or are trying to leave abusive relationships. Of these women a significant proportion are presently undocumented though either have an existing right to reside in the UK under European law or have a strong basis on which they can submit an application to the Home Office for leave to remain. The ‘right to rent’ scheme places these already vulnerable women at further risk by preventing them from accessing their own safe private rented accommodation due to a lack of documentation”.

These women will then be,

“at risk of homelessness, renting from exploitative landlords, returning to abusive partners or being forced into entering exploitative relationships”.

The charity gives a couple of case studies which illustrate the very likely problems that could occur, which I will not cite now given the lateness of the hour. However, I will ask: how does this fit in with the Government’s laudable strategy to end violence against women and girls?

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I lend my support to the remarks made from all sides of the Chamber in support of Amendments 151 and 159, which would provide for a proper evaluation of the right-to-rent scheme before we roll it out nationwide.

I have spent a fair amount of time volunteering with a local charity for homeless people in Wimbledon called Faith in Action. On one occasion I was asked to help a person whose documents had been stolen—an occupational hazard when you are a rough sleeper. It was a lengthy and frustrating morning and afternoon—and quite expensive to boot—and I was not successful in tracing the documents on that occasion. I say this because it is clear to me that homeless people, foreign nationals and those from a black and ethnic minority background who have a right to rent but are not in a position readily to produce the necessary documents will be excluded from the rental market as landlords inevitably become more risk-averse in the face of the harsh penalties that could be incurred.

A number of people have talked about the many different organisations that have put forward their case strongly and well. Crisis—a national charity for single homeless people and a member of the Home Office panel—is one of them. It states that, according to an evaluation of the Immigration Act 2014 in Birmingham, which other noble Lords have mentioned, six of the local charities surveyed said that people they represent have become homeless as a result of the scheme, while interviews with landlords found “potential” for discrimination. They, of course, are not alone in those findings. The Law Society raises similar concerns, as does Liberty. To that list I can add Shelter, St Mungo’s and the JCWI. In fact, any charity that works on the ground with homeless people or supports immigrants’ welfare will say the same.

So I can do no less than lend my support to Amendments 151 and 159. Surely it makes sense to delay implementation of the offences contained in this Bill and the rollout of the right-to-rent scheme until independent evaluations of the associated risks have been carried out.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself in a very difficult position. I have to say to my noble friend that there are three elements to this aspect of the Bill, which the amendments address, which seem to me incomprehensible. The first is that, if one is running a private business and is going to make a major change in the way it is run, one has a pilot scheme that one evaluates—preferably independently—and then decides whether or not it has worked. I do not understand how a Conservative Government who believe in private enterprise have not learned this from the private sector. It seems to me that you do not behave like this. You have a pilot scheme, you have it independently assessed, you announce the results and then you discuss what those answers mean.

So I have a problem of comprehension to start with. It is an important problem, because the second difficulty I have is that I find it pretty unacceptable in this country that people should have to prove that they are suitable for renting a flat before they are allowed to do so. I do not find that very attractive. I am one of those who have always believed in identity cards, which I think would be convenient for everyone. But this Government do not believe in identity cards and have tried to argue all the time that they are not necessary. However, we are now creating a sector, a section of the community, which in fact has to have an identity card. I object in principle to the concept that some should have it and others should not.

Central to that is the issue that, however one likes to dress it up, it is likely that landlords will be more suspicious of people of an ethnic minority or with a foreign accent than they will be of those who speak correct English with the crystal accents heard in this House. I do not think that many of us who have spoken today, even those with self-confessed “odd” surnames, would be refused rented accommodation, because landlords would not expect us to be unable to prove our suitability for that flat.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

After the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, I am tempted to say that I invite the noble Baroness to consider withdrawing her amendment at this stage. The noble Lord gave an authoritative and insightful perspective on the process. As this is the first time that we have come to residential tenancies, for the benefit of the Committee I should put on the record that my wife owns properties that are rented in the private sector. It is not something that is required to be listed in the register but, out of courtesy to the Committee, I make your Lordships aware of that.

Amendment 148 would extend the existing requirement on the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice that specifies what a landlord or agent should or should not do to avoid contravening the Equality Act 2010. It would then relate to all protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act. Amendment 151 would require that, before the offences of leasing premises in this Bill are commenced, the Government should lay before Parliament a report of the impacts of the restrictions on illegal migrants accessing the private rented sector which were introduced in the Immigration Act 2014 in relation to discrimination and the ability of those lawfully residing in the UK to access rented accommodation where they have neither a passport nor a driver’s licence.

Amendment 159 would require an evaluation to be made of the effect of the measures in the first phase area. This would have the effect of delaying any extension of the right-to-rent measures in the Immigration Act 2014 from the first phase area in the West Midlands until at least 1 December 2019. The Government take their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate all forms of discrimination very seriously. The Government have published the policy equality statement and the evaluation of the right-to-rent scheme. The evaluation found no hard evidence of discrimination where the right-to-rent scheme had been commenced, or, indeed, when that area was compared against others, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, outlined. The evaluation also found no evidence that people who lacked a passport or driver’s licence suffered additional barriers.

The Government have given the fullest consideration to the findings of the evaluation and worked with the landlords consultative panel to ensure that the rollout is taken forward, bearing in mind the lessons learned. There is a list of acceptable documents for the right-to-rent checks, which sets out a broad and comprehensive set of options. This can be used by prospective tenants who do not possess a passport or driving licence to provide evidence of their right to rent. It has recently been revised further in consultation with bodies representing landlords, agents, local authorities and the housing charities Crisis and Shelter.

The code of practice that has been published addresses the concerns raised when the Immigration Act 2014 was passed that the right-to-rent scheme might inadvertently result in increased discrimination on the grounds of race. It provides guidance to landlords and agents in avoiding such discrimination. The Government do not believe that there is potential for the right-to-rent scheme to result in increased discrimination on other equality grounds.

Amendment 159 is at variance with the Government’s concerns that the measures should be implemented across the country with the minimum of delay. The Government are already committed to extending the scheme across England on 1 February and the order extending the scheme from that date has already been laid before Parliament.

In implementing the scheme, the Government have engaged with a panel of experts comprising representatives of landlords’ and agents’ associations, homelessness groups and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, as well as local authorities in the areas concerned. We are confident that we have designed measures that will meet the intended objectives.

Having put those remarks on the record, I come to the points raised in the course of the debate.

[Baroness Sheehan]

Would the Minister talk about whether he thinks a sample size of 23 people who are visibly from an ethnic minority is a sensible basis on which to base this evaluation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I hear that. I am making the point that private sector landlords, in doing their due diligence on the person they are renting to, will already require a great deal of detail or proof of who they are and that they have a right to be here. It would surely be in their own interests. If they were letting out their property to someone who had no legal right to be here, they might find that that person disappears and they are left out of pocket. This is eminently sensible in terms of due diligence on the behalf of landlords, as well as being widely consistent with making it more difficult for individuals who are here illegally to operate, in terms of bank accounts, driving licences and employment. The evaluation found very little evidence that British citizens with limited documentation were experiencing problems as a result of the scheme.

With regard to the unacceptable burden of checks, landlords are being asked to take responsibility for ensuring that prospective tenants have a right to rent in the UK by carrying out simple document checks; where necessary, in a small number of cases, making a report to the Home Office. This supports the work of the Government to make it more difficult for illegal migrants to reside here unlawfully and to stop them accessing services to which they are not entitled.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned domestic abuse. She said that victims who do not have documents will struggle. In August 2015 the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, announced a £3 million fund for 2015-16 to address any gaps in the provision of specialist accommodation-based support for victims of domestic abuse.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, asked who should be checked. The answer is any adults who will be taking up the accommodation as their main or only home in the UK. This means all adult occupants, not just those who may be the named tenants.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked about evidence of stolen documents. If a document is stolen, a letter from a UK police force confirming that the holder is the victim of a crime and personal documents have been stolen, stating the crime reference number and issued within the past three months, would be acceptable.

I have covered the point on domestic violence. The Home Office will be aware of who is applying for leave to remain under paragraph (289A) of the Immigration Rules as a victim of domestic violence. It will refer to the national referral mechanism to ascertain who has been the victim of human trafficking. Permission to rent will not be denied to such persons.

In answer to another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, the landlords’ survey included a broad range of landlords with different sizes of properties and portfolios. Focus groups also included small-scale, informal landlords, including those renting a single room. I was asked about fees. The report noted:

“However amongst the focus groups with informal tenants it was suggested that the charging of fees by some agents was common practice. This was not due to the Right to Rent scheme, but had been a long-standing practice—especially in areas where demand exceeds supply”.

I think that I have covered the points about homelessness and students. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, that we have worked with Crisis and Shelter in developing the list of acceptable documents for the right-to-rent checks.

[Baroness Sheehan]

I want to put more about the evaluation on record. We have heard a lot from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about his experience on the evaluation committee, but Crisis was also a member of that Home Office panel, and its assessment is very different. It is very concerned that,

“the harsh penalties for landlords who fail to evict tenants who don’t have the correct immigration status will compound the effect of the previous Immigration Act and make landlords much more ‘risk averse’ and less likely to rent to people who may not have easily recognisable documentation such as homeless people, as well as leading to increased discrimination against foreign nationals and people of black and minority ethnic backgrounds”.

I also had a meeting with the Residential Landlords Association, which said that its fears had been allayed. It was really quite concerned about its members who rented to students and that large student accommodation would be exempt. So while I know that landlords’ concerns have mostly been put to rest, let us please not forget the concerns of people who are dealing with the more vulnerable groups, such as the homeless and the not so well-off immigrants.

[Lord Bates]

That is an important point. Students are of course exempt because their right to be in the UK will have been checked by their university in granting them accommodation. The fact that they are exempt is because those checks are happening, and the social sector is exempt because the checks are happening there. All we want is for those checks to happen in the private sector as well.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, this Bill fills me with dismay and disquiet. To design legislation such as this, which has within it the seeds of racial conflict, is to dice with community cohesion and our current, mostly harmonious race relations. There is a great deal contained in the proposed measures that I could address, but I am sure that noble Lords will be relieved that I will confine myself to a select few.

I start with the right to rent clause. It will tear apart the already fractious landlord/tenant relationship. Making the landlord criminally responsible—if I may put it like that—for staying up to date with his or her tenant’s immigration status puts him or her in the invidious position of taking on the mantle of immigration officer and border control officer. Who will take the risk of letting accommodation to an Imran Khan, on a student visa, when faced with a possible prison sentence if they get it wrong? Buy-to-let landlords had not bargained on this. They will opt for safety first, and who can blame them? Therefore, if the said Imran Khan is temporarily without the necessary papers to prove his legal presence, he will be evicted. The scope for injustice is great.

I have some direct experience of this. In a former role as caseworker for my noble friend Lady Kramer when she was in another place, I dealt with a number of immigration cases. Richmond upon Thames has a surprising number of these due to its proximity to Heathrow. I know from first-hand experience that the Home Office has an alarming propensity to lose case files and applicants’ documents. The Home Office hotline for MPs and their staff was frustrating in its frequent lack of response on often urgent cases, and I fear that there will be people, including UK citizens, who are wrongfully evicted for lack of proof of their right to rent and made homeless. It is as inevitable as night follows day.

St Mungo’s Broadway, a charity working with 25,000 homeless people across London, the south-east, the south-west and the Home Counties, states:

“Homelessness often results in the loss of ID documents and many vulnerable people will not have a passport or be readily able to provide other ID documents required to rent or renew their existing tenancy”.

St Mungo’s Broadway’s figures for services working with rough sleepers show that in Westminster last year, counting only UK nationals and Irish clients, 49% had no ID. The process of tracking down and producing allowable ID documents is time-consuming and expensive. Will the Minister look into making this task a little easier for charities involved in helping homeless vulnerable people to rebuild their lives?

There is also concern about the deterrent effect of applying the right to rent scheme to households who take in lodgers and to charitable families who offer a spare room to refugees and homeless migrants while their application is being considered. These hosting schemes are extremely important for helping people to avoid destitution while they go through the process of regularising their situation or preparing to return to their home country and who are otherwise not entitled to any support.

A couple of weeks ago, I met a newly arrived young Syrian who had recently been granted refugee status. He recounted how his delight on receiving indefinite leave to remain was dampened by the realisation that he would have immediately to find his own accommodation. He had nowhere to go and would have had to risk the streets if someone had not put him in contact with an organisation called Room for Refugees, which found a room for him in a family house in Epsom. I fear that families will be deterred from coming forward to offer spare rooms to destitute asylum seekers and refugees for fear of falling foul of the law. More and more people will be forced to sleep rough on the streets.

The concern is that the Home Office’s record on dealing with immigration leaves something to be desired, and there is concern about its ability to deal promptly with inquiries from landlords and indeed employers. The impact on lives of getting the information wrong or not responding quickly enough will be devastating to those—as many in these situations will be—close to the bread-line.

The pilot of the right to rent scheme in the West Midlands showed the potential for an increase in discrimination on racial grounds and an increase in homelessness. Therefore, before the Government go ahead with the more draconian measures in the Bill, will they carry out an impact assessment of the current countrywide rollout of right to rent measures taking effect in February 2016? It is particularly relevant to test areas such as London, where demand for housing is higher than in the West Midlands. It will be useful to have some evidence of whether existing measures are succeeding in tackling illegal immigration or whether the effect is to drive illegal immigrants further underground, increasing homelessness and providing easy pickings for unscrupulous landlords.

I have similar reservations about the measures in Part 1 on the labour market and illegal working. I seek reassurance from the Minister that the role of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement is unconnected to the role of immigration control.

The many other measures contained in other parts of the Bill could have serious adverse effects on the lives of innocent people who have inadvertently fallen foul of the law or who have suffered from wrong or tardy information from the Home Office. The loss of a driving licence, the loss of a car, the suspension of a bank account, the loss of documents and the inability even to represent oneself at an immigration appeal hearing will devastate and, in some cases, destroy lives.

What will be the effect of stopping drivers to ask for their driving licence? The police have expressed grave reservations about this. Janet Hills, the president of the National Black Police Association, believes that, if it becomes law, the Immigration Bill will set back the hard work of the police and, in particular, the NBPA to improve community and race relations—relations which are hard to build and easy to destroy.

Scope for injustice in many of the provisions outlined in the Bill exists. Therefore, I ask whether the Minister and his colleagues will consider putting in place measures to offer compensation to those who have had their lives and livelihoods disrupted or destroyed by the wrongful application of the Bill’s provisions.

I end by drawing your Lordships’ attention to the recently released report of the Home Affairs Select Committee entitled Immigration: Skill Shortages. I will make reference to just one section in it—the one relating to nursing and healthcare. The Royal College of Nursing advised the committee that about 20,000 registered nursing vacancies were currently advertised in England. Your Lordships will have seen yesterday’s newspapers: nine out of 10 NHS trusts face a shortage of nurses. So I ask the Government: is this a good time to create a hostile environment for much-needed migrant workers?