TOEIC English Language Tests

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

Again, once we have the tribunal determination, we will set out more fully what our response is, rather than speculating today on what that response may be. As I have said, other people are making applications under the status of their private and family life. We have changed our guidance to make it clear that that status is not a block to the application being granted. Obviously, decision makers in the Home Office will now appropriately balance matters of eight years ago with what someone’s private or family life may be today, and look at the proportionate outcome in a case.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is pretty clear that today’s urgent question—I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on obtaining it—will not be the last word on this matter. I wonder whether, when we return to this in the fullness of time, the Minister’s answers will look quite as robust as the delivery with which he offers them to the House today. Instead of doubling down on the history of the Home Office’s dealings with ETS, would it not have been better to bring in somebody independent of the Home Office to restore a bit of trust in the system, which is so manifestly lacking?

[Kevin Foster]

We are talking about actions taken during the time of the coalition Government. Obviously, we were grateful for the support of the right hon. Gentleman’s party at that time.

On bringing in independent systems, we have touched on that. There is an ability to appeal decisions to the courts, and we encourage the courts, where there is a case before them, to make a determination, and we have been doing that for some time. Again, we await the tribunal. The right hon. Gentleman is speculating on the outcome. We will see what the outcome actually is and then bring forward what we believe should be the next steps.

Foreign Interference: Intelligence and Security

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes a number of points. In relation to the House, standards and transparency, there are already measures in place, as we know, and greater work will take place, as I have said. Obviously we will support all aspects of Parliament to ensure that when more work can be undertaken on transparency, it will indeed be undertaken. When it comes to China’s role in the world, in multilateral institutions and organisations, and our own values versus the type of values that the Chinese Government are proposing around the world, I think it is fair to say that there are many difficult issues. The House recognises that, as do I as Home Secretary and the entire Government. I have already alluded to issues such as human rights abuses, whether they involve the Uyghurs or even BNOs, whom I have helped assiduously. I have set up a bespoke scheme to ensure that they are safe, despite the measures that the Chinese Government are putting in place. We as a Government will always stand up for what is right in the world. That means international law and the rules-based system, and it means calling out those who have behaved in an appalling and inappropriate way in respect of some of the issues that I have touched on.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I remind the House that I serve as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Uyghurs and on Hong Kong, and that I am a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which is chaired by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I heard what the Home Secretary said about the implementation of the ICS’s Russia report. I hope that there will now be a bit more urgency in the implementation of its recommendations, not least because we expect the publication of the Committee’s China report before too long. May I also say to the Home Secretary that if this is to be done effectively and the House and indeed this Parliament can then present a united front to the outside world, she should now be working with all parties across the House to build the consensus necessary to implement those recommendations?

[Priti Patel]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. On issues such as national security and intelligence co-operation, he is privy to much of our work and will understand the approach that we take. When it comes to legislation that is under development, we know that there are just so many aspects on which we need to legislate. I have already touched on criminal thresholds and the changing nature of the threats. We are also looking at schemes that are already running in other countries—jurisdictions overseas—to see how we can apply them to our own jurisdiction. It takes time to work through them, but I give the House every assurance that we will work in a collaborative way on these measures.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

I simply say to my colleagues on the Front Bench that that would be a wrong move. If they start down that road, they will end up in court on almost every single case, justifying whether they gave someone three months, 12 months or 14 months. It will end up in court. As all Members will know, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, the last thing Governments want is to do is give themselves an opportunity to be in court under a judicial review. I see my right hon. Friend smiling at that one. Anyone who has served as Home Secretary will know that every day you come into the office someone tells you how many times you are about to be “JRd”. So being decent and straight and doing what we have asked in new clause 47 will help the Government as well, because they will not have to end up spending vast sums on defending—sometimes—the indefensible in the courts.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very good point, which illustrates the importance of the availability of judicial review. Looking towards what might be coming down the line in this regard, should I make an assumption about having his support on that occasion?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

You would call me out straightaway, Mr Speaker, if I went so far as to enter into another debate. Tempting though the offer is from my right hon. Friend—I call him that because of the time we spent in government together, and because we agree on so many issues—he will, I am sure, forgive me if I say that I am not yet aware of any Bill that is due to come before us. I will leave it there.

The Government have recognised victims’ need for stability and consistency in the support that they receive. That is a good move, and I thank them for it. I welcome the intention to provide a guaranteed 12-month minimum period of tailored support for all confirmed victims; that is particularly important. I ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), to bear in mind, when she rises to sum up the debate, that—as I have already said to you, Mr Speaker—I intend to press the new clause to a Division unless the Government make it clear that they have listened very carefully to this and other debates on the subject. The minimum guarantee will serve as a major stabiliser. If the Government are prepared to accept that, and perhaps table an amendment in another place, I shall be prepared to wait and see what happens.

I also welcome the Government’s commitment to considering how best to support victims through the criminal justice process. They need to be serious about that, and I hope to hear a clear statement that modification and improvement are required. There remain concerns about the current restriction of support to

“needs arising from exploitation criteria”,

and the Government will need to deal with that as well.

Let me end by saying that we must separate the concept of modern day slavery from the rows about asylum seeking. Many people come over here with good cause; I personally do not blame those who are fleeing for economic reasons when things are desperate. I accept that we must have rules and restrictions, but I ask the Government to consider those who have been trafficked, those who are being persecuted, and those who are being used for the purpose of sexual or any other exploitation.

When I was at the Department for Work and Pensions, we knew that gangs were getting women in particular over here, giving in their names to claim benefit, and then pushing them into brothels and other places. That is what we want to stop. We want to stamp out the exploitation of women, and men, against their will, both at home and as a result of their being trafficked into the UK. If the Minister can give me, and the House, an assurance that she gets this, and that the Government—my Government—are prepared to make the 12 months a de minimis and to look carefully at how the support can be given and how people can be protected through this process after they go through the NRM, I may feel inclined not to press the new clause.

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[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. One other aspect of this is that it has given me the opportunity to have a fresh look at an area of legislation that I have not been as deeply involved in as he has. I might therefore raise some concerns that the Minister might not get from other quarters, with a keen focus on the legislation dealing with modern-day slavery.

I wish also speak in support of amendment 3, tabled in the name of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I will be pleased to hear him later expressing his support for my new clause, as I also hope the SNP will. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for her indication of support. The reason I say that is that my new clause has not been selected for separate Division, and it is therefore important that this House sends a clear and unequivocal cross-party message to the other House, where this issue can perhaps be looked at anew.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am sure that the House will be on tenterhooks to know, so I can put it out of its misery and tell the hon. Member that I will be more than happy to support his new clause.

[Richard Fuller]

I am very pleased to be off those tenterhooks, although I am never very sure what tenterhooks are. They do not sound very comfortable.

New clause 39 provides the Government with an opportunity to achieve their objectives but on a more considerably secure legal footing than their current proposals would permit. The new clause has been informed by the concerns raised by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton. Clause 62 currently seeks to disqualify potential victims of trafficking from the protections afforded under the national referral mechanism. Those protections are important not just as a manifestation of the mercy of our country towards those whose lives have been made wretched by the exploitations of others but to enable more effective prosecution of the perpetrators of such trafficking. Consideration of exclusion from these protections therefore requires careful assessment of the consequences for both those factors. Moreover, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned, it should be considered in the context of our country’s leading position in international law on human trafficking. That is a position that we should not give up at all lightly.

My first concern with clause 62 as proposed is to ask: where is the evidence? Where is the evidence that access to the national referral mechanism is being abused, and where is the evidence from the Government on the impact of their proposal? My second concern with clause 62 is that it does not appear to address vexatious or unwarranted claims regarding access to the national referral mechanism. That point was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green when he was speaking to his new clause. This is the wrong piece of legislation to do what the Government hope is the right thing, but which many of us fear will make the situation worse rather than better. In the absence of evidence for why this is a logical measure to adopt, I am perplexed as to why clause 62 has been drafted in this way.

My concern is also that subsections (3)(b) and (3)(f) provide a very low bar for disqualification based on criminal sentencing. For those, like me, who are not familiar with modern slavery, it may sound odd that there is public interest in supporting people who have committed crimes either here or, more likely, overseas that carry a 12-month sentence—that is the bar—but that public interest is the same public interest as we have in trying to reach the main perpetrators in county lines drug gangs or serious fraud cases.

The public interest is in enabling sufficient evidence to be collated to bring successful prosecutions against the co-ordinators of those crimes, which is where I fear this clause falls short in subsections (3)(b) and (3)(f). I see good reasons in the other subsections and paragraphs for why clause 62 makes sense, but subsections (3)(b) and (3)(f) are clearly very different. I am interested in understanding the Minister’s logic.

Although this is an immigration Bill, clause 62 will largely apply to people already here, including British citizens, who currently make up the majority of victims. Because it refers to the national referral mechanism, most British victims will fall foul of this clause. The data suggests that the vast majority of British victims would fail under the Bill’s disqualifying remit, as the majority of cases involving British victims involve criminal exploitation. Even those who fall under labour or sexual exploitation often participate in criminal activities as part of their exploitation and so may end up being “unworthy” of support. I fear that is not what we are trying to do, and it should not be in an immigration Bill.

Another concern that has been raised with me is that there are currently significant difficulties in bringing prosecutions for modern slavery. As previous speakers have mentioned, with approximately 10,000 potential victims of modern slavery identified in the UK last year and only 238 convictions, it is clear that the process is at risk of being overloaded.

How does it help for there to be new additional legal requirements to investigate the criminal history of each and every potential victim who is seeking access to the national referral mechanism? How on earth will that help? Have we not been here before, more than a decade ago? I do not like to refer back to the bad old days of immigration under Labour, but what a complete mess Labour made of it. The lives of many of my former constituents in Bedford, and the constituents of many hon. and right hon. Members here, were ruined by the Home Office’s processes, and those processes are still not where they need to be. With this new provision on access to the national referral mechanism, the Home Office is at it again, making it more complicated, making it more difficult and, ultimately, making a rod for its own back.

New clause 39 would remove children from the scope of clause 62, which is important. We do not want children to fall foul of other rules and regulations, certainly when it comes to their criminal record or otherwise. Will the Minister address that directly?

The new clause preserves the Government’s power to remove individuals from the UK who pose

“an immediate, genuine, present and serious threat to public order”.

We understand the Government want to make these changes, and there may be good reason for doing so, but let us set the bar higher and let us make it more pertinent so that we do not block the whole system and unduly use immigration law to address modern slavery. That seems a sensible change to make.

New clause 39 would change the wording of the Bill so that a person who claims to have been trafficked improperly will not be treated as having acted in bad faith, which is more in line with the trafficking convention. When a Government seek to conflate effective modern slavery legislation a little too much with immigration law, it is important that we refer to the founding principles of that first set of legislation. Let us not be wishy-washy by saying we can make it up as we go along. Let us not import one schedule from one Act and say it will work fine in this Bill, which seems sloppy. It seems much better to place it more firmly and resolutely in international conventions and other aspects of international law.

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[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Numerous constituents have written to me with their concerns about the Bill. They fear that it will harm refugees and victims of trafficking and slavery and that it undermines our international commitment to human rights and the right to asylum. I share their concerns.

The Children’s Society has said that it is

“concerned that the provisions of the bill will have a significant impact on all child victims of trafficking”.

Notably, the charity has expressed support for Labour’s new clause 6, which would exempt victims of modern slavery, exploitation or trafficking from many of the provisions in part 5 of the Bill if they were under 18 when they became a victim. Statistics show that 3,140 potential victims of modern slavery were referred to the Home Office in the second quarter of 2021—the second highest number of referrals since the national referral mechanism began in 2009—and 43% of them claimed exploitation as children.

Serious concerns have also been raised about, and many Members have referred to, the proposals in the Bill to allow the Secretary of State to serve trafficking information notices on potential victims of modern slavery and expect a response within a fixed timescale. Dame Sara Thornton, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, has said that

“will make it harder to identify those who have been exploited… Traumatised victims cannot disclose their suffering to order—it takes time to build trust and confidence.”

That is absolutely right.

The Government’s own statutory guidance on modern slavery states:

“Victims’ early accounts may be affected by the impact of trauma. This can result in delayed disclosure, difficulty recalling facts, or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Why do the provisions in the Bill run contrary to the evidence in the Government’s own guidance? This point relates to amendments 5, 6 and 7, which were tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and have cross-party support. I also support my right hon. Friend’s incredibly important new clause 3, which would create an offence for arranging or facilitating the travel of another person with a view to that person being sexually exploited in the UK.

We debate the Bill less than two weeks after the tragic loss of 27 lives in the English channel, yet the Government are intent on pushing ahead with their cruel pushbacks plan, despite Border Force officials saying privately that it is dangerous and unworkable, and despite the Joint Committee on Human Rights having said that pushbacks would

“create a situation where state actors were actively placing individuals in situations that would increase the risk”

On behalf of my constituent, who has more than 10 years’ experience in maritime rescue, I ask the Minister how the Government expect Her Majesty’s Coastguard to operate in a situation that it deems to be search and rescue but that the Home Office considers to be a pushback situation? He wants to know who will have the veto authority in such situations?

As Families Together has pointed out:

“No one chooses to cross the channel…unless they have no other option.”

Amnesty International has said that the Bill

“will cost not save lives. It will enable and empower ruthless criminal gangs not break them. It closes safe routes and opens none. It will harm women and girls along with the men seeking asylum, to whom Ministers appear to take such exception”.

I urge members from all parties to vote against the Bill on Third Reading.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a few remarks about the amendments and new clause tabled in my name and the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends and others. I put on the record my support for the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), by the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), by the official Opposition, by the Scottish National party, and by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I think you can take it from that selection, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the view of many of us here is that part 5 of the Bill requires some fairly urgent and radical surgery. In general terms, that is something to be regretted.

The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) was absolutely right to remind us of the history in relation to human trafficking in this House. He mentioned Anthony Steen, who ploughed a lonely furrow in the early days but was dogged in pursuit of that. I fear that it may not always be what he is remembered for, but ultimately he did a great deal of good in relation to this matter.

I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who, as Home Secretary, drove this with an unquestionable commitment—I saw that for myself in government. The fact that we now find the salami slicer starting to work and that, piece by piece, the provisions and protections that we have brought into operation to protect the victims of modern slavery are being taken away is, I think, a matter of regret.

I do not often tell tales from outside the Chamber, but I went up in the lift in Portcullis House with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead yesterday—I hope that she will not mind me referencing this—and apropos the House’s consideration of the Bill yesterday, she asked what sort of a debate it had been. I replied, “Suffice it to say that I don’t think anybody would refer to it as being the House at its best.” It is to be welcomed that the temperature of debate today is perhaps a bit more measured. It also illustrates that, on a matter such as this, if one looks around the Chamber and sees the range of interests that have brought forward amendments, it is very easy still to build a consensus around this. The fact that the Government show no inclination or enthusiasm for building or maintaining that consensus is a matter of deep regret.

The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) referred to the credibility provisions. He is absolutely right. The idea that legislation should interfere with the assessment of something around credibility is fundamentally obnoxious. If any right hon. and hon. Members have ever spent any time in the Appeal Court, they will have seen advocates being pulled up occasionally for trying to reopen questions of credibility. The Appeal Court always says, “We are not interested. That was heard by the judge at first instance, and he or she alone can be the judge of these matters.” Trying to set out parameters around credibility in the way that is sought here is dangerous to say the very least.

I will touch on the matters that stand in my name. Amendment 3 seeks to leave out clause 62. The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire made an excellent dissection of the effect of clause 62. He said that it was the wrong measure in the wrong place, and he is absolutely right. What we have brought here is more of a scalpel to the Bill, to remove the clause completely. It does sit with other measures in clause 5 in restricting the protections that are available to victims of modern slavery. In our view, this breaks our obligations to support the victims of human trafficking and undermines the fight against slavery and human trafficking. It will make victims less likely to come forward and to co-operate with law enforcement. Ultimately, the effect of it will be to strengthen the hand of the slavers.

Clause 62 works to exclude potential victims of slavery or human trafficking from protections on the grounds that they are a threat to public order or have claimed to be a victim in bad faith. I can put the concerns about this clause no better than Dame Sara Thornton, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, who, in a letter to the Home Secretary, warned:

“I have grave concerns about this clause because it casts a wide net with the potential to prevent a considerable number of potential victims of modern slavery from being able to access the recovery and reflection period granted through the NRM. Without such support prosecution witnesses will be unable to provide witness evidence and this will severely limit our ability to convict perpetrators and dismantle organised crime groups.”

Those are the concerns of the Government’s own Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. We have to wonder why we have people in such positions if their advice is to be disregarded in this way.

In promoting new clause 43 and amendments 130 and 131, I fully declare that I am something of a cipher for the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association—a declaration I make with absolutely no shame or embarrassment. ILPA has a long and distinguished record in this area and it comprises people whose views should be listened to.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith]

The Chagos islanders have suffered over half a century of consistent injustices. They were forcibly exiled from their homeland, the Chagos islands—Diego Garcia and outer islands such as Peros Banhos—by the Harold Wilson Administration in the late 1960s to make way for a military base, and they were typically relocated against their will in Mauritius, but also in the Seychelles and other locations.

There are many aspects of the injustices suffered by the Chagos islanders on which I and many other hon. and right hon. Members across the House have campaigned, such as a right of resettlement, a right to compensation—a package has still not been fully realised to any extent at all—and a right to self-determination. It is London, Washington, the UN in New York or Port Louis that is seeking to decide their future sovereign status.

However, there is another injustice that has been suffered by descendants of Chagos islanders: the denial of their moral rights to British overseas territory citizenship. It is no fault of the grandchildren and other descendants of the Chagos islanders that their forebears were forcibly removed from their homeland and essentially dumped in other parts of the Indian ocean, but it has meant that they have lost their rights to British overseas territory citizenship. Had those individuals been born in other overseas territories, such as Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands or Bermuda, they would have a right to British overseas territory citizenship. This is causing great hardship for many families, and dividing many communities as a result.

Those who were born on the Chagos islands and the direct children of those born on the Chagos islands do have a right to British overseas territory citizenship and therefore British citizenship. They are able to settle in this country, and are productive members of our wider society. I am grateful that many have decided to live in my Crawley constituency. However, many grandchildren and other descendants of those islanders are technically seen as foreign nationals, and have to go through an expensive and rigorous visa process to be here, and then apply for indefinite leave to remain. That results in families with different nationality status and immigration status, often in the same household. Some are able to work and to access public funds and public services. Others are unable to, which creates issues in terms of housing overcrowding.

As I said, this community has suffered a series of injustices. It is the sort of thing you would expect to read in the history books of colonialism of several hundred years ago. We are not talking about many people either. We have just heard a lot about 20,000 Afghans evacuated from that country with the fall of Kabul. We have heard a lot about over 3 million BNO—British national overseas—citizens in Hong Kong with a potential right to settle in this country as a result of the increasing Chinese erosion of democracy there. With the Chagos Islanders, only numbers in the hundreds to low thousands would be eligible.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is not about the numbers; it is about the principle and about living up to our historical obligations. I have seen a number of initiatives of this sort. I will be happy to support this new clause. It remains to be seen what the response will be from the Treasury Bench. Will he join me in putting the message across to the Ministers and officials responsible that this will never just go away? If not today, then sooner or later, these injustices will have to be addressed.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support, and I agree with every word he said.

We have had over half a century of appalling injustice, in many different regards, for this community. It is now time that this House rights the wrongs that they have suffered. In allowing British overseas territories citizenship for the descendants of the Chagos Islanders, we can go a long way towards doing that. Chagos islanders were forcibly removed from their homeland not by this House but by an Order in Council. This issue has never had the proper scrutiny of this elected House, which can now play its part in righting a significant historical injustice. I therefore call on Members from across the House to support new clause 2.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Can I once again urge colleagues to stick to the five minutes that we talked about? We are going to have to impose a time limit shortly if we are going to get everybody in.

[Mr Carmichael]

We have a fair old mixter-maxter of different amendments, new clauses and other provisions, and as I try to find a common theme, I find this: policy decisions that we make as a country and that we make in this place sooner or later have domestic policy implications. It does not matter how hard we try to ignore them, as we have with the rights of the Chagos islanders, or how hard we resist the logic of our decisions, as we have in the case of the Hongkongers until recent years—eventually they all require to be dealt with.

I want first to deal briefly with amendment 2, in my name, which would remove clause 10 from the Bill, and with amendment 12, in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which would remove clause 9. Clause 10 restricts the rights of children who would be born in this country but who would otherwise be stateless. The point about clause 9, which the right hon. Gentleman made very well, is not only that the removal of citizenship is obnoxious but that removal without notice is supremely dangerous. It is perfectly legitimate for Government Back Benchers to point out that the genesis of removal is to be found in the 2002 Act—[Interruption.] I see them nodding. However, I would gently counsel them that finding a way of making a measure introduced by David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, even more illiberal and draconian is not necessarily something about which anybody should be particularly proud.

It is the removal without notice that is particularly objectionable. As the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, one of the things we are dealing with here is the basic British sense of decency. We should not be using citizenship as some sort of tool for further punishment; there are plenty of other ways in which people who have done wrong can be punished. However, we do not use fundamental concepts of domestic and international law, such as citizenship, as a tool to do that.

The hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) have tabled various provisions on the financial barriers that have been put in place. I was happy to sign the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Streatham, and I very much support those tabled by the Scottish National party.

It seems to me from my casework as a constituency Member that the immigration system is already so complex that it is virtually impenetrable to those who are not in some way legally qualified—and, as far as I can see, to many who are. It should not therefore be administered in such a way that it is open to the Government to make a profit from these cases. There are already sufficient financial barriers in place for those who wish to have, and need to have, citizenship, and we should not be putting a further financial barrier in their way.

There is a whole range of different matters before the House this afternoon, which illustrates to me the fact that this Bill is far from properly scrutinised. We are taking it at a canter this afternoon. There may well be reasons for that in the minds of the Government’s business managers, but, as is the case with trying to wish away the consequences of our foreign policy decisions, they will not carry any water when the Bill gets to the other place, and I fear that, even though the Government will probably get their way in virtually everything today, we will not have heard the last of this Bill yet.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I will give to the hon. Gentleman, if he would like, a list of existing police powers and laws that do exactly that. There are many different laws from different pieces of legislation that I have here that do mean the police have the powers that they need to stop serious disruption. The increasing powers in the Bill are what we have a problem with, and where they could lead, because the definitions are so broad.

The Government published last week a draft definition of what they mean by “serious disruption”. It is very broad and it gives away a bit where all this came from in the first place, because top of the list of products and goods that are included in the legislation are time-sensitive products, including newspapers.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a very good case on this point. Does she not agree that there is a serious danger of a chilling effect? The people who are referred to by Government Members will not stop protesting. We know that that is the case, but community groups who perhaps have a legitimate concern and want their voices to be heard will look at this and then exclude protest from their arsenal of options to move forward.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that good point and I welcome the amendments that he has tabled to this section of the Bill. The Opposition want clauses 55 to 61 removed from the Bill and we want to protect our right to protest.

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[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will speak quickly about new clauses 42 and 55, which concern the regulation of abortion.

New clause 42, tabled by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), proposes the creation of censorship zones around abortion clinics. The intention behind it is to stop the harassment of women seeking abortion.

We already have laws against harassment which can be, and are, applied. We also already have public order laws that allow councils to impose restrictions regarding specific clinics that are experiencing any real public order difficulties, so the activity that the new clause proposes to criminalise is peaceful, passive, non-obstructive activity—less disruptive than the sort of protests that Opposition Members are so busy trying to defend today. I recognise the good faith behind the new clause, but in practice it is an attempt to criminalise the expression of an opinion. I cite the campaigner Peter Tatchell, who said today that it is an

“unjustifiable restriction on the right to free expression.”

I urge the House to vote it down.

New clause 55, tabled by the right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), would not criminalise anything; it would decriminalise something, namely abortion itself up to term. It would effectively legalise abortion on demand up to birth. She is keen that we pay attention to the text of her new clause, so I shall quote from it:

“No offence is committed…by…a woman who terminates her own pregnancy or who assists in or consents to such termination”.

The effect would be to legalise or to decriminalise abortion up to birth.

I am not arguing that the new clause is an attempt to deregulate abortion, although I believe that that might be the effect; my objection is to the principle. It says a very, very terrible thing about the value that we place on an unborn life if we simply say that it should be determined by whether or not the mother would like to keep it—by whether that baby is wanted or not. Let us think of that in terms of other lives—a newborn child, a disabled person or a vulnerable elderly person: when their family is unable to look after them, the community and the state step in. We should apply that principle in the case of a child in the womb, especially one that is still viable and could live outside the womb. I urge the House not to support new clause 55.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I will speak to amendment 1, which has cross-party support, and amendments 2 to 7, which would remove the provisions in the Bill that affect the right to protest.

In passing, I point out that a number of other issues are in play today, and goodness only knows what such a debate must look like to those looking in from the outside, but that is the consequence of the inadequacy of the time that has been made available to us. I will therefore limit my remarks strictly to the amendments that stand in my name.

Essentially the objection that many of us have to the proposals is that, first, the Government have got the balance badly wrong, and, secondly, their language in trying to strike that balance is among the vaguest and most imprecise I have ever seen as either a legal practitioner or a parliamentarian.

To ban protest on the basis that it would be noisy or cause serious annoyance may appeal to many parents of teenagers up and down the country, but we have to do rather better when fundamental issues of free speech are in play. Many years ago, it was said—the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) may have heard the same thing—that in Scots law, a breach of the peace was almost anything that two cops did not quite like the look of. It seems to me that what the Government want to do here, in regulating not the conduct of a few drunks on the high street on a Saturday night but the fundamental right to protest, is to take the law back to that imprecise state of affairs. The risk is that that serves only to pit the police against the protesters. It will not be the Home Secretary who makes a decision about what is noisy and causes serious annoyance, but police officers, often those on the ground at the time. That risks undermining the fundamental principle of policing by consent, which has always underpinned the way in which we police protest and, indeed, all behaviour in this country.

I remain of the view that the provisions will be ineffective and have a chilling effect. I do not believe for one second that, if the Bill becomes law, Extinction Rebellion will look at it and say, “Oh well, we can’t possibly go out and protest on the streets of the capital. We’d maybe better just go home and email our Members of Parliament.” Although I have heard some in the House say that even that is seriously annoying sometimes. The Bill will not stop Extinction Rebellion protesting.

However, communities throughout the country who face a challenge to hospitals, schools, traffic management and so on will look at the Bill and think, “Actually, it’s not safe for us to use our voice and to protest against what is being done to our community.” For that reason, as in so many other cases, I believe that this is a fundamentally mistaken provision. The only amendments we can seek to introduce are those that would excise it from the Bill, where they should never have been in the first place.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Carmichael]

If the hon. Gentleman can intervene in nine seconds.

[Steve Brine]

I am listening to what the right hon. Gentleman says. He does not want Conservative Members to smear Opposition amendments, so in that spirit, I point out that the Bill does not ban protest. Is he not tempted by new clause 85, which my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) spoke about, and which provides for a code for the policing of protest?

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am sorry, but I will have to ask the right hon. Gentleman to take 30 seconds.

[Mr Carmichael]

And 30 seconds, because of the nature of the programme motion that the House has passed, is inadequate, so I am afraid I will pass the hon. Gentleman up on that. There might be some future point at which we can return to it. That shows the inadequacy of the way the Government are dealing with this. In the absence of any amendable propositions, I urge the House simply to take these provisions out of the Bill.

Debate interrupted.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am going to suspend the House for one minute. After the statement, there will be a three-minute limit on speeches.

EU Settlement Scheme

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

What it shows is that we can deliver a scheme that secures the rights here in the United Kingdom of millions of our neighbours, friends and colleagues, and it also shows how we can deliver using better technology. The vast majority of people have applied literally from the comfort of their own home and have not had to go off to a visa application centre, for example, to prove their identity. With simple rules and criteria—for example, residence, not exercising free movement rights—we could grant a large number of applications fairly quickly. It not only welcomes EU nationals who came in the time of free movement, but it gives some strong lessons that we can take over into the reform and simplification of the rest of our immigration system. We have applied many of the lessons from the EUSS to the start of the British nationals overseas visa route that we created earlier this year, such as online application from home, simple criteria and a digital status that is quickly and easily issued.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

May I say to the Minister that I did exactly what he has enjoined others to do? Some weeks ago, I wrote to all the EU nationals I could identify in my constituency. We publicised the looming deadline in the press, and I have to tell him that it turned up a disturbing number of glitches in the system, not least one involving the inadequacy of certain mobile smartphones for uploading documents. I would have hoped that by this stage of things, those sorts of bugs would have been ironed out of the system, but my experience is very much that they have not.

On the figures that the Minister has given the House today, there remain something in the region of 400,000 unprocessed applications. Making allowance for the fact that there is bound to be a late surge, we might anticipate that there will be some half a million by the time of the close of the deadline. He will be aware that only once an application has been granted is the applicant entitled to the right to healthcare, to work and to rent. They could be liable to charges within the NHS. What does he intend to do for these possibly half a million people while we are waiting for the applications to be processed?

[Kevin Foster]

I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is not correct. Those who have an application—[Interruption.] I am not sure why we have Wimbledon on the screens, but anyway—

Napier Barracks Asylum Accommodation

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I think my right hon. Friend is raising an extremely good question. It is precisely because of that question that we will be introducing a Bill in the near future, announced in the Queen’s Speech, to reform our system to make sure that the asylum system is fair, as of course it should be, to those in genuine need, but that we deal with these claims quickly, effectively and fairly, and also prevent unnecessary illegal migration, which puts enormous pressure on the system of the kind we are discussing.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The British Red Cross, which I think we would all acknowledge as the expert in the area of provision of accommodation of this sort, made a recommendation in its recent report that the Home Office

“should introduce a formal, independent inspection regime for asylum…accommodation with publicly available reports,”

in order to better

“monitor the quality and effectiveness of support provided and improve transparency and accountability”

for decisions. Surely, in the Home Office’s own interests, that would be preferable to a status quo where it is left to mark its own homework or to be called out by the courts.

[Chris Philp]

We do not mark our own homework; we are very widely inspected. In fact, there was an inspection by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration just a few months ago into Napier.

Safe Streets for All

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to you.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who made a very thoughtful contribution. He said a lot in four minutes, characterised by the fact that, of course, he knows what he is talking about, because he has not just a political understanding but professional experience of criminal justice. In particular, when he spoke of sentencing and how rehabilitation should be at the heart of our prison system, there was nothing he said with which I could disagree personally or politically.

When listening to the Home Secretary, however, it struck me that if we ever wanted to generate a bob or two, we could bring out a new parlour game called “Who said it and when?” because there were points in her speech when I felt that I could have been listening to just about any Home Secretary that I have heard speak at the Dispatch Box in the last 20 years. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Home Secretaries stand there talking about “Cracking down on this” or “Getting tough on that”. It is always the rhetoric of toughness, whereas we know that, in fact, getting things right in criminal justice is often about doing things that are difficult—and difficult to explain in the tabloid press—but that are also right and effective.

We heard as much tonight when the Home Secretary talked about setting centrally driven targets in order to improve policing. Centrally driven targets will not improve policing; it is community policing, rooted in the community that it is there to serve, that will improve policing and produce the outcomes. We have heard this for decades: the rhetoric goes on, yet year after year our streets and communities become less safe for our people, and the rhetoric does not change.

I also discern in the Queen’s Speech an emerging pattern from this Government, and it is one that disturbs and concerns me. Yet again, I am afraid, the Conservatives have been pleased to style themselves in opposition as liberals, and perhaps even occasionally as libertarians, but they are increasingly authoritarian in government. The moves in the carry-over Bill in relation to the right to protest are misjudged and ill-conceived, and I think that, ultimately, they will be counterproductive.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to the question of judicial review. Any Government who believe in the rule of law should have absolutely no difficulty putting the decisions that they have taken before the court. If those decisions are right and legal, they should have no problem in the courts; and if they are not right and legal, they should want to change them in any event.

Time is short and there is one point that I wanted to put on the record. I am in total agreement with the Home Secretary’s comments condemning the scenes on our streets and online in relation to antisemitism, specifically in London. I think I come at the Israel-Palestine question from a rather different point of view from that held by the Home Secretary, but even for somebody who is as staunch a supporter of the Palestinian cause as I am, there can be no place in this debate for what we saw, and we in this country help nobody in Palestine by evincing sentiments that are antisemitic. On that, at least, I hope there will be a measure of consensus across the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is very good to hear the right hon. Gentleman mention consensus in that respect. As a rabbi in my constituency was brutally attacked yesterday—many people may be aware of this—I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for having just articulated what I would have liked to say myself if I were able to do so. I am delighted to tell him that Essex police have arrested two young men in connection with the attack on the rabbi, which was an absolute disgrace.

We now go to a limit of three minutes, I am afraid, and I call Caroline Nokes.

Immigration and Nationality Application Fees

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) on securing this debate. She gave a comprehensive exposition of the issues, as have others over the course of the debate, and I do not intend to repeat them.

I observe in passing, though, that I have noticed among my own constituency casework a significant increase in the number of people, previously here as EU citizens under the right to remain from the treaties, who are now looking to take on citizenship. They feel that it gives them greater certainty than would be the case if they were to go down the route of the other schemes that are available. I suspect that, in relation to citizenship and nationality, this situation is only going to become more acute.

The point that I want to put before the House and, in particular, the Minister is that the fees for immigration and nationality applications are not the only costs that are faced by people in my constituency. The Home Office has refused from day one to offer the biometric enrolment process in Lerwick or in Kirkwall, because it says that there are not enough people there to justify the provision of the service. I understand that the numbers are not high, but the consequences for my constituents are severe.

My constituents are required to go to Aberdeen or, on one occasion where the machine in Aberdeen was not working, to travel on to Dundee to enrol their biometric information. Over and above the cost of the fee for enrolling biometrics, if someone lives in Shetland, they would have to get the 5 o’clock overnight ferry to Aberdeen, which will get them in to Aberdeen at 7.30 am. They have their appointment and enrol their biometrics, and are back at the ferry terminal in Aberdeen at the end of the day to get the overnight ferry back. They leave at 5 pm on a Monday, and they are not back home until 7 am on the Wednesday. That is the actual commitment that is required. They could take a day trip on a plane. I have just checked the service on Loganair’s website, and they can get out at 8.30 am in the morning and come back at 10 past 3 in the afternoon, so it is just about doable, because enrolling biometrics is not a long process. The cost of that is £492. That is the extra charge that we pay over and above all the fees about which every other person in this debate has rightly complained.

To put it in terms that the Minister might understand, he asks of my constituents the same as he would be asking of his own if he were to say to them that they should go from Torbay to Stoke-on-Tent to enrol their biometrics. I suspect that his constituents would not be keen on that, never mind the possibility that the machine in Stoke-on-Trent might be broken so they might have to carry on and enrol their biometrics in Manchester. He would not accept that for his constituents, so why do he and his predecessors seem to think that I should accept it for mine? I will leave him the extra 45 seconds to give that answer in his reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) for securing this debate on immigration and nationality application fees. I thank all Members for their contributions to the discussion today. I welcome any opportunity to hear the views of the House on this subject, even if we come from differing points of view.

It has been an interesting debate. I am in no doubt from the contributions made about the strength of feeling. While I will respond to the points raised today, before I do, it might be helpful to set out the current landscape for the fees we charge for visa, immigration and nationality services.

As was touched on by my SNP shadow, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), the Immigration Act 2014 was approved by Parliament under the coalition, during the time when the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) was in the Cabinet. It sets out the governing factors that must be given regard to and are the only matters that can be taken into account when setting fee levels. These are: the costs of administering the service; benefits that are likely to accrue to the applicant on a successful outcome; the cost of operating other parts of the immigration system; the promotion of economic growth; fees charged by or on behalf of Governments of other countries for comparable functions; and any international agreement.

In setting fees, it is important to emphasise the Home Office cannot set or amend fees without obtaining the approval of Parliament. That ensures there are checks and balances in place and that there is full parliamentary oversight of the fees regime, in addition to debates such as that we are having today. Immigration and nationality fees are set within the limits specified by the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2016, which includes the maximum fee levels that can be charged on each application type or service. That is laid in Parliament and is subject to affirmative resolution procedures.

Individual fee levels are calculated in line with managing public money principles and the powers provided by the Immigration Act 2014. Specific fees are set out in regulations, which are then presented to Parliament and are subject to the negative procedure. The powers agreed by Parliament in 2014 bring benefits to the broader immigration and citizenship system and to the UK in the form of effective and secure border and immigration functions, reduced funding from general taxation and promotion of economic growth.

I turn to the issue that the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch started with—the simplification and the linked parts of the settlement requirements. As she may be aware, I have recently written to the Home Affairs Committee following a meeting with We Belong, which was a useful opportunity to explore with them their experiences of the current system.

Following the Law Commission report on simplification of the immigration rules in 2020, the Home Office is in the process of looking to simplify the immigration rules. As part of that, we are looking at reviewing the rules on settlement and when people qualify for it. We are examining how we could improve the path to settlement for this particular group of young people. Having met them, I recognise the concerns and the wider impact of being placed on what is effectively an 11-year path to citizenship, allowing 10 years to get to permanent settlement—indefinite leave to remain—and then a year free of immigration restrictions to apply for British citizenship, having received indefinite leave to remain. From what we are hearing, and from looking at the process, we believe that too many are ending up on the 10-year route and that is something we want to look at as part of a process of simplifying the rules and requirements.

We are also clear that there are areas where we should simplify the rules to ensure that there are fewer instances where a lawyer needs to be paid for support in the process, which is a cost that we know people face. I know there are some strong views across the House on this issue, and that has been shown today. I look forward to discussing them further when we look to bring forward our proposals.

It is not just in the settlement group specifically that we are looking to simplify the impact people face. Those who have been following the changes to the rules over the last year may have seen things such as the following. On the student route, if those reapplying have been supporting themselves financially without recourse to public funds for 12 months or more, we do not now ask them to prove it as part of their next application. They can do that, having done it visibly. We have changed the English language qualifications, ending a position that was rather bizarre. Someone who went to a state school and had achieved, say, an A grade at GCSE English language or even an A in A-Level English literature was then asked to pass a secure English language test. We are starting to reform some of our rules to look at the wider impacts.

A particularly interesting one, which I am quite keen on, is looking towards the reuse of biometrics and how we capture biometrics. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland set out quite well exactly what a biometrics appointment can mean, and not just for those looking to make a reapplication for leave to remain here in the UK, but sometimes for those looking to get secure entry clearance. An example highlighted to me was of a couple of cultural performers who were Aboriginal Australians. Thankfully, they came within our generous visitor route provisions for the performance they were going to make. Had they been coming for slightly longer, the most expensive part of their visa application would have been the trip from the outback to their nearest visa application centre to give us their fingerprints and facial biometrics.

To reassure Members, we are looking to make a change. The first step is to look at increasing the amount of biometric reuse in our system. That means people can reapply using the fingerprints and facial images they gave in a previous application. The second part is looking at how we can remotely capture biometrics from those who are making applications for the first time. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland may wish to know that, for example, the vast majority of EEA nationals applying to our skilled worker route will be able to supply the biometrics using an app on their smartphone to check the chip on their passport without visiting a visa application centre.

As some may have picked up, last month we launched an enhancement to the settlement route for British nationals overseas and their households ordinarily resident in Hong Kong by allowing a fully digital application route. This is the first time we have done that for non-EEA nationals, and it allows many Hong Kong special administrative region and, we believe, virtually all British national overseas passport holders the ability to apply from home if they qualify for that route.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am enormously encouraged to hear what the Minister says, and it does sound like common sense. But it does all sound distant. In the meantime, can we not just get machines for enrolment and biometrics in Kirkwall and Lerwick?

[Kevin Foster]

It is not that far distant. We are already allowing people to reuse biometrics, and we are looking to lay some regulations fairly soon. In fact, we had a briefing the other day. I would be very happy to arrange a briefing for the right hon. Member on where we are taking this work. I would say that it builds on the EU settlement scheme, to which, as he will be aware, the vast majority have applied from the comfort of their own home, using a smartphone for about 15 to 20 minutes. We are building on that. It is already with us today and it will be being expanded. We are hoping, for example, all EEA nationals applying into economic migration and study routes will soon be doing so, if they need to, from home. Again, this builds on what we have done with the EU settlement scheme. It is happening.

I appreciate that there is inconvenience for those having to still use the existing system, but it is one that we are looking to quite rapidly roll out over the coming years, ahead of making all status digital by the end of 2024. This is something that, hopefully, the right hon. Member’s constituents will start seeing the benefit of, particularly because biometric readers do not present some of the challenges that he will appreciate come with capturing biometrics for the first time in a global context.

Let me move onto the issue of child citizenship, which I am conscious that a number of Members raised today. I am aware of the great strength of feeling on this issue across the House. As some Members referenced, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s judgment that the Home Office had not demonstrated compliance with its duties under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 in setting the child registration fee—although, to be clear, the court did not strike down the regulations. We are currently carrying out a section 55 assessment to inform a review of the fee. While it would not be appropriate for me to speculate on or predict the outcome of that assessment, including whether the fee currently charged will change, we are taking prompt steps in the light of that judgment to complete the assessment.

It is important to emphasise that becoming a UK citizen is not a specific requirement to enable individuals to live, study and work in the UK and to benefit from many of the public services appropriate to a child or a young adult, most of which come with indefinite leave to remain.

The Home Office ensures that an application can be made for the fee to be waived for certain human rights-based claims for leave to remain, including where the fee is unaffordable or where an individual or family could be rendered destitute on paying the fee. That ensures that the appropriate status can be secured to access any public services required.

New Plan for Immigration

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She is well versed in this, in fact, and I thank her for the way she has worked with Ministers, and with me and the Home Office, on this issue of accommodation in her constituency. She and other Members will know that the hotel policy is very much linked to the pandemic, because we have not been able to utilise regular accommodation and dispersal accommodation, and so, along with contingency, we have been using hotels.

There is another point to make here, which is about the processes that we have to look at cases. We are going to change the end-to-end system. There is a reform package in place, including digitalisation of caseworking, faster assessments, and all sorts of work on that basis, so I can give my hon. Friend that assurance.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Can the Home Secretary tell us when the first refugees will be allowed to enter the UK under her new scheme, and how many will be settled each year?

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that today’s paper, the new immigration plan, is a consultation document. It is a Command Paper, so we are consulting and we will work with everybody who wants to work with us constructively on this. It will be subject to new legislation, and he will know the processes, but we as a Government are absolutely committed. We are already in discussion right now with partner organisations that we can work with on safe and legal routes. That is essential, because 80 million people are displaced in the world, seeking refuge. We have a moral responsibility and an obligation to do the right thing and stand by those who are fleeing persecution, while at the same time working not only other with partners but with other countries to ensure that they raise the bar too.