Nationality and Borders Bill (Fourth sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

Q That is certainly what I heard from the Nigerian Minister of Interior, who said that the most vulnerable people in the areas Boko Haram controlled had no chance, no way to afford paying people smugglers. It was middle-class people—by Nigerian standards—who could afford to send, say, son No. 2 on that hazardous journey.

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: I cannot talk about the statement by the Minister about the Boko Haram area, but I can tell you that, first, “middle class” means something different in different countries. Secondly, the people you see applying for refugee status here are not necessarily members of the middle classes. There is a much wider range. I suggest that if someone is truly wealthy, they might be able to come by plane. That is the most expensive kind of irregular journey because it would mean purchasing a passport and a ticket.

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

Q Thank you very much for your time today. I have one quick question on that: if a person is middle class in the country they live in, can they still be a refugee, still be in danger and still have protection needs?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: Of course.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Thank you. If the Bill is enacted, anyone acting with purely humanitarian motives could be criminalised just for facilitating the arrival of a person who does not have entry clearance for the UK. They could face a long time in prison. The Canadian Supreme Court found that similar provisions in Canada violated article 31 of the refugee convention. Can you tell me more about that?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: Thank you very much for that question. Being or not being a refugee has nothing to do with economic status. Refugees can be poor, middle class, or very wealthy. What makes a person a refugee is a well-founded fear of persecution for one of the five reasons established in the convention. Since we are talking about this in the Bill, the manner of a person’s arrival also has no bearing on this whatsoever. A refugee is a refugee is a refugee. If you are a refugee, you are entitled to certain things. That is really the bottom line.

On the criminalisation of those who may be assisting people to move across borders, there is an important difference to be made between those who do so for gain—the smuggler; we all know that there are criminal networks preying on people’s despair, and we commend the Government for their robust action in pursuing these people and bringing them to justice; that is a relief—and those who provide assistance to people in difficulty. They could be organisations rescuing asylum seekers and migrants at sea, for example. That is a completely different kettle of fish, and we definitely believe that it should not be penalised. The difference is between gain and humanitarian purpose.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Do you know anything about what happened in Canada?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: I do not. Perhaps Elizabeth does. Otherwise, I can of course let you know

Elizabeth Ruddick: In Canada, there was an attempt to prosecute refugees who had been abandoned by the smugglers and were steering a boat to safety. They were prosecuted for facilitating each other’s safe arrival. That was found to be a violation of the convention, because if you criminalise refugees assisting each other to survive during the course of their journey, you are criminalising seeking asylum.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q It is important for the Government to hear that. They will face the same possible actions if they go ahead with this.

My other question involves the raging debates we have here all the time, which has come down to, “Yes, it does”, or, “No, it doesn’t”. People who are refugees seeking protection do not have to seek protection in the first country that they come to. We say that all the time, but we have debates with our colleagues who say, “Yes, they do. If they don’t, they are not refugees.” You say, “No, they don’t.” Will you explain that more?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: The answer is, unequivocally, no. Refugees are not required to seek asylum in the first country, full stop. The manner of travel has no bearing on refugee status—none at all. That said, it does not translate into an unfettered right for people to choose where they want to seek asylum.

What is important to consider here—it has a bearing on your situation—is that UNHCR encourages countries to enter into agreements that allow them to transfer responsibilities for asylum seekers in a manner that ensures that every individual has access to a fair procedure, to decent and appropriate reception and, if found to be a refugee, a viable integration path. They do so by sharing responsibility in such a way that protection space is expanded rather than decreased.

One of the specifics of your Bill is that it makes extensive use of so-called inadmissibility in a situation in which there is no agreement that would allow the UK to transfer these people to another safe country in which it would make sense for them to be assessed. The UK, as you know, was part of the Dublin scheme, which is not perfect by any means but was at least a mechanism that established certain rules allowing states to share responsibility and to decide who should be assessed where.

At the moment, you do not have any such agreement with the EU, so a bit of a strange situation is realising itself. Since the entry into force of the changes to the initial rules, I understand that about 4,500 individuals have been notified of their possible inadmissibility. Seven of them have been found inadmissible, but I do not think that anyone has been returned to anywhere, because this has simply created a very long queue leading to nowhere. It is fundamental to the good management of the international refugee system that there should be strong collaboration between states. I hope that clarifies things.

[Anne McLaughlin]

That really does help. I have one more brief question. Would you say that you are an authority on the refugee convention?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: The UNHCR is the established guardian of the 1951 convention. Our statute is an annex to a General Assembly resolution. The duty of states to collaborate with UNHCR is enshrined in article 35 of the 1951 convention, so yes.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

When you spoke first, you said that the Bill would not carry out its intentions. To pick up on that, many parts of the Bill have similarities to the Australian model, which was implemented in 2014. As we know, that was very successful —no migrants were crossing after about nine months of that policy coming in. You said that there were differences from the situation that arose in Australia. I get that, there are differences between them and us, but there are also a great deal of similarities. In your eyes, what are the differences that would make this legislation so unsuccessful?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: Let me just take a step back on Australia. The Australian approach was essentially based on offshoring and externalisation, and on turning around the boats. The offshoring and externalisation did not have any impact on the boats, but it did have a terrible, terrible impact on the people who got caught in it. If you read reports of what happened on Nauru and Manus island and so on, there were very high levels of violence, sexual violence against women and children and suicides. Children were found to be the most traumatised that most practitioners had ever seen. Children were essentially withdrawing into themselves and becoming entirely irresponsive to external stimuli. There were also suicides and self-harm. You really need to ask yourselves whether that situation is something you would like to associate your country with, to be entirely frank.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. I would like to bring in a representative from the SNP now, because they are yet to ask any questions.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Thank you very much for your time today and for everything you do for some of the world’s most vulnerable people. I have a question for Lisa. You say in your written evidence that the cost of prosecuting and imprisoning those seeking asylum, if we go ahead with this Bill, could be up to £400 million a year more than under the current system. Given that in parts of the UK the prison system is already bursting at the seams, and there is an asylum decision backlog of 70,000 people living in limbo, unable to contribute to the economy, if you could spend that £400 million, how would you use it to improve the immigration system?

Lisa Doyle: Certainly by expanding the safe routes that we have been talking about. A question was asked earlier about women and children. If the Government are serious about prioritising vulnerable women and children, the proposals to limit family reunion rights will run counter to that, because 90% of people who join people on family reunion are women and children.

We have an issue with decision making being too slow. At the Home Affairs Committee yesterday, the Home Office said that the average waiting time is a year now. We all want quick, efficient and accurate decisions, which would mean that anyone entering the UK would have their claim assessed quickly, and that would flow through the system and reduce the pressure on asylum accommodation. Putting more decision makers into the Home Office would certainly help. Improvements in the quality of accommodation and an expansion of safe routes would be a good investment for Britain to play its role in the international protection system.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Thank you very much for that. Mariam, the Australian high commissioner was here this morning—you saw that—and I was not able to ask my question, which was about resignation syndrome. You might not know much about that, but I want to talk about mental health generally. My question to him was about how offshoring impacts on everyone’s mental health, but particularly on children who suffer from resignation syndrome. I just want to get this on the record, because these children were in a catatonic state. Some of them had not moved for four months, and still the Australian Government were saying, “No, we can’t help.” Do you know anything about that? If not, you talked about people who attempted to take their own lives in the barracks, so perhaps you could say something about the impact on mental health of living in that type of accommodation.

Mariam Kemple-Hardy: Sure. I am afraid I cannot speak about resignation syndrome. However, on mental health, I have mentioned that there are a few crises in the asylum system, but one of them is definitely a mental health crisis. When we work with and speak to refugees in the asylum system right now, they talk about the impact of the system—not just the accommodation, but the system overall. One person, who has been waiting almost three years for a decision on her claim, said, “It has destroyed me psychologically as a person.”

We have a system in which people are left in limbo for years. While they are waiting, they are not allowed to work—in effect, they are banned from working. They have to live on £5.69 a day—effectively, state-sponsored poverty. People tell us that they feel that they have lost all purpose. They feel that their experience of the asylum system is almost like a mental war, a complete retraumatising. These people have made it here, trying to seek safety, after going through a very traumatic process.

As I said, however, this legislation will only double down on that injustice. It will build an additional six months’ wait into the process, if someone is inadmissible. If their claim is deemed inadmissible and they have to wait six months to see if the Government will support them, it is unlikely that they will. Then, after six months, they enter the asylum system.

We would like to see policies in legislation that are sensible and humane. For example—I will say one final thing on the right to work—you mentioned how much money the legislation might cost the Home Office. Actually, those sensible policies we believe would save the Home Office a huge amount of money and would really help people in that psychological limbo while they wait for their asylum claim to be processed. If people were given the right to work, we estimate that it would save the Home Office about £100 million per year, and actually 71% of the public fully support giving people seeking asylum the right to work. However, we do not see such policies in this legislation. Instead, we see policies to punish and not to protect.

[The Chair]

I am sorry to intervene. Paul Howell.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Are there any further questions?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q I have a question for Patricia Durr from ECPAT. When trailing the Bill, the Home Office talked about the widespread abuse of the system by child rapists and criminals—foreign national offenders. We heard the Minister alluding to that earlier. Of course, nobody wants to have a system that is abused, but I understand that ECPAT submitted a freedom of information request on that. I wonder whether you could tell us how widespread that abuse was.

Patricia Durr: We did not submit the FOI, but the response back indicated that that information is not available, so evidence of widespread abuse does not exist as far as we know.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Perhaps the Minister will get it for us for the next meeting. Thank you very much.