Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the Home Secretary, but does the hon. Lady have an actual point of order?

[Debbie Abrahams]

As the Home Secretary is very eloquently saying, this is an incredibly important piece of legislation, and the lack of opportunity to hold the Government to account on it is a source of real concern. Can she invite—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. That is not a point of order. We are starting a debate, the purpose of which is to allow this House to hold the Government to account. We will be doing so until 10 o’clock tonight, and then again tomorrow. That is not a point of order, and the hon. Lady knows that.

[Priti Patel]

This is an important Bill, and it is right that we have given the House plenty of time to debate it.

We are seeking to achieve systematic, end-to-end reform of this system, but it is complex—it is absolutely complicated. Throughout this debate and in Committee, I hope all hon. Members will reflect on some of the points that have been made by Government Members. Over decades, we have found anomalies in our system. I have mentioned Windrush, tribunals and many of the processes that we want to streamline, which will of course deal with efficiency and productivity in case management.

Fundamentally, the new system will be fair to those who need our help and support. Everyone who plays by the rules will encounter a new system that is fair but firm. As representatives of the British people, we will be finally in control of many of these highly challenging issues that many successive Governments have sought to address in different ways, but now this Government are committed to fixing the broken system.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call the shadow Home Secretary—[Interruption.] I would be obliged if the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) did not speak loudly while I am on my feet. He can heckle other people, but he should not be heckling the Chair. I draw to the House’s attention the fact that there is obviously a very large list of people who wish to take part in this important debate. Therefore, there will be an initial time limit of four minutes, which will be reduced to three minutes at some point, depending on how fast we proceed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The Home Secretary shakes her head, but in the 2019 report “Responding to irregular migration: A diplomatic route” the Foreign Affairs Committee warned of exactly that:

“A policy that focuses exclusively on closing borders will drive migrants to take more dangerous routes, and push them into the hands of criminal groups.”

The Home Secretary should remember that because she was a member of the Committee at the time and her name is attached to the report.

While we are debating—or at least should be debating—a plan for refugees, we should cast our minds back to last week and the failure to restore the 0.7% commitment to international aid. The Department for International Development was tasked with delivering help to countries to tackle poverty and the drivers of people becoming displaced from their homes in the first place. The abolition of that Department was wrong and short-sighted. The work that was going on around the world to tackle the refugee crisis has been starved of funds, with programmes suddenly cut off. Our reputation around the world as a force for good has been damaged. The Government should restore the Department for International Development and restore spending to 0.7%.

The Bill is as wrong as it is ineffective. It will not tackle people smugglers, and it will not protect victims of human trafficking. It is, in reality, a continuation of this Government’s culture war. It is a culture war that led them to side with those booing the England men’s football team for taking the knee. Instead of supporting that brave stance against racism, the players were dismissed as taking part in “gesture politics” by the Home Secretary, and were told to stay out of politics altogether by other Conservative MPs. Last week, the Government refused to live up to their promises on international aid, and they ran away from their own failure to stand with football players against racism. This week, they promote more division with this Bill. As ever, they talk tough, but deliver nothing.

As it stands, the Bill is a charter for human trafficking. It is a missed opportunity that represents the worst of all worlds, lets evil criminals off the hook, and fails those who have been exploited. The cruel irony of this Government’s approach is that they are weak on taking action against criminal gangs, and brutal when it comes to orphan children from war zones. I ask all Members of the House to reject the Bill in the vote tomorrow.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

To reiterate, I am sorry but we have to start with a time limit of four minutes, simply because so many Members wish to participate in the debate. I call Mrs Theresa May.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call the hon. Member for Cardiff North, I should tell the House that after the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), the time limit will reduce to three minutes. With four minutes, I call Anna McMorrin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is crucial that we restore trust in our immigration system. Our asylum system is in desperate need of reform and our constituents rightly expect it to be fixed.

In only the past year, 16,000 people have entered the country illegally, and those are just the ones we know about. Some of those people are genuinely fleeing persecution and need our support, but others are not, and they may abuse the legal system by making repeated vexatious and often last-minute claims, challenging the Home Office’s ability to remove individuals lawfully in those cases and costing taxpayers a lot of money. That also creates a severe backlog, which delays the processing of genuine asylum cases and slows down our judicial processes.

Most worryingly, there are now 10,000 foreign national offenders in circulation outside prisons in the UK whom the Home Office are intent on deporting but cannot because of legal barriers. I welcome the fact that the Government’s new plan for immigration will speed up the removal of these dangerous foreign criminals. Any foreign national who comes to this country and abuses our hospitality by breaking the law should be in no doubt of the UK Government’s determination to deport them.

When assessing the needs of individual asylum claimants, knowing the age of applicants is really important for ensuring that children get protected and properly looked after. The UK is currently one of the very few countries in Europe that does not commission or employ scientific methods of age assessment when determining how old these young people are. As a consultant paediatrician, the welfare of children is of the utmost importance to me. As a doctor, I have participated in the past in the assessment of asylum-seeking children, and the current system in place is nowhere near accurate enough for making such crucial and important decisions. I welcome the fact that the Bill will enable the use of scientific age assessment techniques, and that there will be increased research into their accuracy, so that we can best direct our efforts to support the youngest and most vulnerable people.

Finally, the Bill addresses a number of anomalies in the system of British nationality law. Behind each of these anomalies is a person and a family, and I am pleased to see a change in the law that I have lobbied for since 2019: nationality for children whose fathers are not the husband of their mother at the time of their birth. One of my constituents, who has served this country on military operations, was shocked to discover that he was unable to get British citizenship for his son, despite the fact that he is British and the son was born in Britain. This is because his European mother was still legally married to a foreign national at the time of their son’s birth, and under the current legislation a child’s father is legally deemed to be the husband at the time the woman gives birth. However, in this particular case my constituent is the father in all biological, emotional and practical terms.

New measures in the Bill will provide an entitlement to British citizenship for people who were previously unable to acquire it because their mother was married to someone other than their biological father at the time of birth. This will fix an outdated rule and ensure that my constituent and many others can rightfully pass on their nationality to their children. I am pleased to support this Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

For the sake of clarity, I ought to reiterate what Mr Speaker said to the House earlier today. As the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton) has been required to self-isolate and therefore cannot take her usual place in the Chair, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) will shortly be taking the Chair having been appointed a temporary Deputy Speaker, and I hope that the House will be gentle with her.