Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Listowel

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for moving this very important Motion. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, for highlighting that there may be complexities to this and limits to what the Minister and the Secretary of State can do. I must confess that when thinking about this I feel furious. How can we as a country do this to our vulnerable children—children who have a right to be here? Why would we so foolishly make them feel unwelcome? It is absolutely shameful. There may be constraints on what the Minister can do. This morning I spoke about child health at the Royal Society of Medicine with young GPs and young paediatricians who are enthusiastic to help children in their community. They are working in Hackney and other deprived neighbourhoods. I am proud to be British, to have a health system that is free at the point of delivery and helps vulnerable families and families of all kinds, and an education system available to all. Many countries do not have such services. I am proud of that. I am deeply ashamed of this. What is the underlying message here? We do not want you here. You have a right to be here. We will begrudgingly let you be here. We are going to make as much money out of you as we can because we can get away with it—until the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, highlighted it to us.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby talked about belonging and helping people to be proud to be British, to be proud of this country and to want to be a part of it and contribute to it. I spent this afternoon with foster carers. Church groups around this country have recognised the need of the children of this country for foster carers and adoptive parents and work with their congregations to recruit more vital placements for those young people. These congregations are reaching out to the vulnerable, mostly from impoverished backgrounds, to take them into their homes.

We talked yesterday about the Serious Violence Strategy and young people feeling that they do not belong. When they do not belong, they find places where they are welcomed—gangs where they feel they have a family. Noble Lords will have followed stories of young people from this country choosing to go to Syria to fight for ISIS because they felt that was the place they belonged. Will the Minister say how this policy fits with the Government’s strategy to prevent the alienation of young people so that they may wish to be drawn towards organisations such as ISIS? It is surely in our own best interests not to be so penny-pinching and, where these children have a right, to make it as easy as possible for them to become British citizens and fully integrated members of our society. I am sure there are limitations on what the Minister can say tonight, but I hope she can assure us that every effort is being made to address this problem as speedily as possible.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness. I will add persistence to the attributes that have already been listed. As noble Lords have said, this was raised not only in the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement but at a recent Home Affairs Select Committee taking evidence from the Home Secretary. In response to one member, the Home Secretary said that the Home Office had to get the right balance between the funding of the Home Office and the fees charged. Like other noble Lords, I question whether this is a matter of balance.

As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, mentioned, a memo giving a rundown of the cost of these fees and how they were justified was requested. The Home Secretary responded to the comment that, on the face of it, the fees go way beyond normal cost recovery by saying that it would be a “good exercise for me” as well.

We hear many complaints and expressions of astonishment about the level of Home Office fees generally. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, that the complexity of the system is at the root of this. When the Home Office introduced its premium service some years ago, my first reaction was that, given what all applicants have to pay, they should all get a reasonably quick and reliable service. I do not think I need to expand on that. The briefings have reminded me that I have often read about a whole family being subject to fees, particularly those payable periodically over a long period. That is similar to the position of Amelia, which has been mentioned. If it is not essential to pursue the matter, for instance with naturalisation, and it is too much for the family, some members are omitted. It may be children but often it is women. I can imagine the potential problems down the line in the cases we have heard about, quite apart from the issue of these children being unable to exercise their rights.

What is at issue is not entitlement but the registration of that entitlement. The child has a statutory right to citizenship and everything that goes with it. As noble Lords have said, this is not about immigration control. On Thursday, we will be debating the difficulties that some people face when they try to pursue activities in everyday life. However, these children are not migrants and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned, the leave to remain is not a substitute for citizenship, as is sometimes suggested by the Home Office. I understand that it is not necessarily available, but it is not for the Home Office to dismiss rights in this way.

In his strategy for social integration, the Mayor of London put it very bluntly, saying that,

“if a young person has the right to be a British citizen, then government should remove obstacles to them becoming one”.

He commented on the profit element, which is,

“at least ten times higher than in many other European countries”,

and is,

“preventing too many young Londoners from accessing the rights they are fully entitled to by law”.

The Project, to which the noble Baroness referred, is very telling and powerful and I will quote one short paragraph from it:

“High-cost fees are completely contrary to the promotion and process of integration. Fees act to divide, distorting the vibrant futures of us—and other young people—caught in the complex net of immigration and nationality entitlements. Fees prevent young people from working, paying tax and contributing economically to society”.


I think that meets the right reverend Prelate’s definition of citizenship. Picking up the noble Earl’s point about young people finding other families, I recently heard that one should not use the term “gang” when working with young people in gangs, because they regard the gang as their family. That needs to be recognised.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, recently reported on a remedial order following declarations of incompatibility with regard to the British Nationality Act. In that case, it was about requirements of good character. We raised potentially discriminatory provisions in British nationality law with the then Home Secretary, concluding:

“We would be grateful for an assessment and an explanation from the Home Office as to whether any such discrimination does in fact persist”,


and were pleased that the Immigration Minister responded that she would ask her officials to look at this. I cannot help thinking that charging fees in the way that we have been discussing is a form of discrimination.

I have read the Library briefing for Thursday’s debate. It refers to the work by Coram and the Children’s Society, which have reported that there are 144,000 undocumented migrant children in the UK. I do not know how many are in the categories we have been discussing but that is an astonishing and worrying figure. To summarise what other noble Lords have said, I end by saying, “and dot, dot, dot”.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Listowel

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

[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?