Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Immigration
Fiona Sara Shackleton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for tabling this amendment and give him my support. It is with a heavy heart that I do so, against my Government—my party I sat on the European Union Justice Sub-Committee with the noble Lord when we took hard evidence. We invited the ambassadors for all the EEC countries to come and talk to us and share their concerns, which were twofold. The first was that the applicants were made to feel unwelcome when they were asked to apply. They had to go through the Herculean task of proving something in circumstances where many of them had been super-contributors to our country—where we should have welcomed them with open arms. It looked as if we were doing them a favour in accepting them if they wanted to stay with us, not treating them as our equals. This was simply inhumane and there was no explanation for that Secondly, when they got to the very bottom of the task and were eventually accepted, they asked whether they could have some physical proof. They were denied it without any rational explanation whatever. I happened to chair the meeting to which we invited every single ambassador—it was in a large room, as we could convene in large rooms in those days. I asked them to share with us the single most upsetting feature of applying. To a man or woman, they responded that the lack of physical proof was the highest, the most frequent and the most troubling I not going to repeat the many speeches that have been made tonight because the night is getting long, but I want to add one other feature: cybersecurity. The reason I stand here tonight and am not being hooked up from home is because I am, as I have advised Black Rod, a victim of being hacked through my telephone. My parliamentary email, my own email, my WhatsApp messages, my pictures and my texts are all visible to somebody else. The future of crime is not only the nuclear problem; it is the cyber problem. With one swipe of a button, it affects the system. We have talked a lot about general accidents, not being able to connect and the mistakes that prevent us voting. We have law courts which sit virtually but crash in the middle of a hearing. But if we are under attack and somebody wants to cause serious grief to us as a country, this is what could be done in the absence of any back-up If this happens to the people who we are so lucky to have—I share the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Southwark’s view on this—we are simply not acting in a humane way. We are not treating our fellow citizens in the same way as we would like to be treated. The reciprocal arrangements in embassies across Europe are that British people are entitled to get proof there—they give it out free. We should take notice of that and reciprocate with similar willingness Finally, I want to close by saying this: it is never too late to right a wrong. I have enormous respect for my noble friend the Minister. I hope that she will listen to and take to heart the compliments paid to her personally. I hope that she will look into the abyss and feel that, tonight, we have done something useful to help the very many people who have written to ask for our support in what, for them, are extremely troubling circumstances.