Immigration

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

We have certainly been left with a legacy, and we have to play the cards that we have been dealt. I might like things to have been different, if that were possible. However, we must accept that the European Union covers 47% of our trade and is therefore a major player that we have to deal with, and we need to operate within that framework in terms of border controls.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about the future, but we also need to look at the existing system. Before coming to this place, I practised as a barrister and prosecuted cases for a number of years. An illegal immigrant or an immigrant who had committed an offence would be served with an IM3, an order for deportation, and a judge then made a recommendation. From that point to the point of deportation—and in the time it took to put that into practice—the left arm of the Home Office did not know what its right arm was doing, and in the meantime the taxpayer was paying for it. Before looking to the future, we need to ensure that the problems with the previous system, which has been in place for several years, are put right.

[Chris Skidmore]

I defer to my hon. Friend’s expertise on this matter, but thank him for raising that valuable point.

I want to return to the issue of employment. While hundreds of thousands of British citizens are still seeking a job, and when 10% of recent British graduates are still looking for jobs, the economic recovery must begin here. Although it is important that low-skilled jobs are filled in order to encourage growth in the economy, there are hundreds of thousands of British citizens who can fill them. If we are to build an economic recovery, it must be on the back of the talents of the British people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree that it is very important that we discuss the matter openly and rationally. I agree entirely with the comment made earlier by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) that if politicians from the mainstream parties do not discuss it, we leave a space for other parties. That is why I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead on securing the debate.

I also believe that people’s concerns about immigration are symptomatic of the other big challenges with which we are grappling, which some Members have mentioned. They include the availability of housing at a price that people can afford and of jobs that pay a salary that makes taking the work worth while. We need to address those fundamental problems at the same time as ensuring that our immigration system is, to coin a phrase, “fit for purpose”. It is to that issue that I now turn.

What frustrates me more than anything else about our immigration system is our failure—yes, I accept that it was a failure of the previous Government as much as it is of the current one—to enforce decisions in a fair and humane way. We need appropriate enforcement at the point at which decisions are taken. Given that 37% of immigration appeals are successful, there is also a problem with the right decision being made in the first place, but perhaps that is a discussion for another day. I simply say that we should learn from our mistakes and make better decisions at the outset.

I suspect that I have many constituents who were told years ago that they were liable to deportation or removal, but nothing has happened. Such people carry on their lives, which is understandable. Some might be working in the informal economy, and some will have hung on to jobs that they legally should not have done. They have started relationships and had children, and their children have started school. It is then, years down the line, that they get a visit from the enforcement officers. I do not know what it would feel like to be a six-year-old child and be taken out of school—often the only school they have ever known—and have to move to a country to which they have never been, but something tells me that it would not feel great. I accept that every case is different, and that people who have been convicted of crimes in the past should not be allowed to stay, but I question why we are so intent on causing such upheaval to families.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Lady brings us back to the existing system being completely bizarre. For example, when immigration judges determine a case, they are not allowed to examine an applicant’s previous convictions because of a problem between the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office. Does she agree that to improve the system immigration judges must be able to see an applicant’s previous convictions when determining whether they can stay in this country?

[Heidi Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman clearly has a degree of expertise in the matter, and his suggestion sounds sensible.

I was talking about the upheaval caused to families who have been in this country a long time who face removal or deportation proceedings, not all of them as a result of doing something that the vast majority of the population would think drastically wrong. We need a sensitive approach, and if we are to have fair immigration controls we need to deal humanely with the people who are in the country at the moment.

Enforcement is a case of needing to be firm to be fair—not aggressive, not rough, but firm, competent and timely. I do not underestimate the difficulty of getting the balance right, but I cannot help but worry that cuts in the number of UK Border Agency staff will make the problem even worse. Perhaps fewer staff will just mean fewer legacy cases being processed and more people hanging around the system waiting to get on with their lives. I do not know the answer to this question, but perhaps the Minister will enlighten us about why, at a time when his Government are talking tough on immigration, he is cutting the very staff who are needed to do the job.

My second main frustration about the cases that I see in my surgery relates to the poor quality of immigration advice that many of my constituents receive. Although many private and voluntary sector providers deliver an excellent service, there are also many so-called advisers who simply exploit vulnerable people who do not know which way to turn.