Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. While I was listening to Yohannes’ story on Wednesday, I was certain that I would not have had the motivation at age 19, or probably at any age, to cross the Sahara over four weeks, on two different forms of transport, and then to cross the Mediterranean in uncertain circumstances. That was his first time on a boat. I can recall my first time on a boat, and it was certainly not a pleasant experience.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Will my honourable cousin give way?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Nepotism looms large in this place.

[Robert Neill]

There is compelling evidence that diasporas enrich all parts of countries, and indeed Chambers. Probably every Member of this House has had the good fortune to go to a higher education institution, including some very distinguished ones, and every one of those, in every part of the UK, has at some point or other been enriched by academics who arrived in this country as refugees, whether fleeing the Nazis, communism or other regimes. We should remember the contribution that they have made, from which all of us have benefited, directly or indirectly.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

My honourable cousin makes a fantastic point. We have to see this in multi-dimensions, because seeing somebody as just a refugee in the here and now, so not as an academic or a welder, will lead us down a narrow and sterile path.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Warburton]

That is a very good point. I appreciate the hon. Lady’s intervention. Cost is not really a material matter in this. It is really about what factors will influence behaviour, and so what the result of a policy change will be.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, a great deal of which I agree with. I recognise that the Government have done a great deal in many areas. One of the policy changes in the Bill is really quite modest: it is to make it easier for those who have fled in fear, as he said, to get around the very difficult and onerous requirements to provide documentation in order to access legal aid or exceptional case provisions. As I am sure he will know from his interest in the field, the British Red Cross found that some 74% of all family reunion cases were missing one or more documents. He will also know that someone who is genuinely fleeing in fear frequently does not have time to go through a checklist of documents they might need later. Is not that one of the reasons why this Bill, in a very modest way, improves things in the direction that he has argued for in the past?

[David Warburton]

There is a lot to be said for what my hon. Friend says. As he knows, exceptional compassionate circumstances do exist, and the Home Office guidance allows for those things. He is absolutely right that there are issues about this, such as timing. There are the practicalities and the logistics of the situation, which can very often mean that it is not as easy as it may seem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I am delighted to be a sponsor of the Bill and to support it. I congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) on introducing it. I pay tribute to the work of the British Red Cross and others who have done a great deal to assist in this matter.

I was a member of the Conservative party when Ted Heath, rightly, admitted Asian refugees from Uganda. I am proud of that. In my community, we have a happy and prosperous community of former Ugandan Asians who are now proudly British. That is the spirit of my party that I hope Members from across the House will remember. That is the spirit in which my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) spoke earlier. I regret it if other contributions have perhaps not come up to that spirit.

I simply say this: the Bill is consistent with Government policy—my hon. Friend explained that very well—which has sought to address real issues. I do not criticise anything the Government have done on the work to support refugees in the region and to try to make it possible for them to make new lives nearer to home, rather than to embark on dangerous journeys. All of that is good and right—the money we have invested through the Department for International Development and other programmes—and the Bill does not seek to criticise or undermine it in any way. The Bill deals with a specific area of the law in relation to family reunion, a concept that is accepted in our law and, indeed, is accepted in Government policy.

The issue is that in practice some areas of the law do not work well or fail. The Bill does no more than try to improve the law in that regard and to make it work in a fairer fashion for, as has been observed, a very small number of people. The real issues about pull factors and so on, be they right or wrong, are addressed through other Government policy initiatives that are nothing to do with the Bill. This is a small and modest but very useful measure. We would do well to keep that in context.

The position of legal aid in family reunion cases is being considered by the Lord Chancellor. I am glad about that—the Justice Committee has pressed long and hard for there to be a review of LASPO—but that does not mean they should not also seek to entrench the rules through the Bill. It is very clear from the evidence we heard that there was a misapprehension that cases of this kind are simple and straightforward. The evidence from practitioners in the field—from the British Red Cross, pro bono lawyers and others—clearly demonstrated that in the vast majority of cases it is in fact quite complicated. We only have to think about it: genuine refugees flee in fear. As I said in an earlier intervention, they are not likely to have had the time or inclination to have gone through a tick-box exercise on what documentation they might need at some point further down the line in the future under regulations of which they, by the very nature of things when they leave, have no knowledge. They then have to go through a process which is, for perfectly good reasons, complex and full of legalese. They have to do so in what is almost invariably going to be a foreign language and under circumstances of great stress and pressure.

I note that from the research of the British Red Cross and the lawyers involved, in something like 74% of family reunion cases at least one original document required under the current rules is missing. That is hardly surprising given the way people have fled and have ended up here—lawfully and properly accepted, I emphasise again—as refugees under legal conventions. They then have to go through the rigmarole of producing witness statements and affidavits to explain why those documents are missing, get in touch with embassies or consulates—powers that, by the nature of things, are hardly likely to be friendly to them—or try to seek alternatives. The idea that they can do that without legal assistance is wrong. Practitioners and tribunal judges tell us that much time, sadly, is wasted, both for our court system and for people in difficult circumstances, and that early legal advice could not only achieve a more just outcome but will probably save money for the system, if that is a consideration. I simply say that this is not an either/or.

At the moment the issue around exceptional cases is guidance. In practice, the bar on exceptional cases is extremely high—I think “rare” is the word that is used—and may go further than is appropriate, particularly without legal advice to help refugees through the minefield of getting over that high bar. The Bill seeks to put that same principle, that there is an exceptional case regime, into statute. There is an advantage. By the nature of it, guidance changes, there is a lesser degree of certainty and it would confer different rights. The rights are not great.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I agree with most of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. There is another problem: people are led to believe that the process takes 13 weeks, but we know it takes months. That often causes unnecessary hardship, delay and anxiety.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. Any delay in any kind of tribunal case causes pressure and hardship, and makes for less effective justice. The longer things drag on, the harder it is to ensure that evidence is good and genuine. It is particularly harsh in cases such as these.

For all those reasons, I hope hon. Members will support the Bill. If they do not feel they can support it, or feel that changes are needed, I hope they will not prevent its Second Reading but let it go to Committee to see if changes and improvements can be made. I suspect the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, the promoter of the Bill, and those of us who support it are willing to do that. As someone who believes passionately in being a one nation Conservative, and who joined the party of Harold McMillan, Disraeli, Churchill and indeed Margaret Thatcher, who did a great deal to support the communities who came from east Africa when she succeeded Ted Heath as leader of my party, I hope nobody will seek to stand in the way of the Bill making progress today.