Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Simon Hoare and Sarah Champion

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[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?