Refugees from Ukraine

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Is the Minister saying that the UK is receiving different security advice from all those European countries and our near neighbours Ireland, or is he saying that they are putting their people at risk?

[Tom Pursglove]

Again, I make the point that we have to act in accordance with the advice that we receive. I am simply not in a position to pass meaningful comment on the advice that other Governments may or may not be receiving. Of course there are marked differences between the United Kingdom and many of our European friends, in the sense that we are not part of Schengen and they are. That is a considerable difference that is materially relevant when we discuss these matters.

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

I want to acknowledge two things at the outset. First, the UK is not doing nothing and what the UK has done so far will have made a massive difference for some to whom we have given protection. Some may end up as MPs in this place one day, talking about how they came to the UK as refugees in 2022. There is no doubt that we will have saved and shaped lives, and have enabled some simply to have a life. This Government are not doing nothing and it would be wrong to claim otherwise, which is why nobody has claimed that today.

I also want to acknowledge that none of this is the fault of anyone other than Vladimir Putin and his regime, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) said. It is not the fault of a European Government, of the people of these islands or of the Russian people, and it certainly is not the fault of the Ukrainian people, but our lack of culpability is irrelevant to our duty, both legal and moral.

As an immigration spokesperson and someone who has a very significant immigration case load in my constituency, and as someone who sat on the Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, scrutinising every line along with my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), I am always concerned when this UK Tory Government is required to fulfil that legal and moral duty, because I do not think they think there is a legal duty, and judging by the way they continually invite pats on the head and talk of how generous they are, I do not think they believe they have a moral duty either. They would not bring forward a Bill such as the Nationality and Borders Bill—which, ironically, returns from the Lords next week—if they had any desire, or believed they had any duty, to protect people fleeing war, violence and terror. The Nationality and Borders Bill, widely known as the anti-refugee Bill, is clearly trying to send a signal that benevolent Britain is no more: “Do not come here, because you will not be welcome.”

As I said, the Government are not doing nothing to help Ukrainian refugees, but they must understand that our duty, not just as Opposition MPs but as Members of this Parliament, of whatever party, is to speak up when we think the Government have got it wrong and to say where we believe the Government need to go on this issue. Otherwise we might as well just go home, take the salary and do nothing for it. I will list some of my concerns, many of which have been raised by colleagues but which I want to reinforce.

The response to refugees has been chaotic. I do not believe the Government have got it right yet, but they have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming even to get to the stage they have currently reached. Those of us who regularly have contact with the Home Office know that its modus operandi is to change the rules regularly and blindside people. Immigration lawyers can hardly keep up, MPs and caseworkers cannot keep up, refugees cannot keep up; that is the Home Office MO, and it is deliberate. It is adopted to deny people their rights, and the chaotic way in which the current situation was handled is that MO in microcosm. Anybody would think the Home Office did not want people to come here! From 24 February to 14 March it updated the guidance 11 separate times.

I want to say something about the children we were talking about earlier, and which my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) raised in Prime Minister’s questions, and the chaotic way in which that has been dealt with. We are failing in our duty to those children, and—[Interruption.] If the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) will let me finish, I want to say this. His colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who is no longer in his place, said that the Ukrainian Government have to give permission. That is right—we agree with that—and there is a Ukrainian Government Minister at the child processing centre right now who can give permission, yet the Westminster leader of the SNP must arrange it, because somehow it is not the Home Office Ministers’ job. Well, it is their job. [Interruption.] The Minister is shaking his head; so surely after this debate he will get that sorted so that those children will be brought to safety.

That aside, progress is being made, but why does it have to be so chaotic? Why do we have to make it so hard for people, and why are we still not offering anything comparable to what EU countries are offering? I know the Government do not like it when we compare what is happening here with EU countries, but we are not doing that because they are European; we are doing it because they have comparable economies and population size and we do not compare favourably, no matter what others think. I will come on to that shortly.

Nevertheless, we are slowly getting there, and one method is the Homes for Ukraine scheme. That cannot replace our legal duty, but I am delighted that so many people—120,000—have registered so far, opening their hearts and their homes to others. However, safeguarding remains a concern, and I know that it is a shared concern. Most of those using that scheme will be traumatised women and children and those men who are too vulnerable to be able to stay and fight, and we must ensure that they have the knowledge and means to reach out if it goes wrong; we must ensure they have the confidence to tell somebody if the placement is not working. They need to know who they can go to, and they also need to know they can approach them for any reason. They might just not feel comfortable, for instance. Perhaps a woman on her own with children is staying with a male who makes them feel a little uncomfortable and they might not be able to put their finger on why—perhaps it is just an inability to communicate with their hosts. I am sure most of those offering to share their homes do so from a place of compassion and would agree that we need to be careful in our vetting and follow-on, so that we do not end up inadvertently helping to traffic people into the sex trade who are then terrorised by their captors into not reporting it. That is what often happens now, and we must be very clear that they will be protected if they report such things. I know the Government have said that they will take that on board.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady is making a crucial point about the way traffickers will bring people into this country, but they also coach people in this country, and they will threaten people so they do not report that. That is why vetting, checking and wraparound support from local councils is so important. The hon. Lady has touched on an extremely important point that we all must be aware of.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The hon. Gentleman has done so much in this respect for victims of trafficking.

I want to repeat that Positive Action in Housing based in Glasgow has a rooms-for-refugees scheme; it is not a paid scheme, but none the less over 20 years there have been 4,000 successful placements. It has great experience in this field and the Government could usefully speak to it and other organisations about their experiences.

I raised the issue of visas and asked a number of pertinent questions on Monday, but the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay chose to ignore them, so I tried to intervene, and he refused to engage at all. He continued with the pretence that what we on the Opposition Benches, and many on the Government Benches, are asking for is unusual. Yet thousands of people enter the UK every day without visas: anyone from Australia can come here without a visa; anyone from Mexico can come without a visa; and anyone from Costa Rica can come without a visa. Thousands every week, too, from Canada, from Japan, from Namibia, from South Korea, and from the US, arrive here without a visa.

The Government say that to allow Ukrainians to do so in their moment of need would somehow pose a threat to our safety. As if having a visa is in itself a safeguard: as my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East mentioned, the two Russian military intelligence officers who entered the UK and made their way to Salisbury to carry out a revenge attack on a former MI6 spy, which resulted in the death of local woman Dawn Sturgess, applied for and got their visas before they arrived. A visa is no safeguard.

In Monday’s debate, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) raised the fact, as she has again today, that Lord Ricketts, who I am willing to bet has much more experience than any of us in this House—

[Tom Pursglove]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

The Minister does not know what I am going to say—he should wait till I say it. Lord Ricketts has said he is not concerned that we are going to bring in security threats. On Monday, my hon. and learned Friend asked questions and I repeated her question. She tried to intervene when the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay was speaking, but he refused to give way. I tried to intervene. If the Minister present can tell us why Lord Ricketts is wrong, why all the people who come from the aforementioned countries can come here without a visa and pose no threat, and why Ukrainians are so much more of a danger to us, I will perhaps reach a conclusion different from the one I have reached today.

[Tom Pursglove]

I think the hon. Lady will recognise the unique threat that the Russian state presents. We are currently seeing terrible atrocities in Ukraine, which shows the Russian state’s barbarity and the lengths to which it is willing to go. The hon. Lady has cited various comparisons; what does she make of the counter-argument that we are taking a stance similar to that of the United States and Canada—another Five Eyes country—which take a view akin to ours?

[Anne McLaughlin]

We are far more comparable to European countries, and particularly to Ireland. I ask the question that I asked earlier: is the Minister saying that all the European countries, including Ireland, are simply not cognisant of any security threat, or that they do not care and are putting their people in danger? I do not think they are; I think they know what they are doing. Many of the things that the Government said in this place they could not do they have subsequently done, through some of the 11 changes to the guidance that I mentioned. For example, the Government could not allow family members who did not fit the narrow criteria, but now they can. I do not want to be in a situation, in six, four or two weeks’ time, in which we say, “Okay, we’ll waive the need for a visa.” The Government could do that now. Just do it: put Ukraine on the list of countries whose people do not require a visa to come here—a list much lengthier than the one I read out—as other European countries have done, and people will get here. Let me tell Members what will happen. Those who are fighting—

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

No. I am not giving way to somebody who has not even been interested enough to sit through the debate—as long as the hon. Gentleman is somebody who was not interested enough. [Interruption.] Yes, he is. I thought I had better check.

Let us think how much more the minds of those brave Ukrainian men and women who are currently fighting for their lives and their country will be put at rest, so that they can focus on saving Ukraine, if we make it easier for their family members to come here and live in peace.

The Government love to talk about how generous, marvellous and munificent they are, but their claims just do not stack up. At Prime Minister’s questions, the Deputy Prime Minister referred to this “big-hearted” Government. They really do need to be patted on the back, don’t they? It is about the rights of refugees and our moral duty. We have heard the comparisons for the numbers of Ukrainian refugees we are taking in and also that it is not a competition. We have been slow on the uptake and our numbers are low. As others have mentioned, the Prime Minister said at last week’s Prime Minister’s questions that the UK had

“done more to resettle vulnerable people than any other European country since 2015.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 318.]

That is not true.

Let us look at the numbers per head of population, because that is the only way to make a fair comparison. For every 100,000 people, Sweden takes in 1,619; Germany takes in 1,274; Austria takes in 1,134; and Switzerland takes in 955. For every 100,000 people, we take in 121. That makes the UK 17th—sometimes 18th—in the rankings in Europe. But no European country can top the list, because in terms of displaced people globally, more than 80% of the world’s refugees are in developing countries, which are the countries with the least money. The Government really do need to stop saying things that can be proven not to be the case.

[Huw Merriman]

rose—

[Anne McLaughlin]

Madam Deputy Speaker, do I have time to take an intervention?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Yes.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Do you know what? I think I won’t—I’ll just carry on. [Laughter.] Thanks for that.

I want to come to my final concern. Having served on the Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, I am well aware of this Government’s attitude to refugees. I am well aware that, as I said, they are being dragged kicking and screaming. Look at the warm words we heard for the Afghans who were fleeing; eight months later, most of them are still in those hotel rooms. Let us imagine the Ukrainians who come now being stuck in hotel rooms. We may think, “Fine, we know it’s not going to happen, because they’ve said it’s not going to happen,” but why is it happening to the Afghans? What about the people who are hiding in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran who we promised to help? There are 102 people in touch with my office and I have nothing to tell them. And what of all the other countries?

In the 1940s, my grandmother, Sadie Purdie, lived with my granda, Stuart, and, at the time, three children, in a flat in Greenock. They had one bedroom, one kitchen living room and one dovecot. There were five of them squeezed in, along with three pet rabbits. Her brother, his wife and their five children were sleeping in an unheated wartime Nissan hut, along with many other homeless families, and life was unbearable, so my granny insisted that they move in with her. So there were four adults, eight children and three rabbits in a two-room flat with a dovecot and an outside toilet. It is unimaginable, is it not? But do you know why she did that, Madam Deputy Speaker? It was because she needed to—because they needed her. The way she saw it, they could simply budge up. Why can we not do that? As we have heard, Wales and Scotland want to become super sponsors. Let us budge up and create room. We are a wealthy country and people need our help wherever they are coming from—and they need it soon, before something worse happens to them.

Let me finish by saying to the people who are opening their homes that it is wonderful that they are doing that but I want them to read up on the Nationality and Borders Bill. When they invite someone into their home, they will be emotionally invested in that person, whose trauma they will witness close-up. I want them to imagine that person, or someone just like them, arriving here after the Nationality and Borders Bill is enacted—if this Government get their way—and what being subjected to that law means. It means being offshored. It means being jailed. It means never being reunited with their husbands who are currently fighting for their country. I say to those people: rise up, protest and tell this Government, “Not in our name.”

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[Eddie Hughes]

I will give way in a few minutes. Just give me a chance to build up.

We have also supplied lethal weapons; Ukraine is at war. We are providing the weaponry that it needs to sustain its position. We have introduced financial sanctions to ensure that we are putting a squeeze on Russia, as it is important that there is a military and a financial aspect to this war. I am very proud that we have 1,000 troops on standby in neighbouring countries, helping those people who are fleeing.

[Anne McLaughlin]

rose—

[Eddie Hughes]

If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I need to courteously give way to my hon. Friend on the left.

Ukrainian Refugees

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. Today’s debate was opened by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). Her speech demonstrated that she not only is knowledgeable about what is happening in this crisis, but cares deeply. In fact, I not only heard, but felt, that everyone who has spoken today cares. I would not say that it is not often that we feel that here, but I have never felt it to the extent that I have today. Everybody cares, and we must get something done as soon as possible.

The fault for what is happening to the people in Ukraine lies solely with Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime—not with the Russian people, any of us, any of the Governments that make up the UK or Europe, and certainly not with the people of Ukraine—the blame lies, fairly and squarely, with Vladimir Putin and his regime. It is important to acknowledge that. However, the fact that we did not cause the situation is irrelevant when it comes to offering our support.

Along with my friend and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), I have been heavily involved in scrutinising the Nationality and Borders Bill, so when Russia so cruelly invaded and started bombing Ukraine, and Government Ministers started to remind us of Britain’s benevolent history, I worried a lot. I worried because I know that when the refugee sector named it the anti-refugee Bill, it was no exaggeration but an accurate description. I worried because a Government does not bring forward a Bill like that if they have any desire to protect people fleeing war, violence and terror. The Nationality and Borders Bill is clearly trying to send a signal that benevolent Britain is no more: “Don’t come here, because you will not be welcome.”

Of course, I know that the Bill has not yet been enacted; today, it reaches Report stage in the Lords. While I knew that those Ukrainians fleeing now, before that legislation is enacted, would be subject to the existing laws and rules, I was also very aware of how dreadful the current system is, and acutely aware of the attitude from this Government towards people in desperate need. That is why I was worried.

However, I hoped that the suddenness, the intensity, the urgency and, yes, sadly, the fact that they were European—which apparently makes a difference, although it should not—would kick-start the Government into action. I hoped that they would treat it as an emergency—a humanitarian catastrophe, where we simply had to help first and sort out the details later. That is what other countries have done, including Poland, Germany, France, and Italy. As per usual, they have taken far more people, proportionately, than we have or ever will—of that I am sure.

The Government keep telling whoever will listen that the UK takes in more people than other EU country, but that is not true. Last week at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Prime Minister said that the UK had done more to resettle vulnerable people than any other European country since 2015. However, it is not true.

When looking at the numbers per head of population, which is the only fair way to do it, for every 100,000 people, Sweden takes in 1,619; Germany takes in 1,274; Austria takes in 1,134; and Switzerland takes in 955. Does the Minister want me to tell him—I do not know if he knows this—how many we take in? For every 100,000 people, we take in 121. That makes the UK 17th—sometimes 18th—in the rankings in Europe. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said, that is shocking. No European country can top the global list, because it is the developing countries—those most in need themselves—that take in the most people. Yes, that is right: those with the least are giving the most. More than 80% of the world’s displaced people are living in developing countries.

As we have heard, the Government have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into providing the level of support now being offered to Ukrainians, which still does not match other comparable countries or poorer countries. One day, the Government will offer refuge only to those who have a family connection, and that can only be a very narrow definition of “family”. The next day, they change it so that other family members can come over, but they still need a visa and a passport; then some of them do not need a visa, but others do; and those who do not have a passport still have to apply from Ukraine or wherever they have fled to, but there are no appointments.

[Jim Shannon]

It is always very easy to ask, “Have you got a passport?” but when the bombs are falling and the bullets are flying, there are buildings falling and people are in fear for their lives, the last thing they go for is their passport or their identification: they get out and they move. Many people do not have that passport or identification, not because they do not have it, but because they do not have it with them: it is lying in their wrecked house, back where they came from.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I absolutely agree. Many people have never had a passport because they have never had the money to go anywhere where they would require one, or they cannot afford one. As the hon. Member said, lots of people do not know where their passports are; I do not know where mine is, because I am not planning to go anywhere soon. I am not planning to be in the middle of a warzone and to need to know where my passport is.

When appointments are available, the appointment might be in a fortnight’s time. As we heard from the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), a person might get through everything, jump through all the hoops and pass the test, and then be told to travel 350 miles to pick up their paperwork—it is ridiculous. As the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) told us, they might get to their appointment only to be told to discard their seven-year-old child who is not allowed to come in. I accept that that cannot be Home Office policy, and I saw the Minister frantically messaging to find out what had happened there, but what kind of person would do that? Is that the kind of person we would want in that job? I am absolutely certain that nobody thinks that person is suitable to be in that job. It is chaos: the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) likened it to a game of snakes and ladders, and he is not wrong. If it is confusing for hon. Members and their teams trying to keep up with the advice we can give people, how much more confusing is it for someone in a state of heightened anxiety who does not necessarily speak English? It is almost as if this Government do not want Ukrainians to come here.

Other Members have made important points today. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said it was a disgrace that, several weeks on, this scheme has still not been properly set up. I share that feeling, but I imagine that neither of us is surprised, because we both have ongoing contact with Afghans who are stuck in Afghanistan, begging us to help all these months on, and we still have no advice for them. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said, there are people ready to help Ukrainians. We are getting emails daily from people who want to help, but do not know how. Obviously, I have not seen the statement in the Chamber, but I have not heard that much clarity is coming forward.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) and others have pointed out, if a person is in a warzone, how are they supposed to apply online? Sometimes the internet is bad enough in Parliament, where we are not in a warzone; how is someone in a warzone supposed to be able to get internet? I could hear the exhaustion in my hon. Friend’s voice as she spoke so movingly about her constituent and his struggle to get his family into fortress Britain. He would still be battling if she had not fought tooth and nail for him, but what about all those who do not have that support?

Why are the experts in the field not being consulted—Refugee Action, or the Refugee Councils of England, Wales or Scotland? Positive Action in Housing is an organisation in Glasgow that has a long-running project through which people can host refugees. I would want to know that anyone generous enough to offer to do so is being properly checked, because the dangers are obvious. Perhaps the Government could speak to groups such as Positive Action in Housing. I would also want to know that every single person taken into someone’s home has the knowledge, the confidence and the means to reach out for help, should it be necessary.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the main Chamber. I therefore suspend the sitting for 15 minutes if it is one vote, or 25 minutes if it is two votes, after which we will probably move on to the Labour Front Bench.

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On resuming—

[Anne McLaughlin]

I know that the Minister is going to say that these things all take time. They do, but is he really saying that we cannot not keep up with other comparable European countries? If we are so much more bountiful in our approach to refugees, surely we therefore have more experience and should at least be able to equal the speed of other European countries.

The Minister will also no doubt repeat the trope that we cannot dispense with visas for security reasons, but the Government really need to stop pretending that what we are asking for is anything unusual. Thousands of people enter the UK every day without visas. Anyone coming from South Korea, Australia, Mexico, the US, Costa Rica and many other countries is not required to have a visa. If we are to believe that allowing Ukrainians to do that poses a threat to our safety, the Government must surely believe that the thousands arriving from those countries today, yesterday and tomorrow pose an equal threat to our safety—or are they seriously arguing that Ukrainians are uniquely likely to be infiltrated and pose a threat? As we have heard, a security expert whom the Government previously trusted does not share their apparent fears. I will repeat the question posed to the Minister by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West: what was wrong about what Lord Ricketts had to say? Remember that the two Russians who caused such turmoil in Salisbury did not sneak in by pretending to be another nationality. They came in on visas, so a visa alone is not a safeguard.

I congratulate the petitioner, Phillip Jolliffe, on the efforts he went to in order to get so many people to sign the petition—some 184,949 people have signed it. I will end by saying what I think is the most alarming part of the way we are treating Ukrainian refugees: as confusing, chaotic and cold as their treatment has been so far, we are treating Ukrainian refugees better than we treat refugees fleeing other countries, and we are treating them a million times better than we will treat anyone, including other Ukrainians, who dares to ask for our protection once the Nationality and Borders Bill is enacted. If people are ashamed right now—I suspect that those who signed the petition are—they should prepare themselves to feel a whole new level of shame once that comes in.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

I call Neil Kinnock. I beg your pardon; I mean Stephen Kinnock. I am so sorry.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for opening the debate, and colleagues for their insightful contributions on a vital issue, although, given some of the comments in the debate about attendance, I do note that the clash with the statement in the main Chamber meant that people who may well have wished to participate in this debate decided to attend that instead. Some of the points being raised here were obviously literally being answered in the Chamber as we were sitting here, deliberating on this petition.

Putin’s war on Ukraine is monstrous and unjustified, and this country stands shoulder to shoulder with the brave Ukrainian people against his unprovoked aggression. We have stepped up with our response, which includes giving Ukraine the means not only to defend itself but, ultimately, to drive the invader from its lands.

A number of points were raised during the debate, and I will briefly cover and go through them. A number of colleagues asked about passports, and one reason why we moved to the idea of the route without biometrics and based on passports was what we saw in looking at the analysis of those who had presented themselves, wanting to apply. In something like the first 2,000 people who presented themselves, fewer than 100 did not have a valid Ukrainian passport. Let me be clear that we are talking about a valid Ukrainian passport; we are not detailing the type of Ukrainian passport—those familiar with Ukraine’s passport will know that it started issuing a new type of passport seven years ago—provided that it is valid. The vast majority have brought their passport with them.

On the question of whether we are offering paid priority services, I think we would all agree that it would be, frankly, immoral to offer a paid priority service in the family scheme, and I can certainly say to colleagues today that we are looking to suspend, across UK Visas and Immigration, our super priority and priority visa services. We will still prioritise people in the wider system who have compelling and compassionate circumstances—for example, someone seeking to travel to the UK for a funeral or perhaps someone who needs urgently to take up a role in the NHS. But we will look to suspend the general priority service—again, to free up UKVI resource. I think we all realise that it is actually right that at this time as many of our decision makers as possible are prioritised to this particular route rather than our normal type of priority visa services. Certainly, people should not be being charged at a VAC when they are looking to make applications to this route, and that is something that we are clear on. Also, suspending the wider priority visa services clears up any confusion if people inquire about the wider migration system while at that particular visa application centre.

I hope that colleagues will appreciate why it would not be particularly sensible to go into exact details on what safeguarding checks will be done on those who offer to sponsor people coming to the UK, but yes, safeguarding checks will be performed, as in the devolved Administrations. I think hon. Members will understand why it would not be sensible for me to start reading out the list of exactly what we will do and what we will check. Safeguarding checks on people who offer to be sponsors will be in place, because we are conscious that many of those being sponsored will be vulnerable, whether they are adults or children.

[Anne McLaughlin]

As well as asking for that, I asked about the people who are then placed with a family or with somebody who has a spare room. How will we ensure that they have the knowledge, the means and the confidence to reach out for help? Somebody who is taken in will be extremely grateful because they no longer have bombs raining down on them, but they may feel uncomfortable, or something may go wrong, and they may not want to report it. How can we ensure that people in that situation—primarily women and children—are able to do so?

[Kevin Foster]

That is a good point. Some funding is being offered to local communities. I take on board the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the slightly different structure in Northern Ireland, as we saw with the national transfer scheme for unaccompanied children, reflecting the devolved structure there. We are providing a funding package to local councils; I appreciate that hon. Members taking part in the debate will not have heard the statement in the main Chamber, but that is something we are working on.

I think it is safe to say that I and the Scottish Government have not always got on particularly well, but on a serious note, I welcome their genuinely constructive offers. I have had brief conversations with Neil Gray—he is co-ordinating for the Scottish Government, as Lord Harrington is for the UK Government—about what work they can do on those points. As colleagues have said, speed and getting people in are becoming essential. How can we do that?

My own community does not have the experience of Glasgow, for example, in welcoming communities of asylum seekers. That should not become a delaying factor across large parts of the UK, and balances need to be struck. There are funding packages to try to create that support. I also recognise that there are wider debates around how we can ensure that support is provided. That is what colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will be working on closely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

In a moment. I then look at other areas, and it is perhaps a tale of two cities. Edinburgh, which is not that far away, does not take part in the dispersal area system for asylum seekers. I am regularly struck by the arguments that all must take part. That is certainly another item that we will be looking at closely.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kevin Foster]

I will take an intervention first from the Labour shadow Minister, and then I will come back to the hon. Lady.

[Kevin Foster]

I am keen to encourage all to take part. I think there are only five councils that have not offered in principle to take part in the Afghan resettlement scheme. The hon. Gentleman will note what we recently did with the national transfer scheme, where every council in the UK—I acknowledge that it is done slightly differently in Northern Ireland—is now mandated to take part in the process around unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. He will also note the references I have just made to dispersal accommodation in relation to asylum seekers.

I am struck that there are communities that step up every single time, including in places such as Stoke-on-Trent with Conservative-led councils. In other areas I hear demands that people do things for asylum seekers, yet when we approach them about becoming a dispersal area, they seem strangely quiet.

[Anne McLaughlin]

COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, has told the Minister and his colleagues—as have I—that every one of the 32 Scottish local authorities, in addition to taking in refugees under the Syrian resettlement scheme, would be happy, if it were appropriate in terms of wraparound services and if there were any support, to take part in the asylum dispersal scheme. The problem is that the Government expect the councils to carry all the costs associated with that. There is no excuse; if the Minister is going to start supporting the councils, they will start chipping in with the scheme as well as with the refugees.

[Kevin Foster]

What I find interesting is that I regularly hear how it is about moral duties and that people should be taking part, but I have to contrast that with the situation that the hon. Lady has alluded to in Scotland, where 31 out of 32 local authorities are not dispersal areas, including the city of Edinburgh. The only place in Scotland that is a dispersal area is the city of Glasgow.

Nationality and Borders Bill: LGBTQ+ People

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. Contrary to everything the Government claim, the Nationality and Borders Bill is not some piece of wonder legislation that will fix a broken system. It will not break the business model of people smugglers or offer any safe and legal routes to these islands, although the Minister is going to say that it will. It is called the anti-refugee Bill for a reason, and, as we have heard in some powerful contributions, the Government have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that it punishes the most vulnerable in the flawed belief that deterrence works.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing the debate. We must keep pushing on this terrible Bill generally and emphasising who it will affect, but I am glad that she has given us the opportunity to look at it through the lens of the LGBTQ+ community, given that there are 70—I had 69, but she told us 70—countries across the globe where being gay is still considered a crime. The hon. Member said something that I found quite moving: you can flee, but you cannot flee from who you are, and why should you?

The former leader of the Lib Dems, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) talked about differential treatment being more likely for people in the LGBTQ+ community. Although the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) did not speak in the debate, his many interventions demonstrated a strong understanding of what is happening. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) talked about people spending their life in hiding, and what happens to them when they get here. She asked why, and I will come on to that. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), who served on the Bill Committee with myself and the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), as usual showed a forensic understanding of what is going on. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) talked about the devastating consequences for trans people—let us not forget them.

I would like to talk about Bahiru, an extremely brave gay man from Ethiopia, where homosexuality is still punishable by up to 15 years in prison and LGBTQ+ people are at huge risk of violence and persecution. I thank PinkNews for telling his story. Growing up, he suppressed his sexuality to keep himself and his family safe, but eventually managed to connect with a few members of the community, meeting as a secret and underground group. What shocked him was the lack of knowledge of LGBTQ+ issues, especially safe sex, so he took it on himself to change that situation and educate those around him. He managed to get those travelling back to Ethiopia from abroad to bring condoms and other items unavailable in Ethiopia so he could distribute them around the community—a brave, selfless, and noble thing to do—and he did all of this in the knowledge that he was at risk of being found out, criminalised and prosecuted.

It was not long before the word was out, and Bahiru received threats to out him and release his photo and personal information. He knew his life was in danger. He said,

“I had to escape. I could not even hide in my own parents’ house, because the violence could have come from any side.”

He was lucky—he had been to the UK recently, so he had an active visa and the support of organisations that he had been working with—but most people who are forced to flee their homes in fear of their lives have no time or way to access the very few safe and legal routes. When he arrived in the UK, he was put into shared accommodation with people who had brought their prejudices with them from other countries with homophobic laws and he spent months fearing for his safety. That type of communal living for asylum seekers has been described as a powder keg of different views, prejudices, languages, traumatic experiences and lifestyles. Bahiru was scared to challenge the views of others, saying,

“The homophobic tendencies, the tensions, the passing comments that people make and jokes about sexual minorities, it was awful.”

He was mentally, physically and emotionally burnt out.

The Nationality and Borders Bill will warehouse asylum seekers like Bahiru in large-scale detention centres. The Government are already trialling places such as Napier barracks and Penally to see how that will work. I should say at this point that I am to visit Napier barracks tomorrow with the APPG on immigration detention. I was at best disappointed by, and at worst deeply suspicious of, the refusal of Home Office officials to allow us MPs to speak to residents without officials being present. Will the Minister intervene today and allow them the chance to speak with us freely? If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason not to allow that.

It is hard to imagine much worse than warehousing, but the Bill paves the way for asylum seekers to be warehoused and processed offshore—to be shipped around the globe to any country willing to strike a deal with the UK. Who is to say where that might be and what that country’s laws on sexuality might be? At his asylum interview, Bahiru was asked to prove his sexuality. He described the process as “very heteronormative”, saying, “It’s only heterosexuals who could ask you to prove you are gay.” He knows of people who took pictures of themselves having sex with other people as evidence. Imagine how degrading and humiliating that must be.

In addition, people like Bahiru face the prospect of differential treatment, with a requirement to present themselves without delay to authorities, which they are less likely to do for a multitude of pretty obvious reasons; they could lose their rights to public funds and family reunion, and they could be issued with priority removal notices, along with a requirement to provide relevant evidence by a fixed deadline. Bahiru is applying for indefinite leave to remain, but for him the uncertainty is still there.

The experiences I have described should act as a warning. Everything an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker or refugee goes through today will be made much, much worse when the Bill is passed. We should not be considering legislation that aims to strip dignity and basic human rights from people. We should not be talking about legislation that will make it even harder than it already is for an LGBTQ+ person to prove their sexual orientation or gender identity. We most certainly should not be shipping people across the globe for processing.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam for bringing the debate to the House. My experience tells me that we will get very little out of the Minister today, although something tells me he has fixed it so we can see those people tomorrow, without Home Office officials—I saw him typing away. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North asked why it is like this, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said that the Government are intentionally trying to make things worse for people. The Bill is ideologically driven, and although I predict the Minister will say he is hurt and offended that we could think such a thing, the conclusion that the Government simply do not care about these people is the only one I can reach if the Bill proceeds.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Linden]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I remarked to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) at the beginning of the debate that it was significant that both a former Leader of the Opposition and a former Prime Minister were still in the Chamber. We owe them a huge amount of respect for sticking around and informing the debate, even if our politics often differ from theirs and we do not agree with absolutely everything they say.

The Bill is hostile towards refugees, flies in the face of the refugee convention, and goes against the advice of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, non-governmental organisations and human rights lawyers. Put simply, the Bill takes some of the most vulnerable people in the world and exacerbates their risk of poverty, exploitation, and family separation. In speaking to this group of amendments and new clauses, I wish to offer my support for amendment 128, which would remove clause 58, and a number of other amendments and new clauses, but in the interests of brevity I will focus on part 5 of the Bill, which deals with modem slavery.

Slavery is not yet a thing of the past. For so many people, slavery does not exist simply in the history books but is the horrific reality they face every day. From human trafficking victims to those undertaking involuntary labour and those in forced marriage, modern slavery impacts countless lives, and it is a sad but inescapable reality that it happens in many of our constituencies. Its scale is unknown, but the International Labour Organisation has estimated that more than 40 million people worldwide are victims of modern slavery.

I pay tribute to Restore Glasgow in my constituency and the great work that it does to raise awareness of human trafficking, particularly teaching people to spot the signs of trafficking. Many of us wrongly assume that human trafficking and slavery occurs behind closed doors, but in some cases—indeed, far too many—it is hiding in plain sight on our high streets and in our shop fronts. I want to particularly raise this form of exploitation and highlight the forced labour of people who work in industries that are less regulated, such as car washes and nail bars. Many of us will walk past these shops every day and think nothing of the low prices or the long hours worked. I am asking not just hon. Members in this House but everyone watching this debate to really consider their purchasing power. We need to stop and think about that £5 car wash and that £10 set of nails. Bluntly, if four or five guys in flip-flops are washing your car for a few quid, then the alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear.

There should be greater regulation in these industries to help prevent cases of human trafficking and slavery occurring in the first place, and that is where I would challenge governments both local and national, and all across these islands, to go further. In 2020, the chief executive of the British Beauty Council, Millie Kendall, said of the nail salon industry that

“we are very under regulated and that’s a real problem for us.”

Ms Kendall asked the British Government to move to license the industry. As far as I can see, there is very little provision in legislation to deal with that aspect of modern slavery. The situation for so many victims and survivors is desperate, which only makes the Government’s failure on this worse. Figures released in 2020 highlight that any efforts to crack down on slavery have been weak and slow, with only 42 convictions on slavery and human trafficking in 2018, down from 59 in 2017 and 69 in 2016.

I have outlined aspects of modern slavery that I feel need to be further addressed, and I hope that the Minister will address some of those points in the wind-ups. However, I also ask the Minister and the Home Office to reflect on the fact that at least four Members representing the seven seats in the city of Glasgow have taken part in this debate. We so often hear from Conservative Members about their views on immigration and asylum. However, I would be willing to wager a safe amount of money that the amount of cases that I, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) have ongoing at the moment is probably more than every single Conservative Member has dealt with in the course of this year. That is because, as MPs who rightly welcome people to our city and take up asylum casework, we far too often see the significant failings of an asylum and immigration system that is utterly broken, making it so difficult for those we represent.

This Bill and much of what it represents is not what Scotland wants or voted for. Scotland is a welcoming country to refugees and asylum seekers. They are part of the rich tartan tapestry that makes up our communities. Indeed, they are our friends and our families with whom we break bread at community meals in places such as my native Cranhill. Earlier this year, my home city united and sent a clear message to the Home Office with the Kenmure Street protest, proving that once again all people, including refugees and asylum seekers, make Glasgow. Glasgow rejects this Bill and looks forward to a day when Westminster’s right-wing immigration policies and dangerous anti-refugee rhetoric has no territorial application on our citizens, and instead we can form borders and nationality policy that is based on dignity, not on dog-whistle politics.

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

It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend, and neighbour, the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden).

I have said repeatedly how disgusted I am with this Bill in its entirety, so I will not go over that again, and I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you would not let me. It is hard not to do it, but it is all on the record. In any case, whatever I say today is unlikely to change anybody’s vote, and that is what is so depressing about this. Today I will focus on what you want me to focus on, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is modern slavery and human trafficking. I will highlight two aspects of the many that I find greatly disturbing.

First, there is late disclosure. I am deeply concerned by the measures in the Bill that aim to damage the credibility of victims of modern slavery or human trafficking. Using late disclosure as a reason to damage their credibility only serves to create barriers to effective and vital identification and engagement with those victims. The Government, of course, in their usual, cynical way, believe that claimants are abusing the system and attempting to frustrate removal. They point to the rise in the number of trafficking claims, but that is down to a range of factors, including greater awareness of modern slavery among detention workers and others and an improved ability to recognise vulnerability, as a leading Hibiscus report highlighted. All the awareness-raising campaigns, supported by all the Governments on these islands, including this Government, were always going to increase those numbers—that is what we were looking for, surely. To use that increase as a reason to now cynically attack people is just despicable.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady seems to be welcoming what Governments have done against slavery, and she says that raising awareness and encouraging people to report has created more victims. Does she support what this Government and previous Governments have done to make this country the leader in the fight against modern-day slavery?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I support any attempts to help people who are victims of modern slavery, of course I do. Some good measures have been taken—of course they have—but it depresses me that this Government continually assume that anyone displaying signs of vulnerability, who for a number of reasons might not be able to come forward and present their story to the authorities immediately, is somehow acting in bad faith or gaming the system. There is a distinct lack of compassion and understanding in equal measure regarding the severe trauma suffered by some victims and its impact on their testimony.

There are reasons why people are late in coming forward. I want to read something from the guidance for this Parliament’s Modern Slavery Act 2015. It states:

“Victims’ early accounts may be affected by the impact of trauma. This can result in delayed disclosure”—

the thing that we are now saying damages their credibility—

“difficulty recalling facts, or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder…Victims may also be reluctant to self identify for a number of other reasons that can make understanding their experiences challenging”.

Who wrote that? This Government did, so they know, yet they seek to punish victims by accusing anyone who fails to recount their traumatic experiences in time.

To state that someone has experienced exploitation is in many ways similar to domestic violence in terms of how complicated it is. Exploitation is often committed by someone the victim knows or is close to, and it can happen very gradually over a long time. Some victims of exploitation are unaware there is even a crime being committed against them until it is too late, which this Bill will only prove to exacerbate.

Some victims might not want to admit they have been exploited, particularly in cases of sexual abuse, where cultural sensitivities could mean a victim feels ashamed—shame that they should not feel, but do feel anyway. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) pointed out, men who are exploited may feel ashamed or degraded by their lack of agency. Let us not forget that a lot of victims are terrified that if they reveal information, they or their family, here or wherever they have come from, might be punished by the traffickers. That is how they get them. The Met police said recently that it takes two years on average to get a west African victim of juju-induced slavery to reveal what happened to them.

Then there are those who simply block it out. They do not consciously block it out; their unconscious mind cannot cope with it any longer. I had a friend many years ago who I used to visit every six months or so. One time I went to stay with her for the weekend. She worked as a cleaner in a local primary school. She had a normal life. She built a life for herself. She had a family and everything and this job. She was cleaning, and suddenly she had a flashback—for anyone who does not know, a flashback is not a memory; it is reliving the moment—to when she was eight years old and her stepfather was raping her. It was the most terrifying thing, clearly, but she was then in her 40s, and she only remembered it all those years later. She had the courage to speak to her siblings, one of whom had remembered it and had not told anybody. Sometimes it is simply that it is gone from someone’s memory, but it can come back, and we should not be punishing people in those cases.

These measures will not prevent false claims. Instead, they will create an even deeper mistrust and suspicion of the authorities, and the only people who will gain from that are, as others have said, those who are seeking to exploit and extort these vulnerable victims. Traffickers use the fear of the authorities as a means of control, and this Bill will just give them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) said, a broader set of tools. I cannot work out whether those supporting these measures do not realise that, or just do not care. It is increasingly looking like the latter, particularly over the past couple of days and throughout Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is at the hon. Lady’s discretion, but I think everyone wants the Minister to answer the questions that have been asked this afternoon. If the hon. Lady goes on for very much longer, there will not be an opportunity for that. I am not stopping her, but I hope she will not take too much longer.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I will take your advice on that, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I am little unsure whether we will get answers, because we have not any other time we have been asking for them.

Any disqualification from protection must be reserved for the most serious of offenders—those who pose a serious risk to the public or to national security. A public order disqualification for victims with prior convictions of 12 months or more is too wide, as others have said. There is a real danger that genuine victims who could give vital evidence against slavery networks, and who pose absolutely no risk to the public, will be excluded from that support.

The actual figures for referrals of offenders in immigration detention to the NRM are low, as was said earlier, and the Government have published no data to back up the sensationalist claims made in support of these measures. It is another theme running through every part of this Bill. There is nothing to back up their scaremongering claims. The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) was also asking for evidence. I very much doubt the Minister is going to give us any, but let us wait and see.

I will move on, finally, to say that I fail to see why all of this is part of an immigration Bill. We are not talking about immigrants; we are talking about victims of criminal offences. In 2016, I sat on the Immigration Bill Committee, and a Government Member, who is not present and whose name I will not reveal, told me, “If people do not want to be trafficked, they should simply say no.” That demonstrated a crass misunderstanding of what trafficking is. These are people who are not trying to migrate to this country; they are simply caught up in exploitation and they end up here.

I will end by saying that I would love to hear what the Minister has to say. I have zero faith that we will hear anything. I have never ever been so ashamed as I am today, because I know that Members will vote for this Bill that will damage, exploit and kill vulnerable people, who they claim to care about. It is absolutely a disgrace.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Rachel Maclean)]

We have had an excellent debate. Despite some of the comments I have just heard from the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), there is more agreement across the House on the seriousness of these crimes and our determination to tackle them than there is disagreement.

The aims of the modern slavery elements of the Bill are twofold: to provide clarity on victims’ rights and entitlements, supporting effective recovery from this awful crime, and to increase prosecutions of perpetrators of the despicable crime of modern slavery. That is why we make clear for the first time in legislation that where a public authority, such as the police, is pursuing an investigation or criminal proceeding, confirmed victims who are co-operating and need to remain in the UK to do so will be granted temporary leave to remain. Our core principle is that the entitlements provided to victims are based on their needs, delivering a firm but fair approach. The Nationality and Borders Bill will go further than ever before in putting modern slavery victims’ rights into law. At the same time, we will put in place safeguards to ensure that these important protections are provided to those who most need them.

I will begin by addressing the Government amendments. I will attempt to come on to the Opposition amendments, but I do not have very much time. Government amendments 64, 71 and 73 to 75, which will make changes to clauses 60 to 63, are technical amendments that seek to provide greater clarity on the protections provided to possible victims through the recovery period and on when those rights can be withheld, and to ensure that we have flexibility in decision making. Specifically, they enable the conclusive grounds decision to be made in the recovery period, while still providing for a minimum recovery period of 30 days, which is effectively 45 days in guidance. The second part makes clear our position that, in specific circumstances, as set out in clauses 61 and 62, we can withhold the recovery period and the protection from removal that it provides. Those changes allow us to respond to modern slavery as an evolving crime.

On Government amendments 72 and 76 to 83, which all relate to modern slavery specific temporary leave to remain for confirmed victims of modern slavery, the aim is to clarify our international obligations with regard to the provision of temporary leave to remain for confirmed victims. Government amendments 78 and 81 to 83 are minor technical drafting amendments that provide consistency with similar provisions on the statute book. Similarly, Government amendment 79 updates the wording of the clause to reflect amendment 56, which we considered yesterday.

Government amendments 76 and 77 remove the wording “social well-being” from subsection (2)(a) of clause 64 on the temporary leave to remain. That phrase was an over-broad concept that lacked clarity and left the eligibility criteria for a grant of leave under the clause unclear for victims and decision makers, which undermined the aim of the clause.

I reassure hon. Members that we remain in line with our international obligations. We will continue to support, via a grant of temporary leave to remain, those who have a need to be in the UK to recover from physical and psychological harm caused by their exploitation. In the same vein, Government amendment 72 amends the wording in clause 63 from “social well-being” to “social harm”. I reassure hon. Members that the clause will be underpinned by the immigration rules, which will provide more guidance on the issue for decision makers.

Government amendment 80 extends the current policy in the Bill that temporary leave will be provided where needs cannot be met in another country of which the individual is a national or citizen, another Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings signatory country, or any country with which we have an appropriate bilateral agreement. Decision makers will assess potential returns on a case-by-case basis following an individualised assessment in line with guidance and available country information.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind hon. Members that being fairly brief in remarks, as done admirably by David Davis, will allow more people to get in. I call the SNP spokesperson, Anne McLaughlin.

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

Even though the Scottish National party has fundamental disagreements with most of this horrific Bill, that is not the case for part 1, where we are in agreement with much of it. We support the efforts to correct some historical injustices of UK nationality law and bringing British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship law back into line. It should have happened a long time ago, but we support that it is happening now. We pay tribute to the campaign groups that have continued to make the case over several years, including the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, and Amnesty International. However, there are a number of issues that I want to raise and I will start with the SNP’s new clauses.

New clause 34 would ensure that the Government do not profit from people registering as British citizens or British overseas citizens. Hon. Members might be interested to know that, in 2018, the Home Office made profits of £500 million by charging £500 million more than it cost to process applications. The cost to the Home Office of the registration process is about £372 a person, but to the person applying, it is a minimum of £1,100 for children and £1,200 for an adult. Why? More importantly, why does that matter? How does that affect someone’s life?

I would like to share a story that I told in Committee of someone who has become part of my family and the devastating impact that the extortionate fees had on his family life. Cambull—that is not his real name—came from Sudan. The 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 brothers, sister, mother and father had died, but he did not know for sure. He kept hearing rumours over the years. He came here as an asylum seeker and got his refugee status. He worked in security on minimum wage, zero-hours contracts, but he had a diligent approach to his job and built a life for himself. But the need to know for sure what had happened to his family members was always in the back of his mind. Any of us would share that need.

The Red Cross got some information for Cambull. There was a possibility that some of his family had survived, but nothing was certain. He needed to go back to find out if that was the case. To do that, he needed the protection of a British passport and British citizenship, so he set about applying. Because he was on the minimum wage, it took him years to save up the fees. I realise there are many in here who cannot imagine that, and I make no criticism of them—I am not being facetious—for never having experienced poverty. I would like nobody to experience it, but I would urge Conservative Members to trust me when I say that it took him years to save up the £1,200, and he could not have saved any harder. Had he been charged what it actually cost the Home Office, he would have got to Sudan a whole lot sooner. I know that nobody in this Chamber would have wanted what happened to him to have happened—I am coming to that—but I want to explain the impact of these extortionate fees in the hope that the Government can be persuaded to reduce them.

It took Cambull a long time, but he did finally get back to Sudan, with his British passport, to see what had become of his family, and he discovered that his mum had, in fact, survived the brutal attacks. She later became ill, and was ill for many years, but she lived longer than anyone expected because she had clung on hoping she would see his face one more time. She died two months before he got there. As I have said, I am not for a second suggesting that anybody here or anybody drafting the legislation would not care about what happened to Cambull, but if he had been able to apply for his citizenship when he became eligible—in other words, if he had been able to afford the cost because it was the actual cost, rather than the cost plus profit—he could have been reunited with his mum before she passed away, and it would have meant so much to both of them. There are so many Cambulls out there and others with different stories.

I want to express my party’s support for new clause 8 in the name of the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). I will leave her to make what I know will be very good arguments about the even more offensive practice of making profit from children’s applications. One of those arguments is of course that the courts have already ruled against it, but that does not seem to make a difference to this Government these days.

Finally, on awareness raising in relation to new clause 34, several organisations, including Amnesty, have expressed concern about the lack of it. They have asked for assurances that where an individual application is successful, the Government will take positive action to ensure that other potential applicants are made aware of their equal or similar right to register at discretion. This means that where an example is identified, as the Bill says, of

“unfairness,…an act or omission of a public authority, or…exceptional circumstances”,

on which it is right or necessary to exercise the discretion, there should be publicity and awareness raising. We talked about that in Committee, but those organisations want to know that it will happen, and that members of the public who could use the legislation to the same positive effect will have access—easy access—to such information. I would also like an assurance from the Minister that awareness raising will apply equally to British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship.

On new clause 33, EU citizens have been living in the UK without knowing that, for some, there is an obscure requirement to hold a form of private health insurance. With free access at the point of need to our unique NHS, of which we are all proud, the EU rules on the need for comprehensive sickness insurance were not really written with the UK’s unusual situation in mind. New clause 33 is necessary because, for many, this requirement has only become apparent when applying for citizenship or when applying for British passports for their children born in the UK, and it is now presenting significant hurdles to obtaining citizenship. It could easily be rectified by this new clause, which would allow an applicant the right of free access to the NHS to satisfy the requirement that an individual should hold CSI.

The Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove)—made sympathetic noises on this in Committee, so if he will not accept this new clause, will he at least tighten up the guidance so that nobody has to take the risk of shelling out over £1,200 to apply, only to lose it when the decision maker takes the view on CSI that the Minister seemed to be suggesting he would not want them to take?

We support many of the amendments and new clauses, but I will mention just a couple in particular. Amendment 2 in the name of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) would leave out clause 10 on statelessness. Clause 10 requires the Secretary of State to be satisfied that a child was unable to acquire another nationality before being permitted to register as a British citizen. This creates an additional and unjustified hurdle to stateless children’s registration as British citizens. Rather than ease the process and reform the current system to help children attain citizenship, the Government are intent on putting up more barriers and making it more difficult for children under 18 to be registered. Why? Because they have a handful of anecdotal examples of parents who appear to be using the system, as far as they are concerned, to jump the queue.

In fact, I remember only one such anecdote in Committee. However, I do remember hon. Members on the Committee asking repeatedly for evidence, and the Minister stated repeatedly that evidence would be forthcoming. I remember that the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) asked, I asked several times, the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) asked and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) asked. When I looked at the record, I counted at least 10 times that we asked for something more than anecdotes, and we were told that the evidence would be forthcoming, but it just has not been, so perhaps the Minister is going to surprise us and give us the evidence now.

The impact of the anecdotes—or the one anecdote I remember being given—was that a child who has done nothing wrong may end up registered as British five years before they otherwise might be. That hardly seems grounds for introducing this restrictive clause. The impact of statelessness on children can be dreadful. It is a terrible thing for a child to feel that they do not belong during their formative years.

I come now to amendment 12 in name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). We are very much opposed to clause 9, which, as we have heard, grants the Home Secretary the power to strip UK nationals of their citizenship in secret and without advance warning. This is deeply concerning, and it sends completely the wrong message. Since this has become public knowledge, I have had a number of people phoning me about it in an absolute panic.

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me that it is not only us and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) who share these concerns? A petition that was started on change.org by my constituent Mr Kashif Iqbal has now got over 150,000 signatures calling for the removal of clause 9 to ensure that British citizenship cannot be stripped from our constituents in this manner.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I am coming to the end, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I pay tribute to Mr Iqbal, my hon. Friend’s constituent, because that is what we want. We want public pressure, and in Committee I felt that we were not being listened to at all. Of course, we did not win any of the battles in Committee and we are probably not going to win any of the battles here, but we will try, and public pressure is what will make this Government change their mind.

As I have said, we do support many of the amendments—for example, new clause 2 on Chagos islanders, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) for his tenacity on that. We support new clauses 4 and 5 on Hong Kong citizens, new clause 7 on health care workers—it seems a bit of a cheek to be charging people for the privilege of putting themselves at risk fighting the pandemic—and those amendments and new clauses from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As I say, we support righting the historical wrongs, but our primary concerns are stateless children, stripping away people’s nationality without notice, the CSI requirement for EEA citizens, and the need to end the practice of profiteering from people registering as British citizens—that has to stop.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

Most outrageously, the Afghan and his colleagues might have their claims considered not here at all, but at a so-called offshore centre, replicating one of the most disgraceful episodes in Australian policymaking—an episode that saw human rights abuses rife, health and wellbeing massacred, exponential costs, utterly inadequate capacity and a total policy failure that led to its abandonment. We fully support the amendments to take those provisions out of the Bill.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will my hon. Friend take an intervention?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Very briefly.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I have been told to be very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is my hon. Friend aware of Dr Nick Martin, a medical doctor who had been in the British Navy for a number of years and worked on Manus Island, one of the offshoring projects in Australia? He describes himself as “right of centre” and not a natural refugee supporter until he saw the vile way people were treated—[Interruption.] Well, we are modelling this on the Australian system. Does my hon. Friend agree we should listen to the voices of the people who have lived through this, rather than the people who tell us it will be all roses?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The evidence about how disgraceful the Australian system was is overwhelming. My hon. Friend adds helpfully to that.

Despite all that, our Syrian, Afghan and Uyghur will almost certainly be recognised as refugees, but let us say that the persecuted Christian convert is refused because the judge is only 49% that he will be murdered on removal. Of those who challenge refusals, around 40% have been successful on appeal in recent years, but in this Bill appeal rights are restricted yet again, and certain appeal processes are accelerated.

Our amendment 121 would delete the Government’s attempt to reinstate the detained fast-track process, which was previously ruled unlawful. Amendment 145 removes another expedited appeal process. It is the Home Office that needs to address delays, not our tribunals. The SNP is also fully behind cross-party attempts to place time limits on the use of detention.

Even if our persecuted Christian, after appeal, joins the others in being recognised as a refugee, the misery this Bill will inflict on them is far from complete. The group will now face all the discriminatory measures heaped on by clause 11, which empowers the Home Secretary to punish recognised refugees through the insecurity of temporary residence, through no recourse to public funds, through limited family reunion and any other form of discrimination or punishment she thinks fit. It is a truly astonishing and outrageous provision. Amendment 114 specifically exempts Afghans, Syrians, Uyghurs, Christian converts and other refugees from such disgraceful treatment, and we fully support amendment 8 to remove the clause altogether.

If our Afghan or any of the others happens to be a young person whose age is challenged, the Bill risks making life especially difficult for them, thanks to the provisions of part 4, rammed into the Bill in Committee against the advice of numerous organisations and experts. The clauses will ramp up the use of age assessments by altering established guidance on when assessments are required, requiring them even when there is no reason to doubt a child’s age. They will allow the Home Office to meddle in an area that should be a matter for child protection and safeguarding teams, and to introduce new, unsupported, inaccurate and unethical scientific methods of assessment. Our amendments 122 to 126 seek to undo the damage of those provisions and leave those with expertise, not an anti-refugee agenda, in charge.

Finally, our new clause 32 simply requires the Bill to be interpreted so far as possible in line with the refugee convention. If the Government maintain there is nothing contrary to the convention in the Bill, surely they will have no problem with that new clause? The reality is, as numerous published legal opinions show, that these provisions are a blatant assault on the refugee convention, and the most vulnerable in the world will suffer. Our amendments seek to ameliorate some of the most outrageous aspects of the Bill, but the truth is that the whole thing needs to be canned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davis]

Of course I will look at it. I have said to the Ministers that much of the Bill is worth while. My right hon. Friend is right about the pull factor, and there are many other things we can do. I have had discussions with the Minister about, for example, improving our surveillance. The irony is that at the moment Frontex, using British surveillance operations, does a better job in the Mediterranean than the Home Office does in the channel. There are many things we can do, and yes, I will look at all available options, as long as they are humane.

Clause 28 and schedule 3 grant the Home Office the legal powers to create an offshore processing system. I am afraid I must say to those on this side of the House that it is based on something of a mythology. It is based on the Australian Government’s approach in 2013. Its scope would allow children, modern slavery victims and torture survivors to be detained offshore, in a place where we have little legal control. The Australian model of offshoring was seriously problematic on a humanitarian level, and the supposed deterrent effect of the policy was really down to an aggressive push-back policy. What the Australians did was push those ships back effectively into the middle of the Pacific, or Indonesian waters in the Pacific. That was the biggest impact. It relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend about the attractiveness of these things.

The Refugee Council of Australia has documented the gut-wrenching sexual, physical and mental abuse that has pushed vulnerable children toward suicide. A 14-year-old girl, held offshore for five years, doused herself in petrol and tried to set herself alight; fortunately, she was stopped. A 10-year-old boy attempted suicide three times. A 12-year-old boy, held offshore for five years, had to be medically transferred to Australia because he had tried to starve himself to death and had reached the point at which he could not even stand up because he was so weak.

Members might think that these are isolated cases, but tragically they are not. From May 2013 to October 2015, there were 2,116 documented assaults, sexual abuse cases or self-harm attempts. More than half of them applied to children. I say that more than half applied to children; only one fifth of the asylum seekers were actually children. So that is an astonishing humanitarian record for that policy.

I know there is a lot of doorstep politics involved in this, but if this were to happen on our watch, just imagine how the public would respond to serious harm being done to a child nominally in our care. Remember what happened when the Iranian Kurdish child of four was shown drowned on a Greek beach? It would be something like that, but in our own control. I do not want to see any British Government of any persuasion facing that.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I thank the right hon. Member for everything that he is doing on this. He will be aware of Madeline Gleeson, the Australian lawyer, academic and author of the book “Offshore”, who is an expert on offshoring. She said that, once we commit to something like offshoring, there is no going back, and she asked me to tell any Members who were tempted to vote for it that, even for those in Australia who opposed it, the burden on their consciences is to this day a heavy one. So will the right hon. Member join me in urging those Members tempted to vote in favour of offshoring to search their consciences and not do this to themselves or to those children?

[Mr Davis]

I think everybody in this House wants to do the right thing by our own country and the right thing by vulnerable people too. I do not except anybody from that. What I am trying to do here is to let people know what will happen, before we are fixed with the system and then find ourselves defending something that may turn out to be indefensible. That is my real concern about this element of the Bill, and in my view, the biggest argument is on humanitarian issues.

Also, as Conservatives, we should think about the cost. By any measure, this will be eye-wateringly expensive. At the moment, we spend £1.4 billion annually on asylum costs. That is about £11,000 per asylum seeker. Australia has spent £4.3 billion on just over 3,000 asylum seekers. That is about £1.38 million per person. As an ex-Public Accounts Committee Chairman, I looked rather askance at that and went through it with a fine-toothed comb, and I can tell the House that it is right. If we applied that cost to our asylum situation, we would be talking about something like £34 billion or £35 billion, which is the size of the Government Department. Let us imagine that we were twice as effective as that: the cost would still be £17 billion. Are we really talking about doing something like that? The reason for this is, of course, that we would effectively have to bribe the country that would take the asylum seekers.

Nationality and Borders Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 28th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Despite the Minister’s request, I would like to speak to amendments 144 to 149, which seek to address a couple of pretty serious issues: the immorality and the impracticality of the Government’s approach to the policy of pushback.

As regards Australia, the United Nations special rapporteur expressed real concern that the policy could intentionally put lives at risk. We have also seen the reports on those who lost their lives as a result of pushbacks in the Mediterranean. Clearly, the Government do not want to risk death or injury. Ministers have told us repeatedly that the objective of the legislation is to prevent drowning in the channel. Amendment 144 therefore seeks simply to put that commitment in the Bill.

I heard the Minister’s comments earlier, but a constant theme throughout our debate over the past few days has been that we identify real problems with the Bill and the Minister says, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll sort it out.” We are trying to say, “If we’re in the same place on the issue, let’s sort it out by putting something on the face of the Bill.” Amendment 144 would do that by requiring officers not to act under powers granted by proposed new paragraph B1(2) if they risked the welfare of those on board. It would simply ensure that an officer who wants to stop a ship, board it or require it to be taken elsewhere in the UK or internationally and detained or to leave UK waters must first consider the implications for those on board. Given that we are in the same place in our intentions, I hope the Minister can accept amendment 144.

Amendment 145 addresses the issue of practicality. Clause 41 is disturbing enough in itself, but it also reflects a wider problem with the Bill. The Government are trying to talk tough and grab headlines but with proposals that are actually undeliverable and that will not solve the problem of people smuggling that we all agree needs to be tackled. We have discussed offshoring and third country returns on previous clauses, and here we are again. Amendment 145 seeks to press the Govt on the issue.

In schedule 5, proposed new paragraph B1(7) makes it clear that the Government can proceed with the policy of pushback only where the relevant territory

“is willing to receive the ship.”

So where are the agreements? Amendment 145 would require the Home Secretary simply to publish a list of states with which she has secured agreement under sub-paragraph (7) to send ships with asylum seekers to, and to do so within 30 days of Royal Assent. That is not 30 days from today; that is 30 days from Royal Assent. That is a considerable amount of time. The Government have put a lot of thought into the Bill apparently, although there seem to be a lot of last-minute amendments. The Minister has said repeatedly that he does not want to provide a running commentary on negotiations. Let me reassure him: we do not want a running commentary. We just want some indication that there are agreements, or agreements in the pipeline, but there absolutely do not seem to be any. That is key.

The Government have so far failed to secure any agreements for returning asylum seekers. Instead, they encourage rumours that they are so close to securing an agreement with one country or another, but every country that has been mentioned has slammed those rumours. Rwanda said it had no agreement with Denmark, whose Government have been condemned by the African Union —an entire continent—in the strongest terms possible. The African Union said that offshore processing amounted to “responsibility and burden shifting” and criticised European attempts to extend border control to African shores as “xenophobic and completely unacceptable.” As my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark pointed out, the UK Government were rebuffed by Albania. The Albanian Foreign Minister told the press:

“Albania will proudly host 4,000 Afghan refugees based on its good will, but will never be a hub of anti-immigration policies of bigger and richer countries. We have instructed our Embassy in the UK to demand the retraction of this fake news.”

There are not just no agreements, but the Government are managing to offend countries around the world by implying that they are prepared to enter into agreements when they are clearly not. How many other countries are the Government deciding to burn bridges with over this issue? When will they come clean on this empty rhetoric?

Amendment 145 is intended to be helpful. We want to see transparency and, at the end of this process, to give the Government the opportunity, which they have so far failed to take, to publish the agreements they have secured. I hope that by accepting the amendment the Minister can prove us wrong in our doubts about the Government’s work in this area, and that he will agree that this information should be published well before the Bill takes effect.

Amendments 146 to 149 seek to ensure that officers adhere to the Human Rights Act 1998 and have completed relevant training before searching asylum seekers. These amendments relate to officials carrying out searches of people during maritime enforcement for documents, evidence of crime and other purposes. They seek to ensure that those officials have received training that is relevant to the task, and at all times are adhering to the Human Rights Act 1998.

As we have discussed many times in Committee, those fleeing persecution and danger to build new lives in the UK are likely to be victims of violence and trauma. They are vulnerable, and personal searches in particular could be extremely difficult or upsetting. Schedule 5 allows for officials to search a person, but forbids them to

“remove any clothing in public other than an outer coat, jacket or gloves.”

That is welcome as a bare minimum, but there is no stipulation or description of what can be done in searches in private, so this amendment seeks to ensure that the Home Office designs and delivers training to officers to ensure they are sensitive to the needs of the vulnerable people they may search. Additionally, it would ensure that all those searches are conducted with consideration given to the Human Rights Act and the right to a private life, to encourage the use of these powers only in extreme circumstances and when absolutely necessary.

Again, I draw the Minister’s attention to the lived experience of those who have come to our shores. In 2015, Women for Refugee Women published a report, “I Am Human”, which details the impact of searches on those who have experienced sexual violence. The searches triggered mental health problems, flashbacks and traumatic memories because people felt handled and scared by the process. When addressing my earlier amendments, the Minister sought to reassure me on these points too, saying that the Government would of course be compliant with the Human Rights Act and would take account of all the issues I am raising—fine. So why not put that commitment on the face of the Bill?

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

It is a pleasure to follow my friend, the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. When there are no safe and legal routes —or very few, as we have discovered throughout our many debates in this Committee—refugees will travel by unsafe means. We leave them no other choice. An estimated 40,000 refugees and other migrants died between 2014 and 2020 in the process of moving between countries, so as you said during a previous Bill Committee sitting, Ms McDonagh, we all of course want these dangerous crossings stopped.

We need to establish a network of the safe and legal routes the Government keep claiming the Bill is all about. But if it was about safe and legal routes, the Government would not be spending so much time, energy and money on introducing this so-called pushback policy for vessels found in the English channel. In the Bill, they refer to ships, but they have stretched the definition of what a ship is beyond recognition: it is now anything that appears to float. I feel the need to emphasise that for the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North—I see his ears pricking up at the mention of the word “Stoke”. Given his comment that he is happy to holiday in Greece, and that refugees should therefore just stay there, he clearly thinks people are arriving here on cruise ships. He really ought to look into this issue a bit more before he casts another vote or speaks another word. The Bill specifically talks about

“any other structure (whether with or without means of propulsion)”.

That is because people are making these perilous journeys on the flimsiest of vessels, so desperate are they.

Let us not sanitise things by talking about the pushing back of boats, ships or vessels of any description. Let us call it what it is: a policy of pushing back people—human beings. That is who we are pushing back. Who are these people? They are not, as the Home Secretary disgracefully claimed yesterday, economic migrants who just want to stay in UK hotels. Several very well-respected refugee organisations have spoken to me this morning to express their anger over those words, because as the Home Secretary knows, it is not true. The Home Office itself, over which she presides, accepted that 98% of those who arrived on boats in 2019 were asylum seekers, so I repeat: it is not true.

Who are these people, then? Migrant Voice and Amnesty International, in their evidence to their Committee, said that they are often babies; children; pregnant women; people who are ill; people with physical or mental incapacities; people suffering the traumas of past slavery, torture, or the frightening journeys they are on or have taken; or people who are afraid. Guess what? Young men, with the exception of being pregnant, can also be all of those things. It is clear that it takes just one person to panic or misunderstand an instruction for lives to be in jeopardy—the lives of all those aforementioned people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis]

I do not believe that is in scope of the clause, but I will not apologise to Islington Council. I made it very clear that, by the end of 2020, it had not taken any refugees. Obviously, Stoke-on-Trent had taken far more. The statistics back up what I am saying, and I am more than happy to have exchanges with the hon. Gentleman on the Floor of the House at another time, if he wishes.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s circumstances; he could have 10 kids or none. We have already established that most asylum seekers have no idea where they are going. They do not decide where they are going based on the immigration and asylum policies of the country where they end up, but imagine if they did. If the hon. Gentleman was one of them and was told, “If you go through that country, you will possibly end up in jail, but if you don’t leave your country right now, you are going to end up dead,” which would he choose for his family?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I have one daughter and a son on the way in early February, which I am pleased to announce to the House. What a lucky father I am going to be. The hon. Lady said it—there is nothing dangerous about France, Italy or Greece. People’s lives are not at risk. They may well be in Afghanistan or Syria. People will have left those countries and made that dangerous journey, which they should not have done because there are safe and legal routes to the UK. Other countries across mainland Europe could look to us as an example. They can claim asylum in those countries and not risk their lives by crossing the channel from France to the United Kingdom.

As I said, 70% of people making that illegal crossing are men between the age of 18 and 35. Predominantly, women and children are not coming with them but staying in those dangerous countries, which is why what we did with Afghanistan and Syria was so brilliant—we took women and children from a terrorist regime that I have no time for whatsoever, who treat women as second-class citizens and force certain children into slavery. We need to ensure that those women and children are protected.

I therefore believe that we should give commanders the confidence to do that again if they believe it to be safe. It is the commanders who will make that decision, and I have full faith that they will do so knowing the law, and the legal system in this country will have their back. Most importantly, they will take into account the condition of the waters at the time and the passengers onboard, so they can decide what is safe. The French can then do what they are meant to do when boats are in French territorial waters—stick to the obligations they sign up to for the money they get from British taxpayers and take those people back.

The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke are so angry about what is going on that they want us to pick people up and take them straight back to Calais. I am sympathetic to their viewpoint, and that is one way to deter. This is a legal opportunity for us and the right one for the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Again, I am grateful to the Minister for his answer and we will consider it. I am still not absolutely clear on precisely what the scope of the provision is and whether, for example,

“a statement…on behalf of the person”

would include a medical statement—a medical report—so that its credibility would be damaged just because the person who underwent the medical report disclosed information late. We will go away and think about that. I think the Home Office may need to give it some consideration as well, but in the meantime I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I beg to move amendment 175, in clause 47, page 42, line 24, leave out from “account” to the end of the subsection and insert

“of all the factors that may have led to the person providing the information late.”

This amendment would remove the presumption that delayed disclosure in relation to slavery or trafficking will be deemed damaging to a person’s credibility.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 163, in clause 47, page 42, line 26, at end insert—

“(2A) For the purposes of subsection (2) ‘good reasons’ include, but are not limited to—

(a) the impact of trauma, including avoidant behaviours and memory fragmentation consistent with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder;

(b) distrust of authorities, including fear of punishment or a lack of confidence in the confidentiality of information sharing;

(c) fear of reprisals against them, their children, families or friends if they make an allegation of slavery;

(d) experiencing pressures and fears related to bonded debt;

(e) where the claimant was under the age of 18 years at their time of arrival in the UK or at the time of their exploitation;

(f) where the claimant has diminished capacity;

(g) fear of repercussions from people who exercise control over the individual;

(h) a lack of understanding of Modern Slavery including being unable to identify themselves as a ‘victim’;

(i) narrative reasons including being unable or unwilling to identify themselves as a ‘victim’;

(j) Stockholm syndrome; and

(k) an ongoing or previous relationship with the trafficker.”

This amendment seeks to define “good reasons” for late disclosure.

[Anne McLaughlin]

We know that it is common for the impact of trauma on trafficking survivors to result in late disclosure of the trafficking experiences. I will not repeat things that we have already said, but let us not pretend that we do not know that already. The clause places an additional burden on people to demonstrate good reasons for their late disclosure, or lose credibility and be less likely to be recognised and given the support essential to recover—in as much as one can—from the crimes that have been visited on them, as a trafficked person. They are no less in need, however, and for that reason, amendment 175 would stop the very common delayed disclosure of information from damaging a victim’s credibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

I recognise the sincerity of the hon. Gentleman’s concern about this. What I would say to him, as I have now said many times, is that I expect appropriate decisions to be taken on a case-by-case basis, taking proper account of all the circumstances, mitigations and issues that people bring forward in relation to good reasons. I am confident that that process can be properly developed and delivered in a way that is responsive to those sorts of issues. That is why—to address the point made by the hon. Member for Halifax—it is difficult to put a precise time on when that guidance will be put in place, for the simple reason that we want to engage properly with the sector in the way that I have outlined. I want that to be a thorough process and for the guidance to be put in place in an appropriate manner that is as exhaustive as possible, but does not lack common sense and means that proper consideration is given to the many varied reasons that people may have for providing information late, for example.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I have a couple of points to make. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East made the point that once people get past the deadline, they will be terrified to come forward. What will the Minister do about those people—

[Tom Pursglove]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I had not quite finished, but okay.

[Tom Pursglove]

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady in mid-flow. I just want to provide some clarity on this point. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that someone is a victim, they will get positive identification even if the information is provided late. I want to be clear about that and place it on the record.

[Anne McLaughlin]

But the Government are refusing to accept amendment 163, which would put in the Bill what some of the good reasons could be. The Minister says that he will allow decision makers to have discretion, but what he is actually doing is allowing them to have discretion not to accept some perfectly valid reasons—including trauma, as we have covered. I would love to press the amendment to a vote, but we have to pick our battles in this place, so I reluctantly beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[The Chair]

Amendment 163 has already been debated. Do the Opposition wish to move it formally?

Nationality and Borders Bill (Eighth sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Public Bill Committees

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

The Opposition strongly oppose the clause. We believe that it contravenes the 1951 refugee convention, that it sets a dangerous precedent by creating a two-tiered system for refugees and that it is deeply inhumane. The clause seeks to dehumanise refugees in many insidious ways, and I believe that it threatens our very sense of who we are as a civilised nation. I will set out all the ways in which the clause does that, but before I begin, I would again like to thank the many organisations from across the refugee and asylum sector for their invaluable help in our scrutiny of the clause.

I will talk first about the differential treatment of refugees in groups 1 and 2. As all members of this Committee will know, at the heart of clause 10 is the creation of two tiers of refugee under UK law. Only those refugees who meet specific additional “requirements” will be considered group 1 refugees and benefit from the rights currently granted to all refugees by the refugee convention. Under clause 10 of the Bill, the requirements for group 1 refugees are that

“they have come to the United Kingdom directly from a country or territory where their life or freedom was threatened (in the sense of Article 1 of the Refugee Convention), and…they have presented themselves without delay to the authorities.”

The clause also states:

“Where a refugee has entered or is present in the United Kingdom unlawfully, the additional requirement is that they can show good cause for their unlawful entry or presence.”

Other refugees, who are not deemed to meet the criteria, will be designated as group 2 refugees. The Secretary of State will be empowered to draft rules discriminating against group 2 refugees with regard to the rights to which they are entitled under the refugee convention, as well as the fundamental human right to family unity.

To explain this differentiation between refugee groups further, clause 10 makes provision for different treatment of people recognised as refugees on the basis of how they travelled to the UK and the point at which they presented themselves to authorities. Those who travelled via a third country, do not have documents or did not claim asylum immediately would routinely be designated as group 2 refugees. The clause goes on to set out how the length of limited leave, access to indefinite leave, family reunion and access to public funds are likely to become areas for discriminating against group 2 refugees.

The Opposition strongly argue that such an approach is deeply flawed and fundamentally unfair. Furthermore, the attempt to create two different classes of recognised refugee is inconsistent with the refugee convention and has no basis in international law. The refugee convention contains a single, unitary definition of refugee, which is found in article 1A(2). That defines a refugee solely according to their need for international protection because of feared persecution on the grounds of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Anyone who meets that definition and is not excluded is a refugee and entitled to the protection of the refugee convention. We heard in evidence from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees representative to the UK that in her opinion this clause and the Bill were inconsistent with the UN convention and international law.

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

The hon. Gentleman mentions the UNHCR, which is the guardian of the refugee convention. Does he agree with me that on that basis, if we are to listen to anybody’s opinion about this issue, it would be the UNHCR and that should be therefore the final word on it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

Nice try. No, I did not say that.

The clause represents a fundamental change to the principle of refugee protection in the UK, introducing a two-tier system where any refugee reaching the country who has not benefited from a place on a resettlement programme may have their claim deemed inadmissible and be expelled to another country, or eventually granted temporary status with restricted rights to family reunification and financial support.

It is worth pointing out here that the UNHCR, the guardian of the 1951 refugee convention and the 1967 protocol relating to the status of refugees, tells us that the core principle is non-refoulement, which asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. That is now considered a rule of customary international law. Clause 10 therefore represents the shameful undoing of the commitment to the refugee convention and the British values that led to that commitment in the first place.

[Anne McLaughlin]

It is clear to all on the Opposition Benches that if this goes ahead, we will be breaching our international legal obligations. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that in doing so, the damage done both to the UK’s reputation as a global legal centre and to its trade strategy will be immense, at a time when we really need to find new trading partners?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I very much share those concerns. It is clear that some countries wishing to trade with the UK may also insist on certain measures in relation to visas and access, and in some of the new clauses tabled by the Government more recently there is a suggestion that they would be willing to withdraw visas to some countries. I do not know who they have discussed it with, but that seems contrary to the intention of trading with other nations.

There is no doubt, therefore, that the clause stands in clear contravention of the refugee convention—no small thing, given that the convention, sometimes known as the Geneva convention of 1951, anchors the status of refugees in international law. Around the most desperate and terrorised people on earth, the convention throws the shield of international protection. Since the horrors of the second world war, it has been an article of faith for every decent society, as required today as it was 70 years ago by all those fleeing war, torture and persecution of all kinds, and by all those women and girls who undertake their journey in the knowledge that they may well be raped en route to finding safety.

The Opposition are clear that accepting this clause would set a dangerous precedent by creating a two-tier system for refugees that is deeply inhumane. Furthermore, we hold that its consequences, intended or not, would undermine our binding legal obligations to all refugees. We oppose it because we believe the 1951 convention and all that goes with it speaks profoundly to the core values of the British people. Given the multiple, deeply negative consequences of the clause—mental ill health, poverty, debt, substandard accommodation and homelessness, to say nothing of the financial costs to local and national Government—it should be removed from the Bill.

In short, group 2 status is not only inconsistent with the refugee convention; it is a recipe for mental and physical ill health, social and economic marginalisation and exploitation. The human cost to refugees and their families, including their children, is obvious enough, and it should shame us that this Bill would actively cause harm if clause 10 is adopted. We will oppose clause 10 stand part.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I doubt that what I am about to say on clause 10 will shock Members. It is a fantastic element of the legislation because it will act as a deterrent to one of the many pull factors that the United Kingdom has and why so many people are prepared to make the dangerous journey through mainland Europe—that is not war torn, as some would like to have it seen as—to try to make it here to our United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central talked about the hostile environment, but I remind him that in May 2007 it was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), the then immigration Minister in a Labour Government, who referred to a hostile environment in his announcement of a consultation document. He said:

“We are trying to create a much more hostile environment in this country if you are here illegally.”

When that comment is added to the remarks of Baroness Scotland—cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South—that people should claim asylum in the first safe country they arrive in, it does not take much to understand the demise of the Labour party in red wall seats such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. People in my constituency want to see tougher immigration control, and 73% voted for Brexit because they wanted us to take back control of our borders. Clause 10 is one method by which we will take back control, because it will say clearly to people that if they make an illegal entry to this country it will count against them. If people take a safe and legal route, the country will open its arms to them and bring them over here, as we have done for people from Syria and Afghanistan.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The hon. Member keeps talking about people coming here illegally to apply for refugee status. Of the 5,000 people who came last year by boat, 98% were deemed by the Home Office to be eligible to apply for asylum. They were “genuine asylum seekers”, to use his words and they were not here illegally. They will only become illegal if the Bill is enacted.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. What I heard is that 5,000 people made illegal entry into this country, putting money into the hands of people smugglers, which ultimately funds wider criminality here and in mainland Europe. That is obviously negative, because it means that more people will be trapped in misery. Even Opposition parties accept that the system is currently broken and we need to fix it, but they seem to want to make sure that we have even more people come here—I heard the comparison to other European countries—rather than what people voted for this Government to do, which is to deter people from making those journeys so that they use safe and legal routes.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I disagree. The clause will not force people to use criminal gangs. It is one strand of a wider idea of deterring people from using dangerous routes, including pushbacks, offshoring and a second status for those who enter the country illegally. All those factors brought together, as part of a wider policy, will act as a deterrent, as we heard from His Excellency the High Commissioner for Australia. This clause is one of those deterrents and will form part of a wider package, which has my full support.

I applaud the Minister for this fantastic piece of work. We will always accept people in this country who take safe, legal routes. We will do our utmost to make sure that those people who are most in need are protected. This country has a fantastic history of looking after such people. Stoke-on-Trent is the fifth highest contributor to the asylum dispersal scheme—a Conservative-run authority with three Conservative Members of Parliament. We are proud of our city’s history, but at the same time we also acknowledge that illegal crossings of the Channel are putting people’s lives in danger unnecessarily and causing huge strain on our systems. Such crossings also enable and make profits for the disgusting criminal gangs. The only way to stop that is to stop people wanting to take those journeys. The clause is one part of a wider strategy to ensure that that happens.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way, at least. He seems so determined to stop illegal crossings—not illegal people, illegal crossings—and I agree that no one wants people to take dangerous journeys. What are his thoughts and ideas on how we can expand and develop the safe and legal routes, on which the Bill is apparently based, as an alternative? If we have those routes, people will not have to take dangerous journeys.

[Jonathan Gullis]

The hon. Lady has just promoted me to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office or the Home Office. I would be delighted if the Minister were looking for someone to join him in the Department, but I am sure my Whip would have something to say about that. It is a complicated situation. In Afghanistan, for example, we had a brief window for a safe and legal route to bring people out via the airport. Obviously, we cannot go into Afghanistan tomorrow; we would have to negotiate such an exit route with an Administration that I believe would be hostile to that—I do not believe they have good intentions—so we need to look to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan to see whether we can develop safe and legal entry routes in those other countries. I have full faith that the Government will come about that, but first we need the Bill in place to empower the Government to go forward and create those routes.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think it would be more helpful and more humane to have the safe and legal routes before we enact the Bill so that we do not have a gap for however long it takes when people who desperately need our help cannot get it? That could be months or years—it has taken a long time with Afghanistan, which is apparently a priority. Would it not be better to have the routes first before the Government do whatever they want with the Bill?

[Jonathan Gullis]

The problem is that we are not the only country looking for safe and legal routes from places such as Afghanistan. The world is struggling to come to a solution, and it is a world solution that we need to agree. I hope we will use our position as leader of the G7 for that going forward. However, there are a lot of refugees in mainland European countries such as Greece, Italy and France, which are perfectly safe and nice countries in which to start a new life, and people should absolutely claim asylum in them rather than making the journey to Calais, where they put funds into the hands of criminal gangs to fund criminality and come over here illegally. Remember that 70% are men aged between 18 and 35, which means that women and children—the most vulnerable groups—are being left behind in those countries.

Ultimately, it is more important that we ensure that they are protected and that we get to them, as we did in Afghanistan, rather than the illegal economic migrants who are crossing the Channel to enter the country illegally and putting a huge strain on our local authorities. That is why the clause saying, “If you come to this country illegally, that will count against you in your application” is a fantastic idea. Again, that is one strand of a wider strategy to help combat the shocking scenes we see in those Channel crossings, which are angering the people I represent in Stoke-on-Trent—and, to be quite frank, the nation.

The Bill is therefore long overdue. The Opposition accept that the asylum system is broken. Given that, I do not understand why what we are trying to do is not the right solution. The only thing I hear from the Opposition is, “We should have more people coming over here,” but that would create more pull factors to encourage people to make that dangerous journey.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

I am afraid that I just do not accept that characterisation. As I have said on several occasions in Committee, we continue to resettle genuine refugees directly from regions of conflict and instability, which has protected 25,000 people in the last six years—more than any other European country. It is central to our policy that we advocate safe and legal routes and put them at the heart of our policy making. I have talked about several of them. Of course, this is something that we keep under constant review as the international situation evolves and as needs require. I have no doubt that that will continue to be the approach that we take—establishing routes that are appropriate to the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Earlier today, I asked about safe and legal routes. The Minister said that by the time the Bill is enacted, a safe and legal route from Afghanistan will be up and running. I asked him about the other ones. Did he mean just the one route to which he referred, or did he mean routes across all countries where they might be needed? He said he could not answer at that time because the Chair would be annoyed, as we were talking only about the amendment on Afghanistan. Will he now take the opportunity to tell me whether those safe and legal routes will be available to anyone who requires them, to prevent them from making dangerous journeys, before the Bill is enacted?

[Tom Pursglove]

I respectfully say to the hon. Lady that there are routes in place that people can avail themselves of in order to seek sanctuary in this country.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Blomfield]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. These are vulnerable people, and they are subject to being exploited if appropriate measures are not taken to prevent that from happening. Having them all in one place allows criminals to prey on them.

I come on to the specifics of amendment 104. As I have set out, we have the gravest doubts about the clause. I find it disturbing. Our amendment seeks to ameliorate some of the worst aspects. I will set out each of its aims in more detail.

Presently, persons held in barracks and hotel accommodation are sometimes prevented from entering or leaving their place of accommodation at certain times and some places of accommodation prevent visitors from entering. The amendment addresses this inappropriately draconian situation by inserting proposed new section 22B into the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. It would qualify that the measure—in new section 22A, which relates to accommodation provided under sections 95A and 98A of the 1999 Act—to allow for the provision of accommodation in an accommodation centre, must allow for persons to be supported to enter or leave the accommodation centre at any time.

Although some controls on entry may be required to prevent persons hostile to residents of accommodation centres from entering, we believe that those held in such centres should be allowed to invite their own visitors. They should also not be precluded from communication with the outside world. The amendment would therefore introduce the right for the supported person

“(b) to receive visitors of their choice at any time; or

(c) to use communications equipment such as telephones, computers or video equipment.”

People working with persons supported in accommodation centres report that some persons in accommodation centres are unaware of their conditions of bail and may not have been provided with the conditions of their bail in writing. That places them at risk of arrest and detention for unknowingly breaching those conditions, or being unable to evidence their identity. The amendment would therefore introduce the provision that persons supported in accommodation centres must be provided with a written document setting out any conditions of bail.

Where controls or restrictions on freedom of movement of supported persons or their visitors are in place, a process for submissions by way of a complaints procedure needs to be in place, and the amendment would introduce a complaints procedure relating to the conditions of the accommodation and a procedure for appealing any decisions that may restrict the person’s freedoms, which will not apply to their bail conditions.

As has been argued, legal action taken against the Government over the suitability of Napier barracks for certain vulnerable groups has shown that the existing system has failed to maintain appropriate safeguards. The possibly widespread expansion of the system that the clause seeks to implement is very alarming and should be deeply concerning to any Member of this House.

The move away from community-based housing is poorly defined. Accommodation centres will unquestionably lower living standards for those seeking asylum. That is not an accident—it is the very design of the Bill and the clause. By the same measure, they will impede integration and advance a more draconian, prison-like setting for asylum seekers, who are, by their very definition, already traumatised individuals. If we do not agree our amendment, asylum seekers will find themselves in cold, dirty, isolated conditions, with all but no support services.

Given the widespread denunciations of the Home Office’s decision to house asylum seekers in Napier barracks, not least by the High Court, it is remarkable that the Government now seek to replicate it elsewhere. It should be noted that Mr Justice Linden criticised what he called the “detention-like” setting for the men there. Our amendment seeks to take away the detention element of the accommodation centres. They are de facto detention centres with prison-like conditions, which are cruel, wholly inappropriate and damaging to the individuals concerned. They can do nothing but increase harm and stress on already marginalised and vulnerable people whom we are beholden to protect under our international treaty obligations.

To speak plainly, the Government have got the wrong end of the stick. Clause 11 helps no one. They will find themselves on the wrong side of history with their ever-more draconian and hostile approach to asylum accommodation and, unamended, this clause starkly highlights that point. Amendment 104 should be supported to rectify that situation and ensure safeguards for the future. It would be utterly shameful if the clause, as it stands, enabled a repetition of the appalling situation at Napier barracks.

Without amendment, clause 11 will undermine the UK’s duty to support and protect those making asylum claims. We believe that the current dispersal system, whereby people seeking asylum live in regular housing in the community, is much better for supporting future integration and ensuring that people seeking asylum are able to access services that they need. We would rather see safeguards in place than the kind of appalling situation seen at Napier.

[Anne McLaughlin]

We heard that the devolved Governments were prevented from taking part in the consultation because it took place during purdah in the run-up to their elections. However, Shona Robison MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government in the Scottish Government, wrote a comprehensive response last month, in which she stated:

“This Government is clear that people should be supported to integrate within our communities from day one of arrival in line with the key principle of our New Scots refugee integration strategy. We are committed to the principle of community based integration for refugees and people seeking asylum. The New Scots approach is not compatible with use of remote and institutionalised camps. Such asylum accommodation will also not fix the underlying issues causing shortages in the asylum estate, which include the fairness, quality and timeliness of the asylum application and decision process.”

The position of the Scottish Government is the complete opposite of that of the UK Government, but their hands are tied. We cannot do what we want to do in Scotland to support our asylum seekers. That cannot be right.

Shona Robison also said:

“The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report highlighted significant issues”,

as we have heard,

“with the management of Napier Barracks and Penally, their suitability, safety and the impact this type of accommodation had on people living there. The report also raised concerns about contingency of healthcare if people are moved around the asylum estate. I would add to this contingency of legal representation, essential services and support networks, which must be considered.”

However, we are not talking only about barracks; there are many other types of accommodation that people had to live in. People were taken out of their homes where they were settled and put into Glasgow hostels and hotels last year. The Minister says things like, “This is not our intention.” I do not imagine that it was anyone’s intention for the men I met in the hostel close to where I live to be living in dirty accommodation, but they were, because they had nothing to clean up after themselves with. What most upset them the day I first met them was that they had nothing to clean their toilets with. They were living in tiny rooms, and if they did their washing in the tiny sink in what we will call the en suite—the toilet was in the room—they had to leave their wet clothes on the bed to dry off. I can tell hon. Members that, in Glasgow, that does not happen quickly; our temperatures are slightly different. They said that they could not keep the toilets clean and that there was no support. They were not looking for people to clean up after them, but because their access to finance had been taken from them, they could not even go and buy a toilet brush and bleach. It was a pretty awful situation.

There is also the so-called mother and baby unit that Mears has set up on behalf of the Home Office in Glasgow. I spoke to women who, without any notice, got a visit and were told, “Pack your bags. You and the baby”—or the bump; some were pregnant, some had just given birth—“are moving”. They were settled in communities among friends, they knew where the GP and the shops were and they knew how much things cost, but they were taken out of those communities at almost no notice. Many of them were told that they could take two carrier bags’ worth of goods and no more. These people had babies. I do not know anybody with a baby who can leave the house with fewer than two bags, but they were told by agents acting on behalf of the Government that they could take two carrier bags of stuff.

One of them said, “I was living in Pollok”, on the south side of Glasgow, “and was surrounded by wonderful neighbours. It was my baby’s first Christmas and all the neighbours had come round with Christmas presents.” That is why we want community dispersal. We want people to be part of a community. It benefits not just asylum seekers but everybody in the community—and that community certainly supported that woman and her baby. They took round Christmas presents, but then she was told to leave them behind because there was no room for them in the mother and baby unit. She was devastated because those presents were a symbol of acceptance and love from her community.

[Tom Pursglove]

May I repeat the point that I made earlier about the policy approach that we intend to adopt in accommodation centres, which is that children will not be accommodated in them?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I was really glad to hear the Minister say that, but then my cynical friend the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark pointed out that this is not about the intention but about making it crystal clear in the legislation—and perhaps the way to do that is to accept amendment 98. I hear what the Minister says, and yet still we have babies accommodated in a mother and baby unit. I have been fighting since January to get them out and have been told, “Okay, we will take them out of there.” There is a fantastic campaign called Freedom to Crawl, which points out that the rooms are so tiny that the development of these tiny babies—some of them becoming toddlers—is stifled because they do not have the freedom or the room to crawl. The Minister can tell me that they are not going to house children in those centres, but that is what is currently happening. If he thinks that is wrong, I would be glad to have his support to put an end to it.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am talking very specifically about accommodation centres in relation to the clause. If the hon. Lady writes to me with the specifics of the mother and baby unit in her local area, I will take that away and look at it.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I know that we have said “another letter” a number of times today, but I appreciate that offer. I understand that the Minister might not have heard of the unit because it is in Glasgow—although his predecessor might have known about it—but I would be happy for him to look at it.

Along with Alf Dubs—Lord Dubs—I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on refugees. We recently held a meeting to look at types of accommodation centres. We had a guest, a former politician from Belarus, who told us a story about why such accommodation does not work. He had to leave Belarus for political reasons in 2017. He had no choice. He was in serious fear of his and his wife’s safety. He said, “I am very grateful for the help and support that I have had, and I appreciate Britain taking me in.” He was really appreciative and not complaining, but he said now that he is settled he wants to make this point as much as he can so that other people do not go through what he went through when he initially got here.

They arrived in London and were put in shared accommodation in a hostel called Barry House, a big house full of, as he described it, “people like ourselves” who were seeking asylum. The people who lived in the house were from different backgrounds and cultures with different ideas about lots of issues. He said the staff did their best to make it comfortable, but it was not really possible to be comfortable. During the six months he was there, every day started and ended with some sort of scandal or argument. He described it as a powder keg, and we can understand why, because many of those people had post-traumatic stress disorder, and many of them spoke different languages, so we can imagine how stressful that would be. He said, “We tried to keep ourselves to ourselves—I couldn’t always tell what the arguments were about”, but he could feel the stress coming off other people. He said it was difficult for the staff to look after so many people; one thing he mentioned was everyone’s different dietary requirements, due to a number of things, including culture. He said the staff tried their best to provide a neutral menu, which meant that nobody was happy, but of course they did not feel they could complain, because they were grateful that they were no longer in their previous situation.

We have talked about not housing people with disabilities in that kind of accommodation, as mentioned in amendment 98. This gentleman had diabetes and is also a wheelchair user, and he said his health suffered because of the diabetes and he could not get access to the type of food he needs to maintain his insulin levels. He talked about using the toilets and said there was a limited number he could use, and because there were so many people in there, sometimes he had to wait for hours to use the few toilets he was able to get access to. He said it was like daily torture just trying to use the toilet, and a shower became a luxury for him.

This gentleman needed a specialist bed because of his mobility problems, but of course he could not get one because the rooms were so tiny he could not get one in. He said to me, “I knew I couldn’t go home. It wasn’t possible to go home. I thought I was safe, but I began to have suicidal thoughts at the centre. My life was at risk in Belarus, but it felt like my life was just disappearing in the UK.”

At the time, this gentleman said the stress and pressure was just enormous and that, had it not been for the Refugee Council in England, which provided a psychologist who gave him the belief he could get through it, he would not have survived. He said, “It was really difficult. I was a politician at home. I had what was considered a high standing in society, and I came here and I felt like absolutely nobody.” He said he was not underplaying everybody else’s problems; everybody else had serious problems, and when they are housed in accommodation together, the problems multiply. As I said, he described it as a powder keg and said that everybody had had negative experiences and everybody was scared of different things. Somebody is scared of noises, somebody is scared of something they see—people are all frightened, and that is the legacy of what they have been through. If they are put all together, it is extremely difficult.

I am strongly opposed to that type of accommodation, and the sooner people can get into community dispersal, the better. I know the Minister said he would ensure that the accommodation was not detention—or he said it would not be detention—but my question is whether it will feel like it. In the so-called mother and baby unit in Glasgow, for a time they were not allowed to leave without asking permission, and when they came back they were not allowed a key to the door. They had to wait, standing outside with their babies, until somebody came to let them in, which could be quite a while.

It is well documented how bad detention is for people seeking asylum who have mental health issues, which must be most asylum seekers after what they have been through. A lot of good work has been done by Professor Cornelius Katona and the Helen Bamber Foundation on mental health and detention. I am sure the Minister will be aware of the reports they have done.

I visited Dungavel detention centre in Scotland when I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament. I went in there and I felt like a criminal. They took my fingerprints and they walked about with big bunches of keys. Obviously, I was only there for a visit and I knew I was getting out again. The problem with detention is the indefinite nature of it.

The Minister said it is not indefinite accommodation, and if they can arrange other accommodation themselves they can get out, but I want to share the story of a mother and son I visited. The son was 10 years old. They were in detention, but I cannot help wondering whether we are going to find children in these accommodation centres feeling the same. At the age of 10, he said to his mum, “Mum, let’s not do this anymore. Please can we just find a way to let us die.” That is a 10-year-old boy. He is not dead now; things changed and their lives got a whole lot better, although he is very much impacted by his experience there. I am offering anecdotal evidence not to back up my claim, but to illustrate the detailed research that demonstrates that that child is not an isolated case. I know the Minister is saying that the intention is not for children to be placed in such accommodation—and certainly not in detention—but I want a guarantee that no children will be housed in these circumstances. I am sure he will agree with me that nobody wants to put children through what that child went through.

[Holly Lynch]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North East. I rise to speak in support of this group of amendments to clause 11, and I agree with a great number of the points that have already been made. I join colleagues in raising grave concerns about the direction in which the provision of asylum accommodation has moved in recent months, and I fear that the measures in clause 11 will only make matters worse.

I will focus my comments on the increased use of so-called contingency accommodation—specifically, Napier and Penally barracks—to outline why the amendments are necessary if we are to avoid the failures of those centres being repeated with the proposed accommodation centres. In my former role, and along with many colleagues, I sought to raise serious concerns about the rising use of dormitory-style accommodation. The justification for their use was the pressures of the pandemic and increased numbers in the asylum system. However, clause 11 allows the Government to extend that style of institutionalised accommodation through the introduction of new accommodation centres.

Following reports of bad practice, I wrote to the Government back in December 2020 to raise concerns about the situation in initial and contingency asylum accommodation, and I called on them to commission a review of covid safety in all establishments being used for asylum accommodation. Those concerns became a reality in January this year, when there was a significant outbreak of covid in Napier barracks, with nearly 200 cases. In March, the then independent chief inspector of borders and immigration and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons published their key findings from site visits to Penally camp and Napier barracks in mid-February. They confirmed that, given the cramped communal conditions and unworkable cohorting at Napier, a large-scale outbreak was virtually inevitable. Distressingly, inspectors visiting the site were informed by residents that, at the time of inspection, the barracks were at their best.

I submitted a freedom of information request to various authorities, which brought about the release of the Kent and Medway clinical commissioning group’s infection prevention report that was carried out at Napier barracks. It confirmed that the site does not facilitate effective social distancing. Every line of the report was devastating. The ICIBI and HMIP also raised serious safeguarding concerns, stating:

“There was inadequate support for people who had self-harmed. People at high risk of self-harm were located in a decrepit...‘isolation block’”

that was considered “unfit for habitation.” A survey conducted by the inspectors at Napier barracks found that one in three residents had felt suicidal during their time there.

As hon. Members have said, the report’s findings were further supported by the High Court judgment in June, which found that the Government’s decision to house asylum seekers in such a way was unlawful. It concluded that the condition of the site was inadequate and that it was irrational to house people in dormitory-style accommodation, yet the accommodation remains open and houses over 200 people at any one time. It was deeply concerning that during a recent meeting of the Home Affairs Committee, Home Office officials were unable to confirm how many covid-19 cases there had been since the accommodation reopened in April, yet we know there was another outbreak in August. The Home Office’s continued lack of oversight and engagement at ground level gives me no hope that the Government have learned from their failures, yet they wish to extend and continue that type of accommodation with accommodation centres, as outlined in clause 11.

The ICIBI report on Napier and Penally found that the Home Office did not exercise adequate oversight at either site, where staff were rarely present. It said:

“There were fundamental failures of leadership and planning by the Home Office.”

That is damning, so can the Minister say what assurances we have that things will be any different or any better in accommodation centres? The ability to deliver safe and appropriate asylum accommodation is a duty of any Government, but that just has not been the case in recent months.

The investigation highlights that the advice of Public Health England and the fire authorities was not acted on and was ignored before the sites were opened. The pressures of the pandemic would have presented challenges to any Government having to find solutions to problems at pace. However, we know that the Home Office is planning to extend the use of Napier barracks until 2026. We will be using the breadth of Parliament to challenge that, but I return to the point that the direction of travel in clause 11 is bad. Amendments 100, 104 and 130 are an attempt to ensure that rights and safety obligations are upheld.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Member and I fundamentally disagree on this point. I think that there is value in having accommodation centres that provide accommodation but also ensure that caseworking facilities are available alongside. That aids in the processing of cases more quickly. That is a sensible step forward, and something that I endorse. I think it is the right thing to do in these circumstances.

Amendment 99 would also undermine a key objective that we are trying to achieve through setting up accommodation centres, which is to resolve asylum cases more quickly by putting casework and other services on site. This speaks to the point that I have been making; there is therefore no rationale for restricting the number of people who will benefit from these improvements to 100 individuals per site.

Additionally, there is no reason why unrelated asylum seekers cannot share sleeping quarters, provided that they are the same sex. This is already allowed for in the asylum accommodation system. Those in flats or houses, for example, may be required to share bedrooms. Some asylum seekers might require their own room—for example, the current policy provides that those receiving treatment from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture should generally not share sleeping quarters with strangers—but that is because of their individual circumstances. I re-emphasise that appropriate decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis and, where circumstances require, appropriate arrangements should be made.

Amendment 100 seems to be based on a misunder-standing—I intervened on the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East on this point earlier. We are not proposing to accommodate anyone in the centres under the powers in section 17 of the 2002 Act. Asylum seekers will be accommodated in the centres under section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, or section 98 of the 1999 Act, pending consideration of an application for section 95 support. If the application is refused, there will be a right of appeal in the normal way.

Amendments 101 and 130 are both similar in theme to amendment 16. I disagree that the normal period of residence in an accommodation centre should be no more than three months. It may be that a three month period is appropriate in some cases, either because of the individual circumstances of the asylum seeker or the nature of the facilities at the site. However, as I have explained, we need the flexibility to increase the period of residence in a centre if experience shows this period is too short to provide consistent, streamlined support.

Amendment 102 would effectively give local authorities a veto on any proposals to set up accommodation centres in their areas. That is not appropriate. It is right, of course, that local authorities are fully consulted about such proposals and their views about local impacts and other matters given considerable weight.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I agree that it is right that local authorities are consulted, so the Minister will forgive me for being a little cynical that that will happen. When asylum seekers were put into a hotel in Falkirk a couple of weeks ago, Falkirk Council knew absolutely nothing about it and were not able to support them. He will forgive me for being a bit cynical about that pledge.

[Tom Pursglove]

I think it is absolutely essential that there is an open dialogue with local authorities about any measures that are proposed in their areas, and that those local views are properly taken into consideration and reflected in the decisions that are reached. That is a commitment that we make, and is already a feature of the current system.

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.

Nationality and Borders Bill (Sixth sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

Amendment 30 clarifies how the intention behind clause 7 can be met. It would take away the possibility of inconsistency, which is inherent in our relying on the opinion of individual Ministers, and it would bring about certain practical steps that would make the law easier to enact.

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

I will speak in support of the amendment in my name and the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. We also broadly support the Official Opposition’s amendments. I wanted to raise the evidence that the Committee heard from Free Movement and Amnesty International.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Anne McLaughlin]

I was speaking in support of all the amendments in the group and will use evidence given to the Committee by Amnesty International and Free Movement before adding a couple of points. The clause introduces the discretionary route for registration as an adult. Discretion can be exercised where, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, that person would have been able to become a British citizen if it were not for a number of things. I want to look first at the exceptional circumstances.

Free Movement’s concern, shared by a number of people, including me, is about the reference to the Secretary of State’s opinion. A future Secretary of State—let us not say the current Secretary of State, because we would not want to personalise this—may hold an opinion generally considered to be disproportionate, unreasonable or ridiculous. They may not be from the current party in government—I am not saying that it is more likely to happen under one particular party—but where does it end? There is nothing to say that their opinion can be curbed. I am wondering what is meant by that reference. How could a legal challenge be mounted against a decision that the Secretary of State is allowed to make based on their opinion? I would like something from the Minister on that.

I turn to historical legislative unfairness, which we have talked about a lot today. It has been defined with specifics. We have talked about the unequal treatment of mothers, children of unmarried couples, and children of mothers married to someone other than their natural father, but the list does not include discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and race. The list is not definitive. Is there scope to consider the role played by such discrimination in terms of historical unfairness? I would like the Minister’s thoughts on that.

On the act or omission by a public authority, it is always useful to say when we think somebody has got it right—and we have said that a number of times today. I want to reiterate that, as Free Movement has said, there have been a number of concerns that local authorities responsible for children who become entitled to British citizenship under their care do not always get the applications made on those children’s behalf. Sometimes that is because there has been a misunderstanding, and at other times it is deemed to be not in the child’s interest at that time and it is not always included in their care plan. By the time they are an adult, it is too late for them to make that decision themselves, so I am quite supportive of measures to deal with that.

I want to talk about a concern that Amnesty has expressed—I am sure the Minister has seen this—which is that clause 7 has to be given real, practical effect, and that the measure will be ineffective if uncertainty over the result of an application, along with the excessive fees that we have talked about, deters people from making applications in the first place. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has made those points.

Amnesty has asked for the following matters to be addressed. First, we have talked about fees at length, but I reiterate that several organisations are very concerned about the fees. Secondly, Amnesty has asked for assurances that where an individual application is successful, the Government will take positive action to ensure that other potential applicants are made aware of their equal or similar right to register at discretion. This means that where an example is identified of, as the Bill says, unfairness, an act or omission by a public authority or exceptional circumstances on which it is right or necessary to exercise the discretion, there should be publicity and awareness raising. We have talked a lot about that, but Amnesty wants to know that that will happen, and that members of the public who could use the legislation to the same positive effect will have that information. Lastly, Amnesty has asked for an assurance that awareness raising will apply equally to British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship.

[Bambos Charalambous]

I want to speak to amendment 34, which deals with people who would be British overseas citizens today but for historical unfairness in the law, an act or omission of a public authority or other exceptional circumstances. The Opposition welcome the fact that clause 7 attempts to rectify the position for those who would be British citizens or British overseas territories citizens today but for such an error. However, the clause does nothing for people who would be British overseas citizens today, and that is wrong.

Those who would be BOCs but for such an error should not be excluded from the proposed remedy. They have suffered from historical unfairness, just as those who would be British citizens or BOTCs today have done. Prior to 1983, there was one substantive class of British nationals, citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies. When the British Nationality Act 1981 came into force on 1 January 1983, CUKCs were divided and reclassified into three categories: British citizens, connected to the UK; British dependent territories citizens—now BOTCs—connected to the remaining British overseas territories, such as the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar; and BOCs, connected to the former British colonies.

The Home Office acknowledges that past unfairness in British nationality law includes where men and women were unable to pass on citizenship equally, and where unmarried fathers could not pass on citizenship. The Home Office acknowledges that in the case of people who could be British citizens or BOTCs, but many persons who would be overseas citizens today also suffer from such prejudice. As a result of the British overseas expansion and later decolonisation, there are pockets of BOCs around the world—for example, in Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa and anglophone west Africa, including places such as Sierra Leone. The category of BOC was created under the British Nationality Act, and it gave effect to the fact that BOCs were British nationals and should remain so. The newly created status gave no home or right of abode in the UK or any other remaining British territory.

Although BOCs have no right to come to the UK or a remaining British overseas territory, the status still has real value. It enables a person to seek to use the UK BOC passport, and possession of such a passport enables BOCs to seek UK consular assistance in a third country and to seek residence and permission to work in third countries under local laws. It may be useful where the passport of another nationality that those people hold is considered unreliable, and where their children are born stateless, to benefit from UK laws that reduce statelessness.

BOCs around the world make active use of that status. For example, many persons of Somali heritage born in Aden in Yemen when it was a British colony are reliant on BOC status, as they were, and are, shut out from the Yemeni nationality. Their BOC passports enable them to obtain lawful residence and permission to work in Gulf states, and to secure a visa to study in other countries. The Home Office proposal in clause 7 helps those affected by historical unfairness in British nationality law, an act or omission of a public authority, or exceptional circumstances to become British citizens or BOTCs. However, potential BOCs would also have suffered from such historical unfairness in British nationality law, acts or omissions of public authorities, or other exceptional circumstances. All those classes of British nationals were CUKCs prior to the British Nationality Act 1981, and all suffered from these problems. Clause 7 should therefore be supplemented to provide for registration as a BOC on the same basis as it enables registration as a British citizen or BOTC.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I want to pick up on one thing the shadow Minister mentioned in his speech. He is right that the most profound implications of the clause relate to the correction of wrongs that were done to the Windrush generation, but I slightly disagree with him when he says that it would not have been necessary but for that.

Certain nationality applications always have caused some awkwardness. In the dim and distant past, when I was one of these wicked immigration lawyers, I would have people come to me who were applying to register, and the requirement that they had been in the country five years ago at the start of the residency period would sometimes cause problems. I do not know what I was doing five years ago today, and sometimes it would require a hell of a lot of checking to work it out.

There were the odd occasions where the Home Office kindly returned the applications, because it was going to have to refuse them as the person had perhaps gone abroad for a couple of weeks five years ago. If the Home Office had not done that, it could have just banked the fees and refused the application. The most profound implication is in relation to Windrush, but I think overall that this is a good thing to do anyway and a slightly broader discretion is welcome.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I want to acknowledge the people who were caught up in the Windrush scandal and their tenacity in hanging on in there and sticking it out. I also want to recognise all the different campaign groups, activists and supporters, friends and families of those who suffered so much because of the scandal. I want to take every chance I get to put that on the record.

I regularly talk about feeling frustrated in this place when I passionately argue the case for something or someone but almost never get anywhere—sitting here today, it is of course always going to be nine Members on the Government side and seven on the Opposition side—but I underestimated the importance that people place on MPs speaking up for them and acknowledging their injustice, and I never will again. I did not think it would make such a difference, but it really does make a huge difference to people. That is why, as the SNP’s immigration spokesperson, I take any opportunity to say that what happened to the people who came here as part of the Windrush generation was utterly wrong. Even the solutions went wrong, and there were delays and complications. This clause, today, is good, but that is only right.

[Neil Coyle]

Does the hon. Member share my slight disappointment that it does not go further? Other countries bestow naturalisation on citizens, in particular those who worked for health and social care services throughout the covid crisis. We have non-UK nationals who have worked in health and social care services who could have had their service acknowledged by the Government. The Government have chosen not to do that, despite multiple requests from many MPs of different parties.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I very much agree, because the people we are talking about came here because they were invited. My partner’s family were among them. Thankfully, they were not caught up in this scandal.

We needed people to come here and help rebuild after world war two. People living in the Caribbean were well used to having white people in charge of their country, but what they were not so used to was the racist abuse that would meet them when they reached these shores. They assumed they would be welcome because they were part of the Commonwealth. They fought in our wars. They were invited here. It must have been a huge shock when they got here and somehow that narrative changed.

The narrative is still being used—it is still being used by some people elected to this place—that somehow the gratitude in all of this should be their gratitude to us and that we are somehow doing them some sort of favour. In fact, lots of our wealth was built on the backs of the people we enslaved on those islands. I cannot remember what it is called, but there is such a thing as the collective, inherited trauma that people suffer from. Their descendants were then invited over here to do what we needed done and they were treated the way they were treated, and then they were treated by this Government in the way they were treated in the Windrush scandal.

In the first years, about 5,000 Jamaican nurses came here. We have heard about all of those people from overseas territories who came and supported our health service. Many of them have suffered greatly. Some died during the pandemic, because they put themselves at risk. We needed those 5,000 nurses who came from Jamaica in the first years for our health system, but Jamaica needed them as well. We took them out of the Jamaican health system. We should have been thanking them. We should have been on our knees with gratitude. I do not like the narrative that they are somehow supposed to be grateful to us. So, yes, I would have liked these measures to have gone much further, but I will say that taking away the five-year rule is at least doing something to hold our hands up and say, “We did something wrong, and you don’t deserve to have to wait the five years when you are not the ones at fault.”

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East speaks for the whole House in saying that immigration has made an enormously positive contribution to this country over decades. As elected Members and in our communities across the country, we should continually make mention of that and constantly reflect on it—I am certainly very conscious of it.

Equally, I am conscious of the importance of righting the wrongs of what happened in relation to Windrush. There is an absolute commitment at the Home Office to do just that: follow up on Wendy Williams’s recommendations and make sure that they are delivered. As the SNP spokesman said, the clause has benefit beyond Windrush. I am really pleased that it seems the Committee can come together and support the clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clause 9

Citizenship: stateless minors

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I wish to echo everything the shadow Minister said in outlining why we passionately oppose the clause. As I said in earlier speeches, and has been illustrated by many hon. Members, citizenship is fundamental to a person’s identity. It provides a status and security that no visa or immigration leave can ever match. When talking about statelessness, we may sometimes be talking about people who have neither citizenship nor any immigration status. Organisations that work with stateless kids have provided myriad case studies and examples of the dreadful impact that it can have on them. In essence, they are one of the groups most deserving of our protection and consideration—those without any citizenship at all. Without citizenship, a whole host of other rights become almost impossible, leaving that person with a huge gap in their identity, security and sense of belonging.

We talk often about children who belong to recognised stateless populations, such as Kuwaiti Bidoon, Kurds, Rohingya or Palestinians. Also, there are children who suffer from discrimination under the nationality laws of other countries—the same type of discrimination that has existed and that we have been trying to correct in British nationality law. They could be children in state care, for example, particularly if one of the parents is not available or not co-operative in proving links or nationality.

As matters stand, stateless children and young adults under 22 can register as British if they were born here, have always been stateless and meet the five-year residency requirement. Even now, it is not always a straightforward process, as has been explained by the European Network on Statelessness. Lots of hurdles remain: we have touched on registration fees, as well as lack of knowledge and awareness of the rights of stateless children and challenges in providing proof. I would be keen to rectify that, but instead, for some reason, the Home Office is taking it upon itself to erect further hurdles, making it more difficult, not easier, for children under 18 to be registered as British. Clause 9 restricts access to registration of stateless kids, and is worded in such a way that it gives a broad discretion to the Secretary of State to decline applications, which we believe is in breach of international law.

We have not heard at all from the Government today what assessment they have made of the impact that will have on statelessness. There is no doubt in my mind that it will increase statelessness among children, but that does not appear to have been weighed up in the Government’s reckoning. That is absolutely contrary to the intention of the 1981 Act, which rightly set out to reduce statelessness.

There are three key points: first, the case has simply not been made. There is a bland assertion in the explanatory notes that there have been cases where parents have made that choice. But today, despite pressing for some sort of analysis of the scale of the issue, essentially what we have been given is one extreme case, as the shadow Minister said. I am utterly unconvinced that there are lots of parents going underground and running away from the Home Office all for the sake of trying to secure statelessness in this manner. That case has simply not been made today. That is a wholly inadequate explanation. It actually reflects where Home Office policy making sometimes goes wrong: isolated examples where the rules have arguably been used for purposes slightly beyond how the Home Office would like them to be used are identified, and then an utterly disproportionate response is forthcoming, which may be able to stop those isolated cases but also stops a lot of absolutely deserving cases, and impacts on totally innocent individuals. To put it succinctly, the baby is thrown out with the bath water.

We have called for greater detail: how many cases? We need more examples than one extreme case. What, ultimately, is the problem? There was a lot of talk about queue jumping, but it does not impact on others who perhaps have to wait 10 years for registration. Their rights are not impacted at all. At the end of the day, in one extreme case, a child who has done nothing wrong may end up registered as British five years before they otherwise might be.

Secondly, on international laws, the shadow Minister says that in our view this is in breach of the 1961 UN convention on the reduction of statelessness. The Minister made the case that the UNHCR guidelines on statelessness allow a small discretion for the state to withhold conferring citizenship where the nationality of a parent was available to the child immediately, without any legal or administrative hurdles, and could not be refused by the other state concerned. However, the wording of clause 9 goes significantly beyond what is allowed in the guidance. The clause will insert new paragraph 3A into the British Nationality Act 1981, with subsections 1(d) and 2(c) both going beyond what is permissible. The former appears to allow the Secretary of State some evaluative leeway about what is and what is not possible in terms of accessing another nationality. The question is: why not leave that as a pure question of fact? The latter subsection also introduces leeway where neither the convention nor guidance allows for it. Instead, the very limited exception that is allowed is where the other nationality is available to the child immediately, without any administrative impediments, hurdles, fees or similar obstacles, so I fear that the Home Office will end up in court again.

My final and most important point is that this will cause so much more harm than good. There has been no indication at all that the Home Office has undertaken any sort of balancing exercise. Whatever problem the Home Office is trying to fix—essentially, we have had an anecdote—the damage that will be done goes way beyond it. Families will not risk a huge fee if they have all sorts of doubts about what the Secretary of State will do with her discretion. We fear that many more people risk being unreasonably refused registration, prolonging their statelessness. Where is the assessment of the best interests of the children involved? Where is the assessment of the number of stateless kids who may be impacted by the Bill? There really has been a wholly inadequate justification for it.

I have a final plea to the Minister. Even if he will not revisit the need for some sort of response to the type of case that he has identified and spoken about today, will he at least revisit how far the clause is going? As I say, it is our strong view that it might have prevented that anecdotal case from happening, but it will cause all sorts of damage way beyond that. We also think that the wording is inconsistent with the UN guidelines that the Minister has cited. If he still feels compelled to do something, he should at least revisit how the clause has been worded. Otherwise, I think he will very much regret that the outcome will simply be thousands more stateless kids in the United Kingdom.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The UK is bound by the 1961 UN convention on the reduction of statelessness, as we have heard. That focuses on protecting the stateless child and preventing childhood statelessness. It requires only that the applicant is stateless, and not that they cannot reasonably acquire another nationality, as it says in the Bill. The UK Government say there is a problem that needs addressing through clause 9 and that would justify departing from the safeguards established by the convention, yet no evidence is offered.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has just said, he intervened on the Minister to ask for the evidence. The Minister said he had a long speech and would come to that, but he did not do so. He gave one piece of anecdotal evidence. I know that much of the Bill will have been drafted prior to his recently coming into the role, and I appreciate that this must be a baptism of fire for him, but I ask him to look more closely at the Bill. Why introduce it, if there is no evidence that there is an increase in abuse? There is no evidence. If there is no evidence, there is no problem, and if there is no problem, there is no need for clause 9. The UK Government really must not legislate to enable breaches of the commitment in the 1961 convention and the principle of the best interests of the child in UK domestic law.

[Neil Coyle]

I will not repeat the excellent points that have been made by colleagues, and I will try to be brief. My first point is about international law. It seems that most responsible countries strive to reduce the number of stateless children, but the Bill, and specifically clause 9, leaves people in limbo for a much longer period. It feels as though global Britain is acting in a slightly squeamish way about its international responsibilities on this issue and on other areas, so my first question to the Minister is: which other countries use a similar process, given what he has said today about how this is used in examples?

I agree with the comments just made. The Government are presenting a Bill and a clause that are based on hearsay. The Minister is asking us specifically to rely on hearsay and one anecdote. We all remember the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), talking about someone who was not evicted from this country because their human rights had been encroached because they had a cat. It turned out to be totally false; yet that was used by the then Home Secretary at a Conservative party conference to try to make a very similar point.

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.