Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I support Amendment 64A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, to which I have added my name. I declare my interests in relation to both RAMP and Reset as set out in the register. I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Neuberger and Lady Lister, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for outlining all the arguments for why this amendment is the right route to take. On Amendment 64, I hear the words about safeguarding but it is a dangerous route to take.

The needs of children have been starkly left unaddressed in so many areas of the Bill. The policies proposed to determine the age of the child are particularly concerning. The child and their best interests, rather than deterrence, must be the starting point in designing these policies. I support the amendment because it is imperative that such assessments are up to standard and based on scientific evidence. We should be seeing help for local authorities to improve their practice through multiagency working so that social workers conduct these assessments and that they are better supported with appropriate funding and training. Making the process stricter will lead to more children being treated as adults. This is extremely concerning given that they will then be placed alone in adult accommodation, with no support or safeguarding.

We have been assured that they will have the recourse of appeal at the tribunal. However, as we are hearing in other debates, the focus of the Home Office must be to get decisions right correctly at the first instance in a timely manner. We should not be introducing policies which will add to backlogs and lead to lengthy appeals. Our tribunal system does not need this, and neither do the children. I simply support this amendment, which sets out what an expert and fair age assessment should look like from the expertise of a coalition of more than 60 organisations, all of them professional, in this field.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I veer between Amendments 64 and—unhelpfully—64A on age verification but what is important is that we have a trustworthy system. That is crucial; otherwise, we are in danger of fuelling cynicism and doubt about the whole system of refugee status.

We heard during Questions about the overwhelming generosity of UK citizens welcoming people from Ukraine. The broad public enthusiasm has been well noted, but I am afraid that the Home Office’s seeming ability to act speedily and with urgency is rather doubted. People are frustrated when they hear about things such as visa offices in Warsaw shutting up shop at 5 pm and closing over the weekend as though this is a kind of normal situation. There is a broad concern that, potentially, behind the scenes we do not trust the processes or the bureaucracy, and I think that includes age checks just as much as it includes allowing people to come to the UK, such as in the Ukraine situation.

One of the things that worries me is the sources of cynicism about the whole refugee process. The public feel that there is no control, and that if people declare themselves to be refugees when they arrive by boat, or declare that they are children, this will be accepted at face value and in good faith. The public do not want to feel that they are being taken for a mug. Age assessment is valid. Of course, doing so cruelly or insensitively is not welcome and would be terrible. If it is not the case that dentistry is the right scientific method, fine, but the principle surely is that we check the age of those who say that they are children. That is an important principle. Use whatever scientific method you want and be as kind as you want, but do not just say to the British public that anybody who challenges this is being cruel to children, because that is unfair. The unintended consequence of creating an impression that the process is not fair is a backlash whereby people start saying that they do not trust any of it. We know that the age issue is of some concern.

This is not a blame game, by the way. I realise that if I was a 21-year-old Syrian lad trying to get into the UK, I would say that I was 16. I do not blame anyone for that, and I understand it. Why wouldn’t you? I say good luck to them, in some ways, for trying. It is just that we as legislators are meant to be coming up with a system that the British public feel they can trust and that controls the borders. The inference that anyone who wants to tighten up the system does not care about children or does not care about people suffering in war zones is unfair and a misrepresentation.

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of Amendment 64A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, in relation to the testing of children who may or may not be of the correct age. I think that everybody is united in believing that illegitimate people holding themselves up as children is wrong. However, how that gets assessed needs careful consideration. Can the Government think again as to whether the correct people for doing this investigation and the methods that they use, so movingly put, should be deployed by the Home Office, when local authorities have the equipment and the expertise to do this in a sensitive way which protects both parties? It is not okay for a minor to undergo treatment that adds to trauma, any more than it is right for an adult child to abuse a minor.

We ought to find a system that is fair and age-appropriate, and which gives people the benefit of the doubt until it is proved. Without the proper expertise, more harm can be done than problems solved.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 80, which I am pleased to support—and I also support Amendment 81 very strongly as well. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe is a demon for data, as she has just demonstrated in the House, as a basis for good decisions and keeping the public well informed about what is going on around them while avoiding rumour and anecdote, which takes us to a bad place, particularly in areas as sensitive as immigration. Therefore, I particularly share her view, and the view of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, that the Government’s decision to reduce transparency about the flow across the English Channel is regrettable. It is clearly an area of considerable public concern and, for better or worse, we will not solve it by not publishing the figures—that is likely to make it worse.

I shall add one thing on the international passenger survey, when we come to relaunch, refocus and redesign it. I was once questioned as part of that survey, when I was travelling through Heathrow, and I was very pleased to answer the lady, who was very good and helpful. I went on and talked to her a bit about her job, and I can offer the House three take-aways. First, under no circumstances do you cross-question; so if someone says that they are coming here to be a plumber in Cardiff, a plumber in Cardiff they are—there is no question of whether they might be something else. That is not your job; you just write that into the form. The second was that you tended to have a predominance of older people answering the form. She said that younger people would be in a hurry, pushing on, and they tended not to want to stay and answer her questions —or there were not many of them. Older people seemed to have more time and, therefore, she felt that the survey was biased towards older people. Thirdly, and finally, on the issue of the early morning or transcontinental flights, known as the red-eye flights, unsurprisingly those people coming off those flights did not want to answer a survey—they wanted to get to a shower, a bed or their office. She told me that so difficult had it been that they had started reducing the number of staff who were on the early shift, and they brought full staffing on at about 8.30 am or 9 am, when people were in a more helpful mood—perhaps that is the best way of putting it.

I leave it to the House, and to my noble friend the Minister, but with that sort of anecdotal background, this can hardly be a system that inspires confidence as to the accuracy and value of the data that it collects. If we are going to relaunch it, we need to think much more clearly about how we are going to gather data in a way that creates confidence and trust.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 80 and, partially, Amendment 81. On Amendment 80, it is common sense—and would be helpful to all sides of the debates on this Bill that arose in Committee and on Report—that we should know more. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has said, whatever our analysis or principles, we would all be helped if we had reliable data in the public square on asylum and immigration because we could then perhaps do some myth-busting.

When you talk to people outside of this House, there are a range of responses to this issue and, indeed, to our discussions here on the Bill. There is some perception that borders are open, and that there are too many people flooding into the UK for society to cope. Some people will even go so far as to say that we are full. I do not think that we are full but, as far as some are concerned, it looks as though we are being overwhelmed. They use the evidence of their own eyes, watching people crossing the English Channel weekly, sometimes daily, with a perception that nothing is being done. I know that this Bill is trying to do something about precisely that, but the perception is that all these people are coming in and nothing is being done.

I have said before that I do not believe that the people making those observations in public are motivated by xenophobia. I have a number of observations. The UK may not be full—it is not full—but if you live in one of the many towns where there is a chronic housing shortage, you are near the top of the housing list and then you get bumped, you may have a perception that it is to do with immigration because some refugees have been given housing. British citizens from all ethnicities can become frustrated and can feel as though there are indeed too many people coming to the UK. We need to have the figures to be able to refute that, or to do something about it. Also, as it happens, you need the figures to plan how we can get more housing and deal with the lack of services—because, actually, the problem is not too many people but not enough services. We need to know, and that is why the data would be helpful.

My second point is about lack of trust, a sense that those in authority are not prepared to tackle this issue; that it is too difficult. Often, that takes the form of people believing that lies are being told about the figures and the real numbers are being hidden. It is in all our interests in restoring trust that we are not hiding any figures. Also, confusion remains over different categories of people wanting to come to the UK. Even in this House, throughout this debate there has been slippage in talking about migrants, immigration, asylum seeking, refugees and so on; they are all too often conflated.

This is further confused by reality. For example, in my view, there are not enough opportunities for unskilled economic migrants to make their life here. I have to persuade my fellow citizens of that; they do not necessarily agree. Regardless, many undoubtedly present themselves as asylum seekers here because of the confusion. I know that it is not a clear picture; none the less, it would surely help to detoxify the issue if politicians were open and honest. That would mean our having much more granular information about the numbers of all types of people living in the UK and their status here.

Finally, I have reservations about Amendment 81 asking for weekly figures of the numbers entering the UK across the English Channel. My reservations are based on the image of some ghastly nightly announcement like those Covid death announcements, which were so often demoralising and not necessarily very reliable. I do worry about scaremongering, or that stats might be used as a substitute for analysis or context, but, on balance, I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant and the more information in the public realm, the better. This is not because I am particularly enthusiastic about data or into number-crunching, like some other noble Lords. No nation state can claim to have meaningful sovereignty if it does not know or check, or has no control over, the number of people living within its borders. It comes over as indifference to the worries of people who are already citizens here if it looks like we are being evasive about those numbers, or not openly telling them the truth.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I hope that I do not disappoint noble Lords, but I generally agree with all the speakers before me, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. We agree with Amendment 80 in principle, in that there is a definite need for accurate immigration data. In particular, the public need to know what net immigration to the UK is—that is, the number coming into the UK set against those emigrating. In particular, they need to know how many of those are seeking refuge from war and persecution, such as those trying to come to the UK from Ukraine, and how many are effectively economic migrants, whether workers or students, who make a contribution to the economy as either workers or consumers. The former—genuine refugees—arguably have a stronger case for coming to the UK than those who want to further themselves or their careers. As I have said numerous times, in recent years only six in every 100 immigrants have been refugees.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid I have to plead guilty as charged to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, since I was chair of the committee on citizenship and citizenship engagement that he was referring to, which had among its extremely able members the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and my noble friend Baroness Eaton.

We came across this issue, so I have some sympathy with the direction of travel of this amendment. In simple terms, while our committee was sitting the fees for naturalisation were raised to £1202, with an extra £80 if you wanted to have a citizenship ceremony. We were told that the cost of administering was roughly half that, so there was an override of about £600.

To be honest, to forgo the citizenship ceremony, which we were able to attend, would be to miss something. It was an extraordinarily moving experience to watch the people enter enthusiastically into their new life. In the margin of the meeting, they did, of course, tell us about the costs that they had to incur along the way. My major reason for supporting the direction of travel, though, is the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. We are trying to promote people to come forward and anything that dissuades them is a mistake. I am not sure that we must have regard to what other countries are charging. That seems to me not necessarily something that will add to the sum of human knowledge; nor do I think there is necessarily not some room for a bit of a surcharge for the overall administration. But the underlying point is that the margin between the cost of providing the service and the cost being charged is too great.

In my view, this amendment—not in this form, but something like it—would impose some financial discipline at a lower operational level because it would impose some direct responsibility. Once it becomes a sort of global figure, nobody cares about it, is responsible for it or does anything to improve the service it is providing. That is why I think this is going in the right direction, even though I do not agree with all the detail.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to support Amendments 83 and 84 and really thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for putting them forward. I do not know whether she will be grateful but I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Whether she wants me or not, I am one of the terriers she has managed to inspire in this instance. I have tried to pursue a bit of theme—I raised it at Second Reading and in Committee—that the Bill should have been used, apart from anything, to send a positive message about the benefits of being a citizen and those special rights and duties characteristic of any nation state. I feel the Government have missed a trick.

It seems to me that these modest amendments could punch above their weight by, on the one hand, removing entirely unnecessary barriers to citizenship but, on the other, making a positive case that we care about citizenship by doing so. It is a reminder that the barriers we are talking about here are not necessary. They are just financial ones. These are people whom the British state, according to its own British Nationality Act, says are entitled to citizenship, so that is not even in dispute. That is what is so irritating about this.

The fees are undoubtedly causing people problems and putting them off realising their citizenship rights. We have already heard the details. But the fact that you can be charged well over £1,000—despite the Home Office estimating that it takes only £372 to cover costs—just makes it feel like a rather grubby money-raising scheme. The amendment rightly tackles the fact that you should restrict any fee to just covering the real cost. I worry that it sends a message that citizenship is being cheapened morally by charging too much.

This goes beyond money because we need to consider what it means. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the right reverend Prelate both referred to what this means politically. It is completely counterproductive that citizenship is treated in this financial way because of the impact it has on social bonds and cohesion. Rather than citizenship which allows a sort of national solidarity of citizens—as we have inspiringly seen among the citizens of Ukraine—instead we are socialising new generations into a kind of shadow citizenship status that is fracturing and creates cynicism in the UK’s very commitment to the belonging, to equal rights and virtues and to the promise of what it means to be British.