Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Judd

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 30th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for having introduced this amendment, for the considerate way in which he did it, and for the questions which he posed to the Minister, to which I hope she will reply.

It would be difficult to overestimate the degree of concern that exists among voluntary and civil society organisations which are looking after children and seeing to their protection. I know that across the House, irrespective of party, there is a real concern that we should always be seen in the world as a country which gives genuine priority concern to children.

Among those organisations is of course Amnesty, and it is worth seeing what it has to say on this. Many of these children may do themselves harm; many of them will be British citizens or entitled to register as such. It is vital to their interests that they are encouraged to act on these rights of British citizenship and that local authorities are encouraged and supported to assist children in doing so. If that is not done, these children may lose their rights to British citizenship, either because for some the right is lost on their reaching adulthood since delay may mean evidence becomes increasingly inaccessible to establish, or because an encounter with the criminal justice system may bar their exercise of the right on the basis that they are regarded as not of good character.

Amendments 10, 13 and indeed 18 are concerned with ensuring that EU citizens are not left without settled status. These are important concerns, because being without status or confirmation of it exposes someone to immigration powers and exclusions. These immigration powers include the ability to detain and remove a person from the United Kingdom, and those immigration exclusions include the ability to prohibit a person from such things as working, renting accommodation, holding a bank account, accessing free healthcare and applying for social welfare. There are a number of telling concerns around this area of the Bill, and I thank my noble friend for having introduced the amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, late applications are indeed very important, and guidance will be essential. There is a lot of concern about what may lie behind an EU citizen not having applied for settled status, not with the intention of somehow evading the authorities or doing anything sinister or underhand. For instance, as we have said before, people may believe that an application is not necessary because they have a permanent residence document. Many reasons are cited, and no doubt there are many which none of us has thought of. After all, that is the human condition.

There are people whom the Home Office information has failed to reach or who have not understood it. I am aware that the Home Office plans to step up its communications after the end of the year to try to reach those who have not applied. However, it is worth mentioning again that, when the UK switched to digital television, there was an enormous campaign which was generally accepted as successful, but even that success left 3% of households not switching and finding overnight that their televisions did not work, and that was a much more straightforward subject than this is.

The point made within the amendment, and by the noble Lord, about status in the interim period is hugely important, and I hope to come back to that later in this Bill. They have got to be secure in the interim; it would be an enormous breach of faith if that was not the case. In Committee, the Minister sought to reassure noble Lords that there is plenty of time to apply under the EU settled status scheme, but that is not the point; it is what the Government’s “compassionate and flexible approach” will amount to in practice in their pragmatic take on this.

I confess that I had hoped to get an amendment down on comprehensive sickness insurance—essentially, what the position is on the grace period—in time for today, but it defeated me. I refused to be completely defeated and, with a little more energy, got back to it and it has been tabled, but too late for today, so we will have an opportunity on Monday.

We have the Government’s SI in draft in what I understand to be close to its final form, but those who know this subject inside out—and I do not—are still poring over it. That includes the3million, which is doing the most impressive job on all of this subject, both at a technical and at a human level. It is entirely appropriate to seek an assurance that the draft regulations provide the protection that we, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, would expect to see during the grace period.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was right to remind us of the particular position of children who have not been able to exercise treaty rights, if I understand the position properly. The guidance needs to be as extensive as is appropriate or, to hark back, as is necessary. I say that because on a different matter, on 9 September, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, from the Dispatch Box, said that an amendment which I was speaking to was not necessary, and referred the Committee to the draft illustrative regulations proposed under Clause 4(1), which, as he said, do not include any provisions relating to the subject matter I was discussing. They do not. But reading that afterwards—and I do not think the noble Lord meant it as cynically as I then read it—it was tantamount to saying, “It is not necessary because we are not doing it.” I did read the passage through two or three times.

I have my concerns, as I have said, about the whole of Clause 4, but I am not sure it is appropriate to hold back on all the regulations until this temporary protection is sorted out. But then, frankly, I am not here to help the Government sort out that type of thing. I am glad the noble Lord has tabled this amendment, spoken to it and drawn the potentially precarious position of a number of people—possibly quite a lot of people—to our attention, and I support him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is always a particular pleasure for me to support anything put forward in this context by my noble—and very good personal—friend Lord Dubs. As I have asked on other amendments, do we or do we not see the well-being of children as one of our high responsibilities in any future society that we want to become? How can it be in the interests of stability and security to have children who are semi-alienated by the situation in which they find themselves? That spells trouble for the future.

However, it is not just about our security. It is about wanting to ensure that children who have been through God knows what—it is very difficult to imagine the traumas that they must have had—are given the certainty that they need, with the backing of local authorities. This is not just a technical matter. In requiring local authorities to play their part in this, we will be building up a culture in which the nation shares in this commitment to children.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday the EU Security and Justice Sub-Committee was discussing refugees and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children with the Immigration Minister. He said, and I made a particular point of noting it—the Minister here does not need to look worried—“We always listen very carefully to Lord Dubs.” Well, that will be important for the next amendment, but I will apply it to this one as well, and I am very pleased to have added my name to the amendment on behalf of these Benches.

My noble friend Lord Bruce of Bennachie said at the last stage:

“We all know that children in care are especially disadvantaged, almost by definition”.—[Official Report, 16/9/20; col. 1292.]


I much prefer that term to “vulnerable” because many of them are extraordinarily resilient. But, however resilient you are, if you do not neatly fit a Home Office category, you are likely heading for problems and any parent, including a corporate parent, should do their best to pre-empt that.

In Committee the Minister explained the support services, I think she called them, for looked-after children and care leavers to assist them to make applications. That is of course welcome, but it would take someone much more confident than I am to be certain that no one will slip through the cracks.

In view of the time and in particular of the very thorough analysis of the amendment, especially by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I do not think I should take more of the House’s time, other than to encourage noble Lords to support the amendment—unless of course we hear from the Minister that the point is going to be taken up.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Judd

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 14th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Rosser and the other signatories to this vital amendment. The new clause they have described would delay application of “no recourse to public funds” rules during the current pandemic and until such time as Parliament decides. That is a high purpose.

While I enthusiastically support the amendment, as Amnesty and other non-governmental organisations working on the front line remind us, there is a need to look at the importance of providing access to welfare support for all people in the group with which we are currently concerned during the current and future pandemics to ensure that people lawfully in the UK whom it is plainly anticipated will remain here, such as people permitted to stay by reason of their private life and people who have joined family for purposes of settling, are not left destitute.

Of course, while Amendment 73 provides an opportunity to examine the wider implications, I stress again that the NGOs are right to insist that we need to look at all those who are put in jeopardy by circumstances out of their control such as the pandemic, and measures taken in response to it, as well as illness, accident, redundancy and changes to immigration rules, or things that people have been given no or insufficient opportunity to plan or prepare for. This is an utterly humane and sensible amendment and I do hope it finds favour with the Government.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD) [V]]

My Lords, Covid has proved a desperate situation in so many different ways. One of the telling impacts is on individuals who have no recourse to public funds, not just for them as individuals but, as other noble Lords have said, in the context of public health, if they have to go to work, or to collect food from a food bank or other donors. The position is diametrically opposed to the UBI universal benefit, to which reference has been made. There is a lot to be said for that.

On Amendment 73, it occurred to me to ask what the policy aim is, because it reads as a hostile environment measure. What is the purpose of applying the no recourse rule to people whose future clearly lies in the UK? It is hard not to come to the conclusion that it is about starving them out.