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

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to express concern about Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She has highlighted some hard cases in the cause of her apparently wide-ranging proposed new law. That is an approach that I always discourage. I think legislation of this kind has to be carefully thought about, assessed for cost and consulted on.

In Committee, the main focus of amendments on this issue was to seek greater support from public funds during coronavirus. The Minister explained that some of the Government’s coronavirus measures—quite generously, one might say—applied to those with no recourse to public funds, who are the subject of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

I believe that migrants coming into the UK should be able to maintain and support themselves and their families without posing a burden on our hard-pressed benefit system. I do not know much about the detail of the arrangements for prohibiting access to public funds, but I know that taxpayers already foot large bills for lawyers to prioritise immigrants’ needs and to block the deportation of those who do not have the right to remain.

We cannot introduce an immigration system, as posited here, that has the effect of attracting migrants—whether from the EU, which is today’s subject, or elsewhere—for welfare benefits and not for work. This will not win the support of UK citizens who are struggling to make ends meet and are facing job losses and fiscal deficits as a result of the coronavirus crisis. In short, those who are, in reality, economic migrants should be contributors to the public purse, as I think many are. I hope that the House will reject this amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, in replying to this and the other amendment on no recourse to public funds in Committee, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, according to Hansard, that Home Office analysts were looking at the data to determine what figures could be “reduced”. I would like to think that that might have been about reducing the numbers of people with no recourse, but I suspect that it was a misprint for “produced”. The noble Baroness is nodding.

Almost all the speakers have lit on the issue of lack of data. It occurs to me that a lack of data indicates something of a shortfall in interest among the policy makers on the impact of the policy that they are making. Like much that relates to the immigration system, this amendment is about humanity and common sense: common sense because of the important public health argument about ensuring that people are not prone to disease that can be prevented and that children are fed well enough to be educated and to grow into good citizens, and humanity for obvious reasons.

Hard cases are not to be excluded when we think about policy; they have to be considered to bring attention to bad law. I do not think that the taxpayer is a single cohesive figure. Taxpayers have a wide range of views and there are quite a lot among us who would like to see our taxes spent differently and better. If that means more tax being raised, that is a price that we understand we have to pay.