Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing the debate and pursuing this issue with her usual determination and eloquence, not just today but over several weeks. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions and, like the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), thank the campaigners and witnesses who spoke to us this morning to give us an insight into what is going on.

I do not think there is a more effective way to highlight yet another rotten Home Office stink than by relaying the personal stories of the individuals affected, as hon. Members rightly have. I started jotting them down—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about doctors who had made simple mistakes with their tax returns and the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) spoke about law-abiding citizens with families who had been here for a decade—but I stopped when I got to the gobsmacking story relayed by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) about the accountant who had owned up and yet found that that was not enough to satisfy the Home Office, and about all the consequences that followed.

This all reeks of another episode of the Home Office coming up with a new wheeze to increase the number of people they can remove, and implementing it with no concern for whether decisions stand up to scrutiny in terms of the law or, indeed, basic common decency. It is clear that the Home Office did not like tier 1 general visas as they were closed to new applicants in December 2010, and those still in that process face severe repercussions—low-hanging fruit indeed.

Will the Minister, in responding, tell us whether there has been any change to Home Office guidance? Have any new policies or instructions been issued that relate to tax discrepancies and the relevance of paragraph 322(5) to that issue? If not, what is her explanation for this sudden upsurge in the number of cases we have seen in the last 12 months? Members have pointed out, and were told this morning, that there are probably now more than 1,000 cases. Will she confirm the numbers her Department has? What do the data on appeals and judicial reviews tell us? What has happened to the review we were told was due to be completed by the end of May? Going further, why has the Department been so slow, given that those such as the hon. Members for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central have been raising this matter for months? Once again, it seems that there are systemic issues in the Home Office and those at the top do not appear to know what is going on.

When did the practice of comparing declared income on Home Office applications with tax returns commence, and what safeguards were put in place to ensure that caseworkers, who are not accountants or tax lawyers, did not put two and two together and come up with five? That is exactly what seems to be happening in too many cases. We have all read about cases where minor errors were corrected without demur from HMRC and where different sums were declared purely as a result of different accounting periods or rules applying. We heard again about cases where the difference was £1.20 or £1.60.

When was it decided that paragraph 322(5), which Home Office guidance states is usually to be focused on people involved in serious crime, threats to national security, war crimes and travel bans, was remotely appropriate for the circumstances we have heard about today? As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central and the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) said, that could have serious implications for applications to travel to other countries.

No doubt the Minister will flag up, as she has before, examples of where apparently there has been genuine fraud. Obviously she cannot publish the details of those cases, and that is understood, but the problems with that being the total response from the Home Office are twofold. First, it is utterly contrary to the experience of everyone in the Chamber, as has been relayed, and it seems that yet again the Home Office is using the excuse of a few bad eggs to throw out more than 1,000 people. Secondly, it is a question of trust. I do not think that many members of the public or MPs here—especially after Windrush—will be happy with the Home Office saying, “Trust us. We’ll review things and sort it out.” If she wants us to have confidence in the process, there must be an independent review of what is going on. Will she set that up?

Finally—and most crucially of all—what steps can be taken to allow those individuals to live their lives here while they challenge what appear, in many cases, to be absolutely perverse decisions? Individuals and families are facing destitution and bankruptcy because of the outrageous changes to appeal rights made in 2014 and 2016. If the immigration system was just and respected the rule of law, they would all have an in-country right of appeal to a tribunal and their leave to remain would be automatically extended so that they could still work until the appeal process had been completed. What will the Minister do about that?

I finish by repeating what my hon. Friend said. So many of those involved are people we should be thanking, not threatening with removal. If there is one positive from today, it is that they know that MPs across the political divide are on their side and determined to put things right. I very much hope that the Minister is listening.