Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister and apologise for my semantics.

We do not know what the “genuine obstacle” that must be preventing people from leaving the country means, because it has yet to be defined in regulations. We are potentially talking about denying support to extremely vulnerable families, so the House should be able to discuss and vote on that in primary legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham made that point well in our evidence sessions. That definition will effectively define the scope of support given to people, and it could leave families homeless and destitute. We should be debating that definition now. It is not something to be nodded through the House at the whim of the Secretary of State.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady was as struck as I was by the evidence sessions. There was only one organisation—I cannot for the life of me remember which it was—that actually prepared people who had gone to see it for a potential answer of no to their application. Everybody else just seemed to be keeping people’s hope alive and burning brightly. Does she agree that if more organisations prepared people for a no, people would be able to plan ahead and think about that, rather than wake up one morning and find, “Gosh, that’s a bit of a surprise”?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I think we have different recollections of the evidence sessions. I do not recall just one organisation doing that.

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[James Brokenshire]

The issues that we are dealing with are specific matters of fact, and it remains open to the individual concerned to draw their circumstances to the Home Office’s attention. I take the hon. and learned Gentleman back to how we intend to operate these arrangements. We are not doing this by correspondence; it is being worked through as part of an overall process towards the removal of that individual. The judgment has effectively been taken, and contact is therefore being maintained with the individual, so it is more of the joined-up approach on which I have already responded. That is why, in our judgment, it is a question of looking at the simple elements and at what will be the barriers to removal.

[Simon Hoare]

I do not want to add an unnecessarily acid tone to the debate—[Interruption.] I do not necessarily want to do it, but that does not mean that I will stop myself. I hear what Opposition Members are saying about fairness, but was it fair to those who were making applications and appeals, and so on, who discovered post-2010 that the Home Office had shoved all their paperwork down the lift chutes of abandoned offices? The Home Office had let the whole damned business get so out of control and had become so overwhelmed that it decided that putting the paperwork into the “too hard to deal with” tray was the best option.

[James Brokenshire]

I know this message might not be appreciated by some members of the Committee, some of whom were not here when we experienced some of those practices after coming into government in 2010. I heard, and continue to hear, some extraordinary stories about some of the practices that existed before some of the arrangements that we have now put in place, which is why it is right to focus on some of the administration issues. That is why I referenced the chief inspector’s report. Yes, there is still work to do, and we have been clear on the change and reform that we seek to make to the effective operation of the immigration system. The situation that we picked up was pretty bad. My hon. Friend makes the point clearly and firmly on why some—

[Simon Hoare]

My right hon. Friend is being terribly kind and generous in saying that the situation was not very good. I thought that “not fit for purpose” was the description by the noble Lord Reid when he was Home Secretary of the situation that he discovered.

[The Chair]

I call the Minister to come back to the amendment before us.

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The Government remain committed to ensuring that young people leaving local authority care, whose immigration appeal rights are exhausted, do not face an abrupt withdrawal of all support, and the mechanism is constructed accordingly. If there are practical problems that need to be addressed, we are obviously content to find further ways to do that, but in our judgment the blanket approach that the amendment would apparently create would cut across important policy objectives and could, sadly, add to risk.

[Simon Hoare]

I too will oppose the amendment. I think that the hon. Lady has put her finger on the problem of why immigration has become such a huge issue in our constituencies, especially when juxtaposed with what we hear in the House and in Committee about councils’ central funding being reduced, and an overall cap on Government expenditure. I think that most ordinary folk in our constituencies, irrespective of their political affiliation, conclude on the basis of common sense that once a fair system has been tried, tested and exhausted, there must be a point at which the state, centrally or locally, withdraws.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The hon. Gentleman speaks about when rights have been exhausted, but the example I gave was not of someone who had exhausted his rights; it was someone who did not have the legal support to make a proper appeal, which is why he lost. When he managed to get the help of a charity it was found that he was entitled to support here. We are not talking only about people who have exhausted all appeal rights but about people who have had poor decisions or poor representation, or no representation.

[Simon Hoare]

I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I have to say I find it slightly surprising, given the quantum of those bodies that came to give evidence during our witness sessions. Most of those organisations—indeed, the lion’s share—were clearly focused, on either a regional or national basis, on providing advice, help and support to people who were seeking to make an application. I am not doubting the veracity of what she says, but I would be rather surprised if the problem she mentioned was large scale. Clearly, even the individual to whom she referred was ultimately able to find professional advice and support, and the response that they were looking for.

The nub of the issue is this: the British taxpayer—the council tax payer and income tax payer—cannot be expected to keep signing blank cheques to continue to support people to reside in this country when all of the systems have been tried and tested and their right to remain has not been proved or accepted. Just a few months ago, I am sure all of us heard on the doorsteps—

[Gavin Newlands]

indicated dissent.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. There must be some very eccentric voters in his constituency. Every constituency will have had people—on the doorstep, in the market square or wherever—who will have said that this is a problem about which political correctness has become just a little too wayward.

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[The Chair]

Order. I call Simon Hoare to speak to the amendment.

[Simon Hoare]

I am trying to explain why, like the Minister, I oppose the amendment, Mr Owen. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood is absolutely right. During our evidence sessions we were all concerned to try to ensure that the measures in the Bill helped community cohesion. When one section of the community feels that it is losing the local services, to which it has contributed through its taxes, in order to support the funding requirements of people who should not be here, people start to get annoyed and we start to see some of the rather ugly scenes we saw in Burnley and other areas where that little bit of racial tension became a little too hot and too heavy.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hoare]

I think you are keen for me to finish, Mr Owen, so if the hon. Lady does not mind, I will not give way.

[The Chair]

Order. I am keen for you to address the amendment directly and not have a general discussion on immigration.

[Simon Hoare]

I am bringing in my generic thinking on the issue to explain why we should oppose the amendment. The amendment flies in the face of the common-sense approach that the British people want to see and that underpins the Bill.

In conclusion, the Minister made the apposite point that unless a clear message goes out to say that we are not a “soft touch”—I use that in inverted commas, because I appreciate that it could be inflammatory—or an easy target just because someone is a minor, far too many vulnerable youngsters will, I fear, be trafficked across the channel and elsewhere to come into the UK. This is all about signals and messages. That is why I oppose the amendment—argued for in a heartfelt manner, but fundamentally wrong—backed by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East.

[Keir Starmer]

I will be brief. We are talking about children coming out of care. It has been proposed that a message needs to go out to other countries—to be picked up by and to influence those coming to this country—that we treat those coming out of care unfairly. That proposition beggars belief. I will press the amendment.

Question put, That the amendment be made.