Public Order Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

There are two different issues: there are issues in respect of the kinds of protests that might cause serious disruption to the vital public infrastructure that we all depend on, but there may also be protests that, to be honest, might be a bit annoying but do not actually disrupt anybody at all. In a democracy, we should recognise that even though the right hon. Gentleman and I may think that the world should move on, if people have strong views, they should be able to express them.

There should be a shared understanding across the House—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way before she moves on?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way once, but I really want to get to the detail of the issues in the Bill.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Is there perhaps a case for introducing a retrospective clause, given the confession we just heard from the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)?

Customs and Borders

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Lady is exactly right. Where we currently have good free trading arrangements we should cherish them, because the truth is that it is getting harder to negotiate new trade deals. The politics of trade deals has become more complex, as communities across different countries become more worried about the losers and winners of big changes to trade arrangements. At a time when it could take very many years to negotiate new trade arrangements, if we pursue the idea of ripping up our existing ones before the conclusion of such negotiations it will be deeply damaging to many of our jobs and communities.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

In answer to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), I am struggling to think of a country that we have a ro-ro ferry arrangement with that is not in the single market—which we are going to have very soon, if we follow his direction.

[Yvette Cooper]

Unfortunately, I did not catch the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. May I ask him to repeat it?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

In answer to the right hon. Gentleman, I am struggling to think of a trading partner that we have, outside of the single market and customs union, that we have a ro-ro arrangement with, and I think that would be the answer to his question.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. Not only that, but those other countries that we might seek to get alternative trade arrangements with are further away, and when it comes to manufacturing industry in particular, geography matters—gravity matters. The best opportunities and the greatest markets will be those that are closest, especially in a world of just-in-time production where you might need to get supplies very rapidly into your factories or into your retailers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right: in the end, any agreement has obligations attached to it, as well as enforcement mechanisms.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will make this one of the final interventions. I want to deal with the objections that people have raised to a customs union, because it is important to respond to those.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I am very grateful. To build on the point that the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) made, a free trade agreement in this context is highly misleading. The UK would not have a free trade agreement, but a “less trade” agreement, and when we talk about free trade agreements with the rest of the world, we mean bits of trade agreements. Trade will not be as free as it currently is in the European Union.

[Yvette Cooper]

There is no doubt about that. If we have no customs union, there will be less free trade than we currently have, and that is where the manufacturing industry is at risk.

Manufacturing is very important in my constituency, and we are very proud of having Haribo there. I have been to visit, and I particularly enjoyed doing the quality-control checks on the Starmix—we made sure that they were particularly rigorous and tried many times to make sure that the Starmix was very top quality that day. The chief executive of Haribo said clearly to me:

“If a truck loaded with materials that we desperately need to make a product is held up or not released at border control for a day or two, the worst case scenario would be production grinding to a halt”.

That is the reality.

We know, too, that this issue is particularly important for the Northern Ireland border. Ministers have rightly said that there should be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic or between Northern Ireland and Britain. Parliament has a responsibility to make sure that that happens.

Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Some people feel—it is an excuse, actually—that the Bill, if passed, would encourage people to send their children first. I will deal with that point later, but if that was true, it would be happening in all those other countries. Therefore, it is not true at all. Some also throw up the legal aid argument. Legal aid is available in Scotland, so if legal aid was the point, all the refugees of England and Wales would be going to Scotland. People settle in a place for a whole variety of personal or community reasons. Therefore, these things are not primary pushers, but would help refugees in places where they settle, and help all those around them as well.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his important speech. Is he aware that this issue is cited in some areas as the reason why Italy and Greece are not placing children and child refugees in the UK as part of the Dubs amendment? Those countries are concerned that while the children would be able to be reunited with their family in any other country in Europe, that would not be possible in the United Kingdom. Some 240 places offered by local authorities are empty as a result, and we are not filling those Dubs places because there is such a gap between the UK’s position and that of the rest of Europe.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention; I was not aware of that point. It is absolutely fascinating to hear that other countries choose not to send these children to the UK. If they are doing so out of common decency and in the best interests of those children, because they know that they cannot be reunited with their families, that makes it even more imperative that the UK plays its international role so that people in Greece and Italy can look to the UK as being as good as any other country. Surely, as the legislators of the principal UK Parliament, we should be changing the law to make sure that that happens.

One of the children affected by the rules is Tesfa, who grew up in Eritrea. As he got older, he feared being forced into Eritrea’s brutal and endless military service. In 2010, his brother was taken by soldiers, and the family never heard from him again. Then, when Tesfa was 16, soldiers came to his school; Tesfa never returned home. Without telling his family, he fled Eritrea. He did not know where he planned to go—this is the point about legal aid or whatever—but he had to keep moving. He passed through Sudan and Libya, went over the Mediterranean, and found himself, eventually, in the United Kingdom. After applying for asylum, he was recognised as a refugee, and eventually—after well over a year—he was able to speak to his mother. Imagine that at the age of 16. However, he was unable to be reunited with his family in Britain. The UK has offered him a new home, but what home can a young man have without his family? Amnesty, which is compiling a report on this, told me that one refugee said, “A refugee without a family is like a body without a soul.” That quote will be in the Amnesty report—a plug for Amnesty there.

The Government have previously asserted that allowing children to sponsor their family members to join them would result in families sending their children to the UK so that they could then act as sponsors. During a debate on family reunion in the House of Lords before Christmas, numerous peers rose to take on this argument—I congratulate them on doing so. They cited what Mr Justice McCloskey stated in the upper tribunal:

“there is no evidence underlying it”,

with

“‘it’ being the pull factor”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 December 2017; Vol. 787, c. 1777-78.]

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who is better known for drafting article 50, was one of those peers who forcefully took on the Government’s argument. He described as a “strange, sick, Swiftian joke” the Government’s implication that families in countries such as Syria, Libya, Eritrea or the Sudan would sit down together and make the cold calculation that they would send a child on a journey across land and sea that might take several years, putting their lives at risk, to secure a right to bring the rest of the family to join them. It is very difficult to disagree with the noble Lord about that.

The Government have recognised these children as refugees. They must be congratulated on that, but they must take it further. There is no special definition of refugee that a child has to meet that is different from that for an adult. Children have to pass the same test. If they are recognised as refugees, it is because they have a need for international protection. It is therefore surely only right that these children are able to be with their family members, as adult refugees would be, which would correct a situation that the Home Affairs Committee has described as “perverse”.

On the other side of the coin, the Bill would allow refugee children to sponsor their parents and unmarried siblings under the age of 25 to join them. I can already guess what the reply to that point in the Minister’s brief will be, but I urge her not to read it. I urge her not to assert that parents would callously send their children on life-threatening journeys just so that they could later join them. If that were true, they would be going to other countries anyway, but that is not happening. I urge her instead to recognise that children are better off with their parents and those who will support them, and to bring the UK into line with the vast majority of the rest of Europe so that people resettling refugees in Greece and Italy can have trust and faith in the United Kingdom.

I do not want to pre-empt the Minister too much, but she might well argue that provisions elsewhere in the immigration rules allow a wider group of family members to be reunited. She might say that they are to be found in part 8 and appendix FM of the immigration rules, meaning that the Bill is not needed. However, as she is aware, those routes do not cover all the family relationships that I have described and nor are they accessible for refugees. The application alone costs several hundred pounds, and family members in the UK must show that they can financially support their relative. For refugees, who often have very few resources after escaping with what they have on their backs, those barriers will be impossible to overcome.

Clause 1 also gives the Home Secretary a discretionary power to grant family reunion applications in circumstances over and above those that I have just described. It may be that such an action is in the best interests of a child, because a family member is living in precarious circumstances, be that as a result of an emotional, psychological, physical or financial dependency, or as she may otherwise see fit.

I take this opportunity to thank the refugee team at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which emailed me the other afternoon to say:

“Our NHS Trust supports the mental health of young refugees through our child and adolescent mental health service. The refugee team here, with the support of Chief Executive Paul Jenkins, wished to convey their support for your private Member’s Bill.”

I thank all those working at the sharp end with refugees who have taken the time in their busy lives to be aware of what is going on in Parliament and to write an email of support.

Family reunion is primarily about bringing families back together, but it should also be seen as a safe and legal route for refugees to escape dangerous circumstances. Last month, the Home Secretary celebrated the fact that the UK had reached the halfway point in resettling 20,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict. That is to be commended. Family reunion should act as a complement to that and the UK’s other resettlement programmes.

Although for the purposes of family reunion it is only the relative in the UK who needs to have been officially recognised as a refugee, the Home Office’s immigration statistics show that the beneficiaries of family reunion are often the most vulnerable. In 2017, most family reunion visas were issued to people from Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Some 95% of those who came to the UK were under the age of 18 and/or female. Despite the global refugee crisis—the worst since world war two—very few refugees ever find themselves in the UK. Indeed, in recent years, the number of people applying for asylum in the UK has fallen. Some 86% of refugees live in the world’s poorest countries, not the richest ones. Expanding the refugee family rules would mean that more refugees are able to find safety in the UK to our benefit, as well as theirs.

While it is all well and good for families to have a right to family reunion, it is worthless if they are unable to access that right. This is what clause 2 of my Bill is about. It would amend the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to make civil legal aid available for family reunion applications. Prior to the passing of that Act, legal assistance had been available. With its removal, even those families who are eligible to be reunited face significant hurdles in being able to navigate the process.

The British Red Cross set out in its report “Not So Straightforward” the many bureaucratic and practical barriers that families face. At a recent event in Parliament hosted by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, MPs heard at first hand about the impact that not having legal aid can have. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will remember Sarah Foster, a caseworker at the British Red Cross, who said that a good solicitor for a family reunion application would cost at least £500. Meeting such costs can prove near impossible for refugees who have been unable to work while awaiting a decision on their asylum application. Sarah told us that families resort to borrowing from friends, taking out loans from unscrupulous lenders or living on virtually nothing to afford the support that they need to make their family reunion application viable.

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will also remember, Sarah told us of one applicant she met in a supermarket. He had been recognised as a refugee, but had seven children living destitute abroad. In his shopping basket were packets of 10p noodles, which he planned to live on for the next few weeks so that he could save up for the legal costs of applying to bring his children to safety. This is the situation that we are dealing with and that too many people are facing.

I will wind up my speech by thanking the British Red Cross, the UN Refugee Agency, the Refugee Council, Amnesty International and Oxfam for their support in helping the Bill to reach this point, and particularly the extremely brilliant help of Jon Featonby. I also thank the many other charities, organisations and supporters who have been in touch; those who work every day to help refugees; Baroness Hamwee, who is working on these issues in the House of Lords; the NHS refugee team; and Reverend Steve Tinning at Leigh Road Baptist Church, who is a landlord to a Syrian refugee family in Kent, and was one of the first people to get in touch with me to ask how he could help.

There has been tremendous help and support for this Bill from across the United Kingdom. People want to do the right thing. It is incumbent on the House of Commons to ensure that the right thing happens. I hope that hon. Members will today ensure that, at the very least, this Bill progresses to the next stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. To be honest, it is hard for anybody to navigate our immigration system or asylum system, but for someone who is trying to pull together their family and has been through very difficult circumstances, not being able to get any kind of legal aid makes it so much harder.

The next argument that people use is to say that this is going to create a pull factor, and that it will somehow make things much worse. There are three strong responses to that. First, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) argued, this is only about those who have already demonstrated that they meet all the criteria for being refugees. There are tests in the system already. They have shown that they have been fleeing persecution or conflict, and it is now simply about their ability to reunite with their family. Many of them have come through the legal resettlement process that the Government have rightly brought in and extended, and that we all support.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has done so much work to bring this Bill to the House.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The right hon. Lady has demolished the pull factor argument. The person has to be a refugee already, so the pull argument is dead, according to her point. I thank her for that.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. I pay huge tribute to the work he has been doing.

Secondly, the current system encourages trafficking. It encourages illegal routes and dangerous routes because there is not a safe and legal route for people to travel on. The concern of the family I spoke to whose daughter is in Lebanon—this was some time ago—was that they were going to face a choice about whether to try and find a route through with smugglers or with traffickers to get her reunited with them because they did not have a legal route. The problem is that we are already driving people into the arms of traffickers and exploitation, and we should not do that.

Home Affairs and Justice

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 28th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We have already supported many of the measures that the Government introduced in the previous Parliament on a number of different areas, and we have called for measures in areas where the Government have refused to toughen up the rules, for example, student visitor visas, which the independent inspectorate has warned have been abused. The Home Secretary has repeatedly refused my calls to tighten up the rules in that area. We also think that we need more enforcement staff in order to do the job, which again is something that she has repeatedly refused to do. Time and again she says one thing and does another, or promises one thing and then does the opposite. Immigration is important to Britain, but it needs to be controlled and managed so that the system is fair, so that people can have confidence in the immigration system and so that we can enjoy the historical benefits of people coming to this country, setting up businesses and contributing. We need a system that is controlled and managed for the future.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, who is making an excellent speech. Does she also recognise that while the rhetoric about immigration is ever-present and ever-ongoing in the UK body politic, there are fishing boats tied up in the north-west of Scotland because of this type of debate? We need to get migrant workers in to work on the fishing boats, but that is not happening because of the migrant-phobic debate we are constantly having in the UK. We must realise that migrants sometimes help our economy and help jobs on land when they work at sea.

[Yvette Cooper]

The point I just made was that in a global economy, and also given Britain’s history, we have long seen benefits from people coming here from all over the world, making this country their home and contributing to our economy, and setting up some of our biggest businesses, including Marks & Spencer. But we also need a system that is fair and that is controlled and managed. That is why we have highlighted areas where we think stronger controls are needed in order to make the system fair; for example, better enforcement is needed. We want to see lower migration as well, but the system has to recognise the different kinds of migration, which I think is the point the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is making.

The problem with the gap between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality is that in the end it undermines confidence in the whole system and faith in any immigration promise the Government might make. It also allows some people to exploit the issue in order to divide us. The Government are taking the British public for fools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right—that is a problem.

The Home Secretary’s net migration target includes students, visa overstayers, workers and refugees, but it does not include illegal immigration. That is why she failed so badly in the previous Parliament to deal properly with illegal immigration. It also does not include people who enter the country on short-term visas, even if they may then overstay and break the rules and abuse the system.

The problem for the Home Secretary is that by treating everything as part of her net migration target, she is failing. The area where her approach is failing most, and is most immoral, is the inclusion of refugees in the net migration target. That has created an incentive for the Home Office to resist giving people sanctuary, undermining our long tradition of humanitarian help. Ministers shake their heads, but let us look at the evidence about what they have done as a result of their direct incentive to cut the number of refugees that Britain accepts.

Eighteen months ago, I called on the Home Secretary to make sure that Britain was doing its bit to give sanctuary to some of those in greatest need in the refugee camps outside Syria. She resisted until she was forced to give in, and even then she accepted only 140 people. Last summer, she led the arguments in Europe to stop search and rescue in the Mediterranean, leaving people to drown in the waves in order to deter others from coming here. Now she is again refusing to help when the UN asks for help. Ministers are right to target people-smugglers’ assets and their empty boats before they can set sail, and right to try to build stability in the region, but that is not enough. Frontex has said that the main cause of the increase in boats is the situation in Syria, which has caused the worst refugee crisis since the second world war. Yet the Home Secretary is still resisting the UN’s appeal to give sanctuary to more Syrian refugees, and refusing to help the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide refuge to more of those fleeing Syria and so manage the boat crisis.

I do not expect the Home Secretary to sign up to an arbitrary quota system that is beyond our control, but I do expect her to offer to help. She should work with local councils to see how many more places we can offer and do far more to give desperate people sanctuary, because they are now fleeing not just from the civil war with Assad but from ISIL—a barbaric organisation that oppresses, persecutes and beheads people for their faith and for who they are. Throughout our history, from the Huguenots to the Kindertransport, this country has refused to turn its back on those fleeing persecution and seeking sanctuary. Just as she should not rip up the legacy of international standards on human rights, she should not rip up that legacy of international compassion either.

[Mr MacNeil]

I would add, by way of context, that although the debate in the UK makes it seem unique in leading on migration—that we are almost being “swamped”, which is the word we see in the tabloid press—the reality, according to Eurostat, is that the UK is No. 11 for the share of foreigners as a total of the population, behind countries such as Germany, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and many others. I do not think other countries have the same level of phobic debate that we now have here. It would be good to detoxify that debate and to recognise the contributions made by migrants, as the right hon. Lady did earlier.

[Yvette Cooper]

Every country in Europe is facing issues of immigration and of people moving across borders, but we should be clear in this House about separating the debate on immigration from that on asylum and refugees. They are two separate issues. Yes, we should have strong controls on immigration and we should have a sensible debate, but we should also make sure that we do not turn our back on our historical tradition of providing sanctuary for those in greatest need.

In the end, that is what most disturbs me about this Queen’s Speech and this Home Secretary’s approach. We can point to many failures—failing to keep police on the streets, failing to help victims of child abuse and of the most serious crimes, failing on border enforcement, failing to restore confidence in the immigration system—but, worst of all, she is turning our country inwards, making it a smaller, narrower, darker place. We need to be proud of who we are, of the values for which we stand internationally and of our confidence, determination and international vision. We want the rest of the world to follow the standards that we have championed, the compassion that we showed when other human beings were persecuted or abused and the outward-looking, positive nature of the country we have always been. That is the vision that this Parliament and this Labour party should be championing now.

Passport Applications

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. I know she raised that point in the Committee’s evidence session yesterday. People have made it very clear, including the very nice lady who spoke to a constituent at the Liverpool office, that it is having an impact, because they are having to process so many more foreign applications. That was a decision taken by the Government, by Ministers, and yet they failed to put the additional capacity they needed in place.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Lady not agree that the UK has a very cumbersome process for passport applications? A constituent of mine in Hong Kong applied months ago for a passport for her new baby son, but after months of delay with not much happening she has now decided to apply for a Canadian passport for her son, as the father is Canadian. She is choosing Canadian citizenship for their child over being a British subject because the passport will be given solely on the basis of the father’s birth certificate, as opposed to sending passports away to a passport office in another country. The passport application process is done far more easily in Canada in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. Is there not something the UK can learn from places like Canada?

[Yvette Cooper]

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that it used to be done in a fraction of the time. The British Passport Office used to be able to process passports much more rapidly. The international centres used to be able to process passports within 15 days, but they are not doing so now because of decisions Ministers have taken.

UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. There is a strong case for being part of that UN programme, and I will come on to that point. Indeed, it was the UN who asked us to help in the first place, and it is right that we should respond to that in the most effective way, rather than setting up parallel programmes.

Many other countries are participating. France, Austria and the Netherlands are proving sanctuary for several hundred people, which is similar to the levels of support that the Home Secretary has confirmed she expects to help. Germany and the US are taking many more refugees, but with all our countries standing together, we are not far off the 30,000 places that the UN has asked for. That is the power of countries working together. Although each country itself may offer limited support, it adds up to substantial humanitarian relief for the most desperate people in the world.

When we called for this debate seven days ago, the Government and Home Secretary held a different position on helping the refugees, and it is right that they have now changed that position. I suspect that the Immigration Minister may be glad that he is not responding to this debate, since he had to reply to the urgent question last week when his position was different. As you will be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, as a result of strong support for the UN programme from all parties—including many on the Back Benches who raised their concerns as part of that urgent question last week—the Government have changed their position.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The right hon. Lady mentions countries working together, and we know that in the UK the Government have put forward an arbitrary figure of 100,000 migrants as their target. Surely refugees should not be included in that arbitrary political figure. That would then give the Government far more room for manoeuvre in order to do the right thing and the humanitarian thing.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard me say in response to the Home Secretary’s statement that I think there is a case for removing refugees from the net migration target. Refugees and those seeking sanctuary are different from those who come as migrants to work and may have homes they can return to and are in a different situation.