Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Timothy Kirkhope (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I was not originally going to take part in this debate, but as a former Immigration Minister it seemed to me that it was worth looking carefully at the regret Motion. Indeed, having listened to the introduction of the noble Baroness, there are one or two things that ought to be put on the record with regard to the history of this I know that these matters, particularly those that deal with children, produce a lot of emotion and concern, as they rightly should. But of course we have to go back. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, just mentioned the British Nationality Act 1981 and other legislation which has been passed from, in fact, 1948 onwards. That reflects on the fact that, as the noble Baroness said, the benefits of British citizenship should not be overstated—or at least she said something similar to that. The fact of the matter is that none of us who are British citizens really prizes our citizenship as much as we ought That does not mean that it has to be used as an excuse to look at the value of citizenship against the fees that are charged, but I would point out that when I was the Minister, the Treasury was always on my back, wanting me to produce value for money in anything that my department did. Of course, this was confirmed, as the noble Baroness has admitted, by the Labour Government in 2004, which introduced the term "over-cost", as it was called, and applied it from 2007 onwards. This related to fees in a vast number of areas across a vast number of departments. Because of pressure from the Treasury and indeed from outside of government, the idea was to try to make sure that the costs of departments that were involved in matters such as immigration were, as far as possible, covered to minimise the amount of extra moneys that would be required from the public. That is perhaps rather more surprising under a Labour Government than it might be under the normal Conservative prospectus, but there it was and there it has been ever since. The fees have been rising commensurately ever since in a great many areas I am not here to defend those facts except to say to noble Lords that I am delighted to know that the Government are at least now looking at the issues of complexity, which is the other point I wish to make. When I was doing things on immigration, we had a simple situation. There were few areas and qualifications with which one could remain in this country. Similarly, the application processes and the way we looked at these matters was simple as compared with the situation we now have, with different categories of rights to remain, which have been referred to, such as indefinite rights to remain and temporary rights to remain; they now exist and they are applied. In my opinion, we are much more generous, and rightly so, towards many more applicants than we used to be. In those days, we were much tougher: either you were able to remain here or you were not. However, the complexity has got out of hand. We have so many different headings and categories that, inevitably, there are going to be those, including children and perhaps some others, who will fall foul, as it were, of the regulations whatever they happen to be I therefore welcome the Government’s approach, which is to look at the complexity and try to simplify these matters. Bearing in mind what may well be happening after next year, it will be necessary for us to have a new approach to how we deal with citizens who are closer to this place than normal—Europe. All of this gives us an excellent opportunity to try to simplify the system. However, I fear that while the regret Motion has been put before us today, we are in a situation where the fee structures in this department and in others is to some extent controlled. Moreover, as has rightly been said, the discretions of Ministers in being able to help are somewhat limited, although they do exist in certain cases. I would certainly urge that, in those cases of particular suffering or particular poverty or particular circumstances, Ministers should exercise what powers they have in favour of child applicants.