Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Rosser Excerpts

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

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on her Bill, the purpose of which is to provide for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom to be granted to the family members of refugees and to refugees who are family members of British citizens.

In her opening speech, the noble Baroness explained the provisions of the Bill, including the extension of the list of eligible family members who can be sponsored in an application for refugee status or humanitarian protection. The Bill also provides for the reinstatement of the provision of legal aid in respect of refugee family reunion cases, which can be complex and lengthy. The current position under our Immigration Rules is that individuals making an asylum application may include in that application only a spouse, civil partner, unmarried partner or children under the age of 18, with those dependants being granted leave to enter or remain in the UK for the same duration as the sponsor if the principal application is granted. Child asylum seekers in this country are not able to sponsor a parent or carer to join them.

As has been said, an objective of the Bill is to reduce the incidence of the separation of family members in the light of the significant adverse impacts this can have, and so address the issue of the vulnerability of unaccompanied children and the exploitation many experience. Eighteen months ago the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee issued a report which, among other things, called on the Government to amend the Immigration Rules to allow refugee children to act as sponsors for their close family. The committee argued, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said, that it was perverse that children granted refugee status in the UK were not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do, and that the right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees as it does to adults. This was not a view shared by the Government, who argued that the current family reunion policy met our international obligations and said that there was provision to grant a visa outside the rules, which could be used in respect of extended family members, including parents of children recognised as refugees here, in exceptional circumstances.

However, we are one of only two EU countries that have neither opted in to the EU directive on family reunion, which sets out that unaccompanied child refugees are entitled to be reunited with their family members, nor provided for this in their own domestic law. When she responds, can the Minister provide some information on the number of visas that have been granted outside the rules in exceptional circumstances since July 2016, when the updated guidance was published, and the number of those that were in respect of parents of children recognised as refugees here? Can she also provide information on the terms on which leave to remain has been granted outside the rules in exceptional circumstances, and the extent to which those terms differ from those that would apply in respect of individuals joining relatives in the UK within and through the applicable rules?

I hope the Government will feel able to give a supportive response to the Bill, even though that would be contrary to their approach to date. If they do not intend to be helpful—I am conscious of the way in which they failed to deliver on the spirit of the Dubs amendment—the least they can do is spell out their reasons in some detail, and the hard evidence to support those reasons, bearing in mind the devastating impact, both short-term and long-term, about which we have heard today, that family separation can have on those affected, not least on children and young people.

What impact on the net migration figure do the Government think the terms of the Bill would have? What is their hard evidence to support their conclusion? I ask that in the context that the net migration figure has fallen not inconsiderably recently following the decision to withdraw from the European Union and the hostile climate that that provoked, and in the context that the Government do not apply existing EU rules on movement of people as firmly as they could within those rules and as some other EU countries do. Indeed, apparently the Government do not even know the impact on the net migration figures of not applying those EU rules as firmly as they could. I also ask the question in the context that we have found out only recently that—to put it politely—the Government have been working under a misapprehension about the number of students who stay on in this country beyond the time for which they are permitted to do so. I also ask that question in the context that the Government have no idea of the number of people in this country illegally and focus only on making it harder for this unknown number of people to live in this country illegally.

My final question is about the Government’s estimate of the impact on the net migration figure of the Bill. The Government have had control over the size of the net migration figure for people from outside the EU since 2010 and have had no issue since then with that figure consistently being way above their claimed target of it being in the tens of thousands. This contradiction is no doubt the case because, whatever their publicly declared net migration target, the Government know only too well the benefits that immigrants have brought and continue to bring to this country.

I hope that in the light of all these factors the Government will not try to argue or imply that we do not have the capacity to take into our country the additional people, under humanitarian family reunion principles, who might come here under the provisions of the Bill, unless they are going to provide hard evidence that the figure would be way above what anyone might have anticipated. That would be totally contrary to the Government’s overall approach to net migration, which in reality has been somewhat different, as far as the overall figures are concerned, from the public impression they seek to give, for electoral purposes, that their policy is to bring that figure into the tens of thousands as a matter of priority.