Douglas Ross
Main Page: Douglas Ross (Conservative - Moray)Department Debates - View all Douglas Ross's debates with the Home Office
Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)
Douglas Ross Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
I will scrap most of my speech in front of me, but I thank you for calling me, Ms McDonagh; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) on securing this debate. It is important that we discuss this subject. I am extremely grateful, as a member of the Home Affairs Committee, to have had the privilege of meeting campaigners and some of the affected people earlier today. That allowed the Committee members to hear some of the real hardships faced by a number of people because the immigration rules, which are there for a reason, are perhaps not being implemented in as useful and credible a way as possible.
We heard this morning that no fewer than 1,000 highly skilled immigrants face expulsion from this country under this paragraph. That is not right. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central mentioned the two individuals who owed HMRC £1.20 and £1.60; we heard that they were brothers and that that was their only offence against HMRC, yet the Home Office is using this rule potentially to remove them from this country. It seems that either a simple mistake or no mistake at all leads to law-abiding immigrants’ applications being refused out of hand. That means that no common sense is being used.
I was going to read from the letter to the Home Affairs Committee from the Home Secretary, but the hon. Lady did that. However, I urge the Minister to respond to this point: the Home Secretary said in the letter that he or the Immigration Minister would report back to the Home Affairs Committee by the end of May. Today is 13 June. I checked with the Clerk before this debate; despite chasing up the Home Office’s parliamentary officials this afternoon, we as a Committee still have no knowledge of the Home Secretary or the Immigration Minister’s response. We really need that as quickly as possible.
I asked our guests at the Committee this morning, because I did not want to put words into their mouths, whether it is the policy that is wrong or the implementation. I believe that they agreed that the policy is right—we are right to have these anti-terror policies—but the way it is implemented is wrong. I hope that the Immigration Minister will go from this debate and give case workers more clarification on how to use this policy the way it is intended, not to inflict suffering on people who should not be affected by it.