Windrush

Debate between Meg Hillier and Lyn Brown

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who is no longer in his place, on bringing this matter to the Government’s attention and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on her dogged determination in pursuing the issue.

I want to take issue with some of the comments made in this debate. The hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), who is no longer in his place, spoke about the matter as though it were just a small administrative error, but my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) summed up the ignominy that many of my constituents have faced because they have a west African name or a strong accent. They come to see me for things that they should not have to see me about—not just immigration issues but, yes, those as well. I, too, have a heavy immigration workload, and I have some advice for the Minister, because another thing that has been said in this debate is, “Why aren’t we looking at the Labour years?” Well, I was the Immigration Minister in the last three years of the Labour Government, so perhaps I can help to bridge that gap.

Let me be candid: the Home Office has long had administrative problems on immigration. One of the issues that the Minister and her boss the new Home Secretary will face is that, to deal with the problem, we need proper investment in the right quality and numbers of people to be able to turn casework around in the necessary time, so that people are not dribbling through the system for a decade or bouncing backwards and forwards with decisions that require legal challenge. However, even with the current desire to tackle the issue, I bet that it will be a big challenge to secure the necessary money from the Treasury to deliver that.

[Lyn Brown]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I also have massive amounts of immigration casework, and I really have not benefited from the staff with whom I have been beginning to get a relationship, and who really understand the cases, being changed willy-nilly by the Home Office. We could do with some stability.

[Meg Hillier]

Tackling that is a huge challenge for the Department, and I agree with my hon. Friend. This was not just an administrative error. Dealing with the administration of immigration with never enough resources has been a challenge for the Home Office for years.

The hostile environment has bitten hard in my constituency. Discretionary leave to remain was reduced from five years to three years, meaning that people had to apply twice before they could get citizenship, and is now reduced to two years, meaning that people have to apply three times. The fee is £800 a time—it keeps going up; I lose track—before they pay over £1,000 for British citizenship. The costs are bankrupting my constituents who are working hard in this country, paying their taxes and paying their dues. They are being treated like second-class citizens. They are not yet citizens, but they aspire to be and they are doing everything right.

Turning to the people who are citizens, the Government have in effect declared an amnesty for those people from the Commonwealth who arrived here between 1973 and 1988, and I have another word of advice for the Minister. In declaring an amnesty—officials will be quavering at my use of that word, because they hate it in the Home Office—will she be clear, as other hon. Members have asked, about whether it applies to all members of the Commonwealth? Will it cover my west African constituents who are in exactly the same position? If I only I had the time, I would tell her about some of the horrific cases. One man is homeless, and another is about to lose his home because it belongs to his partner. They are frightened about ringing the Home Office helpline in case it causes them problems.

Those people are from the Caribbean, but I also have Commonwealth citizens who are in the same position. They are originally from Africa, but they are British, and yet they do not have the paperwork to prove it. The little paper Immigration and Nationality Directorate letters that people come to our surgeries clutching have been enough to get them a job and their entitlements, but their employers have suddenly said, “But you need a biometric residence permit.” Why did the Home Office—this happened strictly under this Government when they changed the rules—not write to everybody on the immigration lists and say, “You now need this new document in order to hold your job and keep your rights”? Had it done so, those people who are not yet citizens—those who have not chosen to go down the citizenship route, but have indefinite leave to remain—would have been in a better position.

The issue goes wider than just the Windrush generation, and let us hope that there is not just a quick fix for them, but a much wider review of the system. Let us not forget that this Government chose to abolish identity cards, which were being rolled out on my watch in the Home Office. They would have made a big difference to many of my constituents who very much wanted to prove that they had the same rights as other citizens.

I have little time to cover compensation and legal aid, but good-quality legal advice saves time and money for everybody in the long run, and justice is denied if justice cannot be accessed because someone cannot afford it. I am afraid to say that we have a real dearth of good-quality legal advice with legal aid—it is a desert in some areas—and many lawyers are charging high fees for, frankly, poor service. The Minister needs to take that into account, or we will see further such problems along the way.

Housing Benefit

Debate between Meg Hillier and Lyn Brown

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Meg Hillier]

One reason why that has not worked is housing shortages. However, the self-denying ordinance that I set out at the beginning of my speech means that I cannot talk about wider issues.

Flexibility is important, but it is being abused by the Government, who are proposing changes overnight that might be in place from this autumn—I look to the Minister to give me guidance about that. People who have signed a six-month tenancy or a tenancy with a six-month break clause, for example, will have little option but to fund that shortfall somehow, as I shall address in more detail in a moment.

There is also a proposal to link housing benefit to consumer price index inflation, which will have a big impact on tenants and landlords. Research by Shelter has shown that CPI increased by 15% between 1999 and 2007, while there was a 44% increase in average rents. Had the local housing allowance been set to increase in line with CPI in 1999, it would now be 20% below the level needed to rent the average property. Whichever way the cut is made, people on low incomes—those people are often working—or on benefits are expected to fund the shortfall from their income to stay living in their own homes.

The impact on children and families is pertinent in my constituency, because some 22% of residents are under 16 and a lot of families need homes. People often come to my surgery because they are unable to access social housing. They are advised that they should look at what can be provided in the private rented sector, and I am sure that colleagues are in a similar position. More than one million children—a third of them in London—are living in overcrowded conditions. The cap will only exacerbate that problem because families will be forced to move into smaller, cheaper properties, and perhaps to push out their teenage children as they get older so that they can afford the rent.

I need to touch on a problem in the north of Hackney—not in my constituency, but in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington—where orthodox Jewish families will be severely hit. Such families typically have more than four children, and many of them live in the private rented sector, so the limit on benefit will have a devastating impact. The council and social landlords in Hackney will be unable to take the strain, so I need answers from the Minister on how councils will be supported in dealing with that.

Of the nearly 40,000 people in Hackney currently in receipt of housing benefit, just over 9,000 live in the private rented sector. Two thirds are in receipt of benefit, but one third are working tenants, many of whom would like to continue to work but, as a result of the proposals, will find a serious shortfall between their rent and the benefit provided for it, and will have very little income to make up the difference. In the three bands for the broad rental market areas that operate in my constituency—inner east, inner north and London central—all properties with more than two bedrooms are above the Government’s proposed cap. That is ludicrous. It means that those in Hackney living in a two, three or four-bedroom property—or a larger property—will have nowhere to go. They could go out of Hackney, but there are not many boroughs they could go to. I am not entirely clear how the Government propose to ensure that people can stay living in London—and, crucially, working in London and supporting its economy—because many people need that benefit to subsidise their rent so that they are able to live locally to their jobs.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I agree.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my hon. Friend wish to make an intervention?