Victims of Domestic Violence and Abuse
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I too want to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, on bringing forward this debate today. I also echo the general thanks that have been given from all sides of the Chamber for her important work as Victims’ Commissioner, where she has clearly made a very big impact and begun to make some fundamental changes to the way victims are considered and treated, and also looked in some depth at the issues confronting those who have experienced, and continue to experience, forms of domestic violence.
Unlike other noble Lords in this debate, I do not bring a particular expertise or insight into this issue, other than through indirect experience. However, I have some thoughts I want to share, and I also want to reflect on the broader issues, relating to a particular category of victims—migrant women.
Over 50 years ago, I returned home from school to find two bikes outside my front gate, rather than one. Inside, my mother was talking very earnestly to a friend she worked with. They were both packers and pickers on a farm which specialised in soft fruits. This woman, whom I knew very well, had her two children with her, and was in a considerable state of distress. My life changed quite dramatically for several months thereafter, because I had to quit my bedroom and share our home with my mother’s friend. I am very pleased and delighted that we did, because my mother, being the compassionate and supportive sort that she was, ensured that this woman was protected from the violence that had been visited on her for some years by her husband.
I remember being very curious and asking my mother later what brought this about, and she said to me: “Well, it was just awful”. She described what had been going on. I remember asking, as a teenager, “Why doesn’t she go to the police? Why does she have to share our home—not that I mind?” My mother said, “Would you want to go and report this to our local policeman?” I thought about that a lot. I think my mother was probably right at that time, and the local authority was not very sympathetic or at all helpful.
In some ways, things have improved, but in others they have gone backwards, and we need to reflect on that. For that vulnerable group of women who are migrants to our country, things are not great. This is an important moment in the development of policy on domestic abuse, including in the Bill which has been consulted on for some time. It offers solutions but for some these are not adequate ones. We know that domestic violence has a devastating effect on people’s lives and that the stats are not good: 2 million people a year are affected by it.
As it is, the Bill probably leaves behind some of society’s most marginalised and isolated survivors of domestic abuse, particularly migrant women. As a result, I take the view that it fails to meet fully the requirements of the Istanbul convention, despite the Government’s well-intentioned moves to ratify that convention through the introduction of the Bill. Given the wealth of evidence submitted to the Government’s consultation on the Bill, it is important that we have clear language in the legislation that protection must be afforded to survivors, regardless of their immigration status. It is extremely disappointing in that context that migrant women are not mentioned anywhere in the legislation. If the Bill does not promote equality and ensure protection for all survivors of abuse, it will fail to incorporate the Istanbul convention and risks violating our own existing human rights obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
There are four areas of concern here. First, women with insecure immigration status find it impossible to access refuges and other welfare support in order to escape violence and abuse. Without access to public funds and housing support, they are routinely denied refuge spaces, safe accommodation and welfare. They are therefore faced with impossible decisions about becoming destitute or homeless, or returning to the perpetrator. Many often find that they are unable to regularise or confirm their immigration status, for a host of complex reasons.
The second area of concern is that immigration enforcement has been prioritised over the need to provide safety and security to survivors of domestic abuse, perhaps as a hangover from or continuation of the Government’s hostile environment agenda. Invasive data-sharing agreements between public services and immigration enforcement prevent survivors with insecure immigration status accessing the very services that they need.
Also, the Bill does not meaningfully acknowledge or address the significant additional barriers faced by migrant women in accessing protection, including that abusers commonly use women’s fears of immigration enforcement and separation from their children to control them. Research has pointed to particular vulnerabilities for migrant women. These include: a higher proportion of homelessness; greater financial impact from abuse because of their inability to work, on account of their immigration status; being disproportionately affected by a lack of support when facing forms of abuse such as FGM, forced marriage and so-called honour-based violence. They are also more likely to report multiple perpetrators.
We also have to acknowledge that there is likely a justice gap, with the police not pursuing criminal charges.
The Bill therefore needs to introduce a non-discrimination clause. It has to provide for safe reporting systems for survivors accessing vital public services. It also needs to consider extending eligibility for the existing domestic violence rule and destitution domestic violence concession to all migrant women who experience or are at risk of abuse. Urgent consideration needs to be given to ensuring that those who report domestic violence and abuse should be exempt from having no recourse to public funds; they should be supported.
If we can begin to consider those issues and tackle them in the legislation, perhaps with amendments being brought forward, we will make some big leaps forward for those who are among the most vulnerable in our community.
Domestic Abuse
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Bassam of Brighton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to introduce new domestic abuse legislation; and if so, when.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, this Government are committed to transforming the response to domestic abuse. A wide-ranging consultation on domestic abuse closed on 31 May. We received more than 3,200 responses. We will publish a response to the consultation and introduce a draft domestic abuse Bill later this Session.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that useful reply but, given that both the Women and Equalities Select Committee and the Home Affairs Select Committee have raised the importance of the domestic abuse commissioner being given robust powers, being well resourced and independent of government, will the Minister assure the House that the commissioner will be given those resources and powers and an opportunity to ensure there is real change in practice across local and national government? Further, will she ensure that women with uncertain immigration status who are domestic violence survivors get proper access to appropriate legal and financial support, independent of abusing partners?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I can absolutely assure the noble Lord that the commissioner will have all the tools, powers and resources that he or she will need to undertake the role sufficiently. As he will know, the Prime Minister, who was formerly the Home Secretary, made both violence against women and girls and domestic abuse a first priority. He is absolutely right to emphasise access to legal services, particularly for women who perhaps have not got the resources. I can assure him that, in the last year, 12,000 people, both women and men, were given access to legal aid.
Immigration Policy: Children and Parents
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
I apologise to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for not being clear. Clearly, safeguarding records and records of decisions taken are kept. I was trying, in the first instance, to refer back to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy; I cannot tell the noble Baroness and the noble Lord how many of those decisions were made.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
Will the Minister comment on the estimate by BID—Bail for Immigration Detainees—that there are at least 170 cases where children have been separated from their parents as a result of them being detained? Will she also go back to her department to check those figures and perhaps produce a more accurate answer that Members of this House can take on board and inspect?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I understood that the numbers were 155. I do not have the details of the cases but if any noble Lords were to give me details of such cases I would be very happy to take them up. It is, however, important to consider in the round that if children are separated from their parents it is not necessarily for immigration reasons: it may be because of safeguarding issues—a parent is violent and the child needs to be separated from them—or for temporary reasons, such as the illness of the parent.
Police and Crime Commissioners
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, on getting this debate going, but I will make no comment on the issues he has raised.
I have some form on this issue. Back in the 1980s, I worked for the Greater London Council when it campaigned for greater accountability and a police authority for London—which I was later to play a part in with the noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Blair—and we were abolished for our sins. So when the Home Office published its press release back in 2013 saying that it would,
“return power to the people”,
and give locals a “strong voice” in the fight against crime, I could see where it was coming from. There is no doubt that the PCCs have been an interesting fillip to the extension of direct democracy and improved accountability.
However, it would appear that this “power to the people” has not chimed with the public. In the first set of elections, 14.7% of voters turned out, which doubled to 28% in 2016. It seems that there is a major lack of voter engagement with the PCC concept. When the public were asked in a survey, 72% of them said that they did not know much about the elections, and—a more appalling statistic—96% said they were dissatisfied with the Government’s arrangements for elections. It might have something to do with a distinct lack of government interest; the Government spent just £2,700 promoting the 2016 elections.
It is also worth considering the problems that have been flagged up regarding communication and engagement with the communities PCCs serve. It has been suggested that there is a lack of resource available for this type of work. But even without resources, PCCs should be making a concerted effort to use social media, websites and to make better use of face-to-face opportunities to learn about the big crime issues in their localities. It might also be worth political parties considering in future elections the shocking fact that, of the 41 PCCs, only seven are women and only one is black. If our leaders do not better reflect our society, how can we expect people to take them seriously?
One of the main reasons for the introduction of PCCs was the hope that they would lead to greater innovation and better management of the police service. We have seen some positives, which colleagues have referred to. I pay particular tribute to Vera Baird for her pioneering work as the PCC for Northumbria, and to my noble friend Lord Bach for the work he does in Leicestershire.
Overall, it seems that we need a better national benchmark of what a successful PCC might look like. If PCCs are forced to prove their effectiveness through target setting, as they currently do, frankly we are asking for trouble. There are already red flags appearing where such targets create a “gaming” of statistics in order to prove efficiency. Such targets also create competition regionally rather than promoting cohesion nationally.
That said, I think that PCCs should be left in place, as they have the potential to provide a greater clarity of leadership for policing. But they need to be held to account by a body stronger than the existing crime panels. Clashes between PCCs and their chief constables have demonstrated that, while the role is still in its infancy, it could be useful to have greater scrutiny from police and crime panels. We need a better understanding and assessment of how beneficial PCCs are and of ways in which they can be improved. As time passes and they become more accustomed to their roles, we need to ensure they are effectively held to account and provide the leadership required.
I have a few questions for the Minister. Will she take back the suggestion that the police and crime panels’ powers and duties are reviewed to better hold the PCCs to account? PCCs cannot possibly understand and cover whole force areas. For that reason, I would argue that the crime panels need to have a local focus. What better way than to turn them into community councillors? Perhaps the Home Office can consider that too.
Finally, I wonder whether we have yet got the issue of the operational independence and policy priorities of the service and force quite right. The PCCs have a handle on force budgets. In theory, they can dismiss chief constables—although they rarely do—but they can do little to affect priorities. In an age of austerity budgeting, this becomes more important. Perhaps I can invite the Minister to reflect on this point in her summing up and in any review of the PCC system that the Home Office undertakes.
Immigration: Hostile Environment
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Bassam of Brighton
That this House takes note of the impact of the Government’s “hostile environment” approach towards illegal immigration on those with residency and employment rights.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, when I think of the term “hostile environment”, it conjures up notions of a war zone, of environmental degradation or an inhospitable climatic event, perhaps an earthquake—something stark and unpleasant, like a scene from a World War I killing field. I do not think—or, I should say, I had not previously thought—of it as something to do with my own country.
Sadly, that perception changed when the full horror of the Government’s treatment of the Windrush generation became increasingly apparent over the last few months. Back in 2012, Theresa May said:
“The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment”,
for illegal immigrants. This was at a point when net immigration was running at about 250,000—well above the Conservative Party’s target of bringing it down to the tens of thousands. Over the course of Mrs May’s tenure at the Home Office, this usually cautious politician brought forward seven pieces of immigration legislation and an estimated 45,000 changes to immigration rules—so many we might have been forgiven for thinking that immigration was an obsession. It also explains why many foreign EU nationals are so disbelieving of Prime Minister May’s promises about preserving their residency rights post Brexit.
I fully expect the Minister to repeat a point she made to me in a Written Parliamentary Question: that the term “hostile environment” originated during Alan Johnson’s tenure as Home Secretary. Maybe it did, maybe it did not, but the really important point is what that term came to mean when it was elevated to become a policy that had to be delivered with the careful precision that Mrs May has made her trademark.
The treatment of the Windrush generation is the most objectionable manifestation of the Government’s intentions for the hostile environment. The Guardian, to its great credit, has documented its full human impact. It seems that from about 2013 legal advisers began telling the Home Office that older Caribbean-born people, here entirely legally, were receiving letters from Capita saying that they had no right to be here. Some were told to leave immediately. The Refugee and Migrant Centre in Wolverhampton reported that it had seen hundreds of clients getting the Capita letters but they had already been given right to remain and the correct documentation. As time went on the threatening letters turned into action. People began reporting loss of housing, benefits and jobs, and refusal of access to free healthcare.
The impact of these deprivations has become clear. Many Windrush workers and their children have experienced years of uncertainty, leading to ill health and mental breakdown, and some have ended up sleeping rough. But the hostile environment policies were not just visited on the Windrush generation. In April this year, the Oxford Migration Observatory estimated that some 57,000 Commonwealth migrants from Pakistan, India, Kenya and South Africa might be caught by the policy. Refugee Action reports that the detention, destitution, homelessness and limbo experienced by Windrush children were the tip of the iceberg and that asylum seekers face exactly the same problems.
Colin Yeo, an immigration lawyer, has described the effect of the policy well. He says that it has led to,
“the creation of an illegal underclass of foreign, mainly ethnic minority workers and families who are highly vulnerable to exploitation and who have no access to the social and welfare … net”.
Rachel Krys of the End Violence Against Women Coalition speculated that while rightly the public were outraged by the policy impact on the Windrush generation:
“The same policy is also leaving many women at risk of violence and exploitation, scaring them away from seeking help, and making it harder for them to access life-saving services”.
This cannot be right, but it is exactly what the policy was supposed to achieve: to create such a hostile environment so that people simply left the UK. It is precisely that fact that ultimately led to the undoing of the previous Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, and forced her resignation. We should remember that she first tried to deny that there was a target for forced removals and then, when it was pointed out that she had been briefed on the target, she resigned for misleading Parliament. I suspect that, by that time, Amber Rudd realised that the target covered operations that wrongly deported people, falsely detained them, increased their vulnerability and was probably unlawful—most of its victims were in the UK quite lawfully.
The Government must now regret the day that they dreamed up the expression “hostile environment”. In the wake of the Windrush scandal, the policy of being tough on anyone deemed illegal, or without documents proving citizenship, has rapidly unravelled, and so it should. The new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, presumably fearing the impact of the policy on the Conservatives’ credentials as a more multiracial party in the Theresa May era, has been rapidly distancing himself from the term. He knows that the policy is a stain on our country’s international reputation for fairness and goes to the heart of the reputation we once had for providing a safe haven and a home to the dispossessed.
As a deliberate act of government, creating a policy called “hostile environment” seems odd in itself; cold, politically calculating and designed for effect. So to adopt the term to be used as a policy relating to immigration, where race plays a part, is even more awful. What can Ministers and in particular our Prime Minister have thought they were doing and, more particularly, why? What was the purpose of the term? It seems to me that it was dreamed up as part of the Cameron response to UKIP, to somehow demonstrate that this Government were getting a grip on the ridiculous target they set to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands. I was a Home Office Minister during Jack Straw’s tenure and I find it hard to believe that officials would have advised on a specific target. Migration and asylum targets are notoriously hard to hit because so many factors are involved in driving the numbers.
Weirder still, of course, was the mobile billboard campaign of 2013 that came with the adoption of the policy. Apart from its offensive language, this acted only to highlight the Government’s failure to grapple with a problem of their own imagining. The ill-fated campaign was nothing more than a piece of naked populism aimed at appeasing UKIP-leaning voters. The policy also had inbuilt flaws. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration reported on three areas covered by the policy. The reports are instructive. The report looking at driving licences and bank accounts found real concerns about incorrect data. The chief inspector reported:
“During file sampling, the inspection identified a number of examples of individuals being wrongly listed as in the UK without leave”.
Similar problems were found with bank accounts: from a test sample of 169 individuals, 17 were wrongly flagged as disqualified persons, whatever that means. As the chief inspector observed,
“the Home Office did not appear to appreciate the seriousness of such errors for the individuals affected, and its proposed avenue of redress for individuals who had left the UK with valid leave outstanding ... was inadequate”.
The right to rent review published in March 2018 was even more devastating in its conclusions. The policy, colleagues will recall, was piloted in 2014 and rolled out in England in 2016. It resulted in 468 referrals to the Home Office civil penalties compliance team, resulting in 265 civil penalties and levies of £167,000, but not a single prosecution. The Home Office enforcement of right to rent, through its immigration compliance and enforcement teams, gained entry to more than 10,000 properties but made referrals to the civil penalties compliance team in only 3% of cases. The chief inspector reported that the scheme suffered from poor communications, and early signs had shown the scheme to be wholly ineffective. He said that, overall, the right to rent scheme,
“had yet to demonstrate its worth as a tool to encourage immigration compliance”.
In fact, the number of voluntary returns had fallen over the period. Internally, he found the Home Office had failed,
“to coordinate, maximise or even measure effectively its use”.
The chief inspector went on to reflect stakeholder concerns in four policy areas: wrong right to rent decisions; racial and other discrimination; the exploitation of tenants; and homelessness. The charity Crisis reports that whole households were becoming homeless where a right to rent case had been found in a property, while the Residential Landlords Association research found that 49% of landlords were less likely to rent to someone with limited leave to remain and 44% would rent only to those with documents they were familiar with. Overall, the chief inspector reported that the Home Office failed to monitor the scheme, failed to tackle reported exploitation inherent within it, and made no attempt to measure its intended impact. Recently, your Lordships’ House heard from the noble Lord, Lord Best, that the Home Office’s own Landlords Consultative Panel had failed to meet or even be convened. One wonders why.
Given the treatment of the Windrush generation, we should not be surprised at any of this. As the United Nations special rapporteur, Professor Tendayi Achiume, observed in May 2018, the hostile environment policy was,
“destroying the lives and livelihoods of … ethnic minority communities”,
including people with rightful citizenship status and those who had been in the UK for decades. Of course, the new Home Secretary’s moves to defuse the hostile environment issue are to be welcomed, as are the commitments to compensate and investigate the appalling Windrush cases where people have been deprived of their home, job and access to medical care and benefits.
That the hostile environment policies since 2012 have seeped into the fabric, operation and culture of many of our public institutions shames us all. It is right that these policies are now being scrapped as their appalling implications have been realised. It is also right that the Government have apologised. However, for me, that is not enough. There remains a big question over what replaces the policy, the racial stereotyping it must have been based on, and the loss of trust it has engendered in many of our communities. I want to know from Ministers across our public services how they intend to tackle this. It will be no easy task and they need to convince a sceptical public that they have a plan. Warm words will not suffice.
However, there is a bigger opportunity hidden in this policy disaster. A Government who had a broader vision could start afresh. They could set themselves a goal of taking race out of their political calculations. They could, when they eventually brought forward an immigration Bill, set themselves the task of promoting fairness in the system without playing at dog-whistle politics or trying to appease the politics of social division and racism. Fundamentally, this is where both the Cameron and May Governments have gone wrong. Honesty about the country’s labour needs and the impact of migration at a time of austerity could have helped avoid the policies that led to the hostile environment strategy and the fear of UKIP that triggered the Cameron Government’s foolish rush to a referendum on the EU.
What we should now do is begin to reshape and rethink the debate so that absurd policies such as this do not rematerialise under a different guise in the future. To this end I have a few questions for the Minister to think about. The UN special rapporteur recommended that,
“the Government repeal the aspects of its immigration law … that deputize immigration enforcement to private citizens”,
and make public officials responsible for policing immigration rules in providing health and other public services. Given the evident failure of these policies, can the Minister tell us how actively that recommendation is being considered across government? Can she also update us on the progress being made by the Home Office on identifying the number of Windrush victims of the hostile environment policy, specifically the numbers refused re-entry to the UK and those wrongly made to leave following refusal and denial of housing, health and public services? Perhaps she could tell us where we have got to with the compensation scheme.
Finally, given the welcome hints of change in the offing, can the Minister update us on the position of tier 2 visa applicants and shortage professions? Our health service has been deprived of trained and qualified doctors as a by-product of the hostile environment policy. I know that the Royal College of General Practitioners has raised this issue and has identified cases of trainees being threatened with deportation—this, when we are light of some 5,000 GPs, is a form of public service self-harm.
To conclude, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to highlight this most shameful of public policies. David Lammy and the MPs who have shone the spotlight on the Windrush cases, together with the Guardian, deserve praise for their diligence and determination. 1 hope that as a result of the exposure of the hostile environment policy and its intended and unintended consequences, public policymakers will begin to rethink attitudes to migration, and we can continue to tackle the underlying causes of racism and discrimination on our society and celebrate the multiculturalism which should be at the heart of modern Britain. I beg to move.
Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, I am mindful that in five minutes this House will participate in a minute’s silence. I therefore seek the Minister’s advice as to whether I should start my speech or wait until the five minutes has elapsed and the minute’s silence is observed.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, I echo the Minister’s last point, and thank everyone who has participated in what has been a fascinating discussion and debate about the Government’s “hostile environment” policy. I feel particular empathy for the noble Baroness because I have sat in her seat, having been a Home Office Minister: probably one of the least comfortable areas of policy to deal with is that of migration and asylum seeking. I know how hard it is.
I tabled the debate because I did not want the Government to get away with the fact that they had changed the language of the business of enforcement. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, language is incredibly important. Words in politics mean vast amounts; they are the currency, and it is the atmosphere that words create that infects how we deliver policies in our country. Somewhere around 2012-13, the Government came up with the idea of a “hostile environment” policy. Its terminology may have had an earlier genesis, but it was written then into policy practice and it changed the currency. It changed the way the Home Office and its agencies worked, with disastrous implications—in particular for the Windrush generation.
But that is not the only reason why I called for this debate. I want to see the currency of the debate about immigration, and the part that race plays in the policy’s implementation, change. There is an opportunity, within the disaster that this policy has been, for that to take place, and we should grasp it enthusiastically. I am encouraged by some of the things the Home Secretary has begun to say, and by some of the changes he has outlined and wants to make. If the news on tier 2 visas is anything to go by, there is some progress in that area.
I am grateful to all who took part, and I hope that people got the message from my speech of where I am trying to take us. I hope that we can tackle things such as discrimination, racism and exploitation within our system of immigration control. I am no “Guardianista” soft touch when it comes to recognising the value of having sound borders and firm immigration controls—this side is not that, historically—but the words “fairness” and “equity” should mean something in how we handle and manage migration. For that reason, the debate was put on the Order Paper, and I hope that colleagues and friends have found it valuable.
Home Office Removal Targets
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
I echo the noble Lord’s point about discretion and compassion. I agree with him: I am not sure what the Home Secretary should resign over because she has done a wonderful job. She has made it quite clear that, if there is a culture such as the one which has been worried over, that culture will change. We want the Home Office to remove more people who are here illegally, but I repeat that Ministers have not set specific targets for this year. We are clear that we would like the number of removals to increase. Reducing the size of the illegal migrant population and the harm that it causes is a key component of an effective immigration system, and what the public would expect as a matter of fairness.
On the posters to which the noble Lord referred, local managers may use visual tools to heighten team activities, which could include but not be limited to staff movements, work activity and performance. But, as my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said this morning, she will look at the performance environment as a matter of urgency.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I have some sympathy for the noble Baroness, as I had her brief for a couple of years, between 1999 and 2001. So it is not the first time that we have visited the issue of problems with targets and migration. Can she tell the House whether targets for removals included Windrush generation UK citizens who have been able to provide curious Home Office officials with documents? Would she like to reflect on why, although the Home Secretary is very keen to see illegal migrants leave the UK, the Government have pursued a policy of reducing the number of people employed by the Border Force? I would have thought that ensuring that the force can do its job and has adequate staff to do it is an important first principle.
I am left to reflect that the crisis engulfing the Home Secretary is a product of the Prime Minister’s hostile environment policy unravelling and her inability to control her department and its officials. One day she does not know that there is a target, the next day she seems to know that there is one. This is symptomatic of a Home Secretary who does not know exactly where her department is going.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, as I said yesterday, there should be a hostile environment for people who have no lawful right to be here. In terms of the Windrush citizens, there is a very clear distinction between the Windrush generation, who are here lawfully, and illegal migrants, who by their very nature are not here lawfully. Immigration enforcement is focused on removing illegal migrants, and the Windrush generation clearly does not fall into that category. In addition, the Home Secretary stated yesterday or the day before that 8,000 records had been manually trawled through to ensure that nobody had been deported inadvertently. Thus far, there is no evidence that anyone has been removed who is a Windrush citizen and is lawfully here.
Brexit: Border Control
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I for one find the e-gates very useful indeed. In fact, they are exceptionally good at detecting face against passport at the border. I am sorry if some of them are closed, but sometimes an assessment is made of the throughput of traffic and gates are opened and closed accordingly. However, I cannot speak for the ones that are broken.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness will no doubt be aware of the Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill. Has the Home Office made any estimate of the number of additional staff who will be required to enforce that legislation when it comes into effect if we fail to secure a proper arrangement for the free flow of goods through our ports?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I apologise to the noble Lord that I do not have the up-to-date position on that. My noble friend the Transport Minister is not here but I will ask her to write to him on that matter.
Money Laundering
Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, would the noble Baroness like to revisit something she said in her opening Statement, which was that Labour in government had done nothing on money laundering? I have just been using Google, which says that the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 were made under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. I have some recollection that I played a part in that legislation. Perhaps the noble Baroness ought to reflect on what she said earlier, because she is wrong.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am sure that I may be wrong. I just took issue with the suggestion that we had not done anything.