Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre (Detainee Death)

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman has highlighted some significant issues. There have been some shocking and disturbing cases in the past few years and he has referred to them. He will know that there are ongoing police investigations and criminal proceedings in those cases, which makes it difficult for me to comment on any specifics. I underline to him that the Home Office has conducted a review of the methods of restraint and the use of force in the difficult circumstances of removal. The development of new bespoke training packages for escorts during the removal process has been undertaken by the National Offender Management Service. An independent advisory panel for non-compliance management, chaired by Stephen Shaw, a former prisons and probation ombudsman, was appointed to assess the restraint techniques and the safety of the proposed systems. That panel’s work is literally due to conclude in the next day or so and I look forward to its recommendations, because it is important that staff are fully cognisant and trained. Certainly, I underline the key message of holding responsibility for managing those in detention.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

During my various visits to detention centres, I have been alarmed by the number of times I have heard from detainees that they have difficulty accessing health care, usually in direct contradiction to the reports being put out by management. The situation is particularly alarming given the number of detainees with serious health problems. The Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has referred to a report by Women for Refugee Women that highlights the number with particular health difficulties, and we know that those in detention often find that things get worse. What is the Minister doing to get underneath the skin of the data that management put out about access to health, and what is he doing to ensure that those with serious mental health and physical problems are not in detention at all?

Immigration Bill

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

If citizenship was granted purely because someone used fraud or deception, did not disclose a material fact or used incorrect facts, and if we would not have granted citizenship had we known the full facts, the decision would be to deprive that individual of citizenship. I will not comment on the type of case that the hon. Lady has set out, but the initial question would be whether citizenship would have been granted if the full circumstances had been known at the time of the application. If the full facts had been known, would the decision have been not to grant citizenship? If so, the decision would be to remove citizenship.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Yesterday the House heard many noble speeches about our international obligations and humanitarian protection led by the Home Secretary. I was the first to congratulate her on that. Today, as the clause is drafted, she appears to be asking for a blank cheque to remove people’s rights to have rights. I wonder whether she can see the irony in that and whether our international leadership does not also cover such an important fundamental right?

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[Mrs May]

I am making a few comments about the new clause. I would like to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton speak about it and hear whether he intends to press it to a vote.

I think that where children are involved the new clause weakens the Bill, and as I have said, there are concerns about how the measure would operate and its practical implications. I think it would lead to circumstances in which—potentially for a significant period of time—we would not be able to deport people who otherwise we would be able to deport.

[Sarah Teather]

Given the strong line the Home Secretary has taken on trafficking, how does she feel about the exclusion of article 4 of the European convention on human rights from the new clause?

[Mrs May]

I have indeed taken a strong line on trafficking, but the exclusion of certain other articles of the convention in the new clause is one of the aspects that makes it incompatible with that convention and raises the issue of how it would operate. I have already indicated that I think the new clause is incompatible with the European convention, and I am raising some of the other practical issues that I think would be its impact. I think we will find it harder to deport people because of some aspects of the new clause, and that more cases will go to the European Court as that would become the first decision maker in a number of cases. There would be considerable litigation in the domestic courts if we found ourselves seeking to remove someone contrary to a rule 39 indication. Those are practical issues about whether we can deport individuals.

I recognise the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, and others, about our ability to deport foreign criminals, and in relation to the European convention on human rights. I have said on many occasions that it is necessary for the Government to determine and sort out our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights, and as far as I am concerned, nothing should be off the table in doing that. Today we are considering a Bill that will deal with the deportation of foreign criminals.

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In the light of the Government’s own assessments, we think that the cost of people going to judicial review, rather than tribunal, might be about £10 million year, and that Her Majesty’s Treasury will lose about £4.2 million a year because tribunal costs will not be met. There are cost implications, never mind the issue of basic fairness, which is that the sort of people currently having their appeals upheld at tribunal will not have that opportunity in the future.

[Sarah Teather]

Has the shadow Minister noticed an anomaly that concerns me and on which I hope the Home Secretary can give some clarification? It appears that if someone applies for variation in leave, that leave is protected if their administrative review is pending, but not if they appeal.

[Mr Hanson]

That is another issue. Our amendment 1 would remove clause 11 from the Bill and allow the Government to reflect on the concerns raised by the hon. Lady—she speaks from the Government Benches, but I appreciate that she has an independent frame of mind—and on those expressed outside, in evidence to the Committee, and by my right hon. and hon. Friends about the impact of abolishing tribunals on the sort of people currently having their appeals upheld. Individuals are having their appeals upheld at tribunal, but under clause 11 such appeals will not be possible. Our proposal is either, in amendment 1, to remove clause 11 or, if the Home Secretary cannot accept amendment 1, in new clause 13, to provide for an assessment beforehand so that we can consider this matter in detail.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be pleased to hear that I am coming to my final point, although I have only spoken for half an hour—considerably less time than the Home Secretary took. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton has a range of support for his new clause 15, and in due course I will want to hear again what he has to say about it. Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I want to see foreign criminals deported. That is right and proper. I was pleased, as well as doing counter-terrorism, to serve under my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in the Ministry of Justice. He went to Vietnam to negotiate a deal to deport terrorists and prisoners there, and I went to Nigeria to do the same. We also negotiated a deal with the EU for it to accept foreign criminals, which the Government are now implementing and from which they are reaping the benefits. We have an interest in ensuring that foreign nationals living in this country who commit crimes and go to prison serve a sentence and then are ultimately returned to their home state.

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[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend has made a perfectly reasonable point, but the new clause is tailored to serious criminals, which is all the more reason for it to be considered reasonable and proportionate. Of course, if the Government wish to insert a provision covering persistent petty offenders—which would be far more likely to attract challenges under article 8, because in the case of less serious offences deportation is more likely to be deemed disproportionate—they will be able to do so. However—it is odd to be attacked for not being tough enough—I think that the main focus should be on those who are jailed for a year or more. That is the model in the UK Borders Act 2007.

[Sarah Teather]

May I take up a point that I made to the Home Secretary earlier? As the hon. Gentleman knows, people are often trafficked, but the fact that they have been trafficked is not recognised immediately. Such people may have committed crimes while being trafficked, and may have served sentences of more than a year. It seems that, as a consequence of the restrictive nature of the new clause, we would be willing to send those people back to enslavement following the removal of article 4.

[Mr Raab]

That is an important point, but I think that I can give the hon. Lady some reassurance. If I understood her correctly, she was suggesting that because article 4 would be removed as an excuse for trumping deportation, we could send people home to be subject to slavery or something akin to it. That would automatically be caught by article 3, which covers “inhumane or degrading treatment”. There has never, to my knowledge, been a case in either the Strasbourg or the United Kingdom courts in which deportation has been trumped on the basis of article 4. It would already be covered under article 3, which is very well-trodden ground. I therefore think that her entirely legitimate concern has been catered for, but if she wishes to intervene again, I will give way to her.

[Sarah Teather]

What about other matters relating to the convention, such as the right to practise one’s religion and the right to a private life in relation to one’s sexuality? Is there not a possibility that people would be sent back to a country where they would be persecuted?

[Mr Raab]

From the sound of it, I have reassured the hon. Lady on the first point, which is good news. On the second point, a deportation order has never been trumped on those other grounds. The only grounds on which that has happened are article 2 on the right to life, article 3 on the right not to be tortured and article 8, which now makes up the lion’s share. I therefore do not think that that problem would arise. She talked about persecution. Let us be clear that any persecution that threatens life or limb is already caught by the exceptions under articles 2 and 3. I have deliberately preserved those because the hon. Members from across the House who support the new clause and I support the absolute prohibition on torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. If she is really concerned about this focused issue, those exceptions will deal with all those cases.

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[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for keeping the House updated on that important development.

The key point is that it is clear from the text of the European convention—I have referred to paragraph 2 of article 8—that, under the terms expressly set down by the architects of the convention, the new clause is proportionate. It is proportionate because it applies only to serious criminals who have been imprisoned for a year or more. It therefore ought to withstand any appeal to Strasbourg.

I remind the House that we are not entirely sure how any litigation in Strasbourg on this issue would pan out, whether on the basis of the Bill or the new clause. That is partly because the 47-member-state Council of Europe, to which the Strasbourg Court is accountable, has made two recent declarations in Izmir and Brighton calling on Strasbourg in unequivocal language to meddle less in immigration cases. We therefore have every reason to believe that we will have a greater margin of appreciation in future. I pay tribute to the Minister without Portfolio, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), for the efforts that he made when he was Justice Secretary to achieve those resolutions, which have paved the way for the new clause.

[Sarah Teather]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Raab]

I will not give way again, because I have been reasonably generous to the hon. Lady and I want to give other Members an opportunity to speak.

If we are honest, we know that any serious reform in this area risks being frowned on by the Strasbourg Court at some point in the future. The goalposts keep on shifting. That is how we got to this point in the first place. However, the same objection applies to the Bill. As the president of the Supreme Court and the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, have stated many times, the last word on the balance between human rights and public policy must remain with the UK courts and, ultimately, with elected and accountable law makers in Parliament.

There has been a lot of heady talk about human rights reform. Today, we have an opportunity to do something about it.

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[Mr Straw]

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is confusing section 3 with section 2. Section 3 says that the courts must read legislation

“in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights.”

That is the black letter text of the convention articles. Section 2 says that a court or tribunal that is determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right “must take into account” the judgments and jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court. It is in respect of section 2 and the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court that our courts have extended the words “take account” to mean “follow”. That has been the basis of some of our problems, including the over-extension and elaboration—unnecessary in my judgment—of article 8 rights.

I am aware that there are others who wish to speak, so I will finish there.

[Sarah Teather]

I have a number of amendments in this string. I wish to speak to amendments 56 and 57, which relate to immigration detention. Amendments 2 to 5 and 58 are around the best interests of children. Amendment 61 is a sunset clause, which relates to legal aid. Amendment 60 relates to the use of force. I want to make a couple of remarks relating to Opposition amendment 1 and to speak against new clause 15 and Government new clause 18. I can hear Members groaning that I will be speaking for absolutely ages. They will be amazed because I can be remarkably quick.

Amendments 56 and 57 seek to impose some kind of challenge and limit on detention. The UK detains more people under immigration powers than almost any other country in Europe. Only Greece detains more, but it tends to detain people only for very short periods of time as they come to the border. In fact, we are unique in detaining people indefinitely. That experience of indefinite detention causes profound stress to the individuals concerned, many of whom suffer from mental health difficulties as a result of the journey that they made to get here, and many exhibit profound mental health difficulties during their period in detention.

Furthermore, in many cases, we have no chance of removing the people whom we have in detention to a third country. Often, people are left languishing in detention for extended periods because we are unable to move them to the country of their origin either because it is not safe to do so or because we cannot obtain travel papers. We have been repeatedly criticised for the number of people we detain and for the length of the period for which we detain them. Indeed, the detained fast track system seems to be largely used for administrative purposes. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Chamber has suddenly got very noisy. The hon. Lady is making important points, and other Members should do her and the House the courtesy of listening. If conversations have to take place, there are plenty of places outwith the Chamber in which those conversations can occur.

[Sarah Teather]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The detained fast-track scheme seems to be a process largely of detaining people for administrative ease, often for extended periods, despite its name. It is as if we file people until we want to move them somewhere else and they end up being treated like blocks of paper rather than individual human beings.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that much of the detention is essentially punitive and without benefit of due process? We should always remember that these people have committed no crime.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. Of course, it is not effective in doing what we claim to be trying to deliver. The people detained over a long period of time are those whom we are least likely to be able to remove. Detention Action monitored long-term detainees and found that only a third were ultimately removed or deported. The longer somebody is in detention, the less likely they are to be removed. Extreme stress is caused to the individual, extreme expense is caused to the UK and no benefit is gained for the wider common good.

Amendment 56 seeks to limit the time of detention to 28 days, forcing the Home Office to do what most other countries in Europe have managed to do and find some other way of enforcing removal without putting people into detention. Indeed, 82% of returned asylum seekers in Sweden left voluntarily. When I was a children’s Minister I had a great deal of discussion with the Home Office about ending child detention and we eventually managed to reach an agreement. I was pleased to hear the Home Secretary say in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that we would put some of those provisions on the face of the Bill. I shall await the detail with interest and hope that everything we agreed in 2010 will be included and that it will not just be an agreement in headline.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

There is of course a question mark over whether some detainees are minors. They often arrive in this country without the appropriate documentation and it can be difficult to know whether they are past the age of majority. Those youngsters, who subsequently prove to be minors, are still kept in detention.

[Sarah Teather]

There is a particular difficulty with the speed at which we determine the age of young people at the moment and it varies significantly from one borough to another. I encourage the Home Office to work closely with local authorities to try to speed that process up.

My point is that we have managed to do such a thing for families with children and a great deal of learning has happened in the Home Office that we could extend to adults held in detention. We are managing to remove people whom we want to remove without putting them into detention, and a great deal of good and innovative thinking has been happening. It would be fantastic if good practice in one area of the Home Office was to extend to other areas of the Department. A 28-day limit would sharpen the mind of the Home Office and encourage it to get on and do that.

Amendment 57 would ensure that people had an opportunity to challenge their detention by ensuring that it came up regularly for review. The review would first happen shortly after they went into detention and then at intervals thereafter. The UNHCR has repeatedly asked us to look at that and I strongly urge the Home Secretary to consider it.

Unfortunately, in direct competition with my proposals to try to encourage better due process for people in detention, the Government are proposing to remove people’s rights to apply for bail. That is a very retrograde step. I know that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has tabled amendments on this matter, and if he decides to press them to a vote I will certainly support them.

I have also tabled a raft of amendments on the best interests of children. The drafting of clause 14 appears to imply that certain children are somehow invisible, which goes completely contrary to the work I did in government as a children’s Minister. It was with significant frustration that I read the wording used in the Bill, which, from my perspective, undermines the work we did to end child detention and put in place in the Home Office a practice of considering the best interests of children. More to the point, it runs contrary to existing law. At worst it is unlawful, at best it is deeply and profoundly confusing.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Lady is not talking about new clause 14 at this stage, because it comes in the next but one group of amendments. She may refer to it, but she must stick to this group of amendments.

[Sarah Teather]

I am trying to explain why I have tabled my amendments to the clause, as amendments 2 to 5 relate directly to clause 14, as do my other amendments. I cannot explain them without referring to clause 14 to clarify, I am afraid.

A lot of people might be under a misapprehension, as regards the redrafting of what is in the public interest, that the measure will only apply to a very small group of foreign national prisoners. My point is that it will apply to anybody who attempts to make an article 8 appeal.

Let me make a point about new clause 15 that follows on directly from those points. It seeks to move things in the opposite direction from the proposals I have been trying to make. I find it slightly astonishing that any hon. Member would put their name to something that states that it is okay to cause serious harm to children, to cause manifest harm to children and to cause overwhelming harm to children, and that it is only not okay to cause manifest and overwhelming harm to children. Indeed, it has to be the child of the particular individual concerned and it is otherwise fine to cause manifest and overwhelming harm to any child. I am absolutely astonished that hon. Members think that that is okay.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

As a Member who put her name to the clause that the hon. Lady is disputing, may I say that if she looks at the intent behind it, she will see that Members such as me and others across the House wish to see the greater good of the population trump the good of the individual? She is losing sight of other people who may be harmed, who might be other people’s children.

[Sarah Teather]

I think I probably do not share her utilitarian view of what the greater good is. I probably have a slightly different view about the common good and do not think that that includes causing serious or manifest or overwhelming harm to children. That is why the UK is a signatory to the UNCRC, and why we believe that the best interests of children should always take prime consideration and that the law should be blind in that regard, irrespective of someone’s immigration status. It would be a sad day if the House legislated to say that it is okay to cause serious harm to children and indeed that it is okay to do that in order to pacify a Conservative party rebellion. That is not a good reason for legislating.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady is placing the blame on the wrong person. If someone is deported for committing a serious crime, it is the fault of that person, not of the state for following the consequence of what that person has chosen to do.

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[Sarah Teather]

But is it the fault of their child? That is the point. The law allows us to weigh these tests up and it does not always say that if someone has a child there is not a case for deporting them, but it allows us to look at individual cases. The law must look at individual cases and not set hard and fast lines.

[Ms Abbott]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it has long been a principle of British law that we cannot hold children responsible for the wrongdoing of their parents? I do not know how many Members would want to live in a society where some children have more value than others.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. The law must have the flexibility to look at individual cases. If we draw bright lines in the sand, it becomes difficult for judges to take into account individual circumstances.

Automatic deportation goes slightly wider than the issue of children. Further to the discussion on new clause 15, I want to raise a constituent case. A young man came here as an extremely young child and was given refugee status. His parents then had some difficulties and he was taken into care. His mother had mental health difficulties. The local authority negligently placed him into the foster care of a couple who were drug dealers and continued to engage in significant criminal activity during the course of which the young child was profoundly damaged, as one might well expect. The local authority was found criminally negligent in this case.

By the time the child turned 18 he was convicted of a serious crime. He went to prison. He would have been in prison for long enough to quality for automatic deportation, but he had been in the UK since he was a very young child. He had been given refugee status. There was no family for him to go back to. By all decent recognition of what had happened to him, the state had been negligent in how it treated him. I cannot see any way in which that young man would have protection under new clause 15 as it is drafted.

I come back to the point about what is in the public interest. I do not want to live in a society where judges cannot look at the detail of cases such as that of my constituent. We have had some debate about whether new clause 15 is in accordance with the European convention on human rights. I have had advice from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association that the Home Secretary was unlikely to be able to sign up to saying that the provision was compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, which would make it difficult for it to go into the House of Lords. There was a mischievous moment when I wondered whether, despite my abhorrence for the new clause, I should support it in order to destroy the Bill completely, given that I do not seem to be able find enough people to vote against the Bill to wreck it, which is what I would really truly like to do, as there is little in it that I like.

We have not had much opportunity to discuss amendment 60. It relates to limits on the use of force by immigration officers and tries to bring it back to the status quo. This seems to be another example of giving a blank cheque, and to an organisation that has hardly covered itself in glory where use of force is concerned. We have had issues with use of force against pregnant women—something on which Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons was extremely critical of the Home Office. We have had the death of Jimmy Mubenga. Those are just two recent examples. It seems to me that a failing organisation that is poorly managed should never be given increased power to use force, especially as many of the functions of immigration officers do not properly involve the use of force at all.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I commend the hon. Lady for tabling amendment 60. Jimmy Mubenga died in horrific circumstances. Is she aware that in many cases the forced removal is undertaken by contractors on behalf of the Home Office and those contractors are not necessarily trained in what they do? Appalling injuries take place and a large number of deportations are stopped because the airlines refuse to take people in an unsafe situation.

[Sarah Teather]

That is exactly the point. The Bill effectively gives all immigration officers retrospective freedom against any Act that has previously come into force, any power that immigration officers have and any future power that they have to use force to do what they want to do. Given the problems that we have already seen in making sure that contractors and immigration officers follow best practice, know what they are doing and are properly trained, how on earth the Home Office will be able to devise a training programme to cover every possible power that immigration officers have is beyond me.

I dare say that in most things that immigration officers can do, the reasonable force that is appropriate will be zero. Will the Home Office issue guidance for every possible power that an immigration officer has? I go back to the point I made earlier. The Bill goes against the agreement that we made in relation to treatment of children and families that we would end child detention. The agreement was much wider, I hasten to add, than families being kept in Yarl’s Wood. It was about working with children and families and the extent to which force would be used throughout the process. The power in schedule 1 is very worrying, and there has been no press scrutiny of it.

Labour amendment 1 would remove the provisions in the Bill that limit the right of appeal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Before the hon. Lady comes on to her next point, the House appreciates that she has many important points to make and that this is a large group of amendments and new clauses. Her speech is perfectly in order, but now that she has spoken for more than 20 minutes, she might consider drawing her remarks to a conclusion. She might not be aware that I have had notice that at least 14 other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate, and time is limited.

[Sarah Teather]

I do not have many other points to make.

I want to make a point about amendment 1 that has not been made. There has been a great deal of guff about the Bill being focused on restricting the rights of appeal of people who do play by the rules. It is important to stress that the restrictions on appeal in the Bill are exactly for those who do play by the rules. They are for people who come here to work and for family purposes. When taken together with the changes that make it more difficult to get a spousal visa, it is hard not to see this as an attack on family life. An administrative review is simply not equivalent to an appeal. An organisation such as the Home Office cannot be expected to challenge itself. I would be grateful if the Home Secretary addressed the point that I made in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) about the anomaly with respect to administrative review and appeal when applying for variation in leave.

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[Mrs May]

We have given a great deal of thought to the way in which our measures will operate. The changes that we propose will strengthen our ability to deal with those who are here illegally. We are, for example, strengthening our ability to enforce penalties for those who employ illegal workers. The system enabling employers to determine whether the workers whom they employ are here legally or not is in place, is well known and is running properly, and the same will apply in the other areas that we are discussing.

The Bill will also help to discharge the Government’s commitment to introduce exit checks on people leaving the UK in order to tackle overstaying and prevent people from fleeing British justice.

Let me now go into a little more detail, although not too much, because I know that others wish to speak. The Bill substantially reforms the removals system, and ensures that illegal migrants who have no right to be in the UK can be returned to their own countries more quickly. We inherited a complex system involving multiple stages before an individual can be removed, allowing numerous challenges to be issued during the process. The Bill will ensure that we adopt a system whereby only one decision is made. Individuals will be informed of that decision, and if the decision is that they can no longer stay in the UK, immigration enforcement officials will be allowed to remove them if they do not leave of their own accord. The Bill also reforms the system whereby illegal migrants held in detention centres are allowed to apply for bail, and it gives immigration officers stronger powers so that they can establish the identity of illegal immigrants by checking fingerprints and searching for passports.

The current appeals system is also very complex. There are 17 different immigration decisions that attract rights of appeal, but the Bill will cut that number to four, which I think will prevent abuse of the appeal process. It will also ensure that appeals address only fundamental rights. It will make it easier to deport foreign criminals by requiring individuals to appeal from abroad after deportation, unless they face the prospect of serious harm.

[Sarah Teather]

I do not intend to make a speech, because I know that others wish to speak, but an issue that has not been mentioned at all today is health. The organisation Doctors of the World, whose clinic I visited last week, is very worried about the Bill’s impact on those who do not have residence status. Such people are often extremely vulnerable, and many have been trafficked.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady has raised a number of concerns about aspects of the Bill, and has indicated her objection to it overall. A number of the changes that we are making relate to migrants’ access to services, but I think that the issues to which she has just referred are within the purview of the Department of Health, and are therefore not relevant to the Bill.

We are strengthening our ability to deal with cases in which it has not been possible to deport foreign criminals because they have had recourse to an argument relating to article 8. That is a qualified right under the European convention, and we are now putting it into primary legislation. We expect the courts to respond appropriately.

We will require migrants who will be here temporarily to pay a surcharge so that they contribute to the NHS. I think that most hard-working people would agree that that is appropriate. We have improved our ability to deal with sham marriages.

The deprivation of citizenship is an important new power. As I indicated to the shadow Minister for Immigration, we are happy to discuss with him the full impact of that power. The Minister for Immigration will have those discussions with him. What we are doing meets our international obligations and will strengthen our ability to deal with those who wish to act in a way that is seriously prejudicial to the UK.

The Government are getting to grips with immigration. Net migration is down by nearly a third since its peak in 2010. Net migration from outside the EU is down to 140,000 and is at its lowest level since 1998. The reduction is being driven by cuts in the number of people coming to this country. In 2013, there were nearly 100,000 fewer people immigrating to the UK than in 2010.

We are making good progress with our reforms. We are transforming the immigration and border system. We have abolished the UK Border Agency, established two new operational commands, tightened immigration routes where abuse was rife, strengthened the system of granting students permission to enter or stay in the UK, reformed the family visa system, and set an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants who are admitted to the UK. All those reforms are working well and are doing much to tackle the chaotic and dysfunctional system that we inherited from the previous Government, but we need to go further.

The Bill will build on our achievements. It will ensure that immigration serves our economic interests and that our system commands the respect of the British public, who need and deserve an immigration system that is fair, reasonable and measured. I commend the Bill to the House.

UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

As I said during the statement, I am absolutely delighted that Britain is to take refugees for resettlement. I have a particular interest because I visited projects serving Syrian refugees in Jordan last November. They included projects inside Zaatari camp provided courtesy of the UNHCR by Doctors of the World, UNICEF and Save the Children, and outside the camp by the Jesuit Refugee Service.

It seems to me that there are three reasons why it was right of Britain to agree to take some of the most vulnerable refugees for resettlement. The first two have been spoken about quite a bit, but the third has not. The first—humanitarian reasons—is obvious. I will offer a few remarks on that from my experience in Jordan.

The second reason is solidarity. That was clear to me when looking at the pressure that taking so many refugees puts on Jordan, a country that already has difficulties, with enormous pressure on services. The generosity of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq in providing for the huge exodus of refugees from Syria is extraordinary—staggering—especially when one considers the debate here about taking just a few hundred. Like others who have spoken today, I think it would have been better had we chosen to take part in a UNHCR programme. It would have easier for us to make the arguments of solidarity, but if we are working hand in glove with the UNHCR, that is probably the most important thing.

The third reason, about which few have spoken, is that if there is no legal route—no hope—for people to get out, the risk increases that they will take extremely difficult journeys to escape. Already, the boats coming into Lampedusa are carrying significantly more Syrians, whereas previously they were dominated by people coming from Eritrea. That is very worrying indeed and shows precisely the reason why we need to provide legal routes for people who are desperate to get out.

When in Jordan, I was able spend a day in Zaatari. It was sobering to see the conditions for the people living there, which are difficult for anyone, let alone the very vulnerable groups of people we are talking about resettling. The UNHCR walked me through the route by which people get to Jordan, and it is worth rehearsing now. Since Jordan started managing its borders, the only way into the country from Syria is to traverse great swathes of wilderness and desert to reach the easternmost point of Jordan where it borders Iraq. Families have to sleep exposed to the elements—rain, snow and frost—for 10, sometimes 12, days. We saw the pictures just before Christmas; those are the sorts of traumatic conditions people are having to endure, so they are already extremely hungry and tired and often have no belongings at all.

The UNHCR gives them the basic building blocks to rebuild their life, but it is a meagre existence for one who previously lived a first-world life. It is worth our thinking about what it would be like for one of us—accustomed to gadgets and soft comforts—to go into a camp such as Zaatari or try to live in the conditions that many living outside the camp are coping with now.

Uniqlo donated 500,000 items of clothing to Zaatari camp for the winter. That is staggering generosity. It is worth highlighting when people do good things in order to encourage them to do more. However, the security conditions and particularly the toilets in the camp have been driving many out of the camp to live in host communities, and their plight is stark. They are reliant on the World Food Programme for food vouchers and have no access to rent, and they are not allowed to work in Jordan. Some work illegally, but most send their children to work. I did not meet a single family, either in the camp or in the host community in Amman where I visited people in homes, whose children were in school. That highlights the potential for a lost generation. People are living in poor, overcrowded, damp and difficult conditions.

It is worth remembering that Jordan has already taken many refugees. It took many refugees from Iraq in particular, and they still cannot work. It was also the backbone of the service that the Jesuit Refugee Service was providing, both its educational project in east Amman and the home visiting team. To end on a moment of hope, I saw there refugees serving other refugees, building a sense of community, working from their own experience and supporting others to integrate in difficult circumstances. That demonstrates what can be done if we provide people with the space to serve others.

Syrian Refugees

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We are working hand in hand with the UNHCR, but we are doing so with very particular priorities and with a degree of flexibility that we feel being part of the programme to which the hon. Lady refers would not give us.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Having visited Jordan and seen the conditions in which Syrian refugees are living, I am absolutely delighted that the Home Secretary has made this statement—I hope that it gives her heart to think that doing the humane thing for refugees is often popular and not always unpopular. I am a little disappointed that we are not signed up to the UNHCR’s scheme, but so long as we are working hand in hand with it to identify the vulnerable people, that is what is most important. I ask her to keep under review the priorities she has set as the crisis unfolds, because the people who are the most vulnerable may well change over time. If we are to have our own programme, rather than the UNHCR scheme, that might be important.

[Mrs May]

I take the hon. Lady’s point about continuing to look at the priorities we have set. As I have said, those priorities tie in with other work we are doing in the region. I think that it is important to have that degree of flexibility, which is what having our own scheme gives us. However, I reiterate the point I made in answer to the previous question: we are working alongside and hand in hand with the UNHCR.

UN Syrian Refugees Programme

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman talks about refugees who previously lived in Syria. Of course, the help we are providing is not just to the neighbouring countries; a lot of it is for people who are internally displaced in Syria. We are working very hard with our diplomatic partners to secure humanitarian access in Syria, as well as supporting neighbouring countries. I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome that too.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Before Christmas, I visited Jordan and the Zaatari refugee camp, as well as a number of organisations providing help for refugees living in host communities. I was particularly concerned about the plight of disabled children and children who have managed to travel on their own. The Minister is of course correct to say that most refugees just want to go back to Syria and do not want to come to Britain, but we are not asking for most refugees to come to Britain; we are asking only for those in exceptional need whom we could help to come to Britain. We should continue to make the arguments for Jordan and Lebanon to keep their borders open; otherwise, we really will have a catastrophe.

[Mr Harper]

As I think I said in response to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), we are working closely with UNICEF in Syria and the region on providing support services and protection for 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children and their carers, as well as for refugee children in neighbouring countries. We are providing that support, and we are able to help a significantly larger number of people than the numbers the hon. Lady talks about.

Immigration Bill

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have taken a number of interventions and will now make some progress.

I will set out the elements of the Bill in context. First, the Bill will cut abuse of the appeal process. It will streamline the labyrinthine legal process, which at present allows appeals against 17 different Home Office decisions—17 different opportunities for immigration lawyers to cash in and for immigrants who should not be here to delay their deportation or removal. By limiting the grounds for appeal to four—only those that engage fundamental rights—we will cut that abuse.

Secondly, we will extend the number of non-suspensive appeals so that, where there is no risk of serious and irreversible harm, we can deport first and hear appeals later. We will also end the abuse of article 8. There are some who seem to think that the right to family life should always take precedence over public interest in immigration control and when deporting foreign criminals. The Bill will make the view of Parliament on the issue very clear. Finally, the Bill will clamp down on those who live and work in the UK illegally and take advantage of our public services. That is not fair to the British public and to the legitimate migrants who contribute to our society and economy.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Did the Home Secretary take advice from colleagues in the Department for Education on the extent to which her definition of article 8 is compliant with our obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child?

[Mrs May]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we have had a number of discussions with colleagues in the Department for Education on the operation of the proposals in the Bill. There is an agreement across the Government that we need to do precisely what I have just set out in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott): we must ensure that we are fair to those people who come here legitimately and do everything the right way, but we must also make it easier to remove those people who do not have a right to be here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Last month, one of my constituents—I will call him Philippe—attended an asylum-screening appointment at Lunar house. He had a history of serious ill treatment in Cameroon and had in his hand a referral to Freedom from Torture from his very worried advocates, so one would have expected him to be treated with care and attention when he arrived for his screening appointment. It is worth reading the whole of his statement—it took me some time to do so—to understand what happened to him over three days in September. It gives a picture of what happens to people when they try to navigate Home Office bureaucracy. I want to tell hon. Members a little about what happened to him, because there is a danger that this debate will be about headlines and statistics, but will forget the very people we are being tough on—the very people who are the subjects of the Bill.

Reading all that my constituent said, one gets a sense of his fear and nervousness when he first arrived at Lunar house with all his documents in his hand, and then the abject rudeness with which he was treated, the dismissals, the disbelief and the downright incompetence; and the petty squabbles between contractors unwilling to go beyond the letter of their own instruction and offer basic, normal human compassion and basic, normal information to my constituent. Hon. Members need to read it all to understand his fear, confusion and bewilderment, to follow him from the first moment, when he arrived, with nervous trust, for his asylum-screening appointment, to the moment when, in vain and with frustration, he tried to make the official at Lunar house appreciate that he was there for an agreed appointment and to get her to read his referral to Freedom from Torture. In vain, he tried to make his point through the interpreter about where his belongings were, but instead he was arrested, handcuffed and taken to Harmondsworth. Reading his statement, one gets a sense of just how frightening that is for somebody previously detained in their own country and of its impact on that individual.

Finally, when Philippe arrived at Harmondsworth, rather late at night, somebody realised he should not have been there; somebody eventually checked his documentation and realised that he had originally turned up for a routine asylum-screening appointment, and he was taken back. Eventually, after petty squabbles, which he witnessed, he was dumped in a hostel without any documentation, without being told where he was and without being given an address. There followed a distressing 48 hours, during which he had a paranoid episode and ended up lost on the streets of south London. He had one contact, one human being, who went out of their way to help him. Someone from a church in Brent who had been working with him drove around the streets of south London to find him and then took him into her own home and reconnected him with his lawyer—the best and worst of humanity across three days.

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Lady paints a moving picture, and I am sure we all sympathise with her constituent, but does she agree that these mistakes happen because a large number of people are coming over, abusing the system and preventing us from helping those most in need, which is exactly what the Bill is designed to prevent?

[Sarah Teather]

No, I do not accept that. This happens because of the culture of disbelief in the Home Office, and it is that culture that needs to change, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will have any impact on the quality of decision making or on how individual officials treat constituents such as mine when they go with their asylum or visa applications. In my 10 years as an MP, I have seen countless examples of this behaviour, as all Members will have done. Those of us with the highest levels of immigration casework will have seen more, but it is a source of huge frustration for many MPs that our advice surgeries are spent mostly dealing with stuff that the Home Office should be dealing with.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is making some powerful points about the human cost of the way our immigration system works. Has she, too, experienced cases like those in Feltham and Heston of people who have been given leave to be here and to work but have struggled for months at places where they have been given jobs because they are waiting for documentation? Their lives, and those of their families, are on hold and they then fall into poverty.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. These are the sort of people I worry will fall foul of the Bill because they struggle to provide their documentation. We know that there are a lot of people who fall through the net when they are first given refugee status and end up destitute. They make up the bulk of the people whom the British Red Cross deals with in terms of food parcels because they cannot prove their entitlement to benefits. A significant number of people have the right to stay but will struggle to be able to prove it.

Personally, I have never seen an organisation more in need of checks and balances on its own use of power than the Home Office or, indeed, its predecessor, the Border Agency. Instead, the Bill gives powers that it is not equipped, nor frankly able, to meet and powers that it cannot be relied upon to exercise properly. Where it exceeds or abuses its power, or simply fails to do the job, it will be shielded from challenge in many cases and there will be no redress whatever. The implications of the Bill cannot be understood without also placing it in the wider context of legal aid changes and proposals to restrict judicial review.

The problem is that the impact on individual lives gets lost in the grandstanding of headlines. When immigration is all about reducing numbers on a spreadsheet to meet an arbitrary cap or creating arbitrary political dividing lines and traps for opponents to fall into, the subjects of the legislation—the human beings at the centre of it—are somehow invisible. I am weary of a politics that creates and defines enemies in order to demonstrate potency but, frankly, it angers me to see politics do that at the expense of those who have the least power to change their own futures. All three Front Benches, I am afraid, are at it, including my own, scrabbling over the mantle of toughness, chasing opinion polls and, in some cases, wilfully whipping up fear and loathing in the process. It is staggeringly careless with lives and with community relationships that have been built up over a long time.

I am afraid that whatever the damage that is done by the detail of the Bill when, I dare say, it is ultimately passed, some of the worst damage has been done in our debate in the lead-up to it. The language with which this was brought forward is what really causes the damage to community relations. I remind hon. Members of the debate we had earlier about the Home Office vans. That is a case in point; it had almost no effect on the ground except to whip up real tension between communities. My constituency was one of those areas that was targeted by the vans.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I can understand the passion with which the hon. Lady is speaking and she is making a very sensitive point, but does she agree that there is an element to this that involves the prevention of exploitation of vulnerable people who are brought in illegally, treated badly and fall outside the system? If their pimps and traffickers are unable to do that because we have tougher immigration laws, we will free those people from being put in that awful position. I had a young lady brought to me whose passport had been taken off her. If people can come to our country legally, it will stop those who want to be able to take advantage of them outside the system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I am certain that the commitment of the hon. Lady on the issue of human trafficking is very real. However, there is nothing in this Bill that will make that situation any better for the individuals who are caught up in it. It is worth remembering that, for a lot of vulnerable people who come here, it is very difficult to enter the country legally. Many of the legal routes have been closed down. Someone coming here and applying for asylum may have entered the country illegally and then claimed asylum. Understanding that is important, as is understanding some of the detail. I am in danger of speaking for too long and I know that other hon. Members want to speak, but we must understand that those who get caught up in this may be some of the most vulnerable people.

There is a great deal in the Bill that will have catastrophic consequences on the ground. In most cases, the problem that it seeks to fix has been poorly defined and the solutions ill thought through. All of it is incredibly rushed, a point made by a number of hon. Members. A number of my hon. Friends have also made the point about there being no pre-legislative scrutiny. It seems to me that the detail has been negotiated by an exceptionally tight group of people within the Government, and very little time is being afforded to this House to consider it. One day on Report is extraordinary. The very small period of time between the Bill being published and Second Reading means that most of the briefings from relevant organisations came in yesterday afternoon as they have just begun to grapple with the detail of this Bill. There is a significant amount of detail and the devil will be in making sure that the detail is correct.

It is worth noting some of the increases in power that the Bill gives. There is an extension of removal powers and the application to family members—including British citizens, I should add, who are not excluded from the Bill. Those matters will be in secondary legislation and we have no way of properly scrutinising the extension of powers. There is a significant extension of immigration officers’ powers to use reasonable force, despite the fact that whether the Border Agency previously used reasonable force has been a matter of constant dispute. It is completely within the culture of the Home Office, it seems, always to assume that force is the only way to manage any situation, which was precisely the culture within Government when I was negotiating the details around the ending of child detention. We sought to try to change that so we did not always go to the maximum end of force in enforcement procedures to get a family to understand that they had exhausted the appeals process. I cannot see how an organisation so psychologically addicted to the use of such powers should properly be given more powers until it has learnt how to use the powers it already has well, and certainly until it has learnt from the work that has been done elsewhere within its vast structure to try to change the culture.

Staggering, too, are the proposals on bail for immigration detainees, which would effectively allow the Home Secretary repeatedly to issue removal directions in order to prevent an application for bail. No account would need to be taken of changes in circumstance, or of the health of the detainee or their family. There was an earlier intervention about criminal bail. I want to make the point that some of the detail of that intervention was not fair because, within criminal procedures, one automatically eventually comes up for bail, whereas within immigration detention there is no automatic right to have one’s bail application considered.

We detain more people than any other European country except Greece, and Greece detains people only for very short periods. We effectively operate indefinite detention. The UNHCR has made clear its profound concerns about UK policy on detention and made it clear that bail hearings ought to be automatic. The removal of appeal rights was spoken about by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). That effectively removes appeal rights for all areas of managed migration, an area that has traditionally had very high rates of success on appeal. Given the appalling nature of decision making in this area, it seems to be particularly absurd to remove appeal rights. It is also likely to result only in more claims under judicial review or under article 8, which the Government say they want to try to reduce. It seems utterly nonsensical.

It was perhaps the redefinition of article 8 that made me shudder particularly. It completely ignores the test around the best interests of children and ignores all case law in this area. No doubt this is a deliberate attempt to overrule case law, but certainly it flies in the face of our obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. It ignores children under the age of seven—those children who have been here for fewer than seven years—and will of course apply not just to adults in terms of their right to family life with any of their children, but to unaccompanied migrants in decisions on their immigration cases. I find it very difficult to see how the courts are going to interpret this, but certainly it will have a chilling impact on the Home Office’s own decision making in this area. I am rather frustrated that the careful work we did on the ending of child detention, on the culture within the Home Office and on how we treat families seems to have been completely cut across by this very political statement in the Bill. It also cuts across the Children and Families Bill, which is still making its way through the Lords as we speak.

Perhaps the most absurd proposal in the Bill is that on landlords’ checks. I have listened to some of the discussion on that and there is some naivety about the property market in London in terms of understanding what it means to try to rent a property and the difficulty of getting in there first. If there is any doubt whatever about someone’s immigration status, there is no way they can rent in my constituency. Many people find it difficult to prove their documentation. The claim that this will all work well because a similar system involving employers has worked well flies in the face of our experience of the employers’ checking line, which often gives out inaccurate information resulting in people being unable to get or keep a job. It is extraordinary to propose a similar system that could affect someone’s right to live somewhere.

The catch-all term “illegal immigrants” is being used to describe the people who will be caught by the Bill. I remind the House that some of those people have no status because they are stuck in the black hole of the Home Office’s legacy system. Others might not quite have achieved the definition of “refugee” under the terms of the Geneva convention, yet cannot be returned to their own country because it is not safe to do so. I would count people from Syria among those affected in that way, and I saw many people in that situation during the Iraq war. Unless people are on section 4 support, they will find themselves falling foul of many of the Bill’s provisions.

The NHS levy will apply to in-country applicants, some of whom will have been working here for many years. Some of my colleagues have said that they are prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on the Bill. Personally, I am not prepared to do so. I see very little in it that is worthy of a Second Reading. In fact, it was extremely difficult to find anything in it that I could support or that I found well thought through. I shall vote against Second Reading this evening, and I encourage others who disagree with it to join me in the No Lobby, rather than just adding to the impression that we are all happy for a Bill as ill thought through as this to pass on to the statute book.

Family Migration Rules

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) for securing this debate, and I congratulate him on doing so.

I served on the all-party inquiry with the hon. Gentleman and with the hon. Member for—is it Stretford?

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Sarah Teather]

I have actually got the hon. Lady’s constituency correct.

Many of us on that inquiry were really horrified by what we found, despite my own experience as a constituency MP and having encountered the frustrations of an awful lot of my constituents as they tried to deal with the new rules. Of course, as the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall said, the new rules have been in place for a year now and there is no doubt that they are proving a significant source of frustration and tension for family life without providing any obvious and immediate benefit to the UK. When the Minister responds to the debate, I will be very interested to see if he can tell us what benefits he considers the new rules have brought to the UK, because they are not immediately obvious to me; I can see many of the harms but I cannot see many obvious benefits.

The first thing that is very apparent about the new rules is that they represent a distinct philosophical shift in approach from the old rules. The system used to be tilted in favour of family life, subject to certain basic conditions being met, such as the ability to support a spouse coming into the UK and the ability to meet a basic income threshold, which was pretty much tantamount to a basic income threshold that we would expect around income support levels. Now, the system is tilted entirely in the opposite direction, and against family life, unless someone can meet certain requirements to demonstrate that their spouse who is coming into the UK is desirable in some way and meets some extra criteria. So rather than having a system that was very much about keeping families together, the system now is about serving an overall objective on immigration policy, with family life being significantly relegated in importance. Of course, it is not only family life that is being relegated in importance, but relationships, children’s best interests, basic human compassion and a certain level of common sense.

The consequence is that we have created a system that is highly inflexible and incredibly rigid, and that fails by its own narrow criteria in terms of preventing a burden falling on the taxpayer. What do I mean by that? The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall raised many of these issues, as did a number of the Members who intervened on him. One of my own reflections from having been on the all-party group’s inquiry was, “If you’re self-employed, woe betide you. You might be earning a fortune, but it’s incredibly difficult for you to demonstrate that you meet the Government’s criteria.” Money must be in certain very specific bank accounts; it must be accessible in a very specific way. Parents’ wealth is disregarded, so someone may have a very wealthy family who are more than willing to support them but that is not taken into account.

As the hon. Gentleman said, someone may have wealth tied up in other ways; for example, it might be tied up in capital. Once again, however, that is not adequate under the new rules. It is only someone’s earned income in the UK that is taken into account, so even if someone has been earning a small fortune abroad that is not taken into account. Equally, even if someone’s spouse earns a small fortune, if they come to the UK that is not taken into account either, and nor are their projected future earnings. Even by the incredibly narrow criteria of wanting income to be the most important factor and wanting people to demonstrate a level of wealth that the Government have decided is desirable, the system at the moment fails to deliver.

That is not to mention the hidden costs, which were highlighted by hon. Members in a number of interventions—the costs that are incurred by refusing someone permission to come to the UK. The obvious ones that we heard about during our inquiry were around caring burdens, particularly if the person who is here in the UK has some health problems, or if they have very young children and they have been separated from their partner. They might be able to go back to work if their partner was here in the UK to share child care. Without the partner, however, it is much more difficult.

Then there are the obvious things that the rest of government knows about. For example, if people are separated from their partner and families are divided up, the effects on mental health and on children failing to bond with one parent or another have a wide-ranging impact on behaviour and educational attainment. Of course, none of those more subtle things is taken into account either.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

Among African and Caribbean parents, it is common for a child to be left at home with grandparents, but when the grandparents die, the child is left vulnerable. I have heard about one young girl being abused by the uncle, and the mother is in despair because the rules prevent her from getting the child into this country. Has the hon. Lady also heard about such examples?

[Sarah Teather]

I have not seen that specific situation with regard to the rules we are discussing, but I have seen such a situation elsewhere. We heard all sorts of examples in the inquiry, such as one parent being separated from children and children being left in other places. The impact in terms of the splitting up of families and the effect on children is potentially devastating and, of course, none of that is being taken into account at the moment.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Has the hon. Lady, or the inquiry that she participated in, considered the instance of UK citizens coming back to the UK, having married abroad, often in complete ignorance of what the rules now say? Such people are finding that their spouse and child are simply stranded thereafter. Someone in my constituency has done exactly that and is now faced with the prospect of trying to get a job in the UK that will pay £18,000, not being able to access any of his parents’ assistance, and his wife and child remaining outside the UK perhaps for several years, even though he has done everything right in terms of his life and work, and all other factors.

[Sarah Teather]

What the hon. Gentleman mentions is absolutely the story that we heard over and over throughout the inquiry.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

indicated assent.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Gentleman nods in recollection.

One of the most interesting aspects of this policy is that people being caught up in this change in immigration rules would never have imagined that they would come into contact with the immigration system; they are British citizens who went abroad to work as a teacher, perhaps, or to do development work, or were sent abroad by their company for business purposes, then met somebody and came back. This is the first time that they ever thought that they might come into contact with the immigration system.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

In my constituency in Leicester, a city with a tradition of welcoming people, these new rules are causing considerable concern. A British citizen came to see me last week who has been living in Syria and fled from there with her children, for obvious reasons, yet her husband cannot get out because of the rigidity of the rules. People might think that, given the circumstances and what is happening in that part of the world, there should be some flexibility in how the rules are implemented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I agree. Leicester is my home town, so I sympathise with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. The rigidity of the rules makes it particularly difficult for people. Under the previous rules—I will not say that they were perfect; as a constituency MP, from time to time I pleaded for people’s cases to be accepted and reconsidered—there was at least some flexibility to look at somebody’s case, based on compassionate grounds or common sense, whereas now there appears to be no flexibility whatever.

Why are the rules being so rigidly and inflexibly enforced? It is because income probably has nothing to do with it. It is not really about trying to prevent a burden on the taxpayer; it is actually about the Government trying to demonstrate that we are reducing the number of foreigners coming into the UK. That is driving it. If anything else were driving it, it would be implemented in a far more common-sense way, there would be much more flexibility around it, and it would not have been set at a level to keep out as many people as possible.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

rose—

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Sarah Teather]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) first.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing this important debate on the work of the group. Does my hon. Friend agree that the rules are not only keeping foreigners out but causing some good British people to leave? The response of a number of people in my constituency has been simply to leave the country. These are successful entrepreneurs, those at early stages of what will be well-paid careers, and people coming back, as my hon. Friend said. We risk losing some of our best people, who are internationally experienced, as a result of the rules.

[Sarah Teather]

The classic story that we heard in the inquiry was that people are going somewhere else in Europe to make a home, and waiting until their partner gains EU citizenship there. During that time they donate their skills, wealth and significant social contribution to another European country, and they may or may not return to the UK.

[Kate Green]

It was a pleasure to serve with the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on the Committee. Does she agree that one reason why these rules may be being applied so rigidly is a lack of confidence in the decision-making powers and abilities of Border Agency officials, and that investment in training them to make sensible decisions, rather than imposing blanket rules, would be a fairer and more sensible approach?

[Sarah Teather]

I think it would. I have to say that it would be wiser if we were not being driven entirely by an objective to keep numbers down, but that is perhaps another story.

I should like the Minister to respond to what I am now going to say about the best interests of children. When I was a Minister in the Department for Education, we committed the Government to standing by and meeting our commitment on the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and to take into account children’s best interests when decisions are made. What account is being taken of that now by the Minister’s Department, as it looks at the rules and their impact? Has any assessment been done and has any discussion been had with Department for Education officials on this point? If he is unable to answer that question today, I should be grateful if he wrote to let me know.

The impact of the rules on bringing in grandparents and elderly dependants is just as shocking as that of the spousal rules. Almost no approvals have happened since the new rules came in. It was described to me by one lawyer as a ban masquerading as a rule, which is probably a rather more effective way of describing the problem. If almost nobody can come in, that demonstrates what the Government want to do, and it might have been more honest if that had been done in the first place. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), who is no longer in his place, intervened on the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall and made a similar point. It is almost impossible to meet the rules. People must have a high income and must be clear that their family member will not have recourse to any kind of benefits, and sign something to say that that will not happen. They must also demonstrate that the family member is so sick that they must come here, and cannot possibly have their care needs met in the country where they are, even if they were to pay for it.

Almost nobody will meet those criteria. One lawyer said that he had been thinking through all the possible scenarios and the only example that he came up with where somebody might meet such criteria was if they had an elderly dependent relative in Monaco and had enough money here to meet the first part of the rules, but because care is so expensive in Monaco they would not be able to afford to pay for it there. That would probably be the only way we would allow such people to come to the UK. If we are going to have a ban, let us at least be more honest about it.

The consequences of the rules were drawn to our attention in the inquiry most notably by the British Medical Association, which said that they were among the biggest challenges in planning resourcing around consultants and senior doctors, many of whom are second-generation south Asian and want to bring a relative. For example, two people who are partners, both of whom may be highly paid consultants capable of supporting an elderly dependent relative but with no means of meeting the rules, might end up moving to Singapore. If such highly trained, highly valued people go somewhere else to work so that they are able to be with their family members, that is a significant drain on our national health service.

The current system seems to me to be inhumane and lacking in basic common sense. It cuts across a whole set of areas that the Government say are a priority: it cuts across our commitments on family policy, on early intervention and on our obligations under the UNCRC. We heard in our inquiry that the rules disproportionately affect those from poorer communities in the UK, such as Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, and that women, who struggle to earn the same wages as men, are particularly affected. The system affects not only those people but many highly paid British citizens who may never have thought that they would meet the full force of the immigration system preventing them from having a happy family life. I strongly urge the Minister to review those rules properly and to reconsider them.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). I am sure she will not mind me reminding her of this, but it is the coalition Government, of whom she was a member, who originally proposed the rules and put them through the House. I respect her late conversion to condemning the Government publicly for what they are doing, and I know she feels sincerely about that.

[Sarah Teather]

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, as I am sure the Minister would accept, I say nothing in public that I did not say in private.

[Keith Vaz]

I am sure that is the case, which is why I gave the hon. Lady a wildcard. Of course I am sure that, privately, she was very much against the rules when she was a Minister in the Government who put them through the House.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), whom I have known for more than 35 years, on securing this debate. Even before he became a Member of Parliament, he took up immigration issues in Southall for almost a quarter of a century through the Indian Workers' Association, as a councillor, as the lord mayor of Ealing and as a prospective parliamentary candidate, so it is no surprise that he should be introducing this debate and that he served on the inquiry organised by the all-party group on migration.

All those who served on the inquiry, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), the hon. Member for Brent Central, the noble Baroness Hamwee and others, have done the House a great service. I wish the Select Committee on Home Affairs had time to consider the rules, but being pressed so often by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) to take up new and exciting inquiries, we just did not have time to do so. The all-party group has produced a stunning report, which everyone needs to read with great care.

For those of us who do immigration cases every day, and I see Members here who represent constituencies in Birmingham, Manchester and Leicester, including my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and others—I cannot name every constituency—there is the line in the Lord’s prayer that says

“Give us today our daily bread.”

Immigration cases are our daily bread and butter. Every single Friday, immigration cases are 90% of the work I do in my surgery. Although the Minister, who represents the Forest of Dean, and the shadow Minister, who represents Rhondda, do not have the casework that we have, those of us who have seen the Minister perform before the Select Committee and have heard the shadow Minister’s comments know that they understand our concerns on immigration. For us, as constituency MPs, immigration is a big deal. I am glad to see the Minister here today, and I am sorry that he is on crutches. It is better to be on crutches before the debate than after.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall and the hon. Member for Brent Central have already stated the facts—why bring in an arbitrary figure? Tony McNulty was wrong to bring in the points-based system, and I told him so at the time. He thought it was a great invention. I went to see him when he was Minister for Immigration, and he said, “It is very important that people tot up the points, and then you know whether they qualify to come in under the points-based system.” I said, “Where is the discretion in all this? What about those cases that don’t reach the number of points but where there might be grounds for compassion?” The hon. Member for Brent Central talked about that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall talked about other issues. What about those issues that the entry clearance officers cannot address because the migrant does not have enough points?

Here is another example on the arbitrary figure. Yes, we know that the Migration Advisory Committee advised on the figure and, yes, we know there are lots of statistical surveys that say the sum should be £18,600, but as the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), said, the average wage in his constituency is not £18,600. The average wage is certainly not £18,600 in Leicester East and Leicester South; it is about £16,000 or even less—in fact, it is £4,000 less than the national average according to the Office for National Statistics. I have people coming into my surgery who will never get their spouse into the country—even those who are working very hard indeed. I say to them, “Why don’t you get another job?” They cannot get another job because they are exhausted from working up to 60 hours a week. I know that is not the minimum wage, and it may not be lawful, but that is what is on their little slips.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I thought I would have a go this time. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State answered very well before, but I thought I would take a different tack, because it gives me an opportunity to say, as my right hon. Friend did, that we will bring forward proposals to ensure that landlords have to check the immigration status of tenants. I have had some good discussions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. We will be bringing those steps forward, and I am confident they will be sensible, proportionate and effective.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

T6. Have Ministers checked whether the family migration rules are compliant with our obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child?

[Mr Harper]

Yes, we are confident that they are. Last week I met the chair of the all-party group on migration, the noble Baroness Hamwee, to discuss the report. The Government will consider the recommendations in that report, but my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has set out clearly the objective of the family migration rules: to ensure that those who want to make their family life in the United Kingdom are able to support their families, rather than expecting the taxpayer to do so.

Asylum Support (Children and Young People)

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

I am pleased to have secured this debate, and it is good to see a number of colleagues here, although perhaps not as many as I had hoped; maybe everyone is in Eastleigh this morning. [Interruption.] Perhaps not quite everyone.

It is good to see the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin). He served on the recent cross-party parliamentary panel on the experiences of children and young people in the asylum system, which I chaired. That inquiry, which was supported by the Children’s Society, is the instigator for this debate. The hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) had also hoped to be here, but he has a clashing appointment with the Select Committee on Education.

Before I say anything else, I would like to express my gratitude to the Children’s Society for its help and support during the inquiry. I am grateful to see the Minister here; I have had an opportunity to discuss the inquiry with him. I know he has read the report, so I look forward to his response. I also thank the 200 or so individuals and organisations that gave evidence to our inquiry, both in writing and in person. We were very lucky to receive evidence from a range of experts, including local authorities, safeguarding boards and academics, as well as from organisations working directly with young asylum seekers and their families. We also heard from the young people and their families themselves, many of whom came to give evidence in the House of Commons, which was a very moving occasion for many on the panel.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who also served on the panel, has joined us. All the panel would agree that some of the evidence we received was extremely shocking and very upsetting. We found that families are often surviving on as little as £5 a day per person. Parents told us that they often skip meals to pay for basic items and that it is particularly difficult for them to pay for any item, such as a winter coat or shoes, that requires slightly more money. They told us that they are unable to pay for their children’s school trips and uniform, a situation exacerbated by the frequent moves during dispersal and rehousing that affect many families. Birthdays, toys and other things that other families take for granted are another question entirely.

Asylum support rates have fallen way below the poverty line in recent years; they were first set at 90% of income support rates, but it was later agreed that they be set at 70% of income support rates. Successive Governments have failed to uprate those benefits under section 95 and section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, thereby allowing them to fall way beneath the basic level of support that we would consider appropriate for families—that of income support.

As the Minister is aware, no decision has been taken this financial year about uprating section 95 and section 4 support rates, so those benefits have effectively been frozen this financial year without any accountability to Parliament. We have not had an opportunity to question the Minister on why that decision has or has not been taken.

The levels of the benefits are extremely complex and are set differently for children of different ages. For children under 15 without a disability, the levels are significantly less punitive than those set for adults, slightly older children and children with disabilities. Of course, the problem is that families are living on a whole family budget, not just the child’s extra bit of support.

We found that, when the support is added together, a lone parent with a 10-year-old disabled child is living on just a third of income support levels. It is difficult to see how any family can possibly be expected to survive on such small amounts of money. Notwithstanding any deductions for accommodation, which is paid for separately, it is difficult to see how a family can manage for a prolonged period on such small benefit levels.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She has set out her stall very well and will surely continue to do so. Like me, was she struck by the great dignity of the people who gave evidence to our inquiry? They were not asking for anything, but, as she argues, they deserve to be treated properly.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The people who came to speak to us were asking to be treated as human beings, to be allowed to support themselves and to have enough to support their family. They did not whinge, and they were often extremely grateful for what this country has given to enable them to flee to safety from countries that are war-torn or in which they faced persecution.

The people were asking just to be able to survive and to bring up their children well. The stories they told were incredibly distressing. I will address some of the things they said, and I would be grateful if other members of the panel also reported on some of their experiences of listening to those families.

An estimated 10,000 children in the asylum system are supported by these benefits, and many spend substantial portions of their childhood on asylum support. It is not as if the problem affected people for a few weeks but did not have a long-term impact.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Everyone here is of the same mind. Does the hon. Lady agree that part of the problem is that, up to the age of 18, people who fall into this category experience uncertainty and fear? Does she agree that that needs to be reviewed to address the needs of vulnerable young people from when they come into this country until they reach 18, when the system basically washes its hands of them?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I suspect the hon. Gentleman’s question refers to unaccompanied asylum seekers. Am I correct?

[Jim Shannon]

Yes.

[Sarah Teather]

The inquiry specifically addressed children who are with their families and who are supported by section 95 and section 4, but there is another question about the vulnerability of unaccompanied asylum seekers and the fact that often all support ends at 18.

Many of us will remember, and those of us with children or nieces and nephews will recognise, that an 18-year-old is incredibly vulnerable if they have no family, which is why they are supposed to be treated as children leaving care. They have significant extra difficulties that need to be catered for and are not always addressed sympathetically by the Home Office’s decision making.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on obtaining this interesting debate. Will she tell us how education works for those young people?

[Sarah Teather]

Is the hon. Gentleman talking about unaccompanied asylum seekers?

[David Simpson]

Yes.

[Sarah Teather]

Education legislation is intended to be blind to a child’s immigration status—in fact, the Government are supposed to be blind to a child’s immigration status full stop. We are signed up to the UN convention on the rights of the child, and it seems to me that the UK Border Agency differentiates between children whose parents are currently in the system, or whose asylum case has failed, and children who have permanent residency.

The rules on education in the UN convention are absolutely clear: children must be provided with education regardless. However, the financial support for which they are eligible is an issue. Does it allow children to grow and flourish as the UNCRC expects? It is not adequate to provide children with barely enough to survive on; the UNCRC is clear that we must provide enough to allow them to develop to their best potential. I argue that the system is inadequate even to allow children’s bare survival. It certainly fails miserably to meet our duties under the UNCRC.

At the moment, a surprisingly large number of children live within the asylum support system. A significantly smaller number of those—probably only about 800—are supported under section 4, but the effects on that small number are disproportionate. We in Government know well what impact poverty has on a child’s life chances. All Ministers have accepted that child poverty significantly damages children’s potential for development, and that idea has cross-party support. That is why so much effort has been devoted to ensuring that we get the data right for counting child poverty, understand the indicators and focus on the causes and impacts of child poverty. I know that well from my time as a Minister at the Department for Education, where the issue was one focus of my work. However, we seem not to be able to take the issue as seriously for children whose asylum cases have not been decided.

The situation is significantly worse for those on section 4 rather than section 95 support. Section 4 support is intended to be short-term. It has been described by previous Ministers as an austere regime intended only for those whose applications have failed but who cannot currently return home. However, it is worth recognising that many children spend years on section 4 support. Although it might be intended for adults to live on for a matter of weeks, many children spend substantial portions of their lives on it—we met families whose children had spent almost all their lives on section 4 support. What makes section 4 support so difficult is not just that levels are significantly lower, but, more specifically, that it is cashless and highly restrictive about where the money can be spent.

[Nic Dakin]

One thing that struck me about the evidence provided to us was the impact of the Azure card. It reduces the effectiveness and value of the small amounts of money that the families and children get. Does the hon. Lady agree that if nothing else needs urgent consideration, the Azure card and the cashless system do, in order to improve things for those families?

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree. Parents said to us that the restrictions on where they could shop meant that things were often more expensive, particularly items such as buggies, which were completely impossible for many families to buy. They would have been much happier to go to the second-hand shop, but of course they cannot use the Azure card there; they are required to go to Mothercare or similar shops. To reflect on my sister-in-law’s experience, buying a buggy at Mothercare costs practically as much as buying a car. I hope that I am not libelling the shop by saying so; I shall probably get letters from Mothercare now. Nevertheless, I think that most people would recognise that such items are extremely expensive. For anyone trying to survive on £5 a day in a cashless system using an Azure card, it makes no financial sense whatever.

Families who want to buy food more in keeping with their own culture find themselves unable to shop in suitable shops. It is particularly difficult for some families that they are expected to walk, sometimes up to 3 miles, in order to go shopping. The idea that a lone parent with several children should walk several miles to use an Azure card to go shopping, carrying the children and luggage back from the supermarket, is completely unreasonable.

Similarly, money on the Azure card cannot be saved from one week to the next, at least in more than very small amounts, so unless all the money is spent during the week, it is effectively wasted. People said that if they are ill and unable to shop, they run out of money and are unable to refill the fridge the following week. If they need a winter coat, they have no possible means of saving up for one. During a winter such as this one, that seems completely unreasonable.

Families also spoke to us about the stigma associated with using the Azure card, which identifies them immediately as asylum seekers. Many spoke distressingly about their experiences of being abused in supermarkets when they produced the card in order to buy their shopping. Sometimes, even after the card had been topped up, it still did not work. It is unreliable, as well as bringing great stigma with it.

The section 4 system seems utterly baffling to me. It is highly expensive to administer given the relatively small number of people involved, and it is a punitive regime that seems disproportionate to the problem that the Government say they are trying to fix. It is worth rehearsing some of the consequences of trying to live under the system.

I had a case in my constituency involving somebody on section 4 support. Those on section 4 support cannot be housed with other relatives; they must be housed in special accommodation. As a consequence, he was separated from his partner and child. As is extremely common, he was not eligible for travel money. The Government have said to me that travel money is available in exceptional cases. Those cases seem to be phenomenally exceptional, because my constituency office has had great difficulty accessing the money when it is needed. That man walked miles across London every day to visit his wife and child, a situation that put intolerable pressure on the child and family. We certainly heard of the reverse situation, where the woman was separated from the father of her child. It makes no logical sense. The Government would save money by allowing people to live with their partners, other relatives or friends, as those on section 95 support may do.

Section 4 support is highly restrictive of what people can buy. One thing that struck me most particularly as a Minister considering the issue was that the regulations expressly forbid the purchase of toys. What a bizarre thing to do. I do not know who thought of it, but it is certainly not compatible with the UNCRC.

For pregnant women and new mothers, the situation can be even more intolerable. Maternity Action and the Refugee Council submitted evidence to us during the inquiry. They have subsequently produced their own report, “When maternity doesn’t matter”, which I will say more about in a moment when I turn to housing. The organisations cited a case in which a woman with no money for a buggy or transport was forced to walk home from hospital in the snow, carrying her newborn baby in her arms, shortly after giving birth. That is a ludicrous and appallingly distressing story.

When I discussed the issue with the Minister previously, he said that he did not believe that the public would tolerate our giving the same amount of support to those whose claims have been rejected as to those still awaiting a decision, but I do not think the public would tolerate the kinds of story that we heard in our inquiry. He underestimates the humanity of the British people if he thinks that that is actually what they want in the asylum support system.

There is a further question about whether such punitive treatment actually has any purpose. It does not make desperate families who fear for their lives return home; it simply leaves them in poverty, jeopardising their health and their children’s long-term development. We saw a case in which somebody left on section 4 support for a very long time was later given refugee status on reapplication. To think that all those people are somehow scamming the system and ought to go home is to miss the point entirely.

It is said that if we raise benefit levels, it will encourage more people to seek asylum here. There is simply no evidence for that. When vouchers were introduced, the number of asylum applications rose. When cash was re-introduced, it fell. There has been plenty of research, which I am happy to share, looking at why people choose a particular country. In most cases, it has much more to do with historical ties between particular countries than with any expected benefits that people might receive when they get to the country. Given the complexity of section 4 and section 95 support—it took us some considerable time to produce the spreadsheet to work out exactly what families in different circumstances would get—it beggars belief that someone in a situation of war, violence or persecution would spend a couple of days researching that on the internet before deciding which travel company to book their flight with. We need to get that into perspective. The answer must surely be to set levels in line with other benefits. Deducting accommodation costs if necessary, we should make a clear commitment to uprate benefits so that people who have fled war, persecution and violence can live —as the hon. Member for Scunthorpe said—a basic, dignified life.

I understand the political difficulties of raising benefit levels for asylum seekers, in particular when there is much debate about wider benefit levels—full stop. Surely it would be more sensible and take an awful lot of political grief away from the Minister if they were simply pegged to other benefit levels and automatically uprated each year. Ministers would then not have to go through the agony of having to work out on which full-news day to introduce a measure; they could simply get on with doing the right and humane thing.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the sensible approach that she is advocating is what used to be the case until, unfortunately, the previous Government made the change? Instead of pegging the support to a proportion of benefits, they decided to remove that linkage and left it floating, drifting, leading to the very destitution that she is describing.

[Sarah Teather]

There have been a number of different changes over time. The previous Government agreed that they would peg asylum support to 70% but almost immediately broke that agreement. The problem with this type of issue is that, because it is politically contentious, successive Ministers in different Governments have found it difficult to tackle, which is why it needs to be done in such a way that they do not have to face the headlines every time something happens. Drafting the legislation so as to allow the support to be uprated automatically would surely take the political headache away from Ministers, allowing them to do the right thing. I do not believe that Ministers from any party would wish to see children pushed into severe poverty. It is a question of ensuring that the administration is such that it can be done easily. I strongly encourage the Minister to take that step.

Logically, section 4 should be abolished, to be replaced by one cash-based system for all people regardless. The existing system costs money, it is inhumane and it serves no purpose. If it was abolished and section 95 applied to everyone, I would be extremely surprised were there any political outcry. The Government have managed to make changes to the immigration system and to abolish child detention without any hue and cry, so I am sure it is not beyond the wit of the Minister to amend section 4 so that people get a decent cash system.

[Nic Dakin]

This is a key point. Moving to a cash-based system is a costless way of improving the system and will respond to the stoicism and dignity of those people by giving their children a better deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

Indeed. The Minister could also make a virtue out of it, because the change would almost certainly save money. I made a point a moment ago about how people could be housed with their relatives if less restriction was applied than in the section 4 system, which requires people to be housed in different accommodation. The change would also save money on administration, and I strongly encourage the Minister to make it. At a time of austerity, I am sure he is looking for any method to save a little money.

Not recognising disability and special needs in families seeking asylum is also unjust. We ought to ensure that those needs are recognised in the system, because it is completely illogical to expect a family to be able to cope without such recognition. We heard from one young carer, Riyya, who was left with the most extraordinary pressure of caring for her disabled mother, and of course no financial recognition was given in the benefit system of that pressure or of the extra support that her mother needed. It caused devastation to Riyya during her childhood.

If the Government are really looking to save money, an obvious way would be to allow asylum seekers to work and to support themselves if they have been waiting in this country for some time for their case to be decided. That is what most asylum-seeking families want: they want to be able to support themselves, they do not want to be on benefit. We have spent a lot of time talking up the importance of the work ethic as a salvation for all. One of the mantras of the Government is that work is an important route for supporting oneself, for dignity and for children’s prospects. We know that, and we devote a lot of time trying to get people back into work when they have been out of work for a long time—in all cases except this group, who are often highly educated and talented people with a lot to give to this country. During the time they spend on asylum support, they are deskilled and demotivated, and their children have to survive in high levels of poverty. Again, the Minister could make a political virtue out of that change, because I am pretty sure it is what the public want as well. They want to see people contributing to this country; having given people safety, the public want to see them giving something back, and that is what asylum-seeking families want as well.

[Jim Shannon]

On that deskilling of people, many who come to this country have skills or job experience with which they could contribute to society, but sometimes they are not given the chance. Does the hon. Lady feel that more opportunity should be given to those people who come here with skills and job experience with which they could contribute to the country? At the moment it is not happening.

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree. The sooner that people are able to get back into a regular pattern of work, so that they can support their family and themselves and give themselves some dignity and a sense of contributing to the country that they have chosen to make as their home albeit under difficult circumstances, the better that is for everyone concerned. Furthermore, the quicker they can integrate, the quicker they can learn English, while from a financial perspective it will cost the country a good deal less to support them. That seems to be a logical and sensible thing to do, and I strongly urge the Minister to look at doing it.

In our inquiry, we intended to look specifically at support rates, which is what I have spent most of the time discussing. Before I finish, however, I want to say something about some of the other things that we found that were equally shocking, such as the way in which families are treated by their housing provider. The families have multiple moves, not only dispersed once but moved repeatedly, with appalling living conditions and cases of disrepair, as well as a lack of privacy and of hygiene. The multiple moves, as I said at the outset of my remarks, affect not only family budgets because of the need to buy a new school uniform every time but children’s school life, and their ability to make friends and to settle. We must remember that the children have fled their own country; they have fled war, violence and persecution, with all the trauma involved, and yet, when the family arrive here, we move them over and over again, often with little notice or little information to allow parents to prepare their child emotionally. What family would want to be moved and uprooted with little notice and without some information so that they can discuss with their child what is to happen? They get no information in advance about where the local schools are or about the area, and no support to allow them to register at a new school or with the doctor. They are basically plucked from one place and dropped into another with no support whatever to allow them to integrate. It is no wonder that mental health problems are so high among this group. It would not be an expensive problem to fix. We could provide support for families if a move is necessary, and we could try to move families with young children less often.

One mother and her four-year-old daughter told us that they moved 11 times in five years. She explained that, as a consequence of what she fled from in her own country, she spent the best part of 10 years moving house, first within her own country, then in this country, effectively fleeing from house to house, being moved by the UKBA. She said, “I’m tired.” I am not surprised she is tired, and I am not surprised that it is so difficult for her children. Moves are often made with no appreciation of the impact on children. Families and local authority representatives told us that contractors do not always turn up when they say they will, so belongings, such as a children’s cots, are packed up and no notice is given of when the contractor will eventually turn up.

The impact on pregnant women is even worse. I have referred to the deeply upsetting report, “When Maternity Doesn’t Matter”, which the Refugee Council and Maternity Action produced this week. They submitted evidence to our inquiry that the impact of dispersal on women’s lives is catastrophic if they are pregnant. The four weeks’ protected period that UKBA agreed to introduce is an advance, but still woefully inadequate. Women are moved away from their partners so they may have no one with them when they give birth and no one to look after their other children. A single mother in the study reported that she was separated from her partner so she had no one to look after her children and she considered leaving her children with a local shopkeeper before she went into labour because she had no other options for child care. Midwives told us that it makes their lives incredibly difficult because they are unable to provide continuity of care.

We would not expect any British woman to experience such conditions, but these women have specific extra difficulties and they should receive more support, not less. Many have suffered female genital mutilation and sexual violence in their own country as well as torture, which exacerbates the risk of flashbacks when giving birth. They have a much higher rate of maternal death than we expect in the general population. They make up 12% of all maternal deaths, but only 0.3% of the overall population. Those figures are staggering and worrying, and the Government must get to grips with them.

Again, it is not expensive to fix the problem. There is no reason for repeatedly moving these women, and that could be stopped. I strongly encourage the Government to examine the matter to ensure that women are treated decently and that their children have a chance to thrive. We know that what happens in the first few weeks and months after childbirth is important for their children and attachment. That is why the Government are putting health visitors in Sure Start children’s centres. We know that post-natal depression and so on have an impact on attachment, and a long-term impact on children’s ability to thrive and what happens to them in later life. Other Departments know that, so why does the Home Office not accept the evidence that is driving Government policy everywhere else? It must work with the Department of Health and the Department for Education. The situation is simply not good enough, and it could be changed.

My final point, which is perhaps the smallest and the cheapest to fix, was the most shocking for the panel. Almost every family told us that housing contractors routinely enter properties without knocking. We heard not just from one family, but from all of them independently that people just turn up and use keys to let themselves in. People may be in the shower and if they are Muslim women they may not have adequate head covering. It causes terror for children, and is an epithet for the lack of respect with which they are treated. They are treated as luggage rather than people who deserve some dignity and respect. The Government must get to grips with that with housing contractors.

I have gone through the details of the report. Some of our recommendations would save the Government money, some would cost a small amount, some would be more popular than their current policies, all would be more humane, and none would encourage more asylum seekers to come here. These changes would be win-wins for the Government if they implemented them.

Any change is risky and difficult, but the Minister is very capable and I am sure that he is on top of his brief. If anyone is politically shrewd enough to appreciate the points on offer, I am sure that he is. He does not strike me as a Minister who has come to his brief wanting to tread water, and I strongly encourage him to take note of the points that the cross-party parliamentary inquiry made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

That may be true, but part of my critique is that we have been very ill-prepared to make such decisions over the past 20 years. If a long time is taken to decide on someone’s asylum application—that happened under Labour, but also in the early 1990s—the danger is that we end up with people who have become stateless and without any real existence.

Among people coming to my surgery recently, one young gentleman—he is not young any more; he came here some 25 years ago—has never had an asylum decision and has simply being living here. He has not been living off the state. He lives with his wife, and he is the house husband. Sorry—not his wife, but his partner: he has decided to come clean because he wants to marry, and he cannot marry without regularising his position.

It is vital that we make swift decisions, and it is important that the Government do whatever they can to reach the target of all asylum decisions being made within six months. In some cases, we have to be very careful. In particular, I hope that the Minister will look at the new evidence about Sri Lanka. When we return people to Sri Lanka, where they face oppression and persecution, we need to be careful in our relations with the Sri Lankan Government, let alone with others. There can be no greater instance of the trauma involved in someone’s having to leave their country as a refugee than the case of the 92 Burmese refugees who died after being at sea for 25 days off the coast of Thailand.

I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of the British people would be scandalised, upset and shocked by many of the stories told and much of the evidence presented to the group, especially about those for whom no decision has yet been made. The warmth of feeling of the British people, however, is somewhat diminished for those on section 4 support, when it has already been decided that people should go home.

I also think, as I know from an e-mail I had from a constituent yesterday—about a story in the Daily Mail, which makes me slightly hesitant—that there is less support for those in this country who decide to take on further family responsibilities after it has been determined that their asylum claim will not be accepted. I merely note that five of the people we have talked about are women who became pregnant after their appeal had been rejected.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that his hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe said that, under section 4, people cannot buy condoms.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

Yes they can.

[Chris Bryant]

That is perhaps a point for the Minister. I want to say to some religious organisations that it is time they understood the reality of the modern world and abandoned their views about procreation.

[Sarah Teather]

That is not relevant to the point I just made.

[Chris Bryant]

I hear what the hon. Lady says. I do not know whether what she has reported is true or not, which is why I hope that the Minister can reply. He said from a sedentary position that it was not true.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to refer to the hideous conditions in which many people live. We need to do far more in this country to crack down on unscrupulous and poor landlords, who put people into housing that, frankly, is not fit for living. It has been a disgrace that successive Governments have not concentrated enough on that. Multiple removals are a waste of time, money and energy for the organisations involved, leaving aside the effect on families, and particularly on children who have to change school. I have already referred to slow decision making, and to how important it is that decisions are made swiftly so that people can organise their lives accordingly.

I want to ask the Minister what impact the bedroom tax will have—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) on securing this debate. As she said, she and I met to discuss the report put together by her group of parliamentary colleagues, and I had the chance, both before and after that meeting, to consider it carefully. It will certainly go into the Government’s review specifically on asylum support rates. I thank her for her work and for the evidence. Two of the Members who took part in that work—the hon. Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin)—are here today. In the time available, I will deal with both her points and those made by other Members who spoke or intervened.

Let me first deal with the financial support. One point made by the hon. Lady today, and one of the key points in her report, is that the amount of money given to both asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers is very low and does not meet families’ essential living needs. It is worth setting out for the House exactly what is available. The legal test is whether it meets people’s essential needs, which are food, toiletries and clothing. A family of four receiving section 95 support, which is that given to those who have an asylum application that has not yet been decided, would get £178 a week to cover those essential costs. A family on section 4 support, which is where a decision has been made and they do not have a right to remain in the country, get £151 a week. It is worth remembering that they have furnished housing with no bills to pay. I accept that it is not generous, but I do not think it is ungenerous. It is lower than the income support equivalents, but people who are in asylum support accommodation do not have to pay any utility bills, buy furniture or meet some of the other costs associated with running a household.

The hon. Lady touched on the relationship between the section 95 support and income support levels, which is worth mentioning. For children, the rates are much higher than the 70% she talked about. For children, the rates range between 81% and 89% of the income support levels. It is true that the rates are less generous for adults. If we look at how we compare with other European countries on families—and therefore on children—we are rather more generous than most of our equivalent European neighbours.

[Sarah Teather]

The Minister will perhaps recognise that the rates vary according to the children’s age and tail off significantly at 16, where it would be expected that those children would be in full-time education, especially given the Government’s own policy to encourage everybody to be in education beyond 16. I have discussed the German constitutional court case with him in private. I do not know whether he has had a chance to look at it, but I am happy to send him the details. The support rates there were deemed to be inadequate to meet a family’s basic humane needs. It is difficult to compare our asylum support rates with those of other European countries, because they partly depend on how long someone is on them. It is worth noting that one of our neighbours has had to review its asylum support rates.

[Mr Harper]

I accept that point. It is worth making the point on the German case that our rates for families are rather more generous than the German rates. The hon. Lady is right that there was a court challenge and the Germans have had to make their rates more generous. Ours are significantly more generous. The point she makes about 16 and 17-year-olds is correct, but it is still worth noting that her report and, I think, others have referred to the rates being at least 70% of the income support rate. That is still the case for young people of 16 and 17, where it is 71%. It does fall below that for adults. She will be aware—she and I have discussed this—that we are in the process of reviewing the asylum support rates to confirm that they meet essential living needs. The initial work that we have done suggests that they do, but that work is under way. When we have completed it, we will make an announcement in due course.

The hon. Lady and others, particularly the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, referred to individuals who have higher living costs, especially those with disabilities or complicated medical problems, who might need particular extra care or equipment. The correct way that they are supposed to be supported is through local authorities using their powers and duties under both the National Assistance Act 1948 and the Children Act 2004 to provide that extra support. It sounds like the hon. Gentleman has encountered some cases in his surgeries with constituents, and there were also some in the evidence given to the panel producing the report, where that does not always happen. Obviously I am happy to look at specific cases, so that we can ensure that local authorities are following up on their legal obligations.

Once people have made an asylum claim, if that claim is accepted and they are given refugee status and are permitted to stay in the UK, they have access to the full range of public services and benefits on the same basis as a British citizen. There are some issues about the transition from asylum support to those mainstream benefits, and the UK Border Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions are looking at those to see whether we can smooth that move from asylum support to mainstream benefits for those who are granted refugee status.

It is worth mentioning at this point the speed of decision making, which is important both from a human perspective and to ensure that people do not use the asylum system as a method of economic migration. I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant): both our parties have been clear when in government that there is a distinction between providing refuge for people fleeing persecution and for people who move, perfectly understandably, for economic reasons. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) alluded to that. We now make 50% of asylum decisions within 30 days and 63% are made within a year, and we continue to apply pressure to maintain that progress.

Several hon. Members talked about whether asylum seekers should be able to work. Our view is that they should not be able to, to keep that clear distinction. However, under our obligations under the relevant EU directives, if we take more than a year to make a decision, an asylum seeker is able to apply to work, and we will usually grant them the ability to do so.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman’s point would be correct if we were prohibiting people from working and not providing them with any support. While we say they cannot work, so as to maintain that important distinction, we do provide them with housing where the bills are paid and a basic level of subsistence to support them in the period before we make a decision.

In the four minutes I have remaining, I will say a little about the difference between asylum seekers and those who have failed in their claim. That is important and I have made this point to the hon. Lady. If we are to maintain the proud record that the United Kingdom has in giving people refuge from persecution, it is important that those who have gone through the appeal process through the tribunal system, where we will have looked at their cases carefully, and been found not to require that support leave the country. It is important to distinguish that those on section 4 support are those who have been found not to require our protection. They should be leaving the country. We support those cases where there is a temporary barrier to them doing so, but frankly they should not be here. I know that that is a difficult message for people sometimes, but we have looked carefully at their cases and they do not need our protection. They should return home.

[Sarah Teather]

I am aware that the Minister does not have much time, but does he recognise, particularly in the case of Zimbabwe, that people were left in a situation where the courts would not return them because it was unsafe, and for a prolonged period of time they were left on very tiny amounts of support?

[Mr Harper]

As I have said, if there are temporary barriers to their removal—I do not know the particular cases that the hon. Lady was talking about—we will support them, but if they are found not to require protection, it is right that they leave. That is why we have a different regime for those who have no right to be here from that for those seeking asylum.

We do not think that the Azure card is more expensive than administering cash payments. It can be used in major supermarkets, chemists, children’s and clothing retailers, and some charity shops, which deals with the point made by the hon. Member for Scunthorpe. The hon. Lady made a point about purchasing birth control or sanitary products with the Azure card, which she raised when we met. I have checked it, and there is no restriction on purchasing those products, although there are rightly restrictions on purchasing alcohol and tobacco. I agreed to look into those cases and have checked them, and there is no restriction on birth control or sanitary products, which is right.

I will deal with some of the points raised in the debate. On accommodation and people moving around, we have specific restrictions in our new Compass contracts on how many times people can be moved. People will normally go into initial accommodation when they first make a claim and then will be moved into their dispersal accommodation. They will be moved from that only if there is a good reason, such as if the property becomes unsuitable or if they request it. Under the contract, they are only allowed to be moved twice in an 18-month period. We should not see people being moved about frequently, because that raises a range of issues.

The hon. Lady also referenced the recent report by the Refugee Council about the dispersal of pregnant women. We changed our policies last August, which she acknowledged, and 19 of the report’s 20 case studies were prior to our policy change. That change should have dealt with some of the issues that have been raised. This has been a good debate, and I am sorry that I have not had time to deal with all the issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Teather Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

They are UK-wide figures.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

22. When she expects to announce the asylum support rates for 2013-14.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

There are no current plans to change the asylum support rates, but we do of course keep the matter under constant review.

[Sarah Teather]

The Minister’s Department has not made a decision on the asylum support rates in this financial year. He has therefore frozen the rates by default, without coming to the House to announce that decision. I understand from an announcement made in another place that a review is ongoing, but does he accept that kicking the matter into the long grass for a further year simply will not do?