Immigration Bill

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect to the noble Lord, it is nothing of the sort. On the last point, the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme does not discriminate on the grounds of nationality, ethnicity or religion and therefore does not contravene either Article 3 of the refugee convention or Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That is where the distinction lies.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

I know the Minister is trying to make progress, but he said that the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme does not discriminate against nationalities, but it does. The key is in the name. They are Syrian. It does not apply to Iraqis.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The noble Lord makes the point, and I accept that the scheme applies only to Syrians in the context of Syria being the area that is subject to the scheme, but it does not distinguish on the grounds of ethnicity or religion in that way.

I mentioned numbers a moment ago. No country in the world has an open-door immigration policy of the kind proposed by this amendment. More particularly, no country in the world has an open-door immigration policy that would involve persons who were not strictly refugees under the convention being able to apply in the place of their residence for asylum in the UK. It has always been the practice that an asylum seeker is a person who presents themselves in a safe country and seeks to establish refugee status. What is suggested in this amendment, as I read it, is that a person from within Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey or elsewhere would be entitled to approach a British consulate or embassy and make an application for asylum in the UK from that point. That would not be limited to the Middle East, either; it would apply across the world because, again, you could not distinguish between one set of refugees and another. That would not be possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, introduced the idea that somehow this amendment was subject to a cap. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, observed, though, that is simply not the case, and it is difficult to conceive of how it could be. Still, let us suppose that it was going to be subject to a cap of, say, 5,000 applications. How would that be dealt with? Are we to send 5,000 visas to the consulate in Baghdad? Are we then to say that first come are first served—that those who arrive and apply can have one while those who arrive too late cannot? With great respect to your Lordships, that is not an immigration policy, it is a lottery, and that is not what we are about. We are trying to achieve an objective and fair result.

When we address this, we have to remember also that refugee status applies not only to those who may have been, or threatened with being, the victims of genocide but to those who have been the subject of, or threatened with, persecution. On what basis can we rationally and reasonably distinguish between those two groups when they all constitute refugees?

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment. The whole of this Bill raises moral issues, and it was the simple rightness of this proposition that led me to sign the amendment.

The Daily Mail has been campaigning on this issue and recently highlighted the case of one interpreter who was injured by a bomb and accused by the Taliban of being a spy. He was at that time waiting for the UK Government’s support unit to consider his application to be relocated to the UK. He said, “They told me that after five days they would interview me but after five days I was still waiting and they said the programme has not started yet. Then they said maybe 2014, maybe 2015, but I could not wait that long, it was my life at risk”. We know that hard cases make bad law, but do they invariably make bad law? Do they not sometimes point us to what should be good with the law? The dangers to these staff and their families at home are now obvious, as they were obvious when they provided assistance.

The Minister for the Armed Forces in a Statement last August spoke of the UK team,

“which investigates thoroughly all claims of intimidation. When necessary we will put in place appropriate measures to mitigate any risks. These range from providing specific security advice, assistance to relocate the staff member and their family to a safe place in Afghanistan, or, in the most extreme cases, relocation to the UK”.

There are others in the Chamber who can speak with much more authority than I can about whether giving advice and relocation elsewhere within the country is realistic or effective.

I will finish by saying simply that it took a long campaign to recognise the contribution of the Gurkhas to this country, which was supported by David Cameron before he was Prime Minister. I think that we should put right the position for the individuals who are the subject of this amendment now.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, the hour is late and no doubt the House does not want to sit for too long. This is an issue on which I have campaigned for the best part of 18 months. My instinct is to speak at some length to outline the individual problems that affect Afghan interpreters, but I do not think that this is the moment to do so. I shall try to be fairly brief in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in his amendment.

The amendment cannot be seen except in the context of the United Kingdom’s policy towards Afghan interpreters. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has said, a significantly more disadvantageous set of regulations applies to Afghan interpreters than existed in relation to Iraqi interpreters after the Iraq war. That is an injustice by itself, but let us leave it to one side. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee has said, this is an issue on which the Daily Mail has campaigned—no weeping liberals they, as we know. The newspaper has described the Government’s policies in respect of those to whom we owe a duty of recognition and honour as dishonourable and shameful. I do not often agree with the Daily Mail, but I certainly agree to the use of those adjectives.

I suspect that I am probably the only person in Parliament who not only has been an interpreter—not, I hasten to say, in operational conditions—but has used interpreters, in that case in operational conditions and sometimes moderately dangerous ones. Many of those who served with the front-line units were the bravest of the brave. If there is a front line, they are on it because they have to be; British soldiers cannot do their job unless they are. If there is action, they had to be there too, otherwise we could not do the task that Her Majesty sent us to Afghanistan to fulfil. When the patrol returns the soldiers go into a protected base, but not the Afghan interpreters. They have to spend the night with their families in their communities. Their families are not 10,000 miles away in safety. They too live in the community and are subject to the threat of the Taliban. They came almost by the month for every one of those 13 years and now they come virtually by the day to individual Afghan interpreters, who are beaten up and their families threatened. I have heard so many stories of this that I can barely remember the individual details.

The Afghan interpreters who served day in and day out in active service in the most hostile and dangerous positions, sometimes even with the Special Forces, do not go back after six months. They have stayed in the country for every single one of the 13 years of the Afghan conflict. Now—I have to say it bluntly—we have abandoned them. I do not think that there is a single squaddie or serviceman who served in Afghanistan alongside these interpreters who did not love them, who did not admire them, and who did not think that every single one of them on front-line duties bore a burden of risk greater even than many of our own soldiers because they had borne it for longer. And yet we have abandoned them. It is a shameful policy that shames the Government and, in my view, the nation as well.

The Government’s refuge in this, and we may well hear it from the Minister, is that they have set up their package. There are obligations of duty, honour and service here. Our soldiers could not have operated without the service of these men. They simply would have been useless. The next time our servicemen are asked to go into battle on behalf of our nation and we seek a local interpreter, given the way that we have abandoned them and in the light of the way we have treated them, what kind of response do noble Lords imagine they will get?

The Government believe that all their obligations to these brave men can be fulfilled by the Afghan intimidation scheme. When I understood that the scheme would be put into operation in the next Government, I expressed my opposition to it. I thought that it was the wrong scheme. But if it had been applied with good will, so that the burden of presumption was that the Afghan interpreter would, in the face of intimidation and threat, be allowed to return to Britain, maybe this would have been a reasonable policy—inadequate, flawed, but maybe just about acceptable. But it is not. Almost none of those who have suffered from mortal intimidation from the Taliban have been housed and not a single one has been allowed to return to Britain in the years since this Government have been in power. This policy is already flawed. It is very difficult to understand why it has been enacted with such little generosity and duty of honour, except that those interpreters, along with the honour of our country, have been sacrificed in this Government’s obsession to do not what is right but what is necessary to outflank the revolting prejudices of the right wing of the Conservative Party and UKIP.

This is a shameful policy, the price of which will be paid in the standing not only of our nation but of our own troops, when they seek to draw in the services of interpreters in the future. If we vote for the amendment we can at least make amends in this Bill for three or four years of complete failure to live up to the role that these men have played on behalf of Her Majesty and of our nation in a conflict of our choosing, and who have placed their lives at risk in doing so.

[Viscount Hailsham]

My Lords, if the amendment was simply in the terms expressed by the noble Lord, I would support it. But it is not: once again, one comes back to look at the terms of the amendment. It is extremely broadly drawn. It is not confined to interpreters. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, said about the interpreters, but then I look and see who is covered. It includes,

“direct employees of the Department for International Development or the British Council”,

and people who are,

“contracted staff who worked as part of Her Majesty’s Government’s programmes, projects and operations”.

It goes far beyond what the noble Lord said. As I understood the introduction given by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, which was very clear—the House is grateful to him—all the people who come within those categories should be entitled to come to the United Kingdom and there make applications. We need to focus on legislation. It is quite right to draw attention to the broad principles, which was done very eloquently indeed, but when we are at this stage of a Bill the business of the House is to try to pass legislation that makes sense.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

The amendment does not apply to all those people. It applies to all those people who have served Her Majesty if they are subject to intimidation and threat. The noble Viscount questions the drafting. That is fine, but does he agree with the Government’s policy and the way it is presently enacted with Afghan interpreters? It would appear not. If not, will he put a statement down to the Government today, seeking to use the amendment to get them to adopt a more honourable policy?

[Viscount Hailsham]

The noble Lord asked whether I support the Government’s policy regarding interpreters. I happen to think that we have not been sufficiently generous to interpreters. I take the point entirely. I would like to see the Government be much more generous to interpreters from Afghanistan, and indeed from Iraq, but that is not the sole purpose of the amendment. I come back to the point I constantly make—I am sorry to repeat it. It is right to look at broad principles, of course it is, but we are also looking at legislation. What the House passes into legislation must make sense. This amendment goes far beyond the point so eloquently made by the noble Lord.

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[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, there are some things that I think we can all agree on. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, on this. We all acknowledge that the locally employed people in Afghanistan and Iraq did tremendous work—the interpreters in particular, because they tended to be on the front line. They put their lives at risk and sometimes put their families at risk, and I completely agree that we owe them a duty to look after them and to be honourable towards them. Where I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, in particular, is that we have not had a policy which is shameful; we have tried and we have succeeded in doing quite a lot to support those people.

We do distinguish, it is true, between those who were employed doing more and less dangerous things and we particularly support those who were on the front line in places such as Helmand in Afghanistan, but I assure noble Lords that we are aware of our legal and our moral responsibility to assist those who suffer as a result of conflict generally. Over and above that, we have a comprehensive approach to assisting those in need who are outside the UK, whom the UNHCR considers in need of resettlement and whom we accept under one of our programmes, particularly the Gateway programme and, more recently, as we heard in the previous debate, the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation programme.

We also accept that we have an additional responsibility to those who have worked for the UK Government in conflict zones. Perhaps it would help if I explain briefly what those arrangements are, because I think there has been some misunderstanding. The numbers that the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, quoted are not correct. In Afghanistan, we engaged around 7,000 staff during our operations, around half of whom were English-speaking interpreters. There are two schemes designed to assist these former interpreters and other locally engaged staff who are in Afghanistan. First, there is the redundancy scheme, introduced in 2013 in response to the military draw-down. For those who qualify, there is a range of in-country packages of assistance, but also, for those who meet certain criteria, relocation to the UK along with their immediate dependants. Under this scheme, up to the end of February 2016 more than 600 Afghan civilians have been relocated to the UK. This is completely distinct from our refugee resettlement programmes.

The second scheme is the scheme that was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, which is the intimidation policy—personally, I think it should have been the anti-intimidation policy. This is designed to provide advice and support to any serving or former staff member whose safety has been threatened. So that applies to anyone, whether they resigned long before the draw-down or not—anyone can apply under this policy. That is regardless of the dates or duration of their employment or the role that they held working for us in Afghanistan. Anyone who was employed by the Government, or on associated programmes, can apply. Investigations take place and mitigation measures can be put in place. These can range from providing specific security advice to assistance to relocate the staff member within the country. In the most extreme cases, it could mean relocation to the UK. We have supported around 300 staff members through this intimidation policy, which is regularly reviewed. In the case of Iraq, the numbers are rather larger.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I said that, according to the figures I have, under the intimidation scheme the number of Afghan interpreters who have been relocated to the United Kingdom since the election of this Government is nil. Am I right?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right on that. The point is that 600 Afghan locally employed staff have been relocated to the UK and many others have been helped within the country. The important thing about the intimidation scheme is that, if the circumstances merit it, there is nothing to prevent those people being relocated to the UK.

The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, talked about Iraq. The Government have assisted staff through the Iraq locally engaged staff assistance scheme, which has been running since 2007. Six hundred places were made available for staff and dependants who met the criteria and have enabled nearly all that number to be resettled in the UK. The second arrangement in Iraq was also for locally employed staff who were still serving on 8 August 2007. They were granted entry clearance which, on arrival, if they met the criteria, conferred indefinite leave to enter the UK. This had to be referred by employing departments. Since 2007, under this arrangement, a total of 1,323 Iraqi civilians have been relocated to the UK up to the end of February this year.

These programmes are in addition to the UK’s obligation under the refugee convention to consider all asylum claims made in the UK. But we have no legal obligation to extend the asylum process to those outside the UK. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, mentioned in the last debate, government policy is very clear that we consider only asylum claims that are lodged in the UK. We do not grant visas to enable asylum seekers to come to the UK. To accept that proposal would attract large numbers of claims requiring careful consideration and place very heavy burdens on UK posts abroad. Importantly, it would also draw resources away from those applying in the UK, and thus undermine our ability to process those claims in accordance with our legal obligations under the refugee convention.

The operation of the two global resettlement schemes already provides a route to the UK for refugees recognised by UNHCR. The existing ex gratia schemes for locally engaged staff in Iraq and Afghanistan have a different focus and provide a route to the UK to reward those who have made particularly significant contributions to the success of UK missions. For all locally engaged staff we have the intimidation policy that provides cover for those who may need support in the face of a local threat, which in extreme cases could lead to relocation to the UK, as I have said. We recognise the considerable contributions made by locally engaged staff and owe a debt of gratitude to them and an ongoing duty of care. That duty and that debt are already being discharged and those in need have been allowed to come to the UK.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I cannot accept the amendment. However, I can go some way towards what he was asking for as his second alternative. If he can give me examples of where the existing schemes are not working, I am happy to take them to the MoD and explain why they are not working. However, I submit that the schemes which are operating do fulfil our moral and legal obligations. On that basis, I would be grateful if the noble Lord would withdraw the amendment.