Immigration Rules: Impact on Families

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, and his tribute to the contribution that migrants have made to this country across time. We have discussed many of those in our debate today. I join those who thanked the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for calling this important debate and for the work of her all-party group and join my noble friend, Lord Kilclooney, in emphasising the benefits that such groups can bring to the parliamentary process. Only last week, three new sets of consultations around children in care, covering children missing from children’s homes, out-of-authority placements and data sharing, were produced by the Minister for Children and Families. These were a direct result of the work of Ann Coffey MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, and of that group’s report, produced jointly with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, on children who go missing from care. These can be very effective instruments.

Although I have not looked in detail at immigration issues for some time, I have an inkling of the challenges that the Government face in immigration policy, as I served for five years on a sub-committee of your Lordships’ EU Select Committee tasked with looking at immigration policy. Indeed, I had the privilege of serving with the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Teverson. That experience made me particularly concerned that over-relaxed policies on migration allowed businesses to neglect some of the less work-ready youth of this country, because European Union labour could easily be found from abroad. We have all become more aware of the need for managed migration as we become aware of pressures on services, particularly school places, and especially of the housing shortage, and how these have contributed to social tensions. I pay tribute to the Government for their attention to the need to manage migration more carefully.

However, I am very troubled by the rules that we are debating today. The new income requirement for sponsoring a non-European partner affects UK citizens. Most of them are hard-working taxpayers and many are making an important contribution to our health service and especially to the care of the elderly. These points have been made various noble Lords.

The rules are pushing some women into dependency on the state, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said. As lone parents, they can no longer afford to work. Most importantly, the rules are depriving children of their parents—their fathers in particular. They may have the effect of increasing pressures on housing and school places in London, as it is only here in London that mothers can hope to earn the income necessary to be reunited with their spouses, because of London weighting.

The four UK Children’s Commissioners have issued a statement detailing their concern about the impact of the rules on the rights of children to a family life. In their briefing, they said that the Government’s impact assessment for the new rules,

“barely makes any reference to a child’s best interests and fails to consider at all how these were considered in arriving at the proposals for change”.

They also reported their concern that decision-makers may not be considering the best interests of children in individual assessments of applications, as guidance requires.

The emerging evidence, as shown in the report from the all-party parliamentary group on the impact of the rules, shows that they are having the surely unintended consequence of dividing children from their parents, in particular fathers, with the potential for long-term damage. We all know the poor outcomes for boys growing up without fathers and all lament the increasing number of boys growing up without a father involved in their life. Not so long ago, as I attended the juvenile court in west London, it was drawn to my attention that the young people attending that day would occasionally have a mother with them but that no fathers were present at the proceedings.

Only this Tuesday, at Second Reading of the Children and Families Bill, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, we heard the Schools Minister defending a new legal presumption for the family court: that it is normally in the best interests of the child to have both parents involved in their upbringing. I hope that I have that correct. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, whom I am pleased to see in her place, made a very passionate and eloquent speech in that debate. She said:

“Denying a child adequate contact and time with both their parents is not in that child’s best interest. The sense of self-worth and confidence in any child comes primarily from one's parents, and continued contact with two parents can strengthen a child’s confidence, even after the trauma of divorce. I was interested to read in the Sunday Times … that even bad fathers should, with proper supervision and safeguards, be allowed time with their children”.—[Official Report, 2/7/13; col. 1119.]

It is that important.

I have several questions for the Minister. In formulating these regulations, was consideration given to the impact that they would have on children, particularly on those boys thus denied contact with their fathers? Can he say how many boys are unable to have regular contact with their fathers as a result of these rules? If not, can he say how many children are affected? Are the Government concerned at the impact on boys being denied access to their fathers as a result of the rules? Will the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to review these impacts and what steps they will take to ensure that any damage to children is minimised? That is rather a lot of questions and the Minister may prefer to write to me.

In considering these regulations, I was reminded of the experience of setting up the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre about 10 or 12 years ago. Again, this was to address a thorny problem with immigration. When families had exhausted all the processes for asylum, the Government needed to remove these families and some of them were unwilling to go. Eventually it was determined that some of them would be locked up in Yarl’s Wood. Unfortunately, that was a category C prison and so we had children, babies, young children and their mothers entering the reception area of the prison, being taken through a prison gate and all the locked doors in that prison, and being cared for by prison officers.

The Children’s Commissioner again played a very important role, visiting on many occasions and campaigning on the issue. I congratulate the coalition Government on deciding that this was not the right policy and reversing it. Visiting on one occasion, I remember meeting a 16 year-old girl who had been in that setting for, I believe, nine months with her younger sister. She was so angry: how could she, as a child who had committed no crime, be denied her freedom for all that time during her childhood? I had no way to respond to her on that occasion.

What really came across in the Yarl’s Wood experience was that there was no clear thought at the beginning of the policy about the impact on children and families. Over the 10 years, there was a great deal of change and consideration and, eventually, the policy was overturned. I hope that, in this case as well, we may see further thought from the Government and I look forward to the Minister’s response.