Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing forward this important Bill, and I acknowledge the work of other noble Lords on similar Bills.

The sustained interest in a Bill of this kind should tell us something: that the current route to family reunion is unduly restrictive and prohibitive. Government data shows that in 2023 there were over 7,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the care of local authorities in the UK, 141 of those in the communities that I serve as bishop in Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield.

Despite the best efforts of dedicated professionals and public agencies, the care system is simply not the right place to house children, least of all children seeking asylum. It is deeply regrettable that so many are in care when they have family members only too willing to come and look after them—if the family reunion routes only made that possible.

These are just the children we know about—just the children on the books, as it were. The risk that unaccompanied children will go missing outside the legal process, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, just reminded us, and fall into the hands of exploitative gangs is horrendous and simply unacceptable.

Of course borders need to be managed. The strains on host communities are real, and we should not minimise or overlook them. Resources are needed to help host communities and incomers to live with dignity side by side and integrate well. However, the reality is that families can be separated on their journeys to safety, and we strengthen communities when we strengthen families.

In July this year the Government allowed children who were separated from their parents during the evacuation from Kabul in August 2021 to apply to have their parents join them in the UK; the last Government deserve credit for that. Will the current Government afford that same right to children from other countries?

I very much support the Bill and hope it makes good progress through the legislative process.

Immigration (Guidance on Detention of Vulnerable Persons) Regulations 2024

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Grand Committee

The committee reports that the data does not provide compelling evidence either way on the need for the second-opinion policy, and suggests that the Home Office should monitor the effects closely. My addition is that that may be more difficult in the absence of an impact assessment. The committee adds that the Home Office should publish the results—quite right. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that, as well as the subject of this SI.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its work in scrutinising the regulations and to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for tabling this debate. I have the privilege of being a patron of a charity in Sheffield called ASSIST, which works with people who are seeking sanctuary and who have been refused asylum; it provides accommodation, information, advocacy and other support.

Just last week, I met a man called Victor, a former client of ASSIST. I have his permission to tell his story. Victor is from Zimbabwe. In 1980, he was among those who greeted with joy the nation’s independence and the election of Robert Mugabe as the first democratically elected Prime Minister of that country. That year, Victor embarked on a career in banking of 20-plus years; he became very senior. However, through the 1980s and into the 1990s, he became increasing disenchanted with the Mugabe regime and then opposed to it. Finally, in 2008, after a warrant was issued for his arrest on account of his political dissent, he sought asylum in this country. Victor was eventually granted leave to remain in 2022 and was united with his wife after a 14-year enforced separation. So, in the end, his has been a good news story.

However, in 2019, Victor experienced detention. Reporting in one week as required, he was in effect arrested and assigned for deportation. The decision came out of the blue, with no notice and no explanation. It was apparently arbitrary. In Victor’s case, deportation did not follow. He had by then lived for 10 years in Sheffield, which sets itself out to be a city of sanctuary, and he was known and valued. Within four days, 70,000 people had signed a petition for his release; he was indeed swiftly released and, within another two years, had been granted leave to remain.

I summarise his story because the inhumane way in which the detention and deportation process is operated makes every person subject to it vulnerable. At the time of his detention, Victor was a resourceful and accomplished adult male in good health. He was not vulnerable, according to the definitions in these regulations, but the impact of his detention on his well-being made him vulnerable. It was terrible at the time and remains considerable today. In other words, until the whole process of detention is managed in a way that is humane, consistent, fair, transparent and accountable, every immigrant and asylum seeker detained will be vulnerable.

I am deeply concerned that these regulations expressly remove the intention to reduce the numbers of people in detention who are vulnerable in specifically acute ways. As the Minister will know, the previous Government appear to have accepted just one of the Brook House inquiry’s 33 recommendations. I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, requested, the detention review will revisit that inquiry report to ensure that all the recommendations are given due consideration for implementation.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I support the need to discuss and debate these regulations. The issues have been laid out more than clearly by my noble friend Lady Lister. This stems from the Shaw review, reinforced by the subsequent Brook House inquiry.

The principle that we work under—I am sure that we all agree with it—is that the detention of people with severe mental health conditions amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. I hope we can all agree on that. It has been defined as such by the European Court of Human Rights, but the issue runs wider than that. There should be—indeed, there must be—a clear presumption that people at risk because of existing or potential mental health problems should not be detained. “Detained” is a euphemism; they are, in effect, imprisoned. We imprison people as a punishment, so the need to avoid providing these people with punishment is clear.

The statutory guidance was established in 2014 and has been reviewed. One could not object to the review at all; I hope that my noble friend the Minister will accept that a full and adequate review is reasonable. The problem with this review is that it is driven— it says as much in paragraph 5.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum—by a wish to avoid “undermining lawful action” to remove people from the UK. That is the most concerning statement in the EM. Such an objective is totally at odds with the general principle that we should not imprison people with severe mental health conditions when they have committed no offence. The story it tells us is one of an attitude in government of wishing to prioritise the need to remove people from the UK rather than protecting people who are vulnerable.

The statutory guidance clearly represents its purpose: a weakening of the guidance originally given. One particular example, which is clearly a major issue here, is the issue of a second opinion. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee concluded, the data

“does not provide compelling evidence either way on the need for the second opinion policy”.

We do not really know what the effect of the second opinion policy would be, except that it will result in people remaining in detention for longer; that is the one known effect of having a second opinion policy. Clearly, that in itself suggests that it is something to be done with great care and attention.

Another problem is that there is a general belief among a number of the voluntary organisations most closely involved in these issues that the consultation process on the new statutory guidance was woefully inadequate. It was short, there was a lack of information and there was no equality impact assessment.

The upshot of all of this is that I hope my noble friend the Minister will accept that the statutory guidance requires review and reconsideration, and that it should be driven by the clear presumption that we do not lock up people with severe mental health conditions.