Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) on securing this important debate.

I will focus on one constituent, because the individual cases really highlight the damage the Government are doing. I have a woman constituent—she prefers to remain anonymous—who came here from Zimbabwe in 2007 after winning a British Council scholarship to Birkbeck College in London. She has been a model citizen ever since. She works very hard—she has never had fewer than two jobs at a time—and she brings up her three children without any recourse to public funds. She has held management jobs, and she is the director of a company she set up in 2010. She has been a governor and a volunteer at a school in her community. She has run three marathons for charity, she volunteers at Crisis at Christmas and she helped to set up an arthritis charity.

In 2010, this woman suffered the horrific experience of being raped. Her attacker was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison. In the aftermath of that trauma, she made a mistake on her tax return. She put that down to the many pressures in her life at that time. Considering that she was dealing with a serious sexual assault, holding down multiple jobs, volunteering and bringing up three children, she had an awful lot on her plate. She realised the mistake herself, reported it to HMRC, put her affairs in order and paid off the underpayment. HMRC accepted that it was a mistake and did not impose a fine. A few months later, she applied to the Home Office for indefinite leave to remain but, after a 19-month wait, she was rejected on the grounds of a tax discrepancy that had already been resolved to the satisfaction of HMRC.

This woman has now used up all her life savings on legal advice, has lost the right to work, can no longer afford to pay her mortgage or her bills, and is forced to live on handouts. She faces immediate deportation unless she can raise enough money to carry out further legal action. The Government have ruined this woman’s life.

Clearly, this woman and the thousands like her are assets to this country. They must not be used as pawns in the Government’s attempts to cover up the failures of their immigration policy by targeting people whose presence in this country is wholly legitimate and wholly beneficial. I hope the Minister agrees to suspend the use of paragraph 322(5) for purposes it was never intended for, sets up a hardship fund to help people this policy has damaged, and offers compensation to people who have lost their jobs, homes, savings and livelihoods because of it—and I hope she says sorry to the people she has damaged.