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

Lord Wei Excerpts

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

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I join others in welcoming the Bill; it has been a long time coming. Though I have seen and acknowledge the benefits of freedom of movement, clearly the world is different today from what it was 10 or 20 years ago, for better or worse. It is a more volatile and unstable place and there is a lot more economic migration. Therefore, it is only right that we design and shift to a system which is sovereign and based on skills—that is what this country needs.

I hope that, as we make this transition over the coming 12 months or so, we send a message to the world that we are still open to migrants and that we are not closing the shop or raising the drawbridge. In fact, I hope we can see migrants—such as me and my own family, who came here from Hong Kong in my father’s generation—as people who want to come and contribute to Britain, be a bridge to the rest of the world once they are here and be part of helping to level up the country, which I know is a government priority.

I will not dwell on the Henry VIII clauses, because it is important that the Government have the flexibility they need over the coming months. However, it is important that Parliament is involved in this process and in the evolution of our immigration system, and that the Government do not create policy on the fly, which there is a risk of given the scope of the powers the Bill might give.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. First, while this is clearly not a regional matter, certain regions could benefit as well as suffer if this policy is implemented poorly. For example, areas that are already wealthy may get some of the more skilled, talented and wealthier migrants, whereas there are parts of the country which really need an influx of talent from overseas. Do the Government have plans, particularly around free ports, that are envisaged to encourage that kind of shift?

Secondly, I am worried about capacity: what preparations have been made in the Home Office and the Border Force to cope with the change and the demand that may come? If we can get our act together, I am excited about the potential to harness technologies such as blockchain. Estonia, for example, even has e-citizens who cannot come to the country on a long-term basis but can make use of its law, business and the ability to set up shop in Estonia. Is reform coming to the Home Office to enable it to handle this demand, given that is has such a backlog of regular passports to process currently?

Could we one day shift to a system where we can match the demand from different industries in closer to real time? There is such a delay between knowing where the skills are needed and whether you can match them through local skills coming through the pipeline, or if you need to import labour from overseas. Technology such as blockchain and internet technologies may be able to facilitate better matching than we currently have.

Civilian Use of Drones (EUC Report)

Lord Wei Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con)]

I, too, want to thank my noble friend Lady O’Cathain for instigating this debate. I declare an interest as a recently signed-up member of the present EU sub-committee, as well as having various commercial interests, as can be found in the Lords’ register, in relation to cutting-edge technologies and insurance respectively.

The publication of this report and today’s debate on its findings and recommendations are extremely timely, given the huge growth in the use of drones for commercial and leisure uses, and the potential benefits and risks that this growth poses for us here in the UK and across the world. I, too, commend the authors of the report for work that is extremely well-informed, despite the incredibly technical and emergent nature of this field, and for the proportionate recommendations put forward, which clearly seek to balance leaving room for innovation while seeking to deal with the near-term risks appropriately. The call for risk-based management of certification and regulation, the recommendation to introduce a database of commercially and non-commercially operated drone flights, and the recommendation to strengthen the research and co-operation and communication around drone development—these are all sensible ideas. And it is appropriate on the whole to encourage the EU to help play a co-ordinating role, given the global nature of drone manufacture and import/export, and the potential cross-border nature of commercial drone operations as the market develops, while recognising that the UK is a leading innovator in this field.

In view of the comments already made, I want to focus my remarks on a particular challenge highlighted by the report in the light of the need to balance and recognise rapid innovation, alongside mitigating risks associated with both commercial and leisure use of drones; namely, how to foster a regulatory framework that works and is cost-effective but does not become obsolete before it has been enshrined in global, EU-wide and national legislation and regulation.

On the one hand, the report highlights the voices of some who would like, or who default to, blanket legislation, which would be hard to police given the limited resources of the obvious regulators such as the Civil Aviation Authority or indeed the police. And there are other voices, such as Jay Bregman, cited towards the end of the report, who highlight the role that private sector-led initiatives and innovators such as Verisign can play in developing technologies and tools for self-regulation in the management of internet security.

Clearly the blanket approach is unworkable, and I would like to see whether my noble friend the Minister agrees that in our discussions with EU bodies looking into drones we should avoid any top-down regulation of a one-size-fits-all nature, which, as the report highlights, has hampered innovation and the development of a drone industry in, for example, the United States. Equally, I personally disagree with the comparison of any internet-of-things sector, such as drones, with the digital internet as we have known it, given that a key difference is that a drone can fall out of the sky and kill or injure someone, whether deliberately, such as through an act of terrorism, sabotage or hacking, or by accident.

Surely the way forward is to work out where the long-term development of smaller drones, in particular, is headed, and to try to work back to the key inflection points along the way, where we will need to evolve legislation at global, regional, and national levels. To me, it is very clear that drones will and should form part of the wider internet-of-things ecosystem, and that ultimately this is about a transportation and logistics revolution that will be as dramatic as the work we are seeing in the introduction of self-driving vehicles. As such, in the short term we need to consider not only how drones will operate purely in terms of their relationship with aviation but how they will function within a future transportation web of which cars and airborne vehicles delivering people—or, more likely in this case, goods and objects—are a part. We need to consider that ultimately drones will be part of a worldwide hive of robots, operating even in indoor environments—for example, to carry items such as the food that we may end up eating in restaurants, or enabling goods to be delivered to remote and rural areas cost-effectively.

On the one hand, taking this integrated view is incredibly complex but, on the other, ultimately realistic given the passing of time. It should be remembered that smartphones themselves are barely a decade old—and look where we are today. This view can allow us to encourage a mix of approaches through different global, EU and national bodies to develop proportionate, cost-effective and workable regulation. The report highlights a number of ideas that would fit with this approach, such as the creation of a database of flights by unmanned drones, and resourcing the development of enabling technologies to avoid collisions. But I would be minded to go further than this, and utilise our governmental, civilian and EU influence to push for a more integrated framework.

For example, how do we utilise our influence to ensure that higher-risk internet-of-things devices, of which drones are a part, can be tracked and identified, and even traced using GPS when in the air, and that any database for drones could be integrated with others developed for robots in general? How do we harness, for example, the lever of insurance, to encourage registration of drones, both commercial and civilian, with higher or no cover for those that are not registered? How do we encourage the kind of catapult-backed funded research in autonomous transportation that we are seeing in the ground vehicle space to ensure drones are geo-fenced from high-risk areas, and avoid harming people on the ground even when their pilots, by accident or design, crash them into crowds or built-up areas? How do we assess the impact of drones in the workplace on lower-skilled jobs, as part of the wider debate on the impact of robotics and automation generally into service environments, and help smooth the labour market transitions that are on their way as these systems become more widespread?

I would like to ask the Minister, therefore, given the likelihood of serious accidents or even future terrorist events using drones, which could set back industry and dent public confidence, how the Government are seeking to build a holistic and integrated vision for how drone services and the industry can be supported to develop safely amid the wider transformations taking place in a world that in decades will look quite different from today’s—one incorporating trillions of devices, of which millions or billions may be airborne. Or will the Government’s approach to this area primarily be one of laissez-faire, in which we will regulate or seek to regulate through the EU and other bodies, only mainly after the event?

The advent of smaller, affordable and innovative drones is one of the most exciting developments of the era in which we live. But, as with all internet of things and robot-related developments, there are serious risks, many of which this report admirably highlights. What can we do as a country, and what can we do through Europe, to safeguard both the public and our national interest, while at the same time fostering the dynamic entrepreneurialism and innovation that we are helping to lead? If we can pull off this delicate balancing act, we will be able to harness drone development to strengthen our economy, I hope create lots of interesting jobs, and ultimately benefit consumers and businesses alike in ways that we can only begin to conceive of today.

Visas: Student Visa Policy

Lord Wei Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for tabling the debate. I declare an interest as someone who often works with universities, particularly east Asian student communities, organisations and bodies.

When our country is in desperate need of growth, the question of how we treat visitors to it is of utmost importance. As the son of a Chinese immigrant, I support carefully managed immigration and deplore the previous Government’s mismanagement of it. However, I must say that I am unconvinced that today’s Home Office and UKBA approach to student visas will address the two underlying root causes of uncontrolled net migration from Europe and a lack of imagination.

Let me start with Europe. Because we are part of the EU—I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent pledge to renegotiate our relationship with it—we have the ability neither to police migration from within the EU nor to prevent people from engaging in welfare tourism. That is likely to intensify from 2014 onwards. What can we do about it? It seems that the answer right now is not very much. Instead, we attack non-EU university students, few of whom have been proven to abuse the welcome that we give them, as a means retrospectively to deal with excessive EU immigration.

The consequences of that policy are potentially ruinous: lower growth as fewer students come to stay, invest and create jobs; a decrease in trade, with fewer people able to help us to communicate with the emerging economies of the world; and universities declining and less able to rely on exporting education to balance their books. A policy goal and target that in themselves are well motivated better to manage immigration risk becoming tools for protectionism, economic decline and European hegemony over our sovereign affairs.

However, with more imagination, we could reverse the damage being done while still meeting our objective of having better, more carefully managed net migration. We should start with the basics: exclude students from the immigration statistics, like most other developed countries; have simpler, more affordable visa processes; authorise visas for part-time masters; and let students and other immigrants stay to work after their studies, particularly for trade-related roles.

Let us use our foreign aid to help countries where most of our immigrants come from to create better alternative destinations than ours. Let us encourage some of our young people to emigrate and learn how to do business in emerging markets, reducing the net migration totals in the process. It is time to stop making the international student the bogeyman of our dysfunctional EU-directed immigration policy. Are my noble friend and the head of UKBA willing to meet me and others to discuss more innovative ways to help to manage immigration and to help this country to grow again?

Minority Ethnic and Religious Communities: Cultural and Economic Contribution

Lord Wei Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, for tabling this timely debate and for his truly enlightening speech. It is a testament to the value of this House that so many Peers are able to represent and speak on behalf of different minority interests here today, a strength I fear the current proposals for Lords reform may eradicate forever if carried out without very careful consideration. Somewhere in our system we must preserve a means by which the voiceless can have a voice.

In the interests of time, I will speak primarily on the contribution played in British society by ethnic Chinese. In this, I declare an interest as the only active parliamentarian of Chinese origin, as chair of the APPG for East Asian Business and an adviser to several organisations involved in trade between the UK and Asia. The Chinese in Britain represent the third largest ethnic minority group and also the fastest growing one. From 2001 to 2007 the number in Britain grew 9.9% annually according to the Office for National Statistics. The population is estimated to be about 700,000, excluding tertiary students and tourists from China.

There are many diaspora Chinese, from all over the world. There are the Hong Kong Chinese, such as my parents. Many of them came in the 1960s through to 1997. There are the British-born Chinese, such as myself. There are the Taiwanese Chinese, the Singaporean Chinese, such as the late Michael Chan—the much-loved physician who served in this House—the Malaysian Chinese, the Vietnamese Chinese, the Mauritian Chinese and the mainland Chinese, including those who have recently arrived and who are often highly educated and affluent.

Without their necessarily having shouted about it from the hills, it is important to recognise that the Chinese who live, study and visit here contribute a huge amount to the UK. That might be in the Chinese catering industry, which employs in excess of 100,000 people and contributes £4.9 billion to the economy; or in the 200,000-odd students who, during and after university, contribute to our economy through educational fees; or the many professionals of Chinese origin who work in the City and around the country. Whether in the large numbers of wealthy tourists who come to purchase British goods and services, or in the networks of diaspora investors and their firms who are investing billions in our economy and creating thousands of jobs, or in their general law-abiding contribution to our cultural life, the role of the Chinese in British society cannot be ignored.

There are more opportunities for the Chinese to play an even bigger role in British society. First, I and others would like to help train more up-and-coming Chinese living and visiting these isles to develop socially entrepreneurial skills so as to take up a more visible and integrated role in British society. I would like them to be more engaged in informed political debate and to come up with solutions to the issues that the community faces. These can help create jobs, tackle ignorance, and address social ills for other groups and the public at large.

Secondly, there is a significant untapped opportunity for the Chinese to help positively to influence the British education system, not only because they often perform well at school, but also because of more British people’s hunger to learn about Chinese language and culture.

Thirdly, given the significant numbers of Chinese involved in the professions and in trade with east Asia, there is a role for the British Chinese in helping British and Chinese firms connect and do business together across the cultural and linguistic divide, whether as workers, or on management, or on boards. That will create jobs and prosperity at a time when we most need it. To grasp these opportunities fully, we will need the help and understanding of parliamentarians, the public and government.

In closing, I shall ask the Minister, whose work in this area I greatly respect and admire, the following questions which I know matter in our particular community. What can we do to keep policy on immigration and visas balanced so that we can continue to trade with and access talent and skills from the East while rightly protecting our borders? What is being done to help to tackle ongoing prejudice and fear towards Chinese people in the media and at large? What is being done to harness local British Chinese in building trade with east Asia? How can we harness Chinese learning methods and speakers more in our education system? What can we do to help to mentor the next generation of Chinese British leaders to be more involved in our public life and party-political system when many are underrepresented at present due to the widely dispersed nature of the Chinese across the British Isles?

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Wei Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

I am sure that the Children's Commissioner and her office will take this on board but my key point is that child victims of trafficking have multiple needs. It is not just about preventing them from disappearing. There are immigration issues, emotional and psychological trauma, absence of parents and other support. All that points to the need for a person who can get to know the child as an individual, can cope with the trauma, is familiar with the legal and social care systems and is trusted and respected by the child. A guardian or mentor is such a person. I look forward to the Minister's response on this and to more information if possible on the role of the Children's Commissioner.

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I very much welcome Amendment 57A and the announcement by the Minister, which is a positive step in the right direction. In light of that, I want primarily to direct my comments to the scope that the amendment provides for the use of volunteers.

The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, supported across the whole House, is important. The voluntary legal advocate whom he proposes does not complicate matters by introducing additional bureaucratic burdens on the child. They would simply provide a means of helping all the things that must already be done to be done. They would provide additional capacity to provide more support for the child and the reassurance that there is one person who will help them who will remain constant so that they do not have the emotional trauma of going back to square one to explain their painful story all over again.

The legal advocate would be able to provide general advice and support and crucially be permitted to accompany them on all their interactions with state agencies and act as advocate to all those agencies on the child's behalf. That is based on internationally accepted best practice as set out by UNICEF.

One of the most important parts of the McColl amendment is that it does not tie the Government's hands but provides scope for legal advocates to be the employees of statutory bodies, voluntary organisations or volunteers with voluntary organisations. The opportunity for using the voluntary sector and volunteers, as has been mentioned before, is hugely significant.

The number of children rescued between 2007 and 2010 is roughly 300 a year. I know from my work in the voluntary sector that it would not be difficult to find 300 volunteers a year to be voluntary legal advocates for a child. Indeed, I have been approached, as have other noble Lords, by voluntary organisations that are ready to rise to the challenge and pilot such approaches. This presents us with a win-win situation, because not only does it address a very pressing problem, but it would do so in a way that would help further build British social capital.

I am aware that there are those who may feel nervous about the role of volunteers. In response, I make two key points. First, the amendment is keenly aware that anyone serving those deeply vulnerable children must be properly trained, as has been mentioned already, and all would be subject to the same robust training framework. This is no place for some well meaning volunteer who just feels compassion but who has not been properly trained. Secondly, I would simply point those tempted to suggest that volunteers cannot do the job to our magistrates system. Magistrates are volunteers. They are properly trained and have to deal with very sensitive situations. Although there may be some who are defensive of their turf and tempted to justify their fears of volunteers by pointing to training, we must recognise that volunteers can be, and are, trained, as our magistrates system eloquently demonstrates. Another great example of the very successful use of volunteers to which I would direct noble Lords is that provided by court-appointed special advocates—CASAs—in the United States, who are trained volunteers and who have a proven track record of dealing with extremely delicate situations very effectively.

Of course the opportunity to make proper care available for victims of trafficking through volunteer legal advocates is hugely important in the current fiscal environment, where money is so tight. This is not to say that Amendment 57A would have no costs to the state if the volunteer route were used, but it would be minimal—and money well spent when one has regard for the imperative of providing better and more sensitive care for incredibly vulnerable children and for further reductions in the numbers lost.

My political hero is Anthony Ashley Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, who arguably did more than anyone else in this House—and in another place and beyond—to establish the tradition of compassionate conservatism in the 19th century, demonstrating concern particularly for vulnerable children in factories and mines and for those sweeping chimneys. I am sure that if he were here today, he would be fronting this amendment, which comes in the very best tradition of my party, historically and recently; and which, crucially, also resonates with the traditions of other parties, whether your vision of society is big, open, good or otherwise. I very much hope that we can continue to support the noble Lord, Lord McColl, in his efforts to secure these measures.

Human Trafficking (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill [HL]

Lord Wei Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McColl, on his Bill, which raises some very important issues. I am delighted to speak in support of it today and declare an interest as an adviser to the Community Foundation Network, whose members do a huge amount all over the UK to both fund and mobilise community-led solutions to local social problems. One such problem is fuel poverty, which it is tackling through its current Surviving Winter appeal where members of the public are invited to donate their winter fuel allowance to others in greater need of it in their community.

In the time available to me, I would like to home in on one specific challenge, protecting the victims of child trafficking, and one specific part of the Bill, Clause 9. The ECPAT UK child trafficking data and statistics briefing for May 2011 does not make for pleasant reading. As my noble friend Lord McColl and others have mentioned, it reveals that between 2007 and February 2010, 301 of the 942 children identified as victims of trafficking went missing from local authority care, mainly under the watch of stretched social workers, and with many children passed from one agency to another, sometimes with limited or no dedicated representation to help support them.

Clause 9 of the Bill addresses these challenges by providing a much more robust system of protection in the form of a legal advocate, who would have dedicated responsibility for supporting a child victim of trafficking in all their interactions with the state—the police, the courts, social services and so on. Such provision is based on international best practice in child guardianship, and we must afford child victims of trafficking in the UK nothing less if we are to demonstrate genuine compassion for these incredibly vulnerable and needy children.

There is a problem, however. Guardianship is generally costly and, as everyone knows, at present the Government do not have much in the way of spare cash. Some might respond to the financial constraints of the moment by resigning themselves to the sorry conclusion, “It will never happen”. While this may be logical if you subscribe to a narrowly statist approach to service delivery, it is not if you take a broader view. The truth is that there is an important alternative approach to service provision that trades on a commitment to localism and the principles of citizen-led social action which I and others have advocated and sought to help foster over the past decade. If 946 victims of child trafficking are identified over three years, that works out at just over 300 children a year. That is a significant number but rising to the challenge would not be beyond the capacity of the voluntary sector working in partnership with government.

In the run-up to this debate, I was approached by a number of different charities that said that they would be very interested in working with the Government to develop a guardian programme staffed by volunteers. Of course, there would be some cost implications. They made it very plain to me that it would be absolutely imperative that volunteer guardians were properly trained to deal with what can be very challenging situations. They would also need to have ongoing supervision. This would all cost money which would need to be raised somehow. Crucially, however, these costs would be very small when compared with a classical, salaried statist approach to guardianship. The analogy with such a solution would be that of local magistrates, who give huge amounts of time to serve their communities. Similarly I do not think it beyond the wit of man, even in these strained times, to find 300 people nationwide willing to give a few hours a week to help a trafficked child access justice and fair treatment after the trauma of having been kidnapped and enslaved, and of having been abandoned or of having escaped. This is where the drafting of the noble Lord’s Bill is so very helpful. It makes provision for a legal advocate but does not define the arrangements in great detail. Instead, it gives the Secretary of State an order-making power in Clause 9(1). This order-making power could be used to define a very expensive statist approach to guardianship or it could make provision for the Government to work with the voluntary sector to develop a very much more cost-effective guardian, prepared and provided by civil society.

In making this suggestion today, I anticipate two objections to which I would like to respond. First, some will argue that, if charities are expressing an interest but have not yet set anything up, things cannot progress through this Bill. The absence of an up-and-running voluntary sector proposal, however, does not prevent the Government from future-proofing legislation through the provision of regulations that provide for the possibility of working with the voluntary sector on child guardians as and when voluntary initiatives get off the ground. The second objection I anticipate to my proposal for an alternative approach to guardianship pioneered through a government/voluntary sector partnership is that it would be quite a challenge to create a nationwide network and organisation to rise to the guardianship challenge overnight. I agree, and in the spirit of the Localism Bill would like to suggest that either the regulations make provision for—or, if this is not possible, the Bill is amended to make provision for—charities and community groups to bid to take on the development of a system of voluntary local guardians for trafficked children within a local authority area. As with the community right to challenge in the Localism Bill, if the local authority does not deem the proposal to be sufficiently robust it should have the right to reject it, after which the charity should, in turn, have the right to appeal to the Secretary of State or seek a judicial review. Such a legal framework would facilitate a grass-roots approach to guardianship that, in time, would come to cover the UK, I hope. It would not be dependent on government moneys but I am confident that, if it worked, local authorities would recognise that it was in their interests to support the initiative.

In closing, this Bill’s time has come and I hope that the Government are able to support it. Do we want to continue as we are, losing children at a completely unacceptable rate and have no system of guardianship, or would we rather have some form of guardianship? We must not let the best become the enemy of the good. We cannot allow the current situation to continue. In particular, I ask the Minister whether he has recognised the scope for an alternative approach to guardianship, via the “legal advocate” order-making power, and specifically what his view is of the proposal that community groups be given the opportunity to bid to provide that function at no, or low, cost to the state to help these 300 or so children in need every year. Would he be prepared to meet with concerned Peers to discuss this possibility?