Immigration

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Scottish National party MPs are fully behind this motion to revoke, and I support the arguments that the shadow Minister has set out. As well as thanking the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who secured yesterday’s debate, I want to thank the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for his work on this, and I pay tribute to all survivor groups and others working in this field who alerted MPs to the significance and consequences of these regulations. These might be short regulations, but they are also deeply worrying regulations that could have severe impacts on trafficking survivors, and the so-called consultation on them was a pretty abysmal exercise altogether.

As we have heard, the goal of the statutory guidance on adults at risk in immigration detention is that it will, in conjunction with other reforms, lead to a reduction in the number of vulnerable people being detained, and a reduction in the duration of detention before removal. However, these regulations will have the opposite effect, because they remove crucial protections provided to those with positive reasonable grounds decisions. No longer will the detention of potential victims of trafficking be considered with reference to the separate Modern Slavery Act 2015 statutory guidance; instead, the process is to be merged into the overall adults at risk system. This means a serious dilution of the protections against detention currently afforded to potential trafficking victims. Potential victims are, and should continue to be, entitled to a proper recovery period during which they cannot be removed and therefore cannot generally be detained, thanks to the Modern Slavery Act guidance.

Unless these regulations are revoked today, other immigration considerations will potentially be prioritised. An irregular immigration history, which many victims of trafficking will have, may mean a victim being locked up, and the standard of evidence of potential harm in detention required of them will be ramped up. In short, more victims of trafficking will be detained and more will be detained for longer—something the Government do not even seem to dispute. That means more potential victims suffering real and serious harm to their mental health. That is utterly against the Government’s stated objective in the guidance, and it is against their obligation to assist victims in their physical, psychological and social recovery.

In response to these very serious arguments, the Government seem to provide two arguments of their own. The first seems to justify the regulations on what amounts to little more than tidying up or administrative convenience: why burden officials with two systems of statutory guidance when one will do? The Government point out that potential victims of trafficking are the only group of people for whom such a special provision exists, and they call that a policy anomaly requiring correction, but these additional protections are absolutely justified, given what we know and understand about trafficking and the potential consequences of detention for such people. This is not a policy anomaly but a perfectly reasonable, proportionate response to the specific dangers that face trafficking victims. If anything requires correction, it is the mainstream adults at risk policy into which the Government want to throw trafficking victims. We know that it is overly burdensome and fails too many adults at risk. Let us fix that system, not meddle with the additional protections offered to trafficking victims.

The other Government argument appears to assert that there has been some evidence of abuse of the system, through false claims of trafficking designed to avoid detention. The answer to that it is not to make genuine victims suffer, as these regulations will, but to tackle the abuse head-on. It is the Home Office itself that assesses who is a victim of trafficking, and the answer is to invest in doing that better and faster. Why is it taking 456 days for potential victims to get positive grounds decisions? That is where the Home Office should look to weed out any abuse, rather than throwing victims under a bus.

Even if the Minister does not accept our analysis of the system as it stands, at the very least he should accept that if we are going to put everyone into one system, we should have a wide-ranging consultation and debate on how that system is working, what needs to be changed and what a better system could look like. However, instead of proper debate and consultation, we have had “poor practice”, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said. After two years of Home Office policy development, a small group of stakeholders had two weeks during the August summer holidays to feed back. The whole process was hush-hush, with those involved not allowed to share the proposals beyond a select few. Those lucky enough to participate were largely ignored. This so-called targeted engagement failed to consult relevant groups, including, as I understand it, the Government’s own modern slavery strategy implementation group or the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Wendy Williams’ Windrush review demanded that consultation on changes to policy should be

“meaningful, offering informed proposals and openly seeking advice and challenge.”

The consultation did nothing of the sort, and a bad piece of secondary legislation that will harm victims of trafficking is the result. That is why these regulations should be revoked.