Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hamwee]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, our society recognises the plight of refugees and our moral obligations, including giving practical expression to our humanitarianism. Our culture recognises the importance of family—as do most cultures. This Bill recognises both.

I first acknowledge the Government’s contribution by way of funds in the Middle East and elsewhere. Pursuing the provisions in this Bill is not to deny either the significance of that contribution or the good example set by the UK, but it is not a complete answer. Many refugees from Syria are still in the region and there is an enormous strain on the neighbouring countries: Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon—which is about the size of Wales and hosts a refugee population amounting to around 30% of its total population, and is not in fact a signatory to the refugee convention. If those countries can do so much, we should do our bit. In 2016, the UK received 3% of asylum applications made in the EU. Per head of population, the UK ranked 18th in the EU, with 0.6 applications per 1,000 people. In the same year globally, 20 people became newly displaced every minute of every day.

I know the Government take the view that the Bill seeks little that is not done already, so I will take it clause by clause. Clause 1(1) provides that a person who has refugee status or humanitarian protection may apply for permission for family members to join him—when I say “him” from time to time, I generally mean “him or her”. Indeed, that is the position in our current Immigration Rules, but they are rules, not primary or secondary legislation—not something Parliament can amend or reject. Rules are an executive instrument, subject to change without Parliament’s involvement.

The first three groups of people listed in Clause 1(2) can, under the current rules, be sponsored, but only by an adult. People in the other categories may be given leave—that is, leave to enter or remain in the country— by discretion. I do not think it unreasonable for a refugee to have a right to be joined by family members, and it could not be said that those listed in Clause 1(2) are distant relatives. Where there is discretion there are bound to be inconsistencies—if leave is given at all, of course—in the type of leave or length of stay granted; family members may get different lengths. There may be a residency criterion—for instance, for housing.

Some noble Lords were at a meeting last week in Parliament and heard Khalil, a very mature and tall teenager, tell them that he had reached the UK alone. His parents and siblings came later and separately and eventually they were together, albeit briefly. He said, “They’ve been told they have to go back to Birmingham because that was where my Mum was sent to live when she was an asylum seeker, and because I came as a refugee child on my own, I have to live in Essex, so we are still not together. My brothers and sisters are at school in London and my dad is working in a restaurant. If we had to move to Birmingham, then they would miss out on schooling once again and my dad would lose his job and have to find a new one, which might not be easy. The reason we’re still separated, even though we are in the same country, is because I couldn’t apply for family reunion when I came to England, and that’s the reason I’m still living on my own”.

Home Office caseworkers have guidance and must consider,

“exceptional circumstances or compassionate factors”.

The guidance tells them:

“Entry clearance or a grant of leave outside the Immigration Rules is likely to be appropriate only rarely”.


I heard, for instance, of a disabled person with a carer who is a family member who was allowed leave. “Exceptional circumstances” is a term we are used to considering in various contexts, but often these circumstances are in fact the norm in this situation. One of the people who may—I stress “may”—be given leave is an unmarried child over 18. The position of a 19 year-old daughter or son alone in a refugee camp without family support is something that would worry any of us.

At the meeting to which I referred, we also heard from Maya, a hugely impressive young Syrian. She spoke no English when she arrived but, four years on, and very fluent, she is studying aeronautical engineering. So many of the young refugees I have met have been keen to contribute to society and are model citizens. Her father took the initial journey by himself and she and her mother later joined him under the current rules, but only after several attempts to get visas from the embassy in Beirut, having travelled from northern Syria, been held up at the border and arriving late at the embassy, where they were told that, as they had missed the appointment, they could not be dealt with, so that difficult and dangerous journey had to be repeated in both directions. She said, “There was no respect at the embassy; no respect for our papers”. Dangerous journeys to embassies and consulates to make applications are a common story. Travelling through war zones is not like catching a bus at the end of the road.

Then there are the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, whose situation has particularly caught the public imagination. I do not want to dehumanise them by using the acronym UASC. Rule 319X currently applies and its existence is implicit acceptance of the importance of family, though the need for,

“serious and compelling … considerations which make exclusion of the child undesirable”,

seems to go in the other direction and suggests exceptionality. However, it is not an alternative to the provision in Clause 1(3) of the Bill. Among the other requirements are that the child can and will be accommodated with a relative—usually in this situation an aunt, uncle or sibling—in accommodation “owned or occupied exclusively” by that relative, and will be maintained by that relative,

“without recourse to public funds”.

Often these criteria cannot be met by the relative. In addition, the child must hold a valid entry clearance or leave to remain on arrival—I have referred to the difficulties in getting documentation—and a substantial fee is payable.

In the case of child asylum seekers, we are told by the Government that if we were to allow them to sponsor their parents or other family, this would act as a “pull” factor and they would be sent here by family so that the family had a way in. I will leave aside whether it is consistent to argue this at the same time as arguing that what the Bill would do already applies. I will also leave aside the fact that there are enough “push” factors—but what evidence is there for this? I think that my noble friend Lady Sheehan will say a little more about this.

I can understand that, once a child has reached Europe, the UK may have more of a pull factor than some other countries—although this is not invariably so. However, that is quite different from what is called a “perverse incentive” to send a child out of his own country—and, frankly, I do not buy it. The more we learn of the situation in France, Greece and elsewhere—we recently debated in this House the situation post the Calais Jungle, including very disturbing findings by the Refugee Rights Data Project and the Human Trafficking Foundation: the clue is in that organisation’s name—the more manifest is the need for safe and legal routes to reduce opportunities for criminals to exploit and abuse. Without safe and legal routes, children are destined for abuse.

Giving the right to a child refugee to have his family join him would not be novel. The EU directive on the right to family reunification does so, although we are not a signatory, and Clause 1(3) is based on this. To use another phrase with which noble Lords will be familiar, what in the following situation is in the “best interests of the child”—a child whose father has been killed in Afghanistan and whose mother sends him away for his protection? He is a child in need of protection under the Geneva Convention and it is in his interests to be joined and cared for by his family.

Noble Lords may wonder why I have not mentioned Dublin III. We are concerned with the position post Brexit, but that is a regulation dealing with arrangements between states regarding the transfer of asylum applications. It is a related but parallel issue. I have included an exception to the rights in Clause 1 if that would be in the interests of national security, and applied this also to Clause 2, which concerns British citizens with family members who have a protection need. The problem came to prominence just before the Calais Jungle was broken up. A father was settled in the UK. His daughter was in the Jungle, but he could not meet the fees and income requirements of our family visa rules and so he, the holder of a British passport, went to live in the Jungle to look after his daughter.

Clause 3 allows for the Secretary of State to make regulations,

“to extend the definition of a family member, and … provide for requirements for evidencing family membership or dependency”.

I referred to evidencing, which is not as simple as Ministers ordered during the passage of what became the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act. In debates on the Bill, Ministers said that keeping family reunion cases in scope would cost £5 million a year. I leave it to noble Lords to take their own view of that amount. Documents may not be available; they may have been left behind or may never have been provided in the country of origin. DNA testing would help; the Government used to fund it, but no longer. Indeed, the chief inspector has recommended its reinstatement. I mentioned travel to a UK embassy and back, which can be a dangerous journey in itself. Centres have been set up in France to help refugees—I had understood in conjunction with the UK, but we hear of difficulties in reaching them and of various practical problems. The last I heard was that the UK had sent over a single official to assist. I hope that that is wrong.

If everything I have mentioned is already our law, it is not working in practice. Hard cases make bad law, but bad law—or no law—makes hard cases. The EU directive on the right to family reunification states in a recital that it is,

“a necessary way of making family life possible. It helps to create sociocultural stability facilitating the integration of third country nationals in the … State, which also serves to promote economic and social cohesion”.

I agree. Families belong together. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has supported the Bill and I thank the Minister not only for her response but for that last offer. I am happy to work with anyone, however much I disagree with certain aspects of what is being done.

The Government’s exposition of a positive response to refugees does not really accord with what speakers have heard and know and have told the House. No doubt that is because so many people are affected. Much reference has been made to the pull factors and in response I will adopt the term of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr: implausible. I am not clear why primary legislation is a bad thing in this situation, and with regard to the rules, I simply repeat—because I do not want to make my speech all over again—that exceptional circumstances have become normal circumstances, so you cannot apply the exceptionality factor.

The fact remains that we have a situation that is of huge concern to all noble Lords regarding separated families, and the comprehensive framework, which was referred to by the Minister, is not doing the job we all want to see. The threads which have run throughout this debate include how we wish our country in 2017 to be and to be perceived, including as one that expresses its humanity and the value of family, as well as practical reasons, including those which are not actually altruistic about the enrichment of our society. Reference was made at the start of the debate to informed public opinion. Politicians need to take the lead in informing public opinion and in debating with the public. I hope that noble Lords will agree to give this Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 11th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I move this amendment for two reasons. First, I believe that legislation and the privilege that we have in introducing Private Member’s Bills should be taken very seriously. By this I mean that legislation is something that requires precision for implementing the intention. From that, it follows that the intention should be reasonably clear and realistic. In this, legislation is crucially different from debate on resolutions, propositions or aspirations. One can, for example, debate the need for a settlement of the Middle East conflict, but to put forward legislation for that is unlikely to be helpful. It is perfectly reasonable to debate all sorts of views on immigration but proposals to uncap it in an unmeasurable way are really not suited to a declaration of policy, let alone legislation.

I remember as a journalist when I had to attend all the party conferences, in 1976 at the Liberal Party conference—the first conference that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, had when he was leader of the Liberal Party—the Young Liberals, who are always inclined to anarchism, had a resolution that there should be completely free immigration into the UK. The noble Lord rebuked them, saying that if they wanted the party to have those sorts of policies they should find another leader. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was a Young Liberal at that time.

The second reason why I am moving the amendment is to probe into the actual figures. Clause 1 specifies nine categories of family members of an individual who have been granted refugee status whose application to enter or remain in the UK the Secretary of State would be obliged to grant unless the refusal was in the interests of national security. Immigration statistics are always complicated, but at its simplest I would point out that the number of people who have been granted asylum over the 10 years up to 2017—and this is the lowest figure—is 56,921. Each, I suggest, would be likely on average to apply for entry for more than one person. In the ninth category of people in Clause 1(2) are included,

“any dependent relative not otherwise listed in this subsection”,

so it is really pretty open wording. No limit is really envisaged.

I believe that any Government are obliged to limit immigration to a number that can be absorbed into the community. My definition of “absorbed” in this context is for the basic state provision of housing, health services generally and education to be able to be provided without diluting, to an extent that is democratically unacceptable, the standard of living of those already resident in the UK. I recognise at once that my own amendment of up to two family members could well amount to over 100,000, and that would probably be over my own measure of “absorbed”. In that context, I remind your Lordships that the latest 12-month figure for net migration into the UK is 244,000.

In practice the Bill would open the door to large numbers of economic migrants. We know that the potential number of those from Africa alone is measured in the millions and it is not really possible to estimate it. All that can be said is that market forces suggest that migration would continue until the standard of living in the receiving country was no longer high enough to attract economic migrants—thus, the only way of limiting those who want to come is by restricting numbers.

I must mention one other deeply worrying aspect of immigration control in the UK: the capacity of the Home Office to administer it. It is now 12 years since the then Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, famously declared on 4 May 2006 that the Home Office was “not fit for purpose”. It is sad and deeply worrying that this is clearly still the case, and I am not talking about the deplorable incompetence over the “Empire Windrush”. On that matter, I am wholly on the side of the migrants. In my 20s I was lucky enough, in my first job working for a British chemical company, to be posted for over a year to the Caribbean, living out of a suitcase and travelling from island to island, selling pharmaceuticals to doctors in what was then the British West Indies. I got to know many West Indians and learnt that they have the best sense of humour of any people in the world, and I like and respect them enormously.

I am talking about the fact that it seems that the Home Office immigration service is systemically corrupt. In a Written Answer on 10 January 2012, the Home Office revealed that over the previous five years there had been,

“29 convictions of Home Office staff in connection with their official activities”.—[Official Report, 10/1/12; col. WA36.]

The great majority, nearly all from the immigration department, resulted in prison sentences, two of them for nine years. I fear that that is continuing. As recently as 5 April the Times carried a report of a Home Office official, Mr Shamsu Iqbal, who had been found guilty of falsifying the records of over 400 people, amounting to some £6 million of profit to him and his colleagues. Surely one must ask why the Home Office recruitment and vetting procedure has not been tightened up between the previous figure and today.

At any rate, this Bill is aspirationally attractive, and all of us who have any liberal sensibilities like the idea of families being able to be joined together, although it may well be that better facilities are needed for that purpose. However, the Bill as drafted would make immigration an open season for doubtful and corrupt activities, leaving Ministers little opportunity for questioning what was happening. My amendment would be a small, though probably still too large, step in enabling a practical limit to be imposed. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

It may be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak at this stage. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for the opportunity to return to the Bill, especially because it enables me to give a plaudit to the Government. The Minister would not have expected that.

We have debated the subject of family reunion on previous occasions, but I think the most recent was during the course of the EU withdrawal Bill, when the Minister responding to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and resisting his amendment, did not mention the pull factor, which on every other occasion that I can remember the Government have included in their argument. I do not subscribe to the pull factor, described by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, as implausible. I hope that that was a significant omission.

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I conclude by reassuring noble Lords that we will continue to listen to concerns about family reunion. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, whose efforts in this area are consistent and determined and come from absolutely the right place. However, our starting point is that family reunion is a matter for the Immigration Rules, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, and for policy rather than primary legislation. I look forward to carrying on working with the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, together with all other noble Lords, on this very important and sensitive issue.

[Baroness Hamwee]

Before the noble Lord responds, this is not the moment to continue the debate, although I could take issue with a number of the Minister’s comments. However, criticism has been made of the fact that there is no estimate of numbers or costs in the Bill. I accept that there is no impact assessment, and it would be difficult for someone like me to undertake one, but if that is an offer from the Minister for me to go into the Home Office and spend time with officials to work on the detail, I would be absolutely delighted to do so.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, again before the noble Lord responds, is it not right to pay tribute to the caseworkers? This debate has highlighted the immense challenges they face in making their judgments. Does the Minister not agree that it is right for us to pay great tribute to their work? Can she assure the Committee that, when she looks at capacity in the Home Office, she will ensure that those caseworkers get all the emotional support and time they need to reflect on their work so that it does not overburden them, perhaps contributing to the poor outcomes from casework that we occasionally see?