ISIS: British People
Lord Dubs Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I hope that the House will indulge me for a moment: I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that our thoughts and prayers are with the 39 people killed today in Grays, and that we wish to convey our condolences to the families of those who have lost their lives.
Those who have fought for or supported Daesh should, wherever possible, face justice for their crimes in the most appropriate jurisdiction, which is often in the region where they committed their offences. We will continue to pursue all available avenues with international partners in seeking justice and accountability for those who have fought alongside Daesh.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that we are talking about British people who were born, brought up and educated here, and who now find themselves in Kurdish custody—possibly not even certain custody as they might again come under ISIS’s control? Surely we have a responsibility to people educated in this country to bring them back, expose them to the full force of the law and have them prosecuted here, rather than leaving them to fester in the dangerous situation in the region.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, we have no intention of letting people fester, but the noble Lord will appreciate the fact that we obviously have no consular access so it is difficult to bring people to justice at the moment. We are in discussion with our international partners about what a suitable solution would look like, with agreement from those partners, in bringing people to justice.
British Citizenship
Lord Dubs Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, UK Visas and Immigration anticipates that about 178,000 applications will be processed during 2019-20. Following the introduction of streamlined processes, around 80% of applications are now submitted online. As a result, as at August 2019, 99.4% of straightforward applications were decided within the six-month service standard.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will, I am sure, be aware of an official book called Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents. First, can she justify the fact that the examples given of eminent British people are almost all men and that, in some respects, women have been airbrushed out of British life? Secondly, a number of questions arise that are supposed to be relevant to life in Britain. I will try her out on one: when was the Giant’s Causeway formed—40 million, 50 million or 60 million or 70 million years ago? Will the Minister care to hazard an answer? Also: when did Henry VIII die—January 1547, January 1557, February 1547 or February 1557? I am sure that these are relevant to life in Britain. Can the Minister answer any of these questions, please?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord, who is actually my noble friend, has issued me with a double humiliation. As someone whose father is from Northern Ireland, I am ashamed that I cannot answer his question, but I will guess at 50 million years ago.
Child Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, over 220 children were transferred to the UK under Section 67 in late 2016. Since then, we have made continuous progress towards achieving our commitment to relocate 480 unaccompanied children. Between 2016 and 2018, 426 children were transferred to the UK under Article 8.1 and 8.2 of the Dublin regulation. Since the beginning of 2016 the UK has received 9,512 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and has separately resettled 9,212 children through our resettlement schemes.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the figures she has given. Is it not incredibly disappointing that the Government themselves set an artificial cap of 480 unaccompanied child refugees under Section 67 of the Immigration Act? So far we have taken 220; no progress is being made at all. Why are the Government so reluctant to do what Parliament agreed we should do?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the Government are not reluctant to do what Parliament asked them to do: the 480 figure was based on local authorities’ abilities to take children. I know the noble Lord understands that. As to the 220, we can only move as fast as France, in particular, will allow us to in putting down children’s names for transfer to the UK. The broader picture, which I outlined in my Answer, is that we have been hugely generous to children who need our protection.
Gender Pay Gaps
Lord Dubs Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, the EHRC has enforcement powers if people are misreporting or not reporting at all. Although the story so far has been very good, with almost 100% compliance, sanctions are within the EHRC’s powers.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, to what extent is the gender pay gap distorted by the number of people, often very senior, who are masquerading as self-employed when they are working for large organisations? They are missed out of the figures altogether. Is not the only answer that individual tax returns should be in the public domain, as they are in other countries? Then we could pin all this down once and for all.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord has raised this before. There is not agreement across the House about such intrusion into people’s personal data. We often talk about data protection and privacy of data. He is right to point out that there are certain cohorts of people for whom pay data is not required because they are not employees—they might be partners and therefore not salaried—but the good thing about gender pay gap reporting is that it is done on a quartile basis, so that one can see at each level of the organisation where the disparities lie.
Retailers: Business Rates
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that it is becoming depressing that there are so many empty shops, not just in poor parts of the country but even in affluent areas? Is not the problem that there is no level playing field between shops and the online people, either in business rates or in tax dodging? Do we not have to tighten up both those areas and give our high streets a chance?
Lord Bates
We have looked at that area, and the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government is looking at this precise time to see what can be done. We have to remember that options such as an online sales tax would hit many high street stores, because they are hybrid business models that have a physical presence but also an online business.
Immigration Detention
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The right reverend Prelate will be comforted to know that all decisions on detention benefit from the oversight of the independent detention gatekeeper. On the analogy with the criminal justice system, that system is different. Custody is in place to establish a criminal investigation, but detention has already established that the person needs to be removed.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
It is very unfortunate if a child ends up in detention. The decision is balanced on the need of that child to be, perhaps, with its parents. As I told the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, the number of children in detention has drastically reduced since 2009.
Child Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, as of September 2018 a total of 1,075 refugees have been resettled through the Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme. Over half of those resettled were children. Most refugees settled have been from Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, although—following UNHCR’s urgent appeal— we have accepted approximately 50 unaccompanied children from Libya via Niger.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her Answer. Will she agree that while the conditions in the camps in Jordan, say, are physically better than in the camps on the Greek islands or in northern France, there are still many people there who are stuck and have no hope of any future unless countries such as Britain show a bit of humanity and bring more of them here. Could we not speed up the process?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, this country is not just bringing people here. We are also helping people out in the region, as the noble Lord will know. He will also know that the then Prime Minister significantly increased our contribution to help those people out in the region, many of whom could not actually make the journey over here. I think that is to be commended. It is also much more efficient to help people out in the region when hopefully peace will come at some point soon.
Equal Pay
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
Home-based working is a very good idea. Certainly organisations see it as beneficial to have some flexibility in the way that their employees work. It is to be encouraged.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
There is a simpler answer to all these inequalities, particularly discrimination against women. I ask the Minister not to dismiss it out of hand, which she has done before. If we put all income tax returns into the public domain, as has been done in some countries in Scandinavia, we would see what incomes are and what tax dodging takes place, and we would then see the real nature of inequality.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord has mentioned this to me before and I have rejected it. The equal pay legislation and the gender pay gap audits that we have asked organisations to undertake are starting to lift the lid on where inequality lies in our workforces.
Migrants: Channel Crossings
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am coming to the noble Lord’s point about Dublin. We have resettlement schemes for people in the MENA region but, if we have a deal, Dublin III will apply during the transition period. If we leave without a deal, we will not be bound at all by the Dublin regulation. Nevertheless, this Government are committed to continuing the long history of giving asylum in this country to people who need it.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that, in our discussion with the French authorities, we will set a high stake on the right of migrants who have reached Britain to claim asylum in this country, and those who have reached France to claim asylum in that country? That is a fundamental right under the Geneva convention, and it seems to be being weakened by some of the statements of the Home Secretary.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, there has been a long-established acceptance that people seeking asylum should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. The noble Lord is shaking his head slightly but, if a migrant or asylum seeker arrives in France or Italy, they should seek asylum in that country. If they do not, and decide as some have to take the treacherous journey across the channel, they not only put their lives in danger but are going against the Dublin convention.
Future Immigration
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise the issue of healthcare workers—the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Paddick, have already raised it. I talked about the NHS staff who are already on the shortage occupation list, but he is right to raise the other staff. A salary of £30,000 is the suggested level. Clearly, these things will be worked through in the next year as we have an extensive consultation period and the Government will be very pleased to hear the views of NHS workers and managers of healthcare trusts on where we have got it right and where we have got it wrong.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps the Minister could clarify something and then answer a couple of questions. The Statement talks about an “electronic travel authorisation scheme”. Can she explain what that is? Is it an ID card for people coming into the country or is it something else?
My two questions are these. First, the Statement says that,
“in future everyone other than British and Irish citizens will need to get UK permission before they can come here”.
Will the process of getting that permission be showing a passport at, say, Heathrow, or will it be a matter of getting some sort of visa or other authorisation? The danger is that other countries will reciprocate and then the easy travel that we used to have to France and elsewhere long before the EU existed will no longer apply.
Secondly, the Statement also talks about,
“a streamlined application process for those visiting, or coming to work”.
Can the Minister give us an assurance that we will end the arbitrary decision-making and have a fairer, more balanced system? I think of the difficulties that people have faced in trying to get here, such as the Libyan doctors who went to Tunis to get permission to come here for a week for training in dealing with medical trauma, but, having waited in Tunis, were arbitrarily refused and had to go back to Libya.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord’s last point perfectly illustrates the type of bureaucracy that we are trying to unlock, such as for the Libyan doctors trying to come here. I assure him that we intend it to be a far more streamlined system. We accept that on occasion it has been tricky and has taken too long to get those authorisations, which can eat into the time that the NHS might need those doctors for.
The Irish will be treated like UK citizens—no question about it. On the ETAs—electronic travel authorisations—anyone who wants to come to the UK, apart from the British and Irish nationals I just talked about, needs to apply for permission to do so. That will be either an e-visa for those coming to work or study or for tourists from visa-national countries, or an electronic travel authorisation for tourists from low-risk countries. I think it will be very similar to the ESTA that the Americans insist on.