Nationality and Borders Bill (Seventh sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The right hon. Gentleman fairly describes the circumstances that many find themselves in and it is another policy route that I would be fully behind. In this country, we are way behind where we need to be. We have statutes on the book and we will come to modern slavery later, but some of the measures in part 4 of the Bill will undermine the Home Office’s good work on modern slavery from just a few years ago, which the right hon. Gentleman was part of. Even with those statutes on the book, the system for inspection and finding where this is happening is just not up to scratch. The national referral mechanism takes forever to make decisions. The way it has been implemented is not effective at all; in fact, it is a boon to people traffickers and people who undertake exploitation. So yes, I am happy to support any work that addresses those concerns.

Amendments 91 and 92 would remove the Secretary of State’s power to strip the Syrian, Uyghur or persecuted Christian of their right to family reunion—the right of the Secretary of State to keep their families split apart. Under current law, having been recognised as a refugee, they could apply for reunion with their spouse or partner and with children under 18. For years, parliamentarians across the House have been pushing for broader family reunion rights and it is only a few years since Parliament voted in favour of the private Member’s Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) promoted on the subject. It is another crucial building block in allowing refugees to rebuild their lives, as that Bill recognised.

The Government say it is all about safe legal routes, but this is pretty much the only place where the Bill says anything about them, and now it seems the Government intend to reduce family reunion rights. The crucial question for the Government is simply: is that correct? How will they use the power? Will they prevent spouses and partners from being reunited? Are they going to prevent children from reuniting with a parent? Family reunion is probably the most pivotal safe legal route there is to safety in the UK and it is all the more imperative because without the safe legal route, it seems obvious that the most likely people to try to come here via unsafe routes are those who have family members here.

With around 6,000 family reunion visas issued every year over the past five years, let us also be clear that around 90% are issued to women and children. The real danger is that any restrictions will ultimately mean that many more women and children end up on the boats in the channel or taking other unsafe routes. The danger here is that the Government do the opposite of what they say they intend, and drive people into the arms of the smugglers the Bill is designed to foil.

Again, that is what the Australian experience tends to show us. The Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law notes that after temporary protection visas were introduced,

“there was an increase in the number of women and children who arrived in Australia by boat. According to personal accounts, this was because the TPV regime precluded family reunion. The ineffectiveness of TPVs is the very reason that they were abolished by the Rudd Government.”

Instead, we should do what my hon. Friend’s Bill would have done: expand rules to allow adult children and siblings up to 25 and make other changes. That would reduce the numbers in boats.

In conclusion, all the examples of discrimination in the Bill are just that: examples. The Bill is drafted so as to leave the Secretary of State’s power to discriminate completely and utterly unconstrained. That is pretty shocking. While the amendments test the Government on their intentions in relation to those particular subjects, it is also important to know that the Secretary of State could plan all sorts of other forms of discrimination. Can the Minister clarify what other methods of discrimination the Secretary of State is contemplating?

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everybody. The Government say they are introducing this Bill because they want people who need our protection to use safe and legal routes, but where are those routes? Where in the world and where in the Bill are they? On several occasions, the Minister has made it sound as if this Bill is all about those safe and legal routes, but it is not, because there is no provision for them and they are barely even mentioned.

I have heard those of us who oppose what the Bill does characterised as wanting people to make those dangerous journeys. Of course we do not want that. Our solution is the safe and legal routes that we keep hearing about but not have. They need to be set up and promoted, and people need to be able to use them. One of the safer legal routes that does exist, and is the most likely to be used, is the family reunion route, but this Bill takes that away from people who do not arrive by the mode of transport or in the way that the Government want them to.

Turning to amendment 91, I want to use the example of somebody from Afghanistan, which will also speak to amendment 15. I am using the examples of people, or their family members or friends, who I represent—I know that we were all inundated with requests from people in our constituencies who needed help for people in Afghanistan.

Mr L worked for a British charity in a programme funded by the UK Government around preventing violence against women. He has made an application for relocation, but he has heard absolutely nothing and I cannot get him any information. He and his wife had to go into hiding because his family was being targeted. The Taliban have already made threats against his wife, who, like him, is just 22 years old. The Taliban got messages to her that she will be raped multiple times if they can find her. His father has already been kidnapped by the Taliban and has been tortured by them. Who knows what will become of him?

Mr L’s wife has had such a severe mental breakdown that he had to make the decision to send her to what he hopes is a safe house in Afghanistan, as he thinks he has more chance of securing relocation for him and his wife if at least one of them can get out of Afghanistan. He is now paying illegal traffickers to get him out because he is so desperate to get this situation resolved and is hearing nothing, and weeks and months have gone by. Of course the traffickers are wrong, but is he wrong? Is he wrong to pay them? If he is wrong, what should he do instead? What options have we given him? I do not want him to do this. As an MP, I am not in a position to give him any kind of legal advice, and I know this is not safe for him to do. Does the Minister want me to go back to him and say that, despite all the promises we made to the people of Afghanistan, I do not have options to offer him?

I want to quote a couple of things that were said by Conservative MPs in August, when everything escalated in Afghanistan. The right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) said:

“There is something we can do right now: cut through bureaucracy and ensure that we look after every single Afghani who took risks for themselves and their families because they believed in a better future and trusted us to deliver it.”—[Official Report, 18 August 2021; Vol. 699, c. 1307.]

I am sure we all agreed with that at the time. The right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) said:

“Like the Home Secretary, let me just say that, as the son of a refugee, I am deeply proud that this Government are continuing the big-hearted tradition of the British people in offering safe haven to those fleeing persecution.”—[Official Report, 18 August 2021; Vol. 699, c. 1370.]

The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby gave a welcome from the Scarborough community and talked about

“refugees who had left, in many cases with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. They will have gone through a very traumatic process to even get to the airport and now they have arrived in Scarborough. For many people, the consequences of not getting out of the country would be certain death.”

So, I know he completely understands the trauma that people are going through and their desperation.

That was in August and we are now in October. The people I am talking about are no less desperate—they are more desperate—and I do not know what to say to them. I will have to tell Mr L that if he somehow manages to have his wife looked after, while she tries to recover her mental health, and he manages to get here, he could be offshored, sent away or jailed. He may never see his wife again because we will take away the right to family reunion. That cannot be right.

The people of Afghanistan are desperate—I have read out only a few of the quotes, but I know that all members of the Committee understand that. Time is just not on their side, so we must remove the provision—I would remove all of it. I ask the Committee to support amendment 15, at least to remove those consequences for the people coming from Afghanistan, to whom we absolutely owe safe refuge.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the 242 Afghan refugees who are temporarily in Scarborough before being relocated around the country came here by safe and legal routes? I am sure that when the Minister responds, he will explain how we can set up different, and better, legal routes to get some of those vulnerable people here. That must not be done by feeding into the people-smuggling industry.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I absolutely endorse the ambition for everyone to be able to get here by safe and legal routes, but nothing in the Bill will set up any safe and legal routes. In fact, they will be taken away from some people.

We should be doing that, but we will never be in a position where everybody is able to access safe and legal routes. We will never be in a position where everybody who is entitled to claim asylum can access it, and we should not be punishing them if they cannot. Right now, there are 242 people in Scarborough, but how many thousands more are there in Afghanistan? They need to get out. If they feel that their lives are at risk and they cannot stay any longer, but they can only get here by their own means—I would rather they came by the Government’s means, but nothing is happening there—I could not say to them, hand on heart, that they should just stay where they are.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

To respond to the earlier intervention, does the hon. Lady recognise that people from Afghanistan are currently one of the four largest national groups risking their lives on channel crossings?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. For me, it is wider than that: Afghanistan just showed us what is happening throughout the world. It may have been escalated and was very intense at the time, but things like that happen throughout the world. Right now, people from Afghanistan are coming over by boat, and honestly—I am looking at the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, but I should really be looking at the Minister—I do not think that anyone can morally justify telling those people that they face jail or offshoring, and that they may never see their families again because of new rules that we are introducing.

[Mr Goodwill]

Nobody doubts anyone in this Parliament on their compassion or their feeling for people who are in very vulnerable situations. We should not agree, however, on the route that the hon. Lady is almost advocating—using people smugglers—which is, in effect, means-testing the refugee process so that only those who have the money to pay the people smugglers can come, not the people who are perhaps most vulnerable and most likely to be suffering persecution. Indeed, the gender balance favours men, who seem to be the ones who get here by illegal routes, and not women, who are the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I do not know where to start with that. I take real exception to what the right hon. Gentleman said about my endorsement of people smugglers and those routes. I have been very clear that we do not want anyone to use people smugglers. I have given the Committee an example of somebody’s experience, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can tell me what that man should do. His wife is seriously ill and is being looked after following a mental breakdown, because the Taliban told her that many of them will rape her multiple times if they catch her. How desperate would any of us be in that situation? I am not endorsing people smugglers in any way, and I wish he would take back that remark, because it is very unfair.

Another thing I want to mention, as I have a number of times in this place, is the gender balance. To say that men are not vulnerable is just not true. Often, men seek asylum because they would otherwise be conscripted into the army or tortured. I know many male asylum seekers who faced torture or conscription and had to flee. The other reason that more men come over is that they are coming to safety so they can then send for their family. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said, all the measure will achieve is that women and children will come with the men and make that dangerous journey as well. He said something else that, if I remember, I will come back to later

[Mr Goodwill]

I was not suggesting that the hon. Lady was advocating people smuggling, but unfortunately the law of unintended consequences comes into play. Taking Syrian families under our vulnerable persons resettlement scheme was the right way to proceed. None of the people I visited in refugee camps in Jordan had the means to pay people smugglers. In many ways, it is a means-tested operation if the route used by people smugglers is perceived to be of equal standing to legal and lawful routes, like those by which we took people from Afghanistan and took the people chosen by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in refugee camps in Syria.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I give way to the hon. Member for Halifax.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I remind the hon. Lady of the right hon. Gentleman’s earlier point. Unfortunately, the abhorrent models of people smuggling result in people coming to this country who are locked into debt relating to their journey. It is not as simple as saying it is means tested. There are lots of unfortunate arrangements in that model, which we all want to end, but safe and legal routes will be how we achieve that.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Exactly. I thank the hon. Member for saying that. The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby argues that those who have money are not vulnerable or in danger of persecution. In the case of the 22-year-old I was talking about, I have no idea how much money the couple have. They may be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, but that does not stop her being under threat of multiple rapes by the Taliban. The money is a bit of a red herring.

Often, a vulnerable young man will pay the people smugglers with money gathered by the wider family selling property, because they need somebody to get out and get help for the whole family. We cannot assume that they have the money in the first place, or that they are not clocking up a debt that they will have to pay back, or that the fact of having money will make any difference to their safety.

The right hon. Gentleman says that the effect of my opposition to the proposal leads to people not using safe and legal routes. He says that he is not saying that I am endorsing the people smugglers, but equally, I could say that his refusal to push his Government to set up safe and legal routes before bringing in any other legislation is a case of him endorsing people smugglers. What other option do people have? Now, I am not saying that, but I hope he takes my point.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is misrepresenting the point my right hon. Friend made. He was not in any way suggesting that those with wealth cannot be vulnerable, but it cannot possibly sit comfortably with people who describe themselves as socialist to suggest that there should be channels that are, in effect, available only to those with substantial wealth, on a scale different from much of the rest of the vulnerable population.

[The Chair]

Order. I am sorry to intervene, but I think we have to stop reinterpreting what the last person to speak said. We are all quite clear that no one in this room supports people traffickers. We should move on.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Thank you, Ms McDonagh. That was a rather ridiculous intervention, so I was unsure whether to reply to it.

[Neil Coyle]

As UK law stands, an Afghan who had dared to work for and with the UK, protect the UK, in the past 20 years or so—perhaps as a guard at the embassy in Kabul—and who feared the threat to their family of the Taliban takeover so much that they gave their child to the US to evacuate from the country, cannot come into the UK under the family reunion visa. Perhaps one thing that we can agree on, and that the Minister could include in the Bill, is an extension of the family reunion visa beyond spouses and dependants.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I would absolutely support that. I had no intention of speaking for any more than five minutes, but Members keep on interrupting and goading me. I want to make two more little points, if I may. The Bill is being brought in because there is a mistaken belief that asylum seekers across the world are desperate to get to the UK. I am not sure why they would be if they ever watch parliamentlive.tv, but the fact is that most people coming to Europe as a whole think that Europe is one homogenous place. They do not think in terms of countries. This is not anecdotal; studies have been done on people who come to live here. Similarly, people often think that Africa is a country, when it is more than 50 countries.

Asylum seekers are not looking to go to a particular country. If they choose to come to the UK, it is perhaps because they have family or friends here, which is hugely important, or because they speak the language. They do not speak French or German, but they do speak English and do have family here. Imagine the turmoil when people’s city is bombed. They do not recognise the streets any more, and they do not know where their family are. They know that they could be raped, tortured or murdered at any moment. Imagine the trauma from that. People know that they have to get away. Of course they do not want to leave, but they have to do so. We should all think about that happening to us. We are so lucky that it will probably never happen to us. If it did, we would want to be with people who made us feel safe. If someone has family or friends in the UK, they should be able to join them. Yes, that is a pull factor, as is the language. There is also a mistaken belief that the great British empire was all-welcoming, all-democratic and all-supportive of human rights, which is another reason why people come to the UK.

The truth is that most people who arrive by boat have not decided that they are coming here; the smugglers have decided it. As my Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said, we should be targeting the smugglers, not their victims. We should take away their market, and the only way to do that is to provide the safe and legal routes on which we apparently all agree. But where are they?

I will make one more point, which is about France. We have established that, under the international legislation that the UK played a major role in developing, there is no requirement to claim asylum in the first so-called safe country that somebody arrives in. However, it is important to understand why someone fleeing persecution, and probably suffering from mental health impacts such as post-traumatic stress disorder, might not want to claim asylum in France—I am using France as an example. Why would an asylum seeker choose to make a dangerous crossing? As I said, most people are not choosing; the people smugglers are choosing. Why might they choose to make a dangerous channel crossing, when they could claim asylum in France? I have spoken about the fact that people do not choose their route, but it is well established that the asylum system in France has a reputation for being harsh. I know there are Members present who like the idea of harshness, but we do not.

A 2020 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights condemned France for inhumane living conditions for asylum seekers. Having spent a few days with my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East in the jungle in Calais a few years ago, I saw exactly what the court meant. France might take in many more people than we do in the UK—I believe that we do not treat asylum seekers as well as we should do when they arrive here, and we certainly will not do so if the Bill passes—but France is not where I would want to be if I needed international protection, especially if I had to recover from trauma.

Even during the pandemic last year, when we all agreed that there should be a break in evictions and that everyone should have a roof over their head, asylum seekers sleeping in tents in France where thrown out of their tents and tear-gassed, no doubt triggering terrible memories for many of them. When I was in the jungle, parents there told me that their children no longer played in the little playpark nearby because far-right activists set off fireworks to terrify them, and terrify them it did, as these kids fled, thinking that they were being bombed again.

In addition, the housing situation for asylum seekers in France has only got worse, with asylum seekers such as Hussain, interviewed by the New Humanitarian in April, being forced to sleep rough on the streets of Paris over a year after he submitted his application. The French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights went so far as to say:

“It is true that the conditions in France make people want to leave”.

Nicolas De Sa-Pallix, a French asylum lawyer, condemned the French Government’s approach, and his words should act as a warning for Government Members:

“They talk about being both humane and tough in migration policies, but these don’t go together…You can’t have both.”

I agree, so why not just respond to the plight of these people, facing things that none of us will ever have to face, with humanity?

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

We have heard two excellent speeches, and the Opposition totally support the position of the Scottish National party.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

I do not think it would be appropriate for clause 10 to include an exemption from group 2 refugee conditions for Afghan national refugees. Although I have great sympathy for the plight of Afghan citizens who are fleeing the brutal reign of the Taliban, a blanket exemption for Afghan citizens who are recognised as refugees would be inappropriate for two reasons.

First, we cannot exempt any particular nationality, because situations of conflict and repression are fluid. There may come a time when that country is no longer unsafe and those from it who claim asylum are no longer genuinely in need of protection; I am sure that is something that we all wish to see. If there were still an exemption for them in primary legislation, it would serve as a huge pull factor to the UK for migrants seeking to claim asylum in order to work or otherwise make a new life in the UK.

Secondly, any blanket exemption would inevitably lead to people posing as Afghans in an attempt to benefit from the hon. Gentleman’s very principled generosity. That would, perversely, prevent us from protecting Afghans who were genuinely in need. I am sure hon. Members agree that that would be in no one’s interest.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I wonder whether the Minister agrees or disagrees with the Conservative former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who said in August:

“There are times and places where we should be strict with asylum applications. Afghanistan today is the exact opposite. We should take anyone who can make a case”.

[Tom Pursglove]

I simply cannot in all conscience support anyone of any nationality putting their lives in the hands of evil people-smuggling gangs, and I think that that would be the unintended consequence of what the hon. Lady is trying to achieve. I do not doubt the generosity of spirit behind the amendment, but I do not think that putting it into the Bill is the right thing to do. It is right that we continue to develop the safe and legal route as quickly as possible, and make sure that people are able to come here. I cannot, in all good conscience, support an amendment that would simply afford opportunity to evil criminal gangs. With that, I ask the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East to withdraw it.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the intervention. I think there is a timing issue here. We are debating this Bill in Committee today and we have several more weeks of Committee, and then Report and Third Reading in the Commons, followed by Lords consideration in full, and consideration of any amendments that those in the other place wish to send to us. As a result, we are some way away from this Bill becoming law. By that time, I fully expect that the safe and legal route will have been established and people will be able to avail themselves of it. The overriding point is that all cases are considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into proper account all the relevant considerations.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The Minister says that he hopes that, by the time the Bill is enacted, the safe and legal route will be up and running. We are talking about Afghanistan. Does he mean that, by the time it is enacted, all the safe and legal routes that are required in different parts of the world where people need to flee to seek protection will be and up and running, or just the Afghan route?

[Tom Pursglove]

Amendment 15 is very specifically about Afghanistan. I would not wish to invoke your wrath, Ms McDonagh, by going wider than that, so I must keep my remarks to Afghanistan. The point that I have made stands, and I reiterate that cases are considered on a case-by-case basis, as the hon. Lady would rightly expect.