Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Ludford]

34: After Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“Acquisition of British citizenship by birth or adoption: comprehensive sickness insurance
(1) The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 is amended as follows.(2) After section 15, insert—15A Comprehensive sickness insurance(1) For the purposes of any decision taken by a public authority under this Part after commencement of this section, a person is to be treated as having met a requirement to have held comprehensive sickness insurance, whenever they—(a) had access to the NHS in practice, or(b) held a comprehensive sickness insurance policy.(2) This section applies in particular to any decisions taken under residence scheme immigration rules.”(3) The British Nationality Act 1981 is amended as follows.(4) After section 1(3A) insert—“(3B) A person born in the United Kingdom after commencement who is not a British citizen is entitled, on application, to register as a British citizen if the person’s father or mother would have been settled in the United Kingdom at the time of the person’s birth, if Assumption A had applied.(3C) Assumption A is that, in assessing whether the person’s father or mother met a requirement to have held comprehensive sickness insurance, this is to be regarded as having been satisfied whenever they—(a) had access to the NHS in practice, or(b) held a comprehensive sickness insurance policy.(3D) Registration under subsection (3B) is free of charge.”(5) After section 50A insert—50B ExceptionsNotwithstanding any provision of section 50A, for the purposes of an application for naturalisation or registration made under this Act, a person—(a) is not to be treated as having been in the United Kingdom in breach of the immigration laws during a period of time that has been counted as part of a continuous qualifying period in a grant of leave to that person under Appendix EU of the Immigration Rules, and(b) is not to be treated as not being of good character on account of a failure to hold comprehensive sickness insurance during some period of residence in the UK.””Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause provides that a person seeking to naturalise as a British citizen, seeking to exercise family reunion rights as a naturalised British citizen, or seeking to have their UK-born children recognised as British at birth, need not have had comprehensive sickness insurance prior to naturalising or prior to the birth of their child.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I hope not to have to detain the Committee for too long on this admittedly complicated subject of the anomalous historical legacy of comprehensive sickness insurance—hereafter CSI—because I am hoping that the Minister will spring up, interrupt me and pledge that the Home Office will resolve all the left-over problems faced by some EU citizens today. She was kind enough to meet me virtually last week, and I detected a degree of thoughtfulness in her department on the subject. I cannot yet put it higher than that, but I am hopeful.

Attentive listeners might recall that some of us— especially, perhaps, I—banged on about the obscure issue of CSI at various points in the debates on EU withdrawal and, in particular, on the UK’s EU settlement scheme. It is a long and, in my view, sorry history. I will recap as briefly as I can: in the EU citizens’ rights directive of nearly 20 years ago—which I worked on as a Member of the European Parliament, hence my long-standing interest—so-called free movers were required to have comprehensive sickness insurance; that was the term used. On the continent, health systems are often covered by state insurance systems. In the UK, we have the NHS or private health insurance. Although of course we have national insurance, people do not think of the NHS as an insured scheme. So there has been a long-running problem of EU citizens in Britain who are not employed, such as students, the self-employed and homemakers, being expected—although, crucially, not usually told—to have private insurance. This was a matter of legal dispute in Brussels, which rumbled on, and I do not think it ever got resolved.

Fast forward to Brexit and the acute issue of whether those lacking private health insurance were legally resident in the UK and could seek settled status under the withdrawal agreement. Fortunately, the UK Government wisely cut through that residual red tape and said, in an admirably pragmatic decision, that they would let everyone get settled status. However, often unbeknownst to individuals, they fell into one of two groups: the true cohort and the extra cohort. The significance of this distinction arises only—indeed only becomes known —when a settled person seeks to register a child’s birth, to naturalise themselves as British or to bring a family member to join them in this country. Then they face a veritable series of snakes and ladders, because any historical gap in CSI—private insurance—may make them slide down into a pit of reptilian problems. Only when they seek to register a child, bring in a spouse or become a British citizen might they be told: “Aha! Your historic lack of CSI is a bar.” Noble Lords will recall that it was not a bar to them getting settled status, but it raises its ugly head at this later stage. At the risk of mixing my metaphors, it is Kafkaesque.

Certainly, in the case of bids for naturalisation, caseworkers have—but only through guidance—been given discretion to waive this historic need for CSI to meet the lawful residence requirement. On Report in the other place, the Minister, Kevin Foster, said that

“no one has been refused British citizenship purely on the basis of the CSI requirement in free movement regulations.”

The trouble is that if an applicant has to stump up around £1,300, without the certainty of the outcome because of the discretion for the caseworker, that is a gamble—potentially an expensive one.

I am asking the Government to carry through the pragmatic logic whereby they decided to ignore the past lack of CSI for settled status and now to wipe the slate entirely clean for subsequent immigration applications and statuses. On 7 December, Minister Foster told the other place

“we are considering how the issues could be picked up as part of our work on simplification”.

He hoped that MPs would

“be pleased to hear that we are looking closely at that work.”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/21; col. 260.]

That was a bit encouraging.

Perhaps the Minister could give us a more solid basis of hope, in relation not just to naturalisation but to the other applications, such as the registration of a baby’s birth and family reunion. I am sure that millions of EU citizens, resident in and contributing to this country, would be immensely grateful for the peace of mind they would thereby secure. Who knows? Their gratitude might rebound on this Government. I hope for good news. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitate to follow my noble friend, who is an expert on this issue. I declare an interest as a British citizen seeking a residence permit in Norway, where I have lived with my husband for the last 14 years. I have always had access to the Norwegian national health system. My application for a residence permit—the equivalent of settled status—has been outstanding for over 12 months because of issues with comprehensive health insurance.

I start by thanking the Government for their generous approach to EU and EEA citizens seeking settled status in the UK. The Government have taken the general approach that, if someone has been living here for years and was legally accessing the NHS when the UK was part of the EU, they do not need to have, to have had or acquire comprehensive health insurance, even if—as with me in Norway—they are not working or studying. This goes beyond the Brexit agreement, but is entirely consistent with the principle that EU and EEA citizens living in the UK prior to Brexit should be able to continue to live here on the same terms after Brexit. It is the right thing to do. I am grateful to the Government for taking such an approach. I wish Norway would do the same.

My understanding of this amendment is that it goes a step beyond settled status—where EU and EEA citizens who have qualified for settled status seek to be naturalised as British citizens, to exercise family reunion rights as a naturalised British citizen, or to have their UK-born children recognised as British at birth. Even though they do not have to have comprehensive sickness insurance for settled status, it currently appears that they may have to have it for citizenship purposes. This amendment seeks to rectify that anomaly between settled status and citizenship. I am getting a nod, so that is okay.

What this amendment seeks to achieve follows on logically from the generous and welcome stance of the British Government on settled status in relation to comprehensive sickness insurance. We support the amendment.

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[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I certainly welcome a great deal of what the Minister had to say, and I thank her for it. I will have to read Hansard just to make sure that I have mastered every detail of her response. This is an incredibly complicated subject; I think I have forgotten almost everything I thought I knew about settled status. It is one of those things that has become a bit of a blur over the last six years. Certainly, she said some very positive things, and was very clear, in particular, about family reunion rights. I was not entirely sure about the registration of a birth. The Minister maintained the need for discretion and the caseworker guidance for naturalisation. I was not really sure why that was necessary.

With the slight caveat that I will want to read in detail what she said on this complex subject, there is, indeed, room for considerable congratulations and gratitude that the Minister has grasped this issue by the horns. I had better stop the metaphor there. She has made progress, and there is cause for considerable rejoicing. On that note, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I rise first of all, briefly, to support Amendment 129, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. It is clear, necessary and relatively simple, at least in principle, so I trust that the Government will consider it very carefully.

Our asylum system is already overwhelmed, with a backlog of cases approaching 125,000, which is, I think, rather more than the British Army. So we have to do everything we can to reduce the inflow of those entering by illegal means. In brackets, I say to the Minister that I hope he will take this opportunity to deny that the Government now intend to bury the statistics and emerge only every three months to tell us what is happening.

That said, I would like to speak briefly about the points that have just been made by other noble Lords about the need for safe routes for asylum seekers wishing to come here. I think we need to be a lot more careful about how we address this. My noble friend has just referred to the 80 million refugees in the world. The numbers are huge, even if these are only a third of those who are actually going to move from one country to another. Is it really being suggested that we have a system whereby any who would like to leave his own country has only to purchase a ticket to London and will then be accommodated, et cetera, and his case will be heard? Is that really what is proposed? What about those who fail? Some 70% of the people now arriving across the Channel are young males. I suspect that they are not, in most cases, the ones who are most in need. If this is not to fly completely out of control and reach a level at which the public will react rather strongly against the sheer size of the inflow, we have to be a lot more careful.

It has been suggested that one way to tackle this would be to have missions overseas to take the applications. I am sure that is being considered very carefully, but I am sure that the outcome of that consideration will be that it just will not work. Those posts—whether embassies or some special posts set up in the third world—would be overwhelmed in a matter of weeks. Then you have to ask the Governments of the countries concerned what will happen to those who turned up, quite often from neighbouring countries, did not get the permission that they were hoping for, and are hanging around the embassy or wherever it is in ever-growing numbers. The host Governments would not care for that at all, and it would not achieve anything as far as we are concerned; it would simply mean that the inflow would become, in principle, pretty unmanageable. I really think we have to be careful about this talk of “safe routes”. We keep hearing it all the time; we never hear what is actually meant. I would like to hear from colleagues in this Committee how they propose to organise 30 million people who would like to come here. It cannot be done; there is no public support for it on that scale, and we really need some clear and logical thought.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Can I just ask the noble Lord about his assumption—it seemed to be a stereotype—that young single men are not at risk? I do not claim to be an expert on the profile of asylum seekers, but one can imagine that, because a young man might be seen to be less vulnerable than a young woman in a dangerous journey towards safety and, perhaps, also vulnerable to recruitment into ISIS, for instance, actually it is not that surprising that it may be young single men who are arriving on our shores in greater numbers than young single women. I just think that it is probably important to avoid prejudicial stereotypes that, somehow, young men are not at any risk and therefore can be locked up—I just looked at the Times article that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, mentioned. It sometimes seems to me that we are at risk of demonising young men.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, it is not demonising; it is common sense. The routes that now exist are dangerous and difficult, and the people who are capable of getting through them are the young. But they are by no means the only people, nor necessarily the most deserving of our help. This is why I ask that we have a little more logic and thinking before we simply rattle off about safe routes for asylum seekers.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

But that is why we need family reunion routes.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Can I just point out that the Refugee Council, for example, has made the point that cutting back and restricting family reunion rights, which the Bill will do—this is one of the key safe and legal routes—will particularly affect women and children? Plenty has been written about what safe and legal routes might look like—it is family reunion; it is humanitarian visas. Is the noble Lord really suggesting that we have no responsibility to the kind of people that my noble friend talked about? No one is suggesting that everyone comes over here, but much poorer countries than this country are taking responsibility for asylum seekers, and we will not take any responsibility.

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[Lord Lea of Crondall (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the House would be grateful if somebody, in one sentence, expressed appreciation for the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham. No one doubts that, over the past 50 years or so, he has been a beacon of liberalism within his party. The point he made in this connection is that there is a great dilemma facing us all. Apart from climate change, the dilemma is that, for governance systems in parts of the world—Africa is the continent that springs to mind—we will have to have a new arrangement for crossing the Mediterranean whereby we do not get into all these problems, which are getting worse. That speech is not easy to make, but I just want to say that the honesty and the examination of the dilemmas we all face has been a credit to this House.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I remind everyone that Clause 11 is not only not about immigration, let alone illegal immigration; it is not even about asylum seekers. It is titled “Differential treatment of refugees”—people who have been recognised and accepted as entitled to asylum in this country. What Clause 11 means is that the Government want to penalise a certain category of people who have been accepted as refugees. On the one hand, we accept them as refugees, but then we are going to turn round and penalise them in various ways for how they arrived. I have agreed with all the critics of Clause 11, and I agree that Clause 11 as a whole needs to get the chop.

Clause 11 wants to penalise people with a much-reduced permission to stay; by requiring several frequent applications for further permission to stay; by keeping them in uncertainty for many years; by excluding them from public funds; and by delaying or denying altogether a visa for family reunion. I suggest that this is not only pernicious, as everyone has said, but costly. It is costly to that individual and it is costly to society, because it is not good for society when you have people who are unable to integrate and living with instability, isolation, possible destitution, homelessness and separation from family. They have been recognised as refugees, which means that we expect these people to be part of our society. I cannot see that it is good for society.

I had the opportunity, when the Minister was kind enough to meet me, to receive the great news on CSI. I come at this with an approach of both principle and practicality. As I say, I cannot see that it is in the interests of either society or the Home Office to have people living in this constant fear of what their futures are going to hold. We are told that the asylum system is broken. We know about the 125,000 unresolved applications. We know about the time and delays; on average, it now takes a year to decide a case. When I was an MEP, I had people who had been waiting three and a half years for an initial application, with the harm it did to them physically and mentally and to their status within their family as well. How is it going to help the Home Office to have more administration in constantly having to review these applications to decide whether it is going to deny public funds or renew the permission to stay?

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

If I understand the noble Baroness aright, there is nothing to stop this sovereign Parliament setting out how it interprets the refugee convention in future. She enumerated four Members of the Committee who had spoken supportively. I think it is the case that none of them argued that the Bill was not a breach of the convention. We had some powerful legal advice that it was a clear breach of the convention. I ask her to remember that the last time this House was asked to pass a Bill that broke an international commitment was on the internal market Bill, and it took the very clear view that pacta sunt servanda mattered and that we should stick to our word.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I was not clear about the noble Baroness’s reference to me. The fact that I did not actually say that I believed Clause 11 breaks the refugee convention does not mean that I do not think that it does, because everybody else had said it. I was not quite clear what she meant.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I think what I was trying to say, maybe clumsily, was that the noble Baroness was trying to get back to the amendments.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

The clause breaches the refugee convention, in my opinion. I agree with many people who said that.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I was not making that point, but I accept the noble Baroness’s point.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, just said that the four Members did not argue that the clause is not a breach of the convention. The four Members I singled out for mention were trying to explain public opinion in the round and the need to take note and do something about their concerns, notwithstanding the fact that the British public are warm and welcoming. We are a nation of immigrants. I think my noble and learned friend wants to intervene.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I was at pains to say that this is under national resettlement schemes. I have not tried to mask the figures. I have been very clear about how many people we have taken under national resettlement schemes.

I was about to hold up a prop, although I know that is not done in your Lordships’ House. I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who had to go, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Fox; she apologised for that. I wrote to noble Lords about the safe and legal routes, and I think the reason that some noble Lords do not want to acknowledge it is that they do not accept what we have done. I have looked at how many different family reunion schemes we have. We have four, including refugee family reunion. I will spend a moment to really spell this out, because some noble Lords just seem to not want to hear it. We have granted over 39,000 refugee family reunion visas since 2015, of which more than half were granted to children. Comparing that to the Dublin scheme, under the Dublin regulation, we transferred 714 people to the UK in 2019. In the same year, we issued 7,456 visas under our family reunion rules. It does not take a genius to work out that is 10 times the amount. Part 8 of the Immigration Rules—paragraph 319X—allows relatives to sponsor. We also have paragraph 297 and Appendix FM. Under Appendix FM, in 2020 there were 40,255 family-related visas granted. Please do not keep talking about us undermining family reunion, because we just have not. It is not true. I ask noble Lords to refer back to the letter that I sent to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I think that was last week.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I hope the Minister would acknowledge that—speaking only for myself—what I was doing was objecting to the restriction. I did not criticise the existing record, although my proposed Private Member’s Bill would expand the scope. The objection is to the poor proposed treatment of group 2 refugees under family reunion. I was not talking about the numbers to date.

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[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I would because I am getting thoroughly confused, which is something I perhaps do quite frequently, I accept. I will read out again from the JCHR report. It says:

“The policy paper that preceded the Bill, the Government’s ‘New Plan for Immigration’, gave a more detailed indication of what different treatment may look like, as it proposed that instead of fully fledged refugee status, Group 2 refugees would be granted ‘temporary protection’ for a period of no longer than 30 months ‘after which individuals [would] be reassessed for return to their country of origin or removal to a safe third country.’ Temporary protection status ‘will not include an automatic right to settle in the UK, family reunion rights will be restricted and there will be no recourse to public funds except in cases of destitution.’”


Those are quotations from the Government’s New Plan for Immigration policy statement. In relation to group 2 refugees, who are being created by Clause 11 —that is the new bit and what the Bill is doing—it quite clearly states:

“family reunion rights will be restricted”.

I ask again: is that correct or incorrect? If it is not, why is it written in the JCHR report? If the Minister is going to tell me that the JCHR has got it wrong, please say so clearly now.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Before the noble Baroness responds, I add that I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is confused: I fear that the Minister is being mildly disingenuous with us. Can she confirm that there is a difference in the intended treatment of group 1 and group 2 refugees as concerns family reunion? Otherwise, what is the point of Clause 11(6):

“The Secretary of State or an immigration officer may … treat the family members of Group 1 and Group 2 refugees differently, for example in respect of … whether to give the person leave to enter or remain”


et cetera? What is the point of this being in the Bill if there is no intention to treat group 2 refugees differently? The Minister told us about how this will not breach the refugee convention and so on. I asked specifically about the comments on Article 8, and I look forward to her replying specifically on that. But can she confirm whether their intention is to treat group 1 and group 2 refugees differently in terms of rights to family reunion?

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

May I just add to that? Clause 11(5) says:

“The Secretary of State or an immigration officer may treat Group 1 and Group 2 refugees differently, for example in respect of … whether leave to enter or remain is given to members of the refugee’s family.”

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, this will not be the last time we talk about the need for a trauma-informed approach. I think the expression “necessary delay”, used by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, is very useful and applies much better to this situation than “without delay”, which is what we are faced with.

Even without the background and experiences referred to in this amendment, I cannot imagine undertaking the sort of journey that most people fleeing from the situations they are in will have undertaken. Any asylum seeker will be in a pretty awful state. Many will be anxious about authority figures. It is incumbent on us to ensure that they are not retraumatised. We should not require them to present a coherent explanation and make a claim so quickly.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, talked about the possible survival of Clause 11. I would add Clause 36 to that. I do not think this provision can be read without looking at Clause 36, which deals with Article 31 of the convention. Clause 36(2) says:

“A refugee is not to be taken to have presented themselves without delay”—


“presented themselves” is the phrase used in Clause 11—

“unless … they made a claim for asylum as soon as reasonably practicable after their arrival in the United Kingdom.”

I do not think it is necessary to read the whole clause.

I hope the Minister can explain how, in practical terms, given the life experiences that we are suggesting, “present” and “make a claim” relate to one another. Does making a claim

“as soon as reasonably practicable”

mean presenting the substance of a claim? If I read these two clauses correctly, we now have “presenting oneself” and “making a claim”. Failure, under Clause 11, to present not just oneself but one’s claim takes one straight into the territory of late evidence and all the horrors of criminality and second-class status.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. The remarks by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, made me reflect. She was talking about how it takes a year, 18 months or two years for the people whom she has met in the course of her admirable-sounding charity, to be able to fully open up and explain themselves. This makes me think how similar this is to grief. For asylum seekers who have been forced to flee everything that is familiar to them—their home, country, family and links—and arrive in a strange place, this is a form of grief and bereavement.

I am not the only person in this Chamber who has suffered a relatively recent bereavement. I would not say that I have fully recovered after a year, 18 months, two years—even two and a half years. Indeed, I never will be. Given the disorientation and the inability to fully function, a year, 18 months or two years is not wide of the mark for how long you need to get your act together to handle an asylum claim.

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[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

It is the principle that I am seeking to deal with. The noble Lord is quite right to ask the question, and perhaps my noble friend the Minister can do some comparisons, but there is no doubt that our colleagues in France feel that one of the key perceived pull factors causing people to get involved in these very dangerous crossings is this subject of no recourse to public funds. That is the only question I am raising. We are being heavily criticised by our French colleagues for allowing ourselves to encourage pull factors to grow and escalate, and that is causing the problem to be much more serious than it was.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My recollection of the French criticism is that they were criticising the ability of asylum seekers to work in the black economy—not the ability to be idle and live off the taxpayer. I imagine that any welfare possibilities in the UK would be less than in France. What they are criticising is the relative unregulated state of our employment market. Some of that criticism is valid; some is not, but we are all sometimes worried by illegal employment. That is what the French were talking about.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

When I look into the detail of the criticism, it is much wider than the noble Baroness is suggesting. Part of it must be NRPF—I am not saying it is the whole problem—and I just wish that we would address—

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[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. I would like to clarify one point. I think she is saying that the removal or application of, or access to, public funds is discretionary. If that is the case, who has the discretion to apply or withdraw them? It is unusual for the welfare state to be quite so discretionary and, in effect, subject to subjective judgment. It would help to have clarity as to who can say this person will have access to public funds and that person will not.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Before the Minister answers—I am sorry to prolong the debate; I was going to leave this point until group 8 on the right to work—she talked about pull factors being an absolute fact, but the Migration Advisory Committee said in its annual report in December:

“To the extent that the Home Office has robust evidence to support a link between the employment ban and a pull factor, they should of course make this evidence publicly available for scrutiny and review. That is how good policy is made.”

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, but I disagree.

To answer my noble friend’s intervention about who decides, it is caseworkers.

Intelligence: Russia

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I most certainly can reassure noble Lords that we will be looking at all legislative possibilities to deal with the various issues that the noble Lord, the noble Baroness and other noble Lords have raised today.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

The Foreign Secretary pledges “nowhere to hide” for Putin’s oligarchs, but they are “hiding in plain sight” in their London mansions. In 2018, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said that the London laundromat of corrupt, Kremlin-connected assets

“has implications for national security.”

That was nearly four years ago. Do we have to wait until its chairman, Tom Tugendhat, becomes Prime Minister, as he wants to do, before action is taken?

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, for their support for the amendment. The amendment would extend the right to register as citizens to the descendants of Chagossians exiled from their homeland, subject to a time limit. I am grateful to Rosy Leveque of BIOT Citizens for her help with it, and to Chagossian Voices for its briefing.

To understand the case for this amendment, a bit of history is necessary. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago—a British Overseas Territory which became part of the British Indian Ocean Territory—were evicted by the then British Government to make way for a US airbase on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands. They have never been allowed to return. Not only did they lose their homeland, but their grandchildren and other descendants have no right to British Overseas Territory citizenship and, therefore, to British citizenship. Only those born on the islands and the first generation born in exile have such a right. I should perhaps make it clear that the right to citizenship should not be confused with the quite separate right of return, which is not affected by this amendment, important as it is.

The Chagossians were deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles and now around 4,000 live in the UK, but because of the unjust citizenship rules many are undocumented and children have been and continue to be deported. Families have been broken up and communities are divided, as some members have access to citizenship rights while others do not. This has caused hardship for many and has aggravated the trauma associated with exile. The lack of citizenship rights has created insecurity and made it harder to integrate into local communities.

In the Commons, in Committee, the Minister, Tom Pursglove, expressed some sympathy for the case made for the extension of citizenship rights and acknowledged that

“the Chagossians present a unique case.”—[Official Report, Commons, Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, 4/11/21; col. 644.]

He said he would “reflect further”. It all looked rather hopeful but when the Conservative MP, Henry Smith, raised the issue on Report, what looked like a half-open door was slammed shut by the Immigration Minister, Kevin Foster, which was very disappointing. Mr Smith emphasised the anomalies created, the injustices caused and that we are talking about no more than a few hundred to the low thousands of people who would benefit. So far, BIOT Citizens has identified 500 descendants. What is at stake is a small concession but one that would make a huge difference to the lives of those affected. It would also have symbolic importance for a people who have lost their homeland through no fault of their own.

Mr Smith’s amendment was rejected in a single paragraph. There appear to be two strings to the Government’s case. The first is that the amendment

“would undermine a long-standing principle of British nationality law … under which nationality or entitlement to nationality is not passed on to the second and subsequent generations born and settled outside the UK and its territories, creating quite a major precedent.”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/21; col. 258.]

I am sure noble Lords can spot what a specious argument this is in this context. The only reason the Chagossians in question do not meet this condition is because they are descended from people who were evicted against their will from a British Oversees Territory. Forced and continued exile prevents them from meeting these long-standing conditions. It is not clear that the Government really understand this, but as the Junior Minister acknowledged in Committee, it is “a unique case” so no precedent would be set, unless the Government have plans to evict others from their British Overseas Territory homelands. I hope and trust that, if the noble Baroness—I think it is the noble Baroness—the Minister has been briefed to use this argument, she will scrap it now.

The second government concern is more credible. They do not want to create an open-ended right in the way that the Commons amendment did, and I think that is reasonable. This amendment therefore creates a five-year time limit for applications, following the Windrush precedent in the British Nationality Act 1981. Those aged under 18 at the time of enactment will have up until the age of 23. I am offering the Minister an opportunity to add something positive, that would be widely welcomed, to a Bill that—with very few exceptions to be found in this part of it—has been widely condemned. If this particular way of capping entitlement is not to the Government’s liking I am, of course, open to discussions about alternative means, such as a generational cap. I very much hope that the Minister will accept the amendment or a revised version of it for Report. Is she willing to meet virtually with me and other signatories to the amendment and those advising me to discuss how we might proceed? I plan to return to the issue on Report to try to put right what Henry Smith MP correctly described as an “appalling injustice”. I beg to move.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thoroughly endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has said, and I am very pleased to co-sign this amendment. In the first two groups that we discussed this morning, we talked a lot about righting injustices. This is an opportunity to right a gross historic wrong—a forced eviction and exile that was, indeed, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2019.

I was one of those who raised this issue very briefly at Second Reading. I do not think the Minister referred to it in her response, although I know she had a lot of issues to cover. It should be noted, though, that the amendment in the other place from Henry Smith MP at Report stage, which the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to, had the sizeable support of 245 Members, displaying the strength of feeling about the trauma and hardship of the Chagossian community that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to.

The all-party group on Chagos is a strong and active group that has long campaigned to right, in so far as is possible, the wrongs of the 1960s when, having resisted independence from Mauritius, of which Chagos was part, Britain secretly acceded to an American request to make one of the islands, Diego Garcia, available on a long lease as a “communications hub”. Of course, it later became notorious as a site for rendition flights. Anyway, the then British Government of, I am afraid, Harold Wilson, detached Chagos from Mauritius and then emptied Chagos, chucking out its inhabitants. This appeared, apparently, to be compensation for the Americans for the UK declining to get involved in the Vietnam War.

The saga is littered with lies and about-face. The UK told the UN that the Chagos Islands had no permanent population and the Chagossians were merely contract labourers. The British Indian Ocean Territory—BIOT—comprising all the Chagos Islands was detached from Mauritius and, between 1968 and 1973, the entire population of Chagos was removed. Some 2,000 people were deported to Mauritius, some went to the Seychelles and some arrived in the UK, particularly in Crawley, perhaps because it is near Gatwick, in Sussex.

As was discussed this morning, the purpose of Part 1 of this Bill is to address long-standing discrimination in British nationality law. I put to the Committee that Amendment 11 fits perfectly in this context. The original appalling injustice of the late 1960s and early 1970s perpetrated against the Chagossians has been compounded ever since, not only by their continuing enforced exile from their homeland but by the deprivation of their descendants of their citizenship rights. Had they not been evicted but had stayed in BIOT, they would have passed British Overseas Territory citizenship from generation to generation and some would have had the entitlement to be registered as British citizens or at least benefited from the Home Secretary’s discretion to so register them.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, Ministers in the other place have provided no justification for resisting the rectification of this injustice suffered by the Chagossians. The Government simply rely, in a sense, on the injustice of eviction to perpetuate the injustice. Because we had chucked them out, they were not BIOT citizens and so they cannot benefit from any subsequent citizenship rights. The Government now have an opportunity with this new clause to make substantial amends—hardly complete amends—for the wrongs done half a century ago. I suggest that it is wrong to seek to assert that correcting the nationality law consequences of this wrong would create any wider precedent, as the noble Baroness said.

By the way, if anyone wants to read the history of the UK’s perfidious treatment of the Chagossians, I recommend this booklet of a lecture by Professor Philippe Sands QC entitled Chagos: The Last British Colony in Africa – A Short History of Colonialism, a Modern Crime Against Humanity? and I will give this to Hansard so it can correctly identify it. I urge the Minister to give a positive response.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to speak at Second Reading. I strongly support Amendment 11, which has cross-party support. I speak as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Chagos Islands.

My noble friend Lady Lister explained powerfully and clearly the position of this small number of people, whose ancestors were wrongly deported from their island homes and who have been caught up in big-power politics, denying them the basic human rights that we in your Lordships’ House enjoy. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, gave the whole context.

The fact is that, although all UK Governments agree that the exile of the Chagossians from their island homes 50 years ago was wrong and unjust, the present Government continue not to allow resettlement. They cite a range of reasons for continuing this injustice, including conservation, finance, feasibility, security and defence. This is irrespective of the fact that it is well known that the American base on Diego Garcia would not be threatened or impeded by resettlement on the 54 outer islands. Indeed, the UK Government committed in their 1965 Lancaster House agreement to returning the territory

“to Mauritius when no longer needed for defence purposes.”

The outer islands are not part of the defence framework. Conservation could be maintained by the Chagossians, as happens in other marine conservation areas, and there are various avenues for assistance with resettlement costs.

It is political will and respect for human rights that are lacking. This Government are acting in defiance of the UN charter on decolonisation and United Nations General Assembly resolutions, and contrary to the opinion of the International Court of Justice and the decision of the tribunal of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, in their obdurate refusal to countenance resettlement for this, I repeat, small number of people.

The all-party group strongly supports the international rule of law and the right of return. In respect of this amendment, which follows from all the events we have set out, we firmly believe that, until resettlement is permitted, Chagossians should not have to endure having loaded on them the further injustices that this amendment would remove: the separation of families, deportation and the unreasonable costs of excessive fees. The Government adopting this modest amendment, Amendment 11, would at least go some way to ameliorating the acknowledged injustice that Chagossians have endured by their exile.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Dubs and the proposal that Clause 10 should not stand part of the Bill. I put on record my thanks to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for the very helpful work that it has done on the Bill, with a whole raft of very useful reports. According to ILPA and the Bar Council, this clause contravenes the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and that should give us pause for thought. Research by the European Network on Statelessness shows how some children in very vulnerable circumstances will be affected, as my noble friend said, and found that there can be good reasons for delays in registering a child’s nationality.

To my mind, the justification that the clause is needed because there has been a significant increase in the number of registrations of stateless children smacks of the culture of disbelief and suspicion criticised by Wendy Williams in the Windrush report. Surely it is to be celebrated that more children are exercising their rights—no thanks to the Home Office, which has been dilatory in making children and their parents aware of these rights and in removing the barriers to registering them. It is thanks to the hard work of organisations such as the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens that more children and parents have become aware of the right to registration. As I say, this is to be commended, not cracked down on as if it were some kind of crime.

As the JCHR observes, and Amendment 31 addresses —a point made also by my noble friend Lord Dubs—it is difficult to see how this clause is compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the Home Hoffice human rights memorandum states that it has considered the best interests of the children affected, it is not clear from it how such a clause is in their best interests, so can the Minister spell out exactly how this clause meets the best interests of children affected?

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I agree with the noble Baroness that we have done good work on the Bill. On a more serious note, perhaps I may say how much we appreciate the chairmanship of the right honourable Harriet Harman MP, whose recent bereavement has saddened us so much.

I will speak to both Amendments 30 and 31. As has been said by other noble Lords, Clause 10 amends the British Nationality Act to introduce new requirements for the registration of a stateless child—a child born in the UK—and could make it even more difficult for them to acquire British nationality, to which there are already significant hurdles. I could not agree more with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Why should it be a problem that children are becoming stateless and ceasing to have the security of nationality?

Under Clause 10, the Home Secretary has to be satisfied that the child is unable to acquire another nationality. That puts that child in the position of having to prove that they could not reasonably have acquired another nationality. The policy rationale seems to be a suspicion that parents are wilfully causing their child’s statelessness—the culture of disbelief that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to. As colleagues and the JCHR say, it is difficult to see how the best interests of the child, as required by the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, are served by the new test in this provision. How is it in that child’s interests to be left stateless?

Indeed, asserts the JCHR, Clause 10

“risks punishing the child for a perceived failure”

on the part of their parent or carer, which is obviously through no fault of their own. However, the UN convention does not impose a requirement on the parent to exhaust all avenues to seek the citizenship of another state. So Clause 10 could move the UK away from the convention. I was interested that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, quoted ILFA and the Bar Council as saying that they do indeed think that this is a contravention of the convention, and I can see why. Amendment 30 is an attempt to move the UK back towards the intention of the convention by saying that British citizenship could only be withheld

“where the nationality of a parent is available to the child immediately, without any legal or administrative hurdles.”

Amendment 31 aims to make the best interests of the child central to the decision-making.

Finally, in addition to the risk of alienation from our society of individual children, it cannot be in the interests of British society as a whole for young people born here to be excluded from sharing citizenship and thus rootedness in their community.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support the amendments and the proposal that Clause 10 should not stand part, and my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle has also signed them. We should be making it as easy as possible for children to obtain a nationality if they are already stateless. Quite honestly, who dreams up these cruel clauses at the Home Office? Do they not have a heart when they are writing these things? Do they not understand the impact that they can have on children through no fault of the child? The decision should be made purely in the best interests of the child, as provided by Amendment 31. I hope that the Government change course and make this as easy and straightforward as possible. People outside are looking in and are judging this to be cruel, unpleasant and perfectly horrendous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I assume that it is the latter, but I will write to the noble Lord with the details of the figures I have here. In particular, I will give him more detail about the countries from which these cases derive.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I want to follow up, because the Minister has answered the question I was going to ask. She mentioned that the 1,700 figure—I cannot remember what year it was for—was evidence of abuse, and as she just replied to my noble friend, she is assuming that the parents in those cases could not apply. It seems to me that there is no evidence of abuse. I am thinking of the strengthened safeguards in Amendments 30 and 31, especially Amendment 31. The Home Secretary must be satisfied that “in all the circumstances” it is reasonable, et cetera. The Minister referred to circumstances where parents cannot access the authorities of the relevant state. One can think of dozens of countries around the world in conflict, civil war or whatever chaos. Adding the words

“without any legal or administrative barriers”

would go with the flow of the Home Secretary having to be satisfied that it is reasonable to refuse, and I really cannot see why the Home Office cannot accept Amendment 30, even if it is claiming that Amendment 31 is unnecessary because it already cares about the best interests of the child.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I shall write to noble Lords about this in more detail, because it is quite detailed, and explain where the figures have derived from. I was actually quoting the judge in his conclusion that an “obvious route to abuse” would be opened. I shall send the figures to the noble Baroness. On case sampling, many of the cases have a poor immigration history, with 79% of the parents having no leave at the time of the birth and only 16% having such leave, but I will outline it to noble Lords in greater detail and they can draw their own conclusion.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I cannot read the mind of the Home Secretary, but the noble Lord is absolutely correct that that was a quote from her. On the point that she was making, I think the article he referred to was in relation to the Liverpool bomber. I think the Home Secretary gave that as an example of someone whose asylum claim had been refused. That person then went on to do potential harm to the people of this country. In fact, through the actions of the very brave taxi driver, he blew only himself up, but she was reflecting on the harm that a broken asylum system can do to the people of this country. That is why we need to give refuge to those who need our refuge and to make sure that we deter illegal migration and come down hard on those people who would wish this country harm. I hope that encapsulates my right honourable friend’s estimation of the situation and satisfies the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

In terms of the impact of provisions on women, which I touched on earlier, I was very interested to hear the contributions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coussins, Lady Lister and Lady Neuberger, about the experiences of women and girls including those fleeing sexual violence, and from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, about the experience of vulnerable people who may be experiencing physical or mental ill health. These must be quite traumatic experiences, particularly if you are in a war-torn country.

We recognise that people who have experienced those traumas may feel unable to provide evidence relating to their protection or human rights claim. That is why the Bill makes very clear that, where late evidence is provided and there are good reasons for that, the credibility penalties relating to late evidence will not apply. We will set out in guidance what can constitute good reasons to allow decision-makers the flexibility to take a case-by-case approach depending on a person’s specific situation and vulnerabilities. Looking at the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and his potential case study, it might apply in that case.

We have heard many views expressed on our proposals to make it possible to remove protection claimants to a safe country while their claims are processed. I note in particular the speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Desai, Lord German and Lord Dubs, and my noble friends Lord Horam and Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate. While people are placing their lives at risk making perilous journeys, every possible option must be considered to reduce the draw of the UK. The Government have made their position clear throughout the debate: people should claim asylum in the first safe country that they reach. That is the fastest route to safety. We are also clear that this Bill is fully compliant with all our international obligations and we will not act in such a way which means that a person’s life is at risk or which places a person at risk of persecution, torture, inhumane or degrading treatment.

I move on to the British Hong Kong service personnel. I hope noble Lords will indulge me for an additional minute or two because I was intervened upon. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, raised concerns about the former British Hong Kong service personnel, and I think, to be fair to him, has been doing so since I have been a Home Office Minister, so I must give him credit for that. We remain extremely grateful to those former British Hong Kong service personnel. Under the British nationality selection scheme, a limited number were settled in Hong Kong and could apply to register as British citizens, as he knows. I can confirm, as he requested, that the Government have identified a potential solution to this issue and are currently investigating proposals that could see this cohort treated in a similar way to other non-UK service personnel. That would be in addition to other pathways that they may already be eligible for. There is considerable work to be done to fully scope the ramifications and impact of the policy; however, we aim to provide further details as soon as we can with a view to a solution being provided before the end of this calendar year. Given that he has waited nearly six years—under my tenure anyway—I know he has got an awful lot of patience.

More broadly in terms of international co-operation, my noble friend Lord Balfe, the noble Lords, Lord Reid, Lord German, Lord Davies, Lord Liddle and Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, have spoken eloquently about the need for us to work with our international partners to tackle what really are shared global challenges. I totally agree; all countries have a moral responsibility to tackle the issue of illegal migration. Most countries have got the challenge of illegal migration.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I apologise for creating a slight extra delay, but I have listened in the last 21 minutes to the noble Baroness several times referring to “illegal migrants” or “illegal migration”. This Bill is about asylum seekers and refugees. We may differ on the legal issue of people arriving or entering irregularly, and our interpretation of the refugee convention, but under the Government’s own terms this Bill is not about illegal migrants; it is about asylum seekers.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

It is also about illegal migrants.

Going back to international partners, we expect them to engage with us and we have tried to work with them to build on our good current co-operation and continue to highlight the importance of having effective returns agreements to stop people making perilous crossings. This is an established principle of any functioning migration relationship, and it enables us to maintain public confidence in our immigration system.

We have already signed agreements with India and Albania. There are more people here illegally from India than from any other country, and there are more foreign criminals from Albania than from anywhere else. It is now easier to return criminals and people with no right to be here to both countries. Beyond this, we will seek to negotiate readmissions arrangements with key EU member states which have a mutual interest in preventing asylum seekers moving between safe countries. Where we do not have broad returns agreements, we will seek returns on a case-by-case basis. We will continue to work with our international partners to meet this joint challenge.

We have heard a range of views on international conventions. I note the contributions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Neuberger, and the noble Lords, Lord Green of Deddington, Lord Dubs, Lord Coaker, Lord German, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, Lord Oates and Lord Griffiths of Burry Port. This Government remain committed to our international obligations, including the 1951 refugee convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. Those in need of protection should claim in the first safe country they reach. That is the fastest route to safety.

Immigration Rules: Au Pairs

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord knows very well that the problems with HGV drivers and poultry workers are to do with easing supply chain pressures and are nothing to do with Brexit.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, for decades after the Second World War, it was Conservatives who, following Churchill, formed the backbone of the European movement. One of the motivating causes was that of cultural and educational exchange, whether through the Council of Europe or later the EU. Why on earth can a Conservative Government not now unilaterally extend the youth mobility scheme to EU and EEA countries to include, among others, au pairs?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I have just explained this. The youth mobility scheme is open to the whole world and we are open to having arrangements with any country in the world. We already have arrangements with nine countries, with two more to be added next year.

E-scooters

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Ludford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle the illegal riding of e-scooters.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con) [V]]

My Lords, enforcement of road traffic law and how available resources are deployed to tackle illegal riding of e-scooters is an operational matter for chief officers, according to local police plans. The Government will continue to support the police by ensuring that they have the tools needed to enforce road traffic legislation, including those related to electric scooters.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, this Government claim to represent the party of law and order, and certainly they often talk about crackdowns, but, when it comes to e-scooters, they have allowed, even encouraged, de facto legalisation without the necessary legislation to protect riders and the public. This has caused problems to escalate out of control in a wild west of lawlessness, where riders are terrorising pedestrians, especially those with disabilities and visual impairment. The Government have also failed to regulate the sale and use of private ones, which probably number in the hundreds of thousands. Why are this Government refusing to act on e-scooters and keep people safe?

Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Lord because the sound was not very good, but I understood that he sees a culture that has not changed over many years, particularly one of defensiveness. The report makes it clear that there were significant failings in the Met and that the force put its reputation first, ahead of its duty to the public.

The vast majority of Metropolitan police officers, who work tirelessly to keep us safe and often put themselves in the way of danger, cannot be forgotten. They uphold the highest standards expected of them. Lessons need to be learned and the Home Secretary has decided that she wants a clear and transparent response from the commissioner, as the noble Lord says.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the report calls for police officers to be required to register membership of the Freemasons with their chief constable. This is a modest requirement compared to the recommendation of the report of the Home Affairs Select Committee, 24 years ago, that a register should be publicly available. A voluntary declaration, not even seen by the public, is inadequate to remove any perception of conflict of loyalty and ensure trust in the police. When will the Government act at least to make it mandatory to declare membership of the Freemasons, if not for that to be publicly available?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The panel is clear that it did not find any evidence that freemasonry had any effect on the investigations. The Code of Ethics, published by the College of Policing, makes it clear that the police must remain impartial and that membership of groups or societies must not cause a conflict of interest or impact an officer’s duty to discharge their duties effectively.

Passport and Visa Measures

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I think what the noble Lord is proposing is to make the rest of the world in line with what we had in the EU—in other words, to have an open borders policy with no passports. The answer is no, I am afraid.

[Baroness Ludford (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this attempt to elide European school students with the rest of the world really will not wash because, as well as talking about being ambitious for global Britain, the other favourite slogan of the Brexiter Government, is “We may have left the EU but we haven’t left Europe”. This restrictive policy towards European school students is narrow-minded and bad for Britain. One of the advantages of the present system is that no child is left out, so those who cannot afford a passport or are non-EU citizens and would need a visa are included. Do this Government really want to penalise schoolchildren and damage our reputation and, indeed, our economy?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Again, I put it back to the noble Baroness: what about people who cannot afford a passport and do not live in the EU? Do they not matter?

British Nationality Act 1981 (Immigration Rules Appendix EU) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction. I warmly welcome this measure, which is not always something that I can say about government legislation, particularly in the field of immigration and citizenship. The SI is practical, sensible and humane, as well as consistent with Article 18.3 of the withdrawal agreement, in safeguarding the right to acquire British citizenship for children born after 30 June to EU citizens who do not have settled status at the time of the child’s birth, either because the application has not been processed in time or because a late application was allowed on reasonable grounds, but who go on to get it later.

I have one question about the SI and then I want to raise some points on other aspects of the EU settlement scheme. The question is this: why is the concession being made only in respect of children born after 30 June? Can the Minister clarify the position for children born before 30 June whose parents have a gap in their immigration status after 30 June that is later resolved? What is the situation for those children? The Minister may tell me that I ought to know the answer, but I would be grateful anyway. Could she also explain what happens to children of parents who go on, in the scenario posited, to get pre-settled status? As far as I can see, they are not covered by the SI.

For children who are covered by the SI, I would be grateful to learn from the Minister what the communications plan is to make families aware of the citizenship opportunity under new Section 10A, and what evidential requirements will be imposed. We are all only too aware of what happened to many of the Windrush generation. Studies earlier this year by the JCWI and the Social Market Foundation found that high percentages of their interviewees in social care and low-skilled work were unaware of the scheme.

Of special concern among children would be those estranged from their parents. How many children in care entitled to British citizenship have not yet been registered by local authorities? Will the Home Office be able and willing to assist—through its records, whether of eligibility for settled status before 1 July or of the timing of an application for settled status and the reasons for a late grant of status—in confirming a parental relationship and the British citizenship or settled status of the parent at the relevant time? I believe that is required under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 and by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Will the child, parent, adoptive parent, local authority or other carer with parental responsibility get access to those records if necessary? Obviously it would be inappropriate and unfair for the Home Office to insist that a child produced the original of the document, given that that original was issued by the Home Office to their parent. The child could produce a copy and explain the fact of estrangement.

There is also, of course, the question of the fees for applying for citizenship, which are over £1,000. That is a huge barrier for many people—an issue that many in this House regularly raise. That is compounded by the lack of legal aid for complex cases. Has there been any reconsideration of these matters?

Turning then to other, less benign consequences of a late application, it seems curious to me that, in contrast to the subject matter of this SI, a person applying after 30 June will face drastic circumstances: the loss of lawful status, and with it the loss of the right to work, to rent accommodation, and to get free non-emergency NHS care, benefits or homelessness assistance. In fact, the full hostile environment will fall upon them, with the possible risk of removal. This is the case, as I understand it, even for those who are accepted to have reasonable grounds for a late application. Can the Minister tell us whether, three weeks from the deadline, there is any inkling of a softening in the Home Office’s approach?

Will EU citizens and their family members who miss the deadline but continue to work or rent be committing a criminal offence? Would the employer or landlord themselves face criminal proceedings? My friend in the other place, Stephen Farry MP, asked the Prime Minister 10 days ago for clarity on this, but all he got in response was that the Prime Minister was

“sure the law will be extremely merciful to anybody who finds themselves in a difficult position”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/5/21; col. 369.]

Can the Minister spell out what on earth this means in practice? I hope that it was not one of those promises like the infamous, “There will be no paperwork for Great Britain to Northern Ireland trade”.

An article in the Guardian on 27 May reported a Home Office spokesperson as saying that

“Further information will be provided to employers shortly about what they should do if they have an employee who finds themselves in this situation.”


Similarly, an answer to another Parliamentary Question said that the Home Office would be

“updating … guidance and communicating with landlords in the coming weeks”.

Can the Minister tell me whether such information and guidance has now been provided?

I understand that an announcement is due later this week on new EU settlement scheme Covid-19 guidance, which will say that absences longer than 12 months for Covid-related reasons will not break “continuous residence”, so that affected EU citizens will still be able to build up their residence period for settled status. This would also be a welcome concession. If the Minister could tell me that the Home Office will continue to be in flexible mode, that would be most helpful—although of course guidance does not provide legal certainty, and there is a case for enshrining that concession in law.

In particular, there is a very good case to avert the status gap by granting the temporary right to reside during at least the period until those applicants recognised as having a good reason for a late application get a grant of status. Can the Minister give me a glimmer of optimism on that score? Surely if the Government can, as it were, freeze rights as they are doing on citizenship in this SI, they can do the same in respect of other rights, instead of the proposed drastic loss of residence rights even for those recognised to have reasonable grounds.

Will the Home Office also look again at the treatment of those judged not to have reasonable grounds? The Government have a huge set of discretionary powers and responsibilities in this area, and the worry is that there will be differing interpretations and applications of the caseworker guidance.

Could the Government also consider expanding the list of reasons considered reasonable for lateness to include, for instance, primary carers of children applying late; lack of capacity, as an automatic good reason; pregnancy and maternity around the deadline, which particularly during Covid have been even more stressful and preoccupying than they normally are; and having permanent residence, which many, however mistakenly, think is sufficient? Will the Home Office train all its decision-makers working on late application requests and monitor all decisions to ensure consistency?

Can the Minister give us an up-to-date figure on the number of outstanding applications not yet processed? In a recent letter to parliamentarians, the Home Secretary said that, as of 30 April, over 5.4 million applications had been received and over 4.9 million grants of status made. How many of the remaining half a million have been refused and how many are still to be processed? Will the Home Office publish figures on the time it is taking to process applications, the average wait and those waiting longer than, say, three, six or 12 months?

The “New Plan for Immigration” Statement of 24 May refers to the Government “Building on the success” of the fully digital EU settlement scheme. Many EU citizens are not so impressed that they are being refused a physical proof of status. Indeed, many worry about how they will prove their status after 30 June if they make a late application that is accepted on good reasons grounds. How will their prospective employers and landlords prove their right to work, rent and access healthcare and benefits? Article 18.3 of the withdrawal agreement states that:

“Pending a final decision … on any application … all rights … shall be deemed to apply to the applicant”.


How is that being complied with if they cannot generate an online “share code”? An employer or landlord required to contact a checking service will surely not bother unless they really want that employee or tenant.

EU citizens’ trust in a fully digital scheme which rests on confidence in the Home Office’s records and systems will not have been increased by the extraordinary move—to which my attention was first drawn by journalist Robert Peston—of British citizens being sent letters telling them that they need to apply for settled status. Can the Minister explain this mistake?

Lastly, press reports of extraordinarily harsh treatment of EU citizens newly arriving have not inspired confidence—far from it. Was it really necessary to detain and even deport some people, because surely even those seeking work had a right to attend an interview? What can the Minister tell me about what went wrong? Can she reassure me about training now for Border Force personnel?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I have noticed that the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, would like to ask a supplementary question for clarification. If the Minister is happy, and given the time, I suggest we proceed. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her replies, and on the question of British citizens I confess I have not seen her tweet in reply, although it is true that I tweeted at her—I am glad she was actually enjoying herself on the day. But I could have got one of those letters. Why should a British citizen be judged to be within the scope of the cohort who should get a letter? I have seen some comments following that thread suggesting that there is some Home Office scoping exercise to see who it might be missing, but it does not inspire confidence that people with British citizenship who do not need to apply for settled status are getting letters. They are always official, if not officious, letters from the Home Office which put the wind up many people—and would do so for me if I got one—implying that there is something wrong with your existing status. If you are a British citizen and get this letter, you would be nervous. I do not understand what mistake, or deliberation, has led to British citizens getting the letter.

As a second point, I think the Minister—forgive me if I am wrong—did not address what happens to children born before 30 June whose parents make a late application, or do not make one at all, but where it is later resolved. The SI is all about children born after 30 June; if they are born before 30 June but their parents, for whatever good or not so good reason, are none the less delayed in getting their status, what happens to them?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

A child born before 30 June whose parent has not applied to the EU settlement scheme—if it were just the child—would clearly have the reasonable excuse that their parent did not apply to the EU settlement scheme, even though they were born in the UK. That is the answer to that question. Clearly, we are now trying to capture those children born after 30 June whose parents have applied.

On the letter, the rationale behind it is that we wanted to capture as many people as we could, not as few people, so I acknowledge that people to whom it does not apply may have received letters. I can say to the noble Baroness that we are doing a data-cleansing exercise to try to reduce that duplication. We do not want to worry people, but we do want to make sure that as many people apply as possible.