Immigration

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I want to concentrate on the issues that education—particularly further and higher education in Scotland—has experienced and could experience as a result of a hard Brexit. First, I would like to talk about the post-study work visa, especially in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on photonics. Right across the central belt of Scotland, we have an extremely large amount of strength and expertise in photonics, but photonics and quantum technology are very sensitive to developments in the market. We are currently bringing our international students here, training them up and ensuring that they have the necessary intellectual capacity, but then sending them home to their own countries so that they can challenge or work against companies in our own constituencies. What we should be doing with these talented people is ensuring that they stay to contribute to our economies and that that intellectual property is not lost to our competitors and those who would seek to undermine those companies.

We know that international students are a huge benefit to our local economy, and they pay fees of up to £35,000 per annum. That is a massive amount of money for them, so coming here to do a course—particularly a longer course—as an international student is a huge financial investment. When it comes to their graduation, however, what do we say to their parents? We say, “Well, actually, there’s no guarantee that you can come to the graduation ceremony and go home again. So although you have paid the best part of £100,000 for your child’s education, we’re not even going to allow you to come and join in the celebration of their graduation.” That is shameful.

Conservative Members have talked a lot about the £30,000 salary threshold, and there have been many strong words about that this afternoon, so I urge the Members who have raised concerns about the threshold to join us in voting against it. We know that £30,000 is no indication of the skills of a particular person or of a particular sector. When the White Paper was first published, I asked a series of written questions about what was meant by low, medium and high-skilled positions. I was told that high skills equated to degree level, that medium skills equated to college level or A-level, and that low skills would describe somebody whose highest qualification was at GCSE level, or in Scotland, National 5 level. That was how the Government were designating skills, but I know many people with degrees who do not command salaries of £30,000. We also know that salaries in Scotland are significantly lower than in the south-east of England. Once again, policies are being developed that are particular to one area of the UK and do not take into account the requirements of others.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady makes a strong case on income thresholds. Does she agree that the minimum income rule, which continues to divide families in a spouse visa situation, is equally disgraceful? Many people in my constituency earn nowhere near £18,600. It is yet another example of the hostile environment created by the Government.

[Carol Monaghan]

It is £18,600 if they do not have any children; if they do, it is even greater. If they have children, we put in extra barriers to ensure that those families cannot be together. It is utterly disgraceful.

Many people in research and academia will not come close to the salary threshold of £30,000, such as early career researchers, technicians and many of the EU nationals working in our universities. We should be rolling out the red carpet for such people and doing everything in our power to ensure that they stay, contribute to the success of our universities, and continue to contribute to our communities. Yet once again, we put barriers in place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) mentioned Professor Alison Phipps, the UNESCO chair at the University of Glasgow. I will say a little more about her. Many of the projects that she is involved in are funded by the Department for International Development. The UK Government are funding those international projects, yet the academics involved in them—partners across Asia, the middle east and Africa—are unable to come and be part of that collaboration.

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[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman is correct, and I see it regularly—week in, week out—in my surgeries.

People who have visited the UK on multiple occasions without incident and with no problems, and who are well able to afford the cost of supporting themselves when they come to visit—not that their family would not support them, anyway, because they are guests—are refused time and again. It is offensive, and people are hurt by this. They miss out on family visits and family occasions such as weddings and graduations. They miss out on so much family life that we all take for granted. If any of us wanted to go to any of their countries, we would be allowed to travel. That is the inherent racism of the Home Office and its policies.

[Imran Hussain]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case, particularly on visitor visas and the Home Office’s poor decision making. I dealt with a case in which there was a discrepancy of one penny between the P60 and other evidence, so the application was refused and the person could not attend an important family wedding. Again, that illustrates the hostile environment created by this Government through the back door.

[Alison Thewliss]

It does, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. I see this day in and day out at my surgeries.

More recently, a case has been highlighted in the press—it very much seems that the press is the way to go for those with a complaint about the Home Office, and if I were to do that the pages of all the Scottish newspapers would be full of my constituents—of a group of blind musicians who came over from Chennai as part of a British Council, Creative Scotland and Scottish Government-funded project. They were asked to come over from India as part of that project, and two of the musicians were refused entry. These two blind musicians were told that they did not have sufficient reason to go back to India after the trip. Their carers were allowed in, but these people with disabilities were not. Because their case was highlighted in the press, the decision magically and mysteriously changed, but it was too late because the event had passed.

The group are now £4,000 out of pocket for flights that had to be cancelled. Will the Minister compensate this group of musicians from Chennai who were not able to travel to take part in a British Government project? That is no less than they deserve. She has wasted taxpayers’ money, and she has wasted these young people’s opportunity by refusing them entry and then cynically changing the decision when the case appeared in the press.

I have good grounds to believe that the Government pay attention to the cases that appear in the press and change their decisions. The UK Government deemed a number of people in the highly skilled migrants group, because they needed small and legitimate changes to their tax returns, to be in some way of bad character and a threat to national security under paragraph 322(5) of the Home Office rules.

The cases that I have highlighted in the press, and the cases of constituents who were on “Channel 4 News” and in the newspapers, were decided a full six months quicker than those of constituents whose cases I could not put into the press due to sensitivity. I would like an explanation from the Minister of why very similar cases, with very similar circumstances, were differently decided because two of them were in the media and two of them were not. The UK Government’s decision-making process on this is deeply disturbing.

The same goes for many other cases I have highlighted in the Scottish press. I have a lot of reason to be thankful to people in the Scottish media, at The National and at other publications in Scotland, because they have repeatedly highlighted the terrible decisions made by the Home Office.

I chair the new all-party parliamentary group on immigration detention, and trauma has been caused to my constituents by persistent and arbitrary detention. There seems to be a modern-day cat and mouse act, with people being arrested under immigration detention and then let go. The impact on those individuals is traumatic and appalling, and these are people who have been through a huge amount of trauma already. They have been tortured and trafficked. They have seen things that none of us would ever want to see, and they are being locked up with no time limit.

People can accept being in prison if they have done something wrong, and they know when their sentence will end, but people in this country, quite uniquely, are held in immigration detention with no end in sight. I ask the Minister to consider why she thinks that is fair. I pay tribute to the strength and dignity of those with experience of immigration detention who came to last night’s launch of the all-party group to tell their stories. People in arbitrary detention do not know for how long they will be locked up, even though they have done nothing wrong. That is a stain on this Government and previous Governments who endorsed places like Dungavel.

We need to do so much more to highlight the plight of people held in immigration detention. We must make sure that we do all we can for people who come to this country fleeing persecution and FGM and looking for a place of sanctuary. We must not, by this Government’s actions, cause them further trauma and further pain. Instead, we must protect them and welcome them with open arms.

We are celebrating a refugee festival in Scotland this week. We are celebrating all the things that refugees and asylum seekers bring to this country, and the Government would do well to attend more such events to celebrate people, rather than locking them up, detaining them and causing them pain.

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[Caroline Nokes]

With the leave of the House, I will wind up the debate, as well as having opened it for the Government.

We have had an important debate that has highlighted the scale of activity that the borders, immigration and citizenship system undertakes and the challenges it faces. It has been wide ranging, with Members raising policy issues and individual cases. For every case that Members have rightly raised, there are thousands more people who are satisfied with their experience of the immigration system. I am proud of the hard work and dedication of officials in the Home Office. It is wrong—wholly wrong—to try to characterise those who work for the Home Office, in some instances doing incredibly difficult and stressful jobs, as in any way uncaring or inhumane.

I have listened carefully to Members’ contributions, and I welcome the thoughts and views put forward in today’s debate. I will highlight some of the comments that I thought were particularly insightful and useful.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) made an impassioned speech about immigration being a reserved matter, and he and I of course believe that it should stay that way. He made some interesting points about the way we describe skilled and unskilled labour within the immigration system, and as part of the White Paper process and the future system, I think we have to find better ways to articulate that. It is not easy to describe skills only in terms of qualifications or salary levels, and I have certainly been guided by the engagement we have done during the last few months. In particular, those in the social care industry certainly have many skills that perhaps do not fall neatly into the immigration categories. I have spent much time over the last six months listening to the Scottish farmer, the Cumbrian hotelier and the Bristolian tech entrepreneur, and I absolutely recognise that we need to be adaptive. Our economy is changing, and jobs exist today that did not exist five years ago. In the same way, there will be jobs in five years’ time that we have not even dreamed of today.

The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) spoke at quite some length and used the word “arbitrary” repeatedly, but it is absolutely not the case that we have an arbitrary system. We work very hard to make sure that the decisions we make are the right ones, and there is indeed a great deal of work still to be done to make sure that we improve.

[Imran Hussain]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Nokes]

No, I am sorry, but I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman was not here at the start, and I have a lot of ground to cover in just a little time.

Last summer, I very much enjoyed going to Dundee and hosting a roundtable with people working particularly in the tech sector and the gaming industry. It is important that we reflect on the issues and views not just in a range of different sectors across industry, but of course in the different parts of the United Kingdom—both the individual countries of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the different regions.

My superb, I have to say, Scottish hon. Friends may not have the length of service of the hon. Member for Dundee East, but I do not think we should in any way see length of service as a proxy for skill. They have certainly shown not only that they have grasped the issues but that they can carry their voice to Government and talk sense in a constructive and persuasive manner. This week, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has extended the MAC’s commission to looking again at salary thresholds. I commend all those who made the point that we should do that. Indeed, some of them appear to have missed the fact that we are doing it.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) made, to be quite frank, some outrageous allegations. She has called me “shabby” and accused the Government of being “racist”. I reject her very simple and, to be quite frank, nasty attitude on these points. I have spent the last 17 months making sure that we talk about immigration in a thoughtful and humane way, and I have to say that I have gone to quite some lengths to reach out across the House and listen to different views. I do not think that she either listened to or understood my opening comments, when I talked about the record high number of visitor visas granted—2.3 million last year, up 9%—

[Imran Hussain]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Nokes]

I am sorry, but I have made it clear to the hon. Gentleman that I have a lot of ground to cover, and he was not here for the bulk of the debate.

The grant rate of visitor visas is in the region of 88%, and the characterisation of the UK by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith is one I simply do not recognise. It was a description that, to be frank, perfectly encapsulated her party’s doom and gloom personality: never has a glass of whisky been more half-empty.

My hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) had some very interesting quotes not only from the First Minister of Scotland, but from one of the SNP’s recently elected MEPs. The concerns he raised suggesting it was in any way appropriate—[Interruption.]