Nationality and Borders Bill (Fifth sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Ordinarily, I would take speakers from both sides of the Committee, but if no Government Member wishes to speak at this stage, I will call the hon. Member for Glasgow North East.

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

I will be brief and echo what my hon. Friend has said. I welcome the Minister to his place and wish him well although I am sorry to say not with this Bill. I thank all the multiple organisations that are concerned by the Bill and supported the moves to make the changes that need to be made.

It might be a moot point but, as my hon. Friend said about amendments 29 and 84, we do not want to be in a situation in which parents are treated equally badly. I suspect that that is not what the clause is about and I hope that the Minister will say that it is fine and we will accept that. However, it is important that we acknowledge that mothers were treated unequally and wrongly. That is because, throughout the centuries, women have been treated systemically badly. Yes, of course things have improved—and this is an improvement—but we have to acknowledge it whenever there has been systemic bias against any group of people, and in this case we are talking about women and mothers. I do not think any member of the Committee would disagree that what has happened is extremely unfair but we must acknowledge it so that we can move forward. Acknowledging a problem draws attention to it. Let us not pretend that we have equality of the sexes and genders. We do not. Every time that that is acknowledged it enables us to move forward and think of other situations in which there is inequality.

We have helpfully been provided with photos of members of the Committee and been given their constituency names but when I saw the photo of the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, I thought he was the right hon. Member for Con, Scarborough and Whitby. I thought, “Where is ‘Con’?” until I realised that it referred to the fact that he is a Conservative. I am learning something new every day.

The right hon. Gentleman was factually correct to say that it is easier for mothers rather than fathers to prove their parentage. That is why I wonder why on earth it was so difficult for women to pass on their nationality to their children. There is no question who the mother is in such cases. I hope the Minister will say that he will change the language to refer to mothers and that the Government will acknowledge the inequalities between men and women and mothers and fathers. Treating parents equally should not mean that they are treated equally badly. I suspect that he does not want to do that and I support most of the provisions in this part of the Bill. That is probably the last time I shall say that today.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Tom Pursglove)]

I start by thanking Opposition colleagues for their warm welcome to me in my new role. It is welcome that, in the early provisions of the Bill, there is broad agreement across the Committee about the need to correct the injustices and to put things right.

I thank the hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate, for Halifax, for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and for Glasgow North East for tabling amendments 29 and 84. They both refer to clause 1, which I am pleased to introduce because it corrects a long-standing anomaly in British nationality law. I appreciate hon. Members’ attention to detail in seeking to make sure that the new provision is clear and in line with the parallel provision in the British Nationality Act 1981 for the children of British citizen mothers. However, I do not think an amendment is needed, as the proposed wording here achieves what is intended. In saying that this provision applies to someone who would have been a citizen had their parents been treated equally, we are talking about a situation where the law applied equally to mothers or fathers, women or men.

The term “parents” is consistent with the wording used in section 23 of the 1981 Act, which determined which citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies became British dependent territories citizens on commencement. One of the three conditions that a person needs to meet to qualify for registration under this clause is that they would have become a British dependent territories citizen under section 23(1)(b) or (c) of that Act. That section refers to a person’s “parent”.

I wish to point out that we will further clarify the points that have been made in the underpinning guidance. I trust that will afford greater comfort because it is clear that the Bill is technical, so plain language will be used in the guidance itself to achieve what members of the Committee seek to achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I completely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I maintain my position that although it is a right for these people to apply for citizenship, the cost of their doing so, and indeed the cost of ensuring that people who may be fraudulently trying to avail themselves of citizenship, should not fall disproportionately on taxpayers as a whole but on the applicants. As long as the Minister can reassure us that the fees reflect the cost, and that any high fees can be justified by the man hours spent and the time needed to check those applications, the Government should be supported on the wording in the Bill.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Before I come to what I was going to say, may I respond to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby as well? He does not need that reassurance, and he does not need to worry about the British taxpayer, because in 2018 the Home Office made profits of £500 million by charging £500 million more than it cost to process fees. He talked about the DVLA. He cannot say that the DVLA never gets fraudulent claims; it builds them into its costs. The Home Office has already built in the cost of checking fraudulent claims, and the profit in 2018 was £500 million for the whole year, so the British taxpayer does not have to worry about that. Who has to worry about it are the people who have to pay the fees, which is what I wanted to talk about.

I will give two examples that I think will illustrate the broader point of the unfair impact on people’s lives when they have to pay fees over and above what it costs to become a British citizen or to be allowed to remain in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East was right to focus on children. After all, children have absolutely no say on what happens in their lives. Throughout all the talk about immigration, particularly asylum for instance, we talk about single men as if they are not vulnerable. I will tell the Committee about two young men who were extremely vulnerable—they are less so now—and how the fees affected their lives, stopped them living their lives, and almost ended one of their lives.

They are not young men now. If they are watching this—I doubt that they will be—I think they will be delighted that I am calling them young men; they are just younger than me. I will not give you the first one’s correct name. He adopted a Scottish name, which I will say is Fraser, even though it is not. Fraser has become part of my family. He calls my mother “Mum”. She taught him to drink whisky and he is eternally grateful for that.

[Neil Coyle]

Does she give lessons?

[Anne McLaughlin]

My mum is even less likely to be watching this, but if she is, I will certainly let the hon. Member know.

Fraser—I must remember to use the adopted name—came from Sudan. His village, where he grew up, was razed to the ground. Everybody fled, and he did not know where the rest of his family were. He assumed that his two brothers, sister, mum and dad had died, but he did not know for sure and he kept hearing rumours over the years. He was helped by the British Red Cross, so he came here as an asylum seeker and then got his refugee status. But he wanted to go back and find out, because he kept hearing rumours that his sister had managed to get away and that his mum might still be alive, although he doubted it. The British Red Cross was doing everything it could to help him, but in order to get back to Sudan he needed a British passport and to be a British citizen. He had got his refugee status, but that took something like six years beyond when he was able to apply for citizenship, because he could not afford the fees. Had he been charged what it actually cost the Home Office, he would have got home a whole lot sooner. I know that nobody in this room would have wanted what happened to him to happen, but I am just explaining what the impact of these extortionate fees can be.

It took Fraser a long time, but he did finally get back with his British passport. Members here will be very proud of me, because I went to his citizenship ceremony and stood to sing “God Save the Queen”. I do not do that terribly often, but I did it for him, because it was so important to him. He went to Sudan to see what had become of his family and he discovered that his sister had fled but had come back. His sister was there, living in very dangerous circumstances, which he was then able to help her with. She has children there; she does not want to leave Sudan, but she wants to be safe and he was able to help her. He discovered that his mum had been very ill for many years. She had not died at the time; she, too, had escaped. She had been very ill for many years but—I am trying to think how to put this—she had clung on, because she just wanted to see him one more time. But she had died two months before he got over there.

As I said, I am not for a second suggesting that anybody here or anybody drafting the legislation would not care about what happened to Fraser, but if he had had easier access, had not had to save up for years because he worked on the minimum wage in various precarious employments, and had been able to get over sooner, he could have been reunited with his family, which is a huge thing for him. He calls my mum “Mum”, because he does not have one in his life.

I will call the second person I want to talk about Matthew. He had leave to remain but had to renew it after three years. He, too, worked on the minimum wage in precarious employment, with a zero-hours contract. How could he save up the £2,000 that he had to pay to renew it? So he buried his head in the sand; he did not save it up—well, he could not possibly have saved it up, to be fair—and then his employer said to him, rightly, “I’m no longer allowed to employ you, because you don’t have leave to remain.” He said, “But I can’t afford to apply for leave to remain,” but of course the employer cannot do anything about that. He was obviously then unemployed, but he has no recourse to public funds, because he does not have any status in the UK, so his housing association is saying to him, “Where’s the rent?” A year has gone by and he has clocked up all sorts of debt. His housing association is saying, “Look, we don’t want to evict you, but we are going to have to.” That is all because he could not afford the fees—fees that were way more than it was costing the Home Office. There was no need to do this to him.

The situation then got really complicated because he discovered something—this fits in with new clause 16 and awareness raising. He did not know that it is possible for the fees to be waived if the person is in certain circumstances, and his case fitted those circumstances; they are not waived as a right, but there is that possibility. He did not know that, so he did not ask. He got a lawyer, who obviously did know it, and asked. The Home Office asked to see his bank statements for the past couple of years, and then said, “No, we are not waiving the fee,” and just left it at that. He came to me, and I asked the Home Office. The Minister there was very helpful and said, “Look, it is because he has been gambling his money away. That is why he can’t pay his fees.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Coyle]

I thank colleagues for their kind words about not particularly wanting to hear my contribution and being grateful for the technical problem.

I support the amendments because I believe that the Bill misses an opportunity to address some wider process issues that need reviewing for several reasons. Fundamentally, I come back to the impact of imposing costs on people’s access to their rights and entitlements, given the delays and times involved and the impact on Home Office staff.

Let me give a practical example: the Home Office’s processes take so long and cost so much that businesses in my constituency have moved country as a result. One financial sector firm was trying to recruit someone from Japan. They were told that it would take at least six months to process an application, and that she may not even qualify to work in the UK under the process they were following. They discovered that it was cheaper and faster to up sticks, because of the price, process and times. They chose to move to Frankfurt, and in two weeks they were able to complete the registration and visa process that they could not do over here.

There is a wider problem with how long the process takes. Imposing costs adds to the bureaucratic impact on the Home Offices and the delays. At the end of March 2021, 66,000 people were waiting for initial decisions from the Home Office—the highest figure for over a decade. Of those, 56,000 had been waiting more than six months. I come back to the point that the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby made about accessing a passport. If a child wants to go on a school trip and wants a passport, but cannot get it without going through a process that takes more than six months, how on earth will they go on a school trip? In that circumstance, children are denied the opportunities afforded to their classmates, even if they were born over the river here at St Thomas’ Hospital and sit next to the other children whom they do not have the same rights as. It is iniquitous.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I just want to share a story. When I was in primary 7, everyone in my class went on a trip to Paris, except me, because my parents were too strict and thought I was too young. At least I understood why. Those children cannot go because of who they are; it is not because of a decision by their parents but because they are deemed not to be equal to their classmates. I know how bad it felt to be told by my mum and dad that I was not going to Paris. It must feel 100 times worse for a child when who they are is in question.

[Neil Coyle]

rose—

[The Chair]

Order. We are feeling our way. I do not want to be heavy handed, but interventions are not speeches.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I am sorry.

[The Chair]

It is quite all right. We allow greater flexibility in Committee than we do on the Floor of the House. Nevertheless, an intervention should arise directly from, and be a question to, the Member who has the floor.