Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it was my pleasure to attach my name to Amendment 24 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Kennedy of Southwark, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I express my support for all the amendments in this group, including, as has been said, the very creative Amendment 31 in the name of the right reverend Prelate.

I am following five eloquent and powerful speeches, so I do not feel the need to add a great deal. Those speeches, collectively and individually, have utterly put paid to any suggestion that the UK is generous to people who come to our shores fleeing war or repression and desperately in need of sanctuary. As other speakers have made clear, we are an international outlier in our restrictions on work, to which these amendments refer. I am sure the Minister will recall that she very kindly took the time to hear from me about the circumstances of the asylum seekers in Urban House in Wakefield and the conditions in which people are living.

We all know that the hostile environment of the Home Office is very often chaotic. People are trapped, often for years, living in inadequate privatised housing with the desperately limited sum of £37.75 a week to try to get by on and denied the opportunity—which so many of them are desperate to take—to work. I cite a young woman I spoke to some years ago who made a huge impact on me, so eloquent was she about the situation she found herself in. She was, you might say, an extreme case, but sadly a not at all uncommon one. She had come to Britain as a young woman of 18 or 19, having been a political activist in Zimbabwe— I have no doubt that she was a victim of torture. Some 10 years later, we have still not given her status. She was studying for a degree through funding and support from a voluntary organisation, but she told me what her situation was like:

“I feel like I’m in a cage. I can see the door, and people keep walking back and forth in front of that door with a key in their hand, but they never stick the key in the lock and let me out.”


Leaving people in that situation is torture. We are talking about people who are often already victims of torture. Any of these amendments would be a significant improvement. The three-month amendment is obviously the best one. The current situation cannot continue; it is damaging to all British society as well as to individuals. I commend these amendments to the House.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support all these amendments very happily. I appreciate that the Bill is concerned with EEA and Swiss people, but there is a point of principle which goes wider than the limited scope of the Bill. Some of the arguments we are using apply to that wider point of principle. The first three, Amendments 22, 24 and 29, are all similar, except that they vary on the length of period necessary before permission to work is granted and/or whether one needs to apply separately and additionally to the Secretary of State or whether the right to work is automatic.

We hear the arguments about pull factors. I think every time I have been involved in debates on immigration, asylum seekers or refugees, I have heard the phrase “pull factor” used to rebut any argument used. It is a stock response from the Government and I am not convinced that it is all that powerful an argument. Sometimes it does not apply at all. I have on occasions met people desperate to work. I was in south Wales not quite a year ago and met some asylum seekers. They had two requests: first, could they be helped to learn English because, secondly, they wanted to apply for work. Work was the key thing for them.

There is another group of people who are victims of lacking the right to work: children who come here and reach the age of 18 without having had their status confirmed. There is a later amendment which will give me the chance to develop this argument further. Such people are then in a very vulnerable position. Not only do they not have a full right to stay in this country but, as I discovered from some social workers who begged me to say that they have got these young people, they are not allowed to work and are stuck in complete limbo. I am sure we can all produce other examples of people we have met who are desperate to have the right to work. I think that, statistically, 61% of all asylum seekers have waited over six months to get their status determined. That is a higher proportion than any since records began. Reference has already been made to the Home Office review, allegedly started in 2018; I hope we can learn more about what has happened to it.

I will mention briefly some of the benefits of people being allowed to work, many of which have been referred to already. Above all, there is self-respect. We want people in this country to have a sense of their own worth and self-respect. To deny that to our fellow human beings is pretty appalling. It is a matter of integrity that people should be allowed to work. It is a way out of poverty. Public opinion is overwhelmingly in support of having people here who work rather than eking their existence out of virtually no benefits—even if they were on larger benefits, public opinion would still support the right to work. We are dragging well behind comparable countries. If there is a pull factor, it is those countries that will attract people rather than this one. Above all, people want to contribute to society. Talk to any asylum seeker and they will say that they want to contribute to this country and our society.

These amendments are really important. They add to the dignity of our fellow human beings. I hope that the Government will see their way to being supportive of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, is not with us, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate, and I am sympathetic to the amendments which have been debated and explained so clearly and positively. I particularly support Amendment 76 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, to which I have attached my name. I shall be brief.

One of the greatest opportunities for young people is to pursue education, research, training and student exchanges in another country. It is not always young people, but they make up the majority. That is the purpose of this amendment. We would like these opportunities to be entirely on a reciprocal basis, and I hope if we pass this amendment and establish this principle now, other countries in the EU and elsewhere will follow suit.

Amendment 34 on the cost of visas was ably moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt. Clearly, if the visas are so costly, that would negate the purpose of this amendment, so I would like to see the amendments working together. Perhaps, we should put a clause in about the cost of visas, but the way it is now is fairly clear.

Although this opportunity for travel rose enormously in the post-war years, it is not a function of the EU, though the EU did help. Free movement has existed for the purposes of education and research for many centuries in Europe. It is well within the European tradition, not dependent on the structural changes within the EU. As a result of the EU, however, all these things was greatly enhanced. I hope that this freedom of movement and educational travel will be part of our young people’s future in the years to come, even when we are not inside the EU.

We all know and have met young people for whom the opportunity to travel for study and education is a supreme benefit. It is something many young people want to do, and some of them are dismayed that this door might close for them when we left the EU. It is important to ensure that our departure from the EU does not mean such an opportunity is closed to young people but is still open.

I repeat that it is not just young people who want this education but older ones. It is part of the vision we want for Europe. The noble Lord who moved the amendment referred to Winston Churchill and his importance in the Council of Europe, and we have a lot to learn from that and other international organisations. I am a member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly myself, and these other international organisations can help further international education in the broader sense.

This is an amendment about vision. I hope that the Government will accept it.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 69 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Bull, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I thank them for their valuable insights in supporting this amendment.

I particularly want to speak about the arts in Scotland. The Edinburgh Festival and Fringe is the world’s largest, and probably greatest, arts festival. It normally runs for nearly a month, with around 55,000 performances of over 3,500 shows across more than 300 venues. The cancellation of this year’s festival probably cost over £1 billion in lost receipts, with a further £200 million lost by the Fringe and much more in spin-off activities. Orchestras, opera, dance, rock and pop have all suffered loss and all depend on international performers. As a result of Covid-19, we need to ensure that adequate support for Scotland’s arts enables them to survive and that when performers return, travel and visa restrictions are as frictionless as possible.

I am advised that Capital Theatres in Edinburgh has incurred huge losses as a result of the cancellation of the festival and has relied almost entirely on furlough payments for income since then. Apparently the Scottish Government are sitting on the cash allocated by the UK Government for support of the arts in Scotland, so will the Minister say what discussions there have been between the UK Government and the Scottish Government to ensure that this money is allocated in a fair and timely fashion to keep the arts afloat?

Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend outlines some of the complexities of this. It is not in our purview to go and destroy boats that are not on our soil. They quite often come from France, as my noble friend said. On not landing in the UK, it is an internationally accepted arrangement that the first job of any maritime force, whether Border Force or whoever it is, to save lives at sea. That is a really important thing here. I will repeat what I said in the first instance: on taking someone somewhere else, when people are taken safely on to our soil we are obliged to hear and deal with their asylum claim. This is a problem for every state in the EU: we need to work, together with our partners, to deal with some of the problems of upstream criminality. The reason why people get on to these boats and take perilous journeys is that criminality, unfortunately, is at the heart of it.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I think we would all agree that these are desperate people, many of them children. They are often the victims of war and persecution. The best way forward is to reach some sort of agreement with the French authorities. I suggest that the Minister should say to the French, among other things, that we will take all the children in northern France who have family members in this country or other close links with this country. We should say that we will do this quickly and expeditiously, in return for which we expect the French to redouble their efforts to catch the traffickers.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, that sounds really lovely in theory. In practice, it would just create another incentive for people traffickers to get people to France. Do not forget that France is a free, democratic and safe country. On arrangements with France, the noble Lord will know, because I spoke to him about it, that we have laid a legal text that talks about our obligations in taking asylum seekers who require our protection and, in turn, returning people who do not. Unfortunately, that has not progressed, but we continue to try to make progress with it because, as I have said all along, through the process of Brexit we want to help people who need our protection.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful that a day or two ago, the Minister allowed us to ask questions and discuss the Bill in a more informal way than we can today. I still regret that there is so much in the Bill that it will not be in our power to do much about: in other words, the powers given to the Government under the Henry VIII provisions or immigration rules will be such that we can hardly influence them, and we cannot amend them. Can the immigration rules come to us in two stages: the first, amendable in draft form; and then the final version?

Other noble Lords have talked about the difficulties with social care. The Government are saying that their policy is that social care workers should have higher pay, and we should train more of them so that we do not need to have immigrants to deal with social care, where there are 100,000-plus vacancies at the moment. The trouble is, there will not be time for that: we will be near the end of the year and it takes time to train people; it is wishful thinking. The danger is that we will have a larger gap in social care provision as a result of this legislation. It is a retrograde step and we shall live to regret it.

I shall refer to one or two issues on which, if amendments are tabled, I hope I shall be able to support them. I am concerned about the length of immigration detention. As far as I know, we are the only country in Europe that has no limit on immigration detention. In 2019, 24,000 people were detained in this way. Currently, some 1,500 to 2,000 are detained, although it may have gone down a bit because of early releases due to the pandemic. I hope the Minister will confirm that a large proportion of those detained are, in the end, not removed from the country and are released. The only figure I can find is that 37% of those under immigration detention were removed and the remainder were released, so why detain them at all? What is the purpose of that? It seems to me quite wrong, in a democratic country, that we should be doing that.

The right to work for migrants should be such that they can work after six months and not one year. It is very hard for people who have arrived in this country and want to contribute to our economy and pay their taxes if they are not able to do that. I am also concerned about the discussions about no recourse to public funds, which punishes people twice over. I hope to be able to move an amendment to the Bill on child refugees. I believe that public opinion, if the arguments are put, supports bringing into this country some of the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings—child refugees in Calais and on the Greek islands. I very much hope the House will support such an amendment in the interests of human rights and justice.

Immigration: Detainee Support

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with the noble Baroness that human trafficking is an issue that often comes to light in the detention estate. As I said, a risk-based assessment is done when people leave detention, and people have access to support should they need it, if they are victims of trafficking. However, she is right: this is a real concern at the moment.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister said in reply to an earlier question that detention was for the purposes of removal. Could she then explain why in 2018—the latest year for which I have figures—56% of those detained were released back into the community? Is that not a sign that we are using detention far too much when we do not need to?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

People are released from detention for a number of reasons, including appeals that succeed because late information is provided. However, the noble Lord makes a valid point that we should look back on this period of the pandemic to see whether some of the things that we are doing now could be used in future to manage people in the community.

Reading Terrorist Attack

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the noble Lord points to a crucial issue: those datasets for law enforcement purposes and national security need to be in place after our departure from the European Union. We have EU and other structures to use, depending on whether a negotiated outcome is agreed or not.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree that we saw the police at their very best in Reading a few days ago. I welcome the extra £90 million a year that will be allocated to counterterrorism policing. If I were a member of the intelligence and security services, I would want to find out from MI5 how many of the 30,000 people on a theoretical list it would like to keep under closer scrutiny. In other words, no matter what its resources are, is it in difficulty and does it not have enough resources to watch all those people? Will the Minister also comment on an added difficulty facing the security services? We have seen a resurgence of the threat from far-right terrorists as well, so the resources of the security services must be divided across a very wide spectrum indeed.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right to point out that we need the resources to tackle people who are either a danger to others or assessed as possibly being a danger to others. I pointed out earlier, in answer to the question on police officers and CT policing, that both have had a big uplift in their resources, but it is about the deployment of those resources and the intelligence that adds to the mix in ensuring that we can tackle some of the people who pose a real danger to our communities.

Child Refugees: Turkey and Greece

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to offer places to child refugees currently (1) on the border between Turkey and Greece, or (2) on Greek islands.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government currently transfer eligible children located in Greece under the Dublin regulation, and will continue to do so during the transition period. The UK will also continue to transfer unaccompanied children in Greece through Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 until we fulfil this important obligation.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, who will be as aware as anybody of the terrible conditions affecting refugees, especially child refugees, on the Greek islands. She will also be aware of the request made not long ago by the Greek Government that other countries should help in resettling some of the child refugees who have reached the Greek islands. Can the Minister confirm that the global resettlement scheme, which was referred to yesterday by Ministers in both Houses, will apply to children who are currently in Greece and on the Greek islands, and not just to those elsewhere in the region?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I understand what the noble Lord is saying, in the sense that those children are now in a European country as opposed to coming from whatever region in the world they come from. We will absolutely stand by our commitment to helping children from around the world who need our help. We are in dialogue with Greece and we will work closely with UNHCR, which both identifies and refers children who may need our resettlement.

European Arrest Warrant, Europol and Eurojust

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As the noble Baroness will know, and as I have said on several occasions, we have engaged with the devolved authorities on all things, particularly in the area of law enforcement.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that the European arrest warrant has one enormous advantage among many in that countries that do not normally extradite their people, do so under the EAW? What assurance have we that, in future, this will hold good? Many signals have come from European countries saying that they will not do so in the future. Does that not make us as a country weaker and more vulnerable to criminality?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think it would mean that those states will try in their own countries—I have talked about the enhanced safeguards—but I do not think that will make this country less safe.

Immigration: Points-based System

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we have made it clear that it is incumbent on UK businesses to start to upskill the people who work for them and not to rely on cheap labour from the EU and beyond, as they did before. That is the challenge to businesses, but I take my noble friend’s point—I can hear the tutting—and obviously we will keep the system under review. It is a brand new system and the MAC will, of course, be advising us on it as we proceed.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the words that she has uttered today will have given little comfort to the many employers in this country who are worried about having enough people to work and do the necessary jobs that they have? The Statement referred to talented employees and she talked about people with A-levels and so on. Is there not a danger that we will simply be denuding key industries of the people we need? Is there not a terrible danger to the health service, particularly in social care? I am not aware of anything in what the Minister suggested that would make us feel that social care is going to work. It is on the point of collapsing anyway, and it will collapse even further if there are no people willing to do the job. Of course, the answer is to have a whacking big pay increase for people in social care, but that is not for this afternoon: it is for another occasion. I implore the Minister to understand that employers are desperately worried about what is going to happen, and they have not had any assurances in what she said.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, in the coming months, we will engage widely with different sectors and, I hope, allay their fears. It is important to say, though, that employers should be moving away from reliance on the UK’s immigration system as an alternative to investment in staff retention, particularly in areas such as technology and innovation. There are two things that run alongside each other: immigration must be considered alongside investment in, and development of, the UK’s domestic workforce. That includes—and this relates to the noble Lord’s point—valuing care staff and paying them a decent wage.

Brexit: Child Refugees

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as I outlined in my first Answer, our commitment to supporting refugees will not change when we leave the EU. The noble Lord has referred to 3,000 children. I do not know if he said he was happy or sad about that, but of course we are committed to resettling 3,000 vulnerable children under the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme, and, in addition, some 20,000 UNHCR-recognised refugees by 2020, 9,000 of whom have already arrived.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that several hundred unaccompanied child refugees are in the Calais area at the moment, along with perhaps a couple of thousand on the islands in Greece, many of them sleeping rough without any accommodation? Will she also confirm that we still have an obligation under the Dublin treaty and under Section 67 of the Immigration Act to take action? Surely what is holding things up is a lack of political will on the part of the Government.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I cannot confirm how many hundreds of unaccompanied children are in Calais, but what I can absolutely confirm is that this country, upon request, will take children referred to us, and we continue to work to do that. It is not lack of will on the part of the Government. As I have said, since 2010 around 42,000 children have been given some sort of leave to come to this country.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Dubs Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on achieving this debate with her important Private Member’s Bill.

There are, I think we are aware, 65 million refugees in the world. How we handle the refugee situation is one of the greatest challenges to all of us—although the majority of them are miles away, nowhere near the United Kingdom. It is as well to remember that even with the Syrians, there are about 3 million in Turkey and about 1 million each in Jordan and Lebanon. So when people say to me, “Why are we worried about unaccompanied child refugees coming to Britain?”, I say that it is such a small number compared to those in the region itself.

I will digress from the subject of the Bill for a moment. I was in St James’s church, Piccadilly, at the invitation of the vicar two days ago. There is a wonderful installation in that lovely old church, in which clothes discarded by refugees who arrived in Lesbos hang from the ceiling. It is a powerful image indeed, showing what it means to be a refugee. One wonders what happened to all the refugees whose clothes are hanging up there in that installation.

The important thing in this is public opinion. I firmly believe that we have to keep public opinion on our side if we are to deal humanely with refugees. I still believe, certainly as regards refugee children—and refugees as a whole—that public opinion, if informed of what is going on and of the experiences that refugees have been through, is still, by and large, on our side. I have been involved quite a bit in talking about refugees, and I always say, “I must bear in mind that public opinion has to be with us, then we can be much more humane and can do better things”. On this issue in the Bill, public opinion is certainly on our side. All we have to do is to explain to the public what the position is and how individuals are affected. They will not all come round—I have had a few abusive tweets and so on—but on the whole, public opinion is supportive.

We have to bear in mind that every refugee has gone through a period of uncertainty at the least; sometimes their experiences have been terrible. I was talking to a Syrian boy some months ago who told me that his father had been killed, virtually in front of him, by a bomb, either in Aleppo or Damascus. I asked him about the rest of his family and he said that he did not know. But suppose that the rest of his family have escaped from the carnage in Syria and that his mother, and possibly his siblings, are somewhere in Greece or Turkey. Will we say that the Bill should not apply and that the family should not come to join that young boy here? Of course we cannot say that—it would be inhumane. Yet, save for exceptional circumstances, that is exactly the position—and that is what the noble Baroness’s Bill seeks to remedy.

Of course, there are other uncertainties as well. If a child reaches the age of 18, there is no assurance that they can stay in this country, which is a key issue. However, the main issue for many refugees is separation from family. The child leaves, and then he—it is more often a boy than a girl, because usually only a boy takes the risk of undertaking the terrible journey and can make it in these difficult circumstances—will possibly end up in Dunkirk, Calais or Greece, and maybe will come here. What can he do then, if he cannot be joined by his family? I cannot think of anything more painful. As for his family, do they sit it out in Greece, Turkey or Jordan and just say, “We are never going to be able to join our son in Britain”, or do they make the dangerous journey themselves, subject to trafficking and other things? It is a terrible dilemma to put a family in by saying, “You can either stay in these circumstances separated from your child or you can undertake a dangerous journey”.

The Home Affairs Select Committee said this clearly:

“It seems to us perverse that children who have been granted refugee status in the UK are not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do. The right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees just as it does to adults”.


Surely that is the total argument as regards children. There are other aspects in the Bill, but this seems to be the main one. That is the case, and the Government need to be able to respond to the case of the Home Affairs Select Committee. We will hear arguments about pull factors. We hear such arguments every time anything is said about refugees. There are also push factors. There may be an element of a pull factor, but it is not much of one compared to the humanitarian need to do something to deal with these terrible family separations.

We are told that there might be exceptional circumstances. That is fine; if the exceptional circumstances apply often enough, maybe that would be all right. But it is still uncertain—and even if they applied, they would not give the protection that there would be if people came as of right to be united with their family member. Indeed, the Government themselves said, as the noble Baroness quoted, that exceptional circumstances in these cases must be very rare. Of course, the complexity of the situation is such that, without legal aid, it is very difficult indeed to make much progress.

That is the argument. The Dublin III provisions do not cover all cases—only a small number—and in any case they apply only when a child somewhere seeks to join their family, not when a family seeks to join a child. So there is a clear, humane and humanitarian case in favour of the Bill. I believe that if it were put to the British people, they would support it. That is why we should support the Bill.