Nationality and Borders Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I am not going to get drawn into listing all other possible exemptions to removal in that way, but I set out on Report that, for example, family groups would not be separated, because that would clearly not be in accordance with our international obligations. Clearly, much will depend on the particular circumstances of the countries we are working with. We always work in the asylum system and in the immigration space on a case-by-case basis, but I want to assure hon. Members that we will continue to uphold our international obligations and ensure that any removal is compliant with our obligations under the refugee convention and article 3 of the European convention on human rights, which protects against torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.

I am aware that there has been speculation recently about the potential costs of, and possible locations for, overseas asylum claim processing. I cannot give a running commentary on negotiations, nor share information that could tie the hands of the negotiators. I only say again that the provisions are an essential part of the suite of measures that we are introducing to deliver our objective of discouraging unwanted behaviours, such as making unnecessary and dangerous journeys, and we therefore cannot agree to the amendments.

Amendment 10 creates a more generous approach on family reunion for those who are already in Europe, which we do not consider fair. There is already generous provision in our rules for family reunion, under which more than 40,000 people have been reunited with family members in the UK since 2015. This is a single global approach to family reunion, which does not encourage what are often dangerous journeys into Europe, facilitated by smugglers and traffickers. We therefore cannot support the amendment. Similarly, amendment 11 would commit the UK to resettling at least 10,000 refugees each year.

Our view has long been that the number of refugees and people in need of protection that we resettle each year must be based on our capacity, our assessment of the international situation and our ability to care for people properly when they come to the UK. I understand that hon. Members are seeking assurances that our doors will remain open to those in need, but I respectfully suggest that what is really needed to deliver refugee resettlement is not a number but an approach—an approach that is compassionate and flexible. That is exactly what the Government are delivering through our new plan for immigration.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Coming back to amendment 10, which the Minister is grouping together, he just said that we already have a very generous family reunion scheme, but is it not the case that our current family reunion scheme is considerably less generous than the Dublin III arrangements we had pre-Brexit? If we are genuinely to accommodate a lot of children who have lost their parents and for whom their last surviving relative may be an aunt, uncle, brother or sister who has made it legally to the UK, we need to expand the scheme.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. This is an area that he is very passionate about and has a considerable knowledge of. He will recognise that we have a global approach to family reunion, which is an important distinction when compared with Dublin III. It would be useful for us as Ministers to meet him, as a former Children’s Minister, to discuss his ideas. As I say, I know he takes a passionate and keen interest in these matters. Family reunion is something we continue to be committed to. As I said in my opening remarks on the situation in Ukraine, it is an area where, for example in response to that crisis, we are constantly reviewing what we can do to assist with that issue and challenge. The Dnipro Kids situation illustrates the work we are doing in that space. Of course, there has to be agreement with the Ukrainian Government and the Polish Government to progress on that, but it shows the pragmatic approach we are willing to take on these matters to be responsive to crises as they arise and to ensure that we do our bit to try to support those children wherever we can.

I do not wish to detain the House for longer than necessary, but I think it would be helpful for me to set out the safe and legal routes that we have to the UK. The UK resettlement scheme, which was launched in February 2021, prioritises the resettlement of refugees, including children, in regions of conflict and instability. The number of refugees we resettle each year depends on a variety of factors, including local authorities’ capacity to support refugees and the number of community groups willing to take part. There were 1,131 refugees resettled in the UK through that scheme in the year ending December 2021.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are many dreadful aspects to the whole story, but the impact on children who are utterly innocent and deserve nothing but our compassion and care, but who are not being treated with either of those values and principles, should make the Government hang their head in shame.

[Tim Loughton]

I completely agree that the situation with boats coming across the channel is wholly unsatisfactory, but the hon. Gentleman has just accused the Government of failing to engage satisfactorily with the French authorities. Giving £54 million to the French to do something about this; making constant requests, which have been rebuffed, for meetings with the French Interior Minister and others—where have the Government not tried to engage constructively? How would the hon. Gentleman’s party have engaged constructively? What are his practical suggestions to do something about this, rather than the grandstanding that he does every time he is at the Dispatch Box?

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[Stephen Kinnock]

I congratulate and pay tribute to my hon. Friend and other colleagues who have led a passionate and powerful campaign on this issue. There are 324,963 signatures to a petition about clause 9, and I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned on it. We will be voting for Lords amendment 4 today.

[Tim Loughton]

At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, I asked him what practical solutions his party had put forward, particularly to combat the journeys across the channel. He has skipped through a great many Lords amendments, in each case opposing Government suggestions and putting nothing in their place. May I give him one final opportunity, before he sits down, to tell us what practical measures his party is proposing to deal with the illegal and dangerous boats coming across the channel? So far, he has not come up with a single practical suggestion.

[Stephen Kinnock]

We are supporting every one of these amendments, almost all of which contain practical suggestions. That is the policy of the Labour Front Bench. On the broader point, one thing we would do is not have a party leader who regularly and consistently insults our democratic partners and allies. On that basis, we would negotiate a successor to Dublin and get constructive engagement with the French on security in relation to people smugglers. This is about grown-up politics, as I am sure the hon. Member would agree.

I would like to end by paying tribute to the noble Lords and Baronesses Coaker, Stroud, Lister, D’Souza, Rosser, Judge, Pannick, Kerr, Kirkhope, Dubs, Alton, Neuburger and Ritchie for working cross-party in such a constructive and effective way to win so many votes in the other place. Let me be clear: this Bill reflects and represents a catalogue of failure on immigration policy and a combination of incompetence and indifference from a Government who are presiding over a system that is neither fair, compassionate nor orderly. It is a desperate attempt to distract from the Home Secretary’s failings, and it solves none of the challenges our immigration system faces. We know that many Members on the Government Benches are deeply uncomfortable with the content of this legislation. The British people want and deserve an asylum and immigration system that is fair, compassionate and orderly. Today, Members on the Government Benches can stand up for decency by joining us in the Division Lobby later this afternoon. Let us hope that they will do so.

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[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

The Bill is anti-refugee to its core. It lacks basic humanity and represents an acceleration of the Government’s deeply damaging demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers. Its callousness has been further illuminated by the situation in Ukraine. The Government must provide safe passage and refuge for displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers arriving from Ukraine and all theatres of conflict around the globe.

The outpouring of compassion and solidarity for people fleeing Ukraine has been inspiring, yet when we contrast that to how asylum seekers from non-European and non-majority white countries are treated by the Government, a worrying picture emerges of the inherent racism in how crises are reported, discussed and responded to. The sorrow and despair that we all feel for Ukraine should be identical to the sorrow and despair that we feel for Yemen, Palestine and Syria. The media class and the Government must recognise that every conflict is deserving of our solidarity and our compassion, so the UK must not only rapidly extend its support for people fleeing Ukraine but abandon its unbelievably callous refugee and asylum policy—starting by ripping up this Bill.

Many of the Lords amendments would improve the Bill. I especially support Lords amendment 4, which removes the licence given to the Home Secretary to deprive British people of their citizenship without informing them. I also support Lords amendment 5, which seeks to ensure that the Bill does not violate the UK’s shared international obligations under the refugee convention. Lords amendment 6, which removes from the Bill the power given to the Home Secretary to treat people differently according to the way that they arrive and claim asylum, must also be adopted to prevent a two-tier system that would limit protection for refugees due not to their need but to their method of travel.

I also support Lords amendment 7 on permission to work, yet I believe the six-month limit should be lifted and that people claiming asylum should be able to work regardless of how long they have been in our country. Lords amendments 8 and 9 are steps in the right direction, yet they do not go far enough to prevent asylum seekers from being transferred to other countries and processed offshore. Lords amendment 10, which would introduce a family reunion provision, is important, yet we must accept all people fleeing war, persecution and other horrors, not only those with family ties in the UK. I wholeheartedly support Lords amendment 54, which prohibits the use of new maritime powers contained in schedule 6 in ways that would endanger life at sea. That is an abhorrent proposal and we must fight tooth and nail against its ever being implemented.

Overall, although the Lords amendments improve important aspects, they do not go nearly far enough to rectify this irredeemable Bill. Time and again, the Government have chosen to turn their back on those seeking protection from war, torture or other awful acts. The Bill will compound the misery of people fleeing intolerable conditions. It must be scrapped.

[Tim Loughton]

I welcome the Bill, although not without reservation. The ridiculous caricature that we just heard from the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) and from other Opposition Members helps absolutely nobody.

I very much welcome the offer to meet the Minister on my issue of family reunion. I welcome the flexibility that he and other Ministers have shown on the We Belong campaign by young people who have been in this country for many years and whose wish to become officially British will at last be speeded up. I do not welcome the litany of constant carping from Opposition Members, who have not offered a single practical solution to the serious problems that we are facing, particularly in the channel. They have had every opportunity to do so and they have failed on every occasion.

I support Lords amendment 7—I said that my support for the Bill was not without reservation—and I think there is merit in the six-month campaign. There is a waste of talent that is left in limbo in this country that we could put to good use. I also welcome Lords amendment 12—the genocide amendment—and the good work done on it by Lord Alton. As somebody who has been sanctioned by China for my support of the recognition of genocide, I would be expected to support that.

I will concentrate on Lords amendment 10—the so-called Dubs amendment. I have form in this area, and I am afraid that the family reunion scheme needs to be much better. The Minister said that there is already generous provision in our rules for refugee family reunion, and 40,000 people have benefited from that, but only since 2015 or over seven years. The Home Secretary did say some time ago that she wanted to see a generous equivalent replacement for Dublin III as we came beyond Brexit. I want to hold her to that promise, but I fear what is contained in the Bill does not hold water.

The Dubs amendment would expand family reunion so that unaccompanied children in Europe can easily join family members in the UK, such as their grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings. At the moment, however, the UK’s refugee family reunion rules only cover children trying to reunite with their parents in the UK as long as a parent has refugee status or humanitarian protection, and the child was born before their parents fled the country of origin. This rule is limited so that it excludes most unaccompanied children and prevents them from uniting with family.

For some children, these are their closest surviving relatives. They may be aunts and uncles because they have lost their parents in a place of war. Refugees may have lost their parents before they left their country or on their journey to sanctuary, and siblings in this country may be the only link they have. We have seen the horrendous pictures from Lesbos of the camps there containing many unaccompanied children, where there are fires, predators and other dangers, and those are the young people we really should be concentrating on rescuing. In refusing one case, the Home Office said:

“You currently live in a shelter for unaccompanied minors… I note you have provided no evidence why this arrangement cannot continue”.

That is not a permanent solution.

The Government have also argued that there is discretion to allow family reunion outside the rules in certain circumstances, but it is not right that children who had a clear official route to safety and family reunion under the EU’s Dublin III regulation are now reliant on Government discretion. This discretion is rarely exercised, and the very few cases actually granted outside the rules are mainly done so only on appeal, which requires legal assistance. At best, children are left waiting months alone and separated from family, and at worst, they are prevented from safely joining loved ones at all.

I call on the Government to make good on the promises given by the Home Secretary as we moved out of the Dublin III regulation post Brexit. There has been a long hiatus, but we need to put that right and that is why I support Lords amendment 10 in doing that.

[Janet Daby]

I am grateful to be able to speak in this debate. Many amendments were passed in the other place, but for the sake of time, I will focus on Lords amendments 4, 9, 10 and 13.

I am pleased that Lords amendment 4 deletes clause 9, which I have spoken about before. Clause 9 is one of the most chilling parts of the Bill. I have had countless people write to me about this since the Government brought this Bill to Parliament. It would allow the Secretary of State to deprive a person of their British citizenship without notice, and it is right that the Lords chose to remove the clause entirely from the Bill.

Lords amendment 9 would stop overseas asylum processing. We have seen that this type of system is ineffective, inhumane and too expensive. As we have already heard from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and other Opposition Members, in Australia the offshore processing cost is estimated to be Aus $1 billion a year to deal with 300 migrants. I would like to add my voice to this by saying that I do not think it is in our country’s best interest to have overseas asylum processing.

On Lords amendment 10, Britain has a proud history of offering sanctuary to vulnerable unaccompanied children, but the Government ended the Dubs scheme and have not replaced it. I was proud that, last year, Lewisham Council was the first borough in the UK to be formally recognised for its work by becoming a borough of sanctuary. I encourage all boroughs to be boroughs of sanctuary, and I also thank all families across our countries for offering Ukrainian families a home.

In contrast, the Government are ignoring the treacherous journeys that these desperate people are making. Without safe, legal routes for family reunion, unaccompanied children are making the most dangerous journeys. The Government would be better targeting the traffickers, rather than the victims, if they want to stop people making these treacherous journeys. This amendment is therefore vital because it imposes a duty on the Government to allow unaccompanied children to be admitted to the UK.

I will end on Lords amendment 13. In the other place, Labour rightly voiced concerns that clause 39 would criminalise everyone who arrives in the UK to claim asylum. The clause will have wider implications for all asylum seekers, not only people making irregular channel crossings. It is time the Government recognised that they need to treat refugees humanely, not as a problem they need to solve by criminalising them.

Can the Minister therefore answer me this? If a Ukrainian family enters the UK without a visa in the hope of being granted asylum, will the Government’s proposal mean they are guilty of a criminal offence punishable by up to four years in prison? If so, it is ridiculous that we could be imprisoning people for fleeing a war started by Vladimir Putin—or any other war or natural disaster, for that matter.