Asylum Support (Amendment No. 3) Regulations 2015

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Avebury

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I suspect that the House will soon want to vote on this. I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for presenting their Motions so powerfully. Listening to the debates, I thought back to my father. For some time he was the Father of your Lordships’ House: he took his seat in 1932 and died in 1977. He was an aristocrat from a land-owning family, and he felt it important to go to live at Toynbee Hall in the East End, in order to understand how people from a different background lived. In his late eighties, he continued to take public transport because he was concerned about losing touch with how most people live. I have to say with the greatest respect to the Government that considering yesterday’s Motions and today’s, I am concerned that perhaps they may be losing touch with what goes on with some of the families in our country. The families we are talking about, the ones which would be most touched today and yesterday, are lone parent families. Some 90% of them will be mothers bringing up children on their own without the support of a father. They will be most penalised financially by what we are looking at today.

I have not had the opportunity to thank the Government since the publication of the latest employment figures. I say to the Government and to the members of the coalition Government that it is an extraordinary and very welcome achievement to have the lowest rate of unemployment since 2008. Employment brings important economic benefits to us all but it also brings a purpose and a way of breaking through isolation. I know how important this is, as a carer of a man who is mentally ill and has been unemployed for a long time. Sadly, the families that we are talking about today are not permitted to work. I do not wish to take up too much of the House’s time, but I would like to say a little bit about the importance of isolation. Several noble Lords have referred to the finding, by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, that coming into contact with the UK’s provisions for asylum seekers has an adverse effect on the mental health of families. Some time ago, I listened to a psychiatrist talking about post-natal depression. He said to me afterwards that one can withstand almost any adverse experience as long as one does not have to do it on one’s own. I hope noble Lords will consider that we are denying these families the opportunity to work. They can do voluntary work but they need to pay for transport to do that job. In so many ways, we are working to isolate these families.

I return to my original point. I know that the noble Lord has a large brief, but if he has not yet had the opportunity to go to visit some of these families where they live, I encourage him, or his ministerial colleagues, to do so. Then, the next time we have a debate like this, he can say that he has spoken with these families; that he understands their concerns because he has heard them himself; and he can assure the House that every precaution has been taken, when bringing forward regulations, to think about their needs. Having read the report of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, I am concerned that there seems to have been a careless approach to this very important matter. I look forward to the Minister’s response, but from what I have heard so far I am moved to support the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

I wish to ask the Minister two very brief questions. First, the comment has been made, but not in this debate, about the length of time that people remain on Section 95 support. In 2013, Mark Harper, who was then the Minister in charge of immigration, gave a series of figures, including an average length of time that people are on this destitution support of 525 days. That is part of the most iniquitous feature of this system—that not only do we keep people on the very bottom of the economic heap, but we leave them there indefinitely with no limit on the time that people can remain on this destitution support.

The other question I want to ask the Minister is whether the Government intend to publish a response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has been quoted many times during this debate, and the criticism it made of failing to give full details of the number of families who are on this level of support and what is included in it. Can we have answers to those questions in the Minister’s wind-up speech?

Immigration Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Avebury

Monday 17th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

I should like to ask a couple of questions about Clause 40. The Immigration Minister’s faux pas over the “wealthy metropolitan elite”, such as his predecessor who employed a cleaner from Nepal without checking that she had leave to remain, highlighted the inconsistency of people in senior positions of the Government being happy to employ non-EEA citizens themselves while desperately hanging on to the vain objective of reducing net immigration to below 100,000. That target was never within the realms of possibility and it should be scrapped, recognising that most components of immigration and all of emigration are outside the control of government. As the UK is doing relatively well compared with other European countries, we are an attractive destination for skilled workers from the rest of the EEA, and as my right honourable friend Vince Cable pointed out, we are benefiting from their contribution to our economy and in particular to the revenue from direct and indirect taxation that they bring.

However, we are right to deal with irregular migration from outside the EEA, and in particular the 500,000 of those irregular migrants who were lost by the UKBA and are still scraping a living in low-paid jobs—a few of them as cleaners and nannies. My question about Clause 40 is whether increasing the fines on employers who fail to check the credentials of their workers is going to be the answer. Can the Minister say whether the existing powers are being used to their full extent? In November 2012, when Tesco was found to have employed 20 non-EEA students for three times the number of hours allowed, the supermarket was fined £115,000, compared with the maximum of £200,000. In August 2013, the BBC found that since the original power to impose fines on employers was enacted in 2006, two-thirds of the £80 million fines imposed remained uncollected. The Home Office said that some fines might have been reduced or cancelled on appeal, or that some employers could have gone out of business or could have been asked to pay by instalments. How does making the penalty recoverable as if it were payable under an order of the county court, or the equivalent in Scotland or Northern Ireland, increase the probability that the money will be recovered? Can the Minister be sure that increasing the fines will not simply reduce the proportion of money that is recovered?

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly raise a concern that came to my attention when I was a member of Sub-Committee F of the European Union Committee some time ago. I heard from employers’ organisations in this country that they were very keen to have loose immigration policies. That was very understandable from their point of view. They would recruit migrants who were well educated and motivated and they might have felt that many of our population were not so motivated or well educated. I was concerned that there were not incentives for employers to train up, support and develop young people in this country, that those young people would just go on to benefits, and that a vicious circle would go on through the generations. I was therefore very pleased to hear the Prime Minister David Cameron say recently that his intention is to improve the education system—he feels that that is going a long way in the right direction—and to reform the welfare system so that more young people go into employment and there is not so much pressure on employers to recruit from abroad. It is tragic that so many young people waste their lives. I wanted to voice my happiness at hearing the Prime Minister express that commitment to our young people.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Avebury

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

No, what I was saying is that I hope that the treatment would be given irrespective of the woman’s entitlement while checks are being made to see whether she is a valid patient of the NHS or is someone who should incur the charges. However, if the charges do fall on the woman, I hope that they will simply lie on the table, as obviously a substantial proportion of the costs of treatment of migrants has done in the past. From the official figures given by the Department of Health, I think it was two-thirds of the charges incurred—not just by pregnant women but by persons who were not entitled to treatment presenting themselves to the NHS. In no case that I have heard of were patients denied treatment, but the charges piled up and the debt was left there on the table. I do not know what the mechanisms for recovery will be under this system, and perhaps the Minister will deal with that point in his reply.

I assume, and want confirmation, that no woman would ever be denied treatment, but if it was ascertained subsequently that she was not entitled to it, the debt would be recorded somewhere. Whatever steps the NHS might take to recover it would be fair enough, but if it could not be recovered, like so many other debts which have been incurred by migrants generally in the past, would it be written off to the NHS? I would like reassurance from the Minister on that point.

Undocumented migrants such as overstayers and failed asylum seekers, of whom there are estimated to be half a million, are unlikely to be able to pay for maternity or indeed any other medical services. If such people work, they are on or below the minimum wage and are now likely to become unemployed with the tightening up of checks by employers on their right to work. Health authorities may invoice patients from this group, but can the Minister say what proportion of the debt is recovered and whether there is anything in this clause, or indeed in the Bill as a whole, that will make it easier to collect the money? Will they be able to transfer the debts at a discount to a debt collector, and will they be any better off than they would have been in the past before this clause was enacted?

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, in listening to my noble friend Lord Patel’s concerns, which I share very strongly, about children and the charging of children, it occurred to me that there might also be an issue about the immunisation of children. If significant numbers of children do not get immunised, that might pose a threat. I would appreciate the Minister addressing that question in his reply.

Education Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Avebury

Monday 12th September 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. It is good to hear about the work that his department is undertaking. I think that I heard the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, talk about the demise of specialist Gypsy, Roma and Traveller education services. Maybe the Minister briefly said something about that at the end of his response but, I am sorry, I did not quite catch it. If he could clarify what is going on with those services, I would be grateful.

I apologise if I misled the Committee in any way by describing myself as “teaching” this boy. I was running workshops in a school environment. I am not a teacher; I should make that quite clear.

[Lord Avebury]

In answer to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the ring-fenced grant for the Travellers Education Service ceased in 2007, and the equivalent amount of money was made available in the general grant to local authorities for disadvantaged children as a whole. It was from that point onwards that local authorities started to see that there was money that they could use for other purposes and either made officials in the service redundant, in some cases, or did not replace them when they left. There has been a gradual process of running down that, as I said, if it is allowed to continue, will result in the complete disappearance of specific Traveller education services in a few years’ time.

What the noble Earl and my noble friend said about contact with parents is important. It was an essential feature of the Traveller education services; they managed to link the parents, the children and the schools, which is why they were effective. In the absence of these specialist services, I am afraid we will not have that advantage.

The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, also reinforced the point about mobile children. We are talking not simply about those who still live in caravans and are peripatetic—that is a declining number. What I was talking about when I defined what I hoped the Minister would pick up on—the term “mobile child”—was a child who enters at a point other than the beginning of an academic phase and is therefore potentially disadvantaged because he or she has not hitherto received education or has received it very intermittently. If we could add such children to the definitions that were specified in the Minister’s letter, it would go some way towards covering the children about whom we are particularly concerned.

However, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. We acknowledge the benefits of the pupil premium, which will cover many of the GRT minority. We believe that the revision of the guidance on CME will be effective but we have not seen it yet. I am grateful to my noble friend for mentioning the work of the DfE’s stakeholder group, which has a meeting in the coming week at which I am sure we will want to discuss some of the matters that have been covered in today’s debate. We are in the course of responding to the department’s educational funding consultation. That will also have an impact on how we treat this group. I cannot promise that we will not return to this subject on Report. We have not dealt with all the matters that have been raised. Perhaps we shall cover some of them in the later debates, particularly on virtual schools, which have an important role to play here. However, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.