Draft Immigration Act 2014 (Current Accounts) (Excluded Accounts and Notification Requirements) Regulations 2016

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 General Committees

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding over our considerations this morning, Mr Nuttall. I apologise to the Minister if he has already covered this point but I will be brief. My concern reinforces that articulated by the two shadow spokespersons.

Over many years, I have seen constituents failed by the asylum system. They have been declared illegal but subsequently identified errors in the paperwork made by the Home Office, the immigration authorities or the tribunal. I assume that under these regulations they would be regarded as illegals. Numerous constituents, on a rehearing or appeal, have subsequently demonstrated that they are entitled to be in this country and ought not to have been classified as illegal in the first instance. However, because they are illegal they are ruled not to have access to any state funds or benefits. They live on charity from family and friends, churches and local mosques. I fear that the regulations, robbing those few who do have some bank funds and accounts, could exacerbate the situation and make more people destitute, particularly those who can ultimately demonstrate that they have a right to be here.

To echo my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, this looks like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I will support my Front-Bench colleagues in any Division they call, unless the Minister can reassure us that more people who are entitled to be here but were initially ruled illegal will not be thrown into greater destitution through not being able to work until their case is solved and not being entitled to access benefits while what little funds they may be able to call on are frozen.

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[Simon Kirby]

My understanding is that the Home Office can consider any exceptional circumstances. If I have heard correctly, my hon. Friend’s case involved an appeal. Someone appealing a decision would not be subject to this legislation in the first case. I reiterate that only those people who have no right to remain and who have exhausted all the avenues available to them will be subject to it.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My point is that I have had a number of constituents over the years who have exhausted, or apparently exhausted, those avenues and been declared illegal, who have then found—to pick up on the comment made by the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield—another route to challenge the decision. Sometimes they are straightforwardly delaying until such time as they can succeed; in some instances, they are not delaying, and genuinely new evidence has come to light, or an error has been identified.

The period between being declared illegal and winning that particular point of law or correcting data that the Home Office has got wrong can be years. What the Minister is saying is that during the course of those years, they will not be able to access what little money they might have in a bank account, and will rely on the charity of friends and family, churches, food banks and mosques. To reply to the point made by the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, we are on this planet; we just disagree with the points that he is putting forward.

[Simon Kirby]

The hon. Gentleman raises a valuable point. My understanding is that if that were the case, the Home Office would be open to argument. The instrument is a small piece of legislation in a wide range of tools. I feel obliged to mention the £140 million announced at the Conservative party conference for a controlling migration fund specifically designed to ease the pressures on public services in areas of high immigration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey raised an alternative perspective. It is about getting the balance right and providing the welcome that the UK is famous for—not putting up barriers, being outward-facing and globally-looking—while, at the same time, providing a degree of fairness when it comes to people who should not remain in this country.