First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Fees Order 2011

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly with a few things that will not surprise my noble friend on the Front Bench at all. The first is that, having made a speech in support of the Government in a rather different atmosphere in the House earlier on, I now wish to revert to type. The second is that I was around in 2009 when there was consultation on some earlier proposals. I think that I may even have spoken against them. I certainly did not like them then and I do not like these now. The third is that I pricked up my ears when he mentioned the body that I used to chair, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, which, not to my surprise, has expressed some reservations about these issues. I have got them somewhere but, having been preoccupied on other matters, I have not studied them as carefully as I should. The last thing, as I have already indicated, is that I am not very happy with them, particularly in respect of the family matters to which he referred and asylum seekers.

That said, and bearing in mind that it would be rash of me to call a vote against these proposals, which I would not want to do, I acknowledge that significant efforts seem to have been made to meet some of the concerns expressed, in terms of exemptions, the removal of the Upper Tier from these proposals, and the statement that appeals will be heard, presumably even if the money is not found up front. However, that does give rise to the question of the expense of collection after the event which was implied, or indeed explicit, in my noble friend’s speech just now.

I draw some comfort from all that, and also from the fact—which I probably have in common with the noble Lord on the opposition Front Bench—that there was an indication that some of these matters will be stirred up again by the legal aid Bill, on which I plan to stir up a bit of trouble myself if I get the opportunity. So I shall rest at this moment and wait for future occasions before pressing the matter any further.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on the legal aid Bill. Stirring up trouble on that front will be music to my ears. My noble friend has demonstrated just now that imposing fees on appellants in the immigration and asylum appellate system is neither fair nor sensible. As we all know, the Government have to make economies in every area of their work, but the right way to proceed in this area would have been to reduce the need for appeals and hence the cost of the system, which has spiralled because of defects in the UKBA's own procedures.

First, the UKBA should conform to the law by changing its practice immediately when it has been found to be illegal. For an example of a case where it failed to do so, see the reaction to the decision of the European Court of Justice in Metock, a case which involved the rights of non-EU spouses of EU citizens.

Secondly, the UKBA should address those sectors of its decision-making which are manifestly not fit for purpose. My noble friend will have seen the report Unsustainable by Asylum Aid, showing that the UKBA consistently makes the wrong decisions on claims for asylum by women. There is a particular problem with cases where the applicant has suffered gender-based persecution. We dealt with this at Questions just now. This may satisfy the requirements of the refugee convention because the victims are members of a particular social group, an aspect of the law of which, astonishingly, many case owners appear to be ignorant.

Prisoner Transfer Agreements

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

In some cases we have agreements with the countries of origin. Where we do not have agreements, obviously we cannot send those prisoners back. We have recently concluded an agreement within the EU that will come into force on 5 December this year which will extend that two-way process to 27 countries. There is also a protocol with the Council of Europe which extends to 34 countries, so we are building this up. We are seeking other bilateral arrangements which will allow such exchanges.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I appreciate that officials are now considering whether amendments to the Anglo-Thai prisoner transfer agreement might be drafted to bring the time British nationals spend in prison following transfer into line with that required by other European countries. What does my noble friend think of the suggestion that we should approach the Thai Government at ministerial level with a view to getting round a table and eliminating all the random variations among sentences served under the present arrangements? Better still, since my noble friend has explained that the US and some other countries refuse a prisoner a transfer when they think that it will result in an unacceptable reduction in the time actually served, could we propose an international conference of states that participate in PTAs to discuss ways of eliminating anomalies that may arise?

[Lord McNally]

I will certainly take back to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State the idea of an international conference, which I presume would also come within the bailiwick of the Foreign Secretary. The key thing to remember, however, is that the idea of the prisoner exchange is for prisoners to have the right to return—for most British prisoners, to return to Britain to serve their sentence is a considerable advantage in the first place—so the aim is not to second-guess the authorities in countries where they have committed offences. It is important that we keep that in mind.

Immigration: Refugee and Migrant Justice

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Avebury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their reaction to the probable closure of Refugee and Migrant Justice.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, since this Question was tabled, Refugee and Migrant Justice has been placed into administration. The Government’s immediate concern was that the clients of RMJ should continue to receive a good-quality service.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, as other practitioners specialising in asylum cases—particularly, although not exclusively, those who operate on a not-for-profit basis—have had similar cash-flow problems to those of the RMJ, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the LSC may be able to find providers to take on the RMJ’s 10,000 cases? Will my noble friend acknowledge that there will be serious delays in looking after those cases, first, because the new providers will have to get to know what the cases are, and, secondly, because they do not know whether they will be funded in the spending round that begins on 1 October?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I will take the last point first. Yes, there is bound to be a certain amount of disruption if an organisation that covers 7 per cent of cases goes into administration. However, I can assure the House that the Government are giving high priority to minimise that disruption. On whether other non-profit-making practitioners are facing difficulty, it is true that there have been complaints about the change in funding and fees, which was made by the previous Administration with an eye to saving taxpayers’ money. The change is not popular but, as my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor said in another place, the organisations are coping. Trying to balance the good work that these organisations are doing against the taxpayers’ not-bottomless pot is difficult.

Prostitution

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the law on prostitution so that people who work together in a house for their own safety are not thereby subject to prosecution.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Dholakia, and with his permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, we are studying closely how police forces are enforcing the law and how courts deal with the matters brought before them. We are also considering how to deal with the lessons learnt from the recent terrible events in Ipswich and Bradford. We are committed to tackling exploitation and harm caused to those involved in prostitution. All local agencies must work together to ensure the safety of the women involved.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, on the first occasion that my noble friend has appeared at the Dispatch Box to answer a Question, perhaps I may warmly congratulate him on his appointment. In the light of Miss Claire Finch being acquitted by Luton Crown Court at the end of April of running a brothel with three other women at her home in Bedfordshire, will the Government encourage the CPS to issue guidance to police forces on the undesirability of prosecuting the hundreds of other women in similar situations? Given that it is 10 times riskier for prostitutes to work on their own, will the Government invite stakeholders such as the English Collective of Prostitutes and the Safety First Coalition to a consultation on how women engaged in providing sex services can be safeguarded, including an examination of the law in New Zealand, where it is lawful for up to four people to work together in the same premises, as my noble friend Lady Miller has reminded your Lordships on frequent occasions?

Queen's Speech

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, I particularly welcome the commitment in the gracious Speech to replace the present undemocratic House of Lords with a wholly or partially elected House based on proportional representation, as long as the system chosen is the single transferable vote, and not the iniquitous list system which exists in some other countries. It will take more than one Session to implement all the policies in the coalition’s programme, but I was disappointed to see that, although there are 25 Bills in the gracious Speech, as has been mentioned, there is no implementation of the promise to take action to promote public health and encourage behaviour change to help people live healthier lives.

Everybody knows about the increasing burdens that are being laid on the NHS by the misuse of alcohol. Without effective means of combating this self-harm, further significant increases in spending will be needed in the future to cope with alcohol-related ill health. One of the main reasons why the prisons are bursting at the seams, as my noble friends Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Dholakia pointed out, is the large number of people who are there because they committed offences related to alcohol misuse. The only measure in the gracious Speech that I can see which deals with this problem is the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, which is aimed at alcohol-related violence and anti-social behaviour. Surely it would be far better to discourage people from drinking irresponsibly first, than to deal afterwards with the problems they cause. The interim analytical report on alcohol harm of 2003 hit the nail on the head when it said that the two main supply-side levers that influence alcohol use are price and availability. That advice was ignored, so the problem got worse over the past seven years under the Labour Government.

The coalition is to increase—or, at least, to review increasing—taxes on alcohol, which will have the double advantage of reducing harm and at the same time increasing revenue, though it may not fully address the cheap deals being offered by supermarkets. Duty increases in the past three years of 9 per cent, 10 per cent and 5 per cent have not prevented Tesco offering 24 cans of Carlsberg Export for £16. If we had minimum pricing, instead of above-cost pricing, at 40p per unit of alcohol—the lowest which has been suggested—this offer would have to be increased to £21. Perhaps a combination of minimum pricing and an increase in taxation would be the answer.

A third of the 14 million people a year who attend A&E departments are there because of a condition related to alcohol consumption. In 2005 the Department of Health allocated £32 million to be spent on screening A&E patients and brief interventions. There is a large study now under way across A&E departments, primary healthcare and criminal justice settings to determine the most effective and cost-effective screening method. Will the DoH continue to fund this programme and provide money for alcohol social workers to conduct brief interventions, using any of the screening methods discussed in the SIPS report? The University of Sheffield’s review of the effects of alcohol pricing found that a 10 per cent increase in the price of alcohol would cut hospital admissions by 50,000 a year and reduce criminal offences by 65,000. If these price increases were achieved by taxation, the extra revenue generated would be of the order of £1.5 billion. Will the Government ask the University of Sheffield to verify this arithmetic or make its model available to other researchers who could do the calculation?

The coalition programme—but not the gracious Speech—promises concerted government action to tear down the barriers to social mobility and equal opportunities to build a fairer society. It talks about increasing the focus on the neediest families under Sure Start. These excellent principles would be undermined in the case of the neediest and most disadvantaged of all minorities in the UK—the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker—by the undertaking to adopt the Conservative Green Paper, Open Source Planning. We and the Conservatives both called for the abolition of regional spatial strategies, but the Liberal Democrats added the qualification that,

“we are not intending to disturb the plans already in place for providing Traveller sites”.

If this is not accepted, provision of lawful sites will cease, and that seems to be the intention with the announcement yesterday of the decision to cancel the Gypsy sites grant. Worse still, the article “Gypsy Sites Crackdown” in last week’s Sunday Express says that there are plans summarily to evict Travellers from land they own and occupy without planning permission.

The existing plans for eliminating unauthorised sites, on which one in four Traveller families live because there is nowhere they can stop legally, were to determine what number of pitches were needed in local authorities in England and Wales, and then to designate land for that purpose under the planning system. Does not the Conservative proposal mean leaving it to the unfettered discretion of 368 lower tier local authorities to decide where Gypsy sites shall be located? Does it not mean that Circular 1/06 and the laborious process of Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessments, and the public inquiries which follow them, extending over many years, will be scrapped? Local authorities are not going to court the unpopularity that invariably results from designation of land as a Gypsy site unless there is a national framework to which they can point as the reason for their decision.

Equalisation of the responsibility for provision of the land is an essential feature of the present system and enables the settled population in one local authority area to see that what they are being asked to approve is fair. If there is no mechanism for sharing, people will not be able to see that others are pulling their weight and that their contribution is a necessary part of a plan to eliminate unauthorised encampments.

I hope that the children in Traveller families will benefit from the additional resources that are promised for disadvantaged pupils in the coalition programme because they show serious and chronic underachievement at every stage of education, both compared with all other ethnic groups and with the national average. Perversely, the future of the Traveller education support services within local authorities was already in doubt since their funding was already no longer ring-fenced. How are we to ensure that local authorities continue to provide the non-school based services that were provided by the Traveller education services such as support for families to make them informed and active participants in their children's education, liaison across boundaries to ensure continuity of access to services, inter-agency partnerships to address issues across the Every Child Matters spectrum, distance learning, mediation and mentoring? I have forwarded to my noble friends a copy of an e-mail from the National Association of Teachers of Travellers on the need to maintain the specialist services and the consequences of not doing so.

A fair society is one that takes special care of the weakest and most vulnerable sections of the community, and in the case of Gypsies and Travellers it looks as though we are doing the very opposite. I beg my noble friends not to spoil an otherwise excellent start for the coalition by this perverse contradiction of an essential principle.