Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Can I ask for briefer answers and questions, please, if we are going to satisfy everybody on the list? Thank you.

Lord Green of Deddington: On the first point, you may well be right, but that is more for the Home Office than myself. On your second point, enforcement is essential, and it is not happening. You mentioned this director of enforcement. I think that is probably a good idea, but I would say this. The civil service is not a Meccano set; it is a plant and you cannot keep digging it up to see if it is working or not. I think we need to be careful about reorganising, organising and reorganising. On this occasion, I think there is a case for it.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Lord Green, although I, too, cannot remember the context in which you used the phrase, I would like to support what Mr Newlands was saying. There was a very disparaging tone with regard to “these people”. It certainly jarred with me. On such a sensitive issue as this we all need to be careful about language.

What I did not follow in the logic of your response to an earlier question about the financial support provided to people who have had their applications refused and who have exhausted the appeal process was why there should be an exemption for those with children, or a different style of treatment for those who have children. It seems to me, and I would welcome your views, that if a parent is told that they do not have the right to remain, they are by definition responsible for the welfare of their child. If the child is going to suffer disproportionately because there is a lack of central Government or local government funding, the solution remains in their hands. They have exhausted the appeal process; they have no right to remain. Surely, to safeguard the future and wellbeing of their child or children they should return to their country of origin as quickly as possible. I did not follow the logic that you were deploying as to why there should be two separate streams merely predicated on the fact that people had children.

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[Kelly Tolhurst]

Mr Smith, you mentioned earlier businesses or associations that are part of your organisation, and you said that landlords who wilfully engage in this sort of activity will fall under the radar. Do you agree that the tougher penalties in the Bill target those very people?

[Simon Hoare]

I wondered whether Mr Smith wanted to reflect on his comment that there were not many students in Dudley. That will come as a shock to Dudley College, which has worked closely with the University of Wolverhampton since 1999, offering, among other courses, a PGCE and a Certificate in Education post compulsory education, and has six campuses. That suggests to me that there are quite a lot of students in Dudley.

David Smith: In which case, I immediately withdraw any suggestion that Dudley is not a substantial student town, with my apologies.

[Simon Hoare]

So the corollary is that the baseline with the data that the evaluation mentioned is possibly a little more bona fide than you first indicated.

David Smith: It is still the case that there is a large number of student responses, and I would have liked to see data that drew on groups of people who were absolutely not students. I am prepared to accept that, yes, there may be more students in those areas than I envisaged, but that does not change my primary concern, which is that, from what I can see, having looked at the evaluation briefly, there are a lot of students in the responses. That potentially skews the data and I would like to see a study that was drawn from outside the student population, if possible.

Ms Tolhurst, I am not immediately convinced that increasing penalties in and of itself will smoke out bad landlords. Bad landlords are already subject to a raft of housing legislation with varying penalties. I do not know whether many people saw the story in The Times on Saturday, which was based on freedom of information data that my organisation obtained. They show very poor enforcement by local authorities. I do not know what level of enforcement of this legislation there will be through the Home Office. If it is actively enforced against bad landlords, then, yes, I would agree with you—if.

[The Chair]

That brings us to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions in this session. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. Again, if there is anything they feel they need to add to the answers they have given, please write to the Committee Clerks.

Examination of Witnesses

Chief Superintendent David Snelling and Stephen Gabriel gave evidence.

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[The Chair]

That was an interesting and important exchange. I am conscious that Simon has been waiting patiently, and then I will bring in Anne, Craig, Mims and Kelly.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 176 I have two questions that I hope you can deal with reasonably quickly. The first might just be a yes or no answer. Do you understand the rationale and the public demand that sit behind this Bill?

Adrian Matthews: Yes.

Kamena Dorling: If it can be yes or no, then, yes, I understand.

Ilona Pinter: indicated assent.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 177 We heard from Lord Green and I think one or two others that people who are seeking asylum or refuge in this country are usually pretty well linked in terms of communication and understand what is going on through the use of mobile telephones or established relationships with friends or relatives already in the country. So they know broadly what the new “regime” is going to be all about. If that is the case—I will be interested to know whether you dispute that—casting forward to the future again, someone would know that under the criteria they are bogus, for want of a better phrase, and would know that their application could not be successful, because they do not qualify under any criteria. So why would a caring or loving parent want to put their children through the mill of being destitute while they are trying to prove a point that they know is unprovable? I appreciate that it is a different kettle of fish for those who are here now, but as a signal for the future I wondered whether you think that parents, irrespective of where they come from, would be prepared to put their children at risk in order to make their point.

Adrian Matthews: It took me a number of years of studying law to understand the asylum process. I think the assumption that parents are well acquainted with the rules and regulations is very overstated. If you go to the camps in Calais at the moment there is absolutely no information about the British asylum system. Lawyers who have been there have found that people are really misguided and really do not have a sound understanding of what they are coming to when they intend to come to the UK.

Ilona Pinter: I agree. The idea that people know what they are coming to is not realistic. It is certainly not the experience that we have with the families that we work with. Actually, they are incredibly vulnerable and the fact that families would remain here destitute, rather than returning, is a sign of the difficulties that they would face being returned. Again, this is highlighted in the evaluation of the family return process—most of the families cited fear of return as one of the issues. It was shown that financial incentives and reduced re-entry bans were not helpful in persuading families to leave, because they had an overwhelming sense of what the risks would be for them and their children. While I appreciate the public rhetoric around this, the reality is very different for these families. They are willing to survive on so little because of the risks that they face if they return.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 178 Risks in their judgment though?

Ilona Pinter: In their judgment, of course—but in that respect they are doing what they believe is in the best interests of their children, because they believe at the end of the day that remaining in the UK will give their children the best life chances. Whether that is an accurate interpretation is debatable, but that is what they believe, and it is not about—as it is often characterised—trying to frustrate the system. What we see are very desperate families trying to do the best by their children.

Kamena Dorling: I agree entirely. It is not our experience that families and children arrive in the UK with any kind of detailed knowledge of the asylum system, nor with a detailed knowledge of the asylum support system. We certainly do not see people coming here simply for that level of support.

I wanted to add a little bit, because I think it is an important point about the rationale and the public drive behind the Bill. Presumably, in wanting to respond to that, we want changes that will bring in the change that the Bill purports to be introducing. One of the points that we have made is that taking away asylum support from families has demonstrably been shown not to incentivise them to leave the country. You make children destitute and homeless, but you do not achieve your intended aim, which is for more people to leave the UK. If we accept that—and the Home Office has conducted its own evaluations that show that—all we see, really, is punishing children for their parents feeling that it is best for them to remain in the UK. I think that that is problematic. If we have legislation, we want it ideally to achieve its purpose.

Adrian Matthews: I would echo that. I think it is an absolutely legitimate aim of the Government to remove failed asylum seekers if they have been through a fair and proper process. That is it, really; I do not have anything to add to that. It is simply about the method that you use to go about it. I sincerely believe that what is proposed in the Bill is not going to achieve the Government’s aims, and that there are better ways to do it through an established and workable family returns process that has proved that it is capable of increasing the take-up of voluntary departure, which is greatly preferable to enforced removals.