Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th September 2020 Lords Chamber

I live in a part of the country where, a few years ago, the issue of separate communities was talked about. It is still a problem. There is not enough integration. There are many efforts, but not enough, to get people from different communities to get to know those from other communities. They go to school together and are in the same classes. They go to work together and, after work, they go home into their own communities. We ought to be working to break this down. One way in which people who have come to live here from other countries can do this is by becoming British citizens. We should be cheering and welcoming it, not putting up the obstacles which the mindset of the Home Office does.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his characteristically forceful speech, particularly the striking and moving anecdote about the young man who lost his driving licence. I fear that that kind of experience is not unique and is repeated too often, in too many ways.

I put on record my strongest possible appreciation and support for these two amendments. They are vital. I also want to say how cheered I have been by the strength of argument and emotion with which my noble friend Lord Rosser introduced the debate, and by the way that my noble friend Lady Lister backed him up with her commitment. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has just pointed out, the first bit of the Member’s explanatory statement for this amendment says that it

“is to probe the case for a statutory duty to encourage, promote and facilitate”.

These are key words. The statement runs on to say that it is to ensure the Secretary of State

“does not exercise certain of her powers and responsibilities in any way that may impede the exercise of those rights”.

That hardly needs to be said; at the same time, it needs to be underlined because one cannot be altogether certain on that front.

Rights are rights but there are too many indications of considerable numbers of people—young people and children, in particular—who are not really yet switched on to what their rights are and what is necessary to register them under the new arrangements. There may be a host of reasons why they are not acutely aware of what they must do, but that problem exists with a considerable number of people. I would like to feel that we had a Home Office with political leadership that supports civil servants in saying that their job is to ensure that everyone with a right is going to be able to register to continue the fulfilment of those rights. That is the kind of commitment and drive we need from Ministers and civil servants.

In the context of a Select Committee to which I belonged at the time, I was one of those who had the good fortune to attend a couple of briefings, and I also went to the Home Office to be briefed by civil servants on the arrangements that they were making under the necessary processes following the removal of European Union citizenship in Britain. I was impressed then, because there seemed to be a real commitment by the team working on this issue to tackle the situation effectively. Now, however, I have the feeling that there is not so much inertia but more a sense that our job is to provide the facilities and make them as accessible as possible. We have to be more proactive than that, but that is not going to happen on the scale and with the thoroughness that it should unless leadership comes from the top.

I thank my noble friends Lord Rosser and Lady Lister, and all the others who have spoken so effectively and convincingly on this issue. I cannot believe that the Minister, being the sort of person she is and on hearing these arguments, will not find a way in which she can convincingly respond to them.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I offer the Green group’s support to Amendments 63 and 67. We have already heard many powerful speeches, so I will be brief.

I want to address Amendment 67 in particular, because it has full cross-party support, in so far as that can be expressed by the procedures of your Lordships’ House. I note that Members from the three largest parties and the Cross Benches have signed it. It struck me in looking at this that perhaps I might make representations about our procedures to show the full breadth of cross-party support in our multiparty age; there might need to be the possibility of more signatures to be available on the Order Paper, but that is something for another time.

I want to focus on some of the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. She spoke about the imbalance between the Home Office’s actions: its clear desire to enforce action against people who it perceives not to be British citizens and not to have the right to be here versus its extreme inaction in informing and educating people about their rights and making sure that they are not excluded from those rights. As many noble Lords have noted, there is not much use in having rights if you do not know about them; that is effectively being denied your rights. I was reflecting on that and thinking that, effectively, the Home Office is defying the will of Parliament in defying the rights that Parliament has granted to people, by failing to inform them. That is not what should be happening, but it clearly is. That is why I think it is really important to support both these amendments, which work in much the same ways, and will push to see them in the Bill.

We saw with the Windrush scandal, which one just cannot avoid referring to in this context, that the Home Office denied people their personal rights. It denied them their life in some cases—the actions taken by the Home Office were deadly.

I also note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, that all too often these issues are mixed up with immigration, but they are absolutely distinct. We are talking about British people being able to live in their own country and exercise the rights that they enjoy. I commend both these amendments to your Lordships’ House.