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

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 4B.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to consider Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu of Lords amendment 4B.

[Kevin Foster]

Lords amendment 4B relates to family reunion and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I am sure that hon. Members will have in mind the tragic events in the channel last week. Let me reiterate very firmly that the Government are determined to end these dangerous, illegal and unnecessary crossings to ensure that lives are not lost and that ruthless criminal gangs no longer profit from this criminal activity.

As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary recently announced at the Conservative party conference, we intend to reform our broken asylum system to make it firm but fair. We intend to bring forward legislation next year to deliver this, allowing for a wider debate on the subject. Our reformed system will be fair and compassionate towards those who need our help by welcoming people through safe and legal routes. It will also be firm and stand up for the law-abiding majority by stopping the abuse of the system by those who raise no founded claims through protected routes but do so purely to frustrate the implementation of our immigration law and procedure.

Let me reassure hon. Members that the Government remain committed to the principle of family unity and to supporting vulnerable children. We have a very proud record of providing safety to those who need it through our asylum system and world-leading resettlement schemes, and we are determined that that continues. We have granted protection and other leave to more than 44,000 children seeking protection since 2010. The UK continues to be one of the highest recipients of asylum claims from unaccompanied children across Europe, receiving more claims than any EU member state in 2019, and 20% of all claims made in the EU are in the UK.

The Government understand the importance of this issue, and it is right that we continue to debate it. Lords amendment 4B is well-intentioned in seeking to ensure that adequate protection is in place for vulnerable asylum-seeking children. However, we have made a credible and serious offer to the EU on new arrangements for the family reunion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. It remains our goal to negotiate such an agreement. As my noble Friend Baroness Williams announced in the other place on 21 October, in the event of no negotiated outcome, we will pursue bilateral negotiations on post-transition migration issues with mutual interest countries, including on family reunion for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Government policy has not changed on this matter.

However, it is worth noting that the UK already provides safe and legal routes for people to join family members in the UK through our existing immigration rules, all of which are unaffected by our exit from the EU, as they apply globally. In the year ending June 2020, the Government issued 6,320 refugee family reunion visas and have issued more than 29,000 in the last five years. This shows that our existing refugee family reunion routes are working well, and these routes will continue to apply, including to people in the EU, after the transition period. Our resettlement schemes were the largest in Europe over the last five years, directly resettling more than 25,000 people from regions of conflict and instability, half of whom were children. During the debate in the other place on 21 October, the Government committed, as part of this vital work, to conduct a review of safe and legal routes into the UK, including those for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in EU member states to reunite with family members here in the United Kingdom.

The substantive amendment that the Government have tabled in lieu, amendment (a), makes important statutory commitments, demonstrating the Government’s assurances to review legal routes to the UK for people seeking protection in EU member states or seeking to come to the UK to make a protection claim, including for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to join their family members here in the United Kingdom; to publicly consult on legal routes for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the EU seeking to join family members in the UK; to lay a statement before Parliament providing further details of that review and public consultation within three months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent; and to prepare a report on the outcome of the review, publish it and lay it before Parliament. Amendments (b) and (c) concern commencement of the commitment in amendment (a) to lay a statement before Parliament and specify that it will come into force within three months of Royal Assent.

I trust Members will agree that amendment (a) in lieu is substantial and clearly demonstrates how seriously this Government take the issue of family unity for vulnerable children. It is important that we consider these routes, to discourage vulnerable children from making the dangerous and illegal journeys that can result in the kind of tragedy we saw last week. Due to the scope of the Bill, amendment (a) refers only to legal routes for those who have made an application for international protection in an EU member state or are seeking to come to the UK from a member state to claim protection here. However, I can confirm that the review we conduct will be concerned with legal routes from all countries, not just EU member states. That is in line with our new global approach to the future immigration system and ensures that there is no advantage to making a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean, often organised by criminal trafficking gangs. Those granted permission under these routes can instead travel safely—via scheduled air services, for example—to the United Kingdom.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Minister tells us that the system is working well and that it would be dangerous to change it, and for that reason, the Government are not going to change it. What purpose is served by a consultation in those circumstances?

[Kevin Foster]

We are happy to look at a proper review of the rules. Our current rules apply alongside Dublin for those who are within the EU. We think it is appropriate to take stock, as we are doing with the rest of our migration system, as our arrangements fundamentally change with the European Union. We are happy to make the commitment to review them for the future; that is part of the general stock-take we are doing. It is not unreasonable to highlight our record on resettlement and this country’s commitments and the actions it has taken, compared with the commentary we sometimes hear. I am sorry to hear that the right hon. Member does not see a review of the rules as the way forward, but I am sure that he and his colleagues will look to proactively and positively engage with the discussion that this amendment and the review will engender.

It is now essential that the Bill receives Royal Assent without further delay if key elements of the Government’s future border and immigration system, including the new skilled workers routes as well as social security co-ordination, are to be implemented as planned. Further delay would put at risk the ending of free movement at the end of the transition period, which means the UK would effectively continue to have free movement, but unreciprocated by the European Union, into 2021. We cannot accept a delay to that key manifesto commitment. I therefore hope that, for all the reasons I have outlined today, the House will now support our amendments (a), (b) and (c) in lieu, and the statutory commitments they contain, and disagree with the Lords in their amendment 4B.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I want to start by thanking the Minister for taking the time earlier this week to explain the Government’s amendments in lieu, and for writing to me and others today with further details. Although we do not have a problem with the Government’s amendments—on the contrary, we welcome the opportunity to review all the safe and legal routes available to those fleeing war, torture or persecution and who have grounds to seek asylum in the UK—the review offered still falls a long way short of the commitment that we have asked for in Lords amendment 4B.

The review is a welcome addition to the Bill, but the fact that it is to be introduced through an amendment in lieu of ours makes it feel somewhat hollow by comparison. The Minister will be aware that support for our amendment in the only slightly varying drafts in the other place, spearheaded so ably by Lord Dubs, has resulted in two significant Government defeats, and efforts in the Commons have consistently had support from Members on his own Back Benches. I want to thank them for their work on this, not least the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). He and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), through their work on the Home Affairs Committee, have championed the merits of continuing the routes for unaccompanied child refugees.

We ask the Minister one more time to reflect on why adopting the Dubs amendment in its entirely is not just critical but time-critical. We debate the amendment today with 56 days to go until the Dublin regulations end, and with them the lifeline they offer, and we fall back on the immigration rules. We also debate the merits of our amendment, as the Minister has already said, in the shadow of such tragedy in the English channel this year. The sinking of just one of those insecure boats just last week resulted in the loss of life of four people, two of them children who were just six and nine. A further 15 people were taken to hospital, and three more are missing, presumed dead, including the 15-month-old baby of the Iranian Kurd family who died. It is a truly harrowing reminder that people are making more and more desperate decisions as this Government’s squeeze on safe and legal routes continues. It demonstrates that the morally bankrupt traffickers, who allow children and adults alike to get into their dangerous boats and set off to sea in bad weather, will continue to exploit people in the worst possible ways unless we reopen and continue those safe and legal alternatives, family reunion being one of them.

The deliberations and ping-pong between the two Houses on the matter of family reunion or the question of accepting unaccompanied child refugees should not be politically contentious. We are a decent and humanitarian country that takes seriously the requirement, enshrined in international law, to consider asylum claims and offer refuge to those fleeing persecution and destitution, and the Minister has rightly spoken of our country’s proud record on that.

When the House previously considered Lords amendments to the Bill, the Government rejected Lords amendment 4—the earlier version of this amendment—citing financial privilege, as is so often the parliamentary way. I am inclined to agree with Lord Dubs when he said:

“Given the time we spent on the issue and its importance, to say that the technicality of financial privilege is sufficient to dispose of it…falls short of being humanitarian”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 October 2020; Vol. 806, c. 1595.]

I heard the Minister’s contribution and read his letter earlier today, and it remains the Government’s goal to seek new arrangements with the EU for the family reunion of unaccompanied child refugees. However, when he responds, could he update the House further? We understand that the Commission simply does not have a mandate from the member states to enter into negotiations on this issue with the UK, so those talks simply cannot progress as things stand. With that in mind, the Minister will know that his review does not commit to continuing the route, and he has offered no substitute to bridge the gap between the European co-operation ending and the possible restart of routes or any new routes that result from his proposed review. The Government’s rhetoric on the anticipated sovereign borders Bill has not given us hope on that front, but if he is serious about finding a way forward and continuing the family reunion co-operation that we are currently committed to, I urge him to support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

It is always a pleasure to follow my good friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and to reflect on his comments. It would be a bit out of scope for me to get on to fishing, but I recognise his campaigning on freedom of religious belief. He raises again the points we make about the challenges that are still faced globally by those fleeing persecution, merely because they express the same faith that he and I, and many in this Chamber, share. He also talked about how those who relocated from Syria or the region had resettled and been integrated into life in Strangford, with excellent support, I am sure.

That brings me on to the interesting speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). I know he has long engaged with this issue, both since his arrival here and, crucially, beforehand, through his work as a councillor and through the Local Government Association. His reflections were interesting, particularly when he made the point about offers being mentioned, and asked why were they not actually made, in order to support Kent? Also, when we hear about offers being made in Europe, I think that it reveals the differences in the debate. The Government’s view is that now that we have left the European Union and the transition period is coming to an end, we are moving away in our wider immigration system from the idea of a two-tier approach to non-EEA and EEA. Why not offer places as part of our resettlement programmes more generally or offer them up to those coming straight from the region? This is one of the reasons why I have had very interesting conversations with the Lord Bishop of Durham about the idea of talent beyond borders, looking at how we can open some of our economic migration routes for those who are skilled migrants—who have skills and abilities—who are currently in camps in the region and have been identified as potentially even having skills that are in shortage in this country.

That is where the core of the discussion goes. We have left the European Union. Is it really sensible to carry on in a system that will replicate a unilateral system that effectively applies only to those who are in a collection of safe and democratic countries that we have now left? Yes, negotiations are ongoing. It would probably not be right for me to give a blow-by-blow account at the Dispatch Box. As we have said, if we cannot achieve a reciprocal agreement with the whole European Union, based on the generous offer that we made earlier this year, we will look to talk to individual countries within the European Union where there is a mutual interest in having an arrangement between us both.

Let me turn to why the Government will not and cannot accept Lords amendment 4B. Part of it requires the Government to lay a strategy for the relocation of unaccompanied children from Europe. Again, this would be rather difficult to deliver and is very broad in scope. My hon. Friend touched on this. Local authorities are already caring for over 5,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—146% more than in 2014—and any move in a policy sense has to be balanced in terms of ensuring what offers are made locally. My local council, not controlled by my party, wrote to me earlier this year saying that we should be doing more for refugees across the world in resettlement, particularly in Europe. I asked them, “What was their offer?” Answer: nothing—after quite a bit of chasing about places. We do need to ensure that what we are offering up is backed up, when people arrive here, by resources and an ability to make a life here.

The amendment in lieu sets out a clear path for a review of our migration rules and is about creating safe and legal routes, including from the region directly. This is not just about avoiding a dangerous trip across the channel; it is about avoiding it and having no reason for a dangerous trip across the Mediterranean as well. That is why I am proud that we are one of the global leaders in resettlement and proud of the record that we have as a nation. When we do this review, we will take forward that reputation and ensure that we have a functioning system, but this time based on our having a global set of migration rules and not on a system that we were part of due to being a part of the EEA.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 4B.