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

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Q My question is principally directed to the Children’s Society. Obviously, at the moment, the Government have set about waiving the charge for the EU settlement scheme, but there is still a power in clause 4(5) of the Bill that allows the modification of provisions on the imposition of fees and charges. I am interested in how that relates to vulnerable children, especially looked-after children. First, what are the barriers to those children being able to register? Secondly, what can the Home Office do to assist with those children to ensure that they are registered under the scheme as they are entitled to be?

Ilona Pinter: As I mentioned before, and as Steve mentioned, we are concerned about the significant fees, not just in relation to citizenship registration but more broadly. However, as the Bill is focused on EEA nationals, there is an opportunity here to tackle citizenship registration fees, which are more than £1,000 per child. That makes it prohibitive for many families to be able to acquire those rights, which may be in the child’s best interests. The EU settlement scheme will apply to many children, but it may not be in the child’s best interests to have EU settled status because citizenship provides for greater protection.

We really welcome the Government waiving the fees for the EU settlement scheme. That will help a lot of families for sure, particularly given the levels of poverty among EEA nationals and families, but the risk is that the costs will then be shifted on to other areas. I think there is a real concern in the sector about what happens come April, when the fees normally go up. That is one of the issues that is highlighted with the fees—that there is very little scrutiny and oversight around fee regulation, which is one of our concerns going forward with this kind of approach. For instance, there was no children’s rights impact assessment on fees, including for looked-after children, which you asked about.

There is not currently a waiver for citizenship fees, so local authorities are having to pick up the bill. Interestingly, the issue of the EU settlement scheme came up at the Home Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday. One of the things that was flagged up in that session and in the beta testing review report is that, for the local authorities involved in that second phase of testing, quite a lot of them—although the numbers are not given, and we would urge the Committee to ask questions about that—said that in many cases, children did not have their original passports, which would be the first stumbling block for the EU settlement scheme. Of course, local authorities are going to have to think about not only settling children’s status but settling their citizenship, because as corporate parents, they have to act in the best interests of the child, as any other parent would. That will often mean for that child to apply for citizenship rather than for the EU settlement scheme.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Q I would like to bring us back to the issue of 28 days and the time-limited detention. I do not think anyone in this room wants to see unnecessarily long detention. You have all talked about how the system is not robust enough. If a case cannot be determined within 28 days, what rights do you think the applicant should be given?

Steve Valdez-Symonds: It is wrong, firstly, to think of the case being determined within 28 days. I think you have got to think about the whole of the time in which you are talking about an applicant. It is also quite dangerous to think of applicants, too. People who are taken into detention include people who have been through a process and have been applicants and may still be applicants; they also include people who did not even know they had an issue with the immigration services. Think back to the Windrush scandal. People were picked up who were perfectly entitled to be here and had not had any thought that over the last several decades they had had any problem with the immigration system, and they found themselves in detention. There is a whole range of issues to consider in terms of what is going on here.

From our point of view, the straightforward point is that detention is supposed to be for two specific purposes only. The most important one is to effect a lawful removal. At the moment, we have large-scale routine use of a very extreme power. Going back to the first question, we have a system that clearly is not—if you want to use the word—robust enough to exercise the power fairly and sensibly, let alone humanely, for the thousands of people it is imposed on. If we had a system that was properly directed towards using such powers appropriately at the time that it was appropriate to use them, perhaps we would have a robust system. Perhaps many fewer people would end up being detained. Perhaps the smaller number of people who were detained would be those whom the system was lawfully seeking to remove and had some real potential of removing within what should be a very short period of time.

[Mrs Badenoch]

Q How much of the system not being robust enough do you think is due to the fact that there is such a high volume of immigration cases that need to be dealt with?

Steve Valdez-Symonds: I think the aspects go far and wide. You have made the immigration rules so incredibly complex over the last many years; immigration appeals for so many people have been taken away; legal aid is not available to so many people, even to understand what their situation is, including, as it happens, people who are entitled to British citizenship but cannot get legal aid to establish their citizenship rights. All of those things make for a very complex system, which, unfortunately, even the Home Office frequently does not understand. The courts have not only found that this system is so byzantine but have had to rule in cases where the Home Office has not been able to present a consistent understanding of the rules it is trying to operate.

[Mrs Badenoch]

Q I am sorry to stop you, but I sense there is a lot passion.

Steve Valdez-Symonds: There is a lot of passion, yes.

[Mrs Badenoch]

Q But it sounds like you are hectoring me. I would actually like you to take some of the emotion out of your answers and just stick to the facts, please.

Steve Valdez-Symonds: I am sorry to have given that impression. I certainly did not mean to do that. I apologise to the Committee more generally. All I would say is that the system, over a very long period of time—this is not just a matter of this Administration; it is years and decades—has become very complex and safeguards have been taken away from people. If you want to understand how people end up in detention in the situations that I have been concerned about, there are myriad reasons why this system does not work, long before detention even happens.

Bella Sankey: Could I just add to that question? You asked why the system is not robust enough. The main reason for that at the moment is that there is not a proper independent check on it. In other areas where we allow the state to deprive people of liberty, we always ensure that there is an independent check on the decision to do so. Take the criminal justice system, for example. A suspect cannot be held for longer than 96 hours and not without being charged. Within that 96-hour period, a magistrate’s approval is required for incremental extensions to somebody’s detention. At the moment, in our immigration system there is nothing comparable to that. There are bail hearings that have recently been introduced at the four-month stage, but four months is already an extraordinarily long time, particularly for vulnerable people.

To give a quick, illustrative example, earlier this week, the Minister’s Department conceded that it had been unlawfully detaining an incredibly vulnerable Chinese victim of trafficking for six months. This woman was picked up at a brothel after a tip-off from a member of the public that there was a woman there who seemed like she did not want to be there. When she was found, there were all the indicators you might expect for a trafficking victim. She had no passport, she was worried about being in debt to other people, and she had no friends or family in the UK. But instead of being treated as a victim of potential modern-day slavery and trafficking, she was taken to a detention centre and held for six months. She exhibited signs of extreme distress. She had psychotic episodes. She was walking around in her underwear and screaming, and talking about being burned by a man with hot water.

Despite all of the internal safeguards that are apparently in place, that woman was not released for six months. The Home Office has now conceded unlawful detention. These sorts of cases are happening all the time. I can assure the Committee that there will be people in detention right now in that same situation. That will continue unless there is a statutory end date that will force the Home Office to comply with its own policy and guidance.

[The Chair]

Colleagues, we only have 20 minutes left of this session. I have five more colleagues wishing to ask questions and I wanted to give the Minister time to ask something at the end, so we really have to speed this up.