Immigration: UK Citizenship and Nationality

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, I appreciate the opportunity to bring up the question of residency and access to the United Kingdom, and to ask the Government to look again at the requirements of those seeking UK citizenship: residency conditions; evidence of their good character; English language ability; and a matter that I have raised in the past, the Life in the UK test. A friend from Texas took this test several months ago. These were the questions she was asked: first, whether Elizabeth I handled her Parliament badly or had good relations with the legislature; secondly, whether UK citizens were renowned for backing individual liberty, intolerance, inequality or extremism; and thirdly, was it true or false that in 2002 Sir Winston Churchill was voted the “greatest Briton of all time”.

I should like to take the Minister up on an offer he made during Questions in February to meet interested groups in order to devise a more relevant and practical set of questions. As he will know, Dr. Thom Brooks of Durham University makes a number of recommendations for change. First, the handbook should make it clear which sections are to be tested. It contains about 3,000 facts—far too many for anyone to memorise—and the whole matter could easily become a pub quiz. There are inconsistencies and omissions that need to be rectified. The Government should decide what the rationale is for the test. Is it to be a stumbling block or a ladder in the immigration process? It appears totally unfair that it is used as part of the Government’s plan to reduce immigration. That is not what the test is there for.

Many of the current questions could be omitted. It does not help us at all to know when wives were granted the right to divorce their husbands. Let us make the test far more local: on the basic history of the community where the applicant lives, on where local schools, pharmacies and hospitals are, and so on. It would be interesting if we set up a parliamentary citizenship quiz—perhaps the Commons versus the Lords—on the Life in the UK handbook. If it succeeded here, we could then roll it out across the UK to see how many long-serving, ordinary UK citizens could answer the questions asked. Perhaps the Minister could set up a ministerial team to tackle these questions. The answers to irrelevant questions should play no part when one is making decisions about a person’s suitability for citizenship. I ask again: where is the necessary information about the NHS, how to report crime, or which subjects are taught to our children? We have to have someone looking at this new set of questions, and perhaps Dr Thom Brooks could do just that.

In 2008 the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said of the test that it created a deep impression of unfairness among those who had to sit it. I agree with him but I would go further. I suggest that an accurate impression of the UK’s current immigration system is one that is deeply unfair and riddled with inequalities. I know many folk representing immigrant societies, trying to help them in their present situation, and the general impression is that the whole situation is shambolic.

There is much talk about how we must attract the brightest and the best. Is that done by restricting our immigration further? I have a Bill before the House to reduce from 12 months to six months the time within which those seeking asylum in this country will be able to work. Is it by indefinite detention? Is it by reassessing the family migration rules? These can be barriers but they can also be bridges.

Only 26 of the 193 countries in the United Nations have an average personal income of more than £18,600, which is the sum called for before people can take up their place in our community. You see families with far less than this. In Nigeria the average income is £1,022 and in India it is £935. We are setting impossible targets. How on earth can people raise this sort of money? How can they send their children to somewhere where they can fulfil their dreams? We rely so much on people from India, Nigeria and other countries in order to run our National Health Service. I looked at the list of consultants in the three north Wales general hospitals and a third of them come from outside the UK and outside Europe. If we had these sorts of limits when they were struggling in their own countries, our health service would have gone a long time ago. There could be a very real crisis and if we establish them now and insist on them, that crisis is waiting for us in the future.

Today’s new Immigration Bill, of which I have had a brief view, makes nonsense of the dreams of the past. When the Statue of Liberty was erected, what was written on it? It stated:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.

In the UK today we say: “Stay where you are. The barriers are up; the bridges are destroyed. Forget the hopes and dreams for yourself and your children”. Of course, if you are a wealthy entrepreneur, you can buy residency here if you have £20,000 or £50,000 or £200,000—you can buy your citizenship in the UK—but if you are a little child, with tremendous potential, in one of the African countries, hard lines. The world will never benefit from what you could contribute.

On 25 March the Prime Minister said that he wanted the brightest and the best to come here, but what chances are there for so many? Do we not have an opportunity here to provide them with an opportunity? One thing we could do is to improve at an early stage our links in twinning with schools in places like Africa. There is a lot that can be done and perhaps in the new Immigration Bill we will be able to take up that opportunity.

I think of the vans that went out—they were actually lorries more than vans. The Home Office paid for posters. How effective were they? In the Commons today, it was revealed that only one person took advantage of that offer: one person from Pakistan. There was nobody else. Despite all the cost and the unease produced by the posters, they had such little effect.

This morning, I heard Mrs May trying to create a hostile environment for undocumented migrants in the UK. In an earlier debate, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said that denying asylum seekers the ability to work makes it difficult for them to integrate into our society, which is what we want.

I suggest that the whole culture and attitude is one that we must deplore. It is the new attitude. I imagine that when the Welsh dairymen came here more than 100 years ago, they were not really welcome, and that there was hostility. “Taffy” was one insult for the newcomers.

In 1938 the Daily Mail headlined its story: “German Jews are pouring into this country”. It went on to print:

“‘The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port … is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest’. With these words, Mr Herbert Metcalfe, the Old Street magistrate, yesterday referred to the number of aliens entering this country through the ‘back door’—a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed”.

That was in 1938. The attitude was hostile. Where did it end? It ended in the Holocaust.

The response in 2013 can be much better than that. We should ask the Minister to look again at the contents of this test, and at the whole raft of immigration legislation.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

Before my noble friend rises, perhaps I may remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate, with contributions limited to six minutes. If any speech exceeds that, it will eat into the Minister’s time, and the time of the opposition Front Bench, so I would appreciate it if noble Lords could keep to time.