Refugees from Ukraine
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison Thewliss(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. What we have seen in Ukraine, and the response to it, raises all kinds of questions about the Government’s approach to refugees more generally, and about the fact that this country can be, and wants to be, much more welcoming. It certainly poses questions about the Nationality and Borders Bill, which we will debate next week, and which I shall come to shortly.
As we have heard in numerous Question Times and debates, the requirement to seek a visa is causing distress, upset and fury among those caught up in these processes. I have no doubt that we will hear that again today, from Members from across the House.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making a very good and useful speech. One of the people facing frustrations is my constituent Valentyna, who has been a British citizen for 17 years. She wants to bring her family to safety in Glasgow, but she feels as though her family are going round in circles in Poland and not getting anywhere with regard to visas, and they have nowhere to stay. Does my hon. Friend agree that this delay is causing much distress to people in Poland, Ukraine and Scotland?
Stuart C. McDonald
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Every Member of this House will almost certainly have constituents who have faced similar battles. Newspapers report people speaking of “A humiliating process”; of being
“tied up by Home Office red tape”;
and of the
“trauma of UK visa processing”.
Moving the process online will hopefully make things easier for some, as I say, but “online” is not necessarily “straightforward” or “fast”. The Government are still telling the women and children who are fleeing bombs and brutality to use a smartphone to: complete a complicated online form in English; upload documents that prove that they were resident in Ukraine before the invasion, and that prove a family relationship; and wait for a decision. Meanwhile, the sparse and subcontracted visa application centres are not set up to cope with the many who still need their services. Hours are too limited and the centres are spread too far apart. There is talk of surging staff, and many staff are no doubt working hard, but they have been handed an impossible task.
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison ThewlissMonday 10th February 2020
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald
As I said at the outset, I welcome all the consultation that is happening. I also welcome the role that Martin Forde has played, but we do not have to simply take every chapter and verse of the design that he comes up with. Ultimately, we are the politicians and this is the Government, and we can do things slightly differently if we wish to. The Immigration Minister has already made some changes to the scheme. All I am saying is that there are changes that can make the scheme fairer and more generous, and I will continue to make that case. I absolutely respect the role that Martin Forde has played and I do not mean to diminish it in any way at all.
As we speak just now, lots of folk are having to be helped through the system by pro bono lawyers, volunteers and even students. Not only are difficult concepts of immigration and nationality law involved, but the process of documenting losses and damages is often not easy. Given the significance of these applications to the people making them, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), it is only right that legal aid funding be made available. Ultimately, is it not a bit rich for the Home Office, an institution that completely failed to understand its own immigration rules and laws despite employing an army of policy experts and lawyers, then to turn round and tell victims of those failures that they do not need legal advice? The Home Secretary herself referred in her speech to applications being complicated. That is why legal aid funding should be made available to all the victims.
The fourth issue is the time limit. We welcome the Minister putting the deadline back—the original might even have been capable of legal challenge—but we suspect that there may need to be a further rethink in future. We are also concerned that if a deadline remains, there must be generous provision for those who miss it and a very low threshold for considering reasonable excuses. That is necessary, given the vulnerabilities and isolation that many victims will have suffered. It is also necessary because the Home Office has limited its proactive search for victims to Caribbean countries, despite being told by the NAO that its reasons for not proactively searching for victims elsewhere do not add up. That must be revisited.
Fifthly, we share concerns that many of the limits, tariffs and caps in the scheme are wholly inappropriate. The range of immigration application fees that are recoverable is unduly restrictive, and so too are limits placed on legal fees related to those applications. Some of the lump sums seem surprisingly low. Right across access to social security benefits, housing, employment and education, we cannot accept restrictions on possible total awards. Why is the scheme not aiming to come closer to providing restitution for actual losses, rather than very limited broadbrush payments?
Sixthly, we are concerned about provisions that allow for compensation to be restricted for what essentially seems to be a form of contributory negligence, as well as for serious criminality. On the first point, how can it be right for the Home Office to say, “If only you’d contacted us, things would have been sorted,” and use that as a reason to reduce compensation? For many, simply looking at the eye-watering application fees would have been sufficient to think that fixing the situation was impossible. Others who did try to contact the Home Office to remedy their status ended up the subject of enforcement action and in immigration detention.
It seems that unsuccessful applicants were automatically placed in the migration refusal pool and therefore were at risk of removal, so who can blame people for not attempting the dangerous and seemingly insurmountable task of proving status and contacting the Home Office? After all, this Department was sending out “Go home” vans, but now we are saying in retrospect that at that same time, people suspected of being here illegally should have got on the phone to the Home Office to rectify their situation. That seems wholly unrealistic. The insistence that people would usually have contacted the Home Office within 30 days bears little resemblance to reality and could have severe implications for significant loss of earnings claims. We welcome the Minister’s announcement that the range of actions that the Home Office will accept as attempted mitigation is to be broadened, but we seriously question whether any such deductions are appropriate at all.
On criminality, we are unconvinced by the appropriateness of the provisions. Part of the guidance on this has been redacted from public view, and another section refers to situations where the
“offending was of such a nature that makes it inappropriate to make an award in whole or in part”,
which is vague and lacks clarity. As a point of principle, the fact that someone has a criminal record surely does not mean that the person is not owed compensation when they are wronged by the Government.
Finally, there is a huge issue over what caseworker guidance says about the standard of proof in certain cases. As a general rule, the guidance states that caseworkers should
“take a holistic view of the claim where there is a lack of supporting evidence and decide the claim on a balance of probability.”
That is welcome and as it should be, but a list of exceptions is then provided, including claims for loss of earnings, reimbursement of private medical fees, reimbursement of international student fees and loss of access to banking. The guidance demands that caseworkers
“must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before making an award in these cases.”
That is the criminal standard of proof. I cannot for the life of me see why a loss of earnings claim for a Windrush victim should require to be proved to the criminal standard of proof, rather than the usual civil standard. That seems pretty outrageous, and I look forward to hearing why that is in the guidance. Members have raised various other issues with the scheme, and I look forward to exploring those in Committee.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend has laid out issues with the scheme as it stands and improvements that could be made. There are still ongoing cases with the Home Office where people such as highly skilled migrants have lost huge sums of money, had to fight in the courts to get their status proven and had decisions overturned in their favour. Does he agree that there needs to be a further look at compensation schemes where the Home Office has clearly got it wrong?
Stuart C. McDonald
My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point, and I fully support what she says about those individuals.
That brings me nicely to the concluding part of my speech. The Secretary of State was right to say that compensation cannot be an end to the matter. As one victim, Judy Griffith, said:
“I do think that we deserve compensation. But there is no amount that can truly reflect the fear and anxiety, frustration and ill health we have suffered.”
Indeed, the way we respond to what has happened must go way beyond the compensation scheme. It is about completely overhauling the institutions and hostile environment policies that led to this situation in the first place. Instead of defending the right to rent scheme in court, the Government should be scrapping it. It is about asking whether the public sector equality duty, at 10 years old, is working properly, particularly when it comes to making immigration policy; I think it is self-evident that it is not.
It is about listening to concerns that many EU citizens will face an even worse prospect if they miss the settled status scheme deadline; the shadow Home Secretary was right about that. It is about ensuring urgent publication of the Williams lessons learned review and responding. It is about no longer pricing people out of their rights, especially their right to British citizenship. And it is about a full-blown apology—not just for the fact that this all happened, but for the fact that Government caused it to happen.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison ThewlissTuesday 7th January 2020
(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 7 January 2020 - (7 Jan 2020)
Stuart C. McDonald
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was just about to give an example of the sort of person who will be caught out by this, and there are many more. It is not just those who did not think they needed to apply because of the complex stays, or their immigration and nationality situation, but also those with, for example, low digital literacy or poor language skills. There are also those who accepted pre-settled status and overlooked the subsequent deadline for applying for settled status, as well as children and vulnerable adults. The list goes on.
This is absolutely not the way, as the Government have said previously, to avoid a new Windrush disaster. This is the way to create a disaster on an even greater scale. It is not just me saying this; it is the3million campaign group, legal experts and think tanks, and it is the cross-party conclusion of the Home Affairs Committee, so we call on the Government to think again and to provide the status automatically and keep the settlement scheme open so that people can access the physical document that they need, as and when they realise they need it. That is what amendments 5 and 6 seek to do, as does the official Opposition’s new clause 5, which, because it would do everything in one go, is the one that we will support in a vote.
The second bad choice the Government made was in relation to documentation. The withdrawal agreement allows for the provision of a physical document as evidence of status. Alternatively, that proof could be in digital form. The Government have gone for a purely digital form of proof, which is completely contrary to what the overwhelming majority of EU nationals would prefer. How many Members would be happy to rely exclusively on a piece of Government digital code in an online system as the sole means of evidencing their right to live, work or study here or anywhere else? If the digital form were available alongside the opportunity to request a document, that would be fine, but it is completely unacceptable for it to be in digital form only. What if our retired French lady is digitally challenged, as the expression goes? How difficult will it be for her to prove her rights? And what will happen when the young Polish guy seeks to persuade a landlord that he is eligible to rent a flat in England? We know how great the chance is that the landlord will rent that flat to a person with a passport, way before they will go through the process of checking the Polish lad’s immigration status. The right-to-rent scheme is already in limbo because judges have found such episodes occurring with other less complicated forms of proof. What if the digital system crashes altogether at a crucial moment, as has happened already? Again, the Home Office is making decisions against the interests of EU citizens. That is why amendment 5 calls for a physical document to be provided.
I like to be fair, so let me acknowledge one good decision that the Government have made. That was the decision to open the settled status scheme to a broader category of citizen than was strictly required by the withdrawal agreement. Amendment 6 seeks to cement that into primary legislation, rather than leaving it to the whim of an immigration Minister to do away with at the drop of a hat by changing the immigration rules. The official Opposition’s new clause 5 would do the same thing.
A third disappointing choice that the Government have made relates to the make-up of the Independent Monitoring Authority—that is, the body tasked with ensuring that citizens’ rights under the agreement are properly protected. The withdrawal agreement gives broad discretion as to how the board should be made up. Given the torrid time that EU citizens are enduring, the last thing they want to see are provisions that mean that the person appointing the members of the IMA is a person who has ignored all the other concerns and broken the key commitment that she made to them during the referendum. That is of course the Home Secretary.
Yes, there are other provisions that are designed to create a degree of independence for the IMA, but in advance of the creation of the authority, it is the chief inspector of borders and immigration who has been monitoring the settled status scheme and who has prepared reports and recommendations about it. That makes him a strong candidate for knowing what skills are required for the Independent Monitoring Authority, but there are other independent people who could do the task and give EU citizens much more faith in the process. Additionally, in amendment 52, we seek to strengthen the role of the devolved Administrations in the process of appointing those IMA members being selected because of their knowledge of conditions in the devolved areas.
Turning to appeals, it is positive that the Bill makes provision for a right of appeal against settled status decisions, but not that it does so only by way of regulations or immigration rules. There should be a statutory right of appeal in the primary legislation. These significant rights are not to be toyed with on the whim of a Minister. So again, we support parties who have tabled amendments to put the right of appeal in the Bill directly.
In amendment 7, we challenge the Government’s giving Ministers the right to make provisions about judicial reviews of certain citizens’ rights immigration decisions. This seems unprecedented, and if the Minister can provide another example of such a power being granted, I would be grateful to hear about it. There is huge concern about what the Government want to do with judicial oversight of the decisions that they make, and I hope that this is not an early example of Government attempts to curtail judicial oversight of significant and sensitive immigration powers.
I turn now to the registration of British citizenship. This is another scandal that has developed on the watch of successive Conservative Home Secretaries negligently conflating naturalisation with registration. After the British Nationality Act 1981 came into force, many children and young people who would automatically have been British through birth here were instead given a statutory right to register as British if they met certain criteria such as living in the country for a certain period or their parents becoming settled or British. These criteria reflect the fact that for those children and young people, the UK is their true home. De facto, they are British and should therefore be legally entitled to British citizenship. A Conservative Minister of State said, when introducing the relevant provisions in 1981, that it is extremely important that those who grow up in this country should have as strong a sense of security as possible. That is not the same as naturalisation, where the law gives the Secretary of State discretion in relation to people who have chosen to make the UK their home. But the Home Secretary charges for children to register, as if the two things were equivalent. Even though the administrative cost to the Home Office of registration is around £370, the Home Office has been charging over £1,000 for several years—something the now Chancellor acknowledged was a huge sum when he was asked about it at the Home Affairs Committee. Imagine anyone in this Chamber being asked by an official for £1,000 before their child could be confirmed as British and could exercise their rights as a British citizen. It would be deemed outrageous and totally unacceptable to every single person in this Chamber. It is similarly outrageous that the Home Office is inflicting that fate on other children who are just as entitled to their British citizenship.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point, and I am glad he is raising the issue. I often get families at my surgeries who cannot afford to have their children registered; they might register themselves because they need to work or travel, but they cannot afford to pay for their children. With the decision of the courts on this issue, does my hon. Friend have any view on whether people should be issued with refunds for the children they have already paid for, as the courts have ruled the charges unlawful?
Stuart C. McDonald
I fully support that decision, and I will come to the court case in a moment. Another example I found when searching for cases is that parents have to choose which child will become a British citizen. They cannot afford to pay for two or three, so they have to pick which child will benefit from citizenship. It is a really appalling and cruel game.
It is therefore welcome, as my hon. Friend pointed out, that the fees have been found unlawful in the High Court because they do not properly take into account the best interests of children. I pay tribute to the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, Amnesty International and others for their work on that case. Instead of appealing against that decision, the Home Office should listen to the reasoned arguments and stop this absolute scandal. Among the victims of this scandal are many EU and European Economic Area nationals—for example, a young Belgian girl born in the UK to Belgian parents just after they moved here and before they were settled. She becomes entitled to British citizenship automatically after 10 years, or if the parents become UK citizens or settled themselves, but she or her family quite simply may not be able to afford the £1,000 fee. She, along with many others, will be forced to register under the settlement scheme, when they have a far stronger right to citizenship. As the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens and Amnesty pointed out in a letter to the Minister’s predecessor, children and young people in the care system are especially at risk.
There are many things that need to be done to allow children and young people to access their right to British citizenship, but one key aspect is ensuring that all who have that right through registration can afford it. That is why new clause 18 sets out to limit the fee that can be charged for the administrative cost and to provide for free exemptions and waivers in appropriate circumstances. I do not want this to be limited to EU citizens, but it has to be because of the scope of the Bill. However, there is a far bigger job of work to be done in ensuring that these things are done right across the board. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) pointed out, we should look to reimburse those who have had to break the bank, take loans or do whatever else simply so that their children can become British citizens or register the right to British citizenship that they are entitled to under statutes passed in this place. It seems a simple matter of justice to me. I cannot understand how any Government or MP would want to continue to deprive de facto British citizens of the legal British citizenship they are entitled to, and that is why new clause 18 should be put to a vote this evening.
In conclusion, many EU citizens are having an incredibly difficult time, to put it mildly. They were hurt again by the lazy rhetoric coming from the Conservative party during the election about the cost of benefit payments to EU migrants, and by the Prime Minister’s remarks about EU citizens daring to treat the UK like their own country. Instead of occasional platitudes in this Chamber, we need consistent and vocal support for EU nationals. More than that, we need action, not words, and these amendments and new clauses are exactly the action that is needed to improve the lives of those people.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison ThewlissMonday 28th January 2019
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill 2017-19 View all Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stuart C. McDonald
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the Bill will catch hundreds of thousands of people into one of the most horrible bureaucracies that the Government have managed to create, and we should have absolutely nothing to do with it at all.
All the people—inevitably, hundreds of thousands of them—who fail to apply in time for the EU settled status scheme will be cast into the hostile environment, and that will make this a Windrush crisis writ large. The Bill creates that danger, but provides no clarity on, or protection from, the danger it creates.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Does he appreciate that many of my constituents will be EU nationals whose partners are non-EU nationals, and that that causes double the uncertainty for those families, who now do not know what the position will be?
Stuart C. McDonald
That is a fair point. That is the Surinder Singh route, and we still need clarity from the Government about what happens to people in that position.
One part of UK immigration policy continues to work pretty well: free movement. I would hope that continuing free movement would answer many of the questions I have just posed, but the Bill seeks to ditch it. An end to free movement will make the UK poorer economically, socially and in terms of opportunity. Ending free movement means ripping up mutual rights to live, study, work and enjoy family life across Europe, depriving future generations of the extraordinary opportunities that ours have enjoyed.
Refugees and Human Rights
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison Thewliss(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I welcome the choice of debate and the motion, and I particularly welcome the call for effective action to alleviate the refugee crisis. With 23 million refugees worldwide and more than 40 million displaced internally, this is indeed, as has been said, one of the toughest global challenges of our time. There is no silver bullet to solve it, but Governments working together can achieve a great deal to alleviate the dreadful suffering and misery that it has brought—through efforts on conflict resolution, international aid and crucially, through the provision of safe legal routes for those fleeing persecution.
In my view, the report card on the Government’s response is mixed, with significant room for improvement. Let me start on a positive note with the role of the Department for International Development. As the Minister said, there is no doubt that UK aid in countries such as Lebanon has been hugely significant. In that respect the UK is playing its part, and long may that continue. However, it cannot and must not be the case that playing a part through international aid absolves any country of the responsibility of hosting a share of those who have fled persecution. In fairness, I do not think anyone is arguing with that, but on the question of whether the UK has played its part in sheltering its fair share of refugees in response to the crisis, I still believe that the Government have fallen short. Can we and should we be doing more? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes.
From the outset, the Government’s approach to resettlement and relocation of refugees and asylum seekers went essentially from strong resistance to extreme reluctance, only then to find that once the programmes were up and running, they can be genuine successes and make a genuine contribution to the international crisis. A case in point is the Syrian refugee resettlement scheme, which the Minister pointed to. It was introduced by the previous Prime Minister following what can only be described as a summer of resistance from the Home Office. Only after immense public and parliamentary pressure, magnified by the tragic pictures of little Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on the beach at Bodrum—who can ever forget them?—did we finally see a hugely welcome announcement that the UK would accept 20,000 vulnerable Syrians by 2020.
No scheme is perfect, but as I think everyone in this Chamber would agree, once up and running it has proved an extraordinary success. Across the UK, we have been very pleased to see more than 9,000 refugees arrive. As part of that, we were delighted to see the 2,000th arrival into Scotland just last month, and our thanks and congratulations go to all involved in making that happen.
Resettlement works and can make a crucial contribution to the task of the UNHCR. I hope that the Government’s initial reluctance towards resettlement schemes is now a thing of the past. As the Home Affairs Committee recently recommended, it is important that the Government establish a more general resettlement scheme for the future, echoing calls from the UNHCR, which estimated that 1.19 million people were in need of resettlement globally in 2017. It has asked the UK to aim for 10,000 places each year.
Whereas the Government’s report card on resettlement would say, “Solid start but could do better,” their record on solidarity with our European neighbours has fallen further short. It is worth remembering that at the outset, the Government even opposed the introduction of the Dubs scheme before being forced to accept a watered-down compromise. Despite that scheme having been significantly watered down, it is another example of one that can work and transform lives, as we saw when the Home Office was eventually pressed into urgent action by the impending demolition of the camps at Calais.
Although the recent change to the cut-off date applied to the Dubs scheme is a step in the right direction, this Parliament should insist on revisiting some other restrictions that the Government have placed on it, including, most obviously, the desperately inadequate “specified number.” We should insist on the necessary investment to make it work properly. We should find the children in Greece and Italy, and not make them resort to using people smugglers or travelling to Calais.
It is not only children who need protection, but men, women and children all require safety. Long before the Dubs amendment was tabled during the passage of the Immigration Act 2016, my party argued for UK participation in EU proposals to relocate refugees and asylum seekers from Italy and Greece to other member states. It is to our huge regret that efforts at establishing a relocation scheme have continued to flounder.
As we have heard, what does exist is Dublin III. It is far from perfect, but it is there and must be made to work much more quickly and effectively. The recent agreement that the Government reached with France seeks to significantly reduce the processing times for take-charge requests, and that is very welcome. However, huge problems still exist with accessing the asylum system altogether. We should not be waiting for children to come to us, but actively seeking out those who may have grounds for transfer to the UK. Otherwise, it is inevitable that there will be further deaths as young people and children undertake hazardous trips to join family here.
We need to work faster in other countries, too—notably in Greece and Italy, where it can take up to a year for the Dublin process to run its course. If we can do more to fix delays here and to find potential applicants in those countries, we will undoubtedly save men, women and children from hazardous onward journeys, people smugglers and exploitation.
Resettlement, relocation, and Dublin are three examples of safe legal routes that we support that can help to prevent dangerous journeys and alleviate suffering, but let me mention one more: family reunion. Scottish National party Members have repeatedly argued that rights to refugee family reunion in the UK are simply too restrictive. People with family in the UK are clearly the ones who are most likely to try to get here, but by making it virtually impossible for too many categories of family members to qualify for family reunion, including siblings who are over 18, too many are left with no choice but to make dangerous journeys.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making a very good point about family reunion. Does he agree with me and my constituents, including children from St Mungo’s Academy and Garnetbank Primary School, who see the absolute logic of being reunited with their family? They do not see the difference between someone being a day under 18 or a day over it—they are their family. Does he agree that we need to do so much more to ensure that those families can stay together? If children at primary school and secondary school can see the logic, why do the Government not see it?
Stuart C. McDonald
I agree, and I urge hon. Members to support the private Member’s Bill that has been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). I very much hope that it is passed. He has support from the Refugee Council, the UNHCR, Amnesty International, the British Red Cross and Oxfam, among others.
International Day of Democracy
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison Thewliss(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the International Day of Democracy.
It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. In 2007, the UN General Assembly resolved to observe 15 September as the International Day of Democracy. The aim of the day is the promoting of and recommitting to the principles of democracy. Member states are invited to mark the day as one for celebrating our achievements in democratisation, but also for recognising the shared challenges in nurturing democracy at home and abroad. While we are not quite yet at 15 September, I do not believe there is any harm in kicking off the celebrations early.
I turn first to article 21(3) of the universal declaration of human rights, which states:
“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
That simple but powerful principle, expressed as a human right, seems common sense to us all here today, but for most of our history it was quite the opposite, and it remains disputed by too many regimes across the world. I hope the debate will be outward looking in considering the challenges facing democracy across the globe and what we, both as a state and as parliamentarians, can do to support democracy abroad. However, the debate should also be self-reflective, as we look at the steps we need to take here to help democracy flourish.
This year, the theme of the International Day of Democracy is democracy and conflict prevention, focusing on the need to strengthen democracy not only as a good thing in itself, but also so that we can manage and reduce the risk of violence and conflict. That can be seen at all levels of polity, whether we look at the global level, across our European continent or within these islands. Even the briefest of surveys suggests that, where democracy, rights and civil society are disregarded—often for short-term gain—peace and stability are undermined in the long term and conflict ensues.
The link between democracy and peaceful societies is recognised by goal 16 of the sustainable development goals, which seeks to:
“Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”
Such institutions play a vital role in preventing the spread of violence, which can have destructive and disastrous impacts on a country’s development. In the context of war and violence, it becomes virtually impossible for a country to combat challenges such as extreme poverty, lack of access to education or gender inequalities, for example. Goal 16 and the prevention of violence are therefore fundamentally important to achieving the ambitions and the ambitions agenda set out by all 17 global goals for sustainable development. I am sure the Minister will be eager to update us on the UK’s progress in achieving those goals—goal 16, in particular—both internationally and at home.
It is appropriate to turn to what the UK is doing to support democracy abroad and on conflict prevention, and to ask where there is still room for progress. In 2016, the House of Lords International Relations Committee published a report on co-operation between the UK and UN, and outlined priorities for the UN’s new Secretary-General. It concluded that:
“The UN needs to invest more in conflict prevention. Member states should consider awarding more financial resources, intelligence and analytical capacity to support the ‘good offices’ of the Secretary-General. The UK should take the lead in this field.”
It would be helpful to hear from the Minister what progress has been made in that regard.
The report identified a number of ways in which the UK could further assist UN peacekeeping operations, including by increasing our contribution and stepping up support for the training of other forces. It also suggested that:
“The UK might provide ‘greater and more systematic general and specialist training, which could be expanded to special training’ to address the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers.”
Similarly, it would be useful to hear from the Minister about what work is under way to take forward that recommendation.
Another significant development in the past few years is, of course, the conflict, stability and security fund, which is overseen by the National Security Council. In terms of budget, it is potentially now one of the world’s largest mechanisms for addressing conflict and instability. I think there are questions over the accountability of that fund, and it is early to say how effective it has been and whether its role is defined appropriately, but we should recognise some of its important contributions. Over the past couple of years, it has funded a doubling of the UK’s troop contribution to peacekeeping through two new deployments: providing essential logistical support for the African Union mission combating al-Shabaab, and providing 370 UK military personnel to give engineering and medical support to the UN mission in South Sudan. I pay tribute to the personnel undertaking that work. Again, it would be helpful to hear more from the Minister about how the CSSF will aim to support democracy and conflict resolution in the years ahead.
Another way in which the UK can play its part is in promoting democratic values through its participation in the Community of Democracies, which is an international organisation founded in 2000 that aims to strengthen democratic norms and values around the globe by combining the expertise of Governments, civil society and the private sector. The next Community of Democracies conference is scheduled for later this month in Washington DC. However, I understand that there are concerns that the meeting will not take place as President Trump is still to commit to hosting the event. As a member of the governing council, I hope the UK Government will make representations to ensure that the conference takes place. I will be grateful if the Minister will comment on whether that is under way.
It is also important to remember the great strides taken by the UK’s devolved nations in promoting peace and security around the world. Aside from playing its role in welcoming refugees fleeing violence in Syria, and providing funding to aid agencies in that region, Scotland will be working with the UN to host an international women’s summit in Edinburgh. That will support Syrian women by providing training in communication, negotiation and post-conflict planning, to help ensure that women play a key role in building a lasting peace in the region when the opportunity arises.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend rightly mentions the role of women in making peace. The Finnish Crisis Management Initiative found that, since 2000, fewer than 2% of peace agreements were signed by women and fewer than 9% of peace negotiators were women. Does he agree that a whole lot more needs to be done to bring women into that process, to bring a lasting peace that works for everybody in society?
Stuart C. McDonald
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I very much hope that the Scottish Government’s work with the United Nations will at least set that ball rolling in the context of the crisis in Syria and the middle east. That work certainly has to be done on a far greater scale in relation to conflicts around the world.
As well as asking questions of our Government, I will turn to the work of individual parliamentarians and what we can do to support peace and stability through strengthening democracies abroad. I freely confess that, until the debate, that is probably not something I had given enough thought to, never mind participated in, so what follows will really be a tribute to the work of colleagues across all parties who are taking action where I have merely made speeches. By way of a very immediate example, Iraqi Kurdistan will hold an independence referendum on 25 September. The Scottish National party will share its experience of holding a peaceful, democratic referendum, and members will attend as observers.
The SNP’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy project liaises directly with the Kurdish regional Government and the three main political parties there. Each of them has agreed to a cross-party delegation to Scotland and London in 2018, to review and learn from the processes of the UK and Scottish Parliaments. The main objective is to strengthen the case for resuming the normal parliamentary processes of the Kurdish Parliament, which was disrupted following violence in 2015. I pay tribute to my colleagues—and former colleagues from the previous Parliament—who have already been in Kurdistan, met politicians there and worked to strengthen the understanding of the operations of our Parliaments here. I know that other parties have had similar experiences with their own projects, and it is right that we take the time today to reflect on what we, as a Parliament, can offer to people elsewhere, by means of training and capacity building, as they seek to enhance or even restore democratic rule.
The International Day of Democracy is not only about what we can do to support democracy elsewhere, but is a chance to look at where we are going wrong here. Indeed, it undermines our arguments for there being democracy elsewhere if we are not seen to pursue best practice at home. I had the privilege of meeting Maina Kiai, the former UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, on his last official visit to the UK. He said in his report on that visit:
“It is imperative that the same standards that the UK calls for internationally…are implemented domestically.”
Building democracy must be an ongoing process of renewal, not just an historic roll-call of celebrated achievements along the road to where we are today.
Everyone here today will have their own ideas about what more can be done. My party will continue to advocate for the abolition of the House of Lords. In Scotland, we implemented votes for 16-year-olds and put in place the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. We also opposed the Trade Union Act 2016 in Westminster because of its attack on the democratic right of freedom of assembly and association, and we stood against the oversized powers of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 because of their invasion of privacy. Ultimately, my colleagues and I would argue that our goal of independence is about enhancing democracy and the accountability of political decision-making in Scotland.
Putting all that to one side, today I want to focus briefly on another piece of legislation. My party has repeatedly voiced concerns about the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, having heard about some of its impact on genuine charities that are trying to inform debate. Everyone in the House can appreciate that there is a difference between charities working to fight injustice and a commercial lobbying firm seeking to shape a debate in their client’s favour. Treating lobbying firms and charities as the same seems to be entirely the wrong way to go about it. Registered charities are regulated in a different manner than lobbying firms, so the elision that occurs in their treatment under this Act seems very much to be a backwards step. We know from various reviews that it caused serious problems for charities at both the 2015 and 2017 elections. I therefore ask the Minister, who might not know himself, but can raise it with colleagues, when will the Government respond to Lord Hodgson’s report on the Act? How do they plan to implement its recommendations and what is their timeframe for doing so?
In concluding, I am grateful as a parliamentarian to have had the opportunity offered by the International Day for Democracy to reflect on what we can do to support democracy abroad and nourish it at home. It is a human right that we should never take for granted, and I look forward to hearing the contributions from other Members today.
Immigration Rules: Spouses and Partners
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison Thewliss(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald
It is true the Government chose the lesser of two evils, but I go back to the point I made before: it all depended on the question that the Government asked of MAC, which dictated the answer that came back. They could have looked at a million different alternatives. For example, in some litigation before the courts, reference has been made to the minimum wage, which is considerably less than £18,600. In my view, there was nothing wrong with the threshold previously in place, which was broadly £5,500—a rate that equated to income support at that time. There is even a case for removing the financial threshold altogether. So, yes, the Government chose the lesser of two evils, but that was from the question they asked in the first place.
The all-party parliamentary group on migration rightly pointed out that there will be many cases where the separation of parents leads to increased reliance on social security benefits. All of that is largely hypothetical anyway, since as we all know the non-EU spouse is prohibited from accessing social security benefits in any event for five years.
Ultimately, we should not engage in a balance-sheet debate that excludes from consideration family life and the best interests of children. We are talking about people—husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters—whose lives are being absolutely ruined. I have no doubt that colleagues will raise many constituency cases today, and each of them is absolutely deserving of our attention.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look at issues such as caring responsibilities? A number of constituents have come to my surgeries whose spouse would be able to care for and look after them, but they have been prevented from getting into the country, which has had a hugely detrimental impact on the constituents’ physical and mental health.
Stuart C. McDonald
I agree, and that is a perfect illustration of what the all-party parliamentary group was saying about how the rules can lead to an increased reliance on social security benefits. It also puts a big question mark over any Government argument that the rules somehow benefit integration. They certainly do not benefit the integration into society of the UK sponsor left here picking up the pieces.
All of that suffering is well documented in various reports and pieces of research, and I thank everyone who has been involved in documenting the effects of this mean-spirited and cruel Government policy. Utterly compelling is the report prepared in September 2015 for the Children’s Commissioner for England about the effect on at least 15,000 children—by now the figure is probably pushing on 20,000—living in “Skype families” across the UK. It detailed how the Government’s policy was causing those children separation anxiety, increased levels of anger and disobedience, greater levels of aggression, signs of depression, disrupted sleep, eating problems, social isolation and withdrawal, and feelings of guilt. Ultimately, what matters is that those children are being kept apart from one parent by the Government’s nasty immigration policies. In short, the Children’s Commissioner was clear that the Government’s legal obligations to children are not properly recognised in the rules and that too many decisions completely fail to take into account the best interests principle.
Last week, Phoebe Griffith of the Institute for Public Policy Research told members of the Home Affairs Committee that the net migration target had
“created a whole set of quite perverse incentives”.
She used policies on international students as an example, but I think that an even clearer example is the drastic changes to the immigration rules for non-EU spouses and partners that were introduced in July 2012. The real reason for the rules is the Prime Minister’s near-pathological obsession with her bogus net migration target, and it seems that it does not matter to her who is hurt as a result. Too many UK citizens with non-EU spouses and UK children with non-EU parents know that better than any of us. How many more families do the Government want to plunge into the nightmare in pursuit of the target? Will they apply the same rules to EU spouses after Brexit, for example?
For the reasons I have explained, and many more that I am sure hon. Members will touch on, the Government should go back to the drawing board and put families and children first.
Asylum Support Contracts
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison Thewliss(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) on securing this timely debate and on an excellent speech. Indeed, I am in the happy position of having agreed with pretty much everything that everyone has said so far—though I might yet disagree with myself.
The red doors and red wristbands have rightly grabbed a lot of headlines. As I said in the Chamber at the time of the urgent question on red doors asked by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), such issues have to be looked at and dealt with urgently, but the real concern is that they are only the tip of the iceberg. What hon. Members have set out in the Chamber today about asylum accommodation confirms that to be the case. Members have spoken about the poor quality of accommodation, which is overcrowded and unsafe, inappropriate sharing, poor placement facilities, short notice evictions, issues of privacy and unannounced visits to the property, poor treatment by staff and many other problems.
Red doors and red wristbands were perhaps crass and eye-wateringly negligent rather than anything else, but the growing number and widespread nature of the complaints we are hearing suggest that we need to look much more closely at the operation of the contracts. There is also now a good spread of research that backs up the view of all hon. Members that there are fundamental problems with the operation of the existing contracts. It is worth looking briefly at the detailed evidence and research available.
Back in 2013 the Home Affairs Committee reported:
“The reports that we have received on the quality of the accommodation are extremely worrying...Problems cited in evidence include pest infestations, lack of heating or hot water, windows and doors that could not be locked, lack of basic amenities including a cooker, a shower, a washing machine and a sink and a general lack of cleanliness. Furthermore, many of those who submitted evidence cited difficulties in contacting housing providers and the slow resolution of problems.”
All that sounds incredibly familiar.
In 2014 a National Audit Office report criticised G4S and Serco for “poor performance” and
“still failing to meet some of their KPIs”.
The report found that the companies had taken on rented
“housing stock without inspecting it, and subsequently found that many…did not meet the contractual quality standards.”
The Public Accounts Committee later published a report concluding:
“The standard of the accommodation provided has often been unacceptably poor for a very fragile group of individuals and families.”
In 2014 the Scottish Refugee Council also undertook research into the extent and impact of accommodation issues in Scotland. In short, it pointed to poor standards, poor treatment by staff, poor information on rights and entitlements, and poor oversight by the Home Office of whether contractors are meeting obligations.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the practices of some of the companies, Orchard & Shipman in particular, which turned up one night with no notice at 9.30 pm to evict one of my constituents? Only by good luck was he able to contact my office and prevent his eviction. Does my hon. Friend agree that such practices also need to be reviewed?
Stuart C. McDonald
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. That case fits in exactly with the narrative that we have heard from so many hon. Members today.
A final piece of evidence comes from an October 2015 investigation by Jonathan Darling at the University of Manchester, which highlighted similar problems, including increased distance between asylum seekers and providers, with buck-passing between contractors and subcontractors; breakdowns in communication between key partners; and considerable variations in dispersal accommodation quality, support and opportunities for community integration. In any view, all that is a considerable evidence base and a considerable cause for concern.
As hon. Members have noted, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), is always quick off the mark, so we have already heard evidence from G4S and its Middlesbrough subcontractors about the red doors incident, and yesterday we heard from the contractors responsible for the wristbands in Cardiff. There was extraordinary consistency between the two evidence sessions. Everyone in essence said, “Our performance under the contract is fine,” and, “We meet our key performance indicators”—indeed, staff at one contractor were actually paid bonuses for meeting those KPIs. “We are inspected,” they said, and Clearel even said that Home Office inspectors were well aware of the wristband scheme and had raised no complaints. Clearel also said, “We don’t get many complaints.” In fact, at one point the Clearel manager seemed to be saying that there had been about 19 complaints from 6,500 householders over a certain period of time, if I noted his evidence correctly.
I am not usually a cynical person, but what all that says to me is that we should also be concerned about the key performance indicators, the complaints system and the inspection system, because those processes are not flagging up red doors or wristbands and, too often, not flagging up the myriad other complaints that we have heard about today. The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth made that point well.
Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Alison Thewliss(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
As the pictures of young Alan Kurdi appeared on our screens, I found it difficult to comprehend quite what had happened in Europe that allowed that to happen. I sat up all night and replied to all the emails I received from my constituents who had also seen the images and were desperate to do something to help. They wanted their MP to stand up and say, “This should not be happening on our shores; we should do everything we can to help.” I held my own children tighter that night as they slept in their beds, and I kept my own son away from the newspaper racks in the morning because I could not explain to him how that could have been allowed to happen in Europe.
I noticed this morning that UNICEF had published some photographs taken by children who were living in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Palestine in 2013 and 2014. It is interesting to observe their perspective, seeing life through the eyes of those children. What did they see in those camps? Just other families and other friends—ordinary families living lives in extraordinary circumstances that we would not wish for our own families and children. They saw heat; they saw mud; they saw snow; they saw filth; they saw weddings. Those were the sorts of things the children were seeing in those camps, but they should not have been living their young childhoods there. They should not have had to face that as their reality.
All things are not equal in EU countries today. While we are able to cope to some degree with refugees coming to our shores, people in Hungary are unable to cope. I looked through some photographs on social media and found that the refugee camps being set up in Hungary are woefully inadequate to deal with the numbers, the needs and the circumstances that people face. There are families there with pregnant women and sick and injured people who need a great deal more support than they are able to receive just now.
Médicins sans Frontières has described the current situation in Lesbos as “a pressure cooker”. There are boats going to take people away from those Greek islands because the infrastructure there cannot cope with the circumstances. People came there fleeing terrible circumstances and paid a lot to get there, but things are still terrible for them. We need to look to our European partners to see what help we can give because the infrastructure is incapable of coping.
Both Médicins sans Frontières and the Migrant Offshore Aid Station are operating in the Mediterranean. On their busiest day, some six days ago, 1,658 people were rescued by the two boats that those organisations are operating. They are rescuing people from different circumstances all day through from 7 o’clock in the morning. We need to look to our own resources; what resources can we bring to this? What could our Navy and our fisheries protection vessels be doing to help so that more people do not drown when they could be saved?
Stuart C. McDonald
Earlier this afternoon, I received an answer from the Ministry of Defence that, in tandem with another answer from the same Ministry, shows that the first ship we deployed in the Mediterranean rescued an average 527 people every week over nine weeks. Today, however, we learn that the second ship we deployed, HMS Enterprise, has rescued fewer than that—453 migrants in total over the same period. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about what that means for our ships in the Mediterranean and what we are asking them to do? Do we not deserve a detailed explanation of their exact role in the Mediterranean?
Alison Thewliss
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. It is very poor indeed if it is true that charitable organisations operating on an absolute shoestring are rescuing more people than our Navy is able to rescue, given the facilities and investment that go into our Navy. We need to do a good deal more.
Those refugees are not coming solely from Syria; they are coming from Eritrea, Somalia, Libya and a range of other countries, and we must do all that we can to support each of them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) said earlier, no one puts their child on a boat unless the sea is safer than the land. We must bear that in mind when we think of the difficulties and challenges that people are facing, and the fear that must drive them and their families out on to the sea.
The response in Glasgow has been absolutely amazing. I have been inundated with emails, because so many organisations are trying to help. Groups of people have come together to form organisations such as Scotland Supporting Refugees. Other organisations are well established, such as the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees and Positive Action in Housing. Strathclyde University’s student union is collecting for refugees, and the Clutha—a bar which, as many will know, faced tragedy itself—has been raising money for the Scottish Refugee Council. All those organisations are coming together, but what would be incredibly useful would be a wee bit more guidance on what people should be doing to help. What can people give? Should they donate money, clothes or bedding? Where can they go to donate, and how can we best support the offers from ordinary people who are desperate to do something to avert the tragedy that we are seeing?
I have also received a request from a woman who is involved in Scotland Supporting Refugees. She is desperate to try to help by taking items to Greece, but she has found it incredibly difficult to persuade the airline—in this instance, Flybe—to provide the extra baggage allowance. I hope that Ministers will speak to airlines that are already operating charter flights to Greece to use whatever leeway they have to allow people to take extra items. All the airlines should be trying to support this humanitarian effort.
I have been trying to help a constituent who has been seeking status in this country for some time, having fled from a very dangerous situation in Yemen. He got in touch with me, regardless of the extreme personal difficulties that he has been experiencing—he has faced destitution, not for the first time—to ask, “What can I do to help? I do not want anyone else to have to face this situation.”
I urge the Government to do more. It is great that finance has been coming, but a good deal more needs to be done to support people who are in the most desperate of circumstances.