Immigration Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that members of the public will say it is right that we are fair to people living in the UK and to those who have come here legally, and that we ensure that those who are here illegally do not find it easy to stay and that we are able to remove them.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

A lot of the individual sanctions will be dealt with by statutory instruments. So far it is clear that if a landlord fails to comply and lets a property, they will face a potential fine of £3,000 for each disqualified adult allowed to occupy the property. What sanctions, fines or prison sentence will be given to a doctor or nurse who treats, or a vicar who marries, a disqualified adult?

[Mrs May]

We are not talking about people not being able to receive treatment in the national health service. We are talking about two things in the NHS. First, when people come here and use the NHS, we will ensure that the NHS recovers the money from their country that it should be recovering. It has not been doing that as well as it should be. Secondly, when people come to stay here for a limited period—for more than six months, but not permanently—we will ask them to pay a surcharge to reflect the fact that they might use public services when they are here.

The Bill will increase the marriage and civil partnership notice period to 28 days—

[John McDonnell]

Will the Home Secretary answer the question?

[Mrs May]

I have tried to explain the point about sanctions in the NHS by pointing out that the hon. Gentleman’s assumption about the system that we are putting in place appears to be incorrect. He also mentioned members of the clergy who conduct sham marriages. If he looks back at the press from the past couple of years, he will see that members of the clergy have been arrested and prosecuted for conducting sham marriages on purpose.

The Bill will increase the marriage and civil partnership notice period to 28 days in England and Wales, and allow for it to be extended to 70 days when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a marriage or civil partnership is a sham. The Home Office will investigate the genuineness of the couple’s relationship and consider taking immigration enforcement action when we believe it to be a sham. If the couple do not comply with the investigation, we will prevent a marriage from taking place. Should a sham marriage or civil partnership go ahead, couples will not gain an immigration advantage, but will be removed or prosecuted.

Fixing the immigration system cannot be done overnight. There were too many problems with the system that we inherited for that to be possible. However, the Bill will help us further along the road. It is frankly ridiculous that the Government have to operate such a complex system to deal with foreigners who fail to abide by our laws. It is ridiculous that the odds are stacked in favour of illegal migrants. It is unacceptable that hard-working taxpayers have to compete with people who have no right to be here. The Bill will begin to address those absurdities and restore balance. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I oppose the Bill and will vote against it because I think that it will be defined, in practice, as a racist Bill and that that will have implications for society. I believe that the Bill is the result of electoral positioning; it is not about good governance or the long-term interests of the country. I fear for our long-term interests if we are to be governed by prejudice in this way. I abhor the society that the Bill seeks to create.

Like many Members, I represent a diverse, multicultural constituency. My west London constituency contains Heathrow and two detention centres, Harmondsworth and Colnbrook. I am often the last representative voice that detainees have recourse to before they are removed from the country. I have been visiting Harmondsworth for nearly 40 years. I remember when it was just a couple of Nissen huts with a dozen people in them. There are now two prison-like institutions that detain 1,000 people, most of whom have committed no crime whatever.

For many, the migrant’s story is one of desperation. People come from war zones or, like my Irish grandfather, areas of poverty simply to work and lift themselves out of poverty. I am fearful of what the Bill will do to the society that greets those people. In effect, it begins to echo some of the pass laws of apartheid South Africa. It is a society—

[Mr Harper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

No, I want to get this on the record. It is a society that echoes those pass laws, a society in which people can be confronted—stopped in the street—and asked for their documentation.

[Mr Harper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

No, I want to get this on the record. It is society in which people can be asked for their documentation to prove their identity and status.

Under the Bill, immigration officers will be able to use physical force for all their powers. I have been involved in cases that concern the exercise of physical force. In one case a person was killed, and in others people have been seriously injured as a result of the physical force used in removals. Time and again, concerns have been expressed to the Government about the lack of training for those staff and about the brutality that has taken place as a result, and yet in this Bill we are extending the use of physical force to all immigration officers in exercising their powers.

Many fear, and I do too, that with the removal of the directions notices, so there is no clear process of informing people when they are to leave the country and what their destination is, we are going back to the process of dawn raids where vans turn up and drag people and families out of their homes. One of the first cases I dealt with after being elected as a Member of Parliament involved an elderly lady who came to my constituency surgery because the family next to her had been dragged out of their house at 6 o’clock in the morning, children and all. She went into the house, obtained the children’s teddy bears and followed the van to Harmondsworth so the children at least had their toys. Is that the society we are returning to as a result of this proposed legislation?

I believe that the Bill will result in the escalation of detention. It will make it more difficult to challenge detention, to obtain bail and to secure appeals. As was said earlier, a third of appeals usually win, with nearly 50% winning entry clearance appeals. The Bill will mean that more people will be detained.

What is detention like? I refer people to the report of the independent monitoring board of Harmondsworth. These are volunteers appointed by the Minister, reporting to the Minister. Its latest report, from April 2013, is worth reading. It says that many people handle detention stoically, but that many others suffer intense distress. Many are mentally ill. They self-harm. We have had suicide attempts time and again in Harmondsworth and in Colnbrook. At the last count, last year 125 people were assessed under rule 35 by doctors who found that their health was suffering so badly that they should not be detained. Many Members know what rule 35 is: it means that the person should automatically be released. Of the 125 people so designated by doctors in Harmondsworth last year, only 12 were released. One was released because of ill-health, went to Hillingdon hospital and died soon after. That is what detention means. That is the type of suffering the Bill will increase, yet 20% of people in the detention centre get released back into the community. Some have been detained for a long time. I refer back to the report published in April. Two of those people had been detained since 2008, and 38 had been detained for more than a year. For many people, detention is not just a short-term measure before removal.

I am concerned about what the Bill will mean for the wider community. Nearly 50% of my constituents are black or people of colour. The Bill will mean that any person who is black, is of colour or who just looks foreign will be challenged. They will be challenged by bank managers and landlords, and by the vicar if they want to get married. They will also be challenged if they apply for legal aid. I find that offensive. I voted against identity cards in this House when my own Government brought them forward. The Bill will yet again bring the process of ID cards forward. There will be no ID cards for white people; it will be ID cards for black people, people of colour, or people who look slightly foreign or who have a foreign accent. That is what the Bill will do.

I find it offensive that the Bill will push more people to the margins. In my constituency, I have enough problems with Rachmanite landlords as it is, with people living in appalling overcrowded conditions and being charged too much. The Bill will create a shadow market, where people who are unable to secure accommodation through some landlords will have to go to others with higher rents. There will be a system of blackmail for those rents by those landlords.

What if people cannot get a roof over their heads? Where do they go? They go to the streets. This is an immigration policy of destitution, isn’t it? Let us be frank about that. If people cannot get a roof over their heads, they go on to the street or are forced out of the country. I deal with many people who would like to leave the country, but cannot even get their papers out of the black hole of the Home Office.

The banks, the landlords, the driving licence agency and so on will be only the first step in this process of introduction of these pass laws. We know from leaks from the Department for Education, which were exposed in The Guardian earlier this year, that the Government wanted to introduce this sort of system by having teachers check the nationality of their pupils.

[Mr Harper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

No. I am not giving way.

What happens now for people who are sick? They go to their GPs, and, yes, they will be treated, but what about the next stage as a result of this Bill? This is the first step. Charges are being introduced and people will be checked to see whether they have a visa and have paid the charge, but the next step will inevitably involve GPs. What happens if nurses and doctors want to fulfil their Hippocratic oath? Will they be fined or imprisoned as landlords will be?

I am concerned about the society we are creating, and about the premise on which the Bill is being introduced. When it comes to the reality, as MP after MP will demonstrate—particularly London MPs—a documentation check will take place, but many of our constituents have no documentation, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, many have not applied for passports. Others live chaotic lives, and many, as a result of going through the system, have mental health problems and do not have control of their documentation. As I have said time and again, that is a result of not even being able to get their papers back from the Home Office.

The Bill will create a society that is lacking in compassion, brutal, and lacking in humanity and respect for civil liberties, a two-tier apartheid society that flies in the face of, and is incompatible with, everything that British people associate with their country: compassion, rights, mutual respect, and, yes, support for the underdog. The Bill is derived from the gutter politics of Lynton Crosby; it is an attack on immigrants because supposedly that plays well in British politics. I think that is a fundamental misjudgment of the British people, their values and their decency. I will vote against the Bill because I believe that bringing it forward in this House degrades this House.