Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I was not originally going to take part in this debate, but as a former Immigration Minister it seemed to me that it was worth looking carefully at the regret Motion. Indeed, having listened to the introduction of the noble Baroness, there are one or two things that ought to be put on the record with regard to the history of this.

I know that these matters, particularly those that deal with children, produce a lot of emotion and concern, as they rightly should. But of course we have to go back. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, just mentioned the British Nationality Act 1981 and other legislation which has been passed from, in fact, 1948 onwards. That reflects on the fact that, as the noble Baroness said, the benefits of British citizenship should not be overstated—or at least she said something similar to that. The fact of the matter is that none of us who are British citizens really prizes our citizenship as much as we ought.

That does not mean that it has to be used as an excuse to look at the value of citizenship against the fees that are charged, but I would point out that when I was the Minister, the Treasury was always on my back, wanting me to produce value for money in anything that my department did. Of course, this was confirmed, as the noble Baroness has admitted, by the Labour Government in 2004, which introduced the term “over-cost”, as it was called, and applied it from 2007 onwards. This related to fees in a vast number of areas across a vast number of departments. Because of pressure from the Treasury and indeed from outside of government, the idea was to try to make sure that the costs of departments that were involved in matters such as immigration were, as far as possible, covered to minimise the amount of extra moneys that would be required from the public. That is perhaps rather more surprising under a Labour Government than it might be under the normal Conservative prospectus, but there it was and there it has been ever since. The fees have been rising commensurately ever since in a great many areas.

I am not here to defend those facts except to say to noble Lords that I am delighted to know that the Government are at least now looking at the issues of complexity, which is the other point I wish to make. When I was doing things on immigration, we had a simple situation. There were few areas and qualifications with which one could remain in this country. Similarly, the application processes and the way we looked at these matters was simple as compared with the situation we now have, with different categories of rights to remain, which have been referred to, such as indefinite rights to remain and temporary rights to remain; they now exist and they are applied. In my opinion, we are much more generous, and rightly so, towards many more applicants than we used to be. In those days, we were much tougher: either you were able to remain here or you were not. However, the complexity has got out of hand. We have so many different headings and categories that, inevitably, there are going to be those, including children and perhaps some others, who will fall foul, as it were, of the regulations whatever they happen to be.

I therefore welcome the Government’s approach, which is to look at the complexity and try to simplify these matters. Bearing in mind what may well be happening after next year, it will be necessary for us to have a new approach to how we deal with citizens who are closer to this place than normal—Europe. All of this gives us an excellent opportunity to try to simplify the system. However, I fear that while the regret Motion has been put before us today, we are in a situation where the fee structures in this department and in others is to some extent controlled. Moreover, as has rightly been said, the discretions of Ministers in being able to help are somewhat limited, although they do exist in certain cases. I would certainly urge that, in those cases of particular suffering or particular poverty or particular circumstances, Ministers should exercise what powers they have in favour of child applicants.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and thank her for bringing this regret Motion to your Lordships’ House. She has drawn our attention to the iniquity of the Government’s position, which would add insult to injury by seeking to increase the fee for registering children entitled to British citizenship and thus increase the Government’s profit.

As we have heard, the figure of more than £1,000 per child that is being demanded is, according to the Government’s own figures, comprised of £372 in administration fees with the remaining £640 being pure profit: profit, including even on the backs of children in care. According to the current Home Secretary, it is a “huge amount of money” to ask children to pay for citizenship, a comment he made just a few weeks ago. I agree with him, and he has the power to do something about it. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, pointed out that he does have vestiges of power that remain.

The Home Secretary has come close to recognising that the imposition of the fee is part and parcel of the wish of the previous Home Secretary but one—perhaps Amber Rudd also, but certainly Theresa May—to create a “hostile environment” in this country for—but this is where I come unstuck. Who precisely is the hostile environment aimed at? We are told that it is to deter illegal immigrants, but the events of the last few weeks have shown us that innocent people, those who have every right to be here and who believe themselves to be utterly British, are finding that they are ensnared in these pernicious rules. Without British citizenship, these children face the same issues as the Windrush generation, which have been exposed recently: being refused access to healthcare, employment, education, social assistance and housing; being held in detention centres; and potentially being removed and excluded from the country altogether.

The briefings that we have received from the Coram Children’s Legal Centre and Amnesty International tell us the human stories of the economic hardship and psychological trauma of being unable to surmount the barriers to gaining citizenship. We have heard a couple of the stories this evening; they are heartbreaking. These children have statutory rights—that cannot be stressed enough—to be registered as British citizens, conferred on them by the British Nationality Act 1981. No child should be denied their British citizenship rights by a fee. I add my support to that of others in asking for the removal of any element of the registration fee over and above the actual cost of administration, the removal of the entire fee in the case of children in local authority care and the introduction of a waiver of the fee in the case of any child who is unable to afford the administrative cost of registration.

Of course, I also support the call in the regret Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asking the Government to withdraw the fee increase until they have published a children’s best interests impact assessment and established an independent review of fees for registering children as British citizens, as recommended by the report of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I support the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I will not go into the mathematics—which are very simple, in a way—but I invite the Minister to help us understand the Government’s role in dealing with citizenship. This is about citizenship, not immigration, although sometimes they are linked.

All of us were probably born into citizenship—that is, children become citizens in our country. Obviously, there has to be a system looking at qualification if people come here by other routes. Citizenship is the privilege that glues a country together and enables a Government to have a culture of law and order that people respect and work in and where they support each other. In a market-driven economy, the role of citizenship is even more important because the market will cover some things, but you need a lot of energy and commitment underneath to look after people, look out for them and go the extra mile. There is enormous evidence of social breakdown, including the breakdown of families and communities, isolation and alienation, one of the causes of which seems to be what I call a “citizenship deficit”—that is, many people are not public-spirited, wanting to be citizens with others and live in a joined-up way for a common good.

Noble Lords will know that church people in particular give millions of hours every month to voluntary activity to improve the life of the community. That is what citizenship is: going the extra mile. Many others do this, not just church people. People engaged in such work could give lots of examples of how the civic energy that we need to offer welfare, support, friendship and kindness to make human life more bearable is under stress more and more. We need more recruits. The challenge facing the Government is to create a culture where citizenship is good, creative and worth while.

This issue points to the giving of signals that increase the citizenship deficit. I want to tell two stories from my diocese. I could take you to a parish where an Australian family with three children who were all born here, who have lived over half their lives in this country, claim citizenship. They could afford to pay, so there was not that kind of struggle, but from knowing the family I know that they feel insulted and undervalued. They are citizens living among citizens and making contributions, but suddenly they have to find quite a lot of money to register that.

More poignantly, there is an enormously poor Nigerian family in the parish. They struggle tremendously. Their children are entitled to become citizens, but the fees are way above their possibility. Local church people work hard to try to raise the money, but it is a double whammy: the people becoming citizens feel that the state does not want people to be part of it—it has no commitment to them, so why should they commit to the state?—and all the people of good will who raised the money think, “Golly, what is happening to citizenship in our country, when it is not a right that can benefit society, but some kind of financial transaction that people struggle to meet?”.

If we are not careful, we give out a message that society is just a heap of things that have to raise money to pay the costs of things. A rich society is one in which we give ourselves to each other, generously, graciously and compassionately—that is what citizenship is about. If we cannot induct children into that culture, but give the contrary message that it is a very expensive privilege, and then you just live for yourself, or that very poor people cannot afford to be citizens despite their legal rights and their participation in communities, then I think we are contributing through this scheme to the citizenship deficit and the continuing disintegration of our society.