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

Lord Naseby Excerpts

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

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat any of the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. She knows that I greatly respect her analysis on most things, and on this occasion it is substantial and well worth listening to. My noble friend Lord Alton, who I have respected over many years, has also done a great job.

As I said the other evening, it was my privilege to sit on the Public Accounts Committee for 12 years and I was the senior spokesman for my party for four of those. Its reports are not done on a whim. They arise from the Auditor-General when there is clearly a problem. That committee does not waste its time; it asks questions in depth. The reports that come out do not necessarily agree with the Auditor-General. On occasions, they completely disagree. I have only had a quick read of this report, but it would seem that the committee believes that there is a real problem. That is, in itself, substantial.

I have two granddaughters; their mother is a widow. As I read the papers on the train coming down, I wondered what would happen if they were in this difficult situation. One is taking A-levels and the other doing GCSEs. They are intelligent young women, as young people today are. They take a great interest in public affairs. It would be deeply upsetting if they found themselves having to think about their ownership when they are supposed to be studying. The same must apply to those at university. They are going to university at 18 and a fair number of courses are now four years, so they would be getting close to the cut-off point of 25. This is a problem area. Finally, costing over £1,000 is a bit rich. I have to help my family a bit, understandably, but £1,000 a child—£2,000—is quite a lot of money for any household.

I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench can give some encouraging words. I understand the challenges that are faced—I am in the middle, in a sense—but this amendment needs serious consideration.

[Baroness Primarolo (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will add a couple of comments to this very important debate. First, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Lister. She has pursued this vital subject with great tenacity and ensured with great clarity that the main arguments are put again on the Floor of the House. I know that the Minister will be listening carefully to all the points that have been made.

As my noble friend said, this is a modest amendment, which seeks action from the Government to ensure that the rights that were conveyed by the British Nationality Act 1981 are open and accessible to those who are entitled to them. When reading some of the comments that Ministers made during the passage of the British Nationality Bill, it is fascinating to see the clarity with which they saw the entitlement to citizenship which has now been so clouded and had so many barriers put in its way, as my noble friend Lady Lister said. For example, the Minister of State for the Home Office who took that Bill through said that

“as I think the House knows by now, what we are looking for in the creation of our new scheme of British citizenship is real connection. We are looking for citizens who have a real connection with the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/6/1981; cols. 979-980.]

He went on to say that it is “extremely important that those who grow up in this country should have as strong a sense of security as possible”. Conveying the entitlement to citizenship was central to that.

It was not Parliament’s intention at the time that anyone, least of all children, entitled to British citizenship, should be content, as a substitute, with either limited or indefinite leave to remain. That could leave them liable to immigration control and powers from which it was intended they should be free and would not fulfil the clear intention that Parliament wanted to establish in providing for the entitlement—the right—to British citizenship. It is time to make sure that we have a clear route through to delivering that entitlement, that right, to those in this country who currently cannot get access to it.

The requirements of this amendment, modest as they are, seek to remove a two-tier system, the prohibitive fees and the lack of information which leaves people unable to access their rights. It is time that this House addresses this and I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to give a clear indication today about how we are going to honour the word given to these children in the British Nationality Act 1981 and to deliver access to that right, instead of preventing them achieving it.

I will support the amendment if it goes to a vote, but I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to explain to the House how the Government will deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 25 and thank the noble Lords who tabled it. In these difficult times we need to recruit international research and innovation staff more than ever. It is important that we welcome them and make the UK an attractive place for them to do their research. If it is too difficult to attract them, they will go elsewhere. I speak from personal experience as I have a cousin who was not given enough time to do his clinical research in microbiology. He emigrated to Australia and is now a professor.

A group of noble Lords were invited to visit the Crick Institute—this was before coronavirus. The director told us that he had had a difficult time getting a bright Japanese research student in to do his work. Also, a highly intelligent German researcher, doing research on cancer, had to return to Germany because she did not know if she would get a grant when her EU one ran out.

I ask the Minister if she can tell your Lordships that visa costs will not form a barrier to attracting talented researchers from across the world and that visas will be easy to access, with their benefits effectively communicated, to ensure access from all levels of the research ecosystem. I also hope that people from the arts and entertainment industry will be able to travel easily. It will be a sad disaster if they are restricted by a bureaucratic nightmare.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Patel, is right in what he said about life sciences. However, this is for young people from all over the world, not specifically the EEA, although the Bill is specific to the EEA. Whatever system comes in, we must ensure that the life sciences economy is encouraged and developed, and maintains our position as a world leader.

On artists, as rightly highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, I suspect all noble Lords enjoy opera, theatre or music—whatever our particular interests are. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, is right that anybody in an orchestra should expect a five-year assignment. In my experience—and I do not have particular experience of the Birmingham orchestra—the norm is two to three years, when there is a review, but I may be wrong. This is certainly a different problem from that of life sciences. It needs that flexibility because some operas or plays run for a long time, but some do not. My wife was deeply involved in saving the Almeida Theatre in Islington. That does short-term runs, but other theatres have long-term runs. I will listen to my noble friend.

I will make one suggestion though, as I am deeply involved in south Asia. We have two sorts of visas for Sri Lanka and I think the same for India. Short-term business visas are given a priority by our high commissions, because they are to do with trade and we want to trade internationally, backwards and forwards. They function well, frankly, because the people on the ground, in our high commissions, are well briefed. There is a huge challenge, and it is not far off, for every one of our embassies in the EU to have people who are fully briefed, in depth, on exactly how the system works, however it may end up.

We are not good at communicating as government. We have seen too many examples of that recently. We do not have much time and, if it can work in this part of the world, which I know a lot about, I do not see why it should not work in the parts of the European community to which this applies. I will listen to my noble friend on the Front Bench, but there is a problem here that needs to be addressed. I will finish how I finished the other night. I think we are addressing this for the temporary workers bringing in the harvest, root crops, et cetera, and this is not that dissimilar.