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

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who spoke in support of the amendment, from right across the House, and who very much strengthened the case. Some important points were made and I pick out just two. One is that, over and over, people emphasised the modesty and reasonableness of the amendment and pointed out how carrying out a review like this would be very much in the spirit of both the lessons learned review and the recent Public Accounts Committee report, helping to provide the evidence that it said was lacking. Here—just thinking about the Trump terrier—we are not talking about fake evidence; we are talking about real evidence, based on people’s experiences. There is a sort of incomprehension that the Government cannot accept this modest, reasonable amendment.

That said, I welcome the Minister’s tone and her acknowledgment that there is absolutely no point in trotting out the arguments that have been trotted out up to now, because we simply will not accept them in this House. I feel that we have made progress on that score. I welcome her willingness to talk about it further and I welcome the fact that she has committed to take it back to the Home Secretary. The point about the review that we have asked for is that it requires a report to come back to Parliament. We do not have a clear channel that will ensure that we have an opportunity to come back to this, to say, “Okay, the Minister has agreed to look at this further and to discuss it with the Home Secretary”—I would be very happy to give way if the Minister could say in what way we can then hold her to account in this House on that.

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Amendment 16 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 17. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover of the amendment and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press the lead amendment or any other amendment in the group to a Division should make that clear during the debate.

Amendment 17

Moved by

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[Lord Kerslake (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to add my name to this amendment, and again thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for his diligent pursuit of this issue. Unfortunately, I was not able to join the debate in Committee on 14 September, but I have read the record of the debate. The case for providing access to physical records has been so compellingly made by the noble Lord and other Peers across the Chamber that I do not feel the need to repeat it tonight.

The question I have reflected on is why on earth the Government would not be willing to agree to this. It does not cut across a manifesto commitment, set an unwelcome precedent, or involve major cost or administrative difficulty. As other noble Lords have pointed out, we already have such physical proof available for non-EEA citizens. Having read through the records, I think that the only arguments put forward by the Government are that they are committed to the path of digital, and that it is not necessary.

On the first of these arguments, nothing in this amendment implies that the Government should divert from the path of increasing the use of digital technology —this is really important. It simply says that in the particular circumstances we are dealing with here, the opportunity to also have physical proof is a very important, indeed vital, reassurance. On the second argument, the3million group and the individual representations have provided very good evidence that it is seen as necessary by those affected. However, if it is not necessary, we can expect the take-up to be very small, and there would be an opportunity in the future for the Government to revisit the issue. This is a straightforward and deliverable change to the Bill that would be widely welcomed by a group of people caught up in this process through no fault of their own. It is a small bit of humanity and common sense.

If the Minister is so sure of her ground—of the certainty that the systems will work exactly as intended, without error—she may hold on to her position and I hope that it goes to a vote. But I ask her to think again, because none of us can give that level of certainty to something that is so vital to people’s lives.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has, in his opening contribution, clearly outlined many of the arguments why this simple, short amendment on physical documentation should be accepted by Her Majesty’s Government. It is only five lines long, but within those five lines, so much future heartache and pain could be averted—averted for the most vulnerable in society.

As we have heard, this amendment is tempered and moderate. The words

“and who request such proof”

in subsection (1) show how measured this cross-party amendment, proposed by a grouping of the noble Lords, Lord Oates, Lord Polak, Lord Kerslake and me, is an attempt to be. I hope that the Minister can be as accommodating as we have been.

There have been calls under previous amendments for physical documentation to be automatically provided for all. I have sympathy with that call but, in the hope that we can get to a position where our amendment could be accepted by the Minister and Her Majesty’s Government, the words

“and who request such proof”

have been added. It would be a very sad day if the Minister cannot accept this short and sensible amendment.

In rereading the Commons Committee debate and previous debates on this amendment in your Lordships’ House, like others, I am still at a loss to understand why the Minister feels she cannot accept or support it. The arguments against have been, at best, vague. When responding on 14 September, the Minister said, when referring to the Home Office letter:

“I must say, it is not proof; it is confirmation. This should reassure individuals about their status when dealing with the Home Office in the future”—[Official Report, 14/9/20; col. 1094.]


Well, no. It is the issuing of the physical proof that is vital and will give those individuals the reassurance they need. We all heard the noble Lord, Lord Russell, in his contribution on Amendment 16 talking about the issues surrounding the Home Office. It is vital for so many reasons—for work, for housing, for the feeling of belonging.

Like many others who spoke earlier, I fully support the digitisation and the move to online processing and ordering, but there are issues and concerns with the only form of access to proof being digital and online. We have heard some of those. What happens if the online systems fail—like our voting system last Wednesday, when it was critically and crucially needed? Only this weekend, we have seen the failures in relation to Covid testing and the errors that have occurred with the digitisation there. But it is not just the errors: there are also those who are not digitally literate. What support will the Government offer to them, if they will not accept the amendment?

I hope that, with the cross-party support of this simple, short amendment, it can be accepted and introduced.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I fully support all the points so eloquently argued, once again, by the noble Lord, Lord Oates. I will speak briefly only to reiterate the points I raised in Committee, which were not fully addressed by the Minister in her response.

My first point relates to people in abusive and coercive relationships. I pointed out then, and remind the House now, that a common strategy in coercive control cases is to deprive the victim of access to phone and internet use. This raises the question of how someone who escapes a relationship with a coercive partner will be able to prove their status in future if, as is likely, it was the abusive partner who managed the process of claiming settled status in the first place. In seeking to rent a safe place to live, or to get a job in order to pay the rent, they would be obliged to contact the partner they are likely to have struggled so hard to leave. This is not a sidebar issue. Coercive control is now, quite rightly, a criminal offence in the UK. In the year to March last year, there were 17,616 offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. Can the Minister explain what protection there will be for victims of coercive control or abuse, so that they are not forced back into contact with their abuser in order to prove their immigration status?

My second concern is for people with impaired mental capacity, who are unlikely to have been able to navigate the application system alone, or to have been able to enter into mobile and internet accounts in their own names. Given the fluidity of the social care workforce, there is no guarantee that, at a later point in life when they are applying for a job or to rent a home, they will still be connected with the carer or caseworker who provided assistance. Mental capacity changes over time. Someone who has mental capacity when they apply may lack it at a later date, without the moment at which this change takes place being immediately clear. Can the Minister explain how people who lack mental capacity, now or in the future, are to be protected?

In response to these concerns, which I articulated in Committee, the Minister reiterated the Government’s commitment to

“delivering a service that reflects the diverse needs of all users.”—[Official Report, 14/9/20; col. 1094.]

Given everything that noble Lords have argued on this question, this evening and previously, does she not agree that delivering a service that reflects the diverse needs of all users will include, first, an assessment of which members of society would be disadvantaged by the lack of a physical document; and, secondly, an assessment of the impact of accessibility issues on all potential service users?

I know that the Minister will agree that equality of access should be at the heart of every government policy. This tiny amendment—a simple slip of paper and only if requested—does nothing more than ensure that this is the case. For this reason, it has my support.

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I thank noble Lords for listening so carefully during what has been quite a long debate, and one not without a high degree of concern. I hope that the costs I have outlined—and the fact that 500,000 people are using various aspects of the digital system—will help some noble Lords to pause for thought before voting for this amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received one request so far to ask a short question after the Minister; that is from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

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

My Lords, I am aware of the time so I will be very brief. For the record, the Green group is offering our support for this amendment. I have identified three questions from the debate which I do not think the Minister has answered. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, asked about people who lack or lose mental capacity. To answer ID-confirming questions from a call centre—

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[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, we now come to the group consisting of Amendment 19. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this amendment to a Division should make that clear in debate.

Amendment 19

Moved by