Immigration

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I could fill the rest of the debate and more with the constituency cases I have seen in the past four years. Just under a third of my casework is due to the incompetence of the Home Office.

Most recently, I raised the case of a young man, Eryaar Popalzai, who claimed asylum in 2014. He last made further submissions in 2017 and is still awaiting a decision. The Minister promised me that she would look into the case and that it would be dealt with. I received a letter this morning that said:

“I am sorry that a decision has not been made on Mr Popalzai’s further submissions. The Home Office is aware that Mr Popalzai is vulnerable and has raised safeguarding issues. The Home Office is actively working on his case. However, it is currently awaiting policy guidance on an unrelated matter prior to making a final decision on his case.”

This young man is in tears every time he comes to my surgery. What answer can I give him? Because that is no kind of answer at all. It is just, “Wait and wait and wait.” He has seen his friends move on with their lives and carry on with their education, and he is stuck. He is stuck on antidepressants and is getting counselling, but the Minister has no answer for that young man.

Many of the cases I see in my surgery are of extremely vulnerable families who are in tears. Today, one of my members of staff, Mhairi, tried to accompany one of my constituents, a woman who is heavily pregnant, and her husband to Brand Street, because her three-year-old had been called for interview. I do not know what kind of interview the Home Office expects to get from a three-year-old at Brand Street, but the family went. Their other girls were at school. They were extremely worried that they would not be able to leave Brand Street. During the course of the interview, the father had a seizure and had to be taken in an ambulance, because he was so stressed out about the interview. I still do not know how he is doing or whether he will be okay. I ask the Minister to make a decision on this family. They have daughters who fled in fear of FGM, and they do not want to take their daughters back to face FGM. She should have some heart and deal with this case as a matter of urgency, because it is no less than the family deserve.

I see many cases that look relatively simple and are similar to cases that have been resolved quickly but that, for reasons best known to itself, the Home Office has determined to be complex. As soon as the cases are determined to be complex, they disappear down a black hole somewhere and are not seen for months and years. The Minister and her Department need to look at this and ensure that such excuses are not made for cases that are not complex.

The Home Office is riddled with mistakes and errors, and I regularly see issues with incorrect names and addresses. In a recent decision letter, the Home Office mistook the difference between a closing balance and an opening balance on a bank account in refusing somebody a visitor visa. It loses passports, degree certificates and paperwork endlessly, to the detriment of my constituents.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making some important points. I want to expand on her point about visitor visas, on which she seems to suffer the same sorts of issues as I do. A great many of my constituents are simply asking that, say, their octogenarian parents are able to visit them, but they are being denied that possibility. Even though promises and assurances have been given, they are being denied access to see their grandchildren.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman is correct, and I see it regularly—week in, week out—in my surgeries.

People who have visited the UK on multiple occasions without incident and with no problems, and who are well able to afford the cost of supporting themselves when they come to visit—not that their family would not support them, anyway, because they are guests—are refused time and again. It is offensive, and people are hurt by this. They miss out on family visits and family occasions such as weddings and graduations. They miss out on so much family life that we all take for granted. If any of us wanted to go to any of their countries, we would be allowed to travel. That is the inherent racism of the Home Office and its policies.

[Imran Hussain]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case, particularly on visitor visas and the Home Office’s poor decision making. I dealt with a case in which there was a discrepancy of one penny between the P60 and other evidence, so the application was refused and the person could not attend an important family wedding. Again, that illustrates the hostile environment created by this Government through the back door.

[Alison Thewliss]

It does, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. I see this day in and day out at my surgeries.

More recently, a case has been highlighted in the press—it very much seems that the press is the way to go for those with a complaint about the Home Office, and if I were to do that the pages of all the Scottish newspapers would be full of my constituents—of a group of blind musicians who came over from Chennai as part of a British Council, Creative Scotland and Scottish Government-funded project. They were asked to come over from India as part of that project, and two of the musicians were refused entry. These two blind musicians were told that they did not have sufficient reason to go back to India after the trip. Their carers were allowed in, but these people with disabilities were not. Because their case was highlighted in the press, the decision magically and mysteriously changed, but it was too late because the event had passed.

The group are now £4,000 out of pocket for flights that had to be cancelled. Will the Minister compensate this group of musicians from Chennai who were not able to travel to take part in a British Government project? That is no less than they deserve. She has wasted taxpayers’ money, and she has wasted these young people’s opportunity by refusing them entry and then cynically changing the decision when the case appeared in the press.

I have good grounds to believe that the Government pay attention to the cases that appear in the press and change their decisions. The UK Government deemed a number of people in the highly skilled migrants group, because they needed small and legitimate changes to their tax returns, to be in some way of bad character and a threat to national security under paragraph 322(5) of the Home Office rules.

The cases that I have highlighted in the press, and the cases of constituents who were on “Channel 4 News” and in the newspapers, were decided a full six months quicker than those of constituents whose cases I could not put into the press due to sensitivity. I would like an explanation from the Minister of why very similar cases, with very similar circumstances, were differently decided because two of them were in the media and two of them were not. The UK Government’s decision-making process on this is deeply disturbing.

The same goes for many other cases I have highlighted in the Scottish press. I have a lot of reason to be thankful to people in the Scottish media, at The National and at other publications in Scotland, because they have repeatedly highlighted the terrible decisions made by the Home Office.

I chair the new all-party parliamentary group on immigration detention, and trauma has been caused to my constituents by persistent and arbitrary detention. There seems to be a modern-day cat and mouse act, with people being arrested under immigration detention and then let go. The impact on those individuals is traumatic and appalling, and these are people who have been through a huge amount of trauma already. They have been tortured and trafficked. They have seen things that none of us would ever want to see, and they are being locked up with no time limit.

People can accept being in prison if they have done something wrong, and they know when their sentence will end, but people in this country, quite uniquely, are held in immigration detention with no end in sight. I ask the Minister to consider why she thinks that is fair. I pay tribute to the strength and dignity of those with experience of immigration detention who came to last night’s launch of the all-party group to tell their stories. People in arbitrary detention do not know for how long they will be locked up, even though they have done nothing wrong. That is a stain on this Government and previous Governments who endorsed places like Dungavel.

We need to do so much more to highlight the plight of people held in immigration detention. We must make sure that we do all we can for people who come to this country fleeing persecution and FGM and looking for a place of sanctuary. We must not, by this Government’s actions, cause them further trauma and further pain. Instead, we must protect them and welcome them with open arms.

We are celebrating a refugee festival in Scotland this week. We are celebrating all the things that refugees and asylum seekers bring to this country, and the Government would do well to attend more such events to celebrate people, rather than locking them up, detaining them and causing them pain.