Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 7th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak particularly to Amendments 2, 47 and 57. I strongly agree with the excellent opening speech on this group by my noble friend Lord Hunt and with many other speeches, including those of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and my noble friend Lady Lister. This Bill illustrates that the pandemic has revealed fundamental flaws in the present United Kingdom non-EU immigration system and the Government’s post-Brexit plans for immigration. In an economy which previously had record levels of employment, and despite the joblessness effects of Covid on the labour market, their proposed points-based system could produce damaging labour shortages in many sectors, including the NHS, social care, which has been spoken about authoritatively in this debate, farming, food processing and construction.

None of this should come as a surprise, as the 2016 referendum campaign was based on rhetoric falsely linking the free movement of EU workers with the legacies of Tory austerity: housing shortages, depressed wages and huge cuts in public services, especially social care. The promise to take back control of borders may have appealed to nationalistic jingoism, but it was never rooted in the reality of modern Britain, where EU and non-EU migrants of all skills levels and income brackets keep the economic and social wheels turning. EU and other migrant workers were always, in fact, net contributors, through tax and national insurance, to the National Health Service, social care and other public services. Despite the Government’s intention to equate low pay with low skills and low value, the pandemic has abruptly brought migrants’ significant front-line roles as key workers in keeping the country afloat to the attention of the public, among whom it is now widely recognised, whereas perhaps it was not in 2016. As the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has stated, the Bill

“will deny our communities the care and professionalism contributed by migrants in these areas, to our own detriment.”

The Bill does not set out in detail what the future points-based UK system will look like. These changes will be covered in unamendable Immigration Rules. The Bill gives the Government Henry VIII powers to modify primary or secondary legislation as appropriate. Despite the Government’s claims that these powers are usual, they will diminish the role of Parliament in an area of policy where many, including the Lords’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its 2019 46th report, have concluded that greater scrutiny is already required.

In the social care sector, on which millions of extremely vulnerable British people depend—many of them our relatives, in care homes and in their own homes—the vast majority of social care roles do not meet the planned immigration system’s salary threshold of £25,600. The noble Lord, Lord McCrea, who spoke immediately before me, emphasised that point in relation to Northern Ireland. Using data collected before—I stress, before—the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Skills for Care estimated the number of vacancies in the sector at 133,000. It also estimated that 5% of the 1.65 million workforce, or more than 80,000 staff, are at risk of losing their employment rights at the end of the transition period, in a sector where nearly half of employers are already struggling to fill existing vacancies because of low pay, anti-social hours and the demanding nature of care work.

The Government, in their wisdom, have decided that front-line social care staff will be excluded from their fast-track health and care visa, with the Home Secretary stating that this will encourage employers to invest in workers from the UK. Who is going to pay for this? Will it be people receiving care, cash-strapped local authorities, whose budgets have been massively cut, or private-sector care providers, many of whom are teetering on the brink of financial collapse? Parliament’s library briefing confirms that

“a wide range of organisations are concerned that short-term funding pressures remain. In 2018, the Local Government Association estimated that adult social care services faced a £1.5 billion funding gap by 2019/20 and £3.5 billion gap by 2024/25.”

While the points-based system is a fundamental change, other aspects of the non-EU immigration system such as enforcement, the right to bring dependants, settlement criteria, asylum, no access to public funds and more will remain unchanged when EU citizens without settled status become subject to them in 2021—next year. The pandemic has demonstrated that because of these policies, many such migrants are at significant risk of exposure to the virus, fear accessing healthcare, lack access to safe housing and are unable to stop working or to self-isolate because they are on poverty wages. This is not only detrimental to the health of migrant communities; the health of the wider public is also put at risk.

The Bill is a missed opportunity to deal with many more important questions, on which I support contributions and amendments from noble colleagues, including measures to combat modern slavery and indefinite detention, and to address family reunion for refugees and safe routes for unaccompanied children. These unresolved issues mean that the existing UK immigration regime for non-EU immigration is already a stain on our national reputation. Its extension to EU citizens from 2021 is a matter of deep regret, creating a new Brexit generation alongside the Windrush generation.

All British citizens living in the EU want to be reassured that we will uphold the treaty rights of EU citizens in the UK, the better to insist that they are upheld for our citizens in the EU. The Bill fails to provide that reassurance. If the Government want to retain the respect of our former friends and partners, they should listen to the concerns expressed by EU ambassadors and others and accept amendments which will guarantee the rights of the Brexit generation of European Union citizens, including vital social care workers, who have legally made their lives in our country, by writing them into this primary legislation.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, under cover of the pandemic, Ministers are doggedly pursuing their Brexit immigration agenda when we are in the grip of a pandemic-induced economic tsunami. A hard Brexit, sought by many Conservatives, will sever links with our most important trading partners and neighbours, and unilaterally end free movement on 31 December, with our economy still on its knees and facing a major skills crisis.

This will be the second time in the last 10 years that a Conservative Government have retrospectively changed the rights of migrants who have legally entered this country to live and work here. The Bill aims to prioritise “skilled” labour with a points-based system based largely on salary. However, as shown by a recent Ipsos MORI poll, the public recognise, with my noble friend Lord Rosser, the important role played in the pandemic by the 180,000 European Union-national health and care workers, most of whom would be identified by the Home Secretary as “low-skilled” and would not have qualified for visas under the Bill.

Unless deals on citizens’ rights are reached with the European Union, these workers, many of them heroes in the Covid crisis, will be exposed to the harsh reality of the Home Office’s failed and inhumane hostile environment policy. It is also likely that there will be a second Windrush for the children of migrants, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said in this House on 2 July. The Government’s promises on EU nationals’ rights mean nothing if they are not backed by primary legislation. They should be granted automatic settled status. The Bill does neither.

To lead a recovery from Covid, the Government are promoting investment in construction and infrastructure, highly dependent on skilled labour from the EU, yet they have no effective strategy for domestic skills-based programmes, which take years to deliver results. By ending free movement, the UK will become less accessible to highly skilled EEA migrants, on whom we have depended for years. The Huawei debacle has illustrated that the “global Britain” assumed by leave in the referendum campaign no longer exists. Our legal, economic and trading relationship with the EU—the world’s biggest, richest market, right on our doorstep—which is in no way settled, should remain our most important for years to come. Our immigration system should reflect that, not the other way around.

Another huge consequence of the Bill is that, as a direct consequence of the lack of reciprocal agreements on citizens’ rights, 66 million UK nationals will lose the benefits of their EU citizenship, their rights to travel freely and to live, work and study elsewhere in our European home. Frankly, this is all a shambolic disgrace.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do. I think that finally having a Government who acknowledge what went on over seven decades provides a real impetus. I find that we are one of the most tolerant countries in the world, but it is shameful how long this has been going on. Funnily enough, I looked at the internal Home Office website yesterday because I was looking up something in Parliament, and the first thing I saw was the history of the Windrush generation—so maybe things are improving already. We are certainly more knowledgeable about who the Windrush generation were, what they came here to do and the legacy of rebuilding Britain that they have achieved for us. So I have great hope—I think we must always hope—but we need to do this together.

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I respect the Minister for her diligent decency. Will she accept that, despite government promises, over 3,000 Windrush victims have still not received any kind of justice, and miserably fewer have received any compensation at all? Some have died, been deported or wrongfully imprisoned, lost jobs, pensions, homes, all their dignity and rights—leaving them and their families, all proud British citizens, utterly traumatised. Surely this is a crime against humanity, with Tory Cabinet Ministers, headed by Theresa May, responsible.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Now and in the future, we want to ensure that the people who receive compensation get the full amount to which they are entitled. The compensation scheme is very broad, so I agree with the noble Lord that, on the one hand, 3,000 not receiving any compensation at all is one thing, but we are working through the system and there are a number of offers in place. We want to ensure that people who take up those offers receive the full amount to which they are entitled, and that the relatives of people who have died—the noble Lord mentioned them, and a lot of people will have died in that time—are given the money they are due and that their parents were owed.

Anti-terrorism Policy

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I most wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord’s first point: far-right extremism is indeed on the increase at a rate that we did not think possible some years ago. In fact, it makes up 50% of referrals to Prevent. Prevent is currently being reviewed, but I think it provides a valuable tool for safeguarding very vulnerable people from the far right and any other type of extremism.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that we have seen an unprecedented convergence of anti-Semitic attacks, Islamophobic attacks and racist attacks? Never before in our history have we seen these three forms of race hatred all converge; that is what makes it particularly threatening. Does she also agree that the many UKIP and Brexit Party members who have been accused of Islamophobia should stand condemned?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Without calling out any particular party, anybody who engages in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or any other type of hatred should be condemned. It is up to all political parties to show leadership to this end. The noble Lord is absolutely right that there is an almost perfect storm of far-right and Islamist-type extremism, whose messages are similar but opposite in tone. It provides a perfect melting pot, as he says.