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

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

Q Will the Bill give us the power to do that more?

David Goodhart: It will make flows more predictable, because they will be under our control. If, as I was saying right at the beginning, it turns out that the system is, in a sense, too liberal, it can be made less liberal and the numbers can be brought down, because people coming in need to have a visa; they are not coming in willy-nilly.

This also has an impact on the integration story. If your immigration going forward is overwhelmingly skilled workers and students—there will still be areas like asylum where this does not count—you are talking about mainly highly skilled people who will, at the very least, speak English well, which is a pretty important thing when it comes to integration.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Q My first question is to British Future. You said earlier that the public’s biggest concern in immigration is ensuring that they are treated fairly. Do you believe that the Bill will allow EU citizens to be treated fairly?

Jill Rutter: This is very much a skeleton Bill, and most immigration policy is determined in immigration rules. It is an issue in itself in that there have been thousands and thousands of immigration rule changes since 2010. The rules are presented to Parliament, which can only accept or reject them. No MP—even those well versed in immigration policy—can keep up with all the changes in the rules. We need to think about root-and branch-immigration reform. I do not think the current commission on simplifying the immigration rules will come up with the answer.

Perhaps we should look at what social security does. Social security is another complex area where most policy is determined in secondary legislation. There is the Social Security Advisory Committee—independent experts who scrutinise the law and make recommendations in plain English to Parliament—but we need a proper system of scrutiny. I cannot really answer your question about the Bill itself, because most of what will happen will be determined in either the rules or the operation of immigration law in the Home Office.

The last thing to say is that you cannot have an efficient immigration system on the cheap. Britain does very well in the speed at which it processes visas and citizenship cases compared with many other countries, but it performs badly when it comes to asylum cases. We need a properly resourced Home Office and for staff to be trained and supported, too.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Q Given that the Bill will affect a large number of EU nationals living in the UK, how can the Government ensure that those affected are aware about the effects of the Bill on their daily lives?

Jill Rutter: The Government have invested quite a lot in terms of informing people about the EU settlement scheme. However, that information campaign needs to be extended, particularly when we come close to the cut-off date, and it must be methodical. There should be an information campaign, but we should also use employers and councils, people who actually have contact with EU citizens, to disseminate information. Employers could do a lot with their work force.

David Goodhart: May I make a point on this? One thing the Government should be looking out for down the road is that it is almost certainly the case that a few thousand people, possibly even tens of thousands of people, will not be captured by the EU registration scheme for whatever reason. The truth is that we are going to have a de facto amnesty for those people. That sets a precedent, and I imagine there will be all sorts of challenges, in that people representing the interests of non-EU illegal immigrants are going to say, “Well, these people are in effect illegal now, and yet you’re giving them an amnesty. What about us?” There are estimated to be about 1 million illegal immigrants in this country, so there is a potentially a legal minefield ahead of us on that one.

[The Chair]

Right. I think that ends our session. Thank you very much to our witnesses for coming and giving your evidence. We are very grateful.

Examination of Witnesses

Bella Sankey and Adrian Berry gave evidence.