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

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it will come as no surprise to the Minister that I and many others will focus on some of the potential unintended consequences of this Bill as we endeavour to speak on behalf of those with limited voice and means and without the level of expertise required to navigate our highly complex immigration and social security systems. At this stage, I will not set out a shopping list of the many areas where we would like clarification; we will be able to do that in painful detail in Committee, which I hope will be conducted in your Lordships’ House with rather more time, care and attention than was possible in another place.

This afternoon, I want to focus on an area that the Minister confessed on Monday is of particular interest and relevance to her. During an exchange with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who will speak later in this debate, she indicated how pleased she was to find a colleague in your Lordships’ House who shares her interest in her particular area of policy responsibility: digital ID and data. One might ask what relevance accurate and reliable digital ID and data have to this Bill. Your Lordships will be aware that accurate and reliable data are not a defining characteristic of the modern Home Office. Whether it is confusion over the accuracy and segmentation of our estimated immigration statistics, the exact numbers of care leavers or children awaiting adoption, or the lamentable lack of knowledge and clarity about the legal and citizenship status of the Windrush generation, there is much room for improvement.

There are three areas where accurate and reliable data are of particular importance to this Bill: immigration statistics; exact data on the different categories of EUSS applicants; and the dilemma of how to evaluate policy toward those with no recourse to public funds when there is an absence of proper data on exactly who, and how many, the condition affects. I ask the Minister to do her utmost to commit to clear actions, initiatives and policies and measurable targets to bring about a dramatic improvement in the quality, timeliness and accuracy of data, which are completely fundamental to successful policy direction and implementation. Given her professional and personal interest in this subject—a passion that she appears to share with a certain Mr Cummings—I look forward to her working with your Lordships’ House toward achieving a step change in the quality of Home Office data.

This Bill is regarded by those who believe that we made the right decision in leaving the European Union as the dawn of a new era. Whatever one’s views about that decision, this is an opportunity to ensure that we create new legislation and policies using a level of data and insight that has been sorely lacking in the past—and, alas, is also lacking today.

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

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I also rise to speak in support of Amendment 30, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 68. By the end of this set of contributions, I think the Minister will feel that she is ensconced in an echo chamber from which she will find it hard to escape. She knows full well that the subject of citizenship fees has returned to haunt her, her colleagues and her predecessors, and will probably do the same to her successors. Why is this? The simple reason is that by any reasonable international comparisons, which are there to be looked at, our citizenship fees are punitively high and, for many, completely unaffordable.

At Second Reading, as others have mentioned, the Minister said:

“On the face of it, they seem high, particularly when we are talking about children, but application fees for border, immigration and citizenship services play a vital role in our ability to run a sustainable system … and substantially reduce the burden on UK taxpayers.”—[Official Report, 22/7/20; col. 2296.]


Perhaps I may gently draw the Minister’s attention to page 68 of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review. A former Home Office says:

“The basic resource for the management of the immigration system is wholly inadequate and always has been. And the fundamental reason for that is if you’re the minister and you go to the Chief Secretary and you say, ‘I want more money for the immigration service’, they say ‘you must be joking—you think the British public would support that?’”


I turn now to page 51 of the same review. This is from a member of the Home Office’s own staff:

“Staff from both Immigration Enforcement (IE) and UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) told the review they did not feel they had received adequate training; they also mentioned that the Home Office gave applicants minimal help, often referring people to the Gov.uk website, which staff themselves said they struggled to understand or navigate.”


What is described in the review is a cause of shame and embarrassment. I hope sincerely that the lessons that the Home Secretary has publicly stated would be taken on board and acted on will be demonstrated in the way in which the Government try to navigate their way through some of the complexities and inevitable consequences, many of them unforeseen, of this Bill.

Amendment 30 asks that EEA and Swiss nationals, who of course are eligible to apply for settled status, are not encouraged to go for this as the cheaper, easy option, because in many cases they are eligible for, and may wish to apply for, citizenship. The high fees make settled status a more realistic option for many but it is not necessarily a course of action that will be in their best interests.

I draw the attention of the Minister and her officials to the detailed submission made in July of this year by the PRCBC and Amnesty International to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration for an inspection called “A Further Inspection of the EU Settlement Scheme”. The submission concludes by highlighting that:

“There is, therefore, a huge risk that many British children and young people of EEA/Swiss parentage will be wrongly led to not have their British citizenship confirmed or register for that citizenship to which they are entitled.”


I ask the Home Office, at the very least, to read that submission carefully and to digest its very detailed contents and case studies so that on Report we can have a discussion in which it is clear that the issue is better understood.

As reported on page 50 of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review document, a former Minister commented on the

“total lack of proper administrative competence, basically”

that the scandal had highlighted. Can we not do better than this?

Amendment 68 is more specific about the position regarding fees for the registration of British citizenship, particularly for children in care looked after by a local authority. It also asks the Home Office to raise awareness of people’s right to register their citizenship. I ask the Home Office, when looking at the document submitted to the independent inspector, to look very specifically at the case of a young lady called Mercedes, who was brought up in care, and to see the enormous complications that resulted from her situation and, frankly, the rather inadequate way in which both local government and the Home Office dealt with her parlous situation.

Both amendments have in common a challenge to the Home Office and the Government to live up to their responsibilities and core principles and values, which were often so lamentably absent during the sorry Windrush saga. As I asked earlier, can we please not do better than this?

We shall study the Minister’s responses carefully and hope and expect that at least some of the concerns and questions raised will, at the very minimum, be acknowledged. We are very happy to work with her, if she so wishes, between now and Report if she sees any merit in some of the arguments that we are putting forward. If not, she knows that all of us will be back at Report.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 30 and 68, as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett.

Clearly, as prevented by Amendment 30, EEA and Swiss nationals should not be denied their British citizenship just because registration costs might have become too much for them to afford. Nor, of course, as protected against in Amendment 68, ought children looked after by a local authority to be caught up within the same anomaly.

However, although the corrective of Amendment 30, if accepted, might subsume that of Amendment 68, nevertheless the noble Baroness is quite right to spell out in its own right the threat to children looked after by local authorities, and the necessary remedy which she proposes within Amendment 68.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree and can accept these amendments.

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

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

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

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

My Lords, I declare my membership of the Roma, Gypsy and Traveller APPG which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, represents some of the children who may be particularly affected by our current discriminatory system, which is effectively impossible to navigate. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made a hugely powerful introduction, so I will be brief in offering the Green group’s support for this amendment. I add my hope to that of many noble Lords that the Government will the see the sense of it and agree to adopt it. We are talking about rights that people are entitled to. We cannot allow people to be excluded from them by lack of knowledge, lack of funds to access them or lack of access to the systems needed to exercise them. Keeping that exclusion would be a profound injustice.



I think I have to declare a personal stake in this issue. I chose to become British, as I chose, before that, to live as an immigrant in Thailand for a number of years. But I was able to make both moves very easily, reflecting my relatively privileged background. In Thailand, the Australian state, through Australian volunteers abroad, sorted out my paperwork, then my employer did. It was then through grandparent rights that I was able to come to Britain. The family story is that my grandmother came back to the UK to have a baby. Then, after a period of residence, I was easily able to secure citizenship, back when the price of a British passport was close to the actual cost of administering it, in the early 1990s, which was not really that long ago.

It was only recently, when I read the excellent book, Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire, by Nadine El-Enany, that I was educated about the racism behind that arrangement, the grandparent right. There is much that should be tackled in our law to clear the taint of racism, colonialism and expropriation that remains central. But after Windrush, surely we can do something to clean up the structure of our systems—modest changes, as noble Lord after noble Lord, including from the Minister’s side of the House, has said before me—particularly systems that deny children and young people their right to security and a stable place in the world. Equality before the law is a foundational principle, but the letter of the law is not enough, as Windrush has demonstrated. The practice of government has to be fair and non-discriminatory.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I declare my interest as a governor of the children’s charity, Coram. I rise to speak strongly in support of this amendment.

In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and her supporters were praised for their “terrier-like” characteristics. My initial research into terriers slightly alarmed me, because the original animal, which, in 1815, inspired the creation of the canine family of terriers, was called, believe it or not, Trump. You heard it here. I became less alarmed when I read Johannes Caius’s 1576 description of dogs with similar characteristics, which he praised for their

“insane dedication to chasing creatures bigger and stronger than themselves.”

The Minister knows what she is up against. 

The Minister may recall that at Second Reading I spoke about the paramount importance of accurate, reliable and timely data in making any key policy and process decisions. I think she agrees with this. 

I am supporting this amendment because I am persuaded by several key pieces of evidence. As a terrier, I doggedly follow the scent—or, in this case, the evidence. The first piece of evidence comes from the PRCBC, of which the noble Baroness is a patron, and which repeatedly encounters children who fall into two particular categories. The first category is that of those born in the UK, but not born British citizens because their parent, also born in the UK, had been unaware of, or was unable to exercise, their own right to register as a British citizen. The second category is that of children who are British citizens by birth, who were taken into care or adopted, for whom nobody has acted to confirm their right to citizenship, leaving them unable to establish that they are already legally entitled to British citizenship. These two categories of children are being treated as though they are not British but mere guests in this country, as a result of which they run the risk of effective loss of their citizenship rights. This is both morally and legally wrong and is certainly not what Parliament intended, as several noble Lords have said.

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

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, hybrid proceedings will now continue. Some Members are here in the Chamber respecting social distancing, others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House.

I will call Members to speak in the order listed. Interventions during speeches or “before the noble Lord sits down” are not permitted and uncalled speakers will not be heard. Other than the mover of the amendment or the Minister, Members may speak only once on each group. Short questions of elucidation after the Minister’s response are permitted but discouraged. A Member wishing to ask such a question, including Members in the Chamber, must email the clerk. Leave should be given to withdraw amendments. When putting the question, I will collect voices in the Chamber only. If a Member taking part remotely intends to trigger a Division, they should make this clear when speaking on the group. We will now begin. I call the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.

Clause 6: Children in care and children entitled to care leaving support: entitlement to remain

Amendment 1

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it seems a long time since we debated this Bill on Report. I am now speaking to the amendment to Clause 6 in my name. This is a technical change and need not detain us for long. The amendment is intended to achieve settled status for children in care and care leavers. It deals with the identification of such children and the problems they may have with applying for their status—indeed, dispensing with pre-settled status and moving on to settled status.

On Report, the Minister raised concerns about the original wording of the amendment, particularly the phrase “is deemed”, suggesting that this would mean that children and young people would have no secure evidence of their immigration status. The amendment before us today removes the phrase “is deemed to have”, with which the Minister specifically stated that she was unhappy, and replaces it with

“on notification by the local authority to the Home Office that they are such a child, must”.

I hope that by setting out the process of identifying and supporting these children through the EU settlement process, this amendment would remove the Minister’s concern over automatic entitlements and the problem that these children would not be able to prove their immigration status in the future. In the first instance, we would expect that local authorities would be required to identify these young people, after which they would be granted settled status through the EU settlement scheme. This would allow these young people access to the evidence that they need to prove their rights and entitlements in the long term. This House has always championed the rights of the most vulnerable children, especially those in the care system. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, I should have said when I called the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that we were talking about Amendment 1, to Clause 6. I now call the Minister.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I was about to clarify that we are talking about Amendment 1, but the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and indeed the Deputy Speaker, have now clarified that.

The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to remove the declaratory status aspect of Clause 6 so that it would provide for children in care and care leavers who have their right of free movement removed by the Bill to obtain indefinite leave to remain—or settled status—under the EU settlement scheme, where they applied to the scheme or a local authority did so on their behalf. It would do this regardless of how long the child or young person had been continuously resident in the UK. There is absolutely no difference of view on the importance of protecting the rights of children in care and care leavers as we end free movement—just as we are seeking to do where all vulnerable groups are concerned.

I set out in earlier debates on this provision the extensive support that the Home Office is providing to local authorities to ensure that those children and young people, as well as any other vulnerable groups, get UK immigration status under the EU settlement scheme, and the secure evidence of that status which the scheme provides. This includes grant funding to organisations across the UK of up to £17 million over the period 2019-20, to support this and other vulnerable and at-risk groups in applying to the scheme. I am pleased to say that the Home Office announced last week that the number of organisations funded for this work would increase from 57 to 72. That includes local authorities and local government associations as well as charities.

I made it crystal clear in the earlier debates that, in line with the withdrawal agreement, where a person eligible for settled status under the EU settlement scheme has reasonable grounds for missing the 30 June 2021 deadline, they will be given a further opportunity to apply. I have also made it clear that those reasonable grounds will include where a parent, guardian or local authority does not apply on behalf of a child. Therefore, if a child in care or care leaver does miss the deadline, they can still obtain lawful status in the UK.

In light of views expressed in this House in our earlier debates on this issue, the Government do not object to Amendment 1. We will see how the other place regards Clause 6 as so amended.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister so I call the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted with the Minister’s positive response. I say in passing that I wish we had had such a positive response to a number of other amendments, but that may be too optimistic on my behalf.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As the Member who was lucky enough to speak first on this Bill, both in Committee and on Report, I thank those involved with its passage through our House. Indeed, I have spoken on nearly all the Bills that have followed from our exit from the EU, in my position as a former Minister and as a current member of the European Union Committee.

I particularly congratulate my noble friend Lady Williams on her handling of the Bill. It is possibly the most challenging of the EU exit Bills, involving very divided opinions across the House; yet, thanks to her good humour and diplomacy, shown again on Amendment 1 today, it has been progressed in a timely and very courteous manner. Thanks are also due to another Minister, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott, our social security Minister on this Bill; to our Whip, my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay; to all those on these Benches who have spoken and to others across the House; and of course to the excellent Bill team.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I call the Minister.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am glad the Deputy Speaker has given me another chance to speak, because I forgot to thank both my noble friends Lady Stedman-Scott and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. I will just thank them fulsomely and sit down.