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

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Department: Home Office
Tim Loughton Portrait Tim Loughton
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The hon. Gentleman is right. Actually, the Government have said all along that that is their intention. I have had meetings with many Immigration Ministers over the last few years. I remember going to see the then Immigration Minister, who is now the Northern Ireland Secretary, after Baroness Morgan and I visited Athens with UNICEF. We visited some of the camps out there and saw some of the children who would qualify for this scheme. We were given clear undertakings that it was absolutely the Government’s intention to make sure that after we came out of the EU, when Dublin III no longer covered the United Kingdom, we would have a scheme at least as good as what there is now.

Again, we are talking about just a few hundred children. We are not talking about attracting thousands of children to this country; it is a few hundred specifically identified children—usually through some of our agencies operating in refugee camps and around the world—who have family links in this country. In some cases, those will be their only family links. They may have lost their parents in the civil war in Syria; they may be at the hands of people traffickers, fleeing abuse, fleeing war zones or whatever, and it may be that a brother, an uncle or an aunt is the only family member they have left and that that person is legally in the United Kingdom. Those are some of the most vulnerable children whom we have done a fantastic job of giving a safe home to in recent years, and it is essential that we carry that scheme on. It is a mandatory scheme, and it is a scheme of which we should be hugely proud.

That is why now is the time for new clause 29. We have had fob-offs, frankly, over recent years about why it would not be appropriate to put this in legislation. We need a very clear statement and intent from the Government today that there will be a scheme in operation on 1 January. I know that it depends on negotiations, but if all else fails, we can put in place our own scheme that is at least as good as Dublin. That is what the new clause tries to achieve.

We have a great record in this area. We have taken almost 20,000 refugees under the Syrian scheme. We targeted 20,000; we have actually taken 19,768. We have invested more than £2.3 billion in Syrian refugees—more than any other country in the EU. We have filled the 480 Dubs places. We have a great record, so why on earth would we not want to make sure that we continue that great record for some of the most vulnerable children fleeing from danger, whom we have been able to afford safe and legal passage to join relatives in the United Kingdom?

That is what the new clause asks for. We have to do better. I and my constituents will not be able to understand it if we fail to give a strong commitment that this country continues to want to do the best by those really vulnerable children. For that reason, I support new clause 29 as well.

Holly Lynch Portrait Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
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It is a pleasure to return to the Chamber for the Report stage of this important Bill and to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). I will return later to the merits of new clauses 2 and 29, but I will focus my comments on the merits of new clauses 13 to 15, tabled by the Leader of the Opposition. I will also outline our support for several other new clauses that have appeal across the Labour Benches, not least new clause 1, the lead amendment in this group.

I am sorry that we could not persuade the Government to engage further with us on any of the amendments or new clauses that we tabled in Committee, but we have the opportunity on Report to make the case again for different approaches in certain areas. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke to new clause 13, which called on the Government to review “no recourse to public funds” with a focus on vulnerable groups, including those with children and victims of domestic violence. We had hoped that such a review would establish an evidence base allowing for a more informed parliamentary discussion on the broader issue.

In the immediate term, we have already called for “no recourse to public funds” to be suspended for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. On 21 April, we asked the Government to lift NRPF as a condition on a person’s migration status, in order to ensure that nobody was left behind in the public health effort undertaken to fight against coronavirus.

Stephen Timms Portrait Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
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My hon. Friend is right. “No recourse to public funds” is one reason for what is happening in Leicester. Is she aware that both the Home Affairs Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee, on a cross-party basis, unanimously called for the suspension of the “no recourse to public funds” restrictions for the duration of the pandemic?

Holly Lynch Portrait Holly Lynch
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My right hon. Friend, alongside the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, has done an awful lot of work in this area, not least with the support of the Prime Minister. In response to his question about NRPF on 27 May, the Prime Minister said:

“Clearly people who have worked hard for this country, who live and work here, should have support…we will see what we can do to help”.

My right hon. Friend was right to raise this important point. The Children’s Society estimates that about 1 million people and at least 100,000 children have no recourse to public funds. Although new clause 13 has been drafted to sit within the scope of the Bill, it would start to deliver on the spirit of the Prime Minister’s commitment.

Local authorities have already had instructions from central Government to this effect. On 26 March, Ministers from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote to all councils asking them to utilise alternative powers and funding to assist those with no recourse to public funds. People are, however, still facing destitution and a postcode lottery at the discretion of their local authority without a clear steer from the Home Office. With this in mind, we hope that new clause 13 will have the support of the House. It would prevent any extension of this condition to those who would lose their free movement rights for the course of the pandemic, and would ensure that NRPF could not be re-imposed without a proper parliamentary debate and a vote in both Houses.

Tim Farron Portrait Tim Farron
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In addition to the imposition and the hardship that comes from “no recourse to public funds”, there is the burden that many asylum seekers face when it comes to being able to work. Does the hon. Member agree that it is right that we give asylum seekers the right to work while they wait for their application to be heard, not least because it would save the public money and give those people the dignity of work and the ability to provide for their own families and to begin to integrate much earlier?

Holly Lynch Portrait Holly Lynch
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I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We spoke in favour of the “Lift the Ban” campaign, which would have given asylum seekers the right to work after six months of not receiving a decision on their asylum claims. He is absolutely right that that would restore a degree of dignity to those in the system who have skills and are willing to work and want to contribute to the communities that they call their new homes. He is right to raise that important point.

On new clause 14, we very much welcome the Government’s commitment to scrap the NHS surcharge for migrant health and care workers. However, given that the commitment was made more than a month ago and that, to date, no progress as to how it will be delivered has been forthcoming, we have tabled new clause 14, which has, once again, been crafted to sit within the scope of this legislation and would make a start on enshrining the commitment in law.

The fee was described as “appalling, immoral and monstrous” by Lord Patten, the former Conservative party chairman. The general secretary for the Royal College of Nursing, Dame Donna Kinnair, said,

“it is a shame it took this pandemic for the government to see sense.”

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and Unison have all written to the Prime Minister to ask for practical clarification on his commitment. I also asked the Minister at Committee stage for an update on rolling out the policy change, but we are no nearer to having any insight into what progress, if any, has been made.

We worked with EveryDoctor, the doctor-led campaigning organisation to reach out to the 25,000-plus doctors on their Facebook group. It started a poll on Friday asking doctors to let it know if they had had to pay the immigration health surcharge since 21 May. So far, we have heard back from 55 doctors—all 55 have had to pay the charge.

I spoke to three of those doctors this morning. I thank them for their service to the NHS in our hour of need. Upon hearing their stories of what we make them go through in order to stay in this country and work in our NHS, I was genuinely embarrassed. They have each changed their roles within the NHS over the last three months. The automatic visa extension only covers those who are in the same job. If someone is moving to or from a 12-month specialist training post, for example, which is common in the NHS, they need to apply for a new visa, as they will be transferring sponsor, even though the move is within the NHS. They will not get a new visa without first paying the health surcharge.

I heard from Dr Olivia Misquitta, who is switching to a training placement role from paediatrics and who has been asked to pay the health surcharge twice in seven months—the last time being just last week, on 24 June. She hopes that eventually she will be refunded. I also heard from Dr Ahmed Bani Sadara, from Pakistan, who is working in orthopaedics but starts his GP training in August. His change in visa means that, on 1 June, he had to pay the health surcharge for himself, his wife and his six-month-old daughter, having already been asked to pay the charge for his daughter when she was born in this country just six months ago.

Yvette Cooper Portrait Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
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Does my hon. Friend recognise that social care workers and NHS porters and cleaners—those who do some of the most important jobs on the covid frontline—have not been included in the free visa extension and, as a result, are also being pressured to pay the immigration surcharge? Does she agree that the free visa extension ought to be extended to cover the lowest paid staff in the NHS and social care?

Holly Lynch Portrait Holly Lynch
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I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. In her capacity as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, she has pushed for this issue a great deal, and I commend her for that work. I agree with her wholeheartedly.

In the long term, we need to look at the sponsorship issue. If medical professionals had simply the NHS as a sponsor, rather than individual trusts, that simple step would transform the visa system and the fees for those working on the frontline of healthcare provision.

On the health surcharge, we seek to press new clause 14 to a vote, unless we are given a clear steer and assurances about how and when the changes will come into effect, and how those who have had to pay the fee since the announcement was made will be reimbursed.

New clause 15 would quite simply exempt NHS employers from having to pay the immigration skills charge. As things stand, NHS trusts pay the skills charge for those coming to work in the NHS from countries outside the EU, and they will be expected to pay those costs for those coming from the EU after free movement ends. However, in the context of the NHS, where certain clinical skills are simply not available in the domestic labour pool, levelling a tax on NHS trusts for having no choice other than to plug their staff shortages from the international talent pool is nothing short of an outrage. An NHS trust cannot unilaterally decide to train more nurses from the domestic labour force, for example; it needs Government intervention to deliver that uplift.

We have clinical workforce shortages almost right across the board in the NHS, and that is while we have had free movement. We submitted freedom of information requests to 224 NHS hospital trusts in England, asking them how much they were losing from their budgets to pay these charges back to the Government. To give an indication of what some hospitals are paying out, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust told us that in just one year—the 2019-2020 financial year—it paid the Government £972,000. It has paid over £2 million in immigration skills charges since 2017. Over the past three financial years, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust had to pay the Government £961,000 in immigration skills charges. Only 21% of trusts have responded to the FOI request so far, but this tells us that nearly £13 million has been taken back out of NHS budgets and handed over to the Government since 2017. That is nearly £13 million from just 21% of the hospital trusts in England. The fact that some hospitals could be paying out nearly £1 million in immigration skills charges in a single year must surely be a sign that the system is not working as intended, and this is all while people have been able to come and work in the NHS under free movement, where fees would not have been applicable. That is about to come to an end. I urge the Minister to adopt new clause 15, to mitigate any further detrimental impact on the NHS workforce and to ensure that NHS funding stays in the NHS.

I will briefly touch on the two other changes we have proposed. Amendment 39 would time-limit the Henry VIII powers in the Bill. These powers have been widely criticised by experts, and efforts from both Labour and the Scottish National party in Committee to curb the powers or to ask the Government to state explicitly on the face of the Bill what they would be used for have been to no avail. Amendment 39 would tie them to the end date of the EU settlement scheme.

I want to take this opportunity to say that we also support new clause 29, tabled in the name of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), with cross-party support. This new clause would seek to continue the existing arrangements for unaccompanied child refugees and maintain our commitment to family reunion. I was reassured by the Minister’s positive response to the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) on this issue during the urgent question yesterday, and I hope that discussions can continue in that positive spirit. We also support new clauses 7 to 10, tabled in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which reflect the sustained cross-party appetite to ensure that immigration detention is limited to 28 days, bringing about an end to unfair and unjust indefinite detention.

We are also keen to support new clause 2, tabled in the name of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has already given his very articulate explanation as to why it matters so much. We tabled new clause 58 in Committee to the same effect as his new clause, seeking to grant settled status to all those eligible children who are currently in the care of local authorities or who are care leavers. I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has been able to share with the House some of the latest research from the Children’s Society, which foresees a bleak outlook if we do not take action on this important issue now, taking the responsibility from local authorities who are stretched as they have never been stretched before in order to make an application on behalf of a child. This is a cohort of children and young people who are our responsibility. We, the state, are acting as their legal guardians. They have already had the worst possible start in life, so let us do the best we can for them by at least giving them confidence in their immigration status.

As we have already heard through freedom of information requests, the Children’s Society identified a sample of 404 children who have had their status confirmed through the scheme, out of an estimated 9,000. Of those, 282 were granted settled status and 122 were granted pre-settled status. Given everything that those kids have been through, let us not sign them up for more years of paperwork and burdens of proof by giving them pre-settled status. Let us take all that uncertainty off the table for them by adopting new clause 2 and giving them indefinite leave to remain, as was so articulately outlined by the hon. Gentleman.

I very much hope that the Minister is open to the concerns that have been raised during the passage of the Bill and will no doubt be raised again this afternoon, but we are minded to take new clauses 13, 14 and 15 further if we are not satisfied that the Government are taking steps to mitigate the impact of the Bill and deliver on the promises that they have already made, not least to our brilliant NHS care workers.

David Davis Portrait Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
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I will speak to new clauses 7 to 10, but before I do, may I add my support to new clauses 2 and 29 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)?  As an ex-Brexit Secretary, I see no reason whatever to wait on the negotiation in order to take his clauses forward.

Today there is no limit on the amount of time for which people can be held in immigration detention in the United Kingdom. We are the only country in Europe that takes this stance. At the end of 2019, the individual detained in a holding centre for the longest period had been held for 1,002 days. In earlier years those numbers were even worse. These people are detained without trial or due process, oversight or basic freedoms, and they are carrying the debilitating psychological burden of having no idea when they will be released.

This flies in the face of centuries of British justice. Its operation has been severely criticised by the chief inspector of prisons, the chief inspector of borders, the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Law Society and the Bar Council—quite a bunch of radicals, I would say. As a result of this early criticism, the Home Office had to reduce the numbers in the system, for which it claimed credit in a briefing note issued this morning. This is an improvement towards bringing down the numbers, but is still nowhere near right. We need a 28-day limit on immigration detention, and that is the purpose of my new clauses.

The Government also claimed in that briefing note that 97% of the occupants of immigration holding centres are foreign national offenders. Well, that is technically true, since at the moment, under covid-19 emergency arrangements, we have temporarily put out into the community a significant majority of the people who were detained in holding centres, keeping in only the most serious cases. In fact, in normal times—to which we will presumably return when the covid-19 crisis is over—the average proportion of foreign national offenders who have been detained over five years is 22%. The figure is never more than 23% and is normally at 19% to 20%. That tells us that four out of five detainees in these centres have no criminal action against them whatever; they are innocent people.