Relocation Scheme (Syrians)

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin.

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak about the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme. Like many others in Britain, I have watched with horror as the situation in Syria has developed. I have friends with relatives trapped in Syria, and the pictures of people streaming out of that country have been almost too shocking for me to watch.

Last November, in my capacity as chair of the all-party group on refugees, I travelled to Jordan to witness for myself the conditions in which Syrian refugees are living, to hear their stories and to see first hand the strain that supporting more than half a million extra people is putting on local communities in countries across the region. The details of that visit are, of course, recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Jordan is a relatively small country with a population, before the refugee crisis, of some 6.5 million people, but that figure includes more than 2 million registered Palestinian refugees and tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees, all in what is considered to be one of the world’s 10 most water scarce countries—a country with an economy that has struggled greatly in recent years.

On my first day in Jordan, I visited the Zaatari refugee camp with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which I thank for organising the visit. The Zaatari refugee camp is just a few miles from the Syrian border. At the time of my visit, the camp had a population of around 100,000 Syrians, which made it one of the largest settlements in Jordan.

The UNHCR showed me the route that newly arrived refugees from Syria take when they arrive at the camp, and we began by going to a large tent in which several families were gathered. The families were still recovering from their overnight journey and were yet to go through the formal process for registering as a refugee. Via an interpreter, they told about the journeys they had taken to get to the camp. If they were lucky, the journey had taken several days, but in most cases the journey had taken weeks—weeks across desert, weeks of having to find food and shelter where they could. For much of the journey, they were terrified that the planes they could hear overhead would spot them en route.

When I visited the region, the Jordanian Government had all but closed the border crossing closest to the camp. Most of the families I met at Zaatari had come from Daraa in the south of Syria, not far from the camp itself. The closing of the border crossing forced people to cross hundreds of miles of desert. At best, it took two weeks to reach the only open crossing, which is up in the corner with the Iraqi border.

We heard about families who had endured days out in the rain without shelter, with freezing conditions at night. They were finally picked up in no man’s land between the Syrian and Jordanian borders by the Jordanian army and driven through the night back to Zaatari camp, arriving in the early hours of the morning. Most arrived at Zaatari with very little, perhaps only the clothes on their backs, having fled their farms and villages with what they could carry and having discarded belongings along the route. They were all tired, hungry and covered in dust from the journey.

A short sleep and a shower awaited them on arrival at the camp before they began the registration process with the UNHCR, which entitles refugees to a mattress, some emergency provisions and a tent that will be their home during their time in the camp. It is a meagre existence for families who have typically spent their lives living in first-world conditions not dissimilar to our own, with all the luxuries that we would expect. When we see pictures on the television, it is worth reminding ourselves that most of the people we see have been living in conditions not dissimilar to what we consider to be normal.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She has outlined some of the horrific and awful conditions that face those 500,000 people. Does she agree that we need a strategic international resolution to the issue before those people are affected not only by the oncoming winter but the regional problems that will emerge if the situation is not resolved?

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The situation in Iraq is only making the plight of people in Syria worse, because many of them have fled into Iraq. As it happens, many of those people are travelling up to Kurdistan. Even so, the sheer movement of people in the region is worrying, and it puts extra strain on the countries that are taking the bulk of the refugees. I will return to that point in a moment.

During my visit to Zaatari camp, I met Doctors of the World and Save the Children to see their work supporting refugees. I pay tribute to their work, and I place on the record my admiration for the many people who support those very vulnerable people—they are usually separated from their own family and friends, living a long way away. Despite the hard work of many, conditions in the camp are extremely difficult due to the lack of privacy, the cold of living in a tent and the shared toilet facilities, which have provoked persistent allegations of sexual harassment. That makes it a difficult life for anyone to bear.

Overall, it is the children who stay most in my mind. I was shown some of the provision in the camp, including a football pitch built with funding from South Korea, a playground with swings and a slide, and a project run by Save the Children that does excellent work giving the camp’s children space to learn, play and speak about their traumas, but that is not what stays most in my mind. What stays most in my mind is the sight of children working, as I saw most children doing.

Refugees are not allowed to work in Jordan, yet many are desperate to supplement the small levels of support they receive, so their children work. Children digging are a common sight in the camp, and it took me a minute to notice what they were doing, as at first sight I thought they were playing. When I looked a bit closer and talked to staff in the camp, I realised that they were actually making cement. The Jordanian authorities have banned cement from being brought into Zaatari, so instead the residents of the camp make their own. Groups of children dig through sand and dirt for many hours in the sun to get at the finer material needed to make cement.

Conditions in the camp are so difficult that many choose to leave and take their chances living in neighbouring villages or, if they are lucky, Amman, where they may have friends and relatives. They get more privacy that way, but the conditions for those living outside the camp are also terrible, and it requires raising further funds to support housing costs. Child labour is therefore endemic. In Jordan’s capital, Amman, I visited a team from the Jesuit Refugee Service, which goes out to visit families that are almost invariably living in cold, damp and unfurnished apartments.

None of the children from those families is in school. Instead, many of them are out working to pay the rent for the property in which they live, including a 10-year-old boy I met called Bashir. He is the sole bread winner for his family of six, whose lives are particularly difficult because two of the children have severe disabilities. Bashir sells vegetables on the streets from 8 am until 10 pm. He has no time for school or play, and he is not the only child I saw on that street doing exactly the same thing. That is the reality for refugees in Jordan, and it is a reality mirrored in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I visited Lebanon with the support of World Vision, as I have declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The difference there is that there are no established camps in Lebanon and the nearly 1 million people are dispersed. Only 23% of the international community’s funding commitment has been delivered in 2014, which makes it difficult for the agencies to provide support to register people quickly. That is often a huge blockage.

Has the hon. Lady observed similar problems? Does she agree that our Government need to take a stronger line on encouraging our international partners to ensure that the funding commitment is honoured urgently?

[Sarah Teather]

I did see similar things. There is one set of difficulties for refugees living in camps and another for refugees living in communities. The thing that really bothers refugees living in camps is the lack of privacy and the shared toilet facilities. Most of them are living in tents, although the UNHCR has gradually been trying to replace the tents with more permanent caravans. The lives of people living in camps are extremely hard, and many get to a point at which they can no longer cope. That is when they move out into the community. However, in the community, they are not having their housing costs paid, so they find that they run out of money. Some people cycle between one and the other as they try desperately to find a bearable situation. It is quite obvious that a lot of agencies are not reaching people living in communities. Those who are living in the cities and have been picked up by an agency are luckier than others.

I do not want to go too far into the question of aid, because I am trying to outline some of the conditions before moving on to talk about the relocation scheme, but I hope that the hon. Lady finds the opportunity for a detailed debate on the issues relating to aid in Lebanon and other countries, because they are very important.

I was talking about the five countries—Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt—that currently host 2.8 million refugees. I am going to say that figure again because it is really important: when we talk about the numbers in this country, it is worth bearing in mind that there are 2.8 million refugees, half of whom are children. Of those children, six in 10 are not enrolled in school. Of all households, one in four is headed by women, who face a lone fight for survival. It is extremely difficult for them.

Despite the conditions I saw, nearly every refugee I spoke to was desperate to return home. They consider the phase they are in to be temporary and are desperate for peace to begin so that they can start their lives all over again. However, with no end in sight to the conflict in Syria and with the crisis in Iraq growing bloodier by the day, as we discussed a moment ago, the pressure on neighbouring countries to cope with the constant influx of refugees continues to mount and the prospects for safe return to Syria continue to diminish.

By contrast to Syria’s neighbours, Europe has been relatively unaffected by the refugee crisis. Excluding Turkey from the figures, only 4% of all Syrians who have fled their homeland have sought asylum in Europe. That is a total of 123,600, of whom a mere 4,084 have applied for asylum in the UK. I am going to repeat the number I cited a minute ago: 2.8 million. Of 2.8 million refugees, 4,084 have applied for asylum in the UK. That is a drop in the ocean.

Last September, the UNHCR called on countries to admit 30,000 Syrian refugees on resettlement, humanitarian admission or other programmes by the end of 2014. That 30,000 sounds like a big number, unless we keep repeating 2.8 million. We then remember that it is a really small number. In February, with the refugee crisis growing by the day, the UNHCR expanded its call, seeking an extra 100,000 places in 2015 and 2016. So far, 31,817 resettlement places have been offered by European countries, including Germany offering 20,000, Austria 1,500, Sweden 1,000 and Norway 1,000. The USA has an open-ended number of available places.

What about the UK? The British Government have been among the most generous donors to the humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis, and I want to place on the record my congratulations to them on their strong leadership. However, they have been much slower to move on resettlement issues. In the words of the UNHCR representative to the UK, Roland Schilling:

“this is an extraordinary crisis requiring extraordinary measures”.

He also said:

“International solidarity and burden sharing is now an imperative if we want to ease the suffering of Syrian refugees, assist the neighbouring counties and avoid further destabilization of the region.”

Back in January, I was delighted that the Government announced that the UK would set up the vulnerable persons relocation scheme, which would run in parallel to the UNHCR’s resettlement scheme. The Government were late to make that decision, and it took concerted effort and leadership from the UNHCR, the Refugee Council and Amnesty International, among many others, to persuade them to make it, along with strong advocacy from MPs from across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the Government did make that very welcome announcement.

I was not concerned that the Government were running their own scheme in co-operation with the UNHCR rather than as part of the UNHCR scheme; what is important is that those vulnerable refugees for whom returning home is nigh on impossible—for example, those who have suffered sexual violence, or who would face persecution or need specialised medical care—are offered resettlement in the UK. However, I am extremely concerned that, six months on, very little seems to have come of that announcement.

Answers to parliamentary questions show that so far only 50 refugees have been resettled through the Government’s scheme, although perhaps the Minister will correct me if I have the wrong figure; if it is out of date, he can update us. When the scheme was announced, the Government said that there would be no quota but that those who were deemed the most vulnerable would be prioritised. However, despite the Government’s not providing a quota, it was suggested that the scheme would support

“several hundred people over the next three years”.

Will the Minister explain why the number of people who have managed to come here has so far been so very low? Assurances were given to the House that the Government were committed to the scheme. What has happened to delay the resettlement of refugees? Why has the take-up been so slow?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate and on her outstanding work as chairman of the all-party group on refugees. We will miss her hugely when she leaves the House next May.

One important element might be the involvement of the diaspora community in this country. I have been approached by so many members of the Arab diaspora, including Syrians who have been settled here for many years, who want to help the Government and to assist in bringing more people over. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is important to include members of the diaspora? They might be able to help to increase the numbers from the very low figures we currently have.

[Sarah Teather]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. There are obviously going to be some sensitivities relating to why a person is so vulnerable that they need to be resettled, but there are certainly areas of the country with a significant Syrian diaspora population and the Government should encourage councils in those areas to work to ensure that support systems are in place. I encourage the diaspora to pressure the Government and councils to take part in the scheme and try to increase the number of people we are able to resettle.

I return to the questions I was asking a moment ago. Will the Minister comment on how the figure of “several hundred people” was reached? The VPR scheme appears to be based on need, and that need is obviously increasing, as shown by the UNHCR’s call for more resettlement places. Has the Minister considered re-evaluating that “several hundred” figure upwards? If not, why not? What are the Government doing to ensure that their commitment is delivered and is not just an announcement?

It is worth re-rehearsing the reasons for beginning the scheme in the first place. In the run-up to agreeing to the VPR scheme, Ministers argued that it was more favourable for Syrian refugees to remain in the region and for us to supply aid rather than resettlement places. I and many others made the point that it was not an either/or but a both/and situation; doing one does not preclude the possibility of doing the other well in a targeted and effective way. Both are necessary to cope with the ongoing crisis and to support those countries in the region that are supporting by far the brunt of the refugee population.

The scheme was necessary for the following reasons: first, because some refugees simply cannot adequately be resettled in the region because of their particular vulnerability, as recognised by the name of the scheme; secondly, because, as Roland Schilling hinted at in the quote I read out, there is an acute need to show political solidarity with the countries most affected by the refugee crisis—if we are going to argue that they must keep open their borders so that refugees have a chance at life, we must do something to demonstrate our equal commitment; and thirdly, because if we do not provide safe routes for refugees to travel, they will find unsafe routes, as we are already seeing.

Neighbouring countries are struggling to cope with the numbers, resulting in increased numbers of refugees making dangerous journeys to Europe to seek safety. In 2013, the number of people who arrived in Europe by crossing the Mediterranean sea reached nearly 60,000—almost three times the number who arrived the previous year. That increase has been driven at least in part by the ever-increasing numbers of Syrians taking to boats in the Mediterranean, mostly departing from Libya, Egypt and Turkey. For example, last year Syrians were the No. 1 nationality arriving by sea, with one in four arrivals being Syrian or Palestinians from Syria. Many of them were children, with more than 3,600 Syrian children arriving in Italy last year alone, including 1,224 who were unaccompanied.

This year, the trend has continued. During the first six months of the year, 60,000 people arrived by sea in Italy alone: a fourfold increase on the same period in 2013. Those are not journeys that people choose to take lightly. They are the actions of people who are desperate and see no other option.

In December, some parliamentary colleagues and I boarded a migrant boat on the Thames outside Parliament for international migrants day. It was a tiny boat that had brought around 30 migrants into Lampedusa from Libya. We were given permission to have just eight on board after modifications for safety, and on a fine day on the Thames the boat rocked in ways that gave me a real insight into the dangers that people face travelling on an ocean in an overcrowded boat.

Resettlement programmes offer safe and legal routes for refugees to find safety in Europe. Each year, the UK takes around 750 resettled refugees through the gateway protection programme, something that we as a country should rightly be proud of. We cannot watch the tragedies happening in the ocean around Lampedusa and pretend that it does not have any relevance to us and that we bear no responsibility. Unless we are prepared to offer safe routes into Europe, we bear responsibility for some of those people who drown in the Mediterranean.

I want the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme to be something we can be proud of, like the gateway protection programme. For that to be the case, the Government need to be bolder and more ambitious. The UNHCR now predicts there will be 4.1 million Syrian refugees by the end of this year. Through the vulnerable persons relocation scheme we are on course to have offered only 100 resettlement places by the end of this year. That is 0.002% of all Syrian refugees. We have to do better than that.

We have a proud history of offering sanctuary to those fleeing violence, and we have shown real leadership on humanitarian aid. It is time we lived up to that reputation here and resettled more refugees.

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[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend—I hope I can call him that—for raising that issue. We need to put on record the fact that refugee status is not the same as immigration. There is general concern about immigration, but these people would, I believe, ultimately want to return to their home nation when the situation there was settled and the conflict that drove them out of their home nation in the first place was resolved. There is a willingness to help, and there has been historically.

[Sarah Teather]

Members may not be aware of this, but a poll was done of first-time voters during refugee week. It showed that 70% supported the Government’s decision to resettle in the UK some of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees. I just want to give the Government some confidence that this proposal is popular; they are not working against a tide of popular opinion—people genuinely want this to happen.

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I appreciate the way in which she has phrased her remarks, although Governments sometimes have to do things that are unpopular, even if those are the right things to do. That aside, this is the right thing to do.

In the short time I have, I want to test the Minister on a number of the practicalities of the vulnerable persons relocation scheme. First, I would genuinely welcome an update on how many people have arrived under the scheme, which was announced in January. The last answer to a parliamentary question on this issue was on 24 June—three weeks ago—and it indicated that 50 individuals had arrived as part of the scheme. I would welcome confirmation of how many have arrived as of 16 July. Like other hon. Members, I would also welcome an assessment of how many people are in the pipeline and may arrive in the next six months.

I accept, although I may not agree it was justified, that there were difficulties in establishing the Government’s scheme, rather than using the UN’s existing scheme. I would welcome an update from the Minister on whether proper assessments are in place to deliver a number of individuals. I would also welcome his assessment of how many people will go through the system and arrive in the UK in not only the next six months, but up to the general election next May, although we cannot commit beyond that.

I would welcome the Minister’s assessment of how many local authorities have signed up to assist with the Government’s scheme. I asked the Minister that question earlier this year, but he was unable to given an indication. He may not want to name the local authorities, but it would be helpful if he said that there was a certain number, that they were in London, that they were metropolitan or regional authorities, or that they were in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, just so that we can get some flavour of how the scheme will progress downstream. When people arrive, they have to be dispersed and to have accommodation.

I would welcome an assessment of whether there are problems with local authorities. I have picked up that they may be worried about their ongoing costs and whether the Government will commit to meet those costs beyond a particular time. I would also welcome the Minister’s comments on what he regards as the minimum standard of support for those who arrive. The scheme is different from the UN one, and I would welcome his outlining the support he anticipates those arriving in the UK will receive from the Government.

In a further answer to a parliamentary question from me, the Minister said:

“Costs will be recovered wherever possible, including from the EU.”—[Official Report, 28 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 427W.]

I would welcome an indication from the Minister of how much resource the Government have spent to date on the vulnerable persons relocation scheme, what he expects to spend by the end of the first full financial year, which started in April, and whether he expects to recoup any or all of that money from the EU.

I would also welcome an overall assessment of the longer-term picture. We do not know who will be in government post-May 2015, but does the Minister believe, on the basis of the position today, that the scheme will progress after that time? If so, how will it progress and for how long, given the still devastating political instability in the region? I believe that we need to respond in a positive way, as Opposition Members and the hon. Member for Brent Central have said. She has performed a service in bringing the matter before the House today. The House has been pressing the Government to say how their aspirations are being met on the ground and what support—when, where, how and for how many—they are giving through the scheme. I look forward with interest to hearing the Minister’s response.

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[James Brokenshire]

In respect of liaison, we are working with the UN to identify families and then to ensure that the support that they need is there before they arrive. As I said, two to three families are arriving steadily each month, under the regular plan for continuation of the scheme that we have in place. I will come to the overall numbers and reaffirm the commitment made by the Home Secretary in that regard.

The scheme is to ensure that families receive the support that they need in local areas, given their vulnerability, and central Government are responsible for its overall funding. However, as was mentioned, we will recover costs, if possible, from the EU and other funding sources, and work and discussions continue in that regard.

The Government have delivered what we promised in January: a bespoke scheme to complement the UK’s humanitarian aid, focused on giving sanctuary to the most vulnerable refugees and ensuring they get all the care and support they need in the UK.

[Sarah Teather]

I want to press the Minister a little further, because there is concern about numbers. I want to get from him a sense of whether this scheme is proceeding at the pace he expected. Was the Government’s initial ambition simply that we would only resettle two or three a month or was it higher? Has there been a problem and, if there has, what is it and what are the Government doing to try to resolve it? Two to three families a month is a small number; even my own council manages to move more people into accommodation per month, and this is across the whole of Britain. What is the problem?

[James Brokenshire]

To respond directly to my hon. Friend, we said we would support several hundred of the most vulnerable Syrians over the next three years. It was always envisaged that there would be a focus on a steady process of identifying families and seeing that they have the support that they need to be settled, working with the UNCHR, delivering the commitment to taking several hundred over the next three years. I believe that we remain on course to deliver on the commitment as a result of the excellent collaboration with the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration.

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[James Brokenshire]

That was the basis of the statement made by the Home Secretary in January, on assessing specific needs and the ability to ensure that resources and capabilities could be in place to see that some challenged family groups—it is groups that will see this continued roll-out through the coming months—are supported, to ensure that there is appropriate integration.

I believe that we remain on track to meet the commitments that we stated to the House at the beginning of January. That is obviously in addition to the places available to refugees of other nationalities under our established programmes, which offer the opportunity of a new life in the UK for those in long-term, protracted refugee situations, for whom the only viable long-term solution is resettlement.

[Sarah Teather]

The Minister did not quite answer the question put by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), which I also asked. The Minister mentioned the basis of the Government’s statement, but did not explain how we arrived at the position of saying that we would support several hundred, as opposed to several thousand or tens of thousands. Why that particular figure?

[James Brokenshire]

Clearly, the Government considered what would be a suitable figure, to ensure that the scheme could deliver on its aims and ambitions to meet the needs of some of the most challenged and vulnerable, including some who need specific medical care and assistance, and ensure that they could be resettled within the UK with that support and that package. It was on that basis that the assessment and the programme was drawn up.

Given their vulnerabilities, it is essential that we give beneficiaries of the scheme the specific care they need as soon as they arrive in the UK. We have therefore had to ensure that the support and accommodation they need is properly in place before arrival, and we have been liaising, in the way I mentioned, to achieve this. Successful delivery of the scheme depends on the capacity of local authorities and health bodies to provide the high level of support required by beneficiaries of the scheme. Our emphasis is therefore on quality, not quantity. We are extraordinarily grateful to local authorities and health and education partners who have supported the scheme; they have played a vital role in helping those arriving under the scheme settle into a new, safe life in the UK.

We are, of course, continuing to consider Syrian asylum claims under our normal rules. Since the crisis began in 2011, we have received over 4,000 Syrian asylum claims. During the same time, we have granted asylum or other forms of leave to more than 2,700 Syrian nationals and dependants. We also operate an immigration concession for Syrian nationals who are already legally present in the UK, to enable them to extend their stay or switch immigration category without leaving the UK.

[Sarah Teather]

I should like to take the Minister back a little and question him on local authorities and health services. What is his Department doing to encourage local authorities to take more people? Is he having difficulty persuading them? If so, are there any particular barriers? Knowing that would help those of us who are interested in this issue, partly to see whether there might be anything we can do to help encourage local authorities increase interest. Will he give a bit more information on his discussions in that regard?

[James Brokenshire]

There have been discussions with local authorities, a number of which have been extraordinarily generous and positive in taking part in the scheme. As I said, other local authorities are expressing an interest in joining the scheme. Hon. Members have commented on individuals who have volunteered their homes and their personal support.

Having seen correspondence on my ministerial desk, I am struck by the generosity and desire of so many people wanting personally to see what they can do to provide support and assist in this appalling crisis. There have been ongoing conversations. I am confident that more authorities are coming forward, that we are able to house vulnerable Syrians fleeing the conflict and that we will provide support for them in different parts of the country.

We are, of course, aware that the international community has responded to the crisis in different ways. In the face of such an enormous challenge, it is right that the international community should use all means to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people. It is ultimately for individual states to decide for themselves how they help those displaced by the crisis, but we would not want to see a strengthened focus on resettlement detract from the international community’s continued relief effort to support the majority of refugees who remain in the region and their host countries. I do not see that it has detracted from that, but we need to retain focus on that.

I am conscious that the hon. Member for Strangford is no longer in his place, but I wanted to respond to the point he raised about protecting Christians in Syria. I share his concerns about those who are at risk due to the crisis, including Syrian Christians. There are a growing number of reports of Christians and other minority groups being targeted in Syria. The Syrian National Coalition has responded to those reports, emphasising that they are contrary to the coalition’s vision of a future Syria that protects pluralism and the rights of all its citizens. In that context, it is important to note that it is not only Christians who are being identified, brutalised and murdered as a consequence of their faith; we are aware of other minority communities that are also being targeted on that basis.

It is important to recognise that a brutalising group such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant does not seek to concern itself in virtually anything. ISIL is a brutal organisation that kills those who do not hold the perverse beliefs that it puts forward. That means killing Muslims, whether Shi’a or Sunni, and other minority groups. That is why it is so important that we support the international efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria and that we support the Government of Iraq in finding a solution for that country that brings together all faiths and confronts the challenge that ISIL has brought forward.

To come back to the focus of the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central, we believe that the vulnerable persons relocation scheme will make a real difference to the lives of the most vulnerable refugees, who can only be supported in countries such as the UK. I am delighted to see those who have arrived so far settling into their new homes and receiving the care they need, and I look forward to us welcoming further families to the UK as the scheme progresses. We must not, however, lose sight of the majority, who remain in the region. Continuing our efforts to help them must remain our highest priority, along with providing a long-term political solution for Syria.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Is the Minister able to clarify the numbers involved and how the Secretary of State and, indeed, her predecessors have used those powers? The Joint Committee on Human Rights has repeatedly asked for those data, but has been unable to access them. I have asked similar questions and have also been unable to get the data, so could the Minister tell us how many people have had the power used against them?

[James Brokenshire]

It might be helpful if I explain that since the law was changed in 2006, 27 people have been deprived of their citizenship through different conducive powers. Twenty-six people have been deprived on the grounds of fraud, false representation or concealment of a material fact, and one further person has been notified of the intention to deprive on those grounds. Perhaps that gives my hon. Friend an idea of the context in which the power is used. It is used extremely sparingly: it is not undertaken lightly and the Secretary of State considers its use extraordinarily carefully.

I recognise that the proposals that were suggested when the Immigration Bill was last before this House have, rightly, provoked a great deal of debate and discussion. It is important that the House understands the significance of the measures and that the other place has had an opportunity to consider them after our debate on Report. There has been much debate, both here and in the House of Lords, about the impact of leaving a person stateless, and there are concerns about those who cannot acquire another nationality.

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[James Brokenshire]

I can see that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) wants to make a second intervention, and I will then give way to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland).

[Sarah Teather]

I want to follow up the Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). The Minister said that the issue was about having a route in law to secure another citizenship, but he rather glossed over the practical barriers that many people face in obtaining another citizenship. Will he put on the record more information that might help those of us with concerns about amendment (a), as drafted, particularly about what constitutes an objection to the Home Secretary proceeding in relation to practical impediments to such people gaining another citizenship, rather than the provision necessarily being used as a route in law?

[James Brokenshire]

As I have said, the primary consideration is for the Home Secretary to research various materials and determine whether the individual could reacquire their former nationality, because that is what we are largely talking about in the circumstances of considering such laws. I am sure that she would also have to consider practical issues and the other surrounding circumstances. It is difficult to be specific, as individual facts and cases will no doubt be relevant to the provision. She will, therefore, wish to consider those other practical or logistical arrangements as part of her determination about whether there are reasonable grounds for the individual to secure citizenship from another state.

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[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has made his point. I am sure that he will make it again in the debate. He is right to underline the careful way in which we have framed the amendments.

[Sarah Teather]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[James Brokenshire]

I will take one further round of interventions, then I will make some progress.

[Sarah Teather]

Will the Minister comment on the time frame in which he thinks it is reasonable to expect somebody to obtain another citizenship? In the Government’s mind, would somebody be stateless for two years, five years or 10 years? Is there any sense of how long the process could go on for?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I have tabled a series of manuscript amendments today to seek clarification from the Minister. I hope that he will have an opportunity to respond to my points at the end of the debate.

Let me deal first with amendment (a) to Lords amendment 8, which is my principal concern. The ending of routine detention of children in the immigration system is one of the areas of which I am most proud in my record in government. The Government can be extremely proud of that and it has made a significant difference to many children’s lives. Many thousands of children used to be detained in the immigration system and there is significant evidence of the harm that that causes to children’s mental health.

It was very hard work to get to the 2010 agreement, which followed a painstaking process of negotiation, but it has made a significant difference. Trying to enshrine it in legislation is an extremely positive step and it is important that what happened before can never happen again, but with these issues the devil is always in the detail. I am not yet persuaded that the amendments, which we have not had an opportunity to debate as they were tabled in the Lords, have the detail correct.

I have a number of questions, which I have not been able to get answers to in private, so I hope that the Minister might be able to answer them today. I tabled amendment (a) because I do not understand why we would reasonably need powers to detain unaccompanied children in this way. As drafted, the Government amendments afford less protection to unaccompanied children than to those who have a claim as part of a family. If they are with their family, the family returns panel process is enacted. No such protection applies to unaccompanied children.

If a family needs to be held prior to deportation for a short period of time they are held in Cedars, which has Barnardo’s and specialist social workers working with it and has a carefully designed process to ensure that the welfare of children is paramount. An unaccompanied child who needs to be held for a short period of time will be held in a holding facility, and at the moment they do not have any rules for best practice. Successive Governments have held that question in abeyance and my colleague Lord Avebury has managed to drag out of the Government a commitment finally to try to bring forward some rules. I am very pleased to see that, but the conditions are very different from those in Cedars.

The amendments, as drafted, do not quite meet the Government’s guidelines. I acknowledge that there is currently no time limit for the detention of unaccompanied minors, so the 24-hour limit in the Government’s amendments is at least a step forward, but chapter 31 of the immigration and nationality directorate instructions states that

“detention will occur only on the day of the planned removal to enable the child to be properly and safely escorted to their flight and/or to their destination.”

Although the amendments imply that people could be held overnight, the rules do not suggest that, so I would appreciate the Minister’s response on that point. I see that he is dealing with a matter of whipping, so I do not know whether he heard me. Perhaps he can be refuelled from the Box to ensure that that point is answered.

Chapter 45 of the enforcement instructions and guidance states:

“Unaccompanied children (i.e. persons under the age of 18) must only ever be detained in very exceptional circumstances, for the shortest possible time and with appropriate care”.

The new clause inserted by Lords amendment 8 also contains the power for unaccompanied children to be removed without removal directions already being in place so long as the decision whether or not to give such directions is likely to be positive from the Home Office’s point of view. That does not seem to me to be very satisfactory.

The serious question is: why do we need to detain unaccompanied children at all? I have asked officials about particular cases in which this might apply, and they gave me the example of a Japanese student who wanted to come to the UK to study but found that the institution they were going to study at had suddenly been dissolved. We would need to put them on a plane rapidly, so we would have to hold them for a short period of time. The Minister gave the example of someone who might have to be detained for their own safety to prevent them from being trafficked. That makes me sigh, because it is a typical Home Office response. The Home Office always assumes that the natural reaction to any problem is enforcement, but our duty in this case is protection rather than enforcement. We tend to mistake those two things and it is a psychological trait of the Home Office always to assume that the answer is enforcement and that is precisely why it cannot always be trusted to come up with policy in this area.

[James Brokenshire]

indicated dissent.

[Sarah Teather]

I am sorry that the Minister is upset, but it means that he has heard me.

If an unaccompanied, vulnerable child turns up at a police station, the police do not put them in a cell, but get in touch with social services. Why can we not do the same for unaccompanied children who come here as migrants or to apply for asylum? Why do we need to detain them? Surely our duty is to protect them. There is plenty of legislation that allows us to do that, and I have not heard an example of detention being required as opposed to protection with appropriate powers of social services.

What really bothers me is whether this is a preamble to a more significant change in policy on the forced removal of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children. Currently, the United Kingdom does not routinely remove unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children, but it is probably the worst kept secret that the Home Office wants to be able forcibly to remove more unaccompanied children, particularly to Albania and Afghanistan. My concern is that the Government’s amendment leaves wide open the possibility of a drastic expansion of forced removal of children. Instead of moving towards the ending of detention of children for immigration purposes, the clause could allow more unaccompanied children to be detained for the purposes of removal. I am desperately hoping that the Minister will tell me that my fears are ill founded, and I will be delighted if he does so. I hope that he can answer my other specific points about why we cannot simply involve social services and protect children in the small number of such cases instead of detaining them using enforcement powers.

My amendments to Government amendments 6 and 7 also relate to child detention and essentially ask for clarification and strengthening of our 2010 commitment not to split families to achieve compliance with the immigration process. The Minister will be aware that Barnardo’s, which works closely with the Government at Cedars, has produced a report stating that family splits are, unfortunately, sometimes used to effect enforcement of immigration provisions. We agreed in 2010 that we would not do that, and my amendments seek to strengthen that commitment and to make it clearer. In particular, there are sometimes cases when a parent lives away from the family temporarily. The obvious case is when they are in immigration detention, but similar cases are when someone has been sectioned, is in hospital or is in prison. I am worried that the legislation as drafted does not capture such cases or consider the best interests of children, and is not in the spirit of the agreement that we negotiated in 2010.

Finally, I tabled an amendment to Lords amendment 19 to clarify that the best interests of the child should continue to be a primary consideration in all cases involving children. The Joint Committee on Human Rights criticised the Government, saying that they have

“not explained how in practice the provisions in the Bill are to be read alongside the section 55 duty. Without such explanation there is a danger that front-line immigration officials administering the legal regime will be unclear about the relationship between the children duty in section 55 and the new tests introduced by the Bill which use different and unfamiliar language.”

Lords amendment 19 goes some way to meeting that concern, and I explored some of the issues in amendments tabled on Report. It confirms that it is necessary to take into account the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK, but I am worried that it does not go far enough because the section 55 duty applies only to the Home Secretary and not to the courts. My amendment makes it clear that consideration of children’s welfare should always be the primary concern. That is necessary because there is growing evidence that recent immigration rules are negatively impacting on decision makers’ understanding of what factors should be taken into account when considering the best interests of children. For example, research last year by Greater Manchester’s immigration aid unit into unaccompanied, asylum seeking children found that, in seven of 10 cases analysed, the Home Office failed to carry out any determination of the child’s best interests. Similarly, last year’s audit of Home Office procedures by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees highlighted the lack of any systematic collection or recording of information necessary to determine a child’s best interests. That includes the lack of a process to obtain the view of the child. This proposal simply tries to make sure that the Government do the things they say are their priority. At the moment, the Bill still leaves some confusion.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I want briefly to seek clarification in relation to international students and the changes that have been made to the Bill in relation to landlord checks. I pay tribute to Lord Hannay and others who have pressed this point in the House of Lords. I regret that students are included in the Bill at all, and I know that many Members on both sides of the House feel that they have no place in this debate.

The point relates to the changes that have given powers to universities to nominate students to occupy accommodation. That is a welcome move, and I am glad that the Government have accepted it. Speaking for the Government, Lord Taylor said in the other place that

“nominating is just the naming of an individual as being a student at a higher education institution…It is a form of vouching for the genuineness of the student’s immigration status. That is all.”

Baroness Warwick asked whether it would be

“legal and proper for the landlord to enter into that arrangement even though at that point, because of the time involved and so on, the potential tenant has not actually got their visa?”

This is crucial, because there is a brief period between being accepted into an institution and being enrolled during which many students sort out their accommodation. In response to Baroness Warwick, Lord Taylor said:

“Yes, absolutely: that is the case.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1056-1057.]

That involves a potential contradiction.

Will the Minister confirm in his closing remarks, or in intervening on me now, that an institution can nominate a person who has accepted a university place and has been given a confirmation of acceptance to study, but is awaiting a visa, so that they can confirm their accommodation before they have been issued with their visa?

Asylum Seekers (Support)

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State if she will make a statement on support provided to meet the essential living needs of asylum seekers under sections 95 and 98 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Asylum seekers are supported by the Home Office if they are destitute. The support package usually consists of accommodation, with gas, electricity, water and other utilities provided free, plus a weekly cash allowance to cover essential living needs. The cash allowance is currently £36.62 a week for a single adult, but it is higher in cases where there are children in the household. A family of two adults and two children would receive approximately £180 a week.

The Government completed a full review of payment levels in June 2013. The review concluded that the levels were sufficient to meet essential living needs. That decision was challenged in the courts by Refugee Action, a group that campaigns for asylum seekers, and the court issued its judgment yesterday. It decided that there were some errors in the way in which the 2013 review had been conducted. It found, for example, that items such as household cleaning products and non-prescription medicines should have been considered as essential and therefore factored into the overall assessment of the adequacy of the payment levels. The court did not decide that the current payment levels were too low. That question will be considered by the Government in a fresh review of the payment levels. We are of course considering the full implications of the judgment, and whether or not to appeal.

[Sarah Teather]

The Minister is correct to say that yesterday’s judgment did not comment on the generosity of the levels, but it was absolutely damning about the process that the Home Secretary had used in order to come to her decision. It found that she had misunderstood or misapplied information, that she did not know, or ignored, basic aspects of her Government’s education policy, and that she had failed to gather sufficient information. She has been told to go away and do the whole thing again.

Is not the problem that this decision is a personal fiefdom of the Home Secretary, driven entirely by base political motives? She can and does ignore detailed representations by other Ministers across the Government. She can and does ignore parliamentarians, including the findings of a cross-party inquiry that I chaired last year. She can and does ignore the pleas of those who work with victims of torture, who say that she is exacerbating their trauma and forcing them into severe poverty. It is an indictment of the current process that Refugee Action and the Migrants Law Project had to take the Home Secretary to court to get any kind of oversight of the process.

Is it not simply time for Ministers to accept that the Home Office cannot be trusted to make a rational or humane decision alone on this matter, and to submit to a transparent process with cross-government oversight, which might improve its data and force the Home Secretary to come to Parliament to announce them? Finally, does the Minister accept that half this agony would be avoided if the Government allowed asylum seekers to work and pay their own way, as many of the highly skilled individuals who come here seeking sanctuary are desperate to do?

[James Brokenshire]

The UK has a proud history of granting asylum to those who need it, and the Government are committed to providing support to those who would otherwise be destitute while their claims are being considered. The payment levels to asylum seekers need to be considered as part of the overall support package. Accommodation—plus utilities such as gas and electricity —is provided free.

I do not accept my hon. Friend’s characterisation of the assessment process. A detailed assessment was concluded last June and, indeed, we will carry out a further assessment of levels this year to take into account relevant factors and to assess whether there should be any change. I can certainly assure her that we will consider these matters very carefully.

My hon. Friend makes various comments on the judgment itself. It is a very detailed judgment—it runs to about 90 pages and the Home Office is analysing the detail carefully and, indeed, whether we will be appealing it.

The Home Office takes its responsibilities in respect of asylum support extremely seriously in setting the rates and considering what is appropriate. We believe that it does provide support to enable those who seek asylum and who are destitute to see that their claims are decided, and that support is given to them during that process.

Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre (Detainee Death)

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman has highlighted some significant issues. There have been some shocking and disturbing cases in the past few years and he has referred to them. He will know that there are ongoing police investigations and criminal proceedings in those cases, which makes it difficult for me to comment on any specifics. I underline to him that the Home Office has conducted a review of the methods of restraint and the use of force in the difficult circumstances of removal. The development of new bespoke training packages for escorts during the removal process has been undertaken by the National Offender Management Service. An independent advisory panel for non-compliance management, chaired by Stephen Shaw, a former prisons and probation ombudsman, was appointed to assess the restraint techniques and the safety of the proposed systems. That panel’s work is literally due to conclude in the next day or so and I look forward to its recommendations, because it is important that staff are fully cognisant and trained. Certainly, I underline the key message of holding responsibility for managing those in detention.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

During my various visits to detention centres, I have been alarmed by the number of times I have heard from detainees that they have difficulty accessing health care, usually in direct contradiction to the reports being put out by management. The situation is particularly alarming given the number of detainees with serious health problems. The Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has referred to a report by Women for Refugee Women that highlights the number with particular health difficulties, and we know that those in detention often find that things get worse. What is the Minister doing to get underneath the skin of the data that management put out about access to health, and what is he doing to ensure that those with serious mental health and physical problems are not in detention at all?

Immigration Bill

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

If citizenship was granted purely because someone used fraud or deception, did not disclose a material fact or used incorrect facts, and if we would not have granted citizenship had we known the full facts, the decision would be to deprive that individual of citizenship. I will not comment on the type of case that the hon. Lady has set out, but the initial question would be whether citizenship would have been granted if the full circumstances had been known at the time of the application. If the full facts had been known, would the decision have been not to grant citizenship? If so, the decision would be to remove citizenship.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Yesterday the House heard many noble speeches about our international obligations and humanitarian protection led by the Home Secretary. I was the first to congratulate her on that. Today, as the clause is drafted, she appears to be asking for a blank cheque to remove people’s rights to have rights. I wonder whether she can see the irony in that and whether our international leadership does not also cover such an important fundamental right?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I am making a few comments about the new clause. I would like to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton speak about it and hear whether he intends to press it to a vote.

I think that where children are involved the new clause weakens the Bill, and as I have said, there are concerns about how the measure would operate and its practical implications. I think it would lead to circumstances in which—potentially for a significant period of time—we would not be able to deport people who otherwise we would be able to deport.

[Sarah Teather]

Given the strong line the Home Secretary has taken on trafficking, how does she feel about the exclusion of article 4 of the European convention on human rights from the new clause?

[Mrs May]

I have indeed taken a strong line on trafficking, but the exclusion of certain other articles of the convention in the new clause is one of the aspects that makes it incompatible with that convention and raises the issue of how it would operate. I have already indicated that I think the new clause is incompatible with the European convention, and I am raising some of the other practical issues that I think would be its impact. I think we will find it harder to deport people because of some aspects of the new clause, and that more cases will go to the European Court as that would become the first decision maker in a number of cases. There would be considerable litigation in the domestic courts if we found ourselves seeking to remove someone contrary to a rule 39 indication. Those are practical issues about whether we can deport individuals.

I recognise the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, and others, about our ability to deport foreign criminals, and in relation to the European convention on human rights. I have said on many occasions that it is necessary for the Government to determine and sort out our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights, and as far as I am concerned, nothing should be off the table in doing that. Today we are considering a Bill that will deal with the deportation of foreign criminals.

--- Later in debate ---

In the light of the Government’s own assessments, we think that the cost of people going to judicial review, rather than tribunal, might be about £10 million year, and that Her Majesty’s Treasury will lose about £4.2 million a year because tribunal costs will not be met. There are cost implications, never mind the issue of basic fairness, which is that the sort of people currently having their appeals upheld at tribunal will not have that opportunity in the future.

[Sarah Teather]

Has the shadow Minister noticed an anomaly that concerns me and on which I hope the Home Secretary can give some clarification? It appears that if someone applies for variation in leave, that leave is protected if their administrative review is pending, but not if they appeal.

[Mr Hanson]

That is another issue. Our amendment 1 would remove clause 11 from the Bill and allow the Government to reflect on the concerns raised by the hon. Lady—she speaks from the Government Benches, but I appreciate that she has an independent frame of mind—and on those expressed outside, in evidence to the Committee, and by my right hon. and hon. Friends about the impact of abolishing tribunals on the sort of people currently having their appeals upheld. Individuals are having their appeals upheld at tribunal, but under clause 11 such appeals will not be possible. Our proposal is either, in amendment 1, to remove clause 11 or, if the Home Secretary cannot accept amendment 1, in new clause 13, to provide for an assessment beforehand so that we can consider this matter in detail.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be pleased to hear that I am coming to my final point, although I have only spoken for half an hour—considerably less time than the Home Secretary took. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton has a range of support for his new clause 15, and in due course I will want to hear again what he has to say about it. Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I want to see foreign criminals deported. That is right and proper. I was pleased, as well as doing counter-terrorism, to serve under my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in the Ministry of Justice. He went to Vietnam to negotiate a deal to deport terrorists and prisoners there, and I went to Nigeria to do the same. We also negotiated a deal with the EU for it to accept foreign criminals, which the Government are now implementing and from which they are reaping the benefits. We have an interest in ensuring that foreign nationals living in this country who commit crimes and go to prison serve a sentence and then are ultimately returned to their home state.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend has made a perfectly reasonable point, but the new clause is tailored to serious criminals, which is all the more reason for it to be considered reasonable and proportionate. Of course, if the Government wish to insert a provision covering persistent petty offenders—which would be far more likely to attract challenges under article 8, because in the case of less serious offences deportation is more likely to be deemed disproportionate—they will be able to do so. However—it is odd to be attacked for not being tough enough—I think that the main focus should be on those who are jailed for a year or more. That is the model in the UK Borders Act 2007.

[Sarah Teather]

May I take up a point that I made to the Home Secretary earlier? As the hon. Gentleman knows, people are often trafficked, but the fact that they have been trafficked is not recognised immediately. Such people may have committed crimes while being trafficked, and may have served sentences of more than a year. It seems that, as a consequence of the restrictive nature of the new clause, we would be willing to send those people back to enslavement following the removal of article 4.

[Mr Raab]

That is an important point, but I think that I can give the hon. Lady some reassurance. If I understood her correctly, she was suggesting that because article 4 would be removed as an excuse for trumping deportation, we could send people home to be subject to slavery or something akin to it. That would automatically be caught by article 3, which covers “inhumane or degrading treatment”. There has never, to my knowledge, been a case in either the Strasbourg or the United Kingdom courts in which deportation has been trumped on the basis of article 4. It would already be covered under article 3, which is very well-trodden ground. I therefore think that her entirely legitimate concern has been catered for, but if she wishes to intervene again, I will give way to her.

[Sarah Teather]

What about other matters relating to the convention, such as the right to practise one’s religion and the right to a private life in relation to one’s sexuality? Is there not a possibility that people would be sent back to a country where they would be persecuted?

[Mr Raab]

From the sound of it, I have reassured the hon. Lady on the first point, which is good news. On the second point, a deportation order has never been trumped on those other grounds. The only grounds on which that has happened are article 2 on the right to life, article 3 on the right not to be tortured and article 8, which now makes up the lion’s share. I therefore do not think that that problem would arise. She talked about persecution. Let us be clear that any persecution that threatens life or limb is already caught by the exceptions under articles 2 and 3. I have deliberately preserved those because the hon. Members from across the House who support the new clause and I support the absolute prohibition on torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. If she is really concerned about this focused issue, those exceptions will deal with all those cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for keeping the House updated on that important development.

The key point is that it is clear from the text of the European convention—I have referred to paragraph 2 of article 8—that, under the terms expressly set down by the architects of the convention, the new clause is proportionate. It is proportionate because it applies only to serious criminals who have been imprisoned for a year or more. It therefore ought to withstand any appeal to Strasbourg.

I remind the House that we are not entirely sure how any litigation in Strasbourg on this issue would pan out, whether on the basis of the Bill or the new clause. That is partly because the 47-member-state Council of Europe, to which the Strasbourg Court is accountable, has made two recent declarations in Izmir and Brighton calling on Strasbourg in unequivocal language to meddle less in immigration cases. We therefore have every reason to believe that we will have a greater margin of appreciation in future. I pay tribute to the Minister without Portfolio, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), for the efforts that he made when he was Justice Secretary to achieve those resolutions, which have paved the way for the new clause.

[Sarah Teather]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Raab]

I will not give way again, because I have been reasonably generous to the hon. Lady and I want to give other Members an opportunity to speak.

If we are honest, we know that any serious reform in this area risks being frowned on by the Strasbourg Court at some point in the future. The goalposts keep on shifting. That is how we got to this point in the first place. However, the same objection applies to the Bill. As the president of the Supreme Court and the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, have stated many times, the last word on the balance between human rights and public policy must remain with the UK courts and, ultimately, with elected and accountable law makers in Parliament.

There has been a lot of heady talk about human rights reform. Today, we have an opportunity to do something about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is confusing section 3 with section 2. Section 3 says that the courts must read legislation

“in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights.”

That is the black letter text of the convention articles. Section 2 says that a court or tribunal that is determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right “must take into account” the judgments and jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court. It is in respect of section 2 and the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court that our courts have extended the words “take account” to mean “follow”. That has been the basis of some of our problems, including the over-extension and elaboration—unnecessary in my judgment—of article 8 rights.

I am aware that there are others who wish to speak, so I will finish there.

[Sarah Teather]

I have a number of amendments in this string. I wish to speak to amendments 56 and 57, which relate to immigration detention. Amendments 2 to 5 and 58 are around the best interests of children. Amendment 61 is a sunset clause, which relates to legal aid. Amendment 60 relates to the use of force. I want to make a couple of remarks relating to Opposition amendment 1 and to speak against new clause 15 and Government new clause 18. I can hear Members groaning that I will be speaking for absolutely ages. They will be amazed because I can be remarkably quick.

Amendments 56 and 57 seek to impose some kind of challenge and limit on detention. The UK detains more people under immigration powers than almost any other country in Europe. Only Greece detains more, but it tends to detain people only for very short periods of time as they come to the border. In fact, we are unique in detaining people indefinitely. That experience of indefinite detention causes profound stress to the individuals concerned, many of whom suffer from mental health difficulties as a result of the journey that they made to get here, and many exhibit profound mental health difficulties during their period in detention.

Furthermore, in many cases, we have no chance of removing the people whom we have in detention to a third country. Often, people are left languishing in detention for extended periods because we are unable to move them to the country of their origin either because it is not safe to do so or because we cannot obtain travel papers. We have been repeatedly criticised for the number of people we detain and for the length of the period for which we detain them. Indeed, the detained fast track system seems to be largely used for administrative purposes. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Chamber has suddenly got very noisy. The hon. Lady is making important points, and other Members should do her and the House the courtesy of listening. If conversations have to take place, there are plenty of places outwith the Chamber in which those conversations can occur.

[Sarah Teather]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The detained fast-track scheme seems to be a process largely of detaining people for administrative ease, often for extended periods, despite its name. It is as if we file people until we want to move them somewhere else and they end up being treated like blocks of paper rather than individual human beings.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that much of the detention is essentially punitive and without benefit of due process? We should always remember that these people have committed no crime.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. Of course, it is not effective in doing what we claim to be trying to deliver. The people detained over a long period of time are those whom we are least likely to be able to remove. Detention Action monitored long-term detainees and found that only a third were ultimately removed or deported. The longer somebody is in detention, the less likely they are to be removed. Extreme stress is caused to the individual, extreme expense is caused to the UK and no benefit is gained for the wider common good.

Amendment 56 seeks to limit the time of detention to 28 days, forcing the Home Office to do what most other countries in Europe have managed to do and find some other way of enforcing removal without putting people into detention. Indeed, 82% of returned asylum seekers in Sweden left voluntarily. When I was a children’s Minister I had a great deal of discussion with the Home Office about ending child detention and we eventually managed to reach an agreement. I was pleased to hear the Home Secretary say in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that we would put some of those provisions on the face of the Bill. I shall await the detail with interest and hope that everything we agreed in 2010 will be included and that it will not just be an agreement in headline.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

There is of course a question mark over whether some detainees are minors. They often arrive in this country without the appropriate documentation and it can be difficult to know whether they are past the age of majority. Those youngsters, who subsequently prove to be minors, are still kept in detention.

[Sarah Teather]

There is a particular difficulty with the speed at which we determine the age of young people at the moment and it varies significantly from one borough to another. I encourage the Home Office to work closely with local authorities to try to speed that process up.

My point is that we have managed to do such a thing for families with children and a great deal of learning has happened in the Home Office that we could extend to adults held in detention. We are managing to remove people whom we want to remove without putting them into detention, and a great deal of good and innovative thinking has been happening. It would be fantastic if good practice in one area of the Home Office was to extend to other areas of the Department. A 28-day limit would sharpen the mind of the Home Office and encourage it to get on and do that.

Amendment 57 would ensure that people had an opportunity to challenge their detention by ensuring that it came up regularly for review. The review would first happen shortly after they went into detention and then at intervals thereafter. The UNHCR has repeatedly asked us to look at that and I strongly urge the Home Secretary to consider it.

Unfortunately, in direct competition with my proposals to try to encourage better due process for people in detention, the Government are proposing to remove people’s rights to apply for bail. That is a very retrograde step. I know that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has tabled amendments on this matter, and if he decides to press them to a vote I will certainly support them.

I have also tabled a raft of amendments on the best interests of children. The drafting of clause 14 appears to imply that certain children are somehow invisible, which goes completely contrary to the work I did in government as a children’s Minister. It was with significant frustration that I read the wording used in the Bill, which, from my perspective, undermines the work we did to end child detention and put in place in the Home Office a practice of considering the best interests of children. More to the point, it runs contrary to existing law. At worst it is unlawful, at best it is deeply and profoundly confusing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Lady is not talking about new clause 14 at this stage, because it comes in the next but one group of amendments. She may refer to it, but she must stick to this group of amendments.

[Sarah Teather]

I am trying to explain why I have tabled my amendments to the clause, as amendments 2 to 5 relate directly to clause 14, as do my other amendments. I cannot explain them without referring to clause 14 to clarify, I am afraid.

A lot of people might be under a misapprehension, as regards the redrafting of what is in the public interest, that the measure will only apply to a very small group of foreign national prisoners. My point is that it will apply to anybody who attempts to make an article 8 appeal.

Let me make a point about new clause 15 that follows on directly from those points. It seeks to move things in the opposite direction from the proposals I have been trying to make. I find it slightly astonishing that any hon. Member would put their name to something that states that it is okay to cause serious harm to children, to cause manifest harm to children and to cause overwhelming harm to children, and that it is only not okay to cause manifest and overwhelming harm to children. Indeed, it has to be the child of the particular individual concerned and it is otherwise fine to cause manifest and overwhelming harm to any child. I am absolutely astonished that hon. Members think that that is okay.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

As a Member who put her name to the clause that the hon. Lady is disputing, may I say that if she looks at the intent behind it, she will see that Members such as me and others across the House wish to see the greater good of the population trump the good of the individual? She is losing sight of other people who may be harmed, who might be other people’s children.

[Sarah Teather]

I think I probably do not share her utilitarian view of what the greater good is. I probably have a slightly different view about the common good and do not think that that includes causing serious or manifest or overwhelming harm to children. That is why the UK is a signatory to the UNCRC, and why we believe that the best interests of children should always take prime consideration and that the law should be blind in that regard, irrespective of someone’s immigration status. It would be a sad day if the House legislated to say that it is okay to cause serious harm to children and indeed that it is okay to do that in order to pacify a Conservative party rebellion. That is not a good reason for legislating.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady is placing the blame on the wrong person. If someone is deported for committing a serious crime, it is the fault of that person, not of the state for following the consequence of what that person has chosen to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

But is it the fault of their child? That is the point. The law allows us to weigh these tests up and it does not always say that if someone has a child there is not a case for deporting them, but it allows us to look at individual cases. The law must look at individual cases and not set hard and fast lines.

[Ms Abbott]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it has long been a principle of British law that we cannot hold children responsible for the wrongdoing of their parents? I do not know how many Members would want to live in a society where some children have more value than others.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. The law must have the flexibility to look at individual cases. If we draw bright lines in the sand, it becomes difficult for judges to take into account individual circumstances.

Automatic deportation goes slightly wider than the issue of children. Further to the discussion on new clause 15, I want to raise a constituent case. A young man came here as an extremely young child and was given refugee status. His parents then had some difficulties and he was taken into care. His mother had mental health difficulties. The local authority negligently placed him into the foster care of a couple who were drug dealers and continued to engage in significant criminal activity during the course of which the young child was profoundly damaged, as one might well expect. The local authority was found criminally negligent in this case.

By the time the child turned 18 he was convicted of a serious crime. He went to prison. He would have been in prison for long enough to quality for automatic deportation, but he had been in the UK since he was a very young child. He had been given refugee status. There was no family for him to go back to. By all decent recognition of what had happened to him, the state had been negligent in how it treated him. I cannot see any way in which that young man would have protection under new clause 15 as it is drafted.

I come back to the point about what is in the public interest. I do not want to live in a society where judges cannot look at the detail of cases such as that of my constituent. We have had some debate about whether new clause 15 is in accordance with the European convention on human rights. I have had advice from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association that the Home Secretary was unlikely to be able to sign up to saying that the provision was compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, which would make it difficult for it to go into the House of Lords. There was a mischievous moment when I wondered whether, despite my abhorrence for the new clause, I should support it in order to destroy the Bill completely, given that I do not seem to be able find enough people to vote against the Bill to wreck it, which is what I would really truly like to do, as there is little in it that I like.

We have not had much opportunity to discuss amendment 60. It relates to limits on the use of force by immigration officers and tries to bring it back to the status quo. This seems to be another example of giving a blank cheque, and to an organisation that has hardly covered itself in glory where use of force is concerned. We have had issues with use of force against pregnant women—something on which Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons was extremely critical of the Home Office. We have had the death of Jimmy Mubenga. Those are just two recent examples. It seems to me that a failing organisation that is poorly managed should never be given increased power to use force, especially as many of the functions of immigration officers do not properly involve the use of force at all.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I commend the hon. Lady for tabling amendment 60. Jimmy Mubenga died in horrific circumstances. Is she aware that in many cases the forced removal is undertaken by contractors on behalf of the Home Office and those contractors are not necessarily trained in what they do? Appalling injuries take place and a large number of deportations are stopped because the airlines refuse to take people in an unsafe situation.

[Sarah Teather]

That is exactly the point. The Bill effectively gives all immigration officers retrospective freedom against any Act that has previously come into force, any power that immigration officers have and any future power that they have to use force to do what they want to do. Given the problems that we have already seen in making sure that contractors and immigration officers follow best practice, know what they are doing and are properly trained, how on earth the Home Office will be able to devise a training programme to cover every possible power that immigration officers have is beyond me.

I dare say that in most things that immigration officers can do, the reasonable force that is appropriate will be zero. Will the Home Office issue guidance for every possible power that an immigration officer has? I go back to the point I made earlier. The Bill goes against the agreement that we made in relation to treatment of children and families that we would end child detention. The agreement was much wider, I hasten to add, than families being kept in Yarl’s Wood. It was about working with children and families and the extent to which force would be used throughout the process. The power in schedule 1 is very worrying, and there has been no press scrutiny of it.

Labour amendment 1 would remove the provisions in the Bill that limit the right of appeal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Before the hon. Lady comes on to her next point, the House appreciates that she has many important points to make and that this is a large group of amendments and new clauses. Her speech is perfectly in order, but now that she has spoken for more than 20 minutes, she might consider drawing her remarks to a conclusion. She might not be aware that I have had notice that at least 14 other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate, and time is limited.

[Sarah Teather]

I do not have many other points to make.

I want to make a point about amendment 1 that has not been made. There has been a great deal of guff about the Bill being focused on restricting the rights of appeal of people who do play by the rules. It is important to stress that the restrictions on appeal in the Bill are exactly for those who do play by the rules. They are for people who come here to work and for family purposes. When taken together with the changes that make it more difficult to get a spousal visa, it is hard not to see this as an attack on family life. An administrative review is simply not equivalent to an appeal. An organisation such as the Home Office cannot be expected to challenge itself. I would be grateful if the Home Secretary addressed the point that I made in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) about the anomaly with respect to administrative review and appeal when applying for variation in leave.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

We have given a great deal of thought to the way in which our measures will operate. The changes that we propose will strengthen our ability to deal with those who are here illegally. We are, for example, strengthening our ability to enforce penalties for those who employ illegal workers. The system enabling employers to determine whether the workers whom they employ are here legally or not is in place, is well known and is running properly, and the same will apply in the other areas that we are discussing.

The Bill will also help to discharge the Government’s commitment to introduce exit checks on people leaving the UK in order to tackle overstaying and prevent people from fleeing British justice.

Let me now go into a little more detail, although not too much, because I know that others wish to speak. The Bill substantially reforms the removals system, and ensures that illegal migrants who have no right to be in the UK can be returned to their own countries more quickly. We inherited a complex system involving multiple stages before an individual can be removed, allowing numerous challenges to be issued during the process. The Bill will ensure that we adopt a system whereby only one decision is made. Individuals will be informed of that decision, and if the decision is that they can no longer stay in the UK, immigration enforcement officials will be allowed to remove them if they do not leave of their own accord. The Bill also reforms the system whereby illegal migrants held in detention centres are allowed to apply for bail, and it gives immigration officers stronger powers so that they can establish the identity of illegal immigrants by checking fingerprints and searching for passports.

The current appeals system is also very complex. There are 17 different immigration decisions that attract rights of appeal, but the Bill will cut that number to four, which I think will prevent abuse of the appeal process. It will also ensure that appeals address only fundamental rights. It will make it easier to deport foreign criminals by requiring individuals to appeal from abroad after deportation, unless they face the prospect of serious harm.

[Sarah Teather]

I do not intend to make a speech, because I know that others wish to speak, but an issue that has not been mentioned at all today is health. The organisation Doctors of the World, whose clinic I visited last week, is very worried about the Bill’s impact on those who do not have residence status. Such people are often extremely vulnerable, and many have been trafficked.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady has raised a number of concerns about aspects of the Bill, and has indicated her objection to it overall. A number of the changes that we are making relate to migrants’ access to services, but I think that the issues to which she has just referred are within the purview of the Department of Health, and are therefore not relevant to the Bill.

We are strengthening our ability to deal with cases in which it has not been possible to deport foreign criminals because they have had recourse to an argument relating to article 8. That is a qualified right under the European convention, and we are now putting it into primary legislation. We expect the courts to respond appropriately.

We will require migrants who will be here temporarily to pay a surcharge so that they contribute to the NHS. I think that most hard-working people would agree that that is appropriate. We have improved our ability to deal with sham marriages.

The deprivation of citizenship is an important new power. As I indicated to the shadow Minister for Immigration, we are happy to discuss with him the full impact of that power. The Minister for Immigration will have those discussions with him. What we are doing meets our international obligations and will strengthen our ability to deal with those who wish to act in a way that is seriously prejudicial to the UK.

The Government are getting to grips with immigration. Net migration is down by nearly a third since its peak in 2010. Net migration from outside the EU is down to 140,000 and is at its lowest level since 1998. The reduction is being driven by cuts in the number of people coming to this country. In 2013, there were nearly 100,000 fewer people immigrating to the UK than in 2010.

We are making good progress with our reforms. We are transforming the immigration and border system. We have abolished the UK Border Agency, established two new operational commands, tightened immigration routes where abuse was rife, strengthened the system of granting students permission to enter or stay in the UK, reformed the family visa system, and set an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants who are admitted to the UK. All those reforms are working well and are doing much to tackle the chaotic and dysfunctional system that we inherited from the previous Government, but we need to go further.

The Bill will build on our achievements. It will ensure that immigration serves our economic interests and that our system commands the respect of the British public, who need and deserve an immigration system that is fair, reasonable and measured. I commend the Bill to the House.

UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

As I said during the statement, I am absolutely delighted that Britain is to take refugees for resettlement. I have a particular interest because I visited projects serving Syrian refugees in Jordan last November. They included projects inside Zaatari camp provided courtesy of the UNHCR by Doctors of the World, UNICEF and Save the Children, and outside the camp by the Jesuit Refugee Service.

It seems to me that there are three reasons why it was right of Britain to agree to take some of the most vulnerable refugees for resettlement. The first two have been spoken about quite a bit, but the third has not. The first—humanitarian reasons—is obvious. I will offer a few remarks on that from my experience in Jordan.

The second reason is solidarity. That was clear to me when looking at the pressure that taking so many refugees puts on Jordan, a country that already has difficulties, with enormous pressure on services. The generosity of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq in providing for the huge exodus of refugees from Syria is extraordinary—staggering—especially when one considers the debate here about taking just a few hundred. Like others who have spoken today, I think it would have been better had we chosen to take part in a UNHCR programme. It would have easier for us to make the arguments of solidarity, but if we are working hand in glove with the UNHCR, that is probably the most important thing.

The third reason, about which few have spoken, is that if there is no legal route—no hope—for people to get out, the risk increases that they will take extremely difficult journeys to escape. Already, the boats coming into Lampedusa are carrying significantly more Syrians, whereas previously they were dominated by people coming from Eritrea. That is very worrying indeed and shows precisely the reason why we need to provide legal routes for people who are desperate to get out.

When in Jordan, I was able spend a day in Zaatari. It was sobering to see the conditions for the people living there, which are difficult for anyone, let alone the very vulnerable groups of people we are talking about resettling. The UNHCR walked me through the route by which people get to Jordan, and it is worth rehearsing now. Since Jordan started managing its borders, the only way into the country from Syria is to traverse great swathes of wilderness and desert to reach the easternmost point of Jordan where it borders Iraq. Families have to sleep exposed to the elements—rain, snow and frost—for 10, sometimes 12, days. We saw the pictures just before Christmas; those are the sorts of traumatic conditions people are having to endure, so they are already extremely hungry and tired and often have no belongings at all.

The UNHCR gives them the basic building blocks to rebuild their life, but it is a meagre existence for one who previously lived a first-world life. It is worth our thinking about what it would be like for one of us—accustomed to gadgets and soft comforts—to go into a camp such as Zaatari or try to live in the conditions that many living outside the camp are coping with now.

Uniqlo donated 500,000 items of clothing to Zaatari camp for the winter. That is staggering generosity. It is worth highlighting when people do good things in order to encourage them to do more. However, the security conditions and particularly the toilets in the camp have been driving many out of the camp to live in host communities, and their plight is stark. They are reliant on the World Food Programme for food vouchers and have no access to rent, and they are not allowed to work in Jordan. Some work illegally, but most send their children to work. I did not meet a single family, either in the camp or in the host community in Amman where I visited people in homes, whose children were in school. That highlights the potential for a lost generation. People are living in poor, overcrowded, damp and difficult conditions.

It is worth remembering that Jordan has already taken many refugees. It took many refugees from Iraq in particular, and they still cannot work. It was also the backbone of the service that the Jesuit Refugee Service was providing, both its educational project in east Amman and the home visiting team. To end on a moment of hope, I saw there refugees serving other refugees, building a sense of community, working from their own experience and supporting others to integrate in difficult circumstances. That demonstrates what can be done if we provide people with the space to serve others.

Syrian Refugees

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We are working hand in hand with the UNHCR, but we are doing so with very particular priorities and with a degree of flexibility that we feel being part of the programme to which the hon. Lady refers would not give us.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Having visited Jordan and seen the conditions in which Syrian refugees are living, I am absolutely delighted that the Home Secretary has made this statement—I hope that it gives her heart to think that doing the humane thing for refugees is often popular and not always unpopular. I am a little disappointed that we are not signed up to the UNHCR’s scheme, but so long as we are working hand in hand with it to identify the vulnerable people, that is what is most important. I ask her to keep under review the priorities she has set as the crisis unfolds, because the people who are the most vulnerable may well change over time. If we are to have our own programme, rather than the UNHCR scheme, that might be important.

[Mrs May]

I take the hon. Lady’s point about continuing to look at the priorities we have set. As I have said, those priorities tie in with other work we are doing in the region. I think that it is important to have that degree of flexibility, which is what having our own scheme gives us. However, I reiterate the point I made in answer to the previous question: we are working alongside and hand in hand with the UNHCR.

UN Syrian Refugees Programme

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman talks about refugees who previously lived in Syria. Of course, the help we are providing is not just to the neighbouring countries; a lot of it is for people who are internally displaced in Syria. We are working very hard with our diplomatic partners to secure humanitarian access in Syria, as well as supporting neighbouring countries. I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome that too.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Before Christmas, I visited Jordan and the Zaatari refugee camp, as well as a number of organisations providing help for refugees living in host communities. I was particularly concerned about the plight of disabled children and children who have managed to travel on their own. The Minister is of course correct to say that most refugees just want to go back to Syria and do not want to come to Britain, but we are not asking for most refugees to come to Britain; we are asking only for those in exceptional need whom we could help to come to Britain. We should continue to make the arguments for Jordan and Lebanon to keep their borders open; otherwise, we really will have a catastrophe.

[Mr Harper]

As I think I said in response to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), we are working closely with UNICEF in Syria and the region on providing support services and protection for 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children and their carers, as well as for refugee children in neighbouring countries. We are providing that support, and we are able to help a significantly larger number of people than the numbers the hon. Lady talks about.

Immigration Bill

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have taken a number of interventions and will now make some progress.

I will set out the elements of the Bill in context. First, the Bill will cut abuse of the appeal process. It will streamline the labyrinthine legal process, which at present allows appeals against 17 different Home Office decisions—17 different opportunities for immigration lawyers to cash in and for immigrants who should not be here to delay their deportation or removal. By limiting the grounds for appeal to four—only those that engage fundamental rights—we will cut that abuse.

Secondly, we will extend the number of non-suspensive appeals so that, where there is no risk of serious and irreversible harm, we can deport first and hear appeals later. We will also end the abuse of article 8. There are some who seem to think that the right to family life should always take precedence over public interest in immigration control and when deporting foreign criminals. The Bill will make the view of Parliament on the issue very clear. Finally, the Bill will clamp down on those who live and work in the UK illegally and take advantage of our public services. That is not fair to the British public and to the legitimate migrants who contribute to our society and economy.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Did the Home Secretary take advice from colleagues in the Department for Education on the extent to which her definition of article 8 is compliant with our obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child?

[Mrs May]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we have had a number of discussions with colleagues in the Department for Education on the operation of the proposals in the Bill. There is an agreement across the Government that we need to do precisely what I have just set out in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott): we must ensure that we are fair to those people who come here legitimately and do everything the right way, but we must also make it easier to remove those people who do not have a right to be here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Last month, one of my constituents—I will call him Philippe—attended an asylum-screening appointment at Lunar house. He had a history of serious ill treatment in Cameroon and had in his hand a referral to Freedom from Torture from his very worried advocates, so one would have expected him to be treated with care and attention when he arrived for his screening appointment. It is worth reading the whole of his statement—it took me some time to do so—to understand what happened to him over three days in September. It gives a picture of what happens to people when they try to navigate Home Office bureaucracy. I want to tell hon. Members a little about what happened to him, because there is a danger that this debate will be about headlines and statistics, but will forget the very people we are being tough on—the very people who are the subjects of the Bill.

Reading all that my constituent said, one gets a sense of his fear and nervousness when he first arrived at Lunar house with all his documents in his hand, and then the abject rudeness with which he was treated, the dismissals, the disbelief and the downright incompetence; and the petty squabbles between contractors unwilling to go beyond the letter of their own instruction and offer basic, normal human compassion and basic, normal information to my constituent. Hon. Members need to read it all to understand his fear, confusion and bewilderment, to follow him from the first moment, when he arrived, with nervous trust, for his asylum-screening appointment, to the moment when, in vain and with frustration, he tried to make the official at Lunar house appreciate that he was there for an agreed appointment and to get her to read his referral to Freedom from Torture. In vain, he tried to make his point through the interpreter about where his belongings were, but instead he was arrested, handcuffed and taken to Harmondsworth. Reading his statement, one gets a sense of just how frightening that is for somebody previously detained in their own country and of its impact on that individual.

Finally, when Philippe arrived at Harmondsworth, rather late at night, somebody realised he should not have been there; somebody eventually checked his documentation and realised that he had originally turned up for a routine asylum-screening appointment, and he was taken back. Eventually, after petty squabbles, which he witnessed, he was dumped in a hostel without any documentation, without being told where he was and without being given an address. There followed a distressing 48 hours, during which he had a paranoid episode and ended up lost on the streets of south London. He had one contact, one human being, who went out of their way to help him. Someone from a church in Brent who had been working with him drove around the streets of south London to find him and then took him into her own home and reconnected him with his lawyer—the best and worst of humanity across three days.

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Lady paints a moving picture, and I am sure we all sympathise with her constituent, but does she agree that these mistakes happen because a large number of people are coming over, abusing the system and preventing us from helping those most in need, which is exactly what the Bill is designed to prevent?

[Sarah Teather]

No, I do not accept that. This happens because of the culture of disbelief in the Home Office, and it is that culture that needs to change, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will have any impact on the quality of decision making or on how individual officials treat constituents such as mine when they go with their asylum or visa applications. In my 10 years as an MP, I have seen countless examples of this behaviour, as all Members will have done. Those of us with the highest levels of immigration casework will have seen more, but it is a source of huge frustration for many MPs that our advice surgeries are spent mostly dealing with stuff that the Home Office should be dealing with.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is making some powerful points about the human cost of the way our immigration system works. Has she, too, experienced cases like those in Feltham and Heston of people who have been given leave to be here and to work but have struggled for months at places where they have been given jobs because they are waiting for documentation? Their lives, and those of their families, are on hold and they then fall into poverty.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. These are the sort of people I worry will fall foul of the Bill because they struggle to provide their documentation. We know that there are a lot of people who fall through the net when they are first given refugee status and end up destitute. They make up the bulk of the people whom the British Red Cross deals with in terms of food parcels because they cannot prove their entitlement to benefits. A significant number of people have the right to stay but will struggle to be able to prove it.

Personally, I have never seen an organisation more in need of checks and balances on its own use of power than the Home Office or, indeed, its predecessor, the Border Agency. Instead, the Bill gives powers that it is not equipped, nor frankly able, to meet and powers that it cannot be relied upon to exercise properly. Where it exceeds or abuses its power, or simply fails to do the job, it will be shielded from challenge in many cases and there will be no redress whatever. The implications of the Bill cannot be understood without also placing it in the wider context of legal aid changes and proposals to restrict judicial review.

The problem is that the impact on individual lives gets lost in the grandstanding of headlines. When immigration is all about reducing numbers on a spreadsheet to meet an arbitrary cap or creating arbitrary political dividing lines and traps for opponents to fall into, the subjects of the legislation—the human beings at the centre of it—are somehow invisible. I am weary of a politics that creates and defines enemies in order to demonstrate potency but, frankly, it angers me to see politics do that at the expense of those who have the least power to change their own futures. All three Front Benches, I am afraid, are at it, including my own, scrabbling over the mantle of toughness, chasing opinion polls and, in some cases, wilfully whipping up fear and loathing in the process. It is staggeringly careless with lives and with community relationships that have been built up over a long time.

I am afraid that whatever the damage that is done by the detail of the Bill when, I dare say, it is ultimately passed, some of the worst damage has been done in our debate in the lead-up to it. The language with which this was brought forward is what really causes the damage to community relations. I remind hon. Members of the debate we had earlier about the Home Office vans. That is a case in point; it had almost no effect on the ground except to whip up real tension between communities. My constituency was one of those areas that was targeted by the vans.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I can understand the passion with which the hon. Lady is speaking and she is making a very sensitive point, but does she agree that there is an element to this that involves the prevention of exploitation of vulnerable people who are brought in illegally, treated badly and fall outside the system? If their pimps and traffickers are unable to do that because we have tougher immigration laws, we will free those people from being put in that awful position. I had a young lady brought to me whose passport had been taken off her. If people can come to our country legally, it will stop those who want to be able to take advantage of them outside the system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I am certain that the commitment of the hon. Lady on the issue of human trafficking is very real. However, there is nothing in this Bill that will make that situation any better for the individuals who are caught up in it. It is worth remembering that, for a lot of vulnerable people who come here, it is very difficult to enter the country legally. Many of the legal routes have been closed down. Someone coming here and applying for asylum may have entered the country illegally and then claimed asylum. Understanding that is important, as is understanding some of the detail. I am in danger of speaking for too long and I know that other hon. Members want to speak, but we must understand that those who get caught up in this may be some of the most vulnerable people.

There is a great deal in the Bill that will have catastrophic consequences on the ground. In most cases, the problem that it seeks to fix has been poorly defined and the solutions ill thought through. All of it is incredibly rushed, a point made by a number of hon. Members. A number of my hon. Friends have also made the point about there being no pre-legislative scrutiny. It seems to me that the detail has been negotiated by an exceptionally tight group of people within the Government, and very little time is being afforded to this House to consider it. One day on Report is extraordinary. The very small period of time between the Bill being published and Second Reading means that most of the briefings from relevant organisations came in yesterday afternoon as they have just begun to grapple with the detail of this Bill. There is a significant amount of detail and the devil will be in making sure that the detail is correct.

It is worth noting some of the increases in power that the Bill gives. There is an extension of removal powers and the application to family members—including British citizens, I should add, who are not excluded from the Bill. Those matters will be in secondary legislation and we have no way of properly scrutinising the extension of powers. There is a significant extension of immigration officers’ powers to use reasonable force, despite the fact that whether the Border Agency previously used reasonable force has been a matter of constant dispute. It is completely within the culture of the Home Office, it seems, always to assume that force is the only way to manage any situation, which was precisely the culture within Government when I was negotiating the details around the ending of child detention. We sought to try to change that so we did not always go to the maximum end of force in enforcement procedures to get a family to understand that they had exhausted the appeals process. I cannot see how an organisation so psychologically addicted to the use of such powers should properly be given more powers until it has learnt how to use the powers it already has well, and certainly until it has learnt from the work that has been done elsewhere within its vast structure to try to change the culture.

Staggering, too, are the proposals on bail for immigration detainees, which would effectively allow the Home Secretary repeatedly to issue removal directions in order to prevent an application for bail. No account would need to be taken of changes in circumstance, or of the health of the detainee or their family. There was an earlier intervention about criminal bail. I want to make the point that some of the detail of that intervention was not fair because, within criminal procedures, one automatically eventually comes up for bail, whereas within immigration detention there is no automatic right to have one’s bail application considered.

We detain more people than any other European country except Greece, and Greece detains people only for very short periods. We effectively operate indefinite detention. The UNHCR has made clear its profound concerns about UK policy on detention and made it clear that bail hearings ought to be automatic. The removal of appeal rights was spoken about by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). That effectively removes appeal rights for all areas of managed migration, an area that has traditionally had very high rates of success on appeal. Given the appalling nature of decision making in this area, it seems to be particularly absurd to remove appeal rights. It is also likely to result only in more claims under judicial review or under article 8, which the Government say they want to try to reduce. It seems utterly nonsensical.

It was perhaps the redefinition of article 8 that made me shudder particularly. It completely ignores the test around the best interests of children and ignores all case law in this area. No doubt this is a deliberate attempt to overrule case law, but certainly it flies in the face of our obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. It ignores children under the age of seven—those children who have been here for fewer than seven years—and will of course apply not just to adults in terms of their right to family life with any of their children, but to unaccompanied migrants in decisions on their immigration cases. I find it very difficult to see how the courts are going to interpret this, but certainly it will have a chilling impact on the Home Office’s own decision making in this area. I am rather frustrated that the careful work we did on the ending of child detention, on the culture within the Home Office and on how we treat families seems to have been completely cut across by this very political statement in the Bill. It also cuts across the Children and Families Bill, which is still making its way through the Lords as we speak.

Perhaps the most absurd proposal in the Bill is that on landlords’ checks. I have listened to some of the discussion on that and there is some naivety about the property market in London in terms of understanding what it means to try to rent a property and the difficulty of getting in there first. If there is any doubt whatever about someone’s immigration status, there is no way they can rent in my constituency. Many people find it difficult to prove their documentation. The claim that this will all work well because a similar system involving employers has worked well flies in the face of our experience of the employers’ checking line, which often gives out inaccurate information resulting in people being unable to get or keep a job. It is extraordinary to propose a similar system that could affect someone’s right to live somewhere.

The catch-all term “illegal immigrants” is being used to describe the people who will be caught by the Bill. I remind the House that some of those people have no status because they are stuck in the black hole of the Home Office’s legacy system. Others might not quite have achieved the definition of “refugee” under the terms of the Geneva convention, yet cannot be returned to their own country because it is not safe to do so. I would count people from Syria among those affected in that way, and I saw many people in that situation during the Iraq war. Unless people are on section 4 support, they will find themselves falling foul of many of the Bill’s provisions.

The NHS levy will apply to in-country applicants, some of whom will have been working here for many years. Some of my colleagues have said that they are prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on the Bill. Personally, I am not prepared to do so. I see very little in it that is worthy of a Second Reading. In fact, it was extremely difficult to find anything in it that I could support or that I found well thought through. I shall vote against Second Reading this evening, and I encourage others who disagree with it to join me in the No Lobby, rather than just adding to the impression that we are all happy for a Bill as ill thought through as this to pass on to the statute book.

Family Migration Rules

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) for securing this debate, and I congratulate him on doing so.

I served on the all-party inquiry with the hon. Gentleman and with the hon. Member for—is it Stretford?

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Sarah Teather]

I have actually got the hon. Lady’s constituency correct.

Many of us on that inquiry were really horrified by what we found, despite my own experience as a constituency MP and having encountered the frustrations of an awful lot of my constituents as they tried to deal with the new rules. Of course, as the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall said, the new rules have been in place for a year now and there is no doubt that they are proving a significant source of frustration and tension for family life without providing any obvious and immediate benefit to the UK. When the Minister responds to the debate, I will be very interested to see if he can tell us what benefits he considers the new rules have brought to the UK, because they are not immediately obvious to me; I can see many of the harms but I cannot see many obvious benefits.

The first thing that is very apparent about the new rules is that they represent a distinct philosophical shift in approach from the old rules. The system used to be tilted in favour of family life, subject to certain basic conditions being met, such as the ability to support a spouse coming into the UK and the ability to meet a basic income threshold, which was pretty much tantamount to a basic income threshold that we would expect around income support levels. Now, the system is tilted entirely in the opposite direction, and against family life, unless someone can meet certain requirements to demonstrate that their spouse who is coming into the UK is desirable in some way and meets some extra criteria. So rather than having a system that was very much about keeping families together, the system now is about serving an overall objective on immigration policy, with family life being significantly relegated in importance. Of course, it is not only family life that is being relegated in importance, but relationships, children’s best interests, basic human compassion and a certain level of common sense.

The consequence is that we have created a system that is highly inflexible and incredibly rigid, and that fails by its own narrow criteria in terms of preventing a burden falling on the taxpayer. What do I mean by that? The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall raised many of these issues, as did a number of the Members who intervened on him. One of my own reflections from having been on the all-party group’s inquiry was, “If you’re self-employed, woe betide you. You might be earning a fortune, but it’s incredibly difficult for you to demonstrate that you meet the Government’s criteria.” Money must be in certain very specific bank accounts; it must be accessible in a very specific way. Parents’ wealth is disregarded, so someone may have a very wealthy family who are more than willing to support them but that is not taken into account.

As the hon. Gentleman said, someone may have wealth tied up in other ways; for example, it might be tied up in capital. Once again, however, that is not adequate under the new rules. It is only someone’s earned income in the UK that is taken into account, so even if someone has been earning a small fortune abroad that is not taken into account. Equally, even if someone’s spouse earns a small fortune, if they come to the UK that is not taken into account either, and nor are their projected future earnings. Even by the incredibly narrow criteria of wanting income to be the most important factor and wanting people to demonstrate a level of wealth that the Government have decided is desirable, the system at the moment fails to deliver.

That is not to mention the hidden costs, which were highlighted by hon. Members in a number of interventions—the costs that are incurred by refusing someone permission to come to the UK. The obvious ones that we heard about during our inquiry were around caring burdens, particularly if the person who is here in the UK has some health problems, or if they have very young children and they have been separated from their partner. They might be able to go back to work if their partner was here in the UK to share child care. Without the partner, however, it is much more difficult.

Then there are the obvious things that the rest of government knows about. For example, if people are separated from their partner and families are divided up, the effects on mental health and on children failing to bond with one parent or another have a wide-ranging impact on behaviour and educational attainment. Of course, none of those more subtle things is taken into account either.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

Among African and Caribbean parents, it is common for a child to be left at home with grandparents, but when the grandparents die, the child is left vulnerable. I have heard about one young girl being abused by the uncle, and the mother is in despair because the rules prevent her from getting the child into this country. Has the hon. Lady also heard about such examples?

[Sarah Teather]

I have not seen that specific situation with regard to the rules we are discussing, but I have seen such a situation elsewhere. We heard all sorts of examples in the inquiry, such as one parent being separated from children and children being left in other places. The impact in terms of the splitting up of families and the effect on children is potentially devastating and, of course, none of that is being taken into account at the moment.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Has the hon. Lady, or the inquiry that she participated in, considered the instance of UK citizens coming back to the UK, having married abroad, often in complete ignorance of what the rules now say? Such people are finding that their spouse and child are simply stranded thereafter. Someone in my constituency has done exactly that and is now faced with the prospect of trying to get a job in the UK that will pay £18,000, not being able to access any of his parents’ assistance, and his wife and child remaining outside the UK perhaps for several years, even though he has done everything right in terms of his life and work, and all other factors.

[Sarah Teather]

What the hon. Gentleman mentions is absolutely the story that we heard over and over throughout the inquiry.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

indicated assent.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Gentleman nods in recollection.

One of the most interesting aspects of this policy is that people being caught up in this change in immigration rules would never have imagined that they would come into contact with the immigration system; they are British citizens who went abroad to work as a teacher, perhaps, or to do development work, or were sent abroad by their company for business purposes, then met somebody and came back. This is the first time that they ever thought that they might come into contact with the immigration system.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

In my constituency in Leicester, a city with a tradition of welcoming people, these new rules are causing considerable concern. A British citizen came to see me last week who has been living in Syria and fled from there with her children, for obvious reasons, yet her husband cannot get out because of the rigidity of the rules. People might think that, given the circumstances and what is happening in that part of the world, there should be some flexibility in how the rules are implemented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I agree. Leicester is my home town, so I sympathise with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. The rigidity of the rules makes it particularly difficult for people. Under the previous rules—I will not say that they were perfect; as a constituency MP, from time to time I pleaded for people’s cases to be accepted and reconsidered—there was at least some flexibility to look at somebody’s case, based on compassionate grounds or common sense, whereas now there appears to be no flexibility whatever.

Why are the rules being so rigidly and inflexibly enforced? It is because income probably has nothing to do with it. It is not really about trying to prevent a burden on the taxpayer; it is actually about the Government trying to demonstrate that we are reducing the number of foreigners coming into the UK. That is driving it. If anything else were driving it, it would be implemented in a far more common-sense way, there would be much more flexibility around it, and it would not have been set at a level to keep out as many people as possible.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

rose—

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Sarah Teather]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) first.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing this important debate on the work of the group. Does my hon. Friend agree that the rules are not only keeping foreigners out but causing some good British people to leave? The response of a number of people in my constituency has been simply to leave the country. These are successful entrepreneurs, those at early stages of what will be well-paid careers, and people coming back, as my hon. Friend said. We risk losing some of our best people, who are internationally experienced, as a result of the rules.

[Sarah Teather]

The classic story that we heard in the inquiry was that people are going somewhere else in Europe to make a home, and waiting until their partner gains EU citizenship there. During that time they donate their skills, wealth and significant social contribution to another European country, and they may or may not return to the UK.

[Kate Green]

It was a pleasure to serve with the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on the Committee. Does she agree that one reason why these rules may be being applied so rigidly is a lack of confidence in the decision-making powers and abilities of Border Agency officials, and that investment in training them to make sensible decisions, rather than imposing blanket rules, would be a fairer and more sensible approach?

[Sarah Teather]

I think it would. I have to say that it would be wiser if we were not being driven entirely by an objective to keep numbers down, but that is perhaps another story.

I should like the Minister to respond to what I am now going to say about the best interests of children. When I was a Minister in the Department for Education, we committed the Government to standing by and meeting our commitment on the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and to take into account children’s best interests when decisions are made. What account is being taken of that now by the Minister’s Department, as it looks at the rules and their impact? Has any assessment been done and has any discussion been had with Department for Education officials on this point? If he is unable to answer that question today, I should be grateful if he wrote to let me know.

The impact of the rules on bringing in grandparents and elderly dependants is just as shocking as that of the spousal rules. Almost no approvals have happened since the new rules came in. It was described to me by one lawyer as a ban masquerading as a rule, which is probably a rather more effective way of describing the problem. If almost nobody can come in, that demonstrates what the Government want to do, and it might have been more honest if that had been done in the first place. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), who is no longer in his place, intervened on the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall and made a similar point. It is almost impossible to meet the rules. People must have a high income and must be clear that their family member will not have recourse to any kind of benefits, and sign something to say that that will not happen. They must also demonstrate that the family member is so sick that they must come here, and cannot possibly have their care needs met in the country where they are, even if they were to pay for it.

Almost nobody will meet those criteria. One lawyer said that he had been thinking through all the possible scenarios and the only example that he came up with where somebody might meet such criteria was if they had an elderly dependent relative in Monaco and had enough money here to meet the first part of the rules, but because care is so expensive in Monaco they would not be able to afford to pay for it there. That would probably be the only way we would allow such people to come to the UK. If we are going to have a ban, let us at least be more honest about it.

The consequences of the rules were drawn to our attention in the inquiry most notably by the British Medical Association, which said that they were among the biggest challenges in planning resourcing around consultants and senior doctors, many of whom are second-generation south Asian and want to bring a relative. For example, two people who are partners, both of whom may be highly paid consultants capable of supporting an elderly dependent relative but with no means of meeting the rules, might end up moving to Singapore. If such highly trained, highly valued people go somewhere else to work so that they are able to be with their family members, that is a significant drain on our national health service.

The current system seems to me to be inhumane and lacking in basic common sense. It cuts across a whole set of areas that the Government say are a priority: it cuts across our commitments on family policy, on early intervention and on our obligations under the UNCRC. We heard in our inquiry that the rules disproportionately affect those from poorer communities in the UK, such as Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, and that women, who struggle to earn the same wages as men, are particularly affected. The system affects not only those people but many highly paid British citizens who may never have thought that they would meet the full force of the immigration system preventing them from having a happy family life. I strongly urge the Minister to review those rules properly and to reconsider them.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). I am sure she will not mind me reminding her of this, but it is the coalition Government, of whom she was a member, who originally proposed the rules and put them through the House. I respect her late conversion to condemning the Government publicly for what they are doing, and I know she feels sincerely about that.

[Sarah Teather]

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, as I am sure the Minister would accept, I say nothing in public that I did not say in private.

[Keith Vaz]

I am sure that is the case, which is why I gave the hon. Lady a wildcard. Of course I am sure that, privately, she was very much against the rules when she was a Minister in the Government who put them through the House.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), whom I have known for more than 35 years, on securing this debate. Even before he became a Member of Parliament, he took up immigration issues in Southall for almost a quarter of a century through the Indian Workers' Association, as a councillor, as the lord mayor of Ealing and as a prospective parliamentary candidate, so it is no surprise that he should be introducing this debate and that he served on the inquiry organised by the all-party group on migration.

All those who served on the inquiry, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), the hon. Member for Brent Central, the noble Baroness Hamwee and others, have done the House a great service. I wish the Select Committee on Home Affairs had time to consider the rules, but being pressed so often by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) to take up new and exciting inquiries, we just did not have time to do so. The all-party group has produced a stunning report, which everyone needs to read with great care.

For those of us who do immigration cases every day, and I see Members here who represent constituencies in Birmingham, Manchester and Leicester, including my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and others—I cannot name every constituency—there is the line in the Lord’s prayer that says

“Give us today our daily bread.”

Immigration cases are our daily bread and butter. Every single Friday, immigration cases are 90% of the work I do in my surgery. Although the Minister, who represents the Forest of Dean, and the shadow Minister, who represents Rhondda, do not have the casework that we have, those of us who have seen the Minister perform before the Select Committee and have heard the shadow Minister’s comments know that they understand our concerns on immigration. For us, as constituency MPs, immigration is a big deal. I am glad to see the Minister here today, and I am sorry that he is on crutches. It is better to be on crutches before the debate than after.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall and the hon. Member for Brent Central have already stated the facts—why bring in an arbitrary figure? Tony McNulty was wrong to bring in the points-based system, and I told him so at the time. He thought it was a great invention. I went to see him when he was Minister for Immigration, and he said, “It is very important that people tot up the points, and then you know whether they qualify to come in under the points-based system.” I said, “Where is the discretion in all this? What about those cases that don’t reach the number of points but where there might be grounds for compassion?” The hon. Member for Brent Central talked about that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall talked about other issues. What about those issues that the entry clearance officers cannot address because the migrant does not have enough points?

Here is another example on the arbitrary figure. Yes, we know that the Migration Advisory Committee advised on the figure and, yes, we know there are lots of statistical surveys that say the sum should be £18,600, but as the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), said, the average wage in his constituency is not £18,600. The average wage is certainly not £18,600 in Leicester East and Leicester South; it is about £16,000 or even less—in fact, it is £4,000 less than the national average according to the Office for National Statistics. I have people coming into my surgery who will never get their spouse into the country—even those who are working very hard indeed. I say to them, “Why don’t you get another job?” They cannot get another job because they are exhausted from working up to 60 hours a week. I know that is not the minimum wage, and it may not be lawful, but that is what is on their little slips.