Simon Hoare
Main Page: Simon Hoare (Conservative - North Dorset)Department Debates - View all Simon Hoare's debates with the Home Office
Immigration Bill (Third sitting)
Simon Hoare Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Chair
May I just make it clear—I am sure that we have not strayed on this—that we should not be talking about any active appeals? I do not think that we were; I think they were historic appeals. We just need to bear that in mind.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Q 200 On that point, Mr Yeo, I may have misheard you, and if I have, my apologies. The case that you just cited involved a gentleman whom I think you described as a foreign criminal. He had been through the prison system here and he had been deported. Is it, therefore, your assertion that Government should potentially put at risk people on our high streets in all our constituencies, towns and cities for such a person, or that they should allow them to conduct their appeal at least in their country of origin? If it is the former, that would strike me as a rather irresponsible stance for any Government of any colour to take—but I may have misheard you.
Colin Yeo: On my assessment, the gentleman had a reasonable case under the immigration rules that had been set by the Home Office.
Simon Hoare
Q 201 Sorry, I was not asking about the validity of his case; I was merely drawing attention to his status. Okay, his slate was wiped clean, but he had been a criminal, he had been found guilty and he had been jailed. Correct?
Colin Yeo: He had been, yes, but I cannot conduct that balancing exercise for myself about his danger to the public and so on; he never had an opportunity to put his case to an independent judge to prove that either way.
Simon Hoare
Q 202 With respect, Sir, he did, through an appeal post-deportation. Whether he availed himself of that opportunity would have been entirely up to him. Correct?
Colin Yeo: In theory, yes, but in practice I think it would have been rather hard for him to pursue an appeal from a country that he didn’t know, basically.
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)
Q 218 Am I right in thinking, though, that the Government are reviewing the whole issue of detention in parallel with this Bill?
Jerome Phelps: Yes, we understand that there is an internal review taking place, and the Stephen Shaw review into welfare and detention is reporting around now. In that context, we welcome the decision to announce the closure of Dover immigration removal centre as suggesting a very positive intention to use detention more smartly. I hope that that reflects the overall direction of travel and that the Bill does nothing to get in the way of that.
Simon Hoare
Q 219 I am not quite sure that that last bit was welcome news to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, but we will wait to see.
May I ask each of you to take up your fantasy job? Close your eyes and pretend you are the Home Secretary. It might be your nightmare job—I do not know—but let us suppose it is your fantasy job. We have heard a lot about something to do with principle, something to do with process and something to do with practicality. Imagine you had a clean sheet of paper. Would it be easier for the Government, effectively, to declare an amnesty for everybody who is here now and to start from scratch? Or could they go still further and have no controls at all—effectively, Schengen, but wider—with people just coming to the country as and when, and no longer coming when the jobs run out? That would seem a lot easier.
Don Flynn: The Migrants Rights Network come at this from the point of view that immigration is part of the world in the 21st century. However it is managed and governed by national authorities—we certainly concede that it needs to be managed and governed by them—it has to be conceded that migrants should have rights and are not simply subject to an authority that can push them from pillar to post, taking executive decisions about providing them with reasonable options about how they advance their life chances, without giving them an opportunity to state their own case. We think it is quite possible to lay down a set of principles to govern that. We know what rights migrants need in order to prosper, to feel a degree of security and to tackle the complex issues of integration and providing for the needs of their families. These have been set out in United Nations and International Labour Organisation conventions. A good starting point for us in terms of addressing immigration policy is to see how we can transpose those into national law and make them effective. That is the discussion we would like to see with Governments: how do we design an immigration system which acknowledges the inevitability, and even the necessity, of migration, and how do we do deals with migrants that are fair and allow them to prosper?
The Chair
For the purpose of Mr Hoare’s question, let us turn to Home Secretary Berry.
Adrian Berry: I represent a membership organisation, in which there is a spread of views on where immigration controls should be. I am not ducking the question when I say—
Simon Hoare
Q 220 What is your personal view?
Adrian Berry: My personal view is that of the organisation: there needs to be a fair, just and equitable system of immigration control, and there are a number of ways of achieving that. It is important not to create a situation where there is not a proper opportunity for people to migrate. Migration is part of the ordinary warp and weft of human society. Whether it is internal migration in a state, or migration across an international border, it is just as much part of the manifestation and optimisation of human fulfilment as leading a settled life. We need to have an appreciation of the fact that, in the current times and the current climate, migration is an ordinary part of life, and we need to design and operate policies which reflect that, taking into account the need for democratic control by states and, equally, the position of individuals. It is interesting that migration is often thought of as being about migrants, but, in the context of family reunion and children’s rights, as Mr Gill has identified, it is about British citizens who are settled in the UK and who may have formed relationships with people who are migrating to the UK. The question of what a good policy should be needs to take into account the fact that it profoundly affects the settled population as well as the cohort of people migrating. That is lost from our political discourse in far too many situations. We need to reinstitute and centralise the idea of it as ordinary and normal rather than abnormal.
Colin Yeo: That is quite a major amendment being proposed to the Bill that the Committee is considering. I am a lawyer, not a politician. I cannot say that I have particularly well-formed views about those issues, but what I do see, as a lawyer dealing with the migrants and their families who are affected by the laws passed by Parliament, is that those laws have human consequences. We meet broken families: children who have lost their parents, parents who have lost their children, spouses who have been separated. They are people whose lives have been ruined or significantly impaired by bad Home Office decisions, and by rules that are excessively complicated and that separate people rather than bringing them together.
Jerome Phelps: It would certainly be a nightmare scenario from my point of view; I do not envy the Minister his job for a moment. I think that I, as Immigration Minister, would face the inevitable dilemma of weighing the very strong public support for effective immigration control against the need to respect the rights of migrants, and to get some element of trust in the system among migrants. That is often a very difficult balance to strike.
On detention, actually, those two needs are often mutually supportive. I think that there are benefits to both migrants and to effective immigration control in having safeguards on the use of detention—having a time limit on detention conveys to migrants that it is a reasonable and proportionate power—and in developing alternatives to detention that resolve cases without the expense of detention wherever possible, so that it can be used genuinely as a last resort in exceptional circumstances where voluntary return and far cheaper and more humane alternatives are not possible.
Manjit Gill: The questions whether there should be a no-borders policy or an amnesty are, I think, better directed to social scientists. I do not really feel qualified to comment on those.
Simon Hoare
Q 221 That has to be the first time that a Queen’s Counsel has not felt qualified to comment on something.
Manjit Gill: I am not qualified to comment on many things, and I often say so candidly. As far as the practicalities and policies are concerned, all that I would ask, if I were occupying that unenviable position, is to ensure, in common with what has just been said, that policies that promote cohesion and human rights are developed. All immigration policy must consider, at the end of the day, how to respect the people who will actually be affected by it. How will their human rights be respected, and how will we build a more cohesive society? It is easy to say that, but actually doing it is much harder. I am not sure that I can say anything more concrete than that.
Simon Hoare
Q 222 Just to come back to Mr Gill, prior to my election in my present constituency, I fought Cardiff South and Penarth, which is my home city. Cardiff has always been a calm city, with lots of nationalities and no racial tension at all, but it was very evident in the 2010 campaign, when I stood there, that a number of the elders of very stable communities—Somali, Sikh, Hindu and so on—were saying, “The Government have to get a handle on this.” This is on your cohesion point. There was growing anxiety among people who had been here for a very long time, who had been accepted and who had an absolute right to be here. They were starting to feel uneasy that, because the problem had got slightly out of control, everybody was being put in the same bracket. Those struck me as interesting comments, coming from a community from which one might not have expected them. It certainly was not leading in any way to a more cohesive and calm society.
Manjit Gill: The questions of cohesion and support for communities are complex, as you imply. I recognise that, and I recognise that controls will probably need to be imposed. Those are questions for others. All I am saying is that in the imposition of those controls, you have to respect the individuals who are going to be affected and the human rights of those individuals, and do it in accordance with certain principles of law and policies that you have signed up to. That is all, and you can still build a cohesive society.
The Chair
Six Members are trying to get in, so just bear that in mind—we have 35 minutes to go.
Kelly Tolhurst
Q 234 Can I make a comment? Thank you for that. I would say one thing. Every day, people in this country break the law, intentionally or unintentionally, and cause death, and it wrecks their lives—British citizens, who have a legal right to be here. I was not really comfortable with the way you tried to make a death caused by road accident a lower-level activity, because—
Manjit Gill: I’m sorry, that is not what I was saying. Death by dangerous driving is serious. I am not seeking to diminish the offence; please do not misunderstand me. What I am seeking to point to is the fact that sometimes these offences occur, for which someone is rightly sentenced, but that does not mean necessarily that they are to be thrown out of the country. People know that that is the position but they tend to be forced into a certain decision making.
The Chair
Thank you, Mr Hoare. Gosh, I am surrounded by a lot of lawyers, which is not good for an accountant. There are two Members who have been patiently waiting. With the permission of the Committee, I will call them and see what time we have over for the rest. Mims Davies.