Immigration

Debate between Patrick Grady and Carol Monaghan

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan]

It is £18,600 if they do not have any children; if they do, it is even greater. If they have children, we put in extra barriers to ensure that those families cannot be together. It is utterly disgraceful.

Many people in research and academia will not come close to the salary threshold of £30,000, such as early career researchers, technicians and many of the EU nationals working in our universities. We should be rolling out the red carpet for such people and doing everything in our power to ensure that they stay, contribute to the success of our universities, and continue to contribute to our communities. Yet once again, we put barriers in place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) mentioned Professor Alison Phipps, the UNESCO chair at the University of Glasgow. I will say a little more about her. Many of the projects that she is involved in are funded by the Department for International Development. The UK Government are funding those international projects, yet the academics involved in them—partners across Asia, the middle east and Africa—are unable to come and be part of that collaboration.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I, too, pay tribute to Professor Phipps, who works so hard on these issues. I wish to put on the record another case—that of the head of international relations at the Islamic University of Gaza, Amani al-Maqadma, whose visa has been denied despite the fact that her project is fully funded by Eramsus+. She wants to come here to contribute to the work of the university, and once again the refusal is self-defeating. It defeats the purpose of the grants that the Government are handing out. Perhaps the Minister will be able to look into that before the end of the day.

[Carol Monaghan]

It is, of course, a ludicrous situation, given that the UK Government are giving money to these projects. Flights are booked, sometimes costing thousands of pounds, in the hope that the visas will appear in time, and then we get refusals so flights have to be changed. People can no longer book fixed flights; they have to be flexible flights, which are many times more expensive. It is an utter waste of money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady]

I have parishes in my constituency, such as that of the Immaculate Conception on Maryhill Road, experiencing exactly the same issue. Priests have been coming for years on tier 5 visas without any problems at all. It is a law of unintended consequences, because the ministerial guidance on the matter is not about Christian preachers. It is a very serious issue, and the Minister knows that there will be a debate in Westminster Hall next week specifically about it. I hope that she comes prepared to justify the policy.

[Carol Monaghan]

The Minister will also have to justify it to the archdiocese of Glasgow and other archdioceses across the UK, whose bishops have been contacting MPs on this very issue.

I will mention Windrush very briefly. A constituent of mine has been told that he can get a maximum of £5,000 compensation for everything he has gone through. He is more than £50,000 out of pocket. The hostile environment has wrecked his life.

Finally, I quickly want to mention Helen, who came to see me last week. She fled Eritrea and, in the process, was separated from her two children. With the help of the Red Cross, she located her children and applied for them to join her. Her son was granted a family reunion visa; her daughter, who is now 13, was refused. So one child is still living displaced in Ethiopia and one child is living in Glasgow. Where is the humanity? I appeal to the Minister, if she has an ounce of humanity, to look into this case. The hostile environment has absolutely devastated that family.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Patrick Grady and Carol Monaghan

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

The public, frankly, are fed up with this, but they are also worried. I have been overwhelmed with correspondence from my constituents, 69% of whom voted to remain, and many of whom have since changed from leave to remain supporters. They have raised concerns about the treatment of EU nationals and the impact that it will have on the NHS, and they are angry at the tone of the negotiations. Today’s carry-on after Prime Minister’s questions does nothing to restore anyone’s faith in the Government or the Tory party.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend says that many of her constituents are moving from leave to remain. Is it not the case that many of them are also moving from no to yes on the question of Scottish independence as they watch this play out?

[Carol Monaghan]

That is exactly what many of the emails say—they voted no in 2014 because of their concern about European Union membership, and now their worst concerns are coming to pass.

I was in Romania last year as part of a parliamentary delegation. Everywhere we went, there was a celebration of Europe and its membership of the European Union. People showed great pride in the country having been a member since 2007. It was notable that one issue raised fairly regularly with the delegation was the brain drain that Romania was experiencing. It was seeing its most talented and very best young people moving to other parts of Europe. We gain benefit from that, and we should continue to.

Let us compare that with the UK. We joined a trade organisation very reluctantly in the early 1970s because we were being economically disadvantaged by not being a member of it. Almost immediately afterwards, there was a referendum to see whether that had been the right decision. Had we really done what we should have done? Throughout that time, we heard about European bureaucracy and about how things were being done to us. There was lots of comedy about it. I remember episodes of “Yes, Minister” in which people talked about sausages and bendy bananas. It is rather ironic that we are talking about the bureaucracy of the European Union and European Parliament when, just along the corridor, we have a whole pile of unelected bureaucrats sitting in this building.

The nature of the arguments in the referendum campaign also caused me deep concern. There were stories about millions going to the EU that could be spent on the NHS instead. There was scaremongering about swarms of migrants. A lot of this was stoked up by the right-wing media, and it was received by a public who were looking for leadership. EU nationals were blamed for the strain on schools, the health service and social housing, but let us be clear that the majority of EU nationals in the UK are of working age and are contributing. Three to 18 is the age of education, but the majority of EU nationals here are not in that age group. The biggest strain on our health service comes from those who are over 70, and that does not generally include EU nationals.

When I first came to London to sit in this place, I had a flat in a building where more than half the flats were empty, because they had been bought up and banked by foreign money launderers who used them as a place to keep their investments. Those flats were empty when homeless people were sleeping out on the streets. That was not the fault of EU nationals. If we want to deal with the housing crisis, we need to build houses for social use—for people who need houses. We need to stop building houses that are going to sit empty in the centre of London.

UK Entry Visas

Debate between Patrick Grady and Carol Monaghan

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely, and I would have thought that if anyone was going to honour their visa requirement to come here for a short period and then go back to their country of origin, it would be members of religious orders whose vows of obedience and stability mean that they need to remain where they are based.

Departments at the University of Glasgow frequently encounter difficulties in bringing over visiting academics. Last year, the Home Office denied a UK entry visa to Dr Nazmi al-Masri, the vice-president for external relations at the Islamic University of Gaza, despite the fact that he had a 30-year history of entering and returning from the United Kingdom, and that he was due to travel to support research programmes funded by the UK Government’s own research councils. The situation is perverse and the list goes on.

Examples emerge from all around the world on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. No fewer than 17 researchers were reported as being unable to attend the Women Leaders in Global Health Conference hosted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine last week, which the organisers said was tantamount to discrimination and bad for science research in the UK, and means that they may have to consider hosting events overseas in the future. Pioneering anti-poaching female rangers from Zimbabwe were denied entry to collect humanitarian awards on 3 November. The Syrian journalist Humam Husari was granted entry, again to collect an award, only after high-profile complaints. Here in Parliament, on a weekly if not daily basis, events I have been to recently hosted by the Industry and Parliament Trust and various all-party groups all have similar stories which are heard frankly with embarrassment and cringing by the UK-based participants.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Many of the academics my hon. Friend talks about are from sub-Saharan Africa, India and the middle east. Does he share my concerns that post Brexit this may involve academics from across Europe too?

[Patrick Grady]

That is a very real concern and I will touch on Brexit just before I finish.

It is no wonder that I heard a very senior official from the African Union, who himself had had to produce a marriage certificate and bank statements even though he was invited to attend an event by the Lord Mayor of London, tell one such meeting recently that he is not surprised when he sees business class flights from Addis Ababa to Brussels full, but similar flights to the UK more than half empty. These are not examples of a UK that is open for business. These are not examples of a global Britain. These are not examples of a Home Office that has abandoned the hostile environment. These are examples of failure across the board: failure of policy and failure of practice.

Will the Minister confirm what the Government’s policy on entry visas actually is? Can she explain why so many stakeholders feel that an effective travel ban is in place for certain countries and regions, particularly Africa and Asia? Can she explain why the reality experienced by so many sponsoring organisations is so different from the rhetoric of global Britain? Will she confirm or deny whether there is any connection with the net migration target and the rates of rejection for visitor visas? Do the Government really believe that everything on these islands is so wonderful that they must presume that everyone who applies for a visa secretly wants to abscond; that musicians, authors, academics, scientists, business owners and senior civil servants will take one look at the streets of mother Britannia paved with gold, and abandon their families and careers for a job in the UK’s gig economy? Laughable although that idea is, that is the impression that is being given.

ME: Treatment and Research

Debate between Patrick Grady and Carol Monaghan

Thursday 21st June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Carol Monaghan]

I will come on to the NICE guidelines. They are under review, and all politicians can help with that. I have already written to NICE about the issue and I will ask the Minister about that later.

We now know that 13% of the participants in the PACE trial qualified at baseline as “recovered” or “within the normal range” for one of the study’s two primary measures—self-reported physical function—even though they were classified on the same measure as disabled enough to enter the study. That anomaly, which occurred because the investigators weakened key outcome thresholds after data collection, invalidates any claim that patients recovered or got back to normal. The overlap in entry and outcome criteria is only one of the trial’s unacceptable features.

For patients, the impact of PACE is severe. The recommendation of GET as a treatment for ME has provoked a backlash from patient groups, who report that many people with ME end up more severely disabled after a course of GET than before. I have spoken to people living with ME who have tried to do GET because they are so desperate to get better and have ended up in a wheelchair or bedbound as a result of this programme.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. The turnout shows the significance of this issue to all our constituents. Her point about GET is important. It seems perverse that people should be forced to take a course of treatment that patently makes their condition worse. Does she agree that that must be reviewed?

[Carol Monaghan]

Indeed. Many people have written to me about their experience of GET, but some of the most upsetting examples are of children who were forced through a programme of GET and ended up with life-changing disabilities as a result.