Immigration Bill

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The detained fast-track scheme seems to be a process largely of detaining people for administrative ease, often for extended periods, despite its name. It is as if we file people until we want to move them somewhere else and they end up being treated like blocks of paper rather than individual human beings.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that much of the detention is essentially punitive and without benefit of due process? We should always remember that these people have committed no crime.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. Of course, it is not effective in doing what we claim to be trying to deliver. The people detained over a long period of time are those whom we are least likely to be able to remove. Detention Action monitored long-term detainees and found that only a third were ultimately removed or deported. The longer somebody is in detention, the less likely they are to be removed. Extreme stress is caused to the individual, extreme expense is caused to the UK and no benefit is gained for the wider common good.

Amendment 56 seeks to limit the time of detention to 28 days, forcing the Home Office to do what most other countries in Europe have managed to do and find some other way of enforcing removal without putting people into detention. Indeed, 82% of returned asylum seekers in Sweden left voluntarily. When I was a children’s Minister I had a great deal of discussion with the Home Office about ending child detention and we eventually managed to reach an agreement. I was pleased to hear the Home Secretary say in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that we would put some of those provisions on the face of the Bill. I shall await the detail with interest and hope that everything we agreed in 2010 will be included and that it will not just be an agreement in headline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

But is it the fault of their child? That is the point. The law allows us to weigh these tests up and it does not always say that if someone has a child there is not a case for deporting them, but it allows us to look at individual cases. The law must look at individual cases and not set hard and fast lines.

[Ms Abbott]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it has long been a principle of British law that we cannot hold children responsible for the wrongdoing of their parents? I do not know how many Members would want to live in a society where some children have more value than others.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. The law must have the flexibility to look at individual cases. If we draw bright lines in the sand, it becomes difficult for judges to take into account individual circumstances.

Automatic deportation goes slightly wider than the issue of children. Further to the discussion on new clause 15, I want to raise a constituent case. A young man came here as an extremely young child and was given refugee status. His parents then had some difficulties and he was taken into care. His mother had mental health difficulties. The local authority negligently placed him into the foster care of a couple who were drug dealers and continued to engage in significant criminal activity during the course of which the young child was profoundly damaged, as one might well expect. The local authority was found criminally negligent in this case.

By the time the child turned 18 he was convicted of a serious crime. He went to prison. He would have been in prison for long enough to quality for automatic deportation, but he had been in the UK since he was a very young child. He had been given refugee status. There was no family for him to go back to. By all decent recognition of what had happened to him, the state had been negligent in how it treated him. I cannot see any way in which that young man would have protection under new clause 15 as it is drafted.

I come back to the point about what is in the public interest. I do not want to live in a society where judges cannot look at the detail of cases such as that of my constituent. We have had some debate about whether new clause 15 is in accordance with the European convention on human rights. I have had advice from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association that the Home Secretary was unlikely to be able to sign up to saying that the provision was compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, which would make it difficult for it to go into the House of Lords. There was a mischievous moment when I wondered whether, despite my abhorrence for the new clause, I should support it in order to destroy the Bill completely, given that I do not seem to be able find enough people to vote against the Bill to wreck it, which is what I would really truly like to do, as there is little in it that I like.

We have not had much opportunity to discuss amendment 60. It relates to limits on the use of force by immigration officers and tries to bring it back to the status quo. This seems to be another example of giving a blank cheque, and to an organisation that has hardly covered itself in glory where use of force is concerned. We have had issues with use of force against pregnant women—something on which Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons was extremely critical of the Home Office. We have had the death of Jimmy Mubenga. Those are just two recent examples. It seems to me that a failing organisation that is poorly managed should never be given increased power to use force, especially as many of the functions of immigration officers do not properly involve the use of force at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

We have had a considerable and lively discussion today. I thank all who have contributed to the Bill during its various stages so far, particularly those who steered it through the Committee stage: the Minister for Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), and the Minister for Crime Prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). Indeed, I am grateful for the hard work that was done by all members of the Committee.

Let me remind the House why the Bill is so necessary. It will bring clarity, fairness and integrity to the immigration system, and will address long-standing problems that have prevented the effective operation of immigration controls. It will do that by ensuring that those who are refused permission to stay are required to leave the country, and know that they must do so; by streamlining the appeals system to reduce the scope for playing the system; by ensuring that foreign criminals can be deported first and appeal afterwards, unless there is a real risk of serious irreversible harm; and by ensuring that courts must have regard to the will of Parliament when considering article 8 in immigration cases.

The Bill will make it more difficult for illegal migrants to live in the United Kingdom by denying access to the tools of everyday life. That will include giving landlords a duty to check the immigration status of tenants and imposing penalties on rogue landlords, and denying illegal migrants access to bank accounts and driving licences. We will also strengthen the enforcement of penalties for employers of illegal workers. The Bill reinforces controls to counter sham marriages and sham civil partnerships, conferring new powers and duties, and it will ensure that temporary legal migrants contribute to our national health service.

[Ms Abbott]

I accept the Home Secretary’s wish to clean up the system and discourage people from “playing” it—I deal with thousands of immigration cases every month—but has she given no thought to the effect that her measures that are designed to crack down on illegal immigrants could have on people who are British nationals, but appear as if they might be immigrants?

[Mrs May]

We have given a great deal of thought to the way in which our measures will operate. The changes that we propose will strengthen our ability to deal with those who are here illegally. We are, for example, strengthening our ability to enforce penalties for those who employ illegal workers. The system enabling employers to determine whether the workers whom they employ are here legally or not is in place, is well known and is running properly, and the same will apply in the other areas that we are discussing.

The Bill will also help to discharge the Government’s commitment to introduce exit checks on people leaving the UK in order to tackle overstaying and prevent people from fleeing British justice.

Let me now go into a little more detail, although not too much, because I know that others wish to speak. The Bill substantially reforms the removals system, and ensures that illegal migrants who have no right to be in the UK can be returned to their own countries more quickly. We inherited a complex system involving multiple stages before an individual can be removed, allowing numerous challenges to be issued during the process. The Bill will ensure that we adopt a system whereby only one decision is made. Individuals will be informed of that decision, and if the decision is that they can no longer stay in the UK, immigration enforcement officials will be allowed to remove them if they do not leave of their own accord. The Bill also reforms the system whereby illegal migrants held in detention centres are allowed to apply for bail, and it gives immigration officers stronger powers so that they can establish the identity of illegal immigrants by checking fingerprints and searching for passports.

The current appeals system is also very complex. There are 17 different immigration decisions that attract rights of appeal, but the Bill will cut that number to four, which I think will prevent abuse of the appeal process. It will also ensure that appeals address only fundamental rights. It will make it easier to deport foreign criminals by requiring individuals to appeal from abroad after deportation, unless they face the prospect of serious harm.