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

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I very strongly support this amendment and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on putting it forward in the first place. His personal experience of being part of Kindertransport in 1939 adds real texture to the amendment and makes it perhaps very personal. He is somebody who understands what it is like for these children. He came over legally, but many of these children are coming over illegally. However, the amendment is about family unity. Who can say that family unity is not a good idea? I would have thought it would be a central tenet of any Tory party manifesto, so I am staggered that there is any suggestion that this might not be a good thing.

The Government have recently made some fascinating announcements on asylum. New legal routes will be created; that is interesting. There will be more detention. As has already been pointed out, detention costs a lot of money and is very damaging to the mental health of people who are detained, so all in all more detention might not be the best thing. Our Home Secretary seems to mix up asylum seekers and foreign criminals. I have no idea why she experiences that sort of confusion, but it might be because the Government want us to fear asylum seekers and refugees. They are possibly creating this out of nowhere.

I am curious about how the Government can make announcements of this kind, without anything of substance in them. Lawyers, QCs and judges have looked at them and cannot find much of value, so why bother making such ridiculous statements? This is a question I would like the Minister to answer: are the Government and the Home Secretary completely out of ideas? In which case, accepting this amendment would be a very good idea, because it would ensure some stability in our asylum system and, I hope, would do less damage and make our country less inhumane and more welcoming.

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

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Sub-Committee on Refugee and Migrant Children and Young People.

In Committee, my noble friend Minister explained how, early in the pandemic crisis, following talks between her colleague Minister Philp and Greece, three flights of children arrived in the United Kingdom from the Greek islands. All of us will be very grateful to the Government for this. She also referred to the United Kingdom’s humanitarian record in helping vulnerable people, including children.

The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, does not so much cast doubt on that or on our future good intentions; instead, and in view of Brexit, its new clause seeks the continuation of rights to family reunion under United Kingdom law, currently secured by the Dublin III treaty yet not necessarily guaranteed after the transition period. Equally, and for the same reason, it aims to ensure that unaccompanied child refugees in Europe will have a legal route to safety in the United Kingdom.

In Committee, my noble friend the Minister gave a number of reassurances. One is the Government’s present endeavour to pursue new reciprocal arrangements with the European Union for the family reunion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Can she say what has been achieved so far and whether that level of progress may now stand to be advanced by the European Union’s paper last week on asylum?

Then there is the role of our local authorities. My noble friend has pointed out that 5,000 unaccompanied children are in local authority care. There may well be councils that would take more, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, asserts. My noble friend has commented that, if that is the case, she would like to hear from them, also taking into account the extent to which Kent has to bear the brunt. Does she concur that an approach that is proactive without being coercive might work best? Therefore, should the Government perhaps be more in touch with local authorities to develop co-ordinated plans?

On the protection of vulnerable persons, my noble friend mentioned that current initiatives will be consolidated into a new global United Kingdom resettlement scheme. In outline, can she give us the aims and targets of this new scheme?

In promoting good practice, it goes without saying that internationally the United Kingdom ought to strive to take a lead. Post Brexit, let alone globally, does my noble friend consider that not least should the United Kingdom’s humanitarian standards be well demonstrated in Europe itself within the 47-state affiliation of the Council of Europe, where the United Kingdom remains a much-respected and prominent member?

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

As the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has been unable to be contacted, I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I take some comfort from that, because this Government have shown themselves to be fairly good at U-turns. I hope we see one this evening. In 50 years in Parliament, I have never been more perplexed by any debate and the obduracy of a Government without a cause that is defensible.

What we are doing here is willingly inflicting pain and worry on people who have often served our country, who love our country, who wish to continue to make their life in our country and who make enormous contributions to our country. We are saying to them—I speak as a digital agnostic—“You do this, or else.” It is an indefensible position. I joke about my own position because, until we went into lockdown, I had never possessed a computer, never used a computer and never had any desire to use a computer. I do it now and, with the aid of the wonderful digital support service we have in the House, I have been able to make many speeches on the screen and have attended numerous meetings through Zoom and Microsoft Teams—and I have hated every one of them.

We should be a tolerant House. Tolerance is one of the defining characteristics of the British people, yet we have seen it crack in several places over the past few years. Many of the letters that your Lordships have received, as I have, from truly worried people speak about the creeping xenophobia in our country following Brexit. As everyone in your Lordships’ House knows, I deeply regret that decision, but I have always accepted it. I argued passionately for Mrs May’s deal—Lady May, as she is now. Many of those people feel less wanted. That is extremely sad.

There are one or two things that we should all bear in mind. In his splendid introduction to this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Oates, to whom we are all grateful, referred to the Horizon scandal. It is reaching the end almost as we speak, but not the end for those who suffered—not the end for those who were told that here was a perfect digital system that could not conceivably be wrong; no, that was wrong. We should also remember Windrush—people put into a position of terrible distress because their bona fides were not accepted. Surely we can learn from these things. Surely we can learn from the experiences to which many of your Lordships have referred last Wednesday and this very day. We are not dealing with perfection; we are dealing with clever systems that can frequently let people down. My noble colleague talked about the farm payments scheme. I had many in my former constituency who lived in parts of Staffordshire where there was not good reception. Some of them were driven almost demented by it and the Government saw sense.

Many of your Lordships have paid deserved tribute to my noble friend on the Front Bench. She has shown herself to be a colleague who understands this House and who tries to give time to people who have worries about various aspects of government policy—she will have been very busy recently. I want to say to her directly: please do not let yourself down. Go and see the Home Secretary tomorrow and tell her that you tore up your brief, because it is not worth having. There is no logical, sensible answer to this extremely modest proposal. My noble friend would earn more than an accolade—she would deserve a halo—if she said, “You have been talking sense; I have been talking rubbish, and we are now going to put it right.”

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

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Cormack. I certainly support this amendment, moved so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and its proposed new clause requiring the Secretary of State to issue physical evidence of migration status.

To start with, as has been said, we might well be disposed to approve of a system which is entirely digital, dispenses with cards or paper, and is quick, slick and nicely up to date. In this case, however, although well-meaning, such a system is flawed. That is even so in general, thus for numerous purposes and types of daily use, regardless of the particular and sensitive context of migration status at all. Consider driving licences, student ID cards, pensioners’ bus passes, national insurance cards, and so on. Suppose we could not use these and had to go online instead; at best, this would be frustrating and, most of the time, extremely annoying. It is so much easier to have a card or piece of paper immediately there in your pocket or in the file which you keep at home.

All the more so would it therefore be unsatisfactory—something which this amendment corrects—if evidence of settled status could be provided only digitally. As so many of your Lordships have already emphasised, digital-only immigration status will create new barriers for EU citizens, especially the elderly and most vulnerable, who may not have the necessary digital skills. That apart, if and when some aspect of the digital process fails—which is quite a frequent occurrence—people without a physical form of back-up will obviously be disadvantaged.

Conversely, even when the process may go as smoothly as it can, many still fear lengthy, contorted, multistep sequences involving presentations of passports, birth dates and unique one-off codes sent to mobiles, followed by both parties having to access the Government’s website separately. Worse still, a recent study has shown that the majority of landlords do not want to accept a digital-only proof, stating that they do not trust it.

For these reasons, I am sure that my noble friend would accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Oates, or produce a government one corresponding to it.

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, only today we have seen another example of centralised government technology failing: namely, the PHE Excel spreadsheet not counting all the coronavirus statistics. We know what happened to some Windrush immigrants whose proof was destroyed.

I am happy to admit that when I began to enter the House of Lords, I had to establish my British nationality. That involved finding proof of my father’s naturalisation as a British citizen in the late 1940s. To my amazement and pleasure, there was the document in the small pile he had left me when he died. We should not forget future generations who may need a piece of paper. I shall never forget the comfort of having that piece of paper.

Employers and landlords will look for it. I surmise that, if they are told to check online, this could be an obstacle to the offer of housing or employment when time is of the essence. Older people may not be familiar with the technology—another demographic that the Government sometimes forget: for example, in relation to the NHS track and trace app, where the considerable numbers of older people who do not have smartphones are simply ignored. Moreover, hard copy of proof may be a requirement when an entitled person travels abroad or when there is an emergency and no access to a phone or the internet is possible.

Failure or hacking of the digital system will be catastrophic and are by no means unforeseeable. Of course there could be both digital and paper evidence as a back-up. For those reasons, I support this amendment and urge the Government to do the sensible thing and provide a paper proof of settled status.