Tackling Spiking

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris]

I do indeed think that the ability to report anonymously is a critical part of this. I hope the use of that tool on a national basis will mean that people become accustomed to being able to report these incidents, and that as a result they are reported more widely. I hope that today’s statement will generate publicity, and that we will collectively make this an offence that people will feel much more ready to come forward and report.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement. Brighton has a thriving night-time and entertainment economy—that is what we are based on—but far too many people I know personally have been spiked, predominantly women. When they try to get a test via the health services, very often the pathways are closed to them. Will the Minister ensure that pathways to testing are available not just through the criminal justice system but through the health system, and that it will be a licensing requirement for venues to direct people to the right place—to safety, and then the criminal justice system? Will she also ensure that licensing rules are focused on people’s safety? I hear many reports that licensing rules prevent people from taking a glass out of a venue to get some air, so they leave the glass inside and leave themselves open to danger. Some of this needs to be changed, but outdated licensing rules prevent that from happening and end up putting people at risk.

[Laura Farris]

The hon. Gentleman has made three excellent suggestions. I will take them all back and write to him.

Alcohol Licensing (Coronavirus) (Regulatory Easements) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Alcohol Licensing (Coronavirus) (Regulatory Easements) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (S.I., 2023, No. 990).

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Ms Elliott. This is a relatively modest instrument, which was laid before the House on 11 September 2023. As all hon. Members will appreciate, the hospitality sector continues to face significant economic headwinds in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic. In recognition of that, the regulations will ensure that the Government continue to support such businesses by extending the temporary provisions set out in the Business and Planning Act 2020 for a further 18 months.

I will begin by providing hon. Members will a bit of background. The Licensing Act 2003 enables licences to be granted to sell alcohol for consumption on site or off site, or both. In the event that a business obtains an on-sales-only licence and subsequently wishes to also do off-sales, the business is required to make an additional application to the licensing authority for a variation that would add off-sales to its licence.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am very supportive of the regulations and wish they were being made permanent, instead of us having to come back here in 18 months. Does the Minister agree that one of the big problems with people going back and seeking waivers in their licence is that many licensing authorities incorrectly treat it as a bartering game? They will say, “If you want to be able to do off-sales, what else are you going to give us? Will you shut a bit early or have extra restrictions?” That kind of bartering game is not good for business, and I hope she will make it clear from the Front Bench that it is unacceptable when local authorities do that.

[Laura Farris]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising that. I was not aware of it.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am happy to write to the Minister with some examples.

[Laura Farris]

I would be grateful if he did so. I can certainly discuss it with my ministerial colleagues, because it sounds like something that might warrant a response.

In response to the covid pandemic, the Business and Planning Act 2020 included a temporary provision that automatically entitled holders of licences that covered on-sales to make off-sales without any need to amend their licences, saving them time and money at a desperate moment. That provision meant that pubs and restaurants could make alcohol on-sales, and that pavement licences were provided for any outdoor facilities they had. This was facilitated by a parallel but independent easement to pavement licensing, which created a temporary streamlined process. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 made the change to pavement licensing permanent.

It is believed that the off-sales provision has benefited at least 30,000 licensed premises in England and Wales that previously did not have an off-sales licence. The provision was due to expire at the end of September 2023, but given the clear benefits that it brings to businesses, it has been extended until 31 March 2025. This ensures that businesses will be able to continue to benefit from the provisions for a further 18 months.

Let me make it clear that although the immediate covid-19 crisis has passed, the residual effects continue to have significant impacts, particularly in the hospitality sector, which was acutely affected, and many businesses continue to manage high levels of debt. It is believed that the regulations are an appropriate mitigation to help businesses with the residual effects of covid-19.

During the next 18 months, the Government will explore the creation of a unified pavement licence that includes the consumption and sale of alcohol in outside pavement areas. We want to reduce the administrative burden faced by cafés, pubs and restaurants, which currently have to apply for multiple consents from their council, and I reassure hon. Members that that work is already under way.

I would like to pre-empt a concern that may be raised by making it clear that the Government have consulted the National Police Chiefs’ Council about the impact of extending the temporary off-sales permission. The view of the police is that the extension of off-sales licences has not caused any clearly identifiable increase in crime and disorder. As Members may know, another regulatory easement set out in the BPA temporarily increased the annual number of temporary event notices that licensed premises could have from 15 to 20 and increased the maximum number of days on which temporary events could be held from 21 to 26 days a year. For the avoidance of doubt, that easement will not be extended. It was underutilised, and it is not necessary to extend this provision, so it will lapse on 31 December.

I am confident that the measures in this statutory instrument will continue to benefit a wide range of businesses, including pubs and restaurants, and for that reason, I hope that it will receive the Committee’s support. I commend these regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

On antisocial behaviour, sometimes the problem is that the police do not have the resources to manage legitimate crowds and groups of people leaving bars and venues, and therefore they object to licences being granted or extended. Clearly, that is unfair on the business owners, who might not be producing any more noise or disturbance for local residents, but the police fear, because of a decade of underfunding, that they are unable to pound the streets at night. Could advice be provided to police forces and local authorities to ensure we get the balance right? In our local authority, the police objected to a licence for Soho House because they said they were worried that the punters leaving at 2 o’clock in the morning might be an antisocial behaviour risk. I know Soho House members are creatives, but they are not usually known for their antisocial behaviour.

[Laura Farris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I disagree with him slightly, as we have increased police numbers by 20,000 since I was elected in 2019, and I do not think the common complaint of local police forces at the moment is that they are underfunded, but he alights on an important point with his example of Soho House. In whatever local authority or policing area, there will be distinct considerations. It is probably true that if the police are not embedded in any extension of licencing arrangements, there is a risk of antisocial behaviour, so the long-term solution must plainly be directed at that.

Overall, the reality is that the hospitality sector emerged from the pandemic with £10 billion-worth of covid-related debt, and every MP has heard directly about the pressure that has put on it. Sometimes, in the worst cases, it has led to closures, so I am very pleased that the Committee seems to be united in wanting to do everything it can to support this sector while we work to put a long-term solution in place. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Dangerous Drugs

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

No, there will be no gap, and it is not unintentional or inadvertent; it is just likely that we will have to amend the way schedule 5 to the 1971 Act works in order to create this new category, essentially to accommodate nitrous oxide. The two SIs will be implemented on the same day—there will be no lacuna or gap. That is just how we have to sequence the secondary legislation under the Act.

Let me return to the question of prevalence. Some 230,000 young people inhaled this harmful substance in the year ending June 2022. It was the third most misused substance among that age group and, as we have discussed already, there is evidence that it has harmful neurological effects, particularly when consumed in quite large quantities.

Beyond that, we know that nitrous oxide has a significant effect on antisocial behaviour—indeed, we announced the measure for which we are legislating today in the antisocial behaviour action plan. Again, I thank parliamentary colleagues for raising the impact that nitrous oxide has had on their communities. It is fuelling antisocial behaviour and having an impact on the decent, hard-working majority who want to use their local park or go down their local high street without being harassed by antisocial behaviour or seeing the little silver canisters littered all over the place. To give an illustration of the scale of the problem, after the Notting Hill carnival a couple of weeks ago, it is estimated that 13 tonnes of those nitrous oxide canisters and others were collected from the street by the clean-up crews. That is an extraordinary amount.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

How many tonnes of beer cans were collected?

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the consumption of beer does not, generally speaking, lead to severe neurological damage and paralysis in the way that the consumption of large amounts of nitrous oxide does.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is clear that the 1971 Act is vastly out of date and has many adverse consequences in its application. I wonder whether those on the Labour Front Bench would welcome the idea of our committing to review the use of that Act and to update and modernise it. I am not saying we should scrap it, but we definitely need to investigate its use. That would give me some reassurance and enable me to do what those on the Front Bench are asking later on.

[Alex Norris]

I am afraid that I am going to disappoint my hon. Friend by not setting such a broad policy while debating a statutory instrument on a narrow bit of policy, but I know he will continue to make his case to me and my colleagues ahead of the election down the road.

Let me address the point about the diversionary work. From what I understand from the impact assessment, the Government envisage a relatively small minority of those caught in possession being charged, with the others instead having conditional cautions, community resolutions or diversionary activities. I would be keen for the Minister to state what he has based that assessment on, and how he thinks it is likely to work in practice.

The Minister, I think rightly and importantly, has coupled this issue with that of antisocial behaviour, so we must take a reckoning of the Government’s broader record on antisocial behaviour. They have had 13 years. The Minister talks about the antisocial behaviour action plan and the pilot programmes in 10 police forces, but that is less than a quarter of all forces. We have seen from the Minister and his colleagues a complete failure to reverse the cuts to neighbourhood policing, and we still have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers than we did eight years ago. Half the population say that they rarely see the police on the beat, and that proportion has doubled since 2010. It is clear that the Government’s plans are too modest to meet this challenge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

That is not how the market works. We have had the Misuse of Drugs Act for 50 years and it has not stopped anybody from taking heroin, cocaine or anything else. Those drugs are quite moreish and people tend to keep taking them regardless of the legislation put before them to deter them. It does not work. What we need to do is go after the suppliers, but from what the Minister said it seems to me that the Government have no intention of doing that.

The Minister also talked about the broad legitimate use and the regulations he will bring forward on that. Without seeing them, it is difficult to see how effective this will be. If that legitimate use is incredibly broad—it must be to allow people to continue to buy the substance to run their cafés and produce whipped cream—he will find it very difficult to continue that enforcement game. We have no sight of those regulations tonight, so I argue that it would be irresponsible of the House to pass this statutory instrument without having seen the other part of the equation.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Is there not a danger that the “broad uses” clause will mean that good, middle-class white people, with houses where they can consume this drug in private, will be able to continue to do so and poor, working-class young people in parks, possibly predominantly black, Asian and minority ethnic, will end up being criminalised, as with many other drugs?

[Alison Thewliss]

That is a legitimate question and a legitimate risk, but I do not see it in the Government’s impact assessment.

There is also nothing about the preventive actions that the ACMD talks about in its report. There is nothing about a public health campaign, education or wider knowledge of the health impacts of the drug, which the ACMD recommends that the Government take forward. There are things such as B12 deficiency, nerve damage, incontinence and erectile dysfunction, but the Government are not promoting a plan of how to disseminate that information to people.

I worry—as do the neurologists who have written to the Government with their concerns about further regulation and criminalisation—about stigmatising people who have used this substance and want come forward and get support. Criminalisation will make them less likely to come forward. By criminalising, the Misuse of Drugs Act dissuades people, particularly women, from coming forward for help. The Government have said nothing tonight or in the impact assessment about whether people are less likely to come forward for medical support for having used the substance if they are criminalised.

Furthermore, if kids are using the drug, what support services do the Government intend to put in place to tackle addiction in that age group? If that is a problem, what is the Government’s specific response for addiction support for young people who abuse the drug? The Minister had nothing to say on that whatsoever.

Let me come to the position of Scotland on this issue. The Scottish Government responded to the ACMD report on the use of nitrous oxide and were crystal clear, saying:

“The Scottish government has and will continue to promote a public health approach, rather than continuing the failed war on drugs. It is our view that banning nitrous oxide will further criminalise people for their drug use, serving only to heap additional harms on vulnerable individuals, our young people and communities while doing little to improve the health of these individuals.”

The point about health is absolutely crucial. The Government have said nothing about the health impacts of the drug and intervening on it. What they have outlined in the impact assessment is the cost. They say, in an incredibly vague paragraph on page 15:

“Total costs across all monetised set up and ongoing costs are estimated to be between £19.6 to £178.1 million…with a central estimate of £67.9 million…over the 10-year appraisal period.”

That is an incredibly wide range. The Government, again, are not explaining exactly why they should pass the legislation. They also say at the top of page 19:

“There is limited evidence available to estimate how nitrous oxide misuse may change following the intervention.”

They want to spend tens of millions of pounds and they do not even know whether the intervention will have an impact.

Framing this issue under the Misuse of Drugs Act does not recognise tackling addiction as a public health issue. It is a public health issue. We cannot arrest our way out of a public health issue. It does not tackle the reasons why people are taking this drug in the first place, not does it tackle supply or public health. The Home Affairs Committee recently concluded in its report on drugs that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 require reform. The report says:

“We recommend that the UK Government reform the 1971 Act and 2001 Regulations in a way that promotes a greater role for public health in our response to drugs, whilst maintaining our law enforcement to tackling the illicit production and supply of controlled drugs.”

This SI does nothing about production and supply, and nothing about public health.

We are here tonight because the Government have decided that something must be done, and this is something. The Scottish National party opposes this SI and will vote against it tonight. It criminalises people at unclear cost. There is no sense of tackling the source, reducing demand or treating this as a public health issue. It is bang on form—if I may say so, Mr Deputy Speaker—that the Labour party is going along with this unevidenced drivel. In Scotland, we want a humane drug policy. We have a caring and compassionate human rights-informed drug policy for Scotland, but we do not yet have the powers to implement it. Until such time as the Scottish Government have full control over all our powers as a normal independent country, we seek the devolution of drug laws to allow us to deal with them as a public health issue, as they should be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise with great scepticism about this measure, because it is using an Act that is fundamentally flawed. The 1971 Act does not work. It does not work in criminalising people or in reducing drug use, drug deaths or drug harms. In fact, the evidence across comparable countries, especially Portugal and other southern European countries, is that the Act increases the harm for people. It drives people away from getting treatment and support.

I am also sceptical about the slight moral panic. That is not to dismiss the marginal cases of horrible and acute harm for those affected, including death in the worst circumstances—by the way, we have caffeine deaths in this country—and heart, lung and neurological problems. As the Minister said, this is the most widely taken drug by young people, but the harms caused do not even rank in the top 50 harms caused to young people. The idea that this drug is causing great harm is just not true.

Most people use this drug. I have used it at the dentist. People have used it in hospital settings. But most people use the drug recreationally, harmlessly and acceptably. My view is that that is fine. I have not used the drug recreationally, but I have been in rooms where top judges from the High Court, lawyers, senior politicians and celebrities have used these kinds of drugs, and other drugs, and it causes them no harm. The police do not come knocking at their doors, because the usage is behind closed doors by wealthy people, predominantly white, who are out of sight and out of mind. The state does not mind.

This classification will target poor people, young people, and predominantly people from ethnic minorities. We know that is the case because that is what has happened with all other forms of drug taking, where large numbers of people from different demographics take the drugs but the laws criminalise a specific set of demographics. That is the fundamental problem with the 1971 Act—it targets people and communities, rather than helping them get off the drugs they are addicted to or to move to a safe space. This measure will make things worse.

The measure will also make things worse in terms of gangs and criminal syndicates. It should come as no surprise: the Conservative Government has been giving get-out clauses to criminal gangs for the last 10 years in many other sectors, through bungs to their mates or legislation that allows dodgy dealings. But this measure will move this trade underground. It will suddenly mean that a premium can be charged on this particular drug. It will mean that people will not know what is in the canisters safely. It will mean more deaths and it will mean profits for criminal gangs—they will go laughing to the bank. The people who really want this measure are the gangs. The people who really want the continuation of the 1971 Act are the gangs. I want the Government and my party to stop being the cheerleaders of gangs and criminals, because while they continue to cheerlead for the 1971 Act, that is what they are.

Let us look at the evidence of what the Government’s own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs says: that this drug has no effect on crime whatsoever at the moment. There is no evidence that it causes or exacerbates crime, although there is some minor evidence that it causes antisocial behaviour. I suggest to hon. Members that the antisocial behaviour is not really caused by laughing gas; it is caused by the fact that there are young people hanging around park and benches with nothing better to do, because youth services have been slashed in this country and billions of pounds taken out of support services. People who live in miserable accommodation, who do not have living rooms to sit in because they live in horrible, filthy bedsits, who are out on the streets in the evening trying to while away the hours and take the edge off their often miserable and difficult lives, because they are in absolute poverty or they have other social issues around them, and there is no one in the state to support them—that is what is antisocial. Yes, for the person in their nice big house who does not want to be disturbed in the evening it is a bit of a frustration, but those things can be dealt with, just as we deal with many other issues.

The same argument can also be made on littering; it is a reason, surely, to move to producer responsibility, where we have stamps and marks on the canisters so we can see who is supplying those canisters and ensure that suppliers of those canisters are punished properly. Many of my constituents think we should do that with the plastic cups strewn on our beaches, because we do not know which bar has given them out and not picked them up. I agree with that. I think that for waste and recycling we need to move to a completely different model, but that is not a model of criminalising young people.

This measure is criminalising young people, because the only change here is to criminalise young people. If there was a way to stop this substance being produced, if there was a way to ensure that people can enjoy themselves—personally, I do not have a problem with people enjoying themselves with drugs—but in a safe way that does not cause antisocial behaviour, I would be all for it. However, I am afraid that all this measure will do is exacerbate the situation.

Personally, I would like not to have a vote on this measure today, because I think it would be better for the Government to go away and rethink it, given the cross-party opposition to it, and to find a way forward. If there is a vote, I am afraid I will, very reluctantly, not to be able to support the Government on this.

Migration

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government policies on migration.

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this area of policy, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding time and granting this debate. Few policy areas generate as much unwanted noise as migration, and my aim in securing this debate is to have a reasonable, rational, evidence-informed discussion on the impact of the Government’s migration policies. Those policies are also looked at individually, whether that is Brexit and the impact of the end of freedom of movement, asylum, or other areas of immigration. I am grateful to the Father of the House and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for co-sponsoring this debate. They both bring considerable expertise to this area, and I am looking forward to their contributions.

We are living in a world that is characterised by increased, near-constant movement. Goods, capital and services are increasingly unburdened by borders. One central pillar of the globalisation that we have been living through over the past 40 years or so is that human beings have to some extent also become units that can be moved around the world to enable profit. For decades, cheap labour and trained labour has been used here to lower costs and keep things going, and while we withdrew almost entirely from vocational training, we have seen increased immigration. For many working-class communities, their experience of immigration has been a form of wage suppression.

This is one of the most complex areas of policy that we encounter, cutting across several Departments and dividing public opinion. Specifically, we must begin to take a more focused look at the evidence of policy impact. Why has net migration hit a record high, and what will its impact be? According to the Office for National Statistics, net migration stood at 606,000 people in 2022, with 1.2 million people arriving. Of that number, 925,000 were non-EU nationals. Those numbers include refugees under the respective Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, but that growth has slowed over the past few quarters as the impact of those two schemes decreased. Despite that record number, the Government continue to say that net migration will decrease. That is what successive Conservative Governments have said since 2010, but despite such promises, no decrease has ever been achieved. That huge gap between rhetoric and reality is borne out by the figures. Net migration stood at 256,000 in 2010, and is now 606,000. That is the reality of the situation.

The Minister will stand up and try to say that the Labour party voted against all the Bills that claim to address those increases, but the reality is that none of that legislation has achieved the Government’s stated aims. Net migration has increased, small boat crossings have increased, and the asylum backlog has increased, and all that is because the increased movement of people, and increased migration, is a reality of the modern world.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the increase in boat crossings, but overall the number of people coming over the channel, not just in boats but in trucks and through other irregular forms, has actually decreased over time, has it not? The problem, partly, is that other regular forms of entry into this country are being tightened and people are prevented from them, which forces many people into dangerous forms of migration.

[Dan Carden]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point and share his view on the need for legal and safe crossing routes to this country. I look forward to hearing other contributions on that point.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are displaced from their homes because of climate, poverty, famine, drought and conflict. Many more seek a better life as economic migrants. We must acknowledge that reality and engage with communities here at home that have understandable concerns about the effects of that increase on their ability to buy a house and access health and education services as well as what those increases mean for the public purse.

It is impossible to understand the ruptures in our politics over the last decade without thinking seriously about immigration as a social, political and economic issue. One of the biggest causes of the Brexit vote was a response in many working-class committees to being told that nothing could be done about the forces of globalisation. The mass migration of people around the world will continue, but our immigration system can be managed more effectively, can be more efficient and can be more humane. I believe that our politics needs to put more emphasis on addressing the root cause of some of the concerns that people have about the impact of immigration on suppressing wages and placing pressure on housing stock in local communities, if we are to continue to live in the open, tolerant society that we all wish to have.

There are some areas that we can address to improve the migration system for all involved. I want to use my time to discuss three such areas: visa costs, labour shortages and backlogs at the Home Office. On visa costs, the total minimum cost of the current 10-year settlement route for an adult with indefinite leave to remain stands at £12,836.50. For families, that is extortionate, with fees paid for each individual, including children. Those punishingly high fees force many applicants into debt. While there is a clear need for the visa system to pay for itself, in some cases the cost of visas stands many times higher than the administrative costs of processing them. To take one example, the fee for in- country naturalisation stands at £1,330, yet Home Office figures show that the unit cost for facilitating naturalisation stands at just £372. While those eligible to apply for a fee waiver may do so, applicants cannot apply for a fee waiver for indefinite leave. That makes little sense, especially for those who come to work in our NHS or social care. I would appreciate the Minister’s views on that. Will he look at giving them the opportunity to apply for a fee waiver? The substantial visa cost does not include ancillary costs such as legal advice, translation services and the enrolment of biometric data.

Further, it is not just the substantial financial cost that presents a challenge. Repeat applications, which take an increasingly long time, must be made. Such applications are not subject to a service standard, and applicants are also subject to a default “no recourse to public funds” condition. That has an obvious detrimental impact on applicants, causing them stress and placing them in a form of bureaucratic purgatory. Surely it does not have to be this way.

A joint report by Praxis, the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, which are all organisations that do hugely valuable work in this area, highlights that if applicants had the option to apply for longer blocks of leave—for example, five years instead of two-and-a-half years—applicants’ stress and anxiety and Home Office caseworkers’ workloads would decrease. That would go a considerable way towards guaranteeing security for those who may have already lived and worked in the UK for a long period of time.

On costs, the Home Office could cap them at the administrative cost only, or grant an automatic fee waiver to those who have had their “no recourse to public funds” condition lifted. These are all little measures that could make a big difference.

I have heard the Immigration Minister say in this House on several occasions that the UK visa service is now meeting or exceeding every one of its service standards, but that means nothing if, as we currently see, many applications are not subject to those service standards. Will the Minister commit to introducing a service standard for all applications to improve performance? Will he also indicate what recent steps his Department has taken to simplify the visa application system and lessen the administrative burden on both applicants and caseworkers? It is clear that there is so much to be done in this area.

Labour shortages in areas such as health, social care and hospitality can only be described as hellish across the UK. Sector after sector tell us that they need more access to skilled staff and they simply do not have that access at the moment. The impact of the shortages is obvious. They act as a drag on our whole economy, holding back prosperity and reducing the quality of life for people across the country. Shortages affect productivity and public services and neither can be improved if we do not fill vacancies. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation estimates that, if labour shortages are not addressed, they will cost the UK economy a staggering £39 billion a year. That is a catastrophe and the Government must not allow their rhetoric on reducing net migration to act as a barrier in addressing that huge fiscal black hole.

Increasing access to skills training and education will go some way over the years to improving labour shortages, but we must also look to migration. Employers have long decried the onerous, bureaucratic and time-consuming nature of recruiting staff from abroad. While employers should make every effort to recruit locally, the Government should not act as a roadblock, stopping local businesses such as restaurants and other businesses across the hospitality sector, the NHS or social care from recruiting the staff they need from further afield.

Local businesses tell me of their frustration. They do not understand why, after Brexit, after leaving the EU and the end of freedom of movement, now we are in control of our own borders, we are not using that control to allow UK businesses to recruit to prosper and grow. It is clearly in the public interest to have a thriving visitor economy. For Liverpool, it makes up more than 50% of our economy. It is a matter of life and death that we have a properly staffed national health service and address shortages in social care. As it stands, the Government are sticking to their line that they must keep net migration down, but I think they should shift to look at how we can use migration policy to address the labour shortages. Many measures have been introduced in the form of a temporary exception to the skilled worker criteria under the points-based system and the introduction of a specific visa for seasonal agricultural workers, but workforce challenges are clearly not being solved. The Government must go further. I am aware that the Migration Advisory Committee recently launched a call for evidence on reform of the shortage occupation list. I urge the Government to heed its calls when they arrive.

Finally on labour shortages, why have the Government not moved to allow asylum seekers the right to work? There is support from both sides of the House for this policy change. Refugee Action highlights that the ban currently costs the public purse around £500 million a year. All available evidence, including the Home Office’s own leaked report from September 2020, refutes the Government’s argument that enabling asylum seekers to work is a pull factor. I have met many people residing in my constituency seeking asylum who also want to contribute to their new communities and are desperate for the right to work and to earn a living.

All these issues are made much worse by delays in the Home Office’s decision making. My caseworkers frequently encounter cases with almost indeterminate delay. Although they try to make progress through the UK Visas and Immigration hotline, often responses are non-specific, unhelpful and sometimes contradictory.

To give just one example, one of my constituents applied for asylum in January 2019. She completed her interview in the same month and was referred to the national referral mechanism, as she was identified as a potential victim of trafficking. In November 2021, a positive conclusive grounds decision was reached on the case—in other words, she was identified as a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking. The nearly three years of waiting for a decision were difficult for her and her children, not knowing where their future may lie.

In February 2022, my office was told by the Home Office that my constituent would receive a decision on the asylum part of her claim within six months. That created an obvious expectation from my constituent. But when six months had passed, she informed me that no decision had been forthcoming. After my office notified the Home Office of that, we were told there was no timeframe for a decision, despite the previous commitment. My constituent’s solicitor then issued the Home Office with a pre-action protocol. The Home Office committed to an asylum decision by 1 May. No decision came on 1 May. We wrote again to the Home Office, and I am still awaiting a response. Four and a half years have passed since the initial application, and nearly a year since the Home Office committed to making a decision. That case is not an anomaly; it is one of many I could have chosen to illustrate the point. I would appreciate it if the Minister’s office could reach out to mine to discuss just a few such cases that would greatly benefit from his intervention.

More widely, backlogs are now a well-known aspect of our migration system. They are a feature, not a bug. The Minister has hinted that a quick decision-making process would act as a pull factor again. However, among other issues, that ignores the huge cost of asylum accommodation in the meantime. I would appreciate it if the Minister could provide clarity on this point in his closing remarks.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The cost of housing asylum seekers is huge. There is no ability for local communities who might believe they could do it cheaper and better in alternative forms of accommodation to draw down money. The Home Office has paid huge amounts, often to corporate organisations, even though local organisations would be able to do it better. Giving asylum seekers the ability to draw down that money on an individual or a community basis, and allowing communities and councils to organise accommodation, would at least help to alleviate some of the trauma that people face in Home Office hotels.

[Dan Carden]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s point, and I hope that this debate is a space for exactly those kinds of ideas so that we start to see improvements in the system.

Delays seem to be worse in the asylum system, even as the Home Office chooses to be selective, applying service standards to other types of application, such as for naturalisation or further leave to remain. The backlog on so-called legacy cases has started to fall very slightly. However, the Prime Minister’s commitment to clearing the backlog will not be met at the “current pace”—not my words but those of the Home Secretary.

There have been smart moves to address the huge backlog. For instance, last week, the Government quietly dropped the two-tier refugee system introduced in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. That is a perfect example of the Government very quietly replacing a noisy, reactionary policy with one that has more chance of being workable. It is also illustrative of the desperate need for a coherent and honest long-term strategy in this area.

We all want a migration system that works for all our constituents, those seeking asylum and those wanting to work or visit our country. I am grateful for the time to put some of my thoughts on the record.

No Recourse to Public Funds

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of no recourse to public funds.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling the debate to take place, and I thank the Members on both sides of the House who supported the application. The Register of Members’ Financial Interests records my support from the Refugee, Asylum and Migrant Policy project. I also thank Praxis, Citizens UK, and the Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex and London for helping me to prepare for the debate.

During the pandemic, hard-working, law-abiding families, working legally in the UK but subject to no recourse to public funds, were especially hard hit. Their wages stopped because their jobs stopped, and NRPF also prevented them from claiming benefits. They had to turn to food banks, as a huge number did in my constituency, where Bonny Downs Community Association, Newham Community Project and others did an amazing job. Before the pandemic, if people with no recourse to public funds lost their job they just got another one, but the pandemic made that impossible.

The complete absence of help came as a shock to, for one, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). At the Liaison Committee in May 2020, two months into lockdown, I told him about a hard-working, law-abiding family in my constituency, including two British-born children, who were destitute because the father had lost his income. The transcript of the Committee meeting records the following:

“Hang on, Stephen. Why aren’t they eligible for universal credit, employment and support allowance or any of the other benefits”.

I said that it was because of no recourse to public funds. They had been here for years, but for 10 years, NRPF meant no help at all. The Prime Minister said:

“I am going to have to come back to you on that, Stephen. Clearly people who have worked hard for this country, who live and work here, should have support of one kind or another…I will find out how many there are in that position and we will see what we can do to help. ”

He was right to say that

“people who have worked hard for this country, who live and work here, should have support of one kind or another”.

Unfortunately, however, the Prime Minister’s opinion was not his Government’s policy. He did not find out how many were in that position, because the Home Office does not know.

No recourse to public funds is a condition imposed on people with temporary visas. The current version dates from 2012, and bars access to social security benefits. According to the House of Commons Library, 1.6 million people have leave to remain with no recourse to public funds. The Migration Observatory at Oxford University estimates that the total includes 225,000 children. Typically, families are on the so-called 10-year track to indefinite leave, like the family that I mentioned to the Prime Minister. That family were in the UK on student visas for several years, but after their two children were born, they started on the 10-year track. They renew their leave every two and a half years, paying at least £2,608 per adult in visa fees each time plus additional fees for their children. No recourse to public funds applies throughout. The Home Office has been taking 11 months, on average, to process these re-applications, so for months people cannot prove their status. Thousands who are still permitted to work while awaiting the determination have wrongly lost their jobs as a result. After 10 years, they can apply for indefinite leave and, when they secure that, NRPF no longer applies.

The Home Office does not know how many people in the UK have no recourse to public funds. That, I think, is understandable. Once people are given leave to remain, the Home Office does not know who departs. Parliamentary questions have shown, however, that the Home Office cannot even tell us how many people it gave leave to remain last year with the NRPF condition attached, apparently because of the inadequacy of its computer systems. Last November, I asked in written question 93420 when the new Atlas case working system would tell us the number of applicants who have no recourse to public funds attached to their leave to remain. The answer came back that,

“remaining areas will complete their transition to Atlas in 2023, after which time it will be possible to explore what further information can be produced using the new system.”

I wonder whether the Minister can update us when he winds up. By when does he now think the Home Office will at least know how many people it imposes NRPF on each year?

Citizens Advice estimates that 329,000 parents have had NRPF, many for 10 years, which is most of somebody’s childhood, whereas 40% have been in the UK for more than five years and 10%, like the family I told the then Prime Minister about, have been here for more than a decade. Families with no recourse to public funds can make a change of circumstances application for exemption from NRPF if they are destitute or heading for destitution. Last year, 3,200 families applied and 60% were successful. I welcome regular publication of the data about that. Recent court decisions have required immigration rule changes to allow disability and child welfare to be considered, but those decisions do not yet seem to have been reflected in change of circumstances decisions. A lot of families do not know about the change in circumstances process.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend mentions recent court cases. It was particularly disgraceful that the Green-led administration in Brighton refused to support people with no recourse to public funds during the covid in-period. Shelter took the council to court—where the council spent huge amounts of public money to defend its actions—and won. Is it not the case that housing is a public health issue and, just like access to healthcare, which is excluded from no recourse to public funds, access to basic housing facilities should not require an exemption but should automatically be allowed?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I believe that his local council is no longer Green party controlled. He is absolutely right.

The change of circumstances process is cumbersome and difficult. With specialist help from an organisation such as the Unity Project or Praxis, people are likely to succeed, but lots of families do not know those organisations and cannot access the help. If someone is in Brighton, they cannot access a support organisation in Islington. It is very troubling that many families are missing out because applying is so hard.

The Select Committee on Work and Pensions unanimously recommended two specific changes. The first was that no family with children should have the condition for longer than five years, recognising that for many it is 10 years at the moment. The second was that where the children are British citizens, as is often the case, child benefit should be paid in relation to those children even when the parents have no recourse to public funds. When families have been here for five years, or when children are already British citizens, they are here for good. We should be supporting children to fulfil their potential future contribution to our society. We will all lose out by denying them that support. It makes no sense to impose destitution on the families of children who will be in Britain for the rest of their life. The Government rejected those modest cross-party recommendations, and I hope the Minister will think again. The current policy is contrary to the national interest.

The pandemic highlighted the perilous situation of people with no recourse to public funds, and the latest Trussell Trust data show that food bank demand is sharply up again. In the cost of living crisis, families with no recourse to public funds are being clobbered once more, which is the trigger for this debate. Low-income families with no recourse to public funds are ineligible for cost of living support because they are ineligible for the benefits that passport people to that support. They are not eligible for the £900 cost of living payment this year or the £600 cost of living payment last year, for the £300 pensioner payment, for the £150 disability payment or for the warm home discount.

Battling through the current crisis without the support everyone else receives is extraordinarily hard. The Select Committee took evidence from parents with no recourse to public funds, and a Conservative colleague on the Committee rightly described their evidence as “harrowing.” Having no recourse to public funds leaves families in desperate situations.

Praxis, which supports families in my constituency, calculates that a two-parent, two-child family with both parents working and earning the national living wage are entitled to just over £11,000 of support this financial year, including cost of living support, universal credit and child benefit. If the same family had no recourse to public funds, they would be entitled to £195—the saving from the energy price guarantee. No assessment has been made of the impact on children in low-income families with no recourse to public funds of the non-availability of the support being provided to other families in identical situations, but not much imagination is needed to work that out.

The household support fund is paid out through local authorities. When it was introduced, councils did not know whether they were allowed to support people with no recourse to public funds. The Government advice was that councils should take their own legal advice on whether or not they are allowed to use the household support fund for that purpose. At last, paragraph 45 of the Government guidance on the household support fund states that, from 1 April 2023:

“Authorities can provide a basic safety net support to an individual, regardless of their immigration status, if there is a genuine care need that does not arise solely from destitution, for example if…they have serious health problems; there is a risk to a child’s wellbeing… Authorities must use their judgement to decide what legal powers and funding can be used to support individuals who are ineligible for public funds”.

The Government guidance remains somewhat unclear, but the first point is welcome and overdue.

On the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), Crisis reports that 6% of the people it supported last year had NRPF. St Mungo’s points out that rising food, energy and rent costs are increasing rough sleeping. More NRPF families will be on the street, and others will be stuck in insecure, overcrowded housing with long-term damaging impacts on children who will be here forever.

One parent told the Select Committee:

“My 5-year-old kept asking, ‘Mum, why are other children entitled and I am not?’ I struggled to answer.”

We should not be doing that to children who will spend their life in this country.

Maryam, a 23-year-old domestic violence survivor with two daughters, was referred to the Kurdish and Middle Eastern Women’s Organisation in north London by children’s social services. She had no recourse to public funds, so she was financially dependent on her husband. She had no choice but to stay in an abusive relationship for four years, as NRPF meant she had no way out.

Praxis has surveyed families with no recourse to public funds over the past month: two thirds are struggling to afford food; 59% have been forced into debt to pay for essentials, about three times the proportion of the population as a whole; and half are relying on charities and food banks for basic needs, compared with 3% of the population as a whole.

The Chancellor announced welcome improvements in the Budget, as recommended by the Select Committee, to support people who are claiming universal credit with their childcare costs. That support is not available to working families with no recourse to public funds who are faced with unaffordable childcare, like everybody else. We cannot justify having this large group in the labour market at such a massive disadvantage compared with everyone else. I welcome the extension of care for disadvantaged two-year-olds to NRPF families. Access for those families to free school meals is now permanent as well, which I am pleased about.

Five years is long enough for a family to contribute into our welfare state before receiving from it. After half a decade, a family with British-born children is here for good. Will the Minister commit to considering extending child benefit to all British children, irrespective of their parents’ status, and allowing parents access to public funds after five years? Those are not radical changes. They are affordable, sensible reforms that will be advocated in an op-ed in The Times tomorrow that is co-authored by me and the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). They were proposed unanimously by a Select Committee with a Conservative majority and they would support thousands of families during the biggest fall in living standards on record.

Plymouth Shootings

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I echo my hon. Friend’s tribute to the families of the victims, who have shown extraordinary bravery in the way they have handled this situation and advocated for change during what have obviously been very difficult circumstances for them. We will obviously consider any recommended changes to the law that may follow from the three reports we are going to be considering.

I am aware of the excellent work led by Plymouth City Councillor Rebecca Smith on a VAWG strategy designed to combat these kinds of issues. When my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) was Minister for Safeguarding, she visited Plymouth together with Councillor Smith to discuss her excellent report, and I commend the approach that Councillor Smith has developed in Plymouth to other local authorities around the country.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My thoughts, of course, are with the families and the victims, and I commend the sterling work that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) has done on this issue.

I wrote to one of the Minister’s predecessors, the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), in 2020, asking for medical markers to be put on records and for there to be a review of fees, both the fees that GPs were charging and those that police forces were able to charge. The correspondence I got back said that work was being done on the issue, but clearly work was not done on it quick enough. What is important is not just the 60 days in which the Minister will respond but having some indication of a timetable of implementation for some of these changes, particularly a statutory footing for that medical marker. I am worried that, unless that marker is statutory and it is part of the NHS contract that GPs have to report it, enforcement will be weak.

Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. This is a serious issue, but it is also a symptom of the problem of people smugglers bringing very large numbers of people across the channel, and we must tackle that with the most robust response possible. However, the Opposition continually oppose any effort by us to strengthen our borders.

We will be introducing further legislation, and, as my hon. Friend knows, we are reviewing whether we can adopt a more scientific approach to the verification of ages, as is being done by a number of our European counterparts. It is right for us to do that, because any adult who poses as a child coming into this country poses a serious risk to the young people alongside whom they then live, whether in these hotels or in any other setting.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Locally, I am afraid, my council also does not have a grip on this serious situation. It is out of its depth and, unfortunately, it is in a legal limbo. Past child protection scandals have shown us that all agencies must take both joint and separate responsibility for the protection and safeguarding of children, so this process cannot continue—the process of the Home Office pointing at the council, the council pointing at the Home Office, and nothing being done.

At the centre of this is the fact that Home Office is moving children into our local authority in a way that is wholly outside the law. The Home Secretary’s failure to enforce mandatory requirements to transfer children into foster care is creating an unregistered children’s home in our area, and that is counter to law. The children’s home, by the way, is owned by a man called Hoogstraten who changed his name to Adolf, so we can guess where his sympathies lie. May I ask this Home Office Minister what statutory powers he is using to transfer children into an unregistered children’s home in Hove?

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me say first that there is no pitting of the Home Office against the local authority. The Home Office is working closely with Brighton & Hove City Council, and we have a good working relationship. My officials speak regularly to those at the council, and, having spoken to the chief executive and the director of children’s services, I can say that they too feel that the relationship is working. We also work closely with other partners, including Sussex police. Can we do more to strengthen those relationships? Perhaps we can, and that is exactly what we intend to do in order to prevent any of these instances from happening again in the future.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s ideal solution, we are in agreement. We both want to see the number of hotels of this kind reduced and, ultimately, to see them closed, through better use of the national transfer scheme. However, that does require local authorities to come forward and offer places. We have therefore provided significant financial support, so there should be no financial barrier to local authorities’ investment in more accommodation and, indeed, more social workers and supporters.

Police Conduct and David Carrick

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The Carrick case will be looked at by Lady Angiolini, and hopefully the issues to which the hon. Lady referred will be fleshed out. I am interested in her point about the transfer of police officers. It has been identified that insufficient vetting is taking place when police officers move between forces; we need to take action to improve that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is another case in a long list of cases, and it is about not just misogyny but race and homophobia. When Sadiq Khan called in the then commissioner and asked her to produce a report about what she was going to do, rather than doing her work she walked out the door, and she had the backing of this Government, rather than their backing Sadiq Khan. Now that we know this is a systemic problem in the Metropolitan police and probably among police around the country, is it time that we moved disciplinary matters away from the police force concerned and allowed women and other victims to be able to report to an independent service when it is regarding a police officer, without fear or favour and without fear that it will be covered up?

[Suella Braverman]

It is important that we ensure that whatever disciplinary process is in place actually works. It is clear that there are serious questions about the efficacy of the process, the time it takes and the process-heavy experience, and that ultimately bureaucracy and procedure are prevailing over ethics and common sense. We need to ensure that the system is fit for purpose and that police officers who fall short in their behaviour are dismissed.

Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The people of Great Britain have shown that they want to help desperate families who are fleeing Ukraine. However, the facts are clear: there have been 80,000 applications, but there are only 19,000 people here. The Home Secretary says that is because they are staying where they are. Yes, a lot of them are; they gave up because it became so difficult.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree with me about the really troubling reports—some of these are cases I have dealt with, but some of these I heard of through the media—of the Home Office issuing visas for only some members of Ukrainian families? The families quite rightly do not want to leave someone behind, so do not come here. That is classed as Ukrainians not taking up a visa, rather than Home Office failure. At the same time, the Home Office lines are bunged up. We cannot get through, and when we do, we are told, “I don’t even have a computer in front of me. I’m just on a phone line, and I don’t know what to say.” This is failure at the Home Office, and the Home Secretary has presided over it.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. I have also heard of cases where one family member does not get their visa, and of course the whole family has to wait. They are not going to be separated at a time of crisis. That Home Office Ministers think it is somehow a triumph to take four weeks to issue basic visas to people fleeing war in Europe is totally shameful.

It now takes more than a year to get a basic initial asylum decision, because the Home Office is taking just 14,000 initial decisions a year—half the number it was taking in 2015. This basic incompetence means that the backlog has soared, and so too has the bill for the taxpayer. It takes nearly two years to get a modern slavery referral, which means that victims do not get support and prosecutions just do not happen. No wonder that even the Prime Minister, who is not known for his laser-like focus on delivering policies, has lost confidence in the Home Secretary and is getting other people to do the jobs instead.

The Prime Minister is looking to privatise the Passport Office; channel crossings are to be handed over to the Ministry of Defence; Homes for Ukraine is to be handed over to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; and visas are to be handed over to the new Refugees Minister. Decision making on asylum processing is so slow that Ministers are in the ludicrous and unworkable situation of paying Rwanda over £100 million to take decisions for us. At this rate, crime will be given to the Ministry of Justice and the fire service will be given to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Under this Home Secretary, the Home Office has in effect been put into special measures because it cannot get the basics right. If the Home Secretary cannot get the basics done on any of those core decisions, she should get out the way and let someone else sort it out.

There is an alternative to this shambles. On crime and prosecutions, it was obvious a decade ago that this was where we were heading as a result of Government policies. I warned in 2013 of the risk of falling charge rates. I warned then about the Home Office’s failure to help the police tackle increasingly complex and fast-changing crimes, and about the risks if there was no proper, urgent plan to modernise policing, none of which has happened. I also gave a warning about what it would be like if the police were ripped out of the heart of our communities. Now, our towns, cities and rural communities are all paying the price; they all feel that the criminal justice system is not there for them when they need it.

Where is the action in the Queen’s Speech to turn this around? Where is the action to help the police modernise, so that they can keep up with fast-changing crimes? Where is the action on reform, and on raising police standards so that we improve confidence? Where is the action on getting justice and improving safety for women and girls? There is nothing on establishing specialist rape investigation units in every police force, nothing on establishing specialist rape courts to speed up cases and make sure that they have the expertise necessary, nothing on setting up the domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators register for which we have been calling for years, and nothing to establish a mandatory minimum sentence for rape—all things Labour has been calling for. There is nothing to tackle antisocial behaviour—the powers are just not being used. There is nothing to sort out community penalties, which are too often dropped, and nothing to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour There is nothing to ensure that neighbourhood police are restored to our streets or to set up neighbourhood prevention teams, which Labour has repeatedly called for.

The Home Secretary wants to boast that she is delivering the biggest increase in police funding for 10 years—well, who has been in power for the last 10 years? She has not even restored the police her party cut and she is not getting them out on to the streets. There are still 7,000 fewer police in our neighbourhoods compared with 2015. Instead, the police are weighed down by more bureaucracy, stuck back at their desks doing paperwork—the only way to improve their visibility is to move their desks nearer to the window.

To be fair, the Government have proposed a victims’ Bill, and we would support that, but it is only in draft and it was first promised in 2015. It was promised again in 2016, again in 2017, again in 2019 and, yes, again in 2021. This year, it did not even get a proper mention in the Humble Address and there was certainly nothing from the Prime Minister yesterday.

The Home Secretary rightly made a personal commitment to strengthen victims’ rights back in 2014 when she first said that she backed a new victims’ law. She was right to do so because at that time 9% of cases were being dropped because victims were dropping out of the criminal justice system as they had lost confidence. Since then, those figures have almost trebled. Last year, 1.3 million cases were dropped because victims gave up and dropped out. Yet is she seriously telling us she does not have time in this Parliament for victims again? Instead, the Government’s top priority is a rehashed Public Order Bill, even though they have just done one, because they are again failing to work with the police to sort out swift injunctions against serious disruptive protests or to help the police sensibly to use the powers that they have.

There are Bills that should command cross-party support. Labour supports a “protect” duty that could keep people safer from potential terror attacks. We remember with sadness all the victims of the Manchester attack. I ask the Government to listen to the calls from bereaved families from other major incidents, and I ask the Home Secretary again to look at calls for a Hillsborough law, which she knows have been made by Members across the House and by the families who have lost so much.

Labour also welcomes the long-overdue economic crime Bill. We have called for years for action to strengthen Companies House and we will be pressing for stronger action on money laundering, including illicit finance used for terrorist activity. On terrorism and national security, we always stand ready to work with the Government in the national interest. We agree on the need for a register of foreign agents, which, again, has been promised for years. We need much greater vigilance and action against hostile state activity. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) raised a significant issue that the Home Secretary did not answer, so I ask her to consider it and to be ready to answer it in future. There should be some transparency on the issues around contact with foreign agents. It would be helpful if she could confirm whether the Prime Minister, when he was Foreign Secretary, met the ex-KGB agent Alexander Lebedev in Italy in April 2018 and whether any civil servants were present. It would be very helpful to know that information.

Labour supports stronger action on modern slavery and hopes that the Bill will be an opportunity to go further, but the Home Secretary needs to reverse some of the damaging provisions from the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 that will make it harder to prosecute trafficking and slavery gangs, as the retiring Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner has warned. We must also ask: where is the employment Bill with the long-promised single enforcement body to crack down on forced labour and abuse? Without those measures, this is still not a serious plan to tackle modern slavery.

In the absence of any serious action in the Queen’s Speech on the cost of living or to push prosecutions up, the Government talked instead about levelling up and community pride. The trouble is, they just do not get it. There is no levelling up if people cannot afford to eat, cannot afford to pay their bills or cannot afford to go to the local shops. There is no community pride if town centres do not have police officers or see no action when there is vandalism, street drinking, shoplifting or litter—or if, too often, the windows are broken and nothing is done. How can people have that local pride if there are no neighbourhood police to help prevent crimes, solve problems or nip them in the bud, or if people feel that there are no consequences for criminals? The very communities to whom the Government keep making false promises about levelling up are towns that are being hardest hit by antisocial behaviour and persistent unsolved crimes.

Trust within our communities depends on us having trust in the law and trust in there being consequences. That is why Labour has called for the police to be getting back on the street and to have neighbourhood prevention teams and partnerships in place that work both to prevent crime but also to tackle the criminals and bring them to justice. If people stop believing that a fair and valiant criminal justice system will come to their aid if they are hurt or wronged, that is corrosive for our democracy, too. That is why it is so damaging to feel like we have a Government who shrug their shoulders as victims of crime are let down. The Conservative party in government is not a party of law and order any more. Too often, it is a party of crime and disorder, a party that is weak on crime and weak on the causes of crime, letting more criminals off and letting our communities down. Britain deserves better than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

What I will say to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) is that all of us have food banks in our constituency and we do not need to visit his, because we are perfectly well aware of the requirement for them. They are required not because people do not know how to cook, but because we have poverty in this country on a scale that should shame his Government.

Before I address the substance of today’s debate and, in particular, the Government’s plans for a British Bill of Rights, like others I would like to refer to the results of the local elections last week, because in Scotland they were a very important reminder that this British Government have no mandate in Scotland and no mandate for any of the policies they are seeking to impose on my country in their programme for government. It is no surprise that the Conservatives lost so many votes and have been reduced to third place in Scotland. When I was campaigning on the doorsteps of my constituency, I heard over and over again the contempt in which this UK Government are held, not just because of the endemic law breaking, but because of the rank lack of respect for the Scottish electorate’s frequently expressed wish for a different way of doing things, and for a second independence referendum, following the broken promises of the first.

I am particularly proud that in the Pentland Hills ward of my constituency, my colleague and friend Fiona Glasgow displaced a Tory councillor and won yet another seat for the SNP on the City of Edinburgh Council. I congratulate her on the fantastic campaign that she ran. It is always so good to see women of independent mind elected to public office.

It was suggested by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition yesterday that this Queen’s Speech has no guiding principle. He is right, in so far as it abjectly fails to make meaningful proposals to reverse the cost of living crisis, which is hammering my constituents, and constituents across the UK. There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech about cutting VAT on fuel bills; nothing about taxing big companies—not only energy companies, but others with excess profits; nothing to increase benefits; and nothing to reinstate the £20 that was cut from universal credit. I heard on the radio this morning that the Cabinet met yesterday to chuck around ideas to deal with the cost of living crisis but did not come to any conclusions. The lack of urgency and focus of this Government is as insulting to my constituents as it is callous. Nor does this Queen’s Speech contain any measures to compensate my constituents for the serial incompetence of the Home Office in respect of not just the handling of immigration and asylum cases, but the issuing of passports. Lots of working-class families in my constituency have lost out on hard-worked-for holidays and it is a disgrace. Will the Government compensate them?

I might not agree with everything the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition says—we disagree on the right of Scotland to self-determination, and I would like him to do more to stick up for women’s sex-based rights and the rights of same-sex-attracted people—but I consider him to be a man of integrity. I do not want to live in a state where the Government, with the assistance of their little helpers in the right-wing press, are able to influence the police to reopen a closed investigation into their political enemies. It stinks, and most of my constituents can see the difference between what seems to have been a working meal and the endless parade of parties, with suitcases of booze and karaoke, that took place at No. 10 during lockdown. People are not stupid.

Yesterday, we were told in the Queen’s Speech that this Government will ensure that the constitution is upheld. I had to struggle to stop myself laughing out loud. This Prime Minister cannot even uphold the ordinary laws of the land, and in 2019 he rode roughshod over the constitution when he unlawfully prorogued Parliament. That was just the start of it, because in 2020 his Government introduced legislation designed to go back on an agreement they themselves had signed with the European Union, and they are still at it with the Northern Ireland protocol. I think this Queen’s Speech does have a guiding principle: the principle of diminishing the ability of this Parliament and the courts to hold this Government to account. We see that in the Bill of Rights, the Public Order Bill and the Brexit freedoms Bill, which will expand Executive power to amend, appeal or replace EU retained law by way of secondary legislation, so that this House cannot scrutinise it properly. So much for “taking back control”.

On the Bill of Rights, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), the Government’s independent review of the Human Rights Act and the cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, have found that the case for replacing the HRA with a British Bill of Rights has not been made out. The independent review suggested only very minor changes to the HRA, noting that the vast majority of submissions to that review spoke strongly in support of our Human Rights Act. But this Government did not even bother to address the findings of their own independent review, and instead published their own consultation on the day on which the independent review reported. This is extraordinary.

Yesterday, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who is not in his place and for whom I have great respect, even though I disagree with him on this issue, tried to suggest that the main reason for modifying the Human Rights Act is that it will give the Government the ability to deport foreign criminals who have been released from prison. In the recent thorough report on Human Rights Act reform by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, published on 13 April, we examined that claim in some detail and found it to be unsubstantiated by the data produced by the Government. For anyone who is interested, the arguments are set out at paragraphs 223 to 234.

The Joint Committee also found that the Government’s case that human rights legislation is in serious need of reform is not proven. This is not evidence-based policy making. We concluded that the Government are purporting to solve non-existent problems and offering solutions that will cause only confusion and detriment to those who need their rights to be protected. We said:

“If the Government wanted to strengthen human rights they would improve how they are respected in general, improve education so that everyone knows their rights and improve access to the courts for those needing to enforce them. Improving awareness and understanding of human rights and access to the courts would have a”

far more

“beneficial impact”

than

“the government’s current proposals.”

Our cross-party report was agreed unanimously, so the Government should listen to what it says, as well as to the conclusions of the independent review that they commissioned.

There is of course a particular Scottish angle to the reform of the Human Rights Act, as was highlighted in a previous Joint Committee on Human Rights report, in which we recommended that any proposals to reform the Act should not be pursued without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. Again, that was the recommendation of a cross-party Committee, and it is in tune with the position of the Scottish Government. The Human Rights Act itself is a reserved matter, but human rights per se in Scotland are not reserved. We have our own Scottish Human Rights Commission, which has been A-listed by the United Nations, and it is very concerned about the Government’s plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights. Indeed, the Joint Committee on Human Rights is to take evidence on that this afternoon.

The Human Rights Act that we have in this country is already a Bill of Rights. Bills of Rights have two characteristics: first, they are universal, so the rights apply to everyone, not just the people to whom the Government find it convenient to give rights; and secondly, they are a higher law, which is why the existing Human Rights Act includes the section 3 interpretative obligation. If those things are taken out, as the Government propose, it will not in fact be a Bill of Rights. Everyone knows that the Tories—or some of them, at least—have wanted to get us out of the European convention on human rights for some years. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] They are cheering now, but the reality is that their leader signed an agreement with the European Union when we left it that means we cannot leave the ECHR. This British Bill of Rights idea is, then, actually just a sneaky way to try to diminish people’s ability to enforce their rights under the ECHR.

So far this afternoon, nobody has mentioned the plans for a ban on LGB conversion therapy. I support such a ban, although I think the evidence for how much it is a contemporary problem is questionable. It was certainly a very serious problem in the past.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Joanna Cherry]

I will develop my argument before I give way. I am concerned that Members are coming under pressure to support a ban on what is described as trans conversion therapy that ignores the interim report of the Cass review and the testimonies of Tavistock clinic whistleblowers and detransitioners. There is an exponential rise in the number of girls seeking to transition. Many of those girls will be same-sex attracted; it is important that that possibility, and other explanations for dysphoria, such as autism, be explored in a respectful way with a qualified therapist before young women embark on a road to medicalisation. If someone experiences gender dysphoria in childhood or puberty, it does not necessarily mean that they are trans. Thousands of adult lesbians and gay men will, like me, know that to be true. It is really important that Members understand that “trans inclusive” means assuming that all children who say that they are of the opposite sex are transgender. It also means insisting that they do not need psychotherapy if they say they do not want it.

Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, has been commissioned to report on NHS gender identity services for children. Her interim report, which was published a couple of months ago, has provided worrying information about the lack of normal clinical standards being applied to children with gender distress. More work needs to be done, but the interim results show that a high proportion of cared-for children, those with autism or experience of abuse, and children who would be likely to grow up lesbian or gay are presenting for gender services. I am advocating for evidence-based policy making. Let us wait for the outcome of the Cass report, and let us not be influenced by those who want to criminalise therapists who simply want to do their job and act in their patients’ best interests. We urgently need proper, informed debate, in public and in Parliament, and it must centre on the wellbeing of children and young people.

We can have such proper, informed debates in this place and beyond only if we have free speech. The Tories say that they believe in free speech and want to better protect it as a right, but actions speak louder than words. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which was passed in the previous Session, the Public Order Bill and the Online Safety Bill all contain potential threats to freedom of expression. One of the problems with the Online Safety Bill is the introduction of a “legal but harmful” category for the removal of content. It will create a situation in which people are prevented from saying things that are legal but prohibited. There is a significant danger that, as drafted, the Bill will lead to the censorship of legal speech by online platforms and give the Government unacceptable controls over what we can and cannot say online.

As a former sex crimes prosecutor, I completely applaud the desire to protect children online that underlines the Online Safety Bill, but I am worried that the “legal but harmful” category will enable vexatious complainants to exploit the lack of definitional clarity to try to shut down lawful speech on topics of public concern on the grounds that it is “harmful” and should be subject to censorship.

[Joanna Cherry]

I do not know; the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) wanted to intervene earlier.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

indicated dissent.

[Joanna Cherry]

I give way to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), then.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marco Longhi]

In fact, that invitation has already been made. I am going to print off a set of nomination papers, but I wonder about the 10 people this person might need for the form to be valid.

My staff cannot hear distressed constituents on the phone through the awful racket he causes. All our staff who have offices in 1 Parliament Street suffer considerable stress and anxiety from the disruption he causes to their, and our, work. I doubt that staff in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the buildings opposite, would say anything different—[Interruption.] Is someone wanting to intervene? I do not know. I heard some noises. It is like a Hoover—an irritating thing in the background. I do not know what it is.

This person needs to have his loudspeaker system confiscated and to be moved on. Personally, I would like to see him locked up in the Tower with a loudspeaker playing “Land of Hope and Glory” on repeat at maximum volume. The Met Police really should deal with him. He is causing misery to hundreds of staff, he is intimidating many—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

No, he’s not!

[Marco Longhi]

I think someone wants to intervene, Mr Deputy Speaker. This person intimidates many who are passing by, going about our business and representing our constituents—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

No, he doesn’t!

[Marco Longhi]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to intervene?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The hon. Member clearly does not know how Parliament works, but we often make sounds across the Chamber when we disagree with someone, and I disagree with him. I am happy to swap offices: I will take his office and he can have my office. Then there will be no problem and we will not need to shut down free speech either. Win-win!

[Marco Longhi]

I am actually very comfortable for the hon. Member to come to Dudley North and make those very arguments, because he would be out of office completely. Please do come and make those very arguments. I am not going to allow this kind of behaviour from someone outside, who is a public nuisance, to force us to have to make changes for him.

Our police, whether in Dudley, the Met or elsewhere, need the tools to better manage and tackle the dangerous and highly disruptive tactics used by a small minority of selfish protesters to wreak havoc on people going about their daily lives. Our police already have enough to be doing without the unnecessary burden of a privileged few who seek to rinse taxpayers’ money.

It will come as no surprise that I wholeheartedly support the Public Order Bill. If that disruptive minority want to glue themselves to anything, maybe the Bill should make it easier for them to have their backsides glued to a tiny cell at Her Majesty’s pleasure. They would be most welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

She’s talking about you, Lloyd.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Mine is shorter, but I will extend it now. [Laughter.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

We do not normally have heckling on this point. [Laughter.] It’s all right. The hon. Gentlemen on both sides are forgiven. It is nice and lively.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

What we have here is a set of divisive, straw man Bills—all fluff and no substance. Where these Bills do have substance, they are nasty and miserable, or they are in complete reverse from what was suggested in the previous Session. Planning is one such example. One moment, we were to have a developers’ charter, but a rebellion on the Tory Back Benches meant that that was suddenly reversed, so now we have a nimbys charter. Suddenly, our neighbours will be able to vote on whether we can have that loft extension. Do not upset the Joneses otherwise there will be no extra room for your child. What kind of world are we living in? It is absolute tosh. Then we have a Bill that will make sure that MPs can sit in their offices in silence—with no noisy protesters outside. Really! Is that the extent of the Government’s ambition?

The borders Bill summed up the failure of the Home Office, which is unable to properly process refugees’ applications, leaving them to wait years for proper and decent outcomes, and unable to create safe and legal routes for refugees, of which there are none at the moment for the vast majority of people in the world—none, in fact, for anyone outside Afghanistan and Ukraine. The only legal route to claim asylum is to make an illegal crossing. Is that not stupid? I would have thought that the Government would fix that tautology. No, instead they offshore the problem—they let Rwanda fix it because they cannot get their own house in order. Indeed, it is not just those applying for asylum who are suffering from Home Office mismanagement; ordinary people cannot even get their passports from the Home Office, such is the incompetence in that Department.

On conversion therapy, we have a Bill that is completely useless. Yes, it will protect under-18s, but the majority of those who attend conversion therapies are over 18 and they will of course sign a waiver because they will be told that if they want to stay in their church or their community, and with their friends and families, they will have to go through conversion therapy.

There is a good argument for including trans people in a ban on conversion therapy. I am not saying that trans people should not have psychotherapy and be able to discuss their options as they go forward, or that different options for going forward should not be presented to them and that things should not be slowed down rather than speeded up, but in conversion therapy, the therapist is trying to force people to go in one direction and that is wholly unethical in whatever form it takes. It is wrong for trans people, for gay people, or for any form of therapy where the therapist is forcing the person into a certain direction. The Government’s failure to ban trans conversion therapy, and to ban conversion therapy entirely for over-18s, is a missed opportunity.

My partner twice suffered going through conversion therapies in his long process of coming out—he comes from an evangelical Christian background—and it has caused huge amounts of pain and agony. I do not want other people to go through that, and the loophole the Government have given is not worth the paper the rest of the Bill will be written on. I am deeply saddened by that and hope the Government will come forward with something to address it.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s view on this. Is he proposing there should be an absolute ban on conversion therapy, even if an adult consents? I understand the problem he raises about societal and group influence, but I am genuinely interested in how he would overcome the issue of freedom of association, or indeed action, for an adult.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I do not think that any psychotherapy processes should ever have a prescribed outcome. Of course, people can have friends persuading them one way or another, but that is not a therapeutic programme. That is the difference.

This is a lock-‘em-up Queen’s Speech: lock up the refugees if they manage to get over here because there are no other legal routes for people to come; lock up protestors; and lock up people who may be drug addicts and need treatment and support rather than a criminalising approach. Meanwhile, it allows corporations to continue to get off the hook with tax dodging, and allows the huge covid scams that existed under this Government to go unpunished. There is nothing on clamping down on those corporations that led to the Grenfell tragedy—no forcing them to pay the costs of converting all the properties up and down the country.

We could have seen a cap on fuel bills. We could have seen real progress on social care, integrating it into the NHS. We could have seen the Union saved through confederacy, with the independent sovereign states and regions of this country coming together, instead of continuing the Conservative party’s blind approach of trying to pretend the Union is not in peril and forcing it further apart.

All the Queen’s Speech does on justice is pretend there is no problem. It pretends there is no backlog in the courts. It pretends that all people want is some British Bill of Rights. It pretends that there is not a crisis in the family courts. It pretends that there is not a crisis in the magistrates system—where the Government have cut local magistrates courts up and down the country in the past 10 years, where victims and people seeking justice cannot access a local court and often have to get a bus that takes half a day to get to the local court and a bus back. There is no access whatsoever and no suggestion of fixing it. Even where the Government do suggest some positive things, it is too little.

One area where I welcome some progress is on housing and the renter’s rights Bill that the Government are suggesting will come forward in this Parliament. I welcomed that in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, I welcomed it in the 2021 Queen’s Speech and of course I welcome it in this Queen’s Speech—but this is the third attempt to announce a strengthening of tenants’ rights. Ministers are planning to produce a Green Paper, to consult on it, to produce a White Paper and to get through all the stages in this place while assuming there will not be a new Session in Parliament or a general election, which would mean that all that good work was completely wasted.

I implore the Government to get on with the process, because every minute delayed is another minute of private renters being turfed out of their homes—and I literally mean every few minutes. Research by Shelter shows that every seven minutes a section 21 eviction notice has been served to households in England since the Government first committed to ending no-fault evictions. That equals 230,000 private renters who have been evicted from their households for no fault of their own.

Every one of those renters has their own story. Just last week I heard from one, a private tenant for 13 years in her current home, who has five children between 18 and seven years old. Their landlady has informed them they that they have to leave with a section 21 notice. The council will not help them until they get a county court judgment, and that is another scandal: once they have the county court judgment against them, they have a black mark against their name and they cannot rent from the private rented sector.

In this Kafkaesque world, that parent is petrified about even being about to put a roof over her children’s heads. She has the money to pay the rent, but will any landlord, or the council, help her? She says she is terrified. She has never been in rent arrears. She has two children with autism, one of whom has hypermobility problems and both of whom attend special educational needs provision in the city. She is worried she will have to move out of the city with the rest of her family. There is no legal redress or compensation for the fact that that family have been kicked out through no fault of their own after 13 years of calling that place a home.

I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group for renters and rental reform—I should mention that we are meeting next week, for those others who want to join—and our group has heard time and again that the lives of renters are being harmed.

These moves are positive, and the Government have agreed to set up a private rented property portal. I hope the lessons have been learned from the rogue landlord register, on which the Government predicted there would be 10,000 entries but on which, after two years of operation, there are just 21 names. It is completely useless. If the Government are to make the next register work, all landlords must be on it. Every single landlord in this country, with no exceptions—everyone in this Chamber who is a landlord, everyone out there who is a landlord—needs to be on that register and there needs to be a scorecard for them. If there is not, it will not work for people.

Finally, and most pleasingly in the housing section, there is to be a new housing ombudsperson. That is music to my ears, but what is the detail going to provide? Take the deposit scheme, where there is already a system of redress: it does not allow for precedent to be set from one judgment to the next in deposit disputes. If someone wins an argument that the level of mould was the landlord’s fault and not the tenant’s, the person in the house two doors down, with the same landlord who holds the deposit back and refuses to give it to them, has to go through all the arguments again, and with a different ombudsperson they might have a different outcome. We cannot have justice like that.

An ombudsperson in housing must have precedent for all the other cases they then see, unless the precedent is overturned through legal argument; and they must have open justice, where people can see the results of previous outcomes. They must look at rent, because we know that if we abolish section 21, all landlords will do is whack up the rent and kick tenants out. The Government’s saying they will make it easier for landlords to kick people out for rent arrears without going through the courts is a worry in itself. The system must not penalise tenants if they seek to use it, as currently happens in the county court system, where it can take many months, sometimes almost a year, to even get a hearing. There is a real problem with the backlog in our courts. The Government have called the Bill on housing and renters radical, and a radical approach is needed, so I hope we will see it.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Tom Pursglove]

I am conscious that I need to make some progress and that time is short, but I will give way to my hon. Friend, and then to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

I am always grateful to my hon. Friend for his considered interventions and for the thought and care that he takes in making his arguments. I respectfully disagree with him on this point. I will come on to say more about this later in my remarks, when I will be able to set out precisely why that is the case.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Further to the points that have been made, will the Minister outline what, for example, a Kurdish Syrian who is stuck in Turkey would do? Britain recognises that Turkey is oppressive to Kurds. It is further bombing Kurdish camps, as we speak, in northern Iraq and northern Syria. The majority of people on boat crossings in recent months have been Kurdish and, in particular, they have had the highest number of deaths on those dangerous boat crossings. Will he explain how those people, who often have links to the UK, provide a positive contribution to the UK and have often fought alongside British forces in Syria, can seek asylum here in Britain without the Government opening up proper, safe and legal routes in embassies and visa-processing centres across Europe? Surely that would be the answer to stopping boat crossings, not this other nonsense.

[Tom Pursglove]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion about allowing people to claim asylum at embassies and consulates around the world. We would find that very considerable numbers of people arrive at embassies and consulates to do so and, of course, individuals who are not granted asylum would, in all likelihood, still seek to come to the United Kingdom through small boat crossings, so I do not think that that would actually solve the issue, as he believes it would.

We also have the global resettlement scheme. We continue to look at what more we can do in that space to provide sanctuary and opportunities for people. Many views are expressed in this House about our departure from the European Union. One of the biggest safe and legal routes—the biggest, in fact—is the skills-based immigration system that we now have in this country, whereby people from around the world can apply to come to the United Kingdom. That broad eligibility is very welcome, and people from across the globe can come to the UK through that route.