Illegal Migration Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that comment. As an important aside that relates to other issues he has raised, nothing in the Bill disapplies the Children Act, which will continue to apply in all respects with regard to the children we deal with in this situation. In answer to his particular point, we are taking this power so that in the very small number of judicious cases in which we set out to remove a child, we can take them from the care of the local authority into the responsibility of the Home Office for the short period before they are removed from the country. I have given two examples of situations in which we would use that power, and I will happily give them again. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is concerned about this point.

The first situation is where we are seeking to return a young person to their relatives in another country. I think it is incredibly important that we keep the ability to do so, because that does happen occasionally. It is obviously the right thing to do to return somebody to their mother, their father, their uncle or the support network that they have in another country.

The other situation is where we are removing somebody who has arrived as an unaccompanied minor to another safe country, where we are confident that they will be met on arrival by social services and provided with all the support that one would expect. That happens all the time here with unaccompanied minors; I think the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned, drawing on his experience as a local Member of Parliament around Heathrow, that it happens regularly. It is important that we continue to have that option, because we should not be bringing people into local authority care for long periods in the UK when we can safely return them home, either to their relatives or to their home country, where they can be safeguarded appropriately.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Minister respond to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire)? Where is the impact assessment for the Bill?

[Robert Jenrick]

The impact assessment will be published in due course.

Let me continue with the points I was making. I return to a question that has been raised on several occasions about our policy on the detention of minors. Let me say, speaking as a parent, that of course we take this incredibly seriously. We do not want to detain children. We have to apply the highest moral standards when we take this decision.

The circumstance in which we would use that power is where there is an age assessment dispute about an unaccompanied minor. It is easy to dismiss that, but it happens all the time. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) was correct to raise his experience as a local authority leader. There are a very large number of such disputes: between 2016 and December of last year, there were 7,900 asylum cases in which age was disputed and subsequently resolved. In almost half of those cases —49%—the people in question were found to be adults.

Where there is a live age assessment dispute, it would be wrong for the Government to place those people in the same accommodation as minors who are clearly children, creating safeguarding risks for them. I am not willing to do that. I want to ensure that those children are properly protected. When I visited our facilities at Western Jet Foil recently, I asked a member of staff who was the oldest person they had encountered who had posed as a minor. They said that that person was 41 years of age! Does anyone in this House seriously want to see a 41-year-old man placed with their children? I do not want to see it, and that is the circumstance in which we are going to take and use these very judicious powers.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) raised a number of important points in respect of his amendment on mandatory scientific age assessments. I can say to him that not only are those valid points, but the Government are considering carefully how we should proceed in this regard. The UK is one of the very few European countries that do not currently employ scientific methods of age assessment. In January, the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee published a report on the issue. The Home Secretary and I are giving careful consideration to its recommendations, and I hope to be in a position to say more on Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

With reference to amendment 189 and the contribution of Afghans, Sabir Zazai tells a story of when he was given a letter from the Home Office saying, “You are a person liable to be detained and removed.” More recently, at a celebration to mark his being awarded an OBE, he said he had received a different letter telling him he was being awarded this great honour of the British state. He said he would put those two letters on the wall next to one another, because they show that, regardless of the circumstances by which someone came to these islands, there ought to be nothing they cannot achieve.

There ought to be nothing—but this Bill pulls up the drawbridge. It makes this country smaller, it makes this country meaner and it makes this country crueller—for every Sabir Zazai, for every Abdul Bostani, for every person that the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) is outraged about. People can come here and make a contribution. They could live a dull, boring, ordinary life, they could be an OBE, they could be the First Minister of a country, but they have a contribution to make and they deserve to get to make that contribution without the UK Government pulling up the drawbridge and saying that they are unwelcome.

[Debbie Abrahams]

On amendment 189, which deals with Afghan citizens, it is striking that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs said this afternoon that there are no safe routes for Afghans to come to this country. Those Afghans have protected many of us as citizens and protected our armed forces, yet there are no safe routes for them to come here. Does the hon. Lady not think that is an absolute disgrace, given the promises made to them in 2021?