Immigration Bill

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Is the Minister able to clarify the numbers involved and how the Secretary of State and, indeed, her predecessors have used those powers? The Joint Committee on Human Rights has repeatedly asked for those data, but has been unable to access them. I have asked similar questions and have also been unable to get the data, so could the Minister tell us how many people have had the power used against them?

[James Brokenshire]

It might be helpful if I explain that since the law was changed in 2006, 27 people have been deprived of their citizenship through different conducive powers. Twenty-six people have been deprived on the grounds of fraud, false representation or concealment of a material fact, and one further person has been notified of the intention to deprive on those grounds. Perhaps that gives my hon. Friend an idea of the context in which the power is used. It is used extremely sparingly: it is not undertaken lightly and the Secretary of State considers its use extraordinarily carefully.

I recognise that the proposals that were suggested when the Immigration Bill was last before this House have, rightly, provoked a great deal of debate and discussion. It is important that the House understands the significance of the measures and that the other place has had an opportunity to consider them after our debate on Report. There has been much debate, both here and in the House of Lords, about the impact of leaving a person stateless, and there are concerns about those who cannot acquire another nationality.

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[James Brokenshire]

I can see that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) wants to make a second intervention, and I will then give way to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland).

[Sarah Teather]

I want to follow up the Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). The Minister said that the issue was about having a route in law to secure another citizenship, but he rather glossed over the practical barriers that many people face in obtaining another citizenship. Will he put on the record more information that might help those of us with concerns about amendment (a), as drafted, particularly about what constitutes an objection to the Home Secretary proceeding in relation to practical impediments to such people gaining another citizenship, rather than the provision necessarily being used as a route in law?

[James Brokenshire]

As I have said, the primary consideration is for the Home Secretary to research various materials and determine whether the individual could reacquire their former nationality, because that is what we are largely talking about in the circumstances of considering such laws. I am sure that she would also have to consider practical issues and the other surrounding circumstances. It is difficult to be specific, as individual facts and cases will no doubt be relevant to the provision. She will, therefore, wish to consider those other practical or logistical arrangements as part of her determination about whether there are reasonable grounds for the individual to secure citizenship from another state.

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[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has made his point. I am sure that he will make it again in the debate. He is right to underline the careful way in which we have framed the amendments.

[Sarah Teather]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[James Brokenshire]

I will take one further round of interventions, then I will make some progress.

[Sarah Teather]

Will the Minister comment on the time frame in which he thinks it is reasonable to expect somebody to obtain another citizenship? In the Government’s mind, would somebody be stateless for two years, five years or 10 years? Is there any sense of how long the process could go on for?

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[Sarah Teather]

I have tabled a series of manuscript amendments today to seek clarification from the Minister. I hope that he will have an opportunity to respond to my points at the end of the debate.

Let me deal first with amendment (a) to Lords amendment 8, which is my principal concern. The ending of routine detention of children in the immigration system is one of the areas of which I am most proud in my record in government. The Government can be extremely proud of that and it has made a significant difference to many children’s lives. Many thousands of children used to be detained in the immigration system and there is significant evidence of the harm that that causes to children’s mental health.

It was very hard work to get to the 2010 agreement, which followed a painstaking process of negotiation, but it has made a significant difference. Trying to enshrine it in legislation is an extremely positive step and it is important that what happened before can never happen again, but with these issues the devil is always in the detail. I am not yet persuaded that the amendments, which we have not had an opportunity to debate as they were tabled in the Lords, have the detail correct.

I have a number of questions, which I have not been able to get answers to in private, so I hope that the Minister might be able to answer them today. I tabled amendment (a) because I do not understand why we would reasonably need powers to detain unaccompanied children in this way. As drafted, the Government amendments afford less protection to unaccompanied children than to those who have a claim as part of a family. If they are with their family, the family returns panel process is enacted. No such protection applies to unaccompanied children.

If a family needs to be held prior to deportation for a short period of time they are held in Cedars, which has Barnardo’s and specialist social workers working with it and has a carefully designed process to ensure that the welfare of children is paramount. An unaccompanied child who needs to be held for a short period of time will be held in a holding facility, and at the moment they do not have any rules for best practice. Successive Governments have held that question in abeyance and my colleague Lord Avebury has managed to drag out of the Government a commitment finally to try to bring forward some rules. I am very pleased to see that, but the conditions are very different from those in Cedars.

The amendments, as drafted, do not quite meet the Government’s guidelines. I acknowledge that there is currently no time limit for the detention of unaccompanied minors, so the 24-hour limit in the Government’s amendments is at least a step forward, but chapter 31 of the immigration and nationality directorate instructions states that

“detention will occur only on the day of the planned removal to enable the child to be properly and safely escorted to their flight and/or to their destination.”

Although the amendments imply that people could be held overnight, the rules do not suggest that, so I would appreciate the Minister’s response on that point. I see that he is dealing with a matter of whipping, so I do not know whether he heard me. Perhaps he can be refuelled from the Box to ensure that that point is answered.

Chapter 45 of the enforcement instructions and guidance states:

“Unaccompanied children (i.e. persons under the age of 18) must only ever be detained in very exceptional circumstances, for the shortest possible time and with appropriate care”.

The new clause inserted by Lords amendment 8 also contains the power for unaccompanied children to be removed without removal directions already being in place so long as the decision whether or not to give such directions is likely to be positive from the Home Office’s point of view. That does not seem to me to be very satisfactory.

The serious question is: why do we need to detain unaccompanied children at all? I have asked officials about particular cases in which this might apply, and they gave me the example of a Japanese student who wanted to come to the UK to study but found that the institution they were going to study at had suddenly been dissolved. We would need to put them on a plane rapidly, so we would have to hold them for a short period of time. The Minister gave the example of someone who might have to be detained for their own safety to prevent them from being trafficked. That makes me sigh, because it is a typical Home Office response. The Home Office always assumes that the natural reaction to any problem is enforcement, but our duty in this case is protection rather than enforcement. We tend to mistake those two things and it is a psychological trait of the Home Office always to assume that the answer is enforcement and that is precisely why it cannot always be trusted to come up with policy in this area.

[James Brokenshire]

indicated dissent.

[Sarah Teather]

I am sorry that the Minister is upset, but it means that he has heard me.

If an unaccompanied, vulnerable child turns up at a police station, the police do not put them in a cell, but get in touch with social services. Why can we not do the same for unaccompanied children who come here as migrants or to apply for asylum? Why do we need to detain them? Surely our duty is to protect them. There is plenty of legislation that allows us to do that, and I have not heard an example of detention being required as opposed to protection with appropriate powers of social services.

What really bothers me is whether this is a preamble to a more significant change in policy on the forced removal of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children. Currently, the United Kingdom does not routinely remove unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children, but it is probably the worst kept secret that the Home Office wants to be able forcibly to remove more unaccompanied children, particularly to Albania and Afghanistan. My concern is that the Government’s amendment leaves wide open the possibility of a drastic expansion of forced removal of children. Instead of moving towards the ending of detention of children for immigration purposes, the clause could allow more unaccompanied children to be detained for the purposes of removal. I am desperately hoping that the Minister will tell me that my fears are ill founded, and I will be delighted if he does so. I hope that he can answer my other specific points about why we cannot simply involve social services and protect children in the small number of such cases instead of detaining them using enforcement powers.

My amendments to Government amendments 6 and 7 also relate to child detention and essentially ask for clarification and strengthening of our 2010 commitment not to split families to achieve compliance with the immigration process. The Minister will be aware that Barnardo’s, which works closely with the Government at Cedars, has produced a report stating that family splits are, unfortunately, sometimes used to effect enforcement of immigration provisions. We agreed in 2010 that we would not do that, and my amendments seek to strengthen that commitment and to make it clearer. In particular, there are sometimes cases when a parent lives away from the family temporarily. The obvious case is when they are in immigration detention, but similar cases are when someone has been sectioned, is in hospital or is in prison. I am worried that the legislation as drafted does not capture such cases or consider the best interests of children, and is not in the spirit of the agreement that we negotiated in 2010.

Finally, I tabled an amendment to Lords amendment 19 to clarify that the best interests of the child should continue to be a primary consideration in all cases involving children. The Joint Committee on Human Rights criticised the Government, saying that they have

“not explained how in practice the provisions in the Bill are to be read alongside the section 55 duty. Without such explanation there is a danger that front-line immigration officials administering the legal regime will be unclear about the relationship between the children duty in section 55 and the new tests introduced by the Bill which use different and unfamiliar language.”

Lords amendment 19 goes some way to meeting that concern, and I explored some of the issues in amendments tabled on Report. It confirms that it is necessary to take into account the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK, but I am worried that it does not go far enough because the section 55 duty applies only to the Home Secretary and not to the courts. My amendment makes it clear that consideration of children’s welfare should always be the primary concern. That is necessary because there is growing evidence that recent immigration rules are negatively impacting on decision makers’ understanding of what factors should be taken into account when considering the best interests of children. For example, research last year by Greater Manchester’s immigration aid unit into unaccompanied, asylum seeking children found that, in seven of 10 cases analysed, the Home Office failed to carry out any determination of the child’s best interests. Similarly, last year’s audit of Home Office procedures by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees highlighted the lack of any systematic collection or recording of information necessary to determine a child’s best interests. That includes the lack of a process to obtain the view of the child. This proposal simply tries to make sure that the Government do the things they say are their priority. At the moment, the Bill still leaves some confusion.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I want briefly to seek clarification in relation to international students and the changes that have been made to the Bill in relation to landlord checks. I pay tribute to Lord Hannay and others who have pressed this point in the House of Lords. I regret that students are included in the Bill at all, and I know that many Members on both sides of the House feel that they have no place in this debate.

The point relates to the changes that have given powers to universities to nominate students to occupy accommodation. That is a welcome move, and I am glad that the Government have accepted it. Speaking for the Government, Lord Taylor said in the other place that

“nominating is just the naming of an individual as being a student at a higher education institution…It is a form of vouching for the genuineness of the student’s immigration status. That is all.”

Baroness Warwick asked whether it would be

“legal and proper for the landlord to enter into that arrangement even though at that point, because of the time involved and so on, the potential tenant has not actually got their visa?”

This is crucial, because there is a brief period between being accepted into an institution and being enrolled during which many students sort out their accommodation. In response to Baroness Warwick, Lord Taylor said:

“Yes, absolutely: that is the case.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1056-1057.]

That involves a potential contradiction.

Will the Minister confirm in his closing remarks, or in intervening on me now, that an institution can nominate a person who has accepted a university place and has been given a confirmation of acceptance to study, but is awaiting a visa, so that they can confirm their accommodation before they have been issued with their visa?