Tier 5 Religious Worker Visas

Ged Killen Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gapes. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for it. The issue is of great concern to parishes in my constituency, as it is in others, not least because many Catholic parishes rely on tier 5 religious worker visas to bring priests to the UK on supply placements, which allows cover for illness, retreats, outings and, of course, much needed holidays. The hon. Gentleman has covered many of the salient points and concerns in his remarks, so I intend to be brief.

I am disappointed not to see the Minister for Immigration, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), here, but I am sure that the Minister who is here will convey to her our concerns. I simply ask the Minister this: where is the evidence that the changes were necessary? Where is the evidence that large numbers of people were coming to the UK on tier 5 religious worker visas for another purpose? Where is the evidence that ministers of religion are coming in large numbers to the UK to preach, despite not having the English language skills necessary to do so? Is it not a matter for the parish to determine whether a priest or a minister has the appropriate level of English to preach to their congregation? The alternative in many cases is that services will simply not go ahead at all, and we all know the impact that can have when people, many of them elderly or at risk of social isolation and loneliness, lose out on the opportunity to come together as a community to worship, to support one another, and to seek spiritual and practical help.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

My constituents, particularly those at the Sikh gurdwara, rely on tier 5 for religious workers to come in. They do not want the tier 2 so that their religious workers can be here a long time, and neither do they want to stay indefinitely. It really is a short-term issue and religious workers are being absolutely excluded. In my constituency they have already spent more than £1,000, having been refused a visa while the change of policy went through. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need something in the interim, a bit like the old tier 5, so that short-term religious workers can come in and read from the holy book, which is what they need to do? They are not lecturers or cultural exchange people; they are religious workers who do not want to stay here for a long time.

[Ged Killen]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I absolutely agree. Another senseless decision seems to be based once again on the ideology of the Conservative party, rather than on any evidence. The Catholic Church in Scotland is in no doubt whatever that the changes will mean fewer priests will be able to come to Scotland to support local parishes. Perhaps the Minister can tell us, if he is aware, what assessment has been made of the likely impact of the changes. How many people have been refused under the new system who would have been granted a visa under the old one? Is the Home Office aware of how many other people are likely to be refused entry at a later date?

We all have casework that demonstrates how often the Home Office gets decisions wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) raised in a debate in this place just a few weeks ago concerns revealed in the Financial Times that the Home Office is using algorithms to process visa applications. Many of my constituents have had applications inexplicably refused, usually because of Home Office errors, which were later overturned following an intervention from my office. As the hon. Member for Glasgow East said earlier, we do not want to get into the wider debate, but I will mention the recent example of my constituent Sabir Zazai, the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council. He was being honoured by Glasgow University for 20 years of remarkable contribution to civil society, but his father almost missed out on going to the graduation ceremony, where he was to receive his honorary doctorate, because he was refused a visit visa. That is exactly the type of case that speaks to the heart of the issue that we are talking about today, although we are talking about a different tier of visas.

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Will the hon. Gentleman speak to the actual motion?

[Ged Killen]

I apologise, Mr Gapes, but it does speak to the wider issue where mistakes are made all the time. We already have an under-resourced Home Office, which is why we get so many mistakes, making decisions that are not based on any logic, evidence or fairness, but on ideology, and often getting the decisions wrong and causing enormous hurt to individuals and families. In this case we are talking about what was a relatively straightforward process for ministers of religion to come to this country and we are making it needlessly more complicated, which will inevitably lead to more incorrect decisions and will have a huge impact on local parishes up and down the country.

We are left with the question of why we are doing this. What problem are the Government attempting to fix? We know the problems they will create: parishes in constituencies such as Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be unable to maintain the high level of service that they offer in communities that often badly need it. Coffee mornings, youth clubs, bingo nights, food banks and counselling services are all compromised by the changes. I ask the Minister to convey to the Immigration Minister the concerns raised today, and I ask them to seriously reconsider the decision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

I certainly do not think that is the case. If I understand the hon. Gentleman’s line of thinking—it has not been made explicit—he needs to recognise that the original instinct came from the previous Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, in terms of the integrated communities strategy. That might possibly undermine the hon. Gentleman’s point.

With your permission, Mr Gapes, I shall try to answer directly the fundamental question of the what and the why for the policy. I have set out that the new requirement is for individuals seeking to enter the UK as a minister of religion to use tier 2, demonstrating their command of the English language. We are also introducing, as has been noted, cooling-off periods for the tier 5 religious worker and charity worker routes. Applicants who have held a visa in one of those categories will not be permitted to hold another visa in the same category for 12 months after expiry of their leave. The immigration rules had previously permitted tier 5 religious workers to fill roles that may include preaching, pastoral work and non-pastoral work. That allowed an applicant to come to the UK and fill a role as a minister of religion without demonstrating an ability to speak English. That is no longer possible and, as we have discussed, applicants must use tier 2 to accommodate that.

The cooling-off period for the tier 5 religious and charity worker categories was introduced because we had become aware of a small but increasing number of religious and charity workers who were living in the UK on a near permanent basis, returning overseas for only a brief period to renew their visa. On the point that was made, I do not detect in the change and I am certainly not aware that underlying that are concerns about security. It is more concerns, as I said, about people using the system to live in the UK on a near permanent basis, which was not the original intention.

The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), and others asked about the process of consultation. There is a sense that people have been bounced into this and that the ground was not prepared, so let me restate that the changes were included in the “Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper”, which was published on 14 March 2018. Stakeholders were invited to respond. The Minister for Immigration chose to write directly to faith leaders in December 2018, before the rules took effect. That letter set out the detail and explained the rationale behind the changes. As I have said, the Minister for Immigration is extremely clear about her wish to hear directly from religious leaders themselves, and that is the context of the meeting that she is chairing next week. She wants to listen to concerns and discuss the future system.

The Government therefore feel that there was consultation and communication. To what degree the messages have been absorbed and people have focused on them is obviously open to debate. It is quite possible that people have started to focus on them only as we have got closer to the time when applications are made and positions need to be filled. We understand that, but the Government’s view is that we did engage, communicate and consult, and if people have problems, we need to see the evidence; the process needs to be evidence-led. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) stirred the debate up, but he also made the important point that in the Anglican community, there does not seem to be an issue. The Government must listen to evidence, but those with problems and concerns must present evidence in those discussions.

[Ged Killen]

I am glad that the Minister is talking about evidence, because he was also asked in the course of the debate what evidence the changes were built on. It seems to me that the Home Office was trying to fix a problem that did not exist and has ended up creating a whole range of new problems. Is there an evidence base? I appreciate that the Minister is up against it today, but does he have in front of him an evidence base that was used to inform the decision?

[Mr Hurd]

I am grateful for the empathy shown by the hon. Gentleman in saying that I am up against it. He should come to more police debates.

The changes that seem to be causing the most difficulty for hon. Members are the changes to the visa arrangement from tier 5 to tier 2. I have tried to explain that these changes are rooted in the strategy incubated in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which focuses on the importance of reinforcing the need for English language skills and is rooted in a policy directed at greater social cohesion. In relation to the cooling-off period for tier 5, I think I was clear that that was driven by evidence of a small but growing misuse of that system, with people effectively here on a permanent basis. [Interruption.] I have been asked a straight question, and that is a straight answer.