Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Angus Brendan MacNeil

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely agree. We could spend many hours debating, and highlighting the flaws of, so many of the features of the family migration rules. Another is the fact that this threshold only takes into account the earnings of the UK sponsor; it does not take into account, for example, the potential earnings of those who want to come and join their family members here. So these rules achieve absolutely nothing but keeping families apart—families split apart and destroyed.

Our asylum system also urgently needs important reform: to fix and extend the “move-on period” that forces newly recognised refugees into homelessness and poverty; to end the poverty support rates for asylum seekers and allow them the right to work; and to respect the vote in this House on the Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill to extend family reunion rights.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fundamental point is that those under a certain age who have been designated as refugees should have the same rights as people over that age, and it is very nasty not to give those rights to children in particular?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the UK is once more an outlier in terms of the refugee family reunion rules it has in place. Sadly, the Bill does not mention asylum at all, and gives us little chance to address those issues.

These and a million other things need to be fixed, but this Bill does not do that; instead, it provides the Government with a big blank cheque to extend many of these flawed features to hundreds of thousands more people, each and every year.

On EU nationals who are already here, although scrapping the fee for settled status is welcome, much more needs to be done. The Home Secretary says he is listening, but the biggest concern just now is what happens in the event of no deal. Unilateral promises from the Government are fine so far as they go, but promises can be here today and gone tomorrow and, being unilateral, they are no help to the UK in Europe, nor do they have the force of international law. That is why MPs across the House have repeatedly urged the Government to seek to ring-fence the deal on citizen rights so that they can be guaranteed once and for all sooner rather than later. But the Government have shown absolutely no interest so far. We should use the Bill to try to make them at least attempt to secure such a deal, and we should use the Bill to enshrine the rights of the 3 million in primary legislation so that they cannot be changed in the blink of an eye via immigration rules.

Other questions remain. Why are there differences between the positions of EU citizens in a no-deal scenario compared with if a deal is agreed? Why are there to be settled status appeal rights if there is a deal, but not if there is no deal? Why are the appeal rights not in the Bill? Why are voting rights not protected? Why are the 3 million to be refused physical documentation despite calls from the Exiting the European Union Committee to make that available? Where is the clarity about rights for Surinder Singh cases, and the different rights of carers from Chen, Ibrahim and Teixeira case law?

Perhaps most significantly of all, we still do not know anything about what will happen to those who fail to apply for settled status in time. Why should there be such a severe cut-off date? It is inevitable that hundreds of thousands will not apply in time: many children; people who have been resident for many years; those who think having a permanent residence document is sufficient; people who struggle with language or technology; vulnerable and exploited people; people who were born here and do not think they need to apply—the list goes on. We must also remember that in a recent British Medical Association survey, 37% of EU national doctors were unaware of the scheme. That does not bode well.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

When Conservatives are on the stump or going around the country, they always talk about getting rid of red tape and taking the Government out of the centre of people’s lives. Right now, through this sort of legislation, they are putting massive amounts of red tape in people’s lives and putting Government right in the middle of people’s lives. Where things are currently going seamlessly, they want to introduce a ramping up of bureaucracy. That is shocking.

[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.

Refugee Family Reunion

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to flag up the trafficking and criminality. The UK, and the EU generally, have a long way to go to improve their response to that issue, but at the end of the day who are the most desperate to get here? It is the people with close family ties here, who are perhaps the parents of a child who has made it here, or 18 or 19-year-old siblings of children here. They will come here come hell or high water. The issue, then, becomes: are we going to allow them a safe legal route, established under my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill or otherwise, or are we going to leave them having ultimately to use these smugglers, traffickers and criminals? By expanding the safe legal routes, we will undermine and tackle the smuggling.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and one I can back up anecdotally. In the debate on 16 March, I mentioned a young man from Canterbury, Yohannes, who I also highlighted earlier. He is worried that his sister in a camp in Sudan might do exactly that and go to the criminals. If we were to provide, through my private Member’s Bill, a safe legal route and a right for her to come, she could fly here in a couple of hours without the danger of what might happen across the Sahara, which we do not want to speak about.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

That is a perfect example that illustrates the argument very strongly.

If we take the approach that somehow changing the rules will provide an incentive for others to make a dangerous journey, particularly children, we have to examine the ethics of that position. Are we really saying that we are going to do something that is not in a child refugee’s interests—actually harmful to their interests—just to disincentivise other children from making that journey? That is a pretty horrendous ethical argument to propose and dangerous in itself. The key point is that this is about creating safe legal routes that keep people out of the arms of smugglers, rather than forcing them into their arms.

Refugees and Human Rights

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Indeed, the Red Cross, Oxfam, the Refugee Council, Amnesty and the UNHCR have said that having this Bill is their priority. Does my hon. Friend also welcome the warm words that I detected from the Minister regarding this Bill on family reunification—for codifying what is happening and giving people the legal right and assistance from legal aid, which is also in the Bill? That important part of it would enable the rights that hopefully the law would bring. I think the Minister is warm to it, at least.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a series of valuable points. In Scotland a degree of legal aid still is available to support these applications, which are not straightforward, as a recent report from the Red Cross made absolutely clear. Ensuring that those who need legal aid have access to it would be a hugely welcome development.

On another day we will debate our asylum system for those who seek protection once they are here. Suffice it to say that on the SNP Benches, we see massive scope for improvement. Regular reports are critical of asylum casework, with backlogs and under-resourcing contributing to poor decision making. The Compass contracts for housing are little short of a disgrace. Levels of support are shocking, the right to work is ludicrously restricted and the move-on period after a positive asylum decision is a shambles. In Scotland, we recently launched our second refugee integration strategy. The Welsh Government have one and it is now time for this Government to produce one. Talk of a two-tier asylum system must be shelved, as must dangerous talk of seeking to redefine the very concept of what it means to be a refugee.

The crisis is not going away anytime soon. As the motion says, conflict resolution must be central to our foreign policy. I highlight, for example, the Scottish Government initiative to train women from conflict zones around the world on peacekeeping and conflict resolution as the sort of initiative that Governments across these islands can take. And we have barely begun considering what climate change will mean for migratory flows. New Zealand is considering a humanitarian visa category for people displaced by climate change. That is the sort of conversation we will have to have here as well.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I neglected to say in my initial intervention—it is perhaps worth an intervention on its own—that my private Member’s Bill will be considered on 16 March. I encourage Members to be here to support it and constituents watching to write to their MPs to make sure that they are.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I hope we see a busy House on that date.

In conclusion, I wish to make one further point. Sometimes in these debates we speak as if hosting refugees is necessarily a hardship for our country. It is important to put it on the record, therefore, that, given the chance, refugees far more often go on to make incredibly positive contributions to their communities and new countries and to bring great joy to their new friends and adopted families.