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

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I am in the unusual position of agreeing with pretty much everything that has been said by all four speakers so far, which I do not get to say very often, particularly in relation to my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara).

We in the SNP believe that this is a bad Bill—bad for families and bad for businesses—that sells EU nationals short and extends the scope of the hostile environment. Meanwhile, we have seen the Home Office move from disinterest in specific solutions for devolved nations to disdain bordering sometimes on contempt. It has been made clear during the passage of the Bill that there is to be no remote areas pilot scheme, despite that being a recommendation of the Migration Advisory Committee and an earlier Home Office commitment. Our amendments give Parliament a last chance to remedy these defects, and we will support other amendments that seek to find a silver lining to this Bill, such as amendments on putting a time limit on immigration detention, protecting care leavers, and protecting family reunion rights.

Turning first to the issue of family, sadly, this Bill will destroy more families by extending the scope of some of the most anti-family migration rules on earth. The degree of complacency that there is in Parliament about the damage these rules do to families and children surprises me. Five years ago, just three years after the rules were introduced, England’s Children’s Commissioner estimated there were nearly 15,000 Skype families in the UK—kids separated from a parent overseas because of these ludicrous financial thresholds. These rules do not even take into account the prospective income of the persons applying to come into the country. The commissioner said at the time:

“Many of the children interviewed for this research suffer from stress and anxiety, affecting their well-being and development. It is also likely to have an impact on their educational attainment and outcomes because they have been separated from a parent, due to these inflexible rules which take little account of regional income levels or family support available.”

Amendment 33 puts a brake on extension of these rules and, as the commissioner recommended, starts putting the heart back into the policy.

A second group of families that are being put in an impossible position by this Bill are those formed by UK citizens living across the EEA who may in future want to come back here with their family. These are UK nationals who would have had no reason to doubt that if they had a family while abroad, they would have derived rights to return here with their family members to the UK without having to jump the impossible hurdles of the UK’s domestic family migration rules; they could not have predicted Brexit, and applying the UK family rules to them, denying many a right to return here with their family, would seem incredibly unfair.

To be fair to the Minister, he has acknowledged that there is an issue here and has provided a grace period until 2022, during which such families can return, but this is essentially just kicking the can a little bit further down the road. It still leaves many with horrible decisions to make: do they uproot their families now, just in case they do not qualify to return later on? None of these families could have predicted that they would be in this position, so why not remove the cut-off point altogether, as amendment 38 seeks to ensure?

Finally on the issue of family, we are 100% behind the cross-party amendment on family reunion. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) will say much more about that shortly, and we fully support what the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has already said, but it is plain to see that, despite talking a good game, the Government’s proposals mean they are backsliding on earlier commitments made to the House; they mean fewer safe legal routes for children to get to family here, and that means more children risking dangerous, unsafe routes. The Government’s stance is a boon for traffickers and people smugglers and a disaster for children and families, and that is why we must support new clause 29.

This Bill is not just anti-family; it is anti-business. I have spoken enough at previous stages about the huge problems that salary and skills thresholds will cause when the new system is brought into force, but today I want to focus briefly on the problems that the Bill will cause even if a job qualifies for a visa under the tier 2 system. Our system will make it unbelievably difficult and expensive to bring workers in, and will make this country an eye-wateringly unattractive place for people to come to. Figures from the international immigration law firm Fragomen show that under the future immigration system a tier 2 worker who enters the UK to work for five years with a partner and three kids could potentially involve a total payment to the Home Office of £27,000 upfront from October, once costs such as sponsorship licence fees and the immigration health surcharge are included. That is over 12 times as much as the equivalent for Canada and over 17 times as much as Germany, and it is similarly uncompetitive for other family arrangements.

Of course, skilled workers from the EEA are able to work in any other EEA country without paying a penny and with no need for the stress and uncertainty of a visa application. So if there is a skilled and sought-after French worker, that person can go to Dublin without paying a penny, no questions asked, but to get to Belfast they will need to pay many thousands of pounds and endure a Home Office visa process. It is a perfect incentive for skilled workers to go elsewhere, and it is a perfect incentive for key employers to move their businesses elsewhere. That is why we have tabled new clause 17, so that the Government have to be upfront and open with Parliament about the costs they are imposing on businesses and unskilled workers.

It is also why we have introduced new clause 16, a first step to removing the ridiculous immigration health surcharge, which makes up most of these humungous fees—a nonsensical double poll tax on workers, which is set to increase to £624 per person per year, all of which needs to be paid upfront.

So this Bill risks making it very hard to attract European workers to come to the UK in future, but what of the EU workers who are already here and other EU nationals? Amendment 32 would ensure that all EU citizens who are already here have automatic rights to remain and physical proof of their status. We support new clause 2, which would put in place that same right for looked-after children. Assuming, with regret, that the Government are not about to do that, they need to tell us much more about how they will respond when we wake up on 1 July next year to find an extra few hundred thousand undocumented EU migrants, without rights and potentially subject to removal. What will the Home Office do when a 70-year-old French woman writes to say: “I had permanent residence under the old scheme. I didn’t think I needed to apply, but now the DVLA have refused my driving licence and they say I’m here illegally.” What is the Home Office going to do in such circumstances?

The Government say that they will be “reasonable”, but what exactly does that mean? In Committee, the Minister helpfully explained that he will publish guidance for caseworkers with a non-exhaustive list of examples in which late applications will be allowed. That would be welcome and useful, but the key point is that I want to see it—and I want to see it before we close the EU settlement scheme to applications. Parliament should know precisely how late applications are to be treated before it allows the scheme to close. That is what new clause 34 would ensure.

Two other new clauses seek to push the Government towards fairer treatment of EEA nationals. New clause 36 flags up a new problem relating to EEA nationals who seek to become UK citizens. In fairness to previous Home Office Ministers, when the settlement scheme was established, the Home Office did not insist, as it could have done, on proof of comprehensive sickness insurance in deciding who had been legitimately exercising free movement rights. For some reason known only to itself, the Home Office has now decided to insist on that when it comes to applications for citizenship. That seems an awful miserly approach to take, and I urge the Minister to revisit it.

New clause 21 flags up the issue of those EEA nationals who have a right in law to register as British citizens, and I am grateful for the cross-party support for the clause. We are talking not about adults who have made a proactive choice to come here but about children and young people who were born here or who have been here since they were young, whose parents have subsequently settled or who have lived the first 10 years of their life here. In short, they are children and young people who had no choice over the fact that this is their home country. In law they have just as much right to British citizenship as you, Madam Deputy Speaker, or me; the only difference is that they have to register. When Parliament passed the relevant careful laws, the fee for the process was set simply at the cost of processing, but it has now rocketed to over £1,000—just to access British citizenship. That is profiteering on the backs of children and it has to stop.

Finally, I turn to the issue of the devolved nations. The end of free movement will have drastic implications for Scotland, and if anything the challenges for Northern Ireland will be even more extreme. Home Office disinterest in any notion of a differentiated system has transformed into hostility. New clause 33, which has cross-party support, simply makes the modest proposal that, instead of its usual dismissive attitude, the Home Office looks seriously at the options for addressing issues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. With the Government refusing to look at any regional variation, some in Scotland had at least taken comfort from the MAC recommendation of a remote areas pilot scheme to encourage migration to areas that have a very small labour market. Originally, the Home Office accepted that recommendation, yet in Committee the Government said it had been abandoned. New clause 24 would restore that provision, and I certainly hope that MPs from all parties who represent constituencies with remote areas will insist that the Home Office thinks again.

It is clearer than ever that the only way we will have an immigration system that remotely reflects our needs and circumstances and fixes the injustices that it contains is if we design one ourselves but, given the Home Office intransigence, I have no problem making the case that control over migration will be a key advantage of independence.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

There is no doubt that the Bill represents an important milestone in both the restructuring of the UK outside the European Union and the fulfilment of the promise that we made to, and that was endorsed by, the British people at the 2019 general election to end free movement. As an overarching policy, it is one that I endorse but, as with any wholesale reform to a national system—in this case immigration—there will be people caught up in the shifting sands created around them who, because of their own personal circumstances, will need specific understanding, attention and support to prevent them from being pushed to the very edges of society. Those people include, as we have heard, children in care and care leavers entitled to ongoing support. To that end, as a former Children’s Minister, I instinctively have sympathy for new clause 2, which proposes the provision of automatic settled status for all children in care and care leavers. In the short time available to me, I shall confine my remarks to new clause 2.

As we transition to a new legal framework for our immigration system, it is only right that, as my hon. Friend the Minister has said previously, we help to ensure that no one is left behind. As I understand it, new clause 2 is an attempt to put that principle into practice for children in care and care leavers, rather than leave it to chance.

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[Tim Loughton]

As my hon. Friend and I have both done the same job, I think we appreciate the real problems that social workers and local authorities are having in identifying these children. Does he agree with me that part of the problem is that the Department for Education does not routinely collect data on the nationality of the children it looks after in the first place? Is it not essential that that is the very minimum that needs to happen if we are to identify all of those children who would be covered by this scheme?

[Edward Timpson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and he is right. When one is trying to understand the consequences of the actions one takes as a Minister—as we heard in the statement earlier from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk)—the enrichment of data can help us appreciate whether we are making good progress. In the independent school exclusions review that I carried out for the Government last year, a lot of my recommendations were about getting better data about the children in our systems, why they are there and how we can better track them, so that we know we are making good decisions on their behalf. I agree that that information would be relevant to the considerations under new clause 2.

It is important that we get this right. The corporate parenting principles that we legislated for in 2017 are designed for circumstances just like these. Please can we make sure that we live up to them?

[Yvette Cooper]

I support the points made by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) and new clause 2, which was tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), because we have a responsibility to ensure that children in care do not miss out on the European settlement scheme through no fault of their own, and that we do not end up with another Windrush generation because nobody was looking out for those young people and they missed out on their rights—just never got the right papers.

I will speak to new clauses 29, 30 and 32, as well as other new clauses that I support. New clause 29 seeks only to continue the UK’s current commitments to help child refugees. I welcome the work the Government have done to support Syrian families, to speed up the Dublin scheme and to support the Dubs scheme, as well as the recent flight from Greece. All of that work resulted from cross-party debates in this House that the Government rightly responded to. We should not turn the clock back now or rip up that progress.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the money that is required to go to frontline services. As I indicated, the £76 million of funding that has been allocated to domestic abuse is split across three Departments. The Ministry of Justice has received £15 million for work with local domestic abuse charities through the criminal justice system.

On the hon. Gentleman’s specific question about the need for refuge provision, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will be allocating £10 million to domestic abuse safe accommodation services. It is important that we all recognise that that is where the demand is. Throughout this very difficult period where refuges have found it difficult to operate, there has been a wide spread of measures where we as Government, in our engagement with the refuges directly, as well as with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims Commissioner, have deliberately sought practical means of support for the frontline throughout this emergency.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Building on my right hon. Friend’s answer to the question on refuges, covid-19 has also highlighted the fact that despite the best efforts of the staff in our refuges across the country, including in the north-west, many of those who have sought refuge there, including their children in some circumstances, have not always had access to a good internet connection, which is often a lifeline for them, especially for children who need education. As we start to roll out broadband across the country to fulfil our manifesto commitment, will she commit herself to looking at refuges as one of the organisations that should be at the front of the queue so that people know that access will be there should they seek such sanctuary?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes a vital important point. I have seen for myself, working with refuge and other third-party organisations in the domestic abuse space, the amazing work that they do in terms of internet safety within refuges. We must always put first and foremost the safety of the victims in the environments within which they are living. He is right to highlight the fact that without the internet, too many people, including children, are cut off, and that is a hindrance to their development and wellbeing. I will absolutely take his suggestion away with me and ensure that as we build greater internet safety provisions in refuges for domestic victims, we also think about what more we can do to give them the right kind of safeguards with the right provisions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

17. What steps her Department is taking to reduce burglary and theft in crime hotspots.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Burglary and theft are a blight on all members of our community, which is why this Government are committed to reducing burglary and other neighbourhood crimes. We recently launched the £25 million safer streets fund to protect areas that are disproportionately affected by burglary and theft and to invest in well-evidenced crime prevention measures. A reduction in burglary, along with other neighbourhood crimes, will form one of the many outcomes we will be putting forward to the police that we expect to see as part of the recruitment of 20,000 police officers.

[Kit Malthouse]

Ipswich has rarely had a champion quite as robust as my hon. Friend, and he is right to be as persistent as he is in the defence of his town. I urge Suffolk constabulary, or the police and crime commissioner who represents Ipswich, to make a bid to the safer streets fund. Lots of things can be done to target-harden in particular areas where there are burglary hotspots. My hon. Friend is aware that we have given Suffolk constabulary another £9.2 million this year to start the recruitment of police officers, and of course there will be more to come in the years that follow, but he is right to keep up the pressure and I hope he will see results soon.

[Edward Timpson]

In Cheshire, the police rural crime unit recently reported having dealt with 170 crimes, including burglaries and thefts, in three months. Will my hon. Friend guarantee that tackling such crimes will remain a key focus for his Department, and that the extra resources being made available will help to keep specialist police officers out there to protect the Eddisbury countryside and its farms and businesses into the future?

[Kit Malthouse]

I offer my hon. Friend a belated welcome back from his extended recess; it is nice to see him in his place. He is right to raise the issue of rural crime. As somebody who represents 220 beautiful square miles of rolling Hampshire down land, I am well aware of the problems that rural communities face with crime. My hon. Friend will understand that it is an operational matter for the chief constable in his area to decide where and how his police officers are deployed, but I know that some of the more rural forces are working hard to maintain their capacity in respect of that crime type. As he will know, there is a National Rural Crime Network, which is looking at what more can be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking to divert young people away from violent crime.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

11. What steps she is taking to divert young people away from violent crime.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. What steps she is taking to tackle youth violence.

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[Edward Timpson]

Children excluded from school are twice as likely to carry a knife. A quarter of young offenders who are serving a custodial sentence of less than 12 months have a history of permanent exclusion. To help turn around the life chances of these children, will my hon. Friend take up the recommendations in my report on school exclusion, published last year, which are aimed at taking a public health approach to crime and tackling the root causes, not just the symptoms, of school disengagement?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his meticulous work in his report. He will know that the Prime Minister is taking charge of our response to serious violence, and is indeed holding a Cabinet Sub-Committee on this imminently. I agree that we must tackle the root causes of serious violence. That is precisely why we are bringing forward the serious violence Bill to place a duty on the agencies that can help to address it.