Immigration Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

It might be helpful, before I comment on new clause 11, to set the context in which the amendments and new clauses are being moved.

This is an important Bill. It has, I think, widespread support outside this House, and will ensure that the Government have greater ability to make it harder for people to live in the United Kingdom illegally. It will make it easier for us to be able to remove people who are here illegally and will streamline the process for appeals, reducing the number of appeals from 17 to four. It will also, crucially, enable us, in certain circumstances, to deport individuals before they have their appeals, so that their right of appeal is outside of this country. It also introduces a variety of measures, one of which I will be coming on to speak to, because it relates to some of the technical amendments ensuring that people who come to this country for a temporary period contribute to our public services, as I think every hard-working family would expect them to do. It is this Government who are putting that through in the Bill.

The Bill is important because it will enhance our ability to deal with a number of immigration matters, although that is against the background of our success in reducing net migration into this country and particularly in dealing with the abuse of certain immigration routes, notably student visas. That is the context of these amendments. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the number of amendments, but many of them are very technical and minor amendments.

Government new clause 11 is intended to ensure that the marriage and civil partnership provisions work as effectively as possible. Importantly, part 4 of the Bill will establish a new referral and investigation scheme to prevent sham marriages and civil partnerships from gaining an immigration advantage. Increasingly, sham marriages are being used as a back-door route around immigration rules. The ability to do that has been extended by the Metock case in the European Court, which has enabled people from outside the EU married to someone within the EU to gain free movement rights. There is concern about sham marriages not only in the UK, but in other parts of the EU, and the UK is leading work across Europe.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady is right about sham marriages, which are an issue I tried to raise last summer. It is crazy that the law does not allow registry offices to provide information on all marriages being sought, where immigration might be an issue, directly to the Home Office. At the moment, Home Office officials have to go and look at the board on the wall in the office. Could we not change the law?

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[Mrs May]

To clarify, the Bill increases the marriage and civil partnership notice period from 15 to 28 days in England and Wales for all couples, and allows it to be extended to 70 days where there are reasonable grounds to suspect a sham. But we will be retaining the ability in emergency cases such as those set out by my hon. Friend to require the notice period to be shorter than is being provided for.

[Chris Bryant]

I am trying to help the Home Secretary. She referred earlier to clergymen. Will she confirm that she is not changing the law in relation to clergy at all, which actually will still be the weak point in the system?

[Mrs May]

I accept that we are changing the law in relation to the state obligations of civil registrars, which is part of the state apparatus in relation to this matter. There is not a requirement on clergy to report in this way. With his background, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will share with me a desire to give a clear message that we have considerable concerns where we see clergymen indulging in the practices that I referred to earlier. We have discussed new measures with the Church of England and the Church in Wales and will continue to involve them in our plans for implementation. We are removing bands on the common licence route for non-EEA nationals to ensure that couples within the scope of the referral scheme are correctly identified. I hope that that gives the hon. Gentleman some comfort.

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[Mrs May]

Perhaps hon. Members will have some patience and let me set out my points.

I will not to go into too much detail about the case of al-Jedda, but he was an Iraqi refugee who was granted British nationality in 2000. In 2004, he was detained by British forces in Iraq because of his suspected involvement in terrorism. In December 2007, the then Home Secretary made an order depriving him of his British citizenship.

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As far as I can see, there are no copies of the manuscript amendments on the Table. It seems bizarre, on the matter of whether people should be deprived of their citizenship—[Interruption.] The Minister for Immigration can keep quiet for a moment. The reason we need manuscript amendments is that the Government tabled their new clause only at the very last minute to try to shove other measures off the agenda. Can we ensure that the manuscript amendments are available to everyone so that we know what we are debating?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I understand that copies of the manuscript amendments are available in the Vote Office—

[Chris Bryant]

They should be on the Table.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I have not finished my sentence yet. It would be helpful if that could be checked, although I am assured that they are available, and if copies could be made available in the Chamber for Members who feel unable to get to the Vote Office because they wish to hear the debate.

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[Mr Raab]

I will just expand on this point. I have quoted the advice that I have received. If anyone thinks that the new clause has been tabled with the aim of flouting UK law or engaging in illegality, as opposed to doing something that might be incompatible with the wider, opaque obligations of the ECHR, they misunderstand the point. It is wrong to say that that is what the Home Office’s advice states, because I deliberately sought its advice.

Even if we face a longer-term claim to Strasbourg that is not based on injunctive relief, the new clause remains faithful to the convention. We must not forget that for a second. Paragraph 2 of article 8 on the right to family life provides a list of grounds for curtailing the right to family life, including law enforcement, crime prevention, public protection and protecting the rights of others, which is what the colleagues from both sides of the House who support the new clause care so deeply about.

[Chris Bryant]

I understood the hon. Gentleman to mean that he had sought the same legal advice as the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary said clearly that the Attorney-General had said that new clause 15 was incompatible with the European convention on human rights, but the hon. Gentleman says that he has seen the same advice and that the new clause is compatible with the convention—or have I got that wrong?

[Mr Raab]

Very briefly, that is not what I was saying. I think that the hon. Gentleman has added one and one and made three. I have received a memo from the Home Office team that sets out the position on rule 39 in relation to article 8 cases. Precisely because of the concerns that are shared across the House, I asked whether we were likely to see a deportation process gummed up by a rule 39 injunction.

[Chris Bryant]

So the Home Secretary is wrong.

[Mr Raab]

I will come to that, but I want to be clear about what the advice is. The advice that I received from officials was that Strasbourg would rarely, if ever, consider a rule 39 injunction in relation to an article 8 case because there is no irreversible harm.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that the simple method of clarification is to look at the list, which is on the amendment paper. I will not take up the time of the House by checking whether his name is on it, but he might wish to do so himself.

[Chris Bryant]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just to help the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), may I point out that he is not on the list? However, there are amendment papers all around the building, and to be honest, he could do his own homework.

[James Duddridge]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I suppose so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. We will not take up the time of the House in this important and short debate by discussing the composition of the amendment paper. It is in order and not a point of debate.

[Chris Bryant]

It is a great delight to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) although I would like to correct him on a few details. Although Palmerston thought that Don Pacifico was undoubtedly a British citizen, merely because of his birth in Gibraltar, that would not necessarily apply today in the same way because he was actually a Portuguese Jew who therefore had more than one nationality at the time. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s point applies reliably to the debate.

I entirely agree with everything the Home Secretary said about sham marriages. They are a real problem and in certain places in the country—most notably around London and the west midlands—there is a real issue to be tackled. I warmly commend Ministers who have taken the right actions in the Bill to deal with that. I am concerned, however, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said earlier, about the business of removing people’s citizenship, not least because the way the proposal has been drafted gives a phenomenal degree of Executive power to the Secretary of State. I worry about that, as do several other Members, including the hon. Members for North East Somerset and for Brent Central (Sarah Teather).

Two years ago I remember going to the deportation centre at Heathrow and seeing a young man whose state we do not know. He refuses to say where he is from because he thinks he will be deported to that place. He had then been in that deportation centre for four years because for him, that half life in a sort of prison was better than the danger of being deported back somewhere. Some think the best way of dealing with the problem of deporting foreign criminals involves measures to change the rules on article 8. The biggest problem lies not with that, however, but with an awful lot of people who get to this country and instantly abandon their paperwork, either because that is what they intended to do from the beginning, or because they are from countries to which we simply cannot deport people. Again, I commend those Ministers who have worked—as Labour Ministers did in the previous Government—to try to ensure that people will not be subject to torture if they are returned to their country of origin, and that they will have a fair trial and so on There are, however, many countries around the world where such things still do not apply, and those cases make up the largest number of people, let alone those whose paperwork has been lost by the Home Office—also a substantial number. Of course I want foreign criminals to be deported and sent back to their country of origin, but I also want their human rights to be protected. I still believe in the right to a fair trial and am opposed to torture. I believe in all the things we have signed up to as a country. Let us not pretend that the Bill will sort out the bigger problem.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my hon. Friend accept that one problem is the number of countries that have not signed the convention on torture? We should not deport anyone to a regime where no convention on torture is applicable, and we should not rely on dubious one-off agreements, which is what we have been doing.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree, and anyway, if we sought to deport anyone to such a regime, we would face the courts, which is a very expensive business in this country, and we would be certain of failure. It would be a nugatory exercise.

I worry about creating more stateless people, which is effectively the intention of the Home Secretary’s proposal. I can see an argument for making someone stateless when they are abroad—we can say that a person who has done something appalling, perhaps in another country, is longer welcome in this country and remove their citizenship—but I have a much greater problem with making someone stateless when they are in this country. What would we do? We make them stateless and deprive them of citizenship, but then what? Do we banish them? Do we pronounce exile? Does the Speaker demand that they leave the country? Do we march them to the airport if they refuse to go themselves? In any case, where will they go? What country will take them? That is my problem with the proposals being advanced. There is a mediaeval element in the Bill and it will not help us one jot.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have been thinking about the question of where we might send people. Michael Howard, a previous Home Secretary, tried to send people to other parts of the world and President Obama sent Uighurs from Guantanamo to Bermuda. Perhaps we could consider sending people to some of the British overseas territories. St Helena comes to mind.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend is angling for a visit to St Helena.

My point to the Home Secretary is this: hon. Members know that there is an issue to be addressed and a legitimate question to ask, but this is not the way to advance legislation. The Government are introducing a significant change to the law on British citizenship at this late stage—on Report—and tabled the measure the day before the debate. If anybody wants to amend it, they must table manuscript amendments. If we are going down this route, it is important at least to have the safeguards the Opposition have tabled, but I wish we were doing this in a different way.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

On sending people away, if we take someone’s citizenship away and they are taken to the airport, where do we send them? They need travel documents. If they do not have them, no country will take them. The Government’s measures are completely impractical.

[Chris Bryant]

That is my problem. Sometimes legislation seems like a good idea but ends up being completely and utterly impracticable and making little difference. I suspect that that is the problem we will face with the Bill.

I know the Government are not seeking to do this, but my memory of countries that regularly took people’s citizenship off them in the 20th century is not a good one. It is a list of fascist countries. That is why I get very nervous about such moves. I am not saying that the Home Secretary is engaging in that, but when we give an arbitrary power and significant discretion to a Home Secretary to exercise it, there is a danger.

[Mr Ward]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I am keen to finish because I know that many hon. Members wish to speak, but I will give way if the hon. Gentleman promises to be swift.

[Mr Ward]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is one of the worst examples of the tail wagging dog we have ever seen? We all agree that the tail is unpleasant, but that does not mean we need to do terrible things to the rest of the animal.

[Chris Bryant]

I fear that that often happens in passing legislation. I have never known so many manuscript amendments as there have been this year. In the previous 13 years maybe two were accepted and we have had six or seven this year. I just do not think it is a good way of doing business.

The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) is not in his place, which is a shame. I respect a lot of the issues he raised. There is an imbalance in the way the law relating to article 8 is constructed. Ultimately, the absolute core and rock on which our personal freedoms in this country are based is the rule of law. Because of habeas corpus nobody can be arbitrarily arrested. The law will determine, not party politics or a vote in the House of Commons. To those who regularly trot out the argument that the House of Commons must always have its way, I say, yes, but there are also the courts.

The rule of law, through the courts, argument and precedent developed over time, is a vital part of ensuring our ongoing freedom. That is not just about UK national law, but international law. I have a profound respect for the European convention on human rights. I thought the Home Secretary referred earlier to the Attorney-General having given the advice that the amendment was incompatible. I do not mind which lawyer it was and I am not urging her to publish it or anything like that— I take her at her word. If she believes that it is incompatible with the European convention on human rights, I cannot vote for the amendment and do not want to see it going forward from this House as part of the Bill. Why on earth would we want to do something that the Attorney-General, or whoever was masking for him to provide that advice, had said is incompatible? Every other lawyer I have spoken to, or that we on this side of the House have spoken to, has given exactly the same advice.

The hon. Member for Esher and Walton suggested that there are balancing issues and questions on whether there would be section 39 complaints or not. That is not my issue. All we have to do is look at the amendment, compare it with the European convention on human rights and see that the one does not match the other. That may be an inconvenient fact, but it would be illegal under our present treaty obligations. I do not want this country to renege on the European convention on human rights. We were right to bring it forward. David Maxwell Fyfe, who later became a Conservative Home Secretary—a nasty Home Secretary, I think—effectively drafted it and we should abide by it. We would be utter fools and disloyal to our treaty obligations if we were to support the amendment from the hon. Member for Esher and Walton.

[Mr Dodds]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you give guidance to the House on whether there is any prospect of the next group of amendments, including those on European immigration and access to services, being discussed, debated and voted on today?