EU Settlement Scheme: Looked-after Children and Care Leavers

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Westminster Hall

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

Thank you very much, Mr Bone, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to be back and to serve under your chairmanship.

This debate is on a subject that I fear might be slightly overshadowed by other events in Parliament today and for the rest of the week, but it is no less important in the impact that it could have on a small group of very vulnerable children, and it is absolutely right that we should be considering it. I congratulate my co-applicant for this debate, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), on the way he set out the case and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate on the first day back.

I welcome the new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy), and I hope that we will have as positive an engagement with her on these sorts of issues as we had with her predecessors. In the past, I had many discussions with those predecessors, and they recognised some of the practical implications of immigration policy on some of the most vulnerable children to whom we provide a home in this country. I am sure that dialogue will continue with the new Minister and I look forward to that.

In this country we have a great tradition of looking after children in the care system. There has been gradual progress on improving outcomes, but we need to go an awful lot further. Nevertheless, this is something that we in this country do well. One only has to go to a number of other countries that just do not have the sort of sophisticated and advanced children’s social care system that we take for granted, even with all the problems that we hear about, to realise that it is still one of the best such systems in the world.

Of course, we also have a great and proud record of giving safe refuge to vulnerable families and children from overseas, particularly unaccompanied minors fleeing from the most unimaginable danger, and it is absolutely right that we should continue to do that. Our recent record of helping those very vulnerable children from Syria and other conflict zones who have lost family, which includes participation in the family reunion schemes that I will allude to shortly, is certainly one that we should be very proud of.

I will just refer to the correspondence that the Home Affairs Committee had with the previous Home Secretary, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not think we take credit for this enough, but under the Dublin scheme there has been a significant increase in recent years in the number of children arriving in the UK to be reunited with members of their family who are already here. In 2015, just 24 children arrived in the UK under articles 8.1 and 8.2 of the Dublin regulation, but by 2018—last year —that figure had risen to 159.

It is also important that we are looking after those children appropriately, so I was pleased to hear from the Home Secretary that the Home Office, in partnership with the Department for Education, had developed and adapted its processes to ensure that Dublin transfers are conducted in a safe and secure way, and that there are new processes in place now that were not there just a few years ago.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman is right that Dublin has helped us to support some of the most vulnerable children in our communities. Does he share my grave concern about the reports that if there is a no-deal Brexit, that scheme will be abandoned, and about what that means for the children we already have in this country and indeed for some of the vulnerable children who we know may try to get safe passage to this country? Does he agree that it is important to protect Dublin and the principles that it espouses in terms of our ability to safeguard children in our own country?

[Tim Loughton]

I appreciate that very important point. It has been the subject of some of the discussions we have had with previous Home Secretaries. We have discussed not only what happens if there is a no-deal scenario but what happens if there is an agreement. If there is an agreement, the terms that should apply to children seeking to be reunited with families need to be at least as generous as those under the Dublin scheme, because under our domestic terms a range of family members are not included. We need to overhaul our own laws and increase the flexibility with which we can take on unaccompanied children who seek to be united with relatives who are often distant relatives but are nevertheless the only remaining members of their family, such has been the danger and the terror that they have had to escape from.

So, whatever happens in the next few weeks and months and goodness knows when, this issue needs to be looked at separately. As I say, I have had very positive discussions. When I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have approached the Home Secretary before, having been on trips to Greece with UNICEF to see some of the children who are applying for these schemes, we have had a very positive response and I very much hope that that will continue under new Ministers within the Home Office. But the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) makes a very pertinent point. Therefore, whatever happens, we need clarification under Dublin.

However, there is a problem closer to home, which is what we are discussing today, as a direct result of Brexit. It has not received the level of attention that many other aspects of the immigration scheme have, and it is a cause for concern. I have an interest in it, both as a former children’s Minister, and as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for children and vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for looked-after children and care leavers, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak very admirably chairs. These sorts of issues come up with the children who we see.

As we know, the EU settlement registration scheme aims to establish the immigration status of EU citizens legally residing in the UK after we have left the EU. It grants settled or pre-settled status, with rights to work, travel, use public services, access public benefits and so on. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is the largest registration system ever planned in the UK. It has been a huge challenge and not without its problems, certainly early on. It needs to progress smoothly, to avoid another Windrush scandal, which has been mentioned. It has been subject to a lot of scrutiny and some criticism by the Home Affairs Committee, which I sit on. We produced a report in May on the scheme. In fact, we will take evidence again tomorrow—with the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) there, too—on how our preparedness for Brexit has hopefully improved since we last heard from witnesses on this subject.

Over a million people have now registered under that scheme; I gather that nobody has been refused. I myself have had just one complaint from constituents about the way it works, so things are better, if still not ideal.

[Kate Green]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that many people have been able to access the scheme successfully and it has been very helpful that the Home Office has begun to publish the data on the number of people going through the scheme. However, does he agree that we need one particular piece of data to be disentangled, which is in relation to 16 to 18-year-olds going through the scheme? Currently, they are being included in the number of adults going through the scheme, but nowhere in our law is a 16 or 17-year-old treated as an adult.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; in fact, she has pre-empted what I will now not bother to say later. As she says, 16 and 17-year-olds have been assimilated with adults, but children in this country are those under the age of 18. So, it is absolutely essential that that definition is applied to all children, not least those most vulnerable of children. And as a result of schemes such as Staying Put, what is effectively the definition of the children who come within that remit will expand to include those aged up to 21, 23 and even 25 in the case of some, including those children with disabilities. Therefore, those figures that she referred to absolutely need to be disassembled, because these children are probably the largest group within the cohort that we are talking about today.

The Children’s Society has been very vociferous on the issue that we are considering today and it has done a lot of work on it; I pay tribute to that work, and the Children’s Society has also helped us to prepare for this debate. It has made a calculation—it is not about children in care, but it allows us to put things in context—that between the end of August 2018 and the end of June this year, 107,110 children under the age of 16 applied to the EU settlement scheme. So far, 86% of those children have had a conclusion to their application; 65% have got settled status and 35% have got pre-settled status; 180 applications were withdrawn, or were void or invalid; and no applications have been refused. However, that still leaves 14,510 children, who are presumably waiting for their applications to be concluded. So there is also a group of children coming through the normal scheme who are slightly in limbo.

Again, the whole point about the 16 and 17-year-olds is that we do not know how that group is broken down. So I repeat the call from the Children’s Society to see the ages of applicants broken down further, so that under-18s—as well as 18 to 25-year-olds, who are another potentially vulnerable subset of children not of “child age” but who are equally important and vulnerable—can be properly identified and, as a result, supported.

The Children’s Society also says:

“Additionally, only 12% of the applications to the EU Settlement Scheme have come from children aged under 16. But analysis from the Migration Observatory suggests that there were 700,000 EU children under 18 in the UK in 2018, meaning hundreds of thousands of children may still need to apply for settled status or secure British citizenship. If they do not, they risk being left without a lawful status in the UK which means being unable to access education, employment, healthcare, housing and other vital services.”

Therefore, this is still a big problem for those children in the care system and for those who, though not looked after, are unaccounted for in the applications that have come through so far. There is still an awful lot of work to do.

That group of up to about 5,000 looked-after children who will need to apply to the EU settlement scheme does not include care leavers—some of whom may be subject to “staying put” arrangements and other special support measures—or children who are classified as in need and who receive support services and vital help from local authority children’s services departments. That figure represents something like 6% of all children in care in this country—five years ago it was 3%, so there has been a rapid increase. Those individuals are an important part of the looked-after children estate and potentially some of the most problematic children to identify, support and register.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak mentioned, it is a sad fact of life that children in the care system are still much too disproportionately represented in the youth justice system. Many are victims of people traffickers, many have English as a second language, and many rely on being able to access benefits and other support that we take for granted. Our children’s services departments are hugely overstretched, and the all-party parliamentary group for children has recently produced a number of reports on the issue.

I welcome hugely the announcement of an additional £14 billion for schools. I hope it will be confirmed tomorrow in the comprehensive spending review, although goodness knows what will happen tomorrow. It will be very well received, particularly in my part of the world of Sussex and other shire counties, but I want to ensure that children’s social care services are not excluded. Those services are within the remit of the Department for Education and have faced huge funding challenges, yet it is the local authority departments that provide them that will be responsible for looking out for these children, for identifying and registering them, and for the legal expertise for cases that are not as straightforward as those involving other children. For example, if children are here with a French or German family, they will be able to make the application on their behalf.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic and well-informed speech. Of the £14 billion going to education, £2 billion is due to go to Scotland, where the issue is devolved. I am concerned about how central Government will work with devolved and local government to ensure that no EU citizen, and certainly no child in care, is left behind, and I hope the Minister will clarify that in her closing speech. Scotland has only about 8% of the UK population but about 14% of the UK’s children in care. That is a problem for us, and every single level of government needs to work together to ensure that no one is left behind.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Although we are talking primarily about the looked-after children population in England and Wales, there is a particular issue in Scotland. I had not realised that the proportion was that high. It is really important that money going into education, which is also for the wider benefit of children in the social care system, is targeted at those children who need it most. If the issue is not dealt with, the problem in Scotland could be greater even than that in England and Wales. I hope that the Minister and the Scottish Administration are listening to my hon. Friend’s case.

Many of the children in this potentially most problematic group will have come here in difficult circumstances and gone into care, and it is highly likely that they lack birth certificates and passports and will find it difficult to prove their length of stay in the UK. They may have been moved around the whole system, as so often happens. Yet these children—I repeat that they are children—are expected to produce documentation in order to qualify under the scheme, even though they may not have that documentation. Moreover, the local authorities responsible for them could face huge challenges and detective work, requiring their buying in legal expertise and acting as advocates at a time when they are already hard pressed to look after the record number of children from the indigenous population who have recently entered the care system.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak pre-empted what I was going to say about the citizenship fees, which have been flagged up by the Select Committee on Home Affairs. The increase in fees over recent years, at all levels, has been extravagant, to put it mildly—the fees go well beyond recovering the cost of the service offered. In the past, it was always the principle that the charge should be equivalent to the cost of recovery, not that it should exceed it in order to subsidise services elsewhere in the Home Office. It is difficult to justify the high fee of £1,012 for a child to whom we have given safety and refuge. In most cases the cost will come out of local authority budgets—namely, children’s social care budgets, which are already greatly pressed—meaning less money to spend on social workers and on care placings for other children. Mr Bone, I should have mentioned my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Before I conclude with my asks, I wish to reinforce what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said about the situation of children coming over from France. There has been recent correspondence between the previous Home Secretary—my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid)—and the Home Affairs Committee, because we were concerned about what was happening to children in very vulnerable and dangerous situations in some of the camps in France, in particular those with a claim to come to the UK through the family reunion and other schemes, the processing of which seems to be taking an interminably long time. Part of the reason for that, as I found out when I went to Greece, is that, while potential candidates are lined up by charities and authorities, the process relies on social workers back in the UK doing the investigative work to ensure that the placements properly take care of the children’s welfare. However, due to the current recruitment situation, social workers are being pulled in all directions.

The previous Home Secretary provided some reassurance in his letter:

“I am pleased to confirm that the vast majority of the cases involving children in France awaiting transfer to the UK have been resolved, with many of the children having already transferred, under either the Dublin III Regulation…or section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, or shortly about to; others are pursuing their asylum claim in France.”

These are some of the most vulnerable children and, frankly, if they were in camps outside Dover our local authority children’s services departments and our Government would have taken care of them. It is extraordinary that that has not happened in other countries. I am pleased that we have now accelerated the process to ensure that those who qualify are brought to a place of safety.

In conclusion, I have two asks. The first is that automatic settled status be granted to all looked-after children and care leavers. The very fact that those children are being looked after by local authorities in what are recognised as legitimate placements, paid for by the United Kingdom taxpayer and the local council tax payer, is an endorsement of their legitimacy and of our responsibility to look after them in the first place. Surely, therefore, the assumption should be that they absolutely have a rightful place in this country. If there is a problem with that, we should argue the toss later on, but let us give them protection at the outset.

Secondly, the issue of fees needs to be looked at—an ask of the Home Affairs Committee to the previous Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). It is such a complicated system, as the Windrush issue threw up, with many different avenues to qualifying for citizenship. It is a complete minefield that needs to be simplified and the charges need to be reduced. The complicated nature of the system also makes it very expensive. For goodness’ sake, on behalf of this small but vulnerable group of looked-after children and care leavers, I urge the Government to waive their fees for citizenship applications. That is essential, whether or not we have a deal to come out of the EU—which matters not a jot to those children. They need our help and support. This country has recognised their need and has provided support. Let us not let bureaucracy stand in the way of continuing to do the right thing by those children, as we have a proud record of doing.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

It might be useful for the House to know that the wind-up speeches will have to start no later than 12.30. I have two Members trying to catch my eye, so perhaps they will bear that in mind.