Nationality and Borders Bill

Olivia Blake Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

I am proud to represent Sheffield, Hallam. Sheffield was the first place to call itself a city of sanctuary, and I pay tribute to all the great organisations, such as City of Sanctuary Sheffield, the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group, ASSIST Sheffield and many more, that do such good work in my city—my home—to make it as welcoming a place as possible to people fleeing war, persecution and violence.

It is in that spirit of humanity, compassion and genuine internationalism that I completely reject the divisiveness written into nearly every clause and line of this Bill. The Bill is divisive—in the way it pits so-called group 1, or “good” asylum seekers against so-called group 2, or “bad” asylum seekers; in the way that it stacks our legal system against some of the most vulnerable people coming to the UK; and in the way that it criminalises altruism and basic acts of compassion.

Every line of the Bill strains to break the human bonds that hold us all together. It is an affront to the spirit of the 1951 refugee convention. The convention clearly states that refugees

“shall enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms without discrimination,”

yet discrimination seems to be at the heart of the Bill.

The Government know that there are no visa or pre-entry clearances for someone wishing to claim asylum—there is no such thing as an “illegal asylum seeker”—but the most vulnerable asylum seekers are those who rely on illegal methods to get into the country. The distinction between group 1 and group 2 asylum seekers is a completely bogus differentiation which will introduce more legal hurdles for some of the most traumatised and brutalised people on our planet. It is also chilling that there are no restrictions to prevent the Home Secretary from treating group 2 asylum seekers differently. Those people are already under huge amounts of pressure to provide evidence of their cases, often when they have had to leave their homes behind very quickly. There are massive barriers to their submitting coherent evidence on arrival in the UK. The proposal for decision makers to doubt applications on the basis of late evidence is a wilful misunderstanding of the challenges, the horrors and the deep trauma that asylum applicants have faced to be here, as well as the lack of legal advice.

One of the most appalling aspects of the Bill is the criminalisation of anyone who helps someone seeking asylum to enter the country. What does that mean in practice? For example, how is it compatible with the duty of a ship to attempt to rescue people who are in danger at sea?

This Bill is discriminatory, a violation of our international treaty obligations, inhumane, spiteful, and badly thought through. I suspect that it is more about appealing to a subset of ugly populist opinion than about addressing the real problems in the system, such as the lack of safe and legal routes into the UK to claim asylum. Today I will be upholding the best traditions of my constituency, and voting firmly against it.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

With the greatest respect, what I am talking about is a specific aspect of the revocation of nationality for appalling behaviour against the interests of the country to which we all belong and of which we are all nationals—a very specific point—so I will not follow the hon. Member into that debate, I am afraid.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

To clarify, in reference to the very eloquent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) drew an association between terrorism and the fees for children seeking to get nationality here. That is what has just happened. I think he should revoke those comments.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s comments. I specifically quoted two words that the hon. Member for Streatham used in relation to the clause—she spoke about this “horrible” Bill and this “hostile” Bill. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) will recognise that the clause has been used by Opposition Members, notably the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), to stir up concerns—which, bluntly speaking, I regard as scaremongering—among members of different ethnic communities in our country. To my way of thinking, that is deeply inappropriate.

What we are talking about is the notification of revocation of British nationality to a tiny, tiny number of people who have chosen to behave in a way that is totally against the interests of our country and who have allied themselves with the enemies of this country. All the clause will do is allow for the absence of physical notification where those individuals are either unreachable or in a war zone. So far, so good.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that offer, which I accept with alacrity. I would like to bring colleagues such as the noble Baroness Stroud, who did so much work on this issue, to meet him and officials to look into the detail of the volunteering question in particular. While we encourage asylum seekers to volunteer and they get reasonable expenses, even payments in kind for the volunteering they do are prohibited. There is a real issue there that is preventing many people from making a contribution to the local community, as I have seen for myself in Swindon.

We know the reality that many people under that pressure go off the radar. They end up being exploited, or even bound into modern-day slavery, and we lose them from the entire system. The effect of creating a right to work could deal a hammer blow to that type of exploitation.

I therefore welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Minister and urge the Government, in the spirit of co-operation, to look carefully at how we can do what other countries such as Denmark have started to do in allowing some asylum seekers the right to work. The Migration Advisory Committee has said there is no meaningful evidence to suggest that doing so would create a pull factor. The question is begged: if that is a pull factor, why do we have small boats now?

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have help from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project for my work in this area.

I have said throughout the debates in Parliament that this Bill is divisive. As my constituents reach across borders to help and house those fleeing the war in Ukraine, this Government are sowing division by making an insidious distinction between “good” and “bad” refugees—a division that we should all completely reject. That is why I rise today to support amendments 4 to 9, especially amendment 6.

Clause 11 makes a totally spurious division between group 1 and group 2 refugees that flies in the face of the 1951 refugee convention. The convention clearly states that refugees, wherever they come from,

“shall enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms without discrimination.”

The Government know that there are no visa or pre-entry clearances for someone wishing to claim refuge. There is no such thing as an illegal refugee in international law, yet that is exactly what the new group 2 category attempts to establish. All clause 11 seeks to do is lazily turn far-right talking points about asylum seekers and refugees into legislation, without seriously thinking through any of the consequences for the people involved.

For example, currently people fleeing war can apply for humanitarian protection leave. The protection grants them five years in the UK, access to the NHS and other public funds, an option to apply later for indefinite leave to remain and the right to work. However, the Government are scrapping humanitarian protection as we know it and aligning it instead with the new group 2 status, meaning regular visa reviews every two and a half years compared with every five, no recourse to public funds, no right to work, restricted family visa rights and no route to indefinite leave to remain. That is something I think many in this House have missed, and I hope they will reflect on it.

It is remarkable that in the middle of the Ukraine crisis, as thousands of people join the effort to support people from Ukraine, the Government are actually proposing that people running from the horrors of war should have fewer rights to come here. Those rights were brought in through an EU directive that became British law, and now the Government are using the smokescreen of this Bill to remove them, all by aligning them with a faulty two-tier refugee system.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very interesting speech. Does she agree that the UN refugee convention was about our common humanity? I have heard a lot of talk about a “great country”, but what we see now from this Government is an attempt to split humanity into two tiers. That undermines the concept of human rights and of there being one, sole, universal understanding of what it is to be a human being. This Government are putting humanity into categories, and history tells us that that is a slippery slope and fundamentally wrong.

[Olivia Blake]

I agree—it is fundamentally wrong. That is why we should ensure that clause 11 is not included in this Bill. Clause 11 is out of tune with the hundreds of thousands of people who have come forward to help Ukrainian refugees. It is an affront to the 1951 refugee convention, and I urge hon. Members to reject it and to reject this Bill.