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

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 56 has cross-party support in this Committee and in the House of Commons, where it was debated some time ago. Its purpose is to fast-track children in care and care leavers through the EU settlement scheme and grant them settled status. I am grateful to the Children’s Society and other NGOs for their help in preparing for this debate. It is my contention that very little decisive action has been taken to ensure that none of these children becomes undocumented as the scheme draws to a close in June next year. By the Government’s own estimates, 5,000 looked-after children and 4,000 care leavers need to regularise their immigration status because the UK is leaving the EU. The children in this group face three distinct problems: their identification, the problems they may have in applying, and whether they have settled or pre-settled status. I will deal with each of these in turn.

An analysis by the Children’s Society found that, in January this year, 153 out of 211 local authorities across the UK had identified just 3,612 EU, EEA or Swiss looked-after children and care leavers. Even with a margin of error factored into these statistics, that is well off the mark of the estimated total of 9,000. The Government have stated that it is the duty of local authorities to gather information and apply to the scheme on behalf of children in care and to assist care leavers in applying. I am well aware of the enormous pressure on local authorities, particularly on social workers, and I shall argue later that this amendment, if accepted, will actually lessen the burden on social workers rather than increase them.

Evidence given through research by Coram shows mixed practice among local authorities, with fears that some are not totally aware of their duties as set out in the guidance and are making no attempt to identify children in their care who need to regularise their status. Even before we come to the question of rates of applications for status received, there is the issue of oversight. What more are the Government going to do to ensure that children are being identified as needing to regularise their status before the EU settlement scheme draws to a close in 10 months’ time?

Turning to the problems of applying, of the 3,612 children in care and care leavers identified by local authorities in the Children’s Society’s analysis, only 11% have received either pre-settled or settled status. Evidence from the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit shows that this group is having difficulties acquiring nationality documents and evidencing their length of residence in the UK in order to apply for settled status. Social workers, who are hard pressed enough, are often having to spend their time chasing various European embassies to acquire the appropriate paperwork. Everyone should agree that this is not the best use of their time, particularly in the present circumstances.

If the amendment is accepted, social workers could apply straight to the Home Office, without having to pursue the case through various European embassies. That would speed up the process and lessen the total burden on social workers. The children I am talking about have led complex lives. They often require expert legal and immigration advice to understand their options, including their eligibility for British citizenship. The Government should be streamlining this process for children in their care, not making it more difficult. Would the Minister consider lowering the evidential burden to ensure that these children receive settled status?

The third hurdle faced by some of these children is that, if they receive pre-settled, rather than settled, status, they will be in a vulnerable position. Children in care should not be given a temporary immigration status that expires. In five years’ time, when a young person with pre-settled status needs to reapply for settled status, it may well be that their social worker has changed, that they are no longer in care, or that grant-funded projects to support application have ended. The child surely has a right to apply for status under the EU settlement scheme either independently or in line with their parents’ status. For obvious reasons, it may be difficult for children in care to claim status linked to their parents’ situation. This right should be extended for children in care, so that they can apply in line with their corporate parents—the local authority—and receive permanent immigration status. What safe- guards are the Government putting in place to ensure that children in care and care leavers do not face a cliff edge when their pre-settled status expires and they reapply for settled status?

I am aware that the Home Office has sought to alleviate fears by stating that these children will be able to apply past the EUSS deadline of June 2021. What this means in reality is that children not identified and assisted through the EU settlement scheme would still be undocumented and in a difficult position. As is true of all undocumented children in the UK, this group will run into issues in adulthood when trying to rent a property, applying for a university grant or they are required to pay for NHS treatment while their immigration status is being regularised. Care leavers will still have to deal with a mountain of difficulties by themselves in order to secure the status they are owed. It can never, ever be in a child’s best interests to be undocumented. The Government have been warned that failure to act will result in this for children in the care of authorities across the UK.

To conclude, it is important to see that the amendment would place a duty on local authorities to identify children in their care who need to regularise their status. Within the guidelines issued to local authorities and Home Office workers, it would lower the evidential burden needed for children to apply and propose a fast track through the EU settlement scheme. It would end the concept of pre-settled status and ensure that all children had settled status only. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 56 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. As he just explained, the proposed new clause would ensure that the children of EEA citizens and Swiss nationals who are already in care, along with those entitled to care, are able to stay in the United Kingdom under the EU settlement scheme. Where otherwise would these children go? Therefore, in guaranteeing their protection, this amendment is both logical and necessary. I am sure that the Minister will agree.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB) [V]]

Like the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, my name is on this amendment and, like him, I can be very brief in speaking to it, because the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, gave a masterly explanation of it.

We are dealing here with a small problem. The amendment would ensure that children in care do not fall into a crack, with their status undetermined and undocumented, now or in the future. The numbers involved are not huge; as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, explained, they are probably in the thousands. Nobody would accuse the Government of deliberately creating this crack into which these young people might fall. It is accidental that this has emerged. I would not want to suggest that the Government have been remiss in letting it arise, provided, of course, that they feel able to do the decent thing and accept the overwhelming case that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, made and either accept his amendment or produce a similar one that does the trick. It is the decent thing to do and I am convinced that the Government will want to do that to prevent the children falling into the crack that has accidentally been created.

I have one other point, and it is one I fear I may be becoming tedious on—perhaps I am always tedious. It is about Lesbos and the Moria camp. Yesterday in Berlin, the German ruling CDU, CSU, SPD coalition announced its agreement that Germany would take 2,750 homeless refugees from Lesbos, including 150 unaccompanied children and, in addition, children with serious illnesses and their immediate families. I asked what we will do about the disaster on Lesbos twice in Committee and the Minister did not feel able to pick up my remarks on either occasion, so this time I shall ask her four simple, straightforward questions. I hope she will be able to answer them.

First, does she agree that there would be reputational benefit for this country, at a time when we need friends, in doing what the Germans are doing? Secondly, does she agree that there is a strong humanitarian case for our doing so? Thirdly, does she agree that it is an emergency case, given that more than 14,000 people, including more than 400 unaccompanied children, are sleeping rough around the ruins of the burnt-out camp? Fourthly, will she please tell us, at the end of the discussion on this amendment, what the Government are going to do about it?

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[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 62—spoken to in a very moving way by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—which seeks to expand family reunion rules. I also support Amendment 79, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which ensures that family reunification should not be restricted by any lack of income or assets affecting relevant parties.

Amendment 64, in my name, allows visas to be issued on humanitarian grounds. Three conditions are stipulated: the person needs medical treatment, is an orphaned child, or is a child who is a dependant of a person in the United Kingdom. These conditions are covered in Section 3. However, Section 4 enables the Secretary of State to add to them if required.

As outlined, therefore, Amendment 64 does not address family reunion. Instead, it deals with people who need to come to the United Kingdom for medical attention, orphaned children, and those who do not qualify for family reunion but who are dependent upon another person, or people, in the United Kingdom. Post Brexit, this amendment may thus prove useful for the continuity of the United Kingdom’s excellent record of sustained high standards of humanitarian good practice, such as receiving here for emergency surgery the Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, after she had been shot in the head by Islamist terrorists, and, during the recent lockdown—and for this my noble friend the Minister and her government colleagues deserve a great deal of credit—the relocation to the United Kingdom of dozens of unaccompanied minors from Moria refugee camp in Greece when it was recently destroyed by arson.

Secondly, the measures proposed may also help many to avoid become prey to human smugglers and traffickers. An absence of humanitarian visas, which the amendment seeks to redress, is also an advantage to human smugglers and traffickers. For these reasons, I hope that the Minister can accept Amendment 64.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 62 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which I was delighted to sign. I also wish to express my support for Amendment 64, which the noble Earl has so ably presented, and to speak to my own Amendment 79. The first two refer to people who need refuge; mine refers to a different group and I will get to that in a second.

As I was listening to the powerful presentations from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Earl, I was thinking back to January 2016 when I was at a memorial service for a 15 year-old Afghan boy. His name was Masud, and he died in the back of lorry trying to get to the UK to rejoin his brother. This relates to the discussion we were having before about the situation on Lesbos. We have to provide safe, legal, orderly routes for people to reach the UK, and to achieve the refuge they should be entitled to.

I note my position as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong and identify what may well be a rising issue. The Government have stepped forward and said that they want to help people who need to leave Hong Kong because of what is happening there with regard to human rights. I very much hope that we will see action on providing orderly routes for people to be able to do that, and for people all around the world.

I mostly want to speak on Amendment 79. As I said, this does not relate to refugees. This relates to a situation involving those generally known as Skype children, the numbers of whom are, of course, likely to be significantly enhanced. At the moment, for non-EU and EAA citizens who are the spousal partner of a British citizen, the British citizen has to have an income of £18,600 a year to bring them to the UK—more with children—and at the end of the transition period this Bill will extend that to many more people and many more children.

This is a more limited amendment than Amendment 23, which we debated last week, which addressed couples being able to stay together as well as children. While I prefer Amendment 23, I am hoping that the Conservative Government might be more prepared to consider amending the legislation specifically so that it is not tearing children out of their parents’ arms. It is, at the moment, not using the wisdom of Solomon but actually delivering the verdict of Solomon and forcing parents to let their children go to be separated from them for years. As we all know from the situation with Covid-19, yes, you may be able to keep in contact through a screen, but it is certainly not the same thing.

I note that in 2018 the Children’s Commissioner for England commissioned a report showing that up to 15,000 British children were already growing up in this situation. This is without adding in people affected by Brexit. Many children were reportedly suffering from significant stress and anxiety from the separation.

So have the Government made an estimate of the number of children likely to be affected annually by the minimum income requirement once the immigration Act, as it will be, comes into effect? The research by the Children’s Commissioner found that Britain had the least family-friendly reunification policies of 38 developed countries, largely because of that minimum income requirement. That is of course £18,600 a year, which was then 138% of the minimum wage. It will not be quite so bad now. The Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, said at the time:

“There is a wealth of evidence which indicates that children are far more likely to thrive when they are raised by parents in a warm, stable and loving family environment.”


There is evidence, she said, that this affects

“their well-being and development. It is also likely to have an impact on their educational attainment and outcomes.”

As one of the authors of the report commissioned by the Children’s Commissioner pointed out, the great majority of children affected by this are British citizens. They are being forced to grow up effectively in single-parent families, when their parents want to be together. So I hope that the Government will reflect on the comparison with Solomon and think about accepting this amendment.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 67 in my name and those of other noble Lords who will be speaking. I am grateful for their support. I express support for Amendment 63, moved so well by my noble friend Lord Rosser. Once again, I am grateful to the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, of which I am a patron, and to Amnesty International UK for its briefing.

Amendment 67 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to encourage, promote and facilitate awareness and the exercising of rights to British citizenship among EEA and Swiss nationals. It would also introduce a positive duty to confirm information known to the Home Office that is relevant to establishing a person’s right to citizenship. I am told that at present such information is all too often not forthcoming—a particular problem for many looked-after children—but there appears to be a greater readiness to check and act on such information when it confirms that there is no entitlement to citizenship.

The intention of the amendment is to shift the Home Office’s mindset, in the spirit of Wendy Williams’s Windrush report. That mindset resulted in the active discouragement of members of the Windrush generation from exercising their rights to British citizenship. As we have heard, there are real fears that the lessons of that review are not being learned when it comes to children of EEA and Swiss citizens who were born in the UK or who have grown up here from an early age. Research by the European Children’s Rights Unit, funded by the Home Office, indicates that Roma children, who are an especially vulnerable group, may be particularly at risk.

More generally, PRCBC gives the example of Matteo, who was born in the UK to Italian parents. He has lived here all his life apart from occasional visits to Italy and a gap year in continental Europe. When he became an adult, he discovered to his great distress that he was not regarded as a British citizen when he was refused inclusion on the electoral register for the general election and was twice refused a British passport. Before contacting PRCBC, he had been given poor legal advice that he should apply for settled status under the EU settlement scheme and be naturalised as a British citizen at a future date. Having established what his situation was, PRCBC was able to help him register his entitlement to British citizenship under the 1981 Act. No one had previously advised him of this right, and he had suffered serious mental distress as a result. A young man in this situation should not have to rely on the chance of finding his way into an organisation like that. How many are not finding their way to such organisations?

Can the Minister explain what exactly the Home Office is doing to proactively encourage the exercise of the right to register citizenship, both directly and through local authorities, to ensure that children and young people such as Matteo are not missing out on their chance of registering as citizens? What steps is it now taking to ensure that no one who is entitled to register as a British citizen is wrongly channelled through the EUSS as an immigrant without being informed of their existing right to register as a citizen? Are any specific steps being taken to ensure that Roma children have the information and support they need? Also, can she give us some idea of the number of children overall likely to be affected?

These are important questions. The right to British citizenship of an unknown number of children is at stake. I and others emphasised the importance of citizenship in moving an earlier amendment, and there was a lot of support in the Committee for citizenship’s importance. The answer to these questions will give us some idea of the importance the Home Office attaches to it, and how far it is genuinely willing to shift its mindset in the wake of the Windrush scandal and the Lessons Learned report on it. In that report, Wendy Williams wrote of the need for “deep cultural reform”. The response to these amendments will serve as an indicator of whether the Home Office is genuinely committed to such reform.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on protecting rights to British citizenship. We have already debated her first one, Amendment 68. This urges that applicants should not be disadvantaged just because registration costs might become too much for them to afford. We are now considering her Amendment 67, which advises that our system should set out to be proactive, helpful and encouraging towards applicants. Correspondingly, Amendment 63, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, correctly argues that in the first place, steps should be taken to raise awareness of available British citizenship rights under the British Nationality Act 1981. I hope the Minister is able to endorse these recommendations.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 67, to which I am a signatory, returns to the issue of citizenship. It is a pleasure to follow both the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I was particularly pleased that she referenced the position of the Roma, an issue I raised earlier this week in our previous debates. I hope the Minister will be able to answer the question put to her by the noble Baroness. I also strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said in the context of Amendment 63, but let me add in parenthesis that I think it unfortunate that citizenship is so often viewed through the lens of immigration policy.

Amendment 67 was originally coupled with Amendment 68, which focused on the issue of citizenship fees, as referred to by the noble Earl a moment ago, and which we debated last week. At the conclusion of that debate, the Minister said the Government intended to appeal the decision of the High Court in the case, Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens v the Secretary of State for the Home Department—a case in which, as she knows, I provided a witness statement.