Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-10-31
Topic: Immigration
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Storey in his regret Motion. He talked about an anti-immigration rhetoric, and we have seen the increase in hate crime, for example, which has occurred post-Brexit. However, it goes further than that In addition to the Government’s attempt to require companies to report the number of foreign staff they employ, which my noble friend mentioned, under the Policing and Crime Bill currently going through this House the Government will require people who are detained by the police, where the police suspect the individual not to be a British citizen, to produce their passport. I cannot tell which group of people who are arrested will be required to produce their passport, but I suspect that it may largely be dictated by the colour of their skin. What happens if the individual is a British citizen who does not have a passport? I raise this issue because it paints the picture of where the Government are going as regards immigration Under a provision in the Immigration Act recently passed by this House, when the police stop somebody driving a car whom they suspect not to be a British citizen, the police can search that person’s home for their driving licence without a warrant. Again, the question has to be raised: which drivers will be stopped by the police and taken to their home address to search for their passport? The whole thing shows the direction of travel that this Government are going in, which unfortunately not only provides—to use the current term—a hostile environment for illegal immigrants but does so for people who are here legally, and indeed for those who are born here but who do not appear at first glance to be British. So the charge my noble friend Lord Storey makes that the provision in the regulations smacks of racism is supported by these other measures that the Government have passed and continue to put through. The Government say that the details that are asked for will be only for Department for Education use. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, made reference to the website Schools Week, which reports: "The government has refused to release a new agreement that prevents the Department for Education from passing pupil nationality and country of birth data to the Home Office" All that the Department for Education would say to Schools Week was that, "an old agreement that allowed the Home Office to access certain information from the national pupil database had now been ‘superseded’", but it refused to release the wording of that new agreement without a Freedom of Information Act request. If the Government are absolutely sure that none of this information will be shared with the Home Office, can the Minister please explain to the House why they will not publish what the guidance is and why they require a Freedom of Information Act request to secure it In a letter to my noble friend, the Minister apparently said that this information is intended to enable schools to receive more support. Can the Minister say why in London—where not only is there a higher proportion of low-income pupils eligible for free lunches than in any other region in England but around 42% of the city’s students do not have English as a first language, compared with the national average of just over 15%, and the schools overwhelmingly have larger class sizes than the national average—the schools are doing far better than schools in other, comparable regions in the country? What extra support are these schools going to need because they have pupils who are foreign nationals Unfortunately, all the evidence points to this being an immigration tactic rather than having anything to do with trying to improve the education of young people or supporting our schools.