Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness. I will add persistence to the attributes that have already been listed. As noble Lords have said, this was raised not only in the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement but at a recent Home Affairs Select Committee taking evidence from the Home Secretary. In response to one member, the Home Secretary said that the Home Office had to get the right balance between the funding of the Home Office and the fees charged. Like other noble Lords, I question whether this is a matter of balance As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, mentioned, a memo giving a rundown of the cost of these fees and how they were justified was requested. The Home Secretary responded to the comment that, on the face of it, the fees go way beyond normal cost recovery by saying that it would be a "good exercise for me" as well We hear many complaints and expressions of astonishment about the level of Home Office fees generally. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, that the complexity of the system is at the root of this. When the Home Office introduced its premium service some years ago, my first reaction was that, given what all applicants have to pay, they should all get a reasonably quick and reliable service. I do not think I need to expand on that. The briefings have reminded me that I have often read about a whole family being subject to fees, particularly those payable periodically over a long period. That is similar to the position of Amelia, which has been mentioned. If it is not essential to pursue the matter, for instance with naturalisation, and it is too much for the family, some members are omitted. It may be children but often it is women. I can imagine the potential problems down the line in the cases we have heard about, quite apart from the issue of these children being unable to exercise their rights What is at issue is not entitlement but the registration of that entitlement. The child has a statutory right to citizenship and everything that goes with it. As noble Lords have said, this is not about immigration control. On Thursday, we will be debating the difficulties that some people face when they try to pursue activities in everyday life. However, these children are not migrants and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned, the leave to remain is not a substitute for citizenship, as is sometimes suggested by the Home Office. I understand that it is not necessarily available, but it is not for the Home Office to dismiss rights in this way In his strategy for social integration, the Mayor of London put it very bluntly, saying that, "if a young person has the right to be a British citizen, then government should remove obstacles to them becoming one" He commented on the profit element, which is, "at least ten times higher than in many other European countries", and is, "preventing too many young Londoners from accessing the rights they are fully entitled to by law" The Project, to which the noble Baroness referred, is very telling and powerful and I will quote one short paragraph from it: "High-cost fees are completely contrary to the promotion and process of integration. Fees act to divide, distorting the vibrant futures of us—and other young people—caught in the complex net of immigration and nationality entitlements. Fees prevent young people from working, paying tax and contributing economically to society" I think that meets the right reverend Prelate’s definition of citizenship. Picking up the noble Earl’s point about young people finding other families, I recently heard that one should not use the term "gang" when working with young people in gangs, because they regard the gang as their family. That needs to be recognised The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, recently reported on a remedial order following declarations of incompatibility with regard to the British Nationality Act. In that case, it was about requirements of good character. We raised potentially discriminatory provisions in British nationality law with the then Home Secretary, concluding: "We would be grateful for an assessment and an explanation from the Home Office as to whether any such discrimination does in fact persist", and were pleased that the Immigration Minister responded that she would ask her officials to look at this. I cannot help thinking that charging fees in the way that we have been discussing is a form of discrimination I have read the Library briefing for Thursday’s debate. It refers to the work by Coram and the Children’s Society, which have reported that there are 144,000 undocumented migrant children in the UK. I do not know how many are in the categories we have been discussing but that is an astonishing and worrying figure. To summarise what other noble Lords have said, I end by saying, "and dot, dot, dot".