Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Thangam Debbonaire and Stuart C McDonald

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter). I share her concerns about the Bill, and indeed about the process that we have undergone in scrutinising it.

I want to make three short points. The first and most important one is to try to encourage a little more interest in clauses 30 to 36 that relate to citizenship. They were touched on by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and the former Attorney General, but they are incredibly important and quite alarming. It might seem slightly odd for an SNP MP to be rushing to rescue the concept of British citizenship, but citizenship is vital. It is a source of stability and other rights. Deprivation of citizenship, or blocking people from citizenship, as in the Bill, is something that should be looked at closely and seriously.

Clause 30 is entitled

“Persons prevented from obtaining British citizenship etc”

and it sets all the alarm bells ringing. Subsection (4) states:

“A person (“P”) falls within this subsection if P was born in the United Kingdom on or after 7 March 2023, and either of P’s parents has ever (whether before or after P’s birth) met the four conditions in section 2.”

That unbelievably broad clause means that children, and indeed some adults, will face being blocked from accessing the right to British citizenship not because of their own actions, but because of the actions of their parents, potentially even decades ago. To me that is ludicrous overreach, even if someone is in the space of accepting the Government’s premise of deterrence. In many cases, it could be children born here. One parent could become a British citizen and still that child, born in Britain, could be deprived of their own British citizenship. Or that child could be born here and spend the first 10 years of their life here, and be deprived of their British citizenship just because of the actions of one of their parents, potentially many years previously. It could be a child brought here at a young age and whose entire life has been built here. Surely, even to the Bill’s most ardent supporters, depriving kids of British citizenship because of what one of their parents did is a step too far? That is absolutely wild, but that is precisely what clauses 30 to 36 do and that should be looked at again.

The second point I want to make is on the detention clauses. Like many Members have said today, fewer safeguards and protections with more detentions is another tragic and backward step. Other colleagues have set out most of the key concerns. I just want to repeat the point made on Second Reading and by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) today: any idea that the right of habeas corpus, or a petition to the nobile officium in Scotland, makes all of this fine is absolutely preposterous. These are much more limited procedures for challenging detention, confined to questions of authority to detain rather than errors in decision making. They are also infinitely less accessible and speedy compared with a bail application to the tribunal, especially for vulnerable people. This set of clauses is designed to stop people who should be freed from detention being able to secure their release from detention, and nothing else.

My third and final point relates to clause 4 and the permanent state of inadmissibility of claims. This is the problem at the heart of the Bill. It is a permanent ban on making certain claims, which our amendment 294 seeks to address. Permanent inadmissibility means that, over time, thousands of refugees and others who qualify for protection will be left in limbo, because the Government will not have the capacity to remove them all to Rwanda, but also, because of the Bill, quite simply will not be allowed to process and recognise their claims here. Refugees will end up spending year after year after year in hotels or in dismal former military barracks without any hope of being able to move on.

The penny that does not seem to have dropped right across the Committee is that it also means that many who are not refugees will also be left in limbo in the United Kingdom. Again, the Government will not have the capacity to remove them all to Rwanda and, because of this very Bill, the Government will not be able to remove them to their home countries. If you do not process their asylum claims, you cannot—with a few exceptions—remove the person to their home country. That is recognised in clause 5. So thousands of people will also be left in limbo forever. In fact, the Bill almost creates a perverse incentive. If you are an overstayer—one hon. Member spoke about overstayers—probably your best bet is to make an asylum claim and then be left in that permanent state of limbo. It is an absolutely mad Bill. It does not make any sense at all. That, I suspect, is why we have not seen the impact assessment—it will reveal most of that.

The Bill will not solve any backlog. The backlog is going to balloon. More people will be jammed into hotels and military barracks, not fewer. The backlog will essentially just be given a different name: inadmissibility. That is what the Bill achieves and nothing more. A different backlog and incredible cruelty—that is what the Bill is all about and that is all it is ever going to achieve if it is passed.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Sir Roger. I seek your guidance. The Bill is reaching the closing minutes of Committee stage. Last Thursday, in Business questions, the Leader of the House said in answer to my question as to the whereabouts of the Government’s impact assessment of the Bill:

“I have spoken to the Home Office about the impact assessment; it is quite right that we publish it before Committee stage.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 451.]

As the right hon. Lady has previously asserted her strong support for Parliament to have impact assessments in order for colleagues on all sides to scrutinise any Government properly, and I know her to be a woman of her word, I am baffled. I am sure it could not possibly be that the Government have found the impact to be the £3 billion cost to the taxpayer that the Refugee Council found. Sir Roger, could you tell me of any mechanism I can employ, even now, in these closing minutes, to enable, encourage or merely exhort the Minister to publish the Government’s impact assessments?

Immigration

Debate between Thangam Debbonaire and Stuart C McDonald

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I do not know whether she is planning to contribute to the debate; if so, she can speak more about that.

Thirdly, our immigration detention system remains outrageously bloated, and detention without time limit makes the UK an outlier in Europe. We detain too many people for too long, including many vulnerable adults, such as torture survivors, who should never be detained at all. It is a national scandal and an affront to the rule of law, as myriad reports have shown. We have had some small forward steps from the current Home Office team, but also some missteps. We need radical reform so that detention is a matter of absolute last resort and not routine.

Fourthly, there is our asylum system, which could command a whole debate in itself. There can be few areas that require as big an overhaul. We need to ensure better-quality decisions and proper financial support. We must support the wonderful coalition urging the Government to lift the ban on asylum seekers working. We need a better managed move-on period and properly accountable and funded systems of accommodation. We need a caseworking system so that we are never left with dreadful mass evictions like those we look set to see in Glasgow.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent series of points, particularly now that he has come on to the asylum system, which is a subject close to my heart. Does he agree that if we want to show the world that we are truly an outward-facing, internationalist country—as I believe everyone in this House would agree we are; it is part of our values—then the asylum system is in urgent need of reform to make sure that refugees are truly welcome, and to live up to the findings of the Home Office’s own recently published report on refugee integration? There is a lot we could do right now. Even in the next three weeks, we could make it possible for asylum seekers to work after six months.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

There is a host of opportunities to improve the asylum system. Only last week, we debated refugee family reunion rules. We have already passed on Second Reading a Bill to change those rules, yet it has been held up in the system, thanks to the Government.

I have briefly mentioned four issues, but there are a million others that other Members of Parliament will touch on, such as visas for religious workers, visit visas, lack of appeal rights, lack of legal aid, the complexities of the tier 2 system, visas for fishing vessels, visas for agricultural workers—and so on and so forth. The truth is that our immigration and asylum systems are truly in a mess.

That brings me on to the Government’s proposals for our future immigration system—their White Paper. Next to none of these issues is addressed in the White Paper at all. The bit of the immigration system that is a disaster is the bit that is being left largely unreformed. In fact, it is being rolled out so as to apply to EU nationals in future. The one bit of the immigration system that works perfectly well—free movement of people—is being annihilated. The Government have their priorities completely the wrong way round. I love free movement and my party is passionate about its benefits. We deeply regret that these amazing rights are in danger of coming to an end. All the evidence is that it is beneficial economically—for growth, for productivity and for public finances. In Scotland, in particular, it has transformed our demographic outlook. From a country of net emigration, we are now a country of positive in-migration. We have benefited hugely culturally and socially.

Of course, the quid pro quo is that we will lose our free movement rights too. I have benefited from free movement, as I know many Members in the Chamber have. I regret that this Government want to prevent future generations from enjoying the enormous benefits that so many of us have enjoyed. People did not vote to end free movement, contrary to what the Prime Minister says. This is the Prime Minister’s red line, not the people’s. Simply repeating ad nauseam that we are “taking back control of our borders” is not an argument and it is not leadership. Real leadership is looking at the evidence and saying that free movement is an enormous benefit that we should treasure and keep.

We welcome the gradual change in approach from the Home Secretary towards one-size-fits-all migration policy making. We welcome his announcement that the proposed new £30,000 threshold will be reviewed, including the possibility of regional and sub-state variations within the UK. However, I must emphasise that this is just a small start—baby steps. There are so many other features of the proposed new immigration system that are causing huge concern. Scotland’s economy relies disproportionately on small and medium-sized enterprises. The tier 2 system is not designed for SMEs. Its bureaucracy and expense make it inaccessible for many businesses, which therefore instead recruit from the EU if they cannot do so locally. Reducing the threshold does not fix that; it simply means businesses jumping through administrative hoops and expense simply to recruit workers they could previously have recruited under free movement.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the work done by Hope not Hate and British Future establishes that the British people are behind what he is arguing for? Most people actually value immigration; they just want a system that is fair, accountable and transparent. That is what I believe all of us here would want.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I think that all sensible people would be behind the arguments I am making.

The other point about reducing the threshold is that it does not fix the fundamental problem that ending free movement risks a demographic time bomb for Scotland, with implications for its workforce, its economy and its public finances. The Scottish Government have proposed ways in which additional Scottish visas can help to play a part in addressing that, learning from systems such as the Canadian system. I want the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister to engage constructively with those proposals. But ultimately the best answer to the challenges Scotland faces is continued free movement.

We need to recognise that under the outgoing Prime Minister, migration policy has gone horribly wrong. The current Home Secretary accepts that the net migration target was wrong. The High Court says that key planks of the hostile environment were discriminatory and unjustified. Let us ditch both. Let us learn from the past and not repeat these mistakes, particularly regarding the 3 million. If the new system is to work for all of the UK, it will have to include different rules for different parts of it. Let us seize this opportunity to turn over an entirely new leaf on immigration and asylum policy.

Asylum Accommodation

Debate between Thangam Debbonaire and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 14th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I appreciate your calling me so early in the debate. It is with great pleasure that I follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). I congratulate her and her Committee on an excellent piece of work, which highlights a problem that should concern all of us, because in truth it affects all of us. We all, as taxpayers, pay for asylum accommodation, and we should all therefore, as taxpayers, be concerned about its quality.

The Home Affairs Committee has done the Government a great service in highlighting some of the problems with some of the accommodation. My right hon. Friend has been incredibly fair and patient in stating quite clearly that not all the accommodation is bad, and that some is of a different standard. The Committee has been thorough in its recommendations and I urge the Minister to revisit them, because they are very clear and some of them are worthy of again receiving proper scrutiny.

I speak as the Member for the constituency of Bristol West, where we have asylum seeker accommodation, but also as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees. Earlier this year, the APPG published a report, “Refugees Welcome?”, which is about refugee integration. I am grateful that the Minister read that report and met me to discuss some of its findings. I am grateful to him for giving that time, but I want to remind him of some of the findings relating to accommodation.

The Home Affairs Committee referred to the Government’s review of

“the 28-day grace period for people granted refugee status and the Department of Work and Pensions’ ability to manage applications for support from people transferring out of the asylum system.”

I discussed that with the Minister, and he was keen to address it, so I welcome the comment in the Government’s response to the report that the Home Office has worked with the Department for Work and Pensions to establish a new process to address that. I will be grateful if the Minister updated us on how that process is progressing, particularly in relation to the issuing of national insurance numbers. That relates to accommodation, because refugees told us during our inquiry that they had difficulties if their 28-day move-on period, when they have to move out of their accommodation, was over before their national insurance numbers had arrived. Refugees spoke to me about having to try to hang around outside the accommodation they had previously lived at in order to wait for the postman to arrive, but not being able to take the post off them because that is not allowed. Those things were problems and continue to be, and they are related to accommodation and having to move out of it.

Our recommendation was that the 28-day move-on period should be extended. I understand why the Minister does not want to do that, but our counter-recommendation is therefore that, if we are going to stick to 28 days, that 28 days has to work. It has to mean that a national insurance number and a biometric residence permit are with that person in their asylum seeker accommodation on the day that they receive refugee status, otherwise we will create further problems for refugees down the line.

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

Does the hon. Lady agree that there will be significant problems owing to the roll out of universal credit, given the long waiting times involved in applying for that benefit?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I completely agree, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point for me, because universal credit is a great concern. Again, I am grateful to the Minister for having allowed me to discuss that with him. I understand that the Government are trying to push the idea that nobody should be out of pocket because they can get an advance, but an advance is a loan. Refugees, by definition, do not usually have other family members to call on who have other funds that they can draw down. They are going to struggle, particularly if they have the compounding problems of a long wait for the first proper payment to come in and a 28-day move-on period, which means they will have often left the accommodation from which they made the application before that has been sorted out. The 28-day period does not marry up with the wait for universal credit, so yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

My experience of some asylum seeker accommodation in my constituency—not all—and the evidence that the Home Affairs Committee has presented makes it hard for me to see why many refugees would feel welcome. The question in the title of our APPG’s report, “Refugees Welcome?”, would have to be answered: maybe not all the time. This is a fixable problem. I reiterate that, as taxpayers, we should be concerned when our money is paying for accommodation to protect people who have the legal right to apply for asylum in this country, but that accommodation is costing us a lot of money and is not fit for purpose. I urge the Government to revisit the Committee’s recommendations.

We have some fantastic organisations in Bristol West working with refugees, with some great volunteers and paid staff alike who are going the extra mile to help people to integrate and cope with often very difficult and unsatisfactory accommodation that sometimes just about meets the Home Office’s key performance indicators but really skirts up against the edges.

On visits that I made following the publication of the Home Affairs Committee report and during the course of the APPG on refugees inquiry, I came across accommodation where there are serious problems. I contacted Clearsprings, which is the provider in my area, to ask if I could make an announced visit. I wanted to give the provider a chance to show me its best stuff. The Clearsprings manager who took me round some of the accommodation—some of which I had seen before—did, to be fair, show me a mixture. Some of it was adequate—I would not call it great, but it was adequate—but some of it was not. I was concerned that action was taken only when an MP intervened and said to the Clearsprings manager, “This draught here, this rotten window frame, this problem here, which has clearly been a problem for the tenant for some time, needs to be fixed.” What about all the people in other accommodation—accommodation that we are paying for—that is substandard, unhealthy and unlikely to make refugees feel welcome or in any way integrated, and gives very bad value for money? An MP cannot intervene every step of the way. I am really concerned about that.

I saw some accommodation in which damp or heating were really problematic. In one home where a family was living, the mum had a very serious long-term health condition. Having a damp, underheated or difficult-to-heat home was making life miserable for her and severely impeding her chances of a safe recovery from that serious illness. Her husband was terribly upset by the fact that he felt he was failing to care for his wife at a time of serious illness. To be frank, the house was unheatable due to the fact that it had not been maintained.

I believe that home was unsuitable for long-term use, but the family had been there for a long time because their case had been deemed complex—or non-straightforward, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said. That particularly worried me because children were living in some of the accommodation that was supposed to be temporary. I applaud the Home Office’s determination to stick to the six-month turnaround time, but once we have gone beyond that because a case is complex, people are still living in accommodation that is supposed to be temporary and is anyway substandard. There are real questions as to what we are doing to people who have fled war and conflict and to whom we have a legal obligation.