Immigration Bill (Third sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Before we move on, does any other member of the Committee wish to ask a question on this particular point?

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

Q 213 A number of you have mentioned the quality of the initial decision making; I think Mr Gill referred to it as being unspeakable. It would be useful for us to know—it would certainly be useful for the Minister to know—what it is that you think is making the quality of the decision making so poor. What sort of mistakes are being made? What do you think needs to happen to improve the quality of the decision making?

Colin Yeo: I have been an immigration lawyer for 15 years. When I started, people could use an immigration lawyer if they wanted. It was like using an accountant to do your tax return. It was an optional extra. These days, immigration law has become so insanely complex. The rules are an alphabet soup of non-sequential provisions where it is almost impossible to track what the requirements are. They are separated into different dependencies, which do not seem to match up properly. The rules are incredibly complex. Basically everybody needs an immigration lawyer these days, and the 2014 Act and now the Bill are expanding the number of people who require an immigration lawyer. It now includes landlords, employers, and migrants and their families. Although on one level I speak slightly flippantly because it is great for business for an immigration lawyer, it a crazy way to run a modern country in a global economy.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q 214 Are you suggesting that the decision made initially is poor because the law is so complex and those who are making the decision are not equipped?

Colin Yeo: It is a combination of things. The Home Office officials are subject to rules that change almost weekly or monthly and are very complicated to understand. They are not helped by the applicants themselves, who have real difficulties trying to unravel the meaning of the rules, and the application forms and so on, which are incredibly complicated now.

Don Flynn: To add to what Colin said, it is commonly reported among the organisations supporting asylum seekers and refugees that they do encounter an entrenched culture of disbelief. The presumption very firmly in place within decision-making culture is that this is a bogus application. A steep slope is then presented to the individual asylum seeker to overcome that. In addition, most of us who have been around get hints that templates are being applied to the decision-making process. Rather than rigorous consideration of the individual cases, you get the sense that an Eritrean case or a Somali case is being fed through a particular filter. Occasionally, that shows itself by a decision that is so wildly inappropriate, without any reference to particular facts that have been put forward, which makes you think that this is a pro forma decision, rather than one that has addressed the solid facts that have been argued in the case.

[The Chair]

I had Sarah Champion down. Do you want to go now or later?