Refugee Communities: Covid-19

Debate between David Simmonds and Hannah Bardell

Thursday 12th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) for his contribution, which I think reflected a high degree of consensus on many of these issues across the Chamber, and was certainly seeking consensus on those issues where we all very much agree. I would like to spend my time focusing in particular on the impact that covid has had on three groups of vulnerable people for whom we have a particular responsibility. Those are people who have a no recourse to public funds status attached to their presence in the United Kingdom, refugee children and the people who are waiting for the recommencement—or perhaps hoping in the future for the commencement—of the new global resettlement schemes that we know are in progress at the moment.

Starting with those with no recourse to public funds, this has been the subject of a good deal of debate in Westminster recently. While there is a high degree of recognition that the NRPF status is an answer to retaining public confidence that people are not coming to the United Kingdom simply to access benefits and welfare support, in a time when there is a national crisis, as there is at the moment, it presents some particular challenges. When we begin to look beneath the surface of how the policy is operating in practice, we see the suggestion that it may be time for a reconsideration of the way we apply that policy.

We heard from the Minister during a Westminster Hall debate on this topic that, on average, 90% of requests to remove NRPF status are agreed by the Home Office and that they are agreed very quickly—generally, within a period of 28 days. I recognise that the NRPF status is complicated. For example, many people come to the UK on working visas with NRPF as a part of that. People who come as investors can be very wealthy individuals who are unlikely to face destitution, but the fact is that in the event that people face destitution, local authorities have a duty to step in and to provide financial support. Clearly, we are kidding ourselves in this place if we think that NRPF status means that there is no cost to the British taxpayer in providing that support, and we need to consider whether it is in the interests of the welfare of families who may be facing destitution as a result of that status to allow time for a reconsideration in line with what the day-to-day real practice of the Home Office has been in supporting this particular group.

Moving on to the question of refugee children, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes is absolutely spot-on in identifying that the UK has a very honourable and long-standing record when it comes to supporting refugee children. Since 2015, the numbers coming into the care of local authorities in England has, on average, doubled. There has been a very significant rise. A lot of the political debate has focused on those referred to in the Dubs amendment, but of course the practical experience of local authorities that have been accommodating young people is that that status, clearly defined as it appears to be in the Westminster political debate, is often illusory. Young people are brought to the United Kingdom on the basis that they have a family connection here, but if that individual is not in a position to take parental responsibility under the terms of the Children Act 1989, we are moving that child from the care system of one country into the care system of the United Kingdom, so it is not in practice a process that is largely about family reunion. That is less than one in 10 of the children who are affected.

[Hannah Bardell]

The point the hon. Gentleman makes about taking children from one care system to another seems slightly inappropriate—more than slightly inappropriate—given that we are talking about countries, by and large, that are war-torn and do not even have the basic structures of health and social care, never mind a childcare system. I think it is important that we focus on the reality of the many families who are displaced and what they are leaving, and the fact that they are not necessarily coming to the UK or other western countries out of choice, but out of desperation.