Illegal Migration Bill

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I support the amendments on the rights of children, because the Bill punishes children just for being refugees and puts unaccompanied children at risk. There is not enough time to go through every clause, but I will highlight some of the many cruelties.

The measures before the Committee today not only abolish the protections afforded to children but allow unaccompanied children to be routinely detained beyond the 24-hour time limit, and to be detained anywhere the Secretary of State considers appropriate. Detaining children for prolonged periods is utterly unacceptable and poses serious risks to their health, safety and protection.

Clauses 2 to 10 will create a large and permanent population of people, including children with families and unaccompanied children, living in limbo for the rest of their lives. Clause 3 could see a child who arrives alone, fleeing war and persecution, being allowed to integrate into UK society, only to be forcibly removed from the UK as soon as they turn 18.

Clauses 15 to 20 give the Secretary of State a range of astonishingly far-reaching powers, including the power to terminate a child’s looked-after care status and the key legal protections provided by local authorities.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I am pleased that the hon. Lady has raised these clauses. Having spoken to the Minister, I know he is keen to ensure that we have clarity on this issue so that when the Home Office provides appropriate accommodation for children, in addition to the other care and support required, we know what that means in practice. We also need to understand the justification and reasons for enabling the Home Secretary to remove a child from local authority care under the vice versa clause, clause 16. At the moment, the explanatory notes do not seem to give any reason why the power is needed.

[Apsana Begum]

I hope the Minister will address the hon. and learned Gentleman’s point.

There is an array of evidence on the significant harm facing unaccompanied children who are accommodated by the Home Office in hotels. For vulnerable children, this Bill denies refugee and human rights protections and recovery from trafficking, and it prolongs their fears and insecurity by denying them the reassurance that they have found safety.

This Government are not only targeting children. They are removing almost all protections for victims of modern slavery and trafficking who are targeted for removal. As such, I also support the amendments on equalities and human rights, including my new clause 20, because the Bill will be disastrous for disabled and LGBTQ+ children and adults. Women fleeing persecution will be prevented from claiming asylum and will be detained indefinitely, with no exemption for those who are pregnant. Indeed, clause 11 will enable the Home Secretary to enforce the indefinite detention of children and pregnant women in camps such as Manston on a statutory basis. That goes back to what was happening before 2016, when pregnant women were being detained for weeks on end, and in some cases months, with no idea when they would be released. This is utterly disgraceful.

How can it be right that people are to have their human rights ripped away because they are from a different place? Surely human rights are inalienable and universal. Persecuting some of the most vulnerable people fleeing torture, war or oppression during a climate of increasing anti-migrant hostility, with attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers and a growth in far-right activity, is cowardly and dangerous.

The Illegal Migration Bill will be marked for years to come as an extraordinary and chilling attack on our values and way of life. Not in my name. I oppose the Government’s clauses before the Committee today. I reject their purpose and principle in their entirety, because all human beings are born free and equal in dignity, and with rights. In the words of article 2 of the universal declaration of human rights:

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

Nobody could dispute the seriousness with which I took the situation at Manston in the autumn, or dispute that the situation we are in today is incomparably different. Manston is a well-run facility, led by a superb former Army officer, Major General Capps, and we are ensuring that the site is both decent and legal. Responsibility for the failures at Manston in the autumn of last year does not rest with the Government. It does not rest with the people who work at Manston. It rests with the people smugglers and the human traffickers. It was a direct result of tens of thousands of people coming into our country illegally in a short period of time.

I can tell the hon. Lady that the same thing will happen again if we do not break the cycle and stop the boats. More people will come later this year. She knows that the numbers are estimated to rise this year unless we take robust action. That is what this Bill sets out to achieve. If we take this action, fewer people will put themselves in danger and fewer children will be in this situation. That is what I want to see, and I think that is what the British public want to see as well.

[Edward Timpson]

On unaccompanied children, may I ask the Minister to address the point I raised about the power in clause 16 for the Secretary of State to remove a child from local authority care, when the Secretary of State does not have powers under the Children Act and the responsibilities that follow? Will he set out the reasons behind that—if not in full now, certainly before Report?

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that comment. As an important aside that relates to other issues he has raised, nothing in the Bill disapplies the Children Act, which will continue to apply in all respects with regard to the children we deal with in this situation. In answer to his particular point, we are taking this power so that in the very small number of judicious cases in which we set out to remove a child, we can take them from the care of the local authority into the responsibility of the Home Office for the short period before they are removed from the country. I have given two examples of situations in which we would use that power, and I will happily give them again. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is concerned about this point.

The first situation is where we are seeking to return a young person to their relatives in another country. I think it is incredibly important that we keep the ability to do so, because that does happen occasionally. It is obviously the right thing to do to return somebody to their mother, their father, their uncle or the support network that they have in another country.

The other situation is where we are removing somebody who has arrived as an unaccompanied minor to another safe country, where we are confident that they will be met on arrival by social services and provided with all the support that one would expect. That happens all the time here with unaccompanied minors; I think the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned, drawing on his experience as a local Member of Parliament around Heathrow, that it happens regularly. It is important that we continue to have that option, because we should not be bringing people into local authority care for long periods in the UK when we can safely return them home, either to their relatives or to their home country, where they can be safeguarded appropriately.

Illegal Migration Bill

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me make some progress if I may.

We have been clear that the power to remove unaccompanied children would be exercised only in very limited circumstances: principally for the purposes of effecting a family reunion or to return someone to their safe country of origin. Government amendment 174 makes this clear in the Bill while futureproofing the Bill against the risk that the people smugglers will seek to endanger more young lives and break up more families by loading yet more unaccompanied children on to the small boats.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

On the face of it, I, too, welcome Government amendment 174 on the limitations to the removal of children and the prescription that is put within it. However, my right hon. Friend has alluded to the fact that, further down in that amendment, it sets out that the Home Secretary can pass regulations to set out any other circumstances at a later date. Is he referring to changes in the way that people smugglers may operate? Will this be an affirmative procedure in Parliament, and what sort of circumstances does he anticipate that we may be dealing with?

[Robert Jenrick]

What we do know is that this situation is fast moving and that the people smugglers are individuals and businesses that will stop at nothing and stoop to any low. We want to retain a degree of discretion, of course accountable to Parliament, and we would ensure that it is an affirmative procedure, giving Parliament at least an opportunity to debate it should there be concerns with the approach of any Home Secretary. But let me be clear that the Government’s position is that we see the use of this power only for those two very limited, but understandable and sensible, suggestions. They are two routes that are used today judiciously. We do—although it is very hard to do—seek to reunify unaccompanied minors with their family members, and succeed in a small number of cases. We also remove minors from the UK back home to safe countries, always making sure that social services or appropriate authorities are awaiting them on their return. Those things happen today and we want to see that they continue and, if anything, that we take further advantage of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

It is difficult to know in five minutes how to address the five amendments with my name at the top, including the two that have been leapfrogged by the Home Secretary. I have spent many hours cossetted with the Minister for Immigration and others to try to get some of the adjustments being made, and I am grateful for the time he has spent to try to get us to a better place. I certainly do not have time to respond to the extensive assurances that he aimed to give me from the Dispatch Box earlier.

I support safe and legal routes. I am glad we will now have them on the face of the Bill. We need a balance. I support this Bill, but if we are to be tough on the abusers of our immigration system, we also have to ensure we are open and generous to genuine asylum seekers, to whom we owe a duty of care. The amendments on safe and legal routes are also timely because we needed to address the question that I posed to the Home Secretary some months ago about how the 16-year-old orphan from east Africa with relations in the UK would make it to the UK. This week, that apocryphal scenario became a reality. The measures that the Immigration Minister will be bringing forward need to address that question.

It is essential that the Immigration Minister consults local authorities about capacity, but he also needs to consult refugee organisations and others about the type of schemes with which we will come forward. How will they operate? Who will qualify for them? How will people access them? Let us make sure that those schemes are in place sooner rather than later in 2024, although I would have liked them to be contemporaneous. We have a deal on safe and legal routes, but we need to see some real workable details in the coming months and as the Bill goes through the Lords.

I have no time to talk about amendment 181 on the return of children or amendment 182 on best interest and welfare checks. My real concern has been on child detention, so I was grateful for the assurances that the Immigration Minister gave me, because the measures as they stand do not differentiate between children and adults in detention terms. They ride roughshod through the safeguards on child detention under the Immigration Bill 2014, through which this Government specified the 24-hour limit, and the Government have not even offered to put the maximum detention times for children in this Bill. That is a must when it comes to any amendments that the Minister can bring forward in the House of Lords.

[Edward Timpson]

I very much agree with the points that my hon. Friend makes in support of children. Does he also agree that we need absolute clarity on the responsibilities under the Children Act 1989 in all circumstances where a child is on these shores, and in particular where the Home Office itself has some responsibility?