Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Eighth sitting)

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I will speak to the two new clauses that have been moved. I appreciate the intentions behind them, and the concerns and genuine points that have been raised. That is why, from the outset, there have been arrangements in place to ensure that the EU settlement scheme is accessible to all, including looked-after children and care leavers. Prior to the full launch of the scheme in March 2019, agreements were reached and plans put in place with local authorities to ensure that relevant children and care leavers receive the support they need in securing their UK immigration status under the scheme.

Local authorities in Great Britain, and health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland, are responsible for making an application under the EU settlement scheme on behalf of an eligible looked-after child for whom they have parental responsibility by way of a court order. Their responsibilities to signpost the scheme and support applications in other cases have also been agreed. They concern children for whom there is no court order but where the local authority has a clear interest in supporting the best interests of the child—for example, children accommodated by the local authority, children in need and care leavers.

The Home Office has implemented a range of support services to ensure that local authorities and health and social care trusts can access help and advice when they need to. We have engaged extensively with relevant stakeholders, such as the Department for Education, the Local Government Association, the Ministry of Justice, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and equivalents in the devolved Administrations, to understand and address the needs of looked-after children and care leavers, and to ensure they are all supported. Guidance has also been issued to all local authorities on their role and responsibilities for making or supporting applications under the EU settlement scheme for looked-after children and care leavers. The Home Office is holding regular teleconferences specifically for local authority staff who are responsible for making relevant applications, in order to support them and provide a direct point of contact for them within the Home Office.

A new burdens assessment has been conducted, and funding has been issued to local authorities that have responsibilities for carrying out specific duties in relation to looked-after children and care leavers, to ensure they are adequately funded to do such work. Along with the Minister for Children and Families in the Department for Education, I have written to lead council members to underline the importance of the work that their local authorities are undertaking to ensure that eligible looked-after children and care leavers make applications to the EU settlement scheme, and to highlight the support available. Home Office caseworkers are directly working with local authority staff who are responsible for making applications, as well as with organisations that specialise in working with children, such as the Children’s Society and Coram.

Additionally, the Home Office has provided £9 million of grant funding to 57 voluntary organisations across the UK in order to support vulnerable citizens in applying to the EU settlement scheme. They include several organisations specialising in support for vulnerable children and young people. We have now committed a further £8 million for such work, allowing charities and local authorities to bid for grant funding to provide support to vulnerable people and help ensure that no one is left behind. To reassure the Committee, we are continuing the existing arrangements until new arrangements and a new bidding process are completed.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am listening carefully to all the steps that the Home Office is taking, but is the Minister now in a position to publish the information about the number of children affected by needing to apply for the EU settlement scheme? I understand that his Department has already undertaken that work.

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[Kevin Foster]

Again—here we go—this would mean that someone who had a status could not be distinguished from someone who did not have a status, and would then have to make an application. We have been clear that we cannot allow people to have a status without going through the process, but that we have some generous provisions in place. Similarly, physical documents that are decades old, that date from when someone is a child, are unlikely to be particularly convincing proof in many instances. That is why we need to move towards a digital system that is a permanent record, and if the children are being identified—as Opposition Members are suggesting—the next stage is to make that application, make it simple, and get their status secured. That means the children are then secure for the rest of their life, which is a better outcome.

Fundamentally, changing a system that is working well overall would have the exact opposite effect to that which the new clauses appear intended to achieve, leading to confusion and uncertainty. We have also made it clear that where a person eligible for status under the scheme has reasonable grounds for missing the deadline—for example, if their council did not apply to the EU settlement scheme on their behalf—they will be given a further opportunity to apply. We will ensure that individuals who have missed the deadline through no fault of their own can still obtain lawful status in the UK, which I suggest is a far better response to the concerns expressed by Opposition Members than the new clauses they are proposing. That is why the Government will not accept them.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am disappointed by the Minister’s response to new clause 41. It is also disappointing that the Minister is not able to update the Committee with some information, recognising that that information about numbers may be changing over time. This is a matter that will not go away, and rather than test the opinion of the Committee today, I may wish to return to it on Report. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 45

Immigration: no recourse to public funds

“Section 3(1)(c)(i) and (ii) of the Immigration Act 1971 cannot be applied to persons who have lost rights because of section (1) and Schedule 1 of this Act, until such time as may be specified in a resolution passed by each House of Parliament.”—(Stuart C. McDonald.)

This new clause seeks to delay application of No Recourse to Public Funds rules during the current pandemic and until such time as Parliament decides.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Dame Diana Johnson]

It is a pleasure to serve under you this afternoon, Mr Stringer. I wish to speak to new clause 62, on the no recourse to public funds policy and to support new clause 59, tabled by my hon. Friends.

New clause 62 would exempt EU, EEA and Swiss nationals with dependants under the age of 18 from being subject to any NRPF condition that would otherwise be placed on them under the immigration rules. Many believe that these protections should apply to all families, regardless of their nationality, but for the purposes of the Government’s tightly drawn Bill, the new clause is limited in the way I have described.

Many find it astonishing that this condition is applied to children at all. Having NRPF means that the life chances of thousands of children are dictated by their parents’ inability to access support from the social security system because of their immigration status, even though the children themselves might be British.

I know that the Minister will use his concluding remarks to say that limiting access to public funds for these children and families is in the public interest and that they should be paying in to the system before they benefit from it. He will know that many of the families affected are those of key workers, who are at the frontline at this very moment in the fight against coronavirus. We are talking about NHS hospital cleaners, and about people who work in food preparation or social care, but they are being denied the same access to the safety net that they are working within. These families are paying income tax, council tax, immigration application fees and the health surcharge. It is calculated that if a family started their 10-year settlement journey in 2012, assuming they were not successful in getting fee waivers, and fees did not increase again, a single mum with two children would be expected to pay more than £23,000 for the family to settle in 10 years. A family of five—a couple with three children—would be expected to pay more than £39,000 to settle in the UK.

The NRPF does the opposite of making work pay, because families may end up forced into destitution if parents try to work but cannot access benefits. Working parents, single mums, mothers fleeing domestic violence, parents who have children born in the UK and children with British citizenship currently cannot access benefits to which they should be entitled. For children and families, that includes not being able to access benefits to support children’s upbringing and families’ wellbeing, to ensure that children have the same life chances as their peers.

As we have already heard, in May 2020, the Unity Project and Project 17 supported an eight-year-old British boy in taking the Government to court over the policy. The court ruled that the NRPF policy breached article 3 of the European convention on human rights, which prohibits inhumane and degrading treatment.

Applicants can apply to have their NRPF condition removed if they are likely to become destitute, but the process is time-consuming and requires specialist advice, which is difficult to obtain, especially during the current pandemic. NRPF families may be able to access support under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which is often the only safety net available. That is payable, as we all know, through local authorities, but the pressure of austerity and cuts to local council budgets have left councils largely unable to offer much support.

Section 17 is often referred to by the Government as the basic safety net for migrant families with NRPF, but there is little support—sometimes as little as £3 per child per day—which makes it nearly impossible to meet the basic needs of a child, let alone support them to have a healthy, happy childhood. We have to acknowledge that that, again, puts an unnecessary strain on stretched local authority budgets.

Most, if not all, services that support migrant families with NRPF state that having no recourse to public funds increases the risk of families becoming trapped in a cycle of extreme poverty, vulnerability and abuse. Many children in NRPF families go without things that other children get to enjoy and that are important for their development, including, for example, days out as a family or school trips. One example that the Children’s Society gave me was of Hamid, who said that if his son’s classmates were going on a school trip, he would not take his son to school that day, because he did not want him to see his friends going while he stayed behind because they just could not afford it.

Other Government Departments are beginning to recognise the consequences of NRPF. The Department for Education has temporarily allowed children with NRPF to access free school meals, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has instructed local authorities to house homeless people with NRPF. In the longer term, the solution lies with the Home Office, so I ask the Minister to give an assurance to the Committee that safeguards will be put in place to ensure that more families will not be forced into destitution as a result of a condition placed on their leave to remain.

The Government have made it clear that they want to wrap their arms around everyone during this time of crisis. Vulnerable children are at the heart of the Government’s agenda, so the new clause will ensure that that can happen. I commend it to the Committee.

[Kevin Foster]

After the end of the transition period, EEA citizens coming to the UK will be subject to the same requirements as non-EEA citizens and the same conditions restricting access to public funds under our new global immigration system. The new clauses would maintain a system in which EEA citizens, including those arriving in future, continued to enjoy preferential treatment over non-EEA citizens in relation to their access to benefits. That is not the Government’s intention, nor would it be fair, and it is not something that the British people would support, given the mandate that they have given to the Government.

New clause 45 would delay the introduction of the no recourse to public funds condition to EEA citizens until Parliament had decided on the matter in the light of the current pandemic. However, as has been touched on by some Opposition Members, to their credit, the Government have already made provision to support people through the pandemic, including those subject to no recourse to public funds, and are keeping the situation under review.

It should also be noted that the no recourse to public funds condition does not bar access to all benefits, as pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby. People covered by it may still, for example, access contribution-based benefits and statutory sick pay. Exceptions are also made for vulnerable migrants, such as refugees and those granted humanitarian protection. Those granted leave on the basis of their family life under article 8 of the European convention on human rights can apply to have the conditions lifted if they would otherwise be destitute.

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[Holly Lynch]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, the SNP spokesperson, who used his experience to make a very convincing contribution.

Labour will support new clause 46, which was tabled by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee with the support of a number of its members, as well as the Chairs of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

As we have heard, as a member of the EU, the UK has participated in the Dublin III regulation, which has allowed people seeking asylum in Europe to be transferred to the UK on the basis of family unity and to have their asylum claims considered in the UK. The Dublin III mechanism generally affects a small number of children, but it has a transformative effect on their lives. It has become an increasingly important family reunion route, with more than 1,600 people having been reunited through it since the start of 2018.

However, this route will end once the transition period comes to an end on 31 December 2020. While the Government have committed to seeking an arrangement through the UK-EU negotiations that would maintain a family reunion element of the Dublin system for separated children, we would very much like assurances that the Government are firmly committed to this.

We are concerned that, unlike Dublin III, the current proposals would not be mandatory and would take us back to the days when child refugees were reunited with family only at the discretion of the national Government. That would require the transferred person to make an asylum claim and only secure family unity pending a decision on that claim. Labour, along with the Families Together coalition, supports new clause 46. We want to see a system that retains the family reunion route under the Dublin III regulation for all families.

This is Refugee Week, and family reunion has been a long-standing feature of the UK’s immigration system. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that

“there is a direct link between family reunification, mental health and successful integration.”

By diminishing children’s chances of reaching their relatives legally, restrictive rules sadly only drive people to take more and more perilous alternatives, putting lives at risk and empowering people smugglers.

Labour joins Safe Passage, Amnesty International, the British Red Cross, Oxfam, the Refugee Council, the UNHCR and so many others who make up the Families Together coalition to urge the Government to prioritise family reunion, so that children, spouses and vulnerable adults can reunite with their family and close relatives, by maintaining safe and legal routes for people to come to the UK.

At a time when we are all feeling the effects of separation from our families due to the pandemic, the Government must recognise the need to protect all child refugees adequately and provide a legal and safe means for the reunification of families.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

In speaking to new clause 46, I want to be clear that this is not about placing additional burdens on the Home Office or Government; it is about asking the Government not to water down their obligations to child refugees, but instead to carry on doing what they already do.

As we have heard, new clause 46 is intended to ensure that the safe and legal routes to the UK for refugees with relatives here and for unaccompanied children without family are protected in domestic legislation. I gently say to the Minister that he may well talk about the Dubs scheme—I know that all the places on the Dubs scheme have been filled—but I do not think that that discharges us of our moral duty to help children on the continent.

Indeed, Lord Dubs says that some of the conditions that he has seen in camps in Europe are worse than those in the region, because of the utter lack of hope of those living in those camps. We can give them hope by adopting the new clause and showing that we are not turning our back on child refugees just a few hundred miles away. In all his campaigning on these issues, Lord Dubs has always maintained that he believes that public opinion is behind him when it comes to child refugees. It is heartening to know that recent Ipsos MORI polling suggests Lord Dubs is entirely right in his assessment of British feeling on this. Some 79% of people polled said that children should be able to reunite with parents, and over half said children should be able to reunite with siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. The British public supports refugee family reunion and I hope the Minister will do the same.