Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I support the points made by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) and new clause 2, which was tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), because we have a responsibility to ensure that children in care do not miss out on the European settlement scheme through no fault of their own, and that we do not end up with another Windrush generation because nobody was looking out for those young people and they missed out on their rights—just never got the right papers.

I will speak to new clauses 29, 30 and 32, as well as other new clauses that I support. New clause 29 seeks only to continue the UK’s current commitments to help child refugees. I welcome the work the Government have done to support Syrian families, to speed up the Dublin scheme and to support the Dubs scheme, as well as the recent flight from Greece. All of that work resulted from cross-party debates in this House that the Government rightly responded to. We should not turn the clock back now or rip up that progress.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will know that the Government have talked about their

“proud record on supporting the most vulnerable children”.—[Official Report, 22 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 318.]

Does she accept that there can be no children more vulnerable than those she is talking about, and that the Government simply must maintain this commitment?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We are talking about children and teenagers who are alone, with no one to care for them, but who have family here who could look after them.

The Government have said that we should instead rely on the draft text they have put forward in the transition negotiations. However, the Minister knows that the draft text represents a major downgrade in support and rights for lone child and teen refugees. All it does is allow EU member states to request the transfer of an asylum claim. There is no obligation on the UK even to consider it, never mind accept it. There are no objective criteria on which an application could be based, no appeal rights and no safeguarding timetables to make sure that a case does not drift endlessly, leaving a child in danger and in limbo, and the child with no family will no longer have legal rights.

Let us consider the case of a 14-year-old stuck in the awful Moria camp on Lesbos, whose older sister or aunt is living here and could care for them. If the Home Office loses, ignores or refuses the Greek request for a transfer to the UK to join family, there will be nothing the child, the family or anyone else can do. That is wrong.

The Government do not need to wait for the negotiations to be completed. We should just decide what we think is right. We have the ability to do that. Whatever other countries decide, we in Britain should continue our support for child and teen refugees who are alone and need support. Any Member of this House who has visited the camps in Greece or northern France will know how desperate, unsanitary and dangerous the conditions can be. No child should be abandoned alone in a dilapidated refugee camp or shelter when they have close relatives here who would welcome them with open arms, care for them, get them back into education and reclaim a future for them.

Some child and teen refugees have fled war or escaped being child soldiers. Many have been abused, sexually exploited or assaulted, and many have lost family members along the way. Without safe legal routes to sanctuary, they will be easy prey to trafficking and smuggler gangs, and we know quite how perilous that can be. Desperate young people have already lost their lives; we should not turn our backs on them now. We need to sustain those safe and legal routes. That is why I urge the Minister to support new clause 29.

New clause 30 is intended to ensure that the new immigration system helps rather than harms our economy and public services by calling for a proper assessment of its impact on social care, similar to that in new clause 1, which I support. The Migration Advisory Committee said in its report that these changes will “increase pressure on social care”, yet so far there has been no plan from the Government on how they are going to address that. Social care and those workers are far too important to be ignored. That is why, as well as supporting new clauses 13 to 15—tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on the Front Bench—about supporting the contribution made by many of those workers during the covid crisis, I also urge the Minister to accept the spirit behind one of the other clauses that we tabled which is not in scope today, but which urges the Government to extend the free visa extension to social care workers, as well as to the NHS, doctors and medics. Supporting doctors and nurses is right, but excluding the care workers who hold dying residents’ hands, the cleaners who scrub the door handles and the floors of the covid wards, or the porters who take patients to intensive care is just wrong. We should be supporting them as well.

I will also speak to new clause 32, which is about trying to make sure the system operates fairly, because by default, the Bill extends the hostile environment, even though the Windrush scandal has shown the damage that some of those measures can do. The housing provisions do not benefit the immigration system, but they do lead to discrimination for legal residents and British citizens, including discrimination based on the colour of their skin. That is why the Home Affairs Committee recommended a full review of the hostile environment and why Wendy Williams’ report has called for the same. Extending those hostile environment measures now, rather than accepting the recommendation of Wendy Williams’ report, is the wrong thing to do.

I also support new clauses 7 and 8 in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). Again, those reflect recommendations of the cross-party Home Affairs Committee, because we have found that by not having a limit on detention and not having proper reviews and safeguards, too often, the system just drifts. Too often, people are just left in limbo because there are not proper safeguards to make sure things happen in time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry but we have to move on.

[Paul Blomfield]

There is clearly much to comment on in this Bill, but I rise specifically to speak in support of new clause 7 and to commend the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for the powerful case that he made in speaking to it. Back in 2014, I was pleased to serve as vice-chair of a cross-party inquiry into immigration detention. We included parliamentarians from both Houses and all the main parties, many with huge experience, including a former Law Lord and a former chief inspector of prisons. There were more Government Members than Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who also spoke powerfully on this issue a few moments ago. I pay tribute to Sarah Teather, who chaired the inquiry and who now leads the Jesuit Refugee Service UK, as others have mentioned. After an eight-month inquiry, our recommendations included the limit on detention that is proposed in new clause 7. That was endorsed by the House of Commons in September 2014, so it is disappointing that we are still discussing the issue—but it is important that we are, because, contrary to some suggestions, it is not a particularly controversial proposal.

The truth is that we have become too dependent on detention, which takes place in immigration removal centres. The clue to the purpose of those centres is in the title. They are intended for short-term stays, but the Home Office has become increasingly reliant on them, under successive Governments. Home Office policy states that detention must be used sparingly, but the reality is different.

In our evidence we heard from many organisations, NGOs and so on, but, most powerfully, we heard from those in detention over a phone link. One young man from a disputed territory on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon told us that he was trafficked to Hungary as a 16-year-old, where he was beaten, raped and tortured. He managed to escape and eventually made his way to Heathrow, using a false passport, which was discovered on arrival, and he was detained. He told us that he had been in detention for three years. His detention conflicts with the stated aims of the Home Office in three respects—that those who have been trafficked should not be detained, that those who have been tortured should not be detained and that detention should be for the shortest possible period. His case is not the only one. There are more people like him than there are so-called foreign national offenders, which the Home Office briefers urged Members to refer to. Time and again, we were told that detention was worse than prison, because in prison you know when you are going to get out. One former detainee said:

“The uncertainty is hard to bear. Your life is in limbo. No one tells you anything about how long you will stay or if you are going to get deported.”

A medical expert told us that the sense of being in limbo, of hopelessness and despair is what leads to deteriorating mental health, and that

“those who were detained for over 30 days had significantly higher mental health problems”.

It is not simply the impact on detainees that demands change. A team leader from the prisons inspectorate told us that the lack of a time limit encourages poor case working, saying that,

“a quarter of the cases of prolonged detention that they looked at were a result of inefficient case-working.”

It has become too easy for the Home Office to use administrative detention, and that is what needs to be challenged. The Home Secretary talked about the culture change in the Home Office only a few days ago, in response to the Windrush review. Removing indefinite immigration detention would make a significant contribution to achieving that culture change, because with no time limits, it has simply become too easy for people to be detained, for too long, with no meaningful way of challenging that detention.

Our report gave a number of examples of alternatives to detention, which are being used by countries often held up as hard on immigration, such as Australia. We know that the Home Office is developing pilots on community-based alternatives, including one at Yarl’s Wood, which is a year in and is running well.

[Richard Fuller]

As the hon. Gentleman has raised the point about Yarl’s Wood, does that not show that with experimentation on alternatives, the Government can find ways to do what they want to do, but to do it better?

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right. It is not simply the case that alternatives to detention are more humane—they are more efficient, more effective and more cost-effective for the Government.

I understand that the Government are shortly to announce a second pilot, and that is to be welcomed— I would be glad to hear anything that the Minister would like to say on that—but the pilot we have already seen and the experience of other countries have already demonstrated the effectiveness of community-based alternatives. We need to move faster. The proposal to end indefinite administrative detention in new clause 7 would be more humane, less expensive and more effective in securing compliance. The time really has come for Members from both sides of the House to get behind the proposals in new clause 7.