Immigration Bill (Third sitting)

Mims Davies Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr Hoare. Gosh, I am surrounded by a lot of lawyers, which is not good for an accountant. There are two Members who have been patiently waiting. With the permission of the Committee, I will call them and see what time we have over for the rest. Mims Davies.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Q 235 Mr Yeo, I have read with interest your blog site, Free Movement. That is quite an interesting title. Why did you come up with that?

Colin Yeo: It is a term of description for European migration law essentially.

[Mims Davies]

Q 236 We now have a system of complex rules and, it appears, really complex cases. That seems to be the root of criticism today that we are dealing with very complex rules that do not seem to fit the very complex cases. There is a certain irony in that. The detention system that we have was created very much under the previous Government. We are seeking a clarification of matters. Would you not accept that was the case? If you are saying that things are getting too complex, is this not allowing people to be very clear about things going forward?

Colin Yeo: The current bail provisions in the 1971 Act are quite complicated. In a way, it could be said that schedule 5 of the Bill does simplify them. But it also introduces a radical change, which is simply to render redundant a bail hearing in front of an independent immigration judge. Schedule 5 gives the power to the Home Office to re-detain and to set whatever conditions the Home Office wants after one of those hearings. You wonder what the point of having a hearing is. If it is such a charade, the Home Office can do what it wants after anyway.

[Mims Davies]

Q 237 Is it not fair of me to sit here thinking that we have really got a culture that has grown up over the past few years of complex cases requiring complex rules? I suppose we are trying to work out whether we have a fair system, or whether we have a lot of people involved in complex cases, allowing abuse of the rules, without the Government giving a chance for people to have clarity on the rules. Do you see where I am coming from? It appears we have complex cases and potential abuse of the rules. Therefore, most people on the outside whom I speak to want to have a clear immigration policy. Those people coming in would expect the same.

Colin Yeo: A lot of cases are not necessarily complex but they are made complex by the rules. For example, for a spouse coming into the country, the previous rules required that you had to show adequate maintenance. That was a very straightforward rule in some ways and it was up to you how you evidenced that, and judges would judge it.

A new rule was introduced in 2012 requiring a certain level of income to be established. Along with that level of income of £18, 600 in most cases, more if you have non-British national children, is a plethora of incredibly complicated rules about exactly what documents are required to prove that. Especially if you are self-employed, it is very difficult to get the right documents together. If you have an internet bank account it is virtually impossible to get the letter from the bank that is required by the Home Office to certify those online bank statements. The rules make what could be quite straightforward, simple cases into very complicated ones, and unnecessarily so in my opinion.

[Mims Davies]

Q 238 That is very helpful. Quickly to Mr Flynn, you said that there is an element of templating that is coming here. Do you not believe that that is probably in some ways helpful, given what Mr Yeo has just said?

Don Flynn: I am certainly in favour of simplicity. When I first started giving immigration advice back in the 1970s, the immigration rules were a slim little pamphlet and the best legal text book was written by Handsworth law centre and was about 30 or 40 pages long. If you mastered those principles you were the best immigration lawyer in the country. The vast majority of issues were sorted out very quickly. What we have seen since then is a proliferation. Immigration rules are volumes now. They change every few months, and legal advice on how to interpret them is an industry on its own.

My point is that we manage immigration no better today, with all this complexity of rules, than we did in the 1970s, when there seemed to be more certainty and simplicity. I advocate getting as close as we can to the situation that existed in the 1970s, and we are not doing that in this Bill.

[Mims Davies]

Q 239 But we do lead more complex and complicated lives, and it appears that the people we are dealing with do as well.

Don Flynn: I do not actually believe that. I think that aspects of people’s lives are more complicated, such as the business of earning a living nowadays. In the 1970s, people got a job and stayed in it for 30-odd years until they retired; now they move around. You get portfolio workers, and there is an amount of evidence needed to ensure that you are on the right side of the law rather than the wrong side. You are dependent on far more people to support the evidence that you want to put in front of us.

That is certainly there, but the same fundamental principles govern people’s lives. People want to fit in. They want to get on. They need their lives to have predictable aspects that they can steer toward, and we have got further and further away from that. The business of being an immigrant nowadays is often like being a lost soul, wandering around trying to get orientated and find out exactly what your rights are, and getting into a bigger mess because it is impossible to get that information.

[The Chair]

I am sorry to interrupt, but in order to get the next Member in, I must press on.