Nationality and Borders Bill (Second sitting)

Paul Howell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Thank you.

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

Q I want to turn to your last point before I come to the one that I was going to make. You say that the people in the boats would be scared of Border Force because of what has been said. We were told by the Red Cross earlier that the people getting into boats were not informed about what was going on or what sort of law applied. How would they have a perception that the law had changed and that they were going to be pushed back, given that, as the Red Cross said earlier, they would not have any perception of what laws applied to them?

Lucy Moreton: There are communications channels between migrants who make it and those who are waiting. Also, the spin put on it by the smuggling gangs is absolutely phenomenal. For example, we were seeing a lot of migrants being told that the small vessel route over the English channel would become illegal once the UK had left the EU. It was illegal before and it was going to be illegal after: nothing changed. But the gangs used that to pressure more people into taking the route—“Go now, before they stop it!”—and to charge more money for that route. Different vessels have different amounts of information, but this has been reported quite widely in the press.

Migrant groupings in France, I understand, are now aware that this is a risk. We know that they resist approaches by the French; they put themselves at risk in order to prevent the French intercepting and returning them while they remain within French waters. We get reports from our members on the cutters, particularly the smaller ribs, that migrants make absolutely sure that they have got a British vessel. They are far more likely to trust the RNLI or the coastguard, who they recognise because they are on telly and have different uniforms, than to trust us. The last thing we need is someone standing up and going overboard. If they are trying to avoid being intercepted, either by the French, by us or anyone they do not recognise, that is the risk.

[Paul Howell]

Q It just seems a conflict to me that, on the one hand, the witnesses earlier were saying that migrants did not have information, and now you are saying that they do have information.

Zoe Gardner: Can I jump in on that point? There is a difference between having some gossip information or potential misinformation about what will happen directly on the boat journey and what to do immediately on disembarkation, and actually having a complex and sophisticated understanding of the functioning of the asylum system in the UK, especially in comparison to the functioning of the asylum system in France.

Regarding the levels of understanding and information, as Lucy rightly said there is a lot of misinformation going around, but knowing that you need to avoid being intercepted at sea is different from knowing what your entitlements will be once you have got to this stage in the asylum system in the UK. They are different issues.

Lucy Moreton: I think that is a fair point; it is more about misinformation, spin and misunderstanding than about concrete information and a robust or detailed knowledge of what actually happens.

[Paul Howell]

Q I get that, but I think it is in both directions as well.

I will come to the point I was going to make. The number of cases and the backlog are increasing at a faster rate than the number of applications. I would like to try to understand whether that is purely resource—you have indicated there are resource concerns anyway—or whether there are ways in which the Bill could be written so that it was easier to make decisions and the decisions could be clearer and swifter, rather than having too many complexities, which results in longer times before you get a first decision. Is it the Bill? Is it the resources? Is it a combination thereof?

Lucy Moreton: It is a combination, inevitably, but there are elements of both. The rate of cases in decision is increasing in relation to the number of initial applications, but that is because of late and repeated applications that slow things up, and that may well be an element in the 399 that was mentioned earlier.

One provision in the Bill suggests that individuals would be served with a notice of information to say, “If you do not produce all the information that you know at this time, you will not be able to bring it up later—or, if you do bring it up later, much less weight will be given to it.” I am not convinced that that will work as well in practice as it might appear.

There will always be information that changes if someone has been here and been in the system for six months or six years. There can be a change of situation in their home country that might make late information come up, and even if the information comes up late and is given less weight, it must still be considered and will still have some limited access to appeal, albeit I think that the intention is to remove the ability to seek judicial review of the decision by giving an expedited appeal through the immigration tribunals process.

If the immigration tribunals process does not have the capacity to hear that case for six months, it will not make a great deal of difference anyway, but certainly any measures that assist in encouraging migrants to produce as much information as they intend to rely on at the beginning will help. Most migrants do that, but you get to the end of the system and then suddenly you get, “Oh, but hang on a minute—now I’ve changed my religion, recognised my sexuality, the situation at home has changed, I’m married, I’ve got a child, I’ve got closer ties here, I’ve got a medical condition,” or whatever additional applications come in.

Anything that can control and manage that better will help; that is a recognised method of abusing the process, but we cannot shut it off, because there will always be people for whom it is absolutely true that their situation has changed and they do need protection. We need a method for considering that quickly, getting it through the appeals process quickly, if that is relevant, identifying those who are abusing the system and, crucially, removing them. Another large part of the Bill is the ability to remove people who have come to the end of the system, while still identifying and extending protection to those for whom we have an obligation to do so.

[Paul Howell]

Q Do you think the Bill, as written, helps that process?

Lucy Moreton: Everything will be in the detail. The words used will help, but I suspect we will find ourselves in a situation in two or three years’ time where there has been a loophole or a contrary decision by an upper court that has changed the way this works. There will always be genuine last-minute situations; there will always be genuine last changes that merit a fresh application.

If you front-load the resourcing at the beginning, if you can decide an application and have it through the court system in a matter of weeks, the scope for those last-minute changes of situation is significantly narrowed. If you make the whole process faster and tighter, rather than just trying to block the tail end of a very lengthy process, that would probably be more beneficial both to genuine refugees and to the British taxpayer.

[Paul Howell]

Q Does Zoe want to add to that?

[The Chair]

I do not want to limit anybody’s questions, but there are quite a few people who would like to ask questions. Jonathan Gullis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q I have one final question for Councillor Gough. You mentioned Napier Barracks in Kent. The Government announced that they want to extend the period of time that they are using Napier Barracks for asylum accommodation. I just wondered what your thoughts were on that, and how it has gone down locally.

Councillor Roger Gough: Clearly, it is not welcome that we have another element of this particular picture in a part of the country that very visibly experiences large numbers of arrivals. In a sense, having a presence of this kind in east Kent is not ideal, and we have always been clear—both Kent County Council and our colleagues in the local district council, Folkestone and Hythe—that this is a decision taken by the Home Office, not by the local authorities, and is not something we were in support of.

That said, I think that a great deal of work has been undertaken to seek to address some of the problems that produced the real crisis in and around Napier Barracks in the early part of this year, where we saw some disorder and a significant covid outbreak. Significant steps have been taken on that, although there are still concerns about that facility.

[Paul Howell]

Q Can we change the direction slightly? We have heard lots about the stresses that illegal immigration is putting on local councils. Looking at the Bill as it stands, can you tell me whether there are things in there that help the situation for you, and are there things that you would like to have seen in there—things that would have helped if they had been put in? I am trying to see what difference the Bill would actually make to your life.

Councillor Rachael Robathan: Yes, there are certainly some things that we would welcome, although it would be good to see some more detail when the secondary legislation comes forward. Just to back up slightly, a further issue that we have in Westminster, as many of you will be aware, is the significant number of rough sleepers. Our latest count was 171, which is actually fewer than there have been previously. We worked very closely with Government on the Everyone In programme and so on last year, which was very successful, but we still have 70 in a bridging hotel within Westminster, so there is a significant issue around rough sleeping.

Over half of those people have no recourse to public funds. All of the asylum seekers in Westminster have come through the sanctioned route, so they would be in category 1 under this Bill, but one of the concerns for us would be if there is more clarity, if you like, in terms of no recourse to public funds for category 2, whether some of those people who would have no recourse to public funds might slip into rough sleeping. There is always a draw to the centre of Westminster: it is known that an aggressive beggar can make up to £500, or sometimes more, on our streets in Westminster, so if people find themselves on the street, there is an economic pull into the centre. That could lead to increasing numbers within Westminster.

Speaking very specifically about Westminster, the issue is that we then have an issue with tented accommodation, and the point about tented accommodation—I have had a number of meetings with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice about this—is that there is a very high bar for the police or others to be able to gain entry to the tents. Not only is it difficult to enforce against those who would be illegally there but, much more importantly, it is very difficult to address issues around trafficked women and other people who are on the streets and need support and help, because we are unable to deliver that. That is a concern.

One of the things that we would welcome—I think this has come through in what both Councillor Gough and I have said—is a more organised approach to the way asylum seekers are looked after and accommodated. More planning around the process would help. I think we have also both said that the Afghan resettlement has been much better in terms of being able to have planning and co-ordination with local authorities, so that is something we would welcome.

Also in Westminster, I welcome the measures around modern slavery, but also the greater sanctions to stop people coming back into the country if they have been convicted of criminal activity. Once again, we have people on the streets in Westminster who engage in criminal activity to earn money. That activity is not at a very high level, but they are still things that have a real impact on our residents’ lives. We would welcome the moves around electronic travel authorisation and other measures to make re-entry into the country more difficult for those people who are here to commit criminal activity.

Councillor Roger Gough: I would endorse what Councillor Robathan has said; I agree with all those points. There are a couple of specifics from our side. One slightly begs the question as to how effective the measures will be, ultimately, because others looking at the Bill can judge that better than me. The basic principle of seeking to promote safe and orderly routes at the expense of those that involve things like the small boat routes would be very welcome. There is no doubt, and it has been much emphasised, that that route is very dangerous. It creates a degree of political tension because it is so visible. It is something that we very much wish to avoid. Those issues come home to those of us who are border authorities, particularly in the case of the small boats in areas such as Kent. The measures to try to shift the balance between the two ways in which people get here would in principle be very welcome.

The second area I want to touch on relates to age assessment. Broadly, the direction there seems to me to be a favourable one. The attempt to create a national body, not to carry out or provide support to local authorities, unless it is requested, so much as to provide some consistency and regularity to a very time-consuming process that can wrap up huge amounts of time from very qualified social workers and which often has no very obvious end to it because it is relatively loosely guided, is welcome. Establishing best practice as well as providing support for local authorities, many of which will be less experienced in this area than authorities such as mine, would be very welcome.

[Tom Pursglove]

Q First, I have a very Kent-specific question. You will appreciate that I am new in role, but for the benefit of the Committee, could you set out what pressures Kent County Council currently faces as a result of the number of people crossing the channel?

Councillor Roger Gough: We are slightly betwixt and between on that. I apologise if I give an answer that may not be quite as definite as you would like. I shall explain why. If we take this year and last year, the very specific pressures that we have been experiencing were rapid increases in the numbers of young people coming into our care, the end result of which was that social work case loads rose far above recommended levels, particularly for the specialist teams dealing with those cases. We also had reception centres that, particularly with the first wave of big pressure last year, were filling rapidly. That was the point at which placing young people in other accommodation was difficult because of the circumstances of the pandemic.

Just to be clear, it is perhaps worth saying that when we talk about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, historically, these have been adolescent males. Indeed, if you look at last year’s figures, we have very few indeed who were under the age––or stated age––of 16. There was something of a shift in the early part of this year where, from memory, about a fifth of those arriving were of stated age under 16. That tended to push you more towards foster accommodation rather than the semi-independent and other forms of accommodation that we would provide for the 16 and 17-year-olds. That has meant that through the pressures on fostering, and to some extent on other forms of accommodation, we had to place more young people outside the county, and we were certainly heading into that sort of territory at the time when we were closing our doors again in June. That was the biggest area of concern.

One thing that is worth noting, too, and it has a longer lag on it, is care leavers: those who come into our care, or indeed the care of any authority, under the age of 18—they are taken in as children in care—then become care leavers. Councillor Robathan referred to that. Under the changes to legislation that took place three or four years ago, we have a responsibility for them through to the age of 25. While at the moment, we have around 300 under-18s in our care, we have over 1,000 care leavers. In fact, our care leaver service is more ex unaccompanied asylum-seeking children than it is ex Kent children in care. As you can imagine, that generates a number of specific pressures, too. I hope that answers your question. The only reason for my hesitancy at the start was that we have just come out of the period when we were not taking young people into our care, and therefore some of the very large numbers of arrivals that we saw a few weeks ago, of whom typically 10% to 15% would probably be unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, were not having a very direct effect on us at that point. But clearly if those numbers were to continue, we would potentially be in a different situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Mr Smith, if you could hold your answer to that question, I am going to try to bring in Paul Howell as well.

[Paul Howell]

Q Thank you, Chair. This question is similar to one that I asked a previous witness. Mr Smith, what aspects of the Bill would you particularly welcome, and what do you feel needs to be more robust, or indeed less? Could you cover that at the same time?

Tony Smith: I particularly welcome the distinction between those people who are entering the country from safe third countries, with the new interpretation of article 31 where we can actually test whether they face an immediate fear of persecution in the circumstances under which we find them, and those who are genuinely fleeing persecution coming through refugee resettlement routes. I think that is the part that I favour the most.

The other thing we will have to consider is whether we will have to establish proper arrangements for the reception of people coming via this route. The facilities in Tug Haven—I do not know whether the Committee has been there—are appalling. We have a marquee there and we have Border Force officers changing nappies and ordering pizzas because we simply do not have the infrastructure to cope with these numbers. Other countries at least provide sensible, safe accommodation. You are going to hear lots of evidence about the circumstances at Napier Barracks. There is a real problem in the Home Office right now about being able to manage the proper reception of these people, whether or not we allow them to stay.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Thank you, Mr Smith. As ever, it is very interesting to hear from you. I have two quick questions. I am slightly confused because on one hand, you speak about the necessity of deterrence, but the way you want to go about deterring people from making the crossings is through removals to France. That is exactly what we have lost because of Brexit and the end of the Dublin regulations at the start of the year, and this Bill does not bring us any closer to removals to France. On the other hand, you think that criminalisation is not the right way to go, but that is what is in the Bill; it criminalises people who make those crossings. Although I understand your logic, I do not understand how that takes you to supporting this Bill.