Immigration

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Sweeney

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again.

Evidence-based policy making is the principle that our future borders and immigration system will be built upon. It will be a single immigration system, where it is workers’ skills that matter, not where they come from.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. She referred to evidence-based policy making. Does she recognise that the Fresh Talent initiative introduced by a previous First Minister of Scotland, Lord McConnell, which he credits as his single most effective achievement in office, contributed to reversing Scotland’s historic population decline?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Sweeney

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

11. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of proposals in his immigration White Paper on workers’ rights.

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

Foreign nationals admitted to the UK to work under the proposals set out in the White Paper will benefit from the same employment rights and protections as the rest of the UK workforce, such as the national minimum wage, paid annual leave and protection from discrimination.

[Mr Sweeney]

The Minister might be interested to know that when I criticised aspects of the White Paper last week, particularly the proposed £30,000 salary threshold, her colleague the Secretary of State for Scotland said that he shared my concerns and that he would be making a submission to the consultation about the flawed nature of that arbitrary salary threshold. Does the Minister share her colleague’s concerns about the impact that that threshold will have on young skilled employment in Scotland?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that when the Home Secretary published the White Paper, he made it clear that this was the start of a year-long conversation about the proposal contained therein for us to move to a single system based on people’s skills and not on where they come from. He will also be aware that the Immigration Bill has recently moved into its Committee stage, and we heard evidence the week before last from a range of experts giving us the benefit of their views on salary thresholds, including the Migration Advisory Committee, which proposed the £30,000 threshold.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Sweeney

Monday 21st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the importance of our engaging with business groups and stakeholders across Scotland. I was delighted to meet the CBI in Scotland in a business roundtable back in the summer, and that engagement will continue. I would also like to point out that the independent Migration Advisory Committee was very much of the view that Scotland’s economic situation is not sufficiently different from the rest of the UK to justify a very different migration policy.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister accept that the idea of a skills-based immigration system is undermined by having an arbitrary salary threshold, which should be scrapped in favour of an honest assessment of the real skills demand across different sectors in the economy?

[Caroline Nokes]

I would gently point out that it was not an arbitrary salary threshold; it was the one put forward by the independent Migration Advisory Committee. It is, of course, important that we engage with business and employers across the whole of the United Kingdom, and we will use the next 12 months to do so.

Asylum Accommodation Contracts

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Sweeney

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East, because he has been very patient.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank the Minister for giving way on that point. When Rupert Soames phoned me in July to describe his concerns about the contract, as he saw them, he said it was actually the charity of Serco’s shareholders that was keeping people in accommodation for far longer than they were being funded by the Home Office. Somewhere in that balance, there is clearly a point where the Home Office is prematurely cutting funding for provision of housing. Surely there should be a longer cooling-off period to enable legal counsel to be consulted, to see if the intent is to appeal and so on and so forth before people are turfed out of their housing by Serco.

[Caroline Nokes]

I refer the hon. Gentleman back to my comments about information sharing and ensuring that information is accurate, because that is the only way in which we will make the best decisions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Sweeney

Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. My constituent Duc Nguyen was a victim of human trafficking to the UK. Despite the Home Office recognising that fact, he was detained and sent to a detention centre at Heathrow. Luckily, he has now been released, but is it not against Home Office policy to detain victims of trafficking? If it is, will the Minister investigate this case to understand why it happened?

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that when detention is being considered every case must now go through a single detention gatekeeper, but I will undertake to look very closely at the case he raises. Our adults at risk policy, which Stephen Shaw recently reviewed, will be part of the response that the Home Secretary will bring forward before the recess.

Immigration: Pausing the Hostile Environment

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Sweeney

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The use of immigration and removal centres was, in fact, down by 8% last year. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the figures that have already been made public—that 63% of detainees are released within 28 days and that in the region of 92% or 93% of detainees are released within four months. Obviously, individuals have the right to apply for immigration bail at any time, and that happens automatically after four months. We expect to publish the response to the Stephen Shaw report in very short order indeed.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

In my first year as a Member of Parliament, I have been shocked at the level of the hostile environment as it manifests itself in my constituency. Just two weeks ago, the Kamil family in my constituency went on hunger strike outside the Home Office in Glasgow, having been kept in limbo for 18 years, waiting for their asylum application to be assessed. They are Iraqi-Kurdish refugees. How on earth was this able to happen? Eighteen years is worse than a life sentence. Their children were forced into a situation where they were not able to leave the country. Will the Minister commit to investigating this case as part of a wider review?

[Caroline Nokes]

I am happy to look at this individual case if the hon. Gentleman provides me with the details. I am conscious that we need to do better when it comes to the speed of assessing asylum cases and in ensuring that people receive their decisions in a timely manner.