Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-12-01
Topic: Immigration
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Like the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), we believe that the provisions on support are among the most draconian parts of the Bill; I agree with the Minister to the extent that the disagreement is one of principle In our view, provisions that seek to use the further deliberate infliction of destitution, including of children, as a tool of immigration policy must be thoroughly opposed. The provisions fly in the face of evidence, are counterproductive and show a grim lack of compassion. We support all amendments seeking to prevent, or at least limit, the damage. They include amendment 29, which would remove clause 37 and therefore most of the damaging changes, and amendments 30 and 31, which would preserve all rights of appeal against decisions to refuse support. Amendment 40, tabled by Scottish National party Members, would ensure that families with children who are minors received section 95 support until they left the country. The Minister referred to the pilot carried out by the last Labour Government, and that is still relevant to what is being proposed today. Similar proposals were abandoned because of the results of the pilot. It is interesting to look at the comments about the project made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights: "The section 9 pilot has caused considerable hardship and does not appear to have encouraged more refused asylum seeking families to leave the UK…We believe that using both the threats and the actuality of destitution and family separation is incompatible with the principles of common humanity and with international human rights law and that it has no place in a humane society. We recommend that section 9 be repealed at the earliest opportunity." We believe that the same should happen to the equivalent provisions in this Bill Sadly, the Government have in their sights not only children but those who arrived as children and are now young adults. Rather cruelly, young care leavers will be prime targets. That is why we have tabled amendments 42 to 45, which would ensure that young people leaving local authority care were able to access leaving care support under the Children Act 1989 without discrimination. Amendments 42 and 43 would remove the provisions, added by schedule 9, that would prevent local authorities from providing leaving care support under the 1989 Act to young people who were not asylum seekers and did not have leave to remain when they reached age 18 Amendment 44 would enable local authorities to provide leaving care support under the 1989 Act to young people who did not have leave to remain and were not asylum seekers. Finally in this group, amendment 45 would provide for the Secretary of State to make funding available to local authorities, as the specialist agency responsible for care leavers, to meet the duties, set out in the 1989 Act, to the latter group of care leavers Our amendments 39 and 36 bring us back to what I said about the first group of amendments relating to the broad powers, which we seek to rein in, proposed for immigration officers. Despite what the Minister says, those include powers for detainee custody officers, prison officers and prison custody officers to strip search detained persons for anything that could be evidence of their nationality—a very broadly defined power. The Minister points out that Government amendments 3 and 4 propose changing the name of the search from "strip search" to "full search", but they do not in any essential way change the extent of the powers, which, to all intents and purposes as far as I still understand them, are basically strip search powers. For that reason, provision on the gender of the persons present during the search is made in clause 25(8). Our amendment 36 would remove the proposed power for custody officers to strip search detainees for documents that "might" establish a person’s nationality or indicate "the place from which the person travelled to the UK or to which a person is proposing to go." Going further, we seek to tighten schedule 2(2) of the Immigration Act 1971. This power ostensibly deals with individuals on arrival in the UK for the purposes of determining whether they have or should be given leave to enter or remain. It has been used by the Home Office as justification for conducting speculative, in-country spot-checks involving "consensual interviews". Amendment 39 would expressly limit this power to examination at the point of entry. The Minister argues that our amendment makes the power too tightly drawn, but in our view it is far better for intrusive powers to be tightly drawn than drawn broadly and arbitrarily. The other atrocious provisions that amendments in this group seek to attack are those which provide that people should leave the UK even before their appeal against a Home Office decision has been heard. Amendment 27, which has support from Labour as well as SNP Members, would remove the offending clause 34, which extends powers of certification introduced by the Immigration Act 2014 to mean no longer just "deport first, appeal later" for those convicted, but "remove first, appeal later" for all. To us, these provisions are madness. They will mean people having to give up jobs, studies and family life while appeals are ongoing. Families could be separated for lengthy and unknown periods until their appeal is finally determined All this comes against a background of constant criticism of Home Office decision making, including in a recent ombudsman’s report. We should bear in mind that in 2014-15 42% of managed migration appeals and 42% of entry clearance appeals were successful. In 2013-14, the figures were 49% and 48%. Thousands of people could have to leave for several months because the Home Office got it wrong. The danger is that appeals will not be pursued or will be pursued inadequately given the costs of pursuing an appeal as a privately paying client from overseas.