Immigration Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

All of us with children or grandchildren can imagine our own youngsters in that kind of situation. We would not want it for them and we should not want it for these young people. I know that the Minister, in his heart, would not want it either. This is a just and reasonable amendment, and I hope that the Minister will take seriously the request made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in asking for continued discussions around this question between now and Report.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my warm support to my noble friend in moving this amendment. For any of us who have been exposed to the realities of the situation, it is impossible to forget the mental turmoil that is so often present in the case of the person going through the process. The minds of those who have suffered torture are already in a pretty twisted and confused state. Just trying to cope with the procedures is physically and mentally exhausting. That is aggravated, frankly, because sometimes they have been through all the injustice of ill-prepared cases against them by the Home Office, which were subsequently totally dismissed as unacceptable, allowing the person to acquire asylum status. All this adds to the psychological pressure.

The other thing that strikes me—both the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend referred to this—is the amount of arbitrariness in this process. Some come up against wonderful people in the community. I can think of a case not very far from where the Minister lives where there was a wonderful amount of support forthcoming for the couple concerned, and they roped me in on it, but all the time I was thinking, “But what about all those who do not have this support?”. It was bad enough for them.

Let us consider the arbitrariness that people encounter at the appeal stage in terms of the procedures in court. I was present for this couple’s case, and indeed I was called as a witness. The judge was simply incompetent, but fortunately for this couple, they had a superbly good lawyer to present their case. She was able to shred the case brought by the judge almost within minutes. What was again constantly in my mind was the fact that the couple were fortunate to have the support of a wonderful family and an excellent lawyer, someone who was commended by her own profession for her work, but what about all the others? This indicates that we need to look closely at what is realistically possible.

To be fair, I should add that when I became involved in this case, I was given a lot of helpful support by the Home Office. It was obvious that some people there were unhappy about the situation and they were trying to help. But only a minority of cases have the good fortune of the kind intervention of others. We cannot take the business of fairness lightly and we must be able to think ourselves into the shoes of the people going through this process—what they have been through, what state their minds are in and how capable they are of coping with what is required of them during the period of transition. I hope that the Minister, who I know is an extremely fair-minded man, will listen carefully to the plea of my noble friend and resolve this.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, our Amendment 229 also addresses the issue of people who have been granted refugee status, humanitarian protection and various forms of leave to remain accessing mainstream benefits. I am sure that being able to work, and as a secondary to that being able to access mainstream benefits and accommodation, is what people in this situation want. They do not want to be supported. But delays in the Home Office in issuing biometric residence permits and delays at the DWP in issuing national insurance numbers so that people can get identity documents and thus establish a claim to benefits mean that the system is not working as it should.

Our amendment would not make as many changes as its length might suggest. The relevant addition to the definition of when,

“a claim for asylum is determined”,

are the lines,

“and the claimant or dependants of the claimant do not appear to the Secretary of State to be destitute”.

In other words, adding that in as another condition to be met, as it were. I can understand that it must be much easier to have an automatic time trigger for these things, but we have heard throughout the debate on this Bill how matters are considered on a case-by-case basis, and it seems that this is another occasion when that consideration should be applied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I should make one specific point that I need to put on to the record. It is not just a case of extending the time period, it is also about making sure that people apply for these benefits promptly. One of the figures cited in the 2014 British Red Cross report showed that of its sample of 16 individuals, only three had applied for welfare benefits within the first three weeks of being granted status. Part of the issue is getting people to apply earlier.

[Lord Judd]

The Minister has just put his finger on a good example of the difficulty here. He has said that it is important that people should apply promptly, but sometimes their mental condition and the state of confusion they are in makes that a totally unrealistic proposition unless there are families or friends who can take them through the whole process, as was the case with the couple I cited as an example earlier. People have to work hard on it. These are exactly the sort of points which should be taken up in the discussion that I am glad to hear the Minister is suggesting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, having heard my noble friend and others, it is clear how important these amendments are, and I am sure that the Minister will take them seriously. I will make just one point. Those who are behind these amendments are probably the people in the House who are the most experienced in depth about the issues with children that we are discussing. Their commitment to effective work with children cannot be doubted. It would therefore be outrageous if the Committee did not take seriously what they feel is important to put forward as amendments.

The one thought that strikes me is our failure to think ahead, to think in a wider context and to make connections. We agonise about the rising evidence of mental illness. We agonise about delinquency, extremism and terrorism. What are we doing with this younger generation? Are we actually trying to generate mental illness? Are we trying to generate recruits for extremists or, at a lesser level, gangs? Do we really want to build healthy citizens? These children are going to go somewhere, and they are either going to be positive, creative citizens or they are going to be deeply damaged youngsters with all kinds of negative consequences. We really need to bring our thinking together on social policy, health policy and all the policies necessary for a stable society and, indeed, for protection against extremism. These amendments are highly relevant to the imperative of that wider thinking.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the Committee because we have heard the significance of these amendments, to some of which I have added my name. I want to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said because we all know that the consequence of not providing for these young people when they leave the care system is serious because they are going to remain in this country.

Given that these young people are likely to remain here and to go under the radar, I simply ask the Minister to comment on the figures in relation to removal directions served on former unaccompanied young people in 2014. As I understand it, 245 removal directions were served on former asylum-seeking unaccompanied young people, but only 15—less than half of 1%—were forcibly removed. What I cannot see is how any of the proposed legislation is going to do anything other than make that situation worse and make those young people more destitute. The Children’s Society has plenty of evidence of those young people ending up sleeping on buses and selling the currency of their bodies to have somewhere to stay. I cannot think that that is the sort of response that we in this House want or the sort of society we want to create.

I will not go through the list of cases that the Children’s Society has given me of people who have now reached the age of majority and are receiving some support in education and training, putting themselves in a position where they can make a contribution to our society. But if we implement a system whereby they do not get support after the age of 18, as others do, we are storing up enormous trouble for ourselves and huge financial as well as emotional costs.