No Recourse to Public Funds
Debate between Meg Hillier and Holly Lynch(4 years, 1 month ago)
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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.