Immigration: Hostile Environment

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Bassam for providing this opportunity and I hope he has been encouraged by the very thoughtful, reflective and constructive nature of the debate that has followed his own interesting and challenging introduction. We cannot get away, can we, from the issue of what sort of nation and society we want to be, because all this is part of that. What kind of values do we want to prevail in our society? For me, justice and inclusivity are crucial—a recognition of the joy, really, in humanity, provided by its diversity, and an ability and a willingness to make the most of that diversity, to make its celebration and operation central to the way we approach all our policies.

I found myself, not for the first time, as I have told her, in very strong agreement with my noble friend Lady McIntosh. Of course, language matters. Of course, the signals and the leadership provided by language is absolutely basic. That is why, when phrases such as “hostile environment” are introduced, in whatever context, they are like a cancer which begins to pervade across society as a whole. They cannot be contained within just one of the specific issues we have been discussing; they inevitably affect the whole attitude of people across society.

We all have our own personal examples and we could spend a lot of time reminiscing about those. I was at one stage very closely involved in the case of an Iranian who was seeking asylum in this country. He had been a prominent sportsman in Iran and very highly regarded. He had decided that he wanted to become a Christian and he had the traumatic experience of his own father denouncing him. He then was not only harassed but persecuted by the authorities, and he was tortured. He got here disguised as a crew member in an Iranian aircraft. What I remember is the whole process—it is difficult to pin down individuals. This man was in a very bad condition mentally. He was receiving support and therapy from people who recognised that he had been tortured, the consequences of torture and what was involved in trying to support him effectively. It was very hard to persuade the authorities that his experiences were as relevant and central to the issue as they were. There is no doubt in my mind that the bureaucracy and insensitivity of the whole process aggravated his mental illness.

I became involved in the case when it was eventually brought to court. The judge upheld his position and, fortunately, positive action was taken to establish his standing in our society. But of course, he will never fully recover from those experiences. The court case was bizarre and almost unbelievable. The lawyer for the Home Office said that it could not possibly consider this, that or the other because it had not received the papers. Fortunately, there was a very astute and on-the-ball lawyer from a Newcastle firm, who had done a lot of work on immigration and who produced within minutes the receipt from the Home Office showing that the documents had been received. How can a case of that severity and seriousness have got to that position?

The point I want to make is that while I was emotionally and personally caught up with what was happening, I kept thinking, “But what about all the others?”. This man has been extremely fortunate to find himself among friends in the church who were determined to support him and see him through, but there are many others who do not have that kind of support—the ones who do not have the same opportunity to present their case or who do not perhaps have the same articulate capabilities. They are all our responsibility and we need to remember that. These things worry me profoundly.

The term “illegal immigrants” always intrigues me because it was not very many years ago that a leading government Minister in this country said in relation to those in deprived areas that the hero in society was the one who got on their bike and cycled off to find and build a future for their children. I have never been able to see how you can draw a distinction between that and people faced with an appalling situation in their home country who, as it were, got on their bike and cycled off to try to build a future, at whatever risk. We categorise and try to compartmentalise the whole issue of immigration in a way that is just not tenable, because all the dimensions overlap each other.

As we struggle with our own challenges in this society, we should never forget that there are between 65 million and 70 million refugees and displaced people in the world; 21.3 million are recognised as refugees. In the context of the Middle East, where we are deeply disturbed by the issues that prevail, we should remember that Lebanon has 1.1 million refugees, Turkey has 2.5 million and Jordan has between 660,000 and 700,000. It is not only the horror of the circumstances that these people experience, it is the pressure on and disruption to the host societies—poor, impoverished societies themselves—carrying this huge burden.

This challenge is global and international and that point cannot be escaped. If I was asked to take just one issue in which the imperative of international co-operation and working closely together with other Governments and countries is so important and so obvious, it is the realm of migration and immigration. There is no way in these realities that we can solve the issue by ourselves. We will always be trying to stick a thumb in the dyke. In that sense, we must rebuild a sense of positive engagement with others in the world in asking how we face up to the issues of conflict and poverty, involving an effective global approach to the issue of migration.

At the other end of the reality, we have to remember that of course the pressures of migration can be very disruptive to communities which are ill-prepared to accept the numbers and the experience of a new culture coming into their midst. We need therefore to be taking far more seriously the social investment in our own society where the pressures are greatest. We ought to be looking to the importance of education as a means of helping communities cope with what is before them.