Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-10-19
Topic: Immigration
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who always speaks so expertly on issues of modern slavery The Lords amendments ask three important questions of MPs. First, are we going to protect and promote fair treatment for families and family unity? Secondly, will we look out for the most vulnerable? And thirdly, do we listen to legitimate concerns raised by communities impacted by migration policy? If the answer to those questions is yes, as it should be, we must oppose the Home Secretary’s motions and support the amendments made in the House of Lords Let me start my whistle-stop tour with Lords amendment 2, which is designed to protect families. The fact is that in the UK we have some of the most restrictive family visa immigration rules in the world, splitting up tens of thousands of British citizens and children from their spouses and parents. Sadly, that regime is now to be extended to British citizens and settled persons who happen to fall in love with European nationals. There is now little we can do to stop that, but we can stop the rules applying to British citizens who are already living elsewhere in the EEA with non-UK spouses and their families When such citizens left here and established family life elsewhere in the EEA, they had absolutely no reason ever to suspect that their ability to return would be restricted. This is not, as the Government have tended to suggest in some debates, about avoiding or circumventing rules; it is about British citizens having a legitimate expectation of an unrestricted right to return with their family. The Government should respect that expectation. On the one hand, the Government have, to an extent, recognised the particular circumstances of this group by providing a grace period, which is good in so far as it goes, but the grace period does not solve the problem; it simply postpones this deep unfairness for a couple of years. Basically, the Government are saying to many families, "You need to decide by March 2022. You can come back before then, uprooting your family, even in the most difficult of circumstances; otherwise, you will need to stay away altogether." What the Government should do instead is simply remove the unfairness altogether and exempt this fixed and finite cohort from the rules forever. I really cannot see why that is such a difficult ask of the Government Lords amendment 4 is also about the importance of family unity. It is about protecting some of the most vulnerable people out there: people, including unaccompanied children, seeking asylum. It is not just common sense but common decency that says that this is the right place for an asylum claim to be considered if the applicant has a family connection here or if it is in the best interests of a child. As Lord Dubs said in the other place, this is not about the UK taking responsibility for all unaccompanied children; it is about taking our fair share of responsibility. The Dublin system is far from perfect, but so many families have benefited from it, and indeed the UK has benefited from the system as well through the contribution that those asylum seekers and refugees have made. Alternative options in immigration rules, such as the exception route, are way too limited in scope and just will not do as an alternative. Whatever is or is not happening with negotiations, these people should not be the victims or the latest bargaining chips Lords amendment 3 would benefit another vulnerable group—children in care and care leavers—by fast-tracking their access to the settled status scheme. It would allow all children in those groups to proceed to fully settled status, rather than creating another cliff edge for a later date with pre-settled status. The Government have themselves acknowledged—the Minister acknowledged it today—that fewer than half of eligible children in those categories have applied to the settlement scheme with just eight months left to go The new approach in the Lords amendment is a practical, reasonable and now, I would say, urgent compromise, after Government arguments against an earlier iteration of the amendment that referred to deemed leave. It is just a practical way to assist the Government in achieving as broad a reach as possible for the EU settlement scheme. Having said that, I echo what Lord Dubs said when moving the amendment, which was that local authorities and the Home Office must also make sure that children entitled to British citizenship have full access to that without unnecessary fees and barriers. Although welcome, it is not enough for the Government to state that late applications from these groups would be accepted; although that is better than not accepting such late applications, we should be doing everything possible to avoid any period of their being undocumented, and all the huge difficulties and stresses that that can entail. So we support this amendment, and my amendment (a) would simply increase its scope to include another group of care leavers under legislation in Scotland, something that the Scottish Government have written to the Minister about Lords amendment 9 relates to a group of people who could not be any more vulnerable: the victims of the awful crimes of modern slavery. I pay tribute to Lord McColl and various other members of the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery, including the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, for their relentless pursuit of this issue. Our party will always support immigration leave being granted where that is required for such victims to put their lives back together, and that is exactly what Lord McColl’s amendment seeks to do. I agree with the observations of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green—I was listening to the exchange between him and the Minister, and we will follow the progress in that regard—that we need to go further still. There are rights being lost for the victims of modern slavery from the European economic area, and we have not got ourselves into a place yet where those rights are being adequately replaced On the detention amendments, too many victims of modern slavery, far from being given a short grant of leave to remain to help rebuild their lives, end up instead in our hideous immigration detention estate, along with scores of others who should never be there. During the pandemic the numbers detained have dropped significantly and we should be aiming to keep numbers as low as possible. As the Minister said, detention should be a matter of last resort, and it should be for the absolute minimum period necessary, but the figures show that a majority of people detained are simply released again into the community. It is a badge of shame that the UK continues to be an outlier in failing to place any defined limit on detention. We are dealing with basic but fundamental principles: the right to liberty and the requirement for speedy judicial oversight of any deprivation of liberty Lords amendments 1 and 5 highlight the Government’s failure to listen to serious concerns. As we have heard, Lords amendment 1 flags up the huge danger that an end to free movement and the design of the future immigration system pose to the care sector. It is similar to an amendment tabled when this Bill was first in this place by my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara). It is totally wrong to talk of cheap labour undercutting the resident workforce here; we should be expressing our gratitude for the amazing work that EEA citizens are doing in our social care workforce. The danger to the care sector has been spelled out by the sector and by the Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee, not just last week but repeatedly. Yes, the long-term future of care will require greater investment and better pay, but the Government have shown no indication or inclination to suggest that they are going to fix that any time soon, never mind in the two and a half months between now and the end of free movement. So to take this step in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic is just jaw-droppingly reckless. As the MAC said, ending free movement will "increase the pressure on the social care sector, something that would be particularly difficult to understand at a time when…care" is so "central to the… pandemic frontline response." The Government are not listening to the MAC, but perhaps a review that would follow this amendment would force them to listen Finally, let me close by discussing Lords amendment 5 and paying tribute to those in the3million campaign group for their perseverance, even when it seems that the Government do not listen. Now their modest ask is that they are not used in the Home Office’s moves to go digital; they are simply asking that, like everybody else, they are provided with the physical means of proving their status here. The Minister referred to the example of Australia, but it spent five to 10 years trialling that system with a physical document as back-up. This is first about technology: the fact that someone’s legal status and rights can be verified only by a Home Office system, and all the risks inherent in that.