Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-05
Topic: Immigration
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the hallmarks of this Bill are illegality and inhumanity; the imposition of still greater inefficiency and expense on our asylum system; and prejudice to the interests of society in having well-integrated refugees The Bill delivers neither dignity for asylum seekers nor a fair deal for taxpayers. My colleague in the other place, Alistair Carmichael, said: "If cruelty and bureaucracy were the answer, the Home Office would have solved the problem long ago." The Bill represents, in the words of distinguished lawyers led by Raza Husain QC, "the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the UK." We have a system that is already working badly. Nearly two-thirds of initial decisions are found by the courts to be wrong, there is a backlog of 60,000 people whose cases await initial assessment, and it takes an average of a year to decide a case. The numbers the UK receives ought to be manageable: most European countries, including France, receive far more refugees per head of population than we do The obvious solution is to frontload the system, including investing in retention of caseworkers; improving the quality and accuracy of first-instance decision-making; restoring legal aid; and properly funding the courts and tribunals. But the Government, ignoring the first rule of holes, which is to stop digging, have chosen to worsen these problems by making what they call a broken system even more complex and unfair, which only entails yet more delay and expense. They will then double down on blaming asylum seekers rather than looking at the mote in their own eye—I am not the first to observe that it is the Home Office which is broken—and the whole sorry cycle will continue There is little in the Bill which helps to put the people-smuggling gangs out of business. The only real way is to create sufficient safe and legal routes, whether through resettlement, humanitarian visas, allowing claims to be lodged at a UK embassy or from, for instance, France, or family reunion. Can the Minister tell us what assessment her department has made of the impact the Bill will have on the number of family reunion visas granted each year The UNHCR makes the entirely valid point that the Government’s aim of forcing people to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach is by necessity absent from the refugee convention. The front-line states, which already accommodate nearly 75% of the world’s refugees, would never have signed a convention committing them to host 100% I second what the Conservative MP Caroline Nokes said on Report about penalising so-called group 2 refugees: "It causes me real concern that we will create a two-tier system in which people with identical claims to safety—at identical risk from the Taliban—are treated very differently."—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/21; col. 311.] The further marginalisation of asylum seekers is not only cruel but thoroughly misguided. Skills are lost and health harmed; they are left open to exploitation, with integration and naturalisation impeded and postponed. This is contrary to every interest of our society, which is to see refugees become contributing, productive and taxpaying citizens as soon as possible. Instead of keeping them in depressed limbo for years while they are demonised as scroungers for getting a princely £5.66 a day, the Government should allow all who are able to work. What is the Minister’s response to the recent warning by the Migration Advisory Committee of the "clear evidence of harm" being caused by the current ban on employment All I can say now about the proposals on channel pushback, which my noble friend Lady Jolly has fully covered, and offshoring is that they are utterly misconceived. I also have time only to flag my concerns about the proposals on age assessments Although the provisions of Clauses 1 to 8 on citizenship are largely welcome, there are two specific groups whose problems in acquiring British citizenship I want to flag: Chagos Islanders and some EU citizens. I signal my intention to join the noble Baroness. Lady Lister, if she so acts, in an amendment on the lines of that tabled in the other place by Henry Smith to restore the citizenship rights of the Chagossians and their descendants, who lost both their homeland and nationality rights when cruelly evicted 65 years ago. It is encouraging that the Minister, Tom Pursglove, indicated that he was "sympathetic" to its aims I will again be vigorously pursuing the obscure and obsolete legacy of comprehensive sickness insurance, this time because it is unjustly tripping up EU citizens as regards their own or their children’s British citizenship or family reunion rights Lastly, as well as Clause 10 on stateless children, Clause 9 is understandably causing great alarm among our compatriots who because of descent or marriage could be at risk of statelessness. Can the Minister—here I only echo the superb analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich—explain how a right of appeal against a no-notice decision works if the person does not know about that decision I look forward to extremely robust discussion in Committee.