Draft Registration of Marriages Regulations 2021

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 General Committees

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. The Minister will be relieved to hear that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has raised a number of the issues that I wanted to raise, so he will be spared a long speech.

The Minister covers the General Register Office, which is the same role I had 11 years ago when I was Minister. I was proud then to change the birth registration so that parents who are same-sex couples could be listed as parent/mother and parent on the register. Changing marriage registration is long overdue. I hear the frustration from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, and I commend him for his work on this issue, but I am aware that in the corridors of Whitehall, trying to get legislation to change marriage and birth registration is quite difficult, because nobody else sees it as a priority. It is really great that we are today finally getting mothers on the register.

I have a couple of quick questions about paper registers, which pick up on what the hon. Gentleman highlighted. The challenge of going digital is that, in terms of archiving, it can be very difficult. That recently came up when the Public Accounts Committee was looking at private finance initiatives, which are not that old. Some of the documents for those were on CD-ROMS. There are members of that Committee who do not know what a CD-ROM is. Will the Minister advise whether he has had any conversations with the National Archives about a plan to make sure that the digital register will be accessible for the long term? For those who do not have physical registers—some will not, because of where they choose to get married—there will not be a record. The hon. Gentleman highlighted the issue about existing paper registers. It would be helpful to have that as well.

The explanatory notes say that there has not been a formal consultation, but that the General Register Office has consulted the established churches across the UK and other religious groups. Could the Minister advise which other religious groups that applies to? Just to be clear, at the moment only certain churches—simply put, those with a hierarchy—allow their celebrants to be registrars. I assume that that has not changed; I have not been able to find that in the complex legislative documents, which amend many other Acts. Can the Minister confirm that point?

There is also an element of time to take into account. If a certificate is lost or destroyed, it looks as if there is an eight-day period for it to be replaced. If anyone has ever tried to get a copy of a registration document for birth, marriage and death, eight days is quite optimistic. As the hon. Gentleman highlighted, that could be done by volunteers. We may be dealing with something from some time before. It is not often that I have to produce my marriage certificate, but that is now nearly 25 years old—unbelievably—and my birth certificate is now, I fear, more than 50 years old. Birth certificates may be easier, but it also applies to baptism certificates and so on, and trying to track those things down. Anything to do with churches can be challenging because there are changes of personnel. Records and sometimes church buildings can go; that applies similarly to registry offices. The public sector is often very good at keeping records, but there are things that can go astray. I am slightly worried about the challenge of eight days. It could be quite difficult.

I represent a constituency that has many people who have come from across the world and who have had challenges in life. Often, finding the right document to prove something is one of the biggest barriers to their getting access to the public services they need. So it is more important than it may seem in one or two lines of the regulations. I hope the Minister can pick up those points and the others that have been raised.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch for such comprehensive contributions. I welcome the speech from the shadow Minister. It is pleasing to have the Opposition’s support for the regulations. Obviously, the core of what we are looking to do is not a matter of particular contention.

I start with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch. We recognise that registers have two roles: one is the day-to-day need for people to prove their status or their identity, and the second is for historical records and genealogical research. I take her point about particular churches or places of worship that rely on volunteers. The quarterly returns process in the Church of England can be quite cumbersome; it is a process first started back in the 19th century.

One reason why we want to move to a digital register is to remove the need to get hold of paper documentation. That leans into wider work to allow statuses to be automatically checked by digital systems talking to each other in public services. The hon. Member will appreciate, given her previous role, that that sounds simple, but there are the challenges of making sure that appropriate data protection is in place, and that records will be accessed for legitimate purposes and with people’s consent.

The concept of a church or a religious building continuing to hold a physical register will disappear. They may well keep their historical records and parish registers, but they will no longer be getting someone to fill out a physical certificate. As we have discussed, we have had some lengthy conversations with the Church of England.

On the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, people will still sign a document on the day. It will be similar to now, in that the priest who celebrates the marriage will take responsibility for sending that document off to be placed on the electronic register.

Dunkerton parish church is in a small rural Dartmoor community, in the west of Devon. Marriages have been conducted there for about 700 years. It has no running water, no electricity and certainly no wi-fi. In order to provide a solution that means people can still get married in that ancient church with a wholly electronic register, we came to an appropriate position with the Church of England, which I understand it is happy with and which is as close to the current position as possible. It makes it clear that for those married in that church, the priest is responsible for sending back the form to the registrar, for it to be entered on to the digital record.

People will not see a particular difference on their wedding day, but they will not sign paper certificates on the day. That is where we need to be clear in our own minds. It is no longer about the paper being the record of the marriage. To be clear, this is about recording the event. The moment of marriage is not when it is entered on to the register; sometimes people can be confused and think that signing the register is the moment that they become married. It is not. The certificate is a record of a marriage that has taken place in the church.

[Meg Hillier]

Is it possible for people to be provided with a paper document? Some people frame their marriage certificates; they are proud of the moment. Will that be prohibited?

[Kevin Foster]

Absolutely not. There is nothing to stop that. As the hon. Member will know with baptism, which is not recorded in a secular sense by the GRO, certificates are issued by churches. I think the language on them usually says they are to be used “when the child is presented to the Bishop for confirmation.” That is true in the Anglican tradition and there is nothing to stop that. It will not be a legal document of the marriage, but electronic statuses and transactions are becoming increasingly common for most people, and this will be an easy-to-access digital status when needed—for example, to prove a marriage to a bank or someone else—rather than, necessarily, as the hon. Member says, something that someone might want to have on the wall as a record of their relationship.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

Once we get beyond 4 May, the paper registers will close. Effectively, certificate books will then need to be returned to the GRO to register the final weddings that have taken place under the previous registration system. It would not be appropriate to issue documentation that once had legal status beyond the point at which it has legal status. The current certificate books that people sign will be required to be returned and to cease being used.

[Meg Hillier]

The Minister talked just now about proving status to a bank or someone. There is a challenge here. Who has access to the register? What are the cyber-security issues around that and who gives permission for that? I am already married, but if I were to get married after 4 May, would that mean that the Minister could look up my marriage? Who in a bank would have the power to do that? Could it be done only with my permission? What are the data protection controls around this hugely important database, which could be used for all sorts of nefarious reasons, as well as benevolent ones?

[Kevin Foster]

The hon. Member will know that one reason we are moving to a digital system, away from paper, is that paper is far easier to forge or produce copies of, particularly in the modern era, than in the 19th century, although it has to be said that the register is actually a public document. It is not like the census document, which is kept for 100 years. The registers are actually public and can be consulted, as she will be aware of, given her previous time being responsible for the GRO. I think that we can put that particular concern slightly to one side.

We are also looking at digitising some historical records, to make them far easier to search for those looking to do family history and research. As the hon. Member will know from her time with the GRO, family history, especially discovering dates of marriage, can be quite interesting, particularly when going back to grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generations. When going through a family tree, someone may discover that the great-grandparents who swore blind they got married in 1919 actually got married in 1920, and then realise that grandad was on his way a couple of months later. There is a general part that we are looking to digitise

[Meg Hillier]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kevin Foster]

I will give way once more, and then I will make some more progress.

[Meg Hillier]

Forgive me, but this is an important point. There is a difference with a physical register that someone can look at. The register has people’s addresses and the names of their parents, which are security questions when signing into a bank account. Who gives permission for the register to be checked? Is it completely open to the public, or is there some brake on that to ensure that it is not used inappropriately to mine IDs and to be used for nefarious reasons? That is absolutely fundamental.

When we were looking at introducing identity cards, which of course were not introduced, there were huge debates and discussion of detailed legislation about the security of the data and who would give permission to access it. Although this data is already out there, that is not in the same way as being in a parish register, rather than actually online.

Recently, my local authority suffered a major cyber-security attack, and was very much helped by Whitehall to sort it out, but it will take a year to resolve some of the issues, and important data was stolen and put on the dark web. The issues are therefore very serious and pertinent. I hope that the Minister will address that before we pass the draft regulations.

[Kevin Foster]

First, one of the most common ways of creating identities at the moment is to forge outdated paper certificates, hence why we are keen to move away from paper certificates, which are easily forged and used for nefarious purposes. Clearly, therefore, we want to move to a digital register.

As the Committee may have picked up, another private Member’s Bill is before the House on Friday, relating to birth and death registration where, similarly, we want to move away from the paper certificate process towards a more secure online register as the final arbiter. That is of course out of the scope of the Committee, but it shows the general thrust of the Government’s plans to modernise a pretty outdated system of registration, emphasised not only by the fact that mothers’ details are on marriage certificates but by the process still being heavily rooted in the past.

The position on access to the register will be the same as it is today. I accept that it is slightly different when someone is checking on a computer, rather than walking down to Somerset House, although a lot of that can be done online already, via records already digitised.

To come to some of the other points, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham stated that he cannot see a mention of mothers’ names on marriage certificates. As he will be aware from our long discussions of his private Member’s Bill that is now an Act, a lot of the purpose was to remove much of the specification in primary legislation that we would not put there today. The actual content will be prescribed in regulations made by the Registrar General, with the approval of the Secretary of State. However, the draft regulations to amend primary legislation will remove the more outdated requirements and then allow the new certificate to include mothers’ names and occupations. To be clear, that is where that will be specified finally, but allowing this to go forward will be the core part.

In a couple of other questions, my hon. Friend asked why a Bill that became an Act in late 2019 is being acted upon in 2021. Originally, we were hoping to launch the new system last year. I hope that the Committee will understand why the middle of a global pandemic, when registrars were urgently having to adapt their birth and death registration systems to cope, was widely viewed as not the appropriate time to introduce a brand new system of marriage registration. We would very much have liked to move forward with it last year, but we wholly accepted the points made by the registration system, that the middle of a pandemic was not an appropriate moment. However, with a lot of weddings delayed to this summer due to the impact of the social distancing regulations last year, now is the time to take the new system forward.

Fire Safety Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I was tempted for a moment to think that you were saying that I am just perfect.

I must first declare an interest, as I am a leaseholder in a building with dangerous cladding, but happily for me and my neighbours, our developer stood up and is paying for every aspect of the costs, which is what every developer should do, although clearly that is not the case. I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for Security, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), and commend him for his decisive action at the early stages of this challenge, when he issued a ministerial direction to ensure that ACM cladding was removed from blocks. He recognised that it would take too long legally to chase down who should pay, and in the meantime the urgency of the issue was so great that it needed to be done. I feel that sets the tone for what the Government should be doing.

I commend the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) for their work to try to maintain the profile of this issue, which is particularly difficult to do as a Back Bencher. I also align myself completely with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on the impact on residents. I am are not going to go into that, because I have repeated that many times and my constituents know that I understand their challenges.

This is the biggest consumer and fire safety failure in a generation. Both the Public Accounts Committee, which I chair, and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee have said that we need to make sure this is dealt with, and that we need to deal with the many challenges. I refer hon. Members to those reports. The housing association sector alone estimates £10 billion costs, so although I welcome the Government’s recent £3.6 billion injection, we know it is not going to be enough, and we are concerned about the £50 a month loan fee, on which I hope the Minister will come back to us at the end with a bit more information.

While ideally the taxpayer should not pay, the fact that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup recognised that that direction had to be made and that the Government needed to step in with taxpayers’ money sends, to me, a very clear signal that that is the very best way of approaching this. Yes, we should be recovering money from the developers, ultimately, but we need to get the Government to do that. The Government are not always very good at getting money back from the private sector, but I am sure we can work together, across parties, to support the Government in that endeavour.

I do welcome the Bill. It is right that it should be introduced, and I hear the heartfelt plea from the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan). It is the right thing to do, but it contains an inherent contradiction: to implement it, work needs to be funded, because without that funding the Bill cannot be implemented. That is the problem, and that is why I support the amendments. I hope the Minister will come back, in his closing remarks, to explain what evaluation will be made about the £50 a month loan scheme. I refer him to the not great success of the green deal, which also put a charge on homes and failed badly. I would also like more detail and clarity on the timing of the building safety Bill, because all our constituents need that clarity.

No Recourse to Public Funds

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. It is worth highlighting that we talk a lot about this issue, but quite a lot of people are affected, as others have highlighted. There are 285,000 people living in my borough of Hackney. Of that population, 31,000 are non-EEA citizens. Those are people who have never acquired British citizenship; it is not the total number of foreign-born people, which is just over 10% of the total population. A significant number of them are going through the immigration system, and of those a number will be under “no recourse to public funds” restrictions.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) highlighted, however, the Home Office does not know how many people are under the restriction of no recourse to public funds, because it either does not collect the data or does not wish to publish the data. We know there are issues with the Home Office databases, and perhaps the Minister can provide some illumination. I will try to be brief in order to allow the Minister extra time to respond, and I hope our Front-Bench spokesperson will do so as well, because we need answers to why the figures are not available.

We cannot make policy without decent data. As I will touch on later and as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) highlighted, there are big, cost-shunting issues. If we have the numbers and can work out the cost, we can make better and—dare I dangle this in front of the Minister at this difficult time for all Departments?—cheaper policy. As Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I spend a lot of time looking at this question.

I have served as an MP for 15 years, and no recourse to public funds was not talked about much 15 years ago. I am sure colleagues in the Chamber recognise that. We know it has been extended in the past decade. When I was first elected, people would apply for discretionary leave to remain, they would get five years, and then they would get citizenship. Then it was split into two periods of three years, so they would have to apply twice to get their five years for citizenship. Now it is two years, so it is three applications, three fees, and often at some point in that process, if they did not start out with no recourse to public funds, that is added on.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is making such an important point. These repeated fee requirements means that families that have three, four or five children find it impossible to earn enough money to pay their rent, feed their children and pay these stupid fees.

[Meg Hillier]

Absolutely, and I will touch on that at the end. That is a very significant issue. We have talked a lot about children today, and we are in danger of putting a whole generation on the wrong side of everything. They were often born here, or arrived here as young people, and all they want to do is contribute.

On the face of it, it does not sound wrong. People who come to this country should pay their way; we would expect that if we went to visit other countries—but life is not as simple as that. Many of my constituents are in very low-paid work. As my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said, they are often in low-paid, zero-hours contract jobs. Actually, in my constituency, they are often in good, well-paid jobs. I have nurses, teachers and others who are in jobs that pay well but not enough to live in London. It is very difficult. In my constituency, and probably across the whole of the south-east of England—I do not have up-to-date figures—people cannot rent a three or four-bedroom property under the housing benefit cap. Those people are not necessarily claiming housing benefit, but the costs of renting are too high to pay for out of their wage packet.

What happens is that people live with family and friends, and I have many constituents who do that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden said, if these pictures were shown in the media, people would not believe it. People are living in one room with another family member living in the other room, because they just cannot afford the housing costs. They have no recourse to public funds, and they cannot get a penny of housing benefit to help towards that. Let us not forget that most housing benefit goes to people in work. That is another issue, but it is a systemic sign that the whole housing system is bust. That is a debate for another day—possibly the same Members might wish to contribute.

Overcrowding is a big health risk at the best of times, and we are not in the best of times. A concern of mine during the covid pandemic is that those double households are trapped. I had a very distressed grandmother come to see me at a surgery. I had been to visit the family, and they had been to see me before. She loves her daughter and granddaughter, but they cannot move out of their one-bedroom flat because they have no recourse to public funds, and mum is a nurse. The grandmother came to see me and said, “When will we get housing? How will we get housing?” She came to see me privately because she did not want to tell her daughter how hard it was for her to share her small home with her beloved family. These are small flats, and they are often very overcrowded.

As others have highlighted, councils are spending a lot of money on this. In 2018-19, 59 councils were spending £47.5 million a year on service provision to people with no recourse to public funds. That was before coronavirus, and some of those people are being affected now. I want to highlight an individual case—we all have so many. One of my constituents has two children, and her late father was British. She is working, but because she has no recourse to public funds, she cannot claim tax credits, child benefit or housing benefit. That has had a very big effect on her, and is having an impact on her children. She is not sure, and nor am I, how much longer she will be able to cope.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden highlighted the issue of cost-shunting, which the Public Accounts Committee talks about all the time. There are costs to society, the taxpayer and, of course, individuals. I want to highlight the taxpayer costs to the Minister, because that should bite if nothing else does. So much of the system is having to pay for people who cannot pay their own way because they have no recourse to public funds. They are working people for the most part. They want to work, and they might just have hit a rocky time.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend made a point in passing that I want to highlight. I do not know whether it is well known, but we are talking about a large number of British-born children whose parents cannot claim child benefit for them. I do not think most people know that is the case, but it is.

[Meg Hillier]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, for that intervention, because that is correct. People assume that there is a safety net there—we all assume a lot of things about other people’s lives in a general way, because people do not always live that path themselves—but many of our constituents do not have a penny coming in, even though their children are British. It is the main householder who affected. There is a really big cost and those children are growing up in increased poverty as a result.

If we want to invest in the future of our country, we must consider these young people with their driven parents—parents who came here, who are working, who want to work and want to contribute, and anyone would say that they have the right work ethic to ensure that their children will also achieve—because they are living in much more difficult circumstances than they need to. The cost of any public funding will not suddenly fund their lifestyles; it is just going to help them to keep afloat, to keep their housing and to keep playing their active role as working members of society.

I will touch on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) made about people who cannot afford the fees; we talked a bit about that. I pay tribute to my constituent, Chrisann Jarrett, and to We Belong, which is a group of young people who are taking the long route for citizenship; some are from families with no recourse to public funds, but there is a wider point that I raise here, too. These people are young, gifted and talented, and they came here as young children. They want to contribute to this society; they are not going to live anywhere else. The countries that their parents were born in are of interest to them, but usually they cannot visit them because they do not have citizenship. However, they have to pay these repeated fees. Often, they never got citizenship early on because their parents simply could not afford even to start them on that process. Then they find that they cannot go to university and they are left sitting around, kicking their heels.

In July, the Home Secretary said—very genuinely, I feel, and I say that to the Minister—when she made her latest statement on Windrush that she wanted to root out any unequal treatment in her Department, and that she wanted to see a root-and-branch review of how it treated people. I took her at her word on that; she stood there, said that, and I believed that she meant it. If she really means it, this group that I have talked about—We Belong, which I believe she has met or is about to meet—are really good advocates for this. Surely, however, if she really believes what she said, she needs to look at no recourse to public funds, because if we look at the profile of the people who are affected by that, we see that it does not meet the equality standards that she professes to support.

In summary, I hope that the Minister will answer the detailed questions on the Home Office statistics. Does he have the statistics? If they are available, why can we not see them? If he does not have those statistics, can he tell us how he will get hold of them, so that he can make sure that he and the Home Office are making policy decisions based on proper evidence and data?

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

I thank Members for allowing plenty of time for the Front-Bench spokesmen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Chair for this important debate, Mr Paisley.

I start, as so many others have done, by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, on not just securing this important debate and making a powerful opening contribution, but his leadership on no recourse to public funds throughout the coronavirus crisis. As he made clear, his Committee and the Home Affairs Committee, on a cross-party basis, unanimously called for the suspension of the “no recourse to public funds” restrictions for the duration of the pandemic. His questioning of the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee gave us what we later learned to be false hope that the Prime Minister himself was in agreement that they should be lifted.

My right hon. Friend spoke of his extensive efforts—as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—and the difficulty of ascertaining exactly the information that we need about just how many people are affected by having no recourse to public funds. The latest figures produced by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, which others used during the debate, estimate that by the end of 2019, at least 175,000 children under the age of 18 in families were expected to have no recourse to public funds, and more than 1.4 million adults.

The Labour party has consistently asked the Government to lift NRPF as a condition on a person’s migration status to ensure that no one is left behind in the public health effort against the coronavirus. Writing to the Government on 21 April, I asked them to lift the “no recourse to public funds” condition for the duration of the pandemic, stressing that thousands of people could face impossible choices between staying safe and securing an income for themselves and their families. My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) spoke powerfully about how the length of time it takes to determine a person’s immigration status is at the heart of this debate.

The Minister will say that those with no recourse to public funds were eligible for furlough but, as we all know, not all types of work or employment conditions were eligible for the furlough scheme, which comes to an end on 31 October. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) spoke about those he represents—it is the same in my constituency—who are on zero-hours contracts and were not eligible for that support as a result.

Labour has pressed this issue throughout the passage of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill, both in Committee and on Report. The tight framing of the law changes in that Bill did not allow us to table amendments that would have lifted NRPF with immediate effect, but we did make the case again for why lifting the condition for the duration of the pandemic would be the appropriate and responsible thing to do in the circumstances. The Minister might remember that we pushed that to a vote on Report, as we felt so strongly about it.

As others have commented, it has been frustrating that the Home Office has dug in on the issue. Other Departments have simply circumvented Home Office obstinance. On 26 March, Ministers from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote to all councils asking them to

“utilise alternative powers and funding to assist those with no recourse to public funds who require shelter and other forms of support due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

It seems that the Government have understood in principle that NRPF is counterproductive during the pandemic.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend rightly highlights the cost shunting. The principle was recognised, as she said, and yet the cost was shunted to local government, with a very small pot of money to cover loads of issues in a local area. She is right to raise that issue.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend speaks with experience of process, which is a point that has been touched on already. There are many lessons to be learned, but on process there are also issues with the management of case files, technology, record keeping, data retention—you name it. These are long-term, long-standing issues that the Home Office needs to grip and are part of wider changes to the machinery of government that we are looking at.

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

The Home Secretary said in her statement: “If we find a problem, I will fix it.” Let me commend to her the work of my constituent Chrisann Jarrett and We Belong, young people who came to this country, some when they were as young as two. They are now on the long road to citizenship—10 years—and every three years have to pay over £2,500 in fees. These are young people who will become British citizens, but every hurdle is being put in their way. They are passionate about this country and are not going to live anywhere else. The Home Secretary could save herself resources and staff time, and support those young people, if she were to look at this. I am sure that Chrisann and We Belong would be willing to engage with her Department.

[Priti Patel]

I look forward to that engagement if it is something we can facilitate.

Fire Safety Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I wish to start by declaring my own interest, in that I am a leaseholder in an affected block. Happily, the owner of my block has taken on all the costs of replacement but, like many of my constituents, and others up and down the country, I live in a property that is technically valueless at the moment. That is causing problems, which I will touch on, but I also want to use this opportunity to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) to her place on the Front Bench. She has been a doughty campaigner on this issue in her previous portfolio, so it is great to see that she can continue to fight for all those up and down the country who are affected. I hope that the Minister will hear what I have to say, and what others have said, and answer these questions, some of which go a little beyond the Bill, because it goes only so far, as a short, three-clause Bill, and there are wider issues here.

The Bill is long overdue—it has taken a long while to get this far—not just because of the tragedy of the Grenfell fire three years ago, but because of changes over many years and, as others have highlighted, under different Governments, that led to weakness and confusion over who is responsible for fire safety in a block. That and recent developments have led to real misery for many leaseholders in my constituency and up and down the country. Such people are mortgage prisoners, trapped with expensive mortgage payments and valueless homes. They are therefore unable to sell or rent their properties out, and they are dealing with the costs involved, including those for a waking watch, which in many blocks means two people per block. That is very expensive, but these people are also dealing with the upheaval, and the fear of scaffolding and major works going on around their home, which makes it harder for them to have peaceful enjoyment of their homes.

As of March 2020, only 54% of social housing blocks had had their remediation works done and nearly 90% of private residential blocks still had work to be done. That means that overall three quarters of ACM blocks—266 blocks, mostly flats—have yet to have remedial work done. We have highlighted in debates beyond this one the need for experts to do this work, and with coronavirus we have hit another challenge, because we cannot bring in expertise from elsewhere. Coronavirus is also increasing cost, making it harder for contractors to do the work, which means more delays and yet more costs for leaseholders. This therefore has to continue to be a priority, even during the pandemic. I know that this is not the direct remit of the Minister, but the Bill, and particularly the secondary legislation that follows it, could play a part here.

In the Budget, the Chancellor set aside £1 billion to do this remedial work, but we know that that is not enough—we see that when we look at the Bill and the amount of work involved. It might be a 10th of what is needed, and there is still no clarity about who will bid for that money. The Home Office is responsible for fire safety, so it needs to work closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to make sure that the money that is available is properly applied, easy to bid for and quick to be spent so that we make sure that these blocks get dealt with. The Home Office is responsible for fire safety, so if MHCLG does not have enough funds to help to deliver that, there will be ongoing problems.

I could raise many specific examples—I have raised them in the House before—but when there are owners with housing associations involved, there is double trouble, because there are leaseholders of the housing associations, and the HAs have a relationship with the owner or developer of the block. I want to highlight some of the tactics that can be in play and the delays that owners and developers can inflict on residents. I wish to highlight the case of Regal London, which built The Cube building in Hoxton. In the first year, when many residents were raising snagging issues, Regal did not respond. That lack of response has continued. There has now been five years—scaffolding has been up for a good couple of years—with residents still not sure what is going to happen and who is going to pay. In the meantime, the block has some fire safety issues, and with the to-ing and fro-ing between the owner and leaseholders, the resolution is not there.

While the Bill goes so far, there is a practical element to this, too. As we in this place know, legislation does not solve everything. While what needs to be done will be on the statute book, and that is a welcome beginning, there is a big practical job of making sure that the Bill is real, living legislation that delivers on the ground. While there are legal wrangles going on between owners and residents and organisations such as Regal, which is leading constituents a merry dance and not responding very well, this causes a problem. We know the costs for individuals are huge. I hope the Minister will, in Committee, be able to answer our questions on how this will practically deliver. It is a welcome first step late in the day. It is a start, but I hope that in Committee we will see discussion and movement on how this could be the beginning and not the end.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. This review gives voice to people from the Windrush generation, who, of course, not only came to the UK legally, but were part of our country. They contributed to our country, our economy and our public services in an unprecedented way.

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

The Home Secretary has said, “We will continue to do everything possible to ensure that the Home Office protects, supports and listens to every single part of the community it serves.” I commend the work of Councillor Carole Williams in Hackney, who is doing amazing work, pulling together the community and setting a better model than the Home Office’s for how that engagement could work.

I also want to ask the Home Secretary about the other 160,000 Commonwealth citizens in this situation, which is something that the Public Accounts Committee raised. While she is on her feet, will she also tell us what she is doing about people with no recourse to public funds who are part of the community she serves, who will be facing very difficult circumstances if they are unable to work because of covid-19?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady raises a number of points. First, I thank everyone who is involved, and has been involved, in many of the outreach groups and the events that have taken place across the country. I have mentioned the stakeholder group in particular, which is something that I set up. I have spent a lot of time with volunteers and community activists, and their work has been remarkable and should be commended. There is much more that we need to do on that basis, and that equally applies to members of other Commonwealth countries. This report is very clear about that, and I am very clear about that as well. I said in my statement that we have not done enough yet to reach out to everyone, and that there is a lot of work to do in reaching out to other individuals and communities. I have asked other colleagues and Members of this House to work with us and their communities so that we can ensure that we reach the people who need help and support. That goes exactly to the point about recourse to public funds. I spoke about assistance with benefit claims and things of that nature. Again, we need to identify those individuals, and there is more we can do collectively.

The hon. Lady touched on the current crisis with covid-19 and how we will continue to do these things. That is a fair challenge to us all, because we will not be able to hold events in the way we had planned to. Much more work will now take place through media campaigns and our casework approach, but also through one-on-one communications. I would like the individuals she mentioned in her constituency, and other individuals who are working at the grassroots, to get in touch with me and my office. We will absolutely work with them to create a network locally.

Points-based Immigration System

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

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

The Home Secretary has said that additional points will be awarded for occupations that struggle to fill vacancies. In the tech sector, jobs are often lower paid at the start and ill-defined—they do not actually have a job title. So how will she ensure that the MAC recognises those emerging jobs and can act in real time?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is right; our economy and labour market are changing, thanks to technology and emerging skills that may not even be reflected in the discussion and debate that we are having today. That is why we will be looking to bring in, from next year, a tradeable points system, which recognises not only talent and skills, but the role the MAC has to play in assessing the labour market. This is fundamentally changing the way in which we look at the labour market and emerging sectors, whether in new technology or other sectors, where we know we will need to surge people and their skills. Obviously, that work will take place with the MAC.

Retail Workers: Protection

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing the debate.

My hon. Friend covered most of the important points, so, given the time, I will cut to the chase. However, it is important for me to put on the record that my constituency, which is in the borough of Hackney, has a high percentage of small businesses. More than 95% of them employ fewer than six people, and a large number of them are retail premises. A lot of them are small, family-run businesses. We pride ourselves on our independent shops, but I also want to focus on employees of larger organisations. As a number of Members highlighted, with more than 50 types of products restricted by law, many small retail premises deal with the frontline interaction between enforcement of the law and people who may not want the law to be enforced.

I have some simple asks of the Government. First, as was highlighted, it is now more than 200 days since the Government closed their call for evidence on violence and abuse towards shop staff. It is estimated that there have been 200,000 incidents of violence towards shop workers in that time. Around 12,500 of those incidents—I am a Labour and Co-operative MP—involved Co-operative colleagues. That is just unacceptable. If that were happening in any other sector, we would be having a hoo-hah in the main Chamber rather than a small, albeit important, debate in Westminster Hall. It is not acceptable that people have to face such abuse when they go to work.

That is not all in the hands of the Government, but I want to touch on what the Government could do. First, they could publish their response to the call for evidence. Even an interim response would help those of us who have an interest in this issue, including the bodies that my hon. Friend named, to get to grips with what can be done practically. We would rather get it right than have the Government wait ages and produce a blueprint that they think is right but that cannot be changed. We must engage from all our different perspectives. We have a shared agenda—I hope—to ensure that the people on the frontline are protected.

Secondly, it should be a legal requirement that shop workers who are employees and lone workers get proper support. If there is an argument for having lone workers—there may be challenges for employers if we suddenly say, “You must always have more than one person there”—proper devices should be available to them. Petrol stations, for example, have well worn routes for this, and bookies also have a process, although it is not always perfect. In many shops, people are very vulnerable: they are often right out there, loading the shelves and very much in the frontline. I do not think lone working is acceptable in most cases, but where it happens there must be proper support, which could be enshrined in law.

Thirdly, there need to be security guards. Big chains and employers should ensure that they have proper security and people trained to deal with conflict. Fourthly, we need more prosecutions. The number of prosecutions is just woeful.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for securing the debate. Last week, just outside my constituency, a lone worker was attacked when gunmen entered Bingham’s shop just outside Katesbridge. Does she agree that there needs to be tougher sentencing and more involvement from the police in setting up provisions for lone workers in shops in rural areas?

[Meg Hillier]

As I have reached the end of my time, I cannot go into any of the horrific examples, but I know all hon. Members are aware of such examples. I completely agree that we need more prosecutions and tougher sentences.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and of course she will know that the hostile environment, as she called it, dates back to previous Governments. The point about the points-based system is of course that we want a simpler, faster, firmer, better system—one that fulfils our promises to the British people, where we seize that once-in-a-generation opportunity to take back control of our borders and end free movement, which I appreciate Opposition Members simply do not want. We will restore democratic control of our immigration, which is effectively what the British people voted for.

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

It is important to remember that it was the Labour Government who introduced a points-based system. It is important to remember, too, that many of the workers we need in this country cannot come in under the immigration cap of £30,000. The Home Secretary has looked at that for some professions, but will she widen it to ensure we get the workers we need?

[Priti Patel]

Immigration legislation will come before the House in due course. With regard to the labour market and the skills this country needs, decisions on the points-based system will be based on the needs and skills that this country requires. That is incredibly important, so that no Member is deceived under that. It recognises the fact that we need good people with the skills our economy needs, which will enable and facilitate growth in our economy. We want to encourage the brightest and the best to come to this country not just from the EU, but from outside the EU.

Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I will look into those cases. Of course we have the exceptional payments scheme, which should stop anybody falling through—such people should receive those payments.

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

I was interested to read the updated impact assessment, which reduces the assumption that there will be 15,000 claims to 11,500 claims. Will the Home Secretary explain why that is the case and whether the Bill will cover the 160,000 Commonwealth citizens who could be affected, to which the Public Accounts Committee drew attention last year?

[Priti Patel]

The numbers were reduced in the impact assessment due to the fewer-than-anticipated claims thus far. I will come on to Commonwealth citizens because, of course, this is not specific to Caribbean nationals.

Even though time has elapsed since individuals may have effectively been caught up in the Windrush issue—experiencing hardship, losing their job and, in some cases, also losing their home—I will, as I said to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), look into any specific cases that hon. Members would like to raise with me. Our changes may help some people to qualify for a potentially higher award, particularly where it relates to the loss of employment.

“Windrush” has been used to describe what happened to a specific group, but that term and this scheme are not limited to those of Caribbean nationality. The scheme, of course, is open to anyone of any nationality who arrived and settled in the UK before the end of 1988, and to anyone from a Commonwealth country who arrived and settled in the UK before 1973. The scheme is also open to the children and grandchildren of Commonwealth citizens who arrived and settled before 1973, and to other close family members of such a person who may have been affected. In the cases of those who sadly passed away before compensation could be paid, a claim can be made by their estate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I was going to come to the point that although people talk about the Windrush scandal in terms of migrants from the Caribbean, it actually affects people from Africa, from south Asia and anyone from a then Commonwealth country who came in at the time. I point out to the House that there is also another, perhaps larger, scandal waiting in the wings. This, too, arises because of the 2014 Act and the hostile environment. I am speaking, of course, about this Government’s treatment of the EU 3 million. The EU settlement scheme does not confer new rights, but instead removes them. EU citizens will then potentially risk being charged that they are here illegally, and will face the burden of proof to show otherwise, and the legal status of British citizens now abroad is also bound up with how fairly this Government treat EU citizens here.

I previously stated that the Opposition will not vote against the compensation Bill, because otherwise there will be no compensation paid at all, but we on the Opposition Benches must insist that the Home Secretary look again at the introduction of a special hardship scheme. There are people who have died. There are people who are still in debt, because of the slowness in dealing with their claims for compensation.

[Meg Hillier]

My right hon. Friend will have noted in the letter that we have seen from the second permanent secretary at the Home Office that of the more than1,000 claimants, only 36 have been settled to the tune of just over £62,000. Does she not agree that, although extending it is not a bad thing in one way, it is in danger of delaying the very vital payments that so many of our constituents deserve?

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. The amount and the quantity of the payments are pitifully small, and do not show that the Government have administered the scheme well. We on the Labour Benches believe that the entire scheme for compensation should be like the funding for criminal injuries. First and foremost, compensation should be placed on a statutory footing, as that would allow the compensation to be comparable to awards in civil cases—that is reasoned and reasonable compensation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Abbott]

I agree with my hon. Friend that much more needs to be done to reassure people who are, rightly, worried about engaging with the Home Office at all because of previous experiences.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the big problems is that the Home Office systems are not up to scratch? To cope with both Windrush and the potential non-Caribbean Commonwealth applications as well as EU citizens, whom she rightly highlighted, the Home Office systems need to be improved.

[Ms Abbott]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

Since the previous Government were first obliged to apologise for the scandal, in April 2018, there have been more than 8,000 applications from people seeking the necessary documentation to establish their legality —8,000 applications for documentation, but only 1,000 applications for compensation. What has happened to the other 7,000? Why have they not come forward? Will the Home Secretary tell us what steps her Department is taking proactively to engage with them? Is she aware of any factors that might be inhibiting legitimate applicants? Is it possible that fear of the hostile environment is a factor?

How large is the publicity budget for the scheme? The House would like to know how that budget compares with the £46 million reportedly spent on the “Get ready for Brexit” campaign, which was criticised by the National Audit Office as having not made the slightest difference to public awareness. The House is entitled to know more details of the effectiveness of the publicity campaign. I understand that Home Office officials have visited Afro-Caribbean churches. That is good, but I hope Ministers understand that potential claimants may have difficulty approaching officials about their immigration status if they know that those officials are from the very Department that might seek to deport them, or might have deported someone they know.

Another issue is the extent of the Windrush cohort. As I said earlier, it is not just about people from the Caribbean: it affects all those Commonwealth and former empire citizens who came here legally before 1973, which includes people from west Africa, south Asia and elsewhere. It also includes their daughters, sons, grandsons and granddaughters, because the failure of their parents and grandparents to establish their citizenship may have affected their children’s and grandchildren’s immigration rights. It may be that people who have been rounded up for that flight to Jamaica tomorrow fall into that category. Will the Minister confirm that it is the case that many people originally from south Asia are also eligible for compensation? What will the Government do to ensure that all of them are approached about the compensation they are due?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

This is an essential Bill, and I will be extremely surprised, and indeed ashamed, if anyone rises to speak against it. I am very glad that the Government have extended the deadline to 2 April 2023, for reasons that I will cover in my conclusion. I hope the Bill will go some way to addressing the point that the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made that we need to recover our reputation for just administration at home and abroad.

I represent a large population of Caribbean descent—about 5,000 people. We are proud to have in Wycombe the largest Vincentian population away from the islands. I want to say that I am sorry. On these Benches, we are extremely sorry that this has happened. It is a matter of shame that it has occurred and that these events have taken place. It will be of no comfort to members of the public who have been affected, or their friends or family, that the explanatory notes go back to NHS treatment charges introduced in 1982 for overseas visitors, checks by employers on someone’s right to work first introduced in 1997, measures on access to benefits from 1999, civil penalties for employing illegal migrants from 2008, and so on. This is a long-standing problem, but it brings shame on us all and I am extremely sorry that it has happened.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of employer checks. One of the big concerns for many of my constituents is that they are required to have a biometric residence permit, because their little piece of paper from the Immigration and Nationality Directorate—or whichever form of the immigration system it was at the time—is no longer acceptable. The Home Office, crucially, does not write and tell them that, and it is only on a routine check by their employer that they find out. Many of them are then out of work for many months while they wait for their BRP to arrive. Does he agree that that is a scandal that the Home Office also needs to address?

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. There is no doubt that the Windrush scandal is a stain on the history of our country. It should never have taken place, but it should also transcend party politics, because it came about due to a series of administrative failings under a succession of Governments. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) said, it was the result of cock-up, not conspiracy. It was the result of unintended consequences because of the trail of successive decisions and actions of many Governments over many decades. None the less, it needs to be put right, and I welcome the Bill as just one step in ensuring that we put right as much as we are able to the wrongs that were done to the people who suffered.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman says that it was not intentional, but many of us were raising concerns for some time about constituents who were facing this very situation. The Home Office and Ministers failed to put that together to see that there was a systemic issue. Does he not at least acknowledge that? I hope we would all agree on both sides of the House that the Home Office systems are not, and have not been for some time, up to scratch and need to be improved.

[Steve Double]

I am grateful for that intervention. If the hon. Lady’s point is that something should have been done sooner, I agree. There were clearly warning signs that something was going wrong in the system, and action should have been taken quicker than it eventually was. But we are at this point today, and I welcome the Bill as one step further down the line to put right what was done wrong.

I want to thank the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), and the former Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I had a great deal of engagement with them when this situation came to light, and I thank them for the way in which they took ownership of it and sought to put measures in place to provide redress and compensation as quickly as possible.

When this issue unfolded in 2018, I was a member of the Petitions Committee, and I led a debate in Westminster Hall in response to a petition on this issue. Because of that, I had the privilege of meeting many of the petitioners, as well as a number of church leaders who represented West Indian and Caribbean congregations, who expressed their grave concerns about what was unfolding. As I look back on those meetings, I have two abiding memories of things that I learned and that struck me hard.

The first was that the Windrush generation did not come to Britain to become British citizens—they already considered themselves British citizens. They saw themselves as coming to the aid of the mother country; they came here to help this country at our point of need. I will never forget the stories they told me of how they came to the mother country when we asked them to because we needed their help.

The second thing that struck me from those meetings was just how deep mistrust of the Home Office went. There was a deep sense that something was wrong, and they had serious misgivings about the way that the Home Office functioned. That was not just a feeling at that particular time; it had been established over many decades, and there was a deep sense that they did not trust the Home Office. We wait to see what will come out of the lessons learned report, but I really hope one of the things will be to highlight the need for real change in the way the Home Office functions so that we never see something like this happen in our country ever again.

I welcome the fact that the compensation scheme was launched swiftly in April 2018, but I think we would all agree that it has taken too long to get to where we are today. I think we all acknowledge that, over the last couple of years, a great deal has preoccupied Parliament, filled far too much time and taken attention away from far too many other important matters. However, it is regrettable that more progress has not been made and, as hon. Members have already commented, that too few people have received too little compensation so far.

I sincerely hope that the passage of the Bill will enable the Home Office to accelerate this process, and make sure that claims are processed more quickly and, where compensation is due, payments are made in a timely fashion. I ask the Minister to ensure that all the resources needed are given to the Home Office to make sure that these applications can be processed much more quickly and compensation paid much more swiftly. While I understand why Labour Members will have concerns, I think we need to get this Bill passed, and it would be a mistake in any way to seek to delay it any further.

As terrible and unjust as all that went on during that time is, there is one thing from this whole process for which I am grateful, which is that we have been able to hear the story of the Windrush generation for a new generation in this country. My father was from Ipswich, and although he moved to Cornwall to marry my mother, after I was born we went back to Ipswich several times a year. There were Caribbean communities in Ipswich that we were very much a part of, and at that time I got to know several families who had originally come from the Caribbean. I remember the sense of love of our country that they had and, as I said earlier, the sense that they were coming to help the motherland at that time. I remember with great fondness all those relationships, and all the stories I heard back then.

I am very glad that, because of this tragedy and this unjust thing that has happened, the one good thing is that we can tell their story again and a new generation in this country can hear just how much and how big a debt we owe the people from all over the Commonwealth who came to our country to help us rebuild after the war. We must never forget the price that they paid and all that they gave our country at that time, and we must always be grateful and treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve because of that.

I believe that, as we have now left the European Union, we have an opportunity to review and reset our immigration policy. That is a positive thing and an opportunity we should grasp, but in doing so we must get it right. I believe there are things we can learn from the Windrush scandal that will help to shape our immigration policy to ensure that we do not ever make these mistakes again. One of the things many of us want to see as we break free from being locked into the European Union’s immigration policy is that we can once again build closer relationships with the Commonwealth and strengthen our historic ties with the Commonwealth. However, unless we now get this right and learn the lessons that need to be learned, that is going to be more difficult to do. We have to ensure that our future immigration policy is effective, but also fair and compassionate, and there are clearly lessons that must be learned.

If the reaction is somehow to weaken our stance on illegal immigration or on those who have committed crime, we will be doing a disservice to the British people. There needs to be a change of culture at the heart of the Home Office because the focus has been too much on policy and process, not on people. We must never lose sight of the fact that people are at the heart of these policies—individuals and families—who deserve to be treated fairly, and with dignity, respect and compassion.