Nationality and Borders Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I will be prioritising people who have tabled amendments.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before I speak to my new clause 9, I want to associate myself fully with the comments of the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). In normal times that might surprise people, but I think she put very eloquently the real challenges and issues of offshoring and pushing back.

New clause 9 calls on the Home Office to fill the gap between the digital-by-default proof of status under the EU settlement scheme and the reality of people’s lives. It is typical of the Home Office to have set up a system that does not understand the interactions that people will have to have while proving their status. I thank the Minister for speaking to me about this, and for his letter of today.

Let me give some facts. I represent over 10,000 EU citizens in Hackney South and Shoreditch; my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) represents many thousands more. In my constituency, they are 8.5% of the population. Some 60% of Roma people are unable to access digital proof, and there are other groups who have real problems with digital access. Let me mention just some of the cases in my case load. An EU citizen living in my constituency who visits France weekly for work is interrogated by Border Force every time she arrives back in the UK. Another constituent has parents in their 70s who struggle to understand the complex process of proving their status digitally. Another case involves a freelancer who has had to prove his identity to every new employer, which can be every five or six weeks. The website is sometimes down, and many employers just do not want to engage, so he has lost money.

Another constituent works for a charity working with the Roma; it gave the figure of 60% of Roma people finding it difficult to access digital proof. I thank the3million, which has written to me since I tabled the new clause and explained many of these situations, which I do not have time to go into, but I reiterate the concerns of my constituents.

I say to the Minister, whose job I did just over a decade ago, that we are not so far apart on this. I, too, support methods that take us away from the old Immigration and Nationality Directorate letters, which many of my constituents still come to surgeries with in their wallets, folded up until they are falling apart. They are not a great way of proving one’s status in the UK. People lose passports. There are gaps in the system. We have seen with the covid app how we can make a difference by combining digital and paper.

[Kevin Foster]

An app-based solution was helpfully suggested by the3million. Having held my role, the hon. Lady will know the usual sorts of security caveats that we would add, but it is certainly something we will look at.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for that—it is a bit of a breakthrough. It is important that the Home Office remembers that people will lose records. When they are travelling, they will be in places where there is no wi-fi through which they can access information. A time-limited document that they at least have the option to have on paper would be a very welcome move.

On the basis of what the Minister has said—I will watch him like a hawk on this—I will not press my new clause to a vote, but the hon. Members who signed it have a very strong interest in this. We are talking about EU citizens who have made their life in this country, and we need to give them the comfort that they deserve, so that they can go about their ordinary lives easily and effectively.

[Richard Graham]

I rise to comment on new clause 52. This is important, because in April 2019, I wrote a letter with the former Member for Bridgend, Madeleine Moon, to the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), and then to his successor a few months afterwards. In that letter, we called for a waiver of fees for Commonwealth servicemen and women. The new clause rightly amends that to all non-UK citizens in the new clause, which is effectively the core of what the new clause of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) calls for. It is good to see him in his place this evening and back in the House. I welcome that.