Immigration Rules: Impact on Families

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for bringing this issue to the fore and for her work on the inquiry that she led. One of the big differences between the United Kingdom and, say, Egypt, is that there is a very broad political consensus. Although we may argue between different sides of the House, and on occasion even more on this side of the House, at least we have fundamental principles that we believe in. Whether we are Liberal Democrats, social democrats, socialists, libertarians or Conservatives, we have certain values in common. They include, perhaps, the market economy, democracy, the rule of law, and all the things that bind us together and ensure that we have a stable, long-term democracy.

Two elements of that come within the area of family life. One is that the state should not determine who you can or cannot marry. The second is that families ought to be able to live together; the state should always allow them to live together. We can all think of exceptions. Sham marriages, of which there have been many, should be prevented; forced marriages are illegal and wrong; and the state splits up families when there is criminality by sending criminals to penitentiaries and prison, which clearly is right. However, whether families choose to live together, and who we marry, should be up to us as citizens. In particular, they are our rights as British citizens.

We have heard some of the background figures. Some 5 million UK citizens live abroad. We think of all the citizens from other countries who live here, but 5 million of us are elsewhere. Every year something like 150,000 of our citizens migrate from the UK for more than one year. They are not necessarily retired people—or gangsters, who used to go to Spain before the European arrest warrant but now go further abroad. Some 90% of them are of working age. Perhaps more importantly for this debate, two-thirds of them are single; they are not married when they go. We also know—I know this from my own family—that people go abroad, to university and to study, and they go abroad on gap years. Those areas are expanding.

What happens to the 90% of young, single people when they are working abroad and wanting to get on with life? Strangely enough, they tend to meet people and fall in love with them. We should celebrate that. Strangely enough, a large number of them get married and, praise the Lord, have children. This has happened in my extended family, and it will be something that increases. However, as we have heard, it is estimated that some 47% of these people would not have an income that would enable them to come back as a family unit, with or without their children, to the United Kingdom.

I will give two examples that I have come up against. I went to Buenos Aires over Christmas and the new year, because two members of my extended family had got married and had a son, who now has Argentinian as well as British citizenship. They invited us out there, and we met another British citizen who had married a Brazilian woman. Now they as a family can no longer come back to the United Kingdom. I have had correspondence from someone whose family I knew a long time ago and who now lives in Canada. She is now married. She cannot come back to the United Kingdom with her spouse because they are not able to fulfil the income requirements.

We talk about those bad guys, the tax exiles, but we now have marriage exiles from this country, and children of British citizens who cannot come back and grow up in British society if they want to. We have British grandparents in this country who are unable to meet, look after and nurture their grandchildren and to see them grow up. That is the outcome of these regulations and of the legislation behind them.

Where do we look for our guidance? I looked back at some of the 2010 election manifestos. First, I looked at the Conservative manifesto, and I would like to bring the House’s attention to it. Right at the beginning it mentioned families. On page 41, and I am utterly with my Conservative coalition brothers and sisters on this, it stated:

“We will … make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe … Strong families are the bedrock of a strong society … We will help families with all the pressures they face … We will not be neutral on this … Britain’s families will get our full backing across all”—

I emphasise “all”—

“our policies”.

That clearly includes immigration and migration. Those points were reflected in the coalition agreement, which stated on page 14:

“The Government believes that strong and stable families of all kinds are the bedrock of a strong and stable society. That is why we need to make our society more family friendly”.

We are failing in this area, particularly on this issue. It will be a growing one, and it will affect all our families. It affects mine, although I am pleased to say that my wife’s son-in-law managed to gain entry before these arrangements came into play. I am an absolutist in this area, and I ask the Minister: do the Government, too, believe that the state should not determine who can marry or whether families can stay together?