Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kelly Tolhurst]

Q 267 Do you feel, at the moment, particularly in the south-east—and perhaps if you have knowledge of the whole of the country—that the pressure we are currently seeing with unaccompanied minors is greater than the perceived pressure that may come due to some of the measures in the Bill?

Paul Greenhalgh: My sense of that is no. Kent is currently the authority with the largest number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. It currently has 800. Croydon is the—[Interruption.] Okay, I think it is 800, but David has a different view. It is somewhere between 800 and 1,200. Croydon is the next biggest authority in terms of the number of unaccompanied asylum seekers. We have 370. I think that those figures are small compared with the impact that the Bill would have with regard to removing support from families with that status.

Councillor Simmonds: It is important to be clear, though, that because the Children Act 1989 makes the local authority at the port of authority the responsible body, it falls disproportionately on a small number of places. If you are a port, or indeed, a local authority such as Leicestershire, with motorway services where lorries travelling from ports tend to deposit people, you may end up with a significant population, and their rights derive from the fact that they are unaccompanied children, so their asylum status is not strictly relevant to that. They gain those rights by virtue of the fact that they are unaccompanied, at which point the Children Act and Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 kick in.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Q 268 Is the natural corollary of quite a lot of the discussion about the pressure on local government finance to see some change in the Children Act?

Councillor Simmonds: Paul will have a professional view about that. Clearly, what is not sustainable is to say that people have a portfolio of rights, but there is no funding available to fulfil any of those obligations. So it would be possible—I think the provisions in the Bill could conceivably do it—to say that certain individuals are removed from any consideration under the Children Act. The issue that we would have, of course, is that other avenues will then generally be pursued. One of the common problems for local authorities—I speak from a lot of personal experience—is that as one avenue is closed, another one opens up, so we would need to make sure that any provisions that were envisaged of that nature were extremely comprehensive. It would be a challenge for parliamentarians collectively to say that we are going to walk through the Lobby and say, “We are determined to remove a group of children who are in the UK from being considered as children and view them simply as illegal immigrants, and therefore, not entitled to support.” I suspect that, on a cross-party basis, Parliament would have a challenge in getting that through and finding that it could be supported easily.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 269 We heard in earlier evidence that, when the final refusal comes, virtually everyone, it has been suggested, suddenly goes underground, beneath the radar. Clearly, that is not the case because a lot of people turn up at the doors of town halls across the country. What percentage of those who are refused do you reckon the Government deal with?

Councillor Simmonds: Almost all, but in various different categories. In the last year for which we have figures, about 12,500 people were removed by the Home Office and processes of immigration control. The rest will, under one category or another, by and large, be entitled to some form of support. It is quite common. There is a case that my authority is involved in: a young man applies for asylum, is refused, appeals, is refused, is taken to the removal centre and then says, “Actually, I’m a child. I’m not an adult. According to the passport I presented when I applied for asylum, I am a child.” He has now been released, via the Home Office, into the care of my local authority.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I will ask Mr Hoare to come in in a minute. I should have said at the beginning to the witnesses that we will finish at 4 pm, not 4.30 pm as you may have been told originally. We want to get through as many questions as possible.

The other thing is, when it gets to 4 pm, there will be bells ringing. It is not the fire alarm; we will have to go and vote. You will see us all rush off at that time, so please do not be offended by that.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 297 Ms Robinson, has Liberty ever welcomed an immigration Bill?

Rachel Robinson: I am afraid that I have not been there long enough to give you an accurate analysis of that. What I can tell you is that we have seen the same failed approach tried and pushed in many immigration Bills, so inevitably we raise many of the same concerns. What we see in parallel is a failure time and time again to address problems in the Department that are identified time and time again in various reports.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 298 I think we will take that as a no.

Let me ask you another question; it may come out crudely, but it is not intended to be crudely phrased. A phrase you used in your answer to Sir Keir struck me: “members of our society”. That was a phrase that you used once or twice in your opening remarks. We are talking here about those who have failed a process—a fair process. That could be debated, but let us say for argument’s sake that it is a fair process. Therefore, by definition, one can presume that the people for whom permission has been refused have not welcomed that decision, but in point of fact and without being rude about it they are not “members of our society”; they are members of the societies of other countries. Where does our duty end in those circumstances?

Rachel Robinson: Liberty would certainly argue that while people remain in this country, they should be treated with the basics of dignity and respect; they should have the human rights framework applied to them. That does not mean that enforcement action should not be taken against them—this is not an argument about not having a functioning immigration system. This is how we treat people who remain in our country. We would argue that the provisions set out in this Bill will lead to an increase in destitution, including among children, because this Bill specifically targets children and families with young children. In addition to provisions that cut asylum support for families with young children, we now see the removal of mainstream support for those individuals, and that is deeply worrying.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 299 And that assertion can be evidentially substantiated?

Rachel Robinson: I am sorry—what assertion?

[Simon Hoare]

Q 300 The assertion that you have just given us.

Rachel Robinson: That this is specifically targeted at children? Well, the provisions in the Bill would lead to the automatic removal of section 95 support for families with minor children, who are currently covered by an exception to the current scheme, so yes, it is targeted at children.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 301 Chair, may I just ask a general question? If all members of the panel wish to answer it, that is entirely up to them. I am certainly taking Ms McLaughlin’s line, which I thought slightly pinched my earlier line of questioning this morning. In the ideal world and you have a blank sheet of paper in front of you, would you prefer to see an amnesty for those who are here today illegally and effectively start from scratch, or would you just prefer to see an open borders process and let the market decide how full the country can and cannot be?

Rachel Robinson: This is entirely outside the remit of Liberty’s work. Liberty comments on human rights and human rights protections, and whether they are available to people in this country. We do not take a view on how immigration works; we do not take a view on immigration more broadly than that.

[Simon Hoare]

Okay. Maybe somebody else on the panel has an answer.

[The Chair]

Shall we just go down the panel? There are five people; four organisations. Perhaps one from each organisation.

Rebecca Hilsenrath: I certainly agree that that is not within my remit to comment on, but I would say, and I started off by saying—

[Simon Hoare]

Your personal view.

Rebecca Hilsenrath: Well, I started off by saying that we support the idea of tackling illegal working and particularly protecting those who are exploited because of their status. But to consider, for example, the question of those who have failed in their application for asylum, I do not think that the commission or I would argue for one moment that they should not leave the country. We are simply debating the period between the failure of the application and the exit.

What the Bill says is that in order to be able to claim for support when you have children and are without the right of appeal, you have to be both destitute and able to fulfil a requirement, where the burden of proof is on you, to show that there is a genuine obstacle to your leaving the country. That suggests that being genuinely destitute is not sufficient, but in fact the European convention on human rights says that being destitute ought to be sufficient. The convention on the rights of the child also requires the Government to put the rights of the child at the heart of their policy making. We are looking simply at that window of destitution between failure in the application to remain and exit from the country. We do not debate in the slightest that the failure should implemented by removal.

Steve Symonds: Perhaps I can comment on the first question that you asked. It is important that the Committee understands that it is not just people who have been failed through a process that the Bill will have an impact on. There are children born in this country without any status. There are children who come here when they are very young and remain in this country without any status, many of whom are entitled to British citizenship but do not have access to be able to get it. There are people who have leave quite legitimately and wrongly have their leave curtailed, and who, because of the previous Act, have had their appeal rights withdrawn—no administrative review remedy was set up when those rights were withdrawn. Also, as Saira mentioned, there are British citizens who may be impacted because their children or their spouses are removed from the country, or cannot be reunited with them. There are British citizens who do not have passports and are not able to satisfy a landlord that they are, indeed, entitled to be here and therefore entitled to rent.

There are many aspects of the Bill that have an impact on people who should not be going through any process, those who may be entitled to a process but have had it curtailed or wrongly ended, or those who would be at the start of any process, if it was available for them, at the very time that the Bill will start to impact them adversely, potentially with human rights consequences.

Saira Grant: Steve has given a few examples that I was going to give. That is the important point. You said at the start that these people are not members of our society, they are at the end of the process, they have failed, but as Steve has just outlined to you, there is a real misunderstanding about the people we are talking about. So many are children who have grown up here, who know no other country but who do not have regularised status, through no fault of their own. So many are family members.

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner recently did an in-depth study on the family migration rules and their impact. It discovered that many people without lawful status are the mother of a British child or the wife of a British husband. We are not talking about those in the backs of lorries, who have failed the process and therefore should now be demonised and exploited. Many measures of this Bill are targeting and creating a hostile environment that is unnecessary and will have so many repercussions on regularised black and minority ethnic community members and British citizens, and it will have an impact on our social cohesion.

[Simon Hoare]

Q 302 Can I come back very briefly? I was interested in what you were saying because you made that point in an earlier submission. You are right to be worried about the social cohesion perspective. I suppose I look at it from the other end of the telescope. Do you agree that if everybody in society, irrespective of colour or creed—I put that in inverted commas—had safe knowledge that their neighbours and the people who lived in their communities were all bona fide, were all legitimate, were all citizens, or had right to remain in this country, it would ease the growing tension in many communities? That, in fact, of itself eases what in many communities is a growing tension—a tension between the settled, legal immigrant community and the illegal immigrant community. In my judgment, that is causing quite a lot of tensions in towns and cities across the country.

Saira Grant: You raise a very interesting and valid point, but I do not think that the answer is to create more suspicion and mistrust among members of civil society. It goes back to border control at the start; it is the Home Office’s responsibility, not that of civil society to be policing each other’s immigration status. We need to go back to the beginning. If the Home Office was making correct decisions, issuing correct visas and making it easier for people to lawfully go through the process, we would see a reduction in the numbers of those who are now irregularly here.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 303 Ms Grant, have you or your organisation had time to assess the west midlands pilot on landlords? Are you able to come up with some recommendations of how the pilot could be strengthened or any weaknesses in the Bill?

Saira Grant: Sure. You will be aware—I hope that Members are aware—that our organisation did an independent study of its own as well. We have sent copies of the report around. I have had a chance to go through it, although not in as much detail I would have liked, because it only came out on Tuesday, but looking at the evidence that they provided in the evaluation, it matches and mirrors a lot of the claims we have been making.

The first point to make is that the terms of reference are very different from our evaluation, because the emphasis is not on tenants; it is about landlords and the understanding that landlords have. Discrimination that we found has been alluded to—cases through mystery shoppers of indirect or potential discrimination—but that has not been the focus, and the tenants who are part of the survey are again a very low number, mainly students, so a very different group of people.

Something that really strikes me is to do with whether the reason behind these provisions is to ensure that those who do not have status do not stay in the UK and are encouraged to leave. If enforcement is the aim, look at what the results show: the claim is that 109 people have been “caught”, if you like, as a result of the right to rent checks, but break that down and at best you are looking at 15 people who directly came through the right to rent checks inquiry line and who came to the Home Office’s attention. That in itself is a very interesting statistic, because, of the 109 people, 94 actually had status and the right to remain, but the inquiry was made because landlords could not understand the complexity of immigration status. From the 15, it is really interesting. That is direct, but then we have a breakdown of the 109: 25 people had barriers to removal, 15 were progressing family cases, nine were granted leave by the Home Office and a further four had judicial reviews.

Whichever way you look at it, all of those who have outstanding legal cases need to reside somewhere. Because of the way we have changed our immigration rules, people might not have section 3C leave, which continues their leave, but if they have outstanding legal cases and therefore a barrier to removal, what is supposed to happen to them? Are they now just supposed to be destitute?

Going through their evidence, I would say that there needs to be a longer evaluation period; it needs to be not over the winter period, when no one really moves tenancies; and it needs to look at the impact on tenants, not just landlords. How can we possibly have a roll-out announced on the same day as the publication of this evaluation?