Immigration Bill

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, a great deal has already been said that I was planning to say, and all I plan to do now is add a few details. At the very start of the debate, many hours ago, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester said that there had been concern about immigration before and that this was nothing new. I do not entirely agree. At the moment there is a very ugly mood of xenophobia in Britain, much stronger than anything that existed before. The Daily Mail, the Daily Express, UKIP and even some Conservative Back-Benchers have created a picture of immigration that poisons the discussion of a very serious subject. It is a picture of a huge wave of immigrants who come to Britain to take our jobs, thus increasing unemployment and depressing wages, to abuse our National Health Service and to take advantage of our social services—in a word, to scrounge on our welfare state. It is now suggested that millions of Bulgarians and Romanians are coming to invade us. It is a mood that says, “We want our country back” and “Keep out the foreigners”. It is a very dangerous mood because it is coupled with a total rejection and mistrust of all politics: illustrated by Russell Brand and, “We shouldn’t vote”, “They’re all the same” and “They’re all in it for themselves”. It is a very dangerous mood indeed.

It could worsen because at the moment it is foreigners who are the objective. This mood is behind the strong rise in support for UKIP. At the moment, it is foreigners who they single out, but there could be others soon. It could in time be different races or ethnic minorities. It could be Jews. It has happened before in the history of other countries.

As my noble friend Lady Hamwee and many other noble Lords pointed out, there is a need for leadership. The European Commission has complained that there are Ministers who seldom provide that leadership. A lot of the speeches and rhetoric about immigration are based on myth. This is certainly part of the perception abroad. The Government lead the way, but there are some voices in government who seem to pour fuel on the flames. One of the examples given by my noble friend Lord Teverson and others was the appalling, terrible bus advertisement. That was fortunately withdrawn. It suggested that there is a far greater problem with illegal immigrants than there is—we do not know exactly how big it is—and the whole tenor was thoroughly nasty and anti-immigrant.

Recently, the Prime Minister shelved the report on migrants commissioned by the Home Secretary. It was supposed to be an answer to the Commission’s complaints about the way that the topic is being dealt with in this country. The Commission has said that there is concern in many countries, but nowhere is the debate so full of distortion. It seems that the report was completed by the Home Office at the request of the Home Secretary, but it has been shelved. Why? What on earth is the reason? Is it perhaps because its answers did not stand up? If it is suppressed, it will add to the suspicion that there is more than just a whiff of xenophobia in the Home Office itself. There have been too many cases of officials in the border agency being condemned because of their treatment of people due for deportation and their insensitive and unjustified refusals of applications by asylum seekers. My noble friend Lady Barker referred to the kind of questions asked of gay asylum seekers from Uganda fleeing from the persecution there. There is a very nasty whiff of xenophobia as well as anti-gay prejudice.

As many noble Lords have said, this Bill should ease worries about immigration, but instead it may well increase the chance of injustice being suffered by immigrants. It will need very careful scrutiny and serious amendment. One of my sadnesses, which is shared with my noble friend Lord Teverson, is about Labour attitudes. In the other place, during the passage of the Bill, it seemed that the Labour Party was interested only in making restrictions on immigrants tighter. It was not so much concerned about the libertarian issues at stake.

The other subject that has come up, which has been very eloquently explored, in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, is the question of students. I am rather mystified about the position of students because I now understand that there are separate statistics about students and non-students but that we cannot exclude students from the official immigration figures because of some international objection. What about the Americans, the Australians or the New Zealanders? What happens in their case? Why have they been able to say that they exclude students from the immigration statistics? It makes a huge difference, not only because the way we have approached the question of students has led to the extraordinary situation that the numbers are marginally declining. It is an appalling situation and most unexpected.

Everybody has now said how important students are to this country. It is not only the billions—lots of different figures in billions have been given—that they bring to the Exchequer but that they add enormously to the attraction of our universities by their presence. When they return home, as most of them do, which is why they are swelling the immigration figures, they are ambassadors for the services this country has to offer, and if they stay they are enormously important not only to the health service but to industry which needs the skills which are in short supply. My first question is: what about these immigration figures? Why is it that we cannot follow the example of America, Australia and New Zealand? It seems an obvious example to follow. Secondly, is there going to be some way, as some noble Lords have suggested, in which we can exclude students from this Bill because that would be a wonderful achievement?

Finally, I want to say something about appeals. It has been said that the reforms will clog up the immigration tribunals because of all the cases of judicial review. Clause 4 substitutes for 17 previous grounds of appeal against decisions such as refusal of leave to enter or to remain or decisions to deport only three grounds: refusal of a protection claim or a human rights claim or a decision to revoke a person’s protection status. An immigration expert I know tells me that the effect of these changes will be that many will now rely on human rights grounds of appeal, which will make for many more complicated cases and will swamp the work of tribunals, so two factors may swamp them: the increase in judicial reviews and human rights cases. If grounds of appeal are constricted and so many of the appeals succeed, officials will have even less incentive to be circumspect because they will know that their judgment is absolute and final and cannot be challenged.

It is clear from the many points made in this debate that this Bill needs the kind of scrutiny which it did not get in the other place. It needs serious scrutiny and serious reform, and I hope there will be success in substantially amending this Bill.