EU Settlement Scheme

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Viscount will of course be aware that as the United Kingdom, we have done our duty by EU citizens in the UK. We have done that unilaterally. We hope that the EU would do the same; therefore, we are reliant on that good will on both sides. But I am satisfied that we now have over 2 million applications out of a cohort that I estimate to be about 3 million.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister just said, therefore 1 million people have not yet applied. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that they are aware that they now need to apply, and their applications can be got in in good time?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord will probably be quite pleased to hear that we are processing applications at the rate of about 20,000 a day. People are applying. However, it is crucial that the harder-to-reach people are aware of their rights and aware that they should be applying. In the event of a deal, they have until June 2021 to apply; there is a lot of advertising; and some of the advances in how people can upload their photo and so on have been made easier by the fact that the iPhone 8 and more up-to-date versions will be able to upload people’s details.

Intersex Citizens

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I welcome the Government’s attention to this issue of minority rights. We understand that although this is a small minority it is an important one, and that early medical intervention can lead to deep unhappiness. Will the Government’s consultation lead to a public education programme? The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, mentioned the need for medical professionals to be trained, but we well understand that a lot of parents will need a certain amount of background enlightenment as to these possibilities and to the dangers of giving in to pressures at an early stage to “do something about it”, rather than allowing children to grow up as they are.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is not a consultation so much as a call for evidence, which is a more informed process, engaging with various stakeholders with expertise in this area. The noble Lord will be aware, of course, that intersex or variations in sexual characteristics can be chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal or indeed anatomical. Therefore, it is very important that whichever public services the individual comes into contact with, particularly medical practitioners, are educated and trained to be sensitive to the various issues.

World Bank: Selection Process for President

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Our key representative serving on the executive board is Richard Montgomery, our executive director. I am in regular contact with him, and he makes a great contribution in this area. Of course, the application process is still under way: it is open until 14 March, so other candidates may come forward and we will evaluate them, as we have before.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, what will Her Majesty’s Government do if the United States continues to nominate a candidate who, according to many people—including, I suspect, some within the British Government—does not meet the criteria for the post?

[Lord Bates]

That is the process that is under way at the moment. The only formal candidate to have been nominated currently—Under-Secretary Malpass—is in London today to meet the UK Governor of the World Bank, the Secretary of State for International Development. She is making very clear the importance we attach to the World Bank’s commitments, particularly in relation to climate change.

Migrant Crossings: Naval Assets

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is correct about the high percentage of Iranians. His second point is right too, and that is what we are trying to achieve.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, as part of its contingency planning for a crash-out no-deal Brexit, is the Home Office preparing measures to discourage British citizens from leaving the country?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

No, my Lords, we are not.

Brexit: EU Citizens in the UK

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Yes, my Lords, I am.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister may know that some of these Italian women were recruited directly by Salts Mill to work in Saltaire. When I first moved there with my family, we had Italian-born as well as Polish-born neighbours. There is real concern among these elderly people, who in most cases have British citizens as their children and grandchildren. Many of them have been in care homes for several years and do not find filling in forms easy. I heard a TUC representative from Yorkshire describe the settled status scheme as an absolute shambles in Yorkshire. Is there anything that the Government can do to ease the anxieties of those people by making it absolutely clear that they are guaranteed settled status for the rest of their lives?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government have made it abundantly clear that these people are welcome to stay. There are a number of routes open to them to confirm that status and the Government are doing everything we can to make this process as easy as possible. Of course, any party of government has a lesson to learn from the history of the Windrush generation, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, says, and we do not want a repeat of that.

Brexit: Border Control

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether sufficient personnel will be trained and equipment will be ready to take full control of the United Kingdom's borders by the end of March 2019.

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

My Lords, we will always ensure that we have the resources and the workforce that we need to keep the border secure. In addition to the creation of 300 Readiness Task Force, approximately 600 Border Force officers are being recruited in 2018-19 to respond to future requirements as a result of EU exit and to provide operational resilience at the border.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the NAO report states that for a deal we will need 1,000 more Border Force members, who will have to be fully trained, which takes 12 months, and 2,000 more for no deal and that as of 8 October 2018 we had managed to recruit 149. Perhaps a few more will arrive in the next few months. It also states that there will be an acute shortage of vets for hygiene border controls. On resources, HMRC reports that it will take up to three years for it to get its new systems in order. As we heard last week in the Answer to the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord West, we now have, as I understand it, two offshore patrol boats to protect our maritime borders, a third is on station in the Falklands Islands and it might be agreed to build some new ones over the next several years. The tone of the NAO report is of uncertainty and insufficient time. Do the Government think that we can take back control as was promised in the referendum?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I shall address the two areas of the noble Lord’s question. The first was on the recruitment of sufficient numbers of staff. The EU exit recruitment strategy for 2018-19 is actually deal-agnostic. It is being taken forward in three broad phases: before Christmas with a flexible workforce of 300; an additional 300 leading up to Brexit; and another 300 post Brexit. Secondly, the noble Lord asked about the border patrol service. It operates a fleet of five cutters and six coastal patrol vessels around the UK coastline. They are deployed on a risk or intelligence basis and fulfil a number of tasks.

Immigration

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank my noble friend for that question. I am referring, and the Statement referred, purely to the immigration system. He is absolutely right that biometrics cover a number of areas, as he said, including fingerprints and iris recognition—but in this context DNA presentation should be entirely voluntary.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister may know that I have been looking at the problems which British universities are now having with visas for their staff and students, and the families of their staff. In the last two weeks I have spoken to a number of university teams about this, and on Monday a senior officer of one of our most effective and renowned universities said to me, “We pay £25,000 for a premium service because that’s the only way one gets a basic service these days”.

My strong impression is that what we have just heard is one indication of a severely overloaded system. As we approach a peak of applications coming towards March 2019, with people wanting to clarify what position they have within Britain, that system is coming close to breakdown. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned the cuts in staffing, and it is clearly understaffed. Telephone lines are frequently impossible to get through to; passports are taken away and do not come back for eight to 10 weeks.

A lawyer friend of mine who, as a dual national, was asked to supply both her passports when trying to change to her new married name could not find anything in the regulations that required her to send her French as well as her British passport away for eight weeks. Can this review therefore take a rather wider survey of whether the current visa system is able to cope with the weight of applications coming to it? The series of stories that I have been hearing from university staff and university HR departments suggests that it is not coping at present.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord very nicely gives us a taste of his Question on Monday, which will be asked in a different context—that of borders. This Statement is not quite about preparations for Brexit or the sheer number of applications; it is about a specific cohort of people for whom guidance was incorrectly written. But I take the noble Lord’s point that we need the capacity and the capability to process visas which come into UKBI. Of course, we keep our capacity needs under review, but I do not deny in any way that it is a busy system. We expect that the EU citizens’ application service, which has already gone out to private beta trial, will be rolled out further. We have not experienced any problems with that so far, but the noble Lord was absolutely right to point out that preparedness, particularly towards March, will be absolutely crucial.

Sexual Offences

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, this has to be a multiagency approach. It is a job that local government will have across its desk in terms of protecting vulnerable children. The police will have it across their desks. The Department of Health will have it across its desk. It is also the job of education to ensure that girls—predominantly—who may be vulnerable to this sort of exploitation are supported in the communities in which they live. I have outlined the various funding packages to try to prevent such things happening, but the noble Lord is not wrong when he says that resources need to go into this. Sometimes the public’s priorities are not the priorities that the police might seek to invest in, but this is a major national priority.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister may have read the Times report this morning on the county lines abuse of young children in Bradford. I am sure that the Government think that getting at this abuse of children through county lines drug networks is also a priority. The last time I was driven around north Bradford by one of our local councillors, I did not see a single policeman on the streets all afternoon—although I did see three people peddling drugs on the streets as we passed by. Does that not mean that we need larger resources than we have at the moment to cope with the underlying social issues that give rise to this sort of exploitation of children, male and female?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to bring up the issue of county lines, because that encompasses everything we have been talking about in response to the Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, as well as to this one. There is definitely a link between gangs, guns, drugs and exploitation, and at the heart of it—always—is exploited children.

Yemen

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am conscious that an already poor humanitarian situation has been exacerbated by the conflict, and by the blockade. Can the Minister tell us a little bit about the blockade of the ports which US and Saudi ships have been involved in, and how far that now has been lifted?

Can he also tell us about the consultations we are having with the Emiratis who, after all, alongside the Saudis, are major players in every single way in Yemen? I received a note from the UAE embassy in London about the humanitarian assistance to Yemen the other day. Clearly, they have major local responsibility, so can he assure us that we are working as closely with them and criticising when we think it is necessary?

[Lord Bates]

I shall respond by giving a bit more information. Yemen imports 90% of its food and almost all its fuel. The level of imports remains insufficient. The UK has been responding to this by sending DfID experts and funding experts, particularly to Djibouti, to help to speed up the process of verification of shipping. As a result, over the past year the level of shipping that has been cleared to enter Yemeni ports has increased from 8% to around 70%—around tenfold—and we welcome that. We are funding to the extent of £1.3 million the UN verification inspection mechanism. These are all very important steps to ensure that urgent humanitarian support gets in.

Brexit: Border Control

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of whether preparations for (1) national border controls, facilities and staffing, and (2) the registration of European Union citizens in the United Kingdom, will be complete by 29 March 2019.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper—even though it has already been half-addressed by the previous Answer.

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

I hope that means that I have half the time to answer the Question—but I doubt it. Border Force is working with other government departments to develop our future approach at the border, and we will ensure that we have the resources and the workforce required to keep the border secure. Work is under way to develop a settled status scheme for EU citizens, and a registration scheme to operate alongside for those arriving during the implementation period. We continue to work with users and experts to ensure that it is streamlined and user friendly.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have 365 days until we leave the European Union. We have heard a number of commitments from Ministers saying that there will be a registration scheme in place. The recent report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration shows that the current system of border control remains in chaos. Can the Government assure us that there will be effective schemes in place by March 2019, and can they begin to tell us how many extra staff and how much additional cost this will take over the next year?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord will probably know that in the Spring Statement the Chancellor announced that the Home Office would receive £395 million. Much of this will be spent on the border. The recruitment of additional staff, to which he referred, is under way to bring existing staffing levels in UKVI working on Euro routes to 1,500 by April 2018. As I said, the Chancellor announced that the Home Office would receive £395 million of that funding to fund the EU exit preparations.