European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-22
Topic: Immigration
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): Given the shortness of time, I will limit my remarks to those subjects that have not been addressed at length today. On amendment 1, which deals with the declaratory system and the documents, I want to make two points as a former Immigration Minister. First, on the declaratory system, I think it is important that we should have the current system, which encourages people to establish their status and ensure that it is clear now. The lesson that I took from Windrush was that one of the problems was that people laboured for many years under the sometimes correct but often incorrect understanding that they had a legal right to be here and all the appropriate documents, only to discover many years down the line that they did not. Encouraging European Union citizens to register and establish that certainty now is sensible, and taking the existing system—which, as the Secretary of State says, has already had 2.5 million successful grants—and effectively having to restart it would not be a good way of delivering certainty On amendment 4, which deals with the so-called Dubs amendment, the Government are trying to establish an important principle. I have not heard this set out particularly clearly, but the question is whether Parliament should legislate for the Government’s negotiating objectives. That position was never taken by the Government in the last Parliament, but because the Government did not have a majority, that Parliament forced certain negotiating objectives on the Government. I think it is better to re-establish the traditional mechanism whereby Governments negotiate treaties and bring them to Parliament for ratification into law. That might sound like a minor point, but it is an important one to establish. The Minister in this House has made it clear, as has Lady Williams in the other place, that the Government’s policy has not changed. There is now a relatively short period of time until the end of this year, and it is worth saying that the European Union has committed in three separate paragraphs of the political declaration to agreeing our future relationship by the end of this year, as well as our having made that commitment. I am therefore confident that we will have re-established the Dublin regulation in practice by the end of this year, which is why I firmly support the Government in rejecting this amendment Finally, the Sewel convention is already enshrined in statute. I listened carefully to what the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), who is no longer in her place, said about this. Consulting someone, listening to them and taking into account their views is not the same as doing as they say. The problem is that it seems to me that the three devolved legislatures are simply refighting the Brexit argument. In 2014, the people of Scotland decided, for a generation, that they wanted to be part of the United Kingdom, and in 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. If the devolved legislatures were accepting of that decision and were trying to help the Government to deliver it in a better way, that would be one thing, but they are trying to refight the battle that they lost.