Nationality and Borders Bill (Fourth sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

Q That is certainly what I heard from the Nigerian Minister of Interior, who said that the most vulnerable people in the areas Boko Haram controlled had no chance, no way to afford paying people smugglers. It was middle-class people—by Nigerian standards—who could afford to send, say, son No. 2 on that hazardous journey.

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: I cannot talk about the statement by the Minister about the Boko Haram area, but I can tell you that, first, “middle class” means something different in different countries. Secondly, the people you see applying for refugee status here are not necessarily members of the middle classes. There is a much wider range. I suggest that if someone is truly wealthy, they might be able to come by plane. That is the most expensive kind of irregular journey because it would mean purchasing a passport and a ticket.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Q Thank you very much for your time today. I have one quick question on that: if a person is middle class in the country they live in, can they still be a refugee, still be in danger and still have protection needs?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: Of course.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Thank you. If the Bill is enacted, anyone acting with purely humanitarian motives could be criminalised just for facilitating the arrival of a person who does not have entry clearance for the UK. They could face a long time in prison. The Canadian Supreme Court found that similar provisions in Canada violated article 31 of the refugee convention. Can you tell me more about that?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: Thank you very much for that question. Being or not being a refugee has nothing to do with economic status. Refugees can be poor, middle class, or very wealthy. What makes a person a refugee is a well-founded fear of persecution for one of the five reasons established in the convention. Since we are talking about this in the Bill, the manner of a person’s arrival also has no bearing on this whatsoever. A refugee is a refugee is a refugee. If you are a refugee, you are entitled to certain things. That is really the bottom line.

On the criminalisation of those who may be assisting people to move across borders, there is an important difference to be made between those who do so for gain—the smuggler; we all know that there are criminal networks preying on people’s despair, and we commend the Government for their robust action in pursuing these people and bringing them to justice; that is a relief—and those who provide assistance to people in difficulty. They could be organisations rescuing asylum seekers and migrants at sea, for example. That is a completely different kettle of fish, and we definitely believe that it should not be penalised. The difference is between gain and humanitarian purpose.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Do you know anything about what happened in Canada?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: I do not. Perhaps Elizabeth does. Otherwise, I can of course let you know

Elizabeth Ruddick: In Canada, there was an attempt to prosecute refugees who had been abandoned by the smugglers and were steering a boat to safety. They were prosecuted for facilitating each other’s safe arrival. That was found to be a violation of the convention, because if you criminalise refugees assisting each other to survive during the course of their journey, you are criminalising seeking asylum.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q It is important for the Government to hear that. They will face the same possible actions if they go ahead with this.

My other question involves the raging debates we have here all the time, which has come down to, “Yes, it does”, or, “No, it doesn’t”. People who are refugees seeking protection do not have to seek protection in the first country that they come to. We say that all the time, but we have debates with our colleagues who say, “Yes, they do. If they don’t, they are not refugees.” You say, “No, they don’t.” Will you explain that more?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: The answer is, unequivocally, no. Refugees are not required to seek asylum in the first country, full stop. The manner of travel has no bearing on refugee status—none at all. That said, it does not translate into an unfettered right for people to choose where they want to seek asylum.

What is important to consider here—it has a bearing on your situation—is that UNHCR encourages countries to enter into agreements that allow them to transfer responsibilities for asylum seekers in a manner that ensures that every individual has access to a fair procedure, to decent and appropriate reception and, if found to be a refugee, a viable integration path. They do so by sharing responsibility in such a way that protection space is expanded rather than decreased.

One of the specifics of your Bill is that it makes extensive use of so-called inadmissibility in a situation in which there is no agreement that would allow the UK to transfer these people to another safe country in which it would make sense for them to be assessed. The UK, as you know, was part of the Dublin scheme, which is not perfect by any means but was at least a mechanism that established certain rules allowing states to share responsibility and to decide who should be assessed where.

At the moment, you do not have any such agreement with the EU, so a bit of a strange situation is realising itself. Since the entry into force of the changes to the initial rules, I understand that about 4,500 individuals have been notified of their possible inadmissibility. Seven of them have been found inadmissible, but I do not think that anyone has been returned to anywhere, because this has simply created a very long queue leading to nowhere. It is fundamental to the good management of the international refugee system that there should be strong collaboration between states. I hope that clarifies things.

[Anne McLaughlin]

That really does help. I have one more brief question. Would you say that you are an authority on the refugee convention?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: The UNHCR is the established guardian of the 1951 convention. Our statute is an annex to a General Assembly resolution. The duty of states to collaborate with UNHCR is enshrined in article 35 of the 1951 convention, so yes.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

When you spoke first, you said that the Bill would not carry out its intentions. To pick up on that, many parts of the Bill have similarities to the Australian model, which was implemented in 2014. As we know, that was very successful —no migrants were crossing after about nine months of that policy coming in. You said that there were differences from the situation that arose in Australia. I get that, there are differences between them and us, but there are also a great deal of similarities. In your eyes, what are the differences that would make this legislation so unsuccessful?

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor: Let me just take a step back on Australia. The Australian approach was essentially based on offshoring and externalisation, and on turning around the boats. The offshoring and externalisation did not have any impact on the boats, but it did have a terrible, terrible impact on the people who got caught in it. If you read reports of what happened on Nauru and Manus island and so on, there were very high levels of violence, sexual violence against women and children and suicides. Children were found to be the most traumatised that most practitioners had ever seen. Children were essentially withdrawing into themselves and becoming entirely irresponsive to external stimuli. There were also suicides and self-harm. You really need to ask yourselves whether that situation is something you would like to associate your country with, to be entirely frank.

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[The Chair]

Thank you. I would like to bring in a representative from the SNP now, because they are yet to ask any questions.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Thank you very much for your time today and for everything you do for some of the world’s most vulnerable people. I have a question for Lisa. You say in your written evidence that the cost of prosecuting and imprisoning those seeking asylum, if we go ahead with this Bill, could be up to £400 million a year more than under the current system. Given that in parts of the UK the prison system is already bursting at the seams, and there is an asylum decision backlog of 70,000 people living in limbo, unable to contribute to the economy, if you could spend that £400 million, how would you use it to improve the immigration system?

Lisa Doyle: Certainly by expanding the safe routes that we have been talking about. A question was asked earlier about women and children. If the Government are serious about prioritising vulnerable women and children, the proposals to limit family reunion rights will run counter to that, because 90% of people who join people on family reunion are women and children.

We have an issue with decision making being too slow. At the Home Affairs Committee yesterday, the Home Office said that the average waiting time is a year now. We all want quick, efficient and accurate decisions, which would mean that anyone entering the UK would have their claim assessed quickly, and that would flow through the system and reduce the pressure on asylum accommodation. Putting more decision makers into the Home Office would certainly help. Improvements in the quality of accommodation and an expansion of safe routes would be a good investment for Britain to play its role in the international protection system.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Thank you very much for that. Mariam, the Australian high commissioner was here this morning—you saw that—and I was not able to ask my question, which was about resignation syndrome. You might not know much about that, but I want to talk about mental health generally. My question to him was about how offshoring impacts on everyone’s mental health, but particularly on children who suffer from resignation syndrome. I just want to get this on the record, because these children were in a catatonic state. Some of them had not moved for four months, and still the Australian Government were saying, “No, we can’t help.” Do you know anything about that? If not, you talked about people who attempted to take their own lives in the barracks, so perhaps you could say something about the impact on mental health of living in that type of accommodation.

Mariam Kemple-Hardy: Sure. I am afraid I cannot speak about resignation syndrome. However, on mental health, I have mentioned that there are a few crises in the asylum system, but one of them is definitely a mental health crisis. When we work with and speak to refugees in the asylum system right now, they talk about the impact of the system—not just the accommodation, but the system overall. One person, who has been waiting almost three years for a decision on her claim, said, “It has destroyed me psychologically as a person.”

We have a system in which people are left in limbo for years. While they are waiting, they are not allowed to work—in effect, they are banned from working. They have to live on £5.69 a day—effectively, state-sponsored poverty. People tell us that they feel that they have lost all purpose. They feel that their experience of the asylum system is almost like a mental war, a complete retraumatising. These people have made it here, trying to seek safety, after going through a very traumatic process.

As I said, however, this legislation will only double down on that injustice. It will build an additional six months’ wait into the process, if someone is inadmissible. If their claim is deemed inadmissible and they have to wait six months to see if the Government will support them, it is unlikely that they will. Then, after six months, they enter the asylum system.

We would like to see policies in legislation that are sensible and humane. For example—I will say one final thing on the right to work—you mentioned how much money the legislation might cost the Home Office. Actually, those sensible policies we believe would save the Home Office a huge amount of money and would really help people in that psychological limbo while they wait for their asylum claim to be processed. If people were given the right to work, we estimate that it would save the Home Office about £100 million per year, and actually 71% of the public fully support giving people seeking asylum the right to work. However, we do not see such policies in this legislation. Instead, we see policies to punish and not to protect.

[The Chair]

I am sorry to intervene. Paul Howell.

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[The Chair]

Are there any further questions?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q I have a question for Patricia Durr from ECPAT. When trailing the Bill, the Home Office talked about the widespread abuse of the system by child rapists and criminals—foreign national offenders. We heard the Minister alluding to that earlier. Of course, nobody wants to have a system that is abused, but I understand that ECPAT submitted a freedom of information request on that. I wonder whether you could tell us how widespread that abuse was.

Patricia Durr: We did not submit the FOI, but the response back indicated that that information is not available, so evidence of widespread abuse does not exist as far as we know.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Perhaps the Minister will get it for us for the next meeting. Thank you very much.

Nationality and Borders Bill (First sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

[Anne McLaughlin]

[Anne McLaughlin]

[The Chair]

Nationality and Borders Bill (First sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I will call Ms McLaughlin, then the Minister, and then we will see how we are doing for time.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Q The British Red Cross is part of the International Red Cross, so perhaps it has a clearer picture of the scale of the global crisis that is leading to the displacement of people. The Bill is apparently partly a response to the number of people seeking asylum and refugees that the UK is taking. You said a moment ago that we should be able to take the number we have at the moment. The UK Government’s argument is that we are taking proportionately higher than most other countries. Is that correct? Are the Government right to be concerned enough about the proportionally higher numbers that the UK is taking to bring in this legislation?

Jon Featonby: As you rightly say, the British Red Cross is part of the Red Cross and Red Crescent global movement of 190 national societies around the world. Working with our international partners gives us that insight into what is happening globally.

We know that 75% of refugees are hosted by countries that border the ones that they fled, and 85% of refugees are hosted by some of the poorest countries in the world, so it is absolutely the case that most people who are displaced from their own countries stay within their regions. Almost everybody we work with wants to be able to return home at some point, which is why they stay as close to their home as they can for as long as possible. One of the other trends we have seen over the past decade is that the situations that produce refugees are lasting for longer, which means that people are living in those other countries for longer. That potentially results in more people looking to move on in order to be able to rebuild their lives.

The UK has about 35,000 to 40,000 asylum applications a year at the moment. Compared with other European countries, that puts us 17th in the number of applications per capita. We are fourth overall for the past year. Germany received four times as many asylum applications as the UK did last year. France received three times as many and Spain received twice as many.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q That is interesting. If I have time for one more question, I want to mention the concerns that have been raised about aspects of the Bill that are not compliant with some of the UK’s international obligations—the refugee convention is one, but there are many of them. There is a huge debate; one commentator says, “It doesn’t comply,” and the Government say, “Yes, it does comply.” Do you share those concerns? If so, is it possible to amend the Bill so that the UK is not defying international obligations?

Jon Featonby: We are aware of that debate going on. I am also aware that the Committee is taking evidence from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees later in the week, which is, compared with the Red Cross, in a far better place to make comments on that.

From our point of view, that debate will probably rage on through the course of the Bill’s passage and after it becomes law, but it is important to remember where the idea of the refugee convention comes from. We can have a debate about article X or article Y of the convention and how this legislation fits or does not fit with them, but the convention was obviously born out of what happened during the second world war and built on international agreements before that. It is largely predicated on the idea that no one country can respond to global displacement on its own. To be able to do that and make sure the people who are displaced receive the protection they need, there needs to be an international framework based on solidarity and co-operation, and that is absolutely what the convention is part of. Obviously, the UK played a key role in its drafting.

One of our concerns about what is in the Bill, particularly around inadmissibility rules and reducing access to the UK’s protection system, is that what the UK says and does matters, so other countries look to the UK and take a lead from it. There is a potential negative impact. If the UK says, “We don’t believe that these people should be claiming asylum here”—not making a decision on their protection needs but just saying, “These people are inadmissible to our rules”—and they get pushed back to France, France could be within its rights to do the same, and you end up with a domino effect.

To return to what is happening in Afghanistan at the moment, one of the international community’s primary objectives should be to make sure that the countries bordering Afghanistan continue to keep their borders open so that the people who need to escape Afghanistan can do so. We saw that with the Syrian crisis and the role that Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, in particular, played in the region. There is the danger that if countries such as the UK prevent access to their protection system, some of those countries can—almost quite rightly—turn around and say, “Why should we continue to keep our borders open?”

Rather than getting into the ins and outs of the convention, we believe that it is important for the UK to continue to show that leadership by offering protection, whether through the resettlement programmes, which are absolutely among the world’s best, or through continued access to a protection system and the asylum system in the UK.

[Anne McLaughlin]

That is really helpful. Thank you.

[The Chair]

I will now call the Minister. Mr Anderson, if there is time after we hear from the Minister, we will try to fit you in.

Nationality and Borders Bill (Second sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Anne and Stuart, you have about a minute to ask your questions and to get some answers before I bring in the Minister.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Q I had a question for Lucy, which she has partly answered, so I will check with her offline—I thank her for partly answering it. I know that the JCWI has concerns about statelessness, so perhaps Zoe will say something about that. Also, this morning, we talked about the Bill being at odds with our international obligations, so will you comment on the fears that the British Red Cross expressed this morning, that if we do this—you referred to it yourself—there could be a domino effect? If we start to say, “Not on our doorstep”, France could say the same and so, even more worryingly, could countries where most people end up, such as the countries that border Afghanistan, where the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said the genuine refugees come from. We have asked countries to keep their borders open, but what if they start to say, “No, we’ll not keep our borders open if the UK isn’t going to or France isn’t.” There will be that domino effect, which is worrying.

[The Chair]

Finally, Stuart.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Q Final question from me. Do you not think it is right that somebody who claims to be a victim of trafficking should be treated as a victim and that if they choose to disclose something later, that should not count against them?

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Kirby: I think what you are getting at is correct. The reason is that some of these people are under a huge amount of duress, including their families being threatened. Their families remain in Albania and other countries, so they cannot protect them, and violence is often used by these groups. If people are told not to claim that they are a victim and to go through the criminal justice process, and then at some point change their minds for whatever reason, I think that needs to be allowed and not counted against them. The difficulty is, of course, those who would exploit the system and raise a defence at a late stage in order to cause complications for the prosecution and who are in fact criminals, sometimes at a fairly high level. That is where the police and other agencies always need to be cognisant that that defence can be raised and to run those parallel investigations.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Good afternoon. I will start by saying that none of us here can possibly understand how complex the work is that you and your colleagues do. I am trying to understand some of it. I know that recently you said that you have spotted a trend of people who were arrested in drug busts claiming to be victims of slavery when you did not believe that to be the case. I think that, as a result of those concerns, the Home Secretary is overseeing plans to roll out a new public order definition that will allow police forces to refuse NRM protection to those committing serious crimes.

That turns the presumption of innocent until proven guilty on its head. Do you think that that is the most helpful way to go forward and, if so, are there other circumstances in which we should not offer support to people because we do not believe them, before they have had the opportunity to prove otherwise? If you do not think that it is helpful, how would you amend the legislation to be more helpful, while recognising that we do not know whether people are victims of slavery at the point at which they are arrested?

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Kirby: There are a few areas there. First, the existing legislation does not apply to a lot of crime types in any event—some of the more serious crime types that you mentioned, such as kidnapping and manslaughter, and lots of offences included in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and firearms legislation, so some of that is there already. I do not think that it is right to say that policing is turning the presumption of innocent until proven guilty on its head. What I would say is that, where we already have information and intelligence in relation to individuals and their place within a criminal hierarchy, at that point it may be appropriate to turn that presumption on its head.

To illustrate, there is a recent case in Derbyshire where an Albanian gang has been dismantled only in the last couple of weeks. There have been 24 arrests, and I think 12 of those people were Albanians, running cannabis growers and other types of criminality in the region. More than one of those people claimed to be victims, but we had a covert investigation behind us that showed their level of control, their ability to communicate, the resources that they had and various things that clearly went against that claim. Absent that information and intelligence, I do not think that we would say, “We don’t believe this person,” in the first instance. An investigator should, and in all investigations does, go into that situation with an open mind. This person could be a victim or could, in fact, be a criminal. They start at that point, not on one side or the other.

The other part of your question was about what we do to make things easier for investigators to understand the true position. I think that, again, that would be some sort of duty to co-operate, because it is quite difficult if somebody claims to be a victim and then, for example, refuses to provide a phone passcode, and so on. Perhaps a duty there would assist us. I mentioned whether a person should have to declare straightaway, because often there are delays, but I think that a lot of genuine victims would suffer that way.

[Tom Pursglove]

Q Clearly it is critical that our resources are focused on genuine victims of modern slavery. Are you able to share any examples or concerns that you have about individuals or groups taking opportunities to misuse the national referral mechanism by falsely claiming to be victims?

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Kirby: Absolutely. I cannot give you names right now. That perhaps would not be appropriate, but in various areas of criminality we have seen that, and again it is for various reasons. One reason that I have alluded to already is to hamper prosecutions, as a tactic. Quite often we can get around that as investigators because we have been looking at the various areas that would prove or disprove a person’s status throughout, but sometimes the defence is raised in order to obtain access, we believe, to other services that we would of course want to provide to genuine victims, such as access to housing and potentially some assistance in securing visas and so on.



We do see those things. I can only say that in some cases we have proved that those people are not victims—for example, through covert activity that was already in place because it was a part of larger operations or because of things such as telecoms investigations and so on, sharing that work. There is a lot of technical detail in how it is done, but we have detected people exploiting the system for those two reasons: benefits and to avoid prosecution.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Q On the Border Force issue, what the Bill suggests doing is pushbacks, which many people would agree would be a dangerous activity. What are your thoughts about pushbacks and how that sits with maritime law?

Tony Smith: I think it is highly dangerous. I am in touch with former colleagues from the Australian Border Force, which is often held up as a model for pushbacks. That was an entirely different model from the one that we are proposing. These are dangerous waterways and very vulnerable vessels. I fear for the worst. We have already had drownings. They are not as well reported as they should be but we have had them. We do not know how many, of course, because bodies have not always been retrieved. We will certainly see the smugglers resort to tactics, as we saw in Australia, such as vessels literally being holed so that they sink and lifejackets being thrown overboard in the trust, hope and expectation that those on board will then be rescued, which we have an international duty to undertake.

The only real way out of this is to come to an accommodation with the French Government, which I have been advocating for some time. There is provision under article 98 of the UN convention on the law of the sea for countries to establish regional arrangements, so it is possible, with political agreement with France, that we could have joint patrols on the English channel. We could have British officers on their vessels and they could put French officers on our vessels, but the premise would be that if you are returned to either side, there is no risk of refoulement because both countries are signatories to the 1951 refugee convention and you would get a full and fair asylum hearing on either side. I do think that is possible, but there is a reluctance on the part of the French Government to go down that road at the moment because they have significant immigration problems of their own. They cannot control their own southern border because they are part of the Schengen group and there is a significant lobby in France saying, “Why would we stop people crossing to the UK when we have plenty of irregular migrants already coming into France?”

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q Good afternoon. You have already answered some of what I was planning to ask you about. I read recently that you said the preservation of life should be the UK’s top priority. You have repeated that today, so I do not need to ask you the question about whether you support the pushing back of children, men and women who arrive in boats, because you clearly do not.

You talked about Australia, which I was going to bring up. I am sure I read recently that Australia also criminalised those who rescued people who were seeking asylum and arriving by boat, but made the exception that if the vessel was not seaworthy they would not be criminalised. I think that is what you referred to when you talked about the traffickers putting holes in the boats so that they became dangerous. That sort of thing assists traffickers now that they know what to do. First, would you caution the UK against making that caveat and perhaps urge it to drop the pushback thing altogether? Would you caution against the criminalisation of people who rescue people at sea?

Tony Smith: We could spend a lot of time talking about the Australian model, which we do not have, but you are talking about a much, much longer stretch of water there. The Australian Border Force—I was down there helping it to set up—took the view that its maritime response was significantly different from ours. The vessels it deployed are significantly different from the UK Border Force cutters. The cutter fleet that we have in the Home Office are legacy Customs cutters. They are not designed to bring people ashore or to process people. They were even processing people on some of the Australian vessels to determine whether they were admissible to the asylum system before they brought them ashore. In the end, they invested in vessels of their own. They could then move the individuals from the unseaworthy vessels that they were encountering into their own vessels that they had purchased and escort them back to Indonesian waters. There was a significant investment by the Australian Government in doing that, which did work, but trying to compare that with what we see on the English channel is a different question.

Yes, of course we should preserve life, and I think the French should do that, too. There is an obligation on both sides of the channel for us to work together to find a way to stop human smugglers. The current model simply demands, “You pay €5,000 to me and I will put you in an unseaworthy vessel, and I really don’t care whether you drown or not because I have got my money.” I am afraid that is the way the mind of the human smuggler operates. They are getting the upper hand, we are seeing numbers going up and we will see more drownings. It is difficult to lay this at the door of the UK Border Force, who have a lot of other pressures on their resources at the moment.

We need to find a way, if we can, of getting common sense to prevail on a joint strategy with France. We already have a significant number of bilateral treaties with the French that have survived Brexit and that would enable us to fix this problem, but I do not think we have been able to find anybody in a senior position in the French Government who would go that far.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q My second and final question is on international relations. The UK lags behind other European countries in terms of numbers. The British Red Cross said that we were the 17th highest in terms of the number of people that we took in. The Bill basically says to the French, among others, “Not in my backyard—your problem”. What does that do to international relations and what could the UK Government do? I accept what you say about other Governments having to come into these bilateral agreements, but what could the UK Government do to reach out to other countries in Europe to try to work on this together?

Tony Smith: I would dispute those figures. We are probably about fifth in Europe in terms of asylum intake, but you are right that other countries have more asylum applications every year than we have. That is not necessarily because those numbers have been invited by the EU to go and live there. It is because they are unable to control their own external frontier. Because of the Schengen arrangement, asylum seekers can choose where they would like to go. Many drift north to Scandinavia, Germany, Holland or France, where they would rather be than in some of the southern or eastern European states.

The EU has its own difficulties in determining the allocation of asylum seekers across the Schengen zone because they do not agree among themselves about how they should be distributed. The bigger question is not necessarily a European one but a global one. No doubt you will hear evidence from experts on this. The need for international resettlement is a huge problem. We have seen it in Afghanistan; we have climate change; and we have migratory pressures coming up from South America to the US border. People are going to continue to move in great numbers over the next 20 or 30 years. The question is how the western world is going to cope with that.

I am quite a big fan of the refugee resettlement programme. UNHCR has been going out to western countries for some years saying, “We have 80 million people displaced, and 40 million in different countries in our camps already. These are refugees who have already fled war zones whom we would like you to take.” Even though we were taking only about 5,000 or so, we are still third highest in the world, so we are not really getting to grips with the global challenge of resettling refugees through the resettlement route. It has picked up a bit since Afghanistan, and we are doing more. There is certainly evidence that we are trying to do more, and I think we could become global leaders on refugee resettlement programmes, but it is going to be difficult politically for anyone to sell that when we are seeing uncontrolled migration across the English channel.

It is finding the balance. How can we help to contribute to genuine resettlement for genuine refugees, but at the same time take back control of our borders, which is clearly the Government’s stated intent?

[Tom Pursglove]

Q Is it reasonable to think, based on your many years of experience, that if we do nothing—if we just stand back from the challenge of illegal crossings—the number of crossings will increase and crossing will become even less safe? Do you think that the principle of deterrence is important in all this?

Tony Smith: I do think that. It is absolutely important in all this. While I would not defend the turn back strategy, I can understand why the Government are looking at those kinds of measures to stop the boats. It must be extremely frustrating not to be able to do anything about the ever-increasing numbers, particularly when a succession of Home Secretaries have come in saying that that was what they would do. A number of my successors—civil servants—have given evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, saying that they were going to make the route unviable. I am afraid it is not within their gift to make the route unviable within the current frameworks. One would hope that the new legislation would change things. It certainly changes the dynamic. We can now say, “We know that you arrived by this route. We know that you are not immediately fleeing persecution.”

I am not a big fan of the criminal justice system for migrants. It has not really worked. I am a fan of it for smugglers and facilitators, but putting migrants in prison is not necessarily going to be the answer and will lead to more challenges. The question is how we disrupt the smugglers and break that business model. The only way is to start seeing people going back to France. Then people will see that there is no point putting their life at risk in a small dinghy. There will be no point in more and more of them spreading up to Calais because that business model is broken. The big difficulty for the Government is how to persuade the French that we ought to have a policy like that and negotiate an agreement, and how to counterbalance that with the other problem of significant numbers of people around the world seeking resettlement. How are we going to contribute to responding to that?

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[Anne McLaughlin]

Q You have said a number of times that having safe and legal routes is one of the things that will reduce what some people refer to as the pull factor. I am going to dispute the idea of the pull factor, because of a report a few years back by the Refugee Council that demonstrated that the vast majority of people making their way to Britain had no clue what lay ahead. They just had some idea that Britain would welcome them. I wonder if one of the things we could do is show them clips of Conservative MPs talking about what kind of welcome they will get. Maybe that would reduce the pull factor. Anyway, that was not my question. Are you surprised that there is nothing in this legislation about safe and legal routes? There is nothing about increasing or improving them.

Rob Jones: Thankfully, that is a policy issue, which I do not need to deal with. It is for others to deal with. I can give you my perspective on the impact of tackling organised crime. In relation to the other factors, it is helpful. No doubt, those considerations are under way, but that question is best asked to others.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q You talked about the concurrent effort needed. I suppose you do not want to agree, but I am going to ask you anyway. Do you agree that it would be better if, at the same time as tackling the small boat crossings, we were doing something as substantive as this legislation on beefing up the safe and legal routes throughout world?

Rob Jones: Concurrent pressure against all of the factors that create a scenario in which thousands of people cross the channel in unsafe boats is absolutely something we need to.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness for his evidence.

Question put, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Craig Whittaker.)

Afghanistan Policy

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. We recognise the risk. We want to work with specialist organisations to ensure that we help the most vulnerable, which of course include minorities who are LGBT+.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

The Minister talked in her statement about a referral process for those inside Afghanistan where it is possible to arrange safe passage, thus acknowledging that that is not always possible. Last week, the Home Office released proposals to engage in push-backs of boats in the channel carrying refugees and asylum seekers. Will she confirm that that policy means a boat carrying Afghan asylum seekers fleeing the Taliban who, as she said, could find no safe passage, would be forcibly pushed back from UK waters?

[Victoria Atkins]

We are setting out safe and legal routes for Afghans who need to be resettled. As the hon. Member will know, other countries across Europe through which people are making their journeys are safe countries, and we would strongly encourage people making their way into safe countries in Europe and elsewhere to apply for asylum in those countries. The resettlement schemes are about helping people in region, and we very much hope to help the numbers that we have talked about.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Where to start, Madam Deputy Speaker? Thank you for calling me to speak—I think.

As many Members have noted throughout these proceedings, it is the 70th anniversary next week of the refugee convention—a convention built on article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises the rights of persons to seek asylum from persecution in other countries. That was the building block: the right to seek asylum from persecution. I know that the current Government are keen to distance themselves from our international treaty obligations. I have been expressly told that those obligations hold no weight in their opinion, but we simply cannot let that be the narrative. That is a concern shared by the Law Society of England and Wales, which sees it as vital that the UK applies, and is seen to apply, a convention that it willingly became a party to.

[Aaron Bell]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

No!

Our legal standing on the international stage relies on this concept. Are we not in the strangest position when the Prime Minister, who seemingly holds Churchill in the highest esteem, is willing to undermine and redefine the post-war legacy that his political hero left behind?

The Government are trailing the Bill as a chance to streamline the immigration system and to cut down on so-called unmeritorious claims and time-wasting appeals. They have even introduced a wasted cost order that will ensure that those attempting to pursue their legal rights to a fair hearing are liable to pick up the tab for certain types of conduct that they consider improper, unreasonable or negligent. What about the wasted costs that the Government will run up if this Bill goes through unamended? I am sure that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), who is so keen to help the most vulnerable in our society, will be interested to know that the cost of imprisoning so-called illegal asylum seekers could be as much as £412 million a year. If we do the maths, as the Refuge Council in England has done, the proposed plan to lock asylum seekers up for four years—yes, four years; there are some people in this House who clearly do not understand that refugees could be locked up as well simply for trying to come here—comes to an eye-watering £1.65 billion. Parts of the UK already have a prison system groaning under the strain of over-population. How can the Government justify moves that increase the number of people crammed into the prison estate?

When I prepared this speech earlier, I wrote that the hardest bit about speaking in this debate is having to leave out so much but that I was grateful to be on the Bill Committee because nothing would be left unsaid. Then, Madam Deputy Speaker, I experienced something that I have never experienced here before: the minutes went up and up, and now I am completely confused and have no idea how long this will take me.

[Alexander Stafford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Well, okay, if it gives me extra time, I will take an intervention.

[Alexander Stafford]

The hon. Lady is talking about costs and the costs of, as she says, locking up asylum seekers, but what are the costs of housing these tens of thousands of asylum seekers? What are the costs in terms of GP services? What are the costs in terms of housing for my constituents. My constituents are struggling to get access to the GP services. They are struggling to get houses—

[Anne McLaughlin]

Is it not funny, Madam Deputy Speaker, that all afternoon Government Members have been saying, “Why are more council areas in Scotland not taking more asylum seekers?” We want to do that, but the Government do not fund it. If the Government funded it properly, we absolutely, certainly would take more. Sometimes it is not just about the money, but about people’s human rights.

I want to concentrate a little on congregated living—I do not know the term, but Members will know what I mean. Today, the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) mentioned Ireland. Yesterday, at the all-party group on refugees, we heard from the Irish Refugee Council, whose chief executive, Nick Henderson, described this as a “Sliding Doors” moment. Just as Ireland changes its immigration system, after a 19-year campaign, and sets out on a path to end congregated living for asylum seekers, we are embarking on the opposite journey, closing down community dispersal for those deemed to have arrived unlawfully by slinging them into degrading and inhumane detention centres—“Sliding Doors” indeed. I will say a bit more in a minute about the Irish experience, but at that same meeting we also heard a Belarusian politician describe his experience of living as an asylum seeker in congregated settings in London. He was at pains to point out how grateful he was that the UK had taken in him and his wife, and he was very clear that, had it not done so, he would have been murdered. He is now settled, but he is worried about others. He knows the impact of congregated living for asylum seekers. None of us knows it, but he does, and he wants to warn the Government against going further down that route. He talked about the powder keg that is created when a melting pot of multiple cultures and languages lives in one space with always just one thing in common: trauma. The constant stress of that and the indignity of communal living left him feeling suicidal. Yes, I agree with those Conservative Members who say that we have a broken asylum system: we certainly do, but they are trying to fix it in the wrong way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) talked about the inquiry that the APPG on immigration detention has been doing. I attended some of those sessions and I was as sickened as she was when I heard people talking about the outbreak of scabies. How is that giving people dignity? She and I have both worked hard to try to close down the so-called mother and baby unit in Glasgow. There is a fantastic campaign called Freedom to Crawl. It is called that because in that mother and baby unit the rooms are so tiny that the babies and toddlers cannot crawl; they cannot move. That is inhumane.

I am sick to the back teeth of hearing about people who come here by very dangerous routes characterised as wealthy and selfish and just coming here for their own benefit because they want to make money.

[Duncan Baker]

There is an awful lot of talk about refugees. First, would the hon. Lady like to comment on the fact that this country has taken the highest number of refugees of any other European country? [Hon. Members: “Not true!”] Let me finish. Secondly, is there not a part of her that recognises that if we are to house refugees, as we should, and meet our international obligations, giving them a safe route to come here—not making them risk life and limb through coming on boats, as we are hearing—is a sensible and practical way to try to move the legislation forward?

[Anne McLaughlin]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, that is not true. We have just heard—he was clearly not listening—about a number of other countries that, per head of population, take far more than us. He might also be interested to know that 82% of the world’s refugees are in displacement camps in developing countries, and that the poorest countries are taking the most asylum seekers.

As I said, the gentleman who came to the APPG on refugees acknowledged that he would be dead if it had not been for the United Kingdom taking him in. Nobody here is saying that it is not a positive thing to have a system, but what the hon. Gentleman’s Government is doing to the system is vile. On safe and legal routes, yes, there is not a single person alive that would not want people to use safe and legal routes, but I must have missed something because I have not seen anything in the Bill that tells me how the Government will beef up those safe and legal routes so that people do not need to desperately cross the channel on those boats.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The most important thing is to have a sense of perspective. Everyone supports safe, legal routes, but even in a good year, pre-covid—I think the figure was about 25,000 last year—the total number of resettlements globally from UN-mandated camps was in the region of 50,000. We are talking about 25 million or 30 million refugees. We would be here for centuries before resettlement provided a complete solution. We will have resettlement but we must also have an asylum system alongside that. All we are asking is for the United Kingdom to offer a relatively small, by European standards, number of asylum seekers a place of sanctuary.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I completely agree, as I always do, with everything that my hon. Friend says.

I ask Conservative Members: just imagine it was you. I talked about a Belarusian MP, but imagine it was you. Imagine that for some reason—lucky us; we do not have to—you ended up in that situation where you had to flee. Is there anything Conservative Members would not do to keep their families safe? If there is anything they would not do to keep their families safe, maybe they should be thinking about their moral code.

Ireland has been through attempts to reform the system. It argued at the time, as Conservative Members do, that its system was a deterrent. Those at the Ministry of Justice in Ireland wanted to build misery into the accommodation system. It was not a train of thought imagined by critics; it was their actual policy. But they realised it was wrong and there is now cross-party consensus that it must stop. They reached that consensus not just because it did not work, but because they have recognised the inhumanity of that system.

[Angela Crawley]

Will my hon. Friend give away?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I want to come on to my last point, and I do not get an extra minute.

The Home Secretary set the tone for this debate by immediately, in the first paragraph of her speech, talking about people having “had enough”. She used the words “uncontrolled” “failed asylum system”, “illegal”—that was used three times—“foreign”, “crime gangs”, “pretending to be genuine” “pretending to be children”, “criminals”, “murderers” “rapists” and abusers. Yes, I am sure Conservative Members loved it. That was the first paragraph and it set the tone. It was calculated and it was irresponsible. She knew exactly what she was doing. We will be doing everything to make sure that the people know the truth out there .The Home Secretary should be ashamed of that speech yesterday, and all Conservative Members should be ashamed of this Bill.

Amnesty for Undocumented Migrants

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 567681, relating to an amnesty for undocumented migrants.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. The petition calls on the Government to

“grant an urgent Amnesty to Undocumented Migrants living in the UK.”

It attracted 103,440 signatures, and I thank each and every one of those people for participating in our democracy by signing the petition, which has led us to debate this very important issue.

It is clear that covid-19 has added a bit of impetus to the decision to sign the petition. There has been concern about the ability of undocumented migrants to get access to a vaccine, which is of benefit both to them and to the wider society, because we know that people are less likely to transmit the virus when they have had the vaccine. That seems to have given the petition a bit of added impetus, because having an unstable existence is made even more challenging through covid-19. As for many things, covid-19 has made a challenging situation more challenging, so I can understand the decision of 103,440 people to sign the petition.

In terms of what the petition calls for, it is as simple as granting an amnesty to all undocumented migrants living in the UK, except those who have a criminal record. The petition was quite clear that if someone has a criminal record, they should not be the beneficiary of the proposed amnesty, but I have to say that there is not much more detail than that. I assume that the petitioners want to treat every undocumented migrant the same, regardless of whether they are someone who has been living here for over 10 years and who has put down extensive family roots, or somebody who, quite frankly, arrived here last weekend on a dinghy from Calais. That is something that the petition is missing, because there is no clarity. I can only assume that the petition is essentially referring to every single undocumented migrant. I also assume that it would be a one-off amnesty for all undocumented migrants, but I am unsure about whether the petitioners wish it to be something that happens routinely—for example, every five or 10 years. That is also not clear. What is clear is the desire to regularise the status of all undocumented migrants, which is what we will be debating today.

The arguments in favour of the petition are clear. There are many individuals and families who have come here as undocumented migrants. Some may have come illegally in the first instance. Some may have come here legally, but the legal time that they are allowed to be here has expired and they are looking to regularise their position. It is a combination of both of those. However, there are many who are making a positive contribution to our country in difficult circumstances. At the moment, it is a very challenging situation for them.

There is also an argument that, by regularising their status, it actually leads to their paying more taxes, which is beneficial to the taxpayer. I have some sympathy with the argument that says we should treat people a bit differently if they have been here for 10 or 12 years and have put down extensive family roots. Is it really realistic, or likely, that the Government will deport migrants at that stage? It is incredibly unlikely. If we are of the view that it is incredibly unlikely that we are ever going to deport migrants in those circumstances, there does seem to be a strong argument that we should regularise their status, and perhaps an argument could be made for an amnesty. However, in terms of the arguments against, and in relation to the petition, I simply cannot support treating a family who may have been here for more than 10 years the same as somebody who came here last weekend in a dinghy.

We also cannot make assumptions about every single person who is in the undocumented migrant category. The reality is that there will be some people who have come into this country through an illegal route. We do not know whether they are genuine refugees; it is impossible to know whether all of them will be. Among them there will be some economic migrants, so ultimately those individuals would likely be the beneficiaries of the blanket move as suggested by the petition. That is something that I cannot support.

If we were to support a blanket amnesty for every single undocumented migrant, it would be impossible to sustain that position while at the same time not being in favour of open borders. I find it very difficult to understand how you could support an amnesty—and potentially have one regularly, every five or six years—and not support open borders. As a Member of Parliament of this country, I would never support open borders. It would put unsustainable amounts of pressure on our public services. There would be all sorts of problems with social integration if migration was unmanaged to that extent. It would also limit our country’s ability to show compassion towards the most genuine refugees and to have a laws-based, rules-based immigration system that allows us to welcome the brightest and the best who want to come to this country to make a positive contribution. More to the point, it would be a slap in the face for all of those people who have moved to this country legally and who have followed the—often cumbersome—rules. They have followed them. They have done their side of the bargain. They have moved here legally. This would be a slap in the face to them.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Member know that a lot of the people that we are talking about, undocumented migrants, have come here legally? They are undocumented not through any fault of their own. Does he accept that?

[Tom Hunt]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Member, I did make the point that the proposal would apply both to those who may have entered the country illegally and to those who may have entered legally but for a fixed period of time that has expired. Yes, it is a mixture. That is why I am against a blanket amnesty. It would be a significant movement away from the case-by-case approach that the Government are currently taking, which takes into account the differences between cases and the nuances of different circumstances. An amnesty would not do that.

Yes, some of the individuals who would benefit from an amnesty would be those who came here legally but whose time has expired, who are struggling with the process, who have been here for 10 years and who are making a positive contribution. However, it would also include those people who have shunned the laws of our country, who have deliberately come here illegally and who, frankly, have no more right to be here than the families or individuals who are patiently waiting to come here legally. That is the reality of the situation.

We are also talking at a time when the Government are dealing with the significant challenge of the illegal crossings from Calais—

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will the hon. Member take an intervention on that?

[Tom Hunt]

No, I am not going to take another intervention. That is a situation in which individuals, regardless of their circumstances, are knowingly deciding not to engage with the legal process for claiming asylum or to immigrate here in a legal way, but to shun that legal approach and come here in an illegal manner. The danger of a blanket amnesty is that it would send out a message to all of those people who come over illegally and fuel an evil trade in human lives. It would potentially make the situation a lot worse. The money fuelling this evil trade in human lives would increase and potentially more lives would be put at risk, because if we adopted a position such as the one set out in the petition, which is very close to an open borders immigration policy, essentially the message would be: “Once you’re in, you’re in. So get over here, ignore the processes, because it’s worth the risk”. The risk is very real; it could lead to the loss of lives.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Would the hon. Member be surprised to hear then that his own Prime Minister has toyed with the idea of exactly what is being called for in this petition—an amnesty for anybody who has been here for a certain period of time? The Prime Minister has also talked about it recently.

[Tom Hunt]

With the greatest of respect, if the hon. Member has read the motion in the petition, she will see that that is not what this petition is calling for. It mentions nothing about being here for 10 years. Essentially, it is a blanket amnesty for every single undocumented migrant. People across the political spectrum have floated and supported the idea of a limited amnesty targeted at those who have been here, say, for over 10 years. As I said earlier in my speech, I believe there are some merits in those arguments.

However, this petition is not calling for such an amnesty; it is calling for a situation that sits very closely to an open border policy, in my view. I think it would lead to chaotic results, unintended consequences, unsustainable pressure on public services, problems with social integration and, as I also said earlier, it would limit our capacity to promote a compassionate, generous, rules-based immigration system and approach to refugee resettlement, which could benefit this country and which, I believe, is supported by the majority of people in this country.

That is sort of the wider picture. Of course there will be examples of where the status quo fails individuals and individual families, and we need to work with that system to improve its efficiency and how quickly it deals with these cases, so that it can turn them around as quickly as possible and get people the outcome they need as soon as possible, so that they can plan their lives with certainty. Of course, that is something that I support.

However, the current Government position is that if someone has been in the country for a long period of time, there are opportunities to regularise their status. Nevertheless, I think it is appropriate and fair that that is done on a case-by-case basis, because we cannot make huge generalisations with regard to those who come under the category that we are talking about today, because the motors vary and the circumstances vary enormously.

In conclusion, although I sympathise with the reasons why people have signed this petition and their concern about the circumstances that many people face at the moment, the petition is not focused enough in what it is calling for. To me, it is calling for a blanket amnesty for every single person, many of whom have come here illegally and shunned the legal process. It would be a slap in the face for those who have come here legally, and there would be serious unintended consequences.

If the hon. Members taking part in this debate believe in this petition as it stands, they should run with that policy in a manifesto in a general election. There would be a resounding answer from the British people, namely that they would not support this proposal. The vast majority of people in this country see the benefits of immigration and are compassionate towards refugees, but they want a rules-based system and this petition would fly in the face of that.

For all those reasons, I would be unable to support this petition, but I am glad that this subject will have a good airing today. Having looked at the call list, I predict that perhaps we will hear some arguments being raised that are different to those I have raised. There probably will not be much reiteration of the arguments I have just made, until perhaps the end of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

It is an absolute joy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, even though we are not speaking about anything particularly joyous today.

I have just come from the House of Commons Chamber where right this minute, as we debate the suffering of undocumented migrants on these islands, the Nationality and Borders Bill is getting its Second Reading. It is a horrible piece of legislation that will discriminate against those who, according to the refugee convention, to which we are signatories, enter the UK legally but by boat. It will give preferential treatment to those who have been fortunate enough to be able to use the very few safe and legal routes.

The debate today is about undocumented migrants, stuck in legal limbo and trying to find a route to resettlement. What we are hearing is that even when migrants use those safe and legal routes, the state often continues to neglect, to discriminate and to punish, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. A number of Scottish National party colleagues and I supported an early-day motion tabled by the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) on the regularisation of undocumented migrants in May this year and many of my colleagues have spoken regularly about this issues.

As others and I have said, there can be numerous reasons why someone is undocumented. They might not be able to get legal advice or life might have got in the way, for example through a bereavement or an illness, theirs or that of someone close to them. They might make minor mistakes on their application. A friend of mine sent a copy of her wedding certificate instead of the original. Yes, it was her mistake but, instead of allowing her to rectify it, she had to go through the entire palaver again, including paying the fee again.

As several hon. Members have said, another big reason is that many are simply unable to pay the extortionate application fees, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). It is also worth noting that some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), spoke about people being trafficked to these islands.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) has spoken repeatedly about the costs for children registering their right to British citizenship. Most people would be surprised to hear that children born here are not automatically citizens. Indeed, they used to be, but that was repealed by the British Nationality Act 1981, which came into force in 1983. At least in 1983, a fee of just £30—that is equivalent to £100 today—was charged to register a child as a British citizen. That really raises the question about why the Home Office currently charges more than £1,000 for a migrant child, or even a child born here of migrants, to register. I appreciate that that is under review at the moment, but only because the courts are forcing the Government to look again.

I want to share the story of Paul—that is not his real name, of course—who is a constituent of mine from Nigeria. He was on minimum wage, so he was just getting by and no more, but he was doing a really good job of keeping a roof over his son’s head, and making sure that he was healthy and educated—all the things a good dad would do. He realised that his leave to remain was due to be renewed or considered, so he went to apply, only to discover that the cost was more than £2,000, which would have required him to save up £1,000 for every year of his leave to remain. That is just not possible on the minimum wage.

Paul’s leave to remain then expired, so he became an undocumented migrant, but he was doing nothing wrong. His employer had to let him go because he did not have the right to work. He had no recourse to public funds—I completely agree with what the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said about that—leaving him with no food, no electricity and rising rent arrears. He did not know what to do. He had no choice but to send his son to live with his mum.

By the time I met Paul, he was in a terrible state. He had been unable to face responding to the letters from his housing association, which was ready to evict him. When I contacted those at Spire View Housing Association, they could not have been more helpful. Reassured by the fact that I had had a meeting with the Minister to plead Paul’s case, they agreed to pause proceedings, and they then gave him money to get food and electricity. I really thank them for that, but it was all so unnecessary, as we have heard many times in the debate.

Here is the other problem: Paul got two and a half years’ leave to remain after the fee was waived. The first year of that was spent in lockdown, so understandably, he is still unemployed. In around a year’s time, he will again have to apply for an extension, and he will have to find another £2,500 or hope that the fees will be waived, but there is certainly no guarantee that they will be. If they are not, he will yet again be an undocumented migrant. With the best will in the world, if he gets another minimum wage job, it will not be possible for him to pay back his rent arrears, which have been clocked up through no fault of his own, and save that amount of money.

Paul’s was the first case that I took to the Minister, who sorted it out, to his credit. I thank him for that, but we cannot keep going to the Minister with every single case. That said, I will take this opportunity to highlight the case of another constituent, who contacted me at the weekend to say that because of an error, the fee for his wife’s spousal visa had been taken twice. He was told by the Home Office in November that it would be refunded within six weeks. He is still waiting. Last week, he was told for the umpteenth time that it would be with him in six weeks. To add insult to injury, each phone call he makes costs him £5 because of the 65p a minute charge. He really needs that £2,000. The Home Office agrees that it owes it to him, and I hope that when the Minister responds, he will offer to look into this urgently, as he did with Paul.

I can see you looking at me, Mr Hosie, so I will sum up. I urge the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt)—I went on holiday to Ipswich last year—to read what the Prime Minister actually said about the notion of an amnesty for undocumented migrants. As welcome as some form of amnesty would be for those who are currently battling for the right to remain, the system as a whole needs reform. The hostile environment is alive and kicking. After an amnesty, we would bear witness to a whole new generation of migrants being subjected to this endless cycle.

Let us reform the whole system root and branch, and save ourselves and them all this unnecessary grief. Otherwise, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) asked, what have we become?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I will not, as I have less than five minutes and this has been a lengthy debate.

The Government remain committed to an immigration policy that welcomes and celebrates people who are here legally but also deters illegal immigration. We want to encourage people with skills and potential from around the world to make the UK their home and help make the UK a dynamic global economy, but we must not reward those who exploit the system and break the rules. We must also prevent the abuse of benefits and services paid for by UK taxpayers and disrupt the criminals who exploit and profit from the vulnerable, who will be tempted to use dangerous and irregular routes to get here if they can see a clear reward at the end of it. That is right both for the British public who pay for welfare services and for those wishing to visit and settle in the UK who played by the rules.

The Government recognise that we have a responsibility to help the vulnerable and have established several schemes and programmes to assist those most in need. One example is the work that we have done to resettle genuine refugees fleeing directly from regions of conflict and instability and to provide the necessary support to help them build a life in the UK and integrate as self-sufficient members of our society. In the past six years, the Government have offered protection to 25,000 people in this way—more than any other country in Europe in that period—through a planned resettlement scheme. That is in addition to welcoming a further 29,000 people through refugee family reunion between 2015 and 2019. We have also recently introduced a new pathway to citizenship for British national overseas status holders and their family members facing draconian new security laws in Hong Kong, with an estimated 5.4 million people potentially being eligible for the scheme.

We believe that a fair and balanced system is about guaranteeing integrity in the UK’s immigration system. We must support those in need, but we must also make sure that there is a cost for those who intend to break the rules, as have Governments of all colours since the introduction of our modern immigration system, despite some of the comments we have heard today.

The proposal to offer amnesty to all those without permission to be in the UK undermines the integrity and effective working of the UK immigration system. To recognise the stay of those who have wilfully and deliberately broken our laws is first and foremost an affront to those who have done the right thing and migrated here lawfully and contributed by paying visa fees and the immigration surcharge. An amnesty for those not playing by the rules could prove divisive for those groups who feel an injustice when they have complied with our policies, and it is safe to say that it is unlikely to build public confidence in the migration system. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said, it would certainly be interesting to see the public reaction if such a policy were included in an election manifesto.

The debate is about not just the impact of those ignoring our migration rules and refusing to leave but making sure that the public feel that there is confidence in the system. Why would someone bother to apply for status or renew their visa if they knew that they could just stay and be granted that status anyway? A point ignored by the petition and by some Members is the fact that the immigration routes already provide for undocumented migrants who have not broken the law except for by remaining in the UK without lawful immigration status.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kevin Foster]

I have less than two minutes, I am afraid. I appreciate that you wanted to give people time, Mr Hosie, but as the Minister I have only eight minutes to wind up, which is pretty short.

People who fear the situation in their country of origin may choose to claim asylum, and there is no cost to that. Those with qualifying family members who are present and settled in the UK can apply under the family rules, for example where there is a qualifying partner and insurmountable obstacles to family life continuing outside the UK. The private life rules provide for those who have been in the UK for a particularly long time to regularise their status. That said, we are in the process of reforming our immigration rules and, as many Members may be aware, I have met the group We Belong to discuss the current process for those who arrived here as children or were born here but did not qualify for British citizenship. We aim to simplify the settlement rules in the near future, as part of our wider work on the new migration system, which will include some changes in response to the points raised by that group, and we will reduce the number of people ending up on the 10-year route to settlement. We accept that too many people are on that route.

I have had to give a fairly short summary of the Government response, but we do not believe that granting an amnesty, as proposed by this petition, would be appropriate. It would undermine the rules—actually, it would make the whole creation of rules pointless if people could just ignore them and get status anyway.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hunt]

Thank you very much, Mr Hosie, for chairing this debate so expertly. I thank the Minister for his response and every other participant for making this debate pretty well-tempered and balanced.

[Anne McLaughlin]

So far.

[Tom Hunt]

The hon. Lady should not worry. As I was saying, it has been a pretty balanced debate in which we have heard both sides of the argument. I also think that there is a shared concern for the individuals in question. However, this is a very complicated issue, with unintended consequences.

It seems to me that very few Members agreed with the petition’s call for pretty much a blanket amnesty for every single undocumented migrant. However, I think there is space somewhere for a very important debate about how we can potentially do something in this area.

Obviously, one of the real concerns is what amnesties might mean in terms of encouraging future illegal crossings. In some respects, if the Opposition supported the Bill going through Parliament today and if that Bill were enacted, as I hope it will be, they might think that the public were in a much better place to have a debate about a reasoned amnesty and pathway for citizenship because there would be public confidence that, in doing so, we were not fuelling illegal crossings from the continent. That may be, at some point, where we get to: if there is confidence that we have a rules-based immigration system and we are confident that we are in a better position to tackle illegal crossings and make determinations about the people who aspire to live in our country, perhaps at that point we could have that important debate about amnesties.

Actually, there are some shortcomings when it comes to an amnesty for those who have been here for over 10 years. I said that I saw some of the arguments in favour of that, but it is a complicated issue.

Clearly, though, this has been a productive debate. This issue needs to be debated much further; I am sure that it will be. Again, I thank the more than 100,000 people who signed the petition. Hopefully, they will feel that, at the very least, the issue—in a general sense—has had a good airing and been thoroughly debated today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 567681, relating to an amnesty for undocumented migrants.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis]

I see the hon. Gentleman getting very animated. I just hope he can convince his Scottish National party colleagues—or the nats—to get involved in the asylum dispersal scheme. I know that the Minister will be very keen for meetings tomorrow to start the paperwork and let us have lots more councils in Scotland taking part in the scheme.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for taking my intervention. He keeps saying this, as do many of his colleagues. However, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) met the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities last week and it said, as it has so many times before, that every one of the other 31 local authorities in Scotland would be happy to get involved in the asylum dispersal scheme if it were funded—why shouldn’t it be funded? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it should be properly funded.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Stoke-on-Trent, sadly, has the second lowest council tax revenue income of any local authority in England, yet all I am hearing from those opposite is excuses, excuses, excuses. The SNP has money for all these vanity projects, but it does not have any money to look after asylum seekers—I find it baffling. By creating new accommodation centres, removing asylum seekers to a safe third country while an asylum claim is pending, in the same ways as is being done in Denmark, increasing maximum penalties for entering the UK illegally, enabling the quicker and easier removal of foreign criminals convicted of horrific crimes such as rape and murder, creating new safe and legal routes that will be looked on favourably when people apply for asylum, and backing our Border Force to stop and redirect boats out of British waters, returning them to safe countries from which they came, such as France, this Bill is delivering the reforms that we need and that are wanted by the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke.

EU Settlement Scheme

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I do not welcome this debate, as it should not have been necessary. That said, there have been some very interesting contributions. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for being all over this subject, as he always is. I also thank the3million for its ongoing support and campaigning for all those who are still worried.

My office is always busy with casework, but in recent months it has been snowed under with people who have real difficulties with the EU settlement scheme. They have gone above and beyond the call of duty, working all sorts of hours, so I put on record my thanks to them.

I do not think I have any new questions, because I have asked them all before—I have just had difficulty getting an answer other than, “It’ll be all right on the night.” I do want to ask about late applications. I know that the Minister is always happy to give the example he gave today of the five-year-old child in care who in 13 years’ time discovers that their status was never resolved, and to say that that is of course a good reason for a late application. That is great, but I would really like to hear other examples because—he will forgive me for saying so—that is quite an obvious one. Who would not overlook a late application in that instance?

We on the SNP Benches would feel more comforted if the Minister elaborated on who else could make a late application and in what circumstances. He said something today about people who do not have the mental capacity to apply, and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) talked about people in coercive relationships, but could we get a bit of detail? Are we are talking about people in domestic abuse situations? Anyone who has been trafficked or bereaved or who is homeless? Anyone experiencing mental or physical ill health or an addiction? And can we talk about what is likely to happen in the immediate future, rather than 13 years hence? It is not likely that anyone around today will be still around then to be held accountable—I do not mean they will not be alive, just that they will not be here to be questioned.

I am going to hazard a guess that the Government are not that bothered about the toll this is taking on individuals—it is not all guesswork, because I have a fair bit of evidence about how we treat all categories of migrants. But if the Government do not care about the people involved, they surely must care about the economy. Scottish Government analysis shows a decline in the number of EU nationals working in Scotland, and that is hitting industries such as agriculture and hospitality hard. As others have said, that is happening not just in Scotland but across the UK. I know that this Government do not listen to the Scottish Government, so will they listen to the National Farmers Union, whose figures show that last year only 11% of seasonal workers were UK residents? That was despite the big Pick for Britain campaign. Farmers need workers but are struggling to get them. How would the Minister do his job if he could not get support staff?

Will the Government listen to the owner of Wetherspoons, Tim Martin? I never expected to refer to him to make any point in this place but, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said, even the arch Brexiteer himself is now lamenting the fact that he cannot get the staff he needs and is calling for a special dispensation for his industry. If he of all people is saying that, we know what a terrible impact Brexit must be having in terms of people leaving, and the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) spoke about why. If on top of that we have EU nationals who are living here and entitled and willing to work, but who are unable to prove it quickly or easily and are therefore unable to work, what does that do to the availability of labour and to the economy?

I will not repeat the arguments about how important the requirement for physical evidence is, because my colleagues have covered that. All I will say is that there is absolutely no reason to require it. If the Government can do it to prove that people have been vaccinated, they can do it for EU citizens, if they want to.

So we have lengthy delays; people who missed the deadline; no physical evidence of the right to remain; online systems that are unable to cope; employers scared to employ; and people feeling unwanted and heading off. Many of my colleagues have today echoed the calls of Jenny Gilruth, the Scottish Government Minister for Europe, for the deadline to be extended, but that is not our preference. As has been said, our preference is for a declaratory system and for the settlement scheme to be scrapped. We are not asking the Government to do something fanciful: 14 countries in Europe—including Spain, Germany, Portugal and Italy—automatically granted residency status to UK nationals living in those countries. That is the thing we promised but did not do. The immigrants we sent to those EU countries were treated an awful lot better than we are treating people from those countries. But then, our people are never immigrants, are they? They are expats and we expect them to be treated with respect. I agree, but respect cuts both ways, and making people jump through hoops is not respectful.

There is no doubt about it: this is a sore one for those of us in the SNP. Nothing—I mean nothing—throws light on exactly what is wrong with this Union more than the Brexit vote. It is a tale of two countries with completely diverging views on migration, or at least on inward migration. The latter, Scotland, votes 62% to stay in Europe, but because the former is bigger, it gets the final say, and my country is dragged out of the EU completely against its will. Now, my country is supposed to stand by and watch while this Government break the promises of the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister who, as we have heard, signed the pledge that said that

“EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK”.

That pledge was a lie, because the two people who signed it are the very two who could have made it happen, and still could. It does not matter what the Minister says—that cannot be denied. The people of Scotland did not fall for that lie. We voted against it, but still we are expected to stand by and watch our family, friends, neighbours and colleagues go through hell, waiting months, and not knowing whether they can stay or not. We will not stand by much longer.

We will not be party to treating people that way. We will not put up with watching whole sectors of Scotland’s economy fail because they cannot get the workers that they need, because those workers cannot prove their right to be here, because we are not allowed to invite them to our country or because they just do not want to be somewhere they do not feel welcome any more. None of that is in our name, and if Government Members mean what they have been saying throughout the debate— I am tired of hearing it—they should lobby the Prime Minister. They should tell him to make up for the democratic deficit that is Brexit and do the only democratic thing that he can do when it comes to Scotland: give us our section 30 order so that we can have a referendum on independence.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) said that the debate should be about people. Independence is about people, and I am in no doubt that the people of Scotland will tell this place that none of this—not Brexit, the EU settlement scheme or the hostile environment—is in our name. They will know that the only way to be able to create the kind of country that reflects who we are is to take control of our own affairs by voting yes to independence.

Immigration Rules

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room, putting the cleaning materials in the bin.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Immigration Rules and highly skilled migrants.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Ms McVey. With yesterday’s announcement of the new Nationality and Borders Bill, I am pleased to have the opportunity to lead this debate on the immigration rules and highly skilled migrants. I want to start by thanking the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who originally secured this debate and asked me to take it on. I know he is doing a lot of work in this area.

I also want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who recently challenged the Chancellor and the Home Secretary on the introduction of yet another scheme to bring in highly skilled migrants in the 2021 Budget. I echo her sentiments that the Chancellor, the Home Secretary and the UK Government must sort out this injustice once and for all before another person is given a highly skilled migrant visa. I am sure that people of colour from Commonwealth nations contemplating bringing their talents to the UK, including under the new scheme, will want to know of any potential risks to their and their families’ immigration status prior to applying. I also want to commend BBC “Newsnight” for covering the issue a few weeks back, raising awareness and prompting people to contact me.

What is it that has got everyone so exercised? It is complicated and simple. The nub of it is this. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has been sharing information about a subset of non-white highly skilled migrants from specific Commonwealth countries in the global south with the Home Office. That enables the Home Office to then refuse their visas to remain in the UK. The basis for the refusals are historical, non-criminal tax discrepancies, some very minor—I understand one was for only £1.30—and most dating back years, long ago resolved, and none of which HMRC felt required further action. Let us bear in mind that the people we are talking about have been here for 10 years or more. Finally, the legal basis on which this has been done is questionable. So that is the summary.

These individuals, who were invited to these islands to contribute to our economy and wider society, now find themselves in a precarious immigration limbo, without any investigations into the circumstances or nature of people’s tax discrepancies before the visa refusals. There remain many questions about whether the decisions taken have allowed fair assessments and hearings, and how proportionate visa refusals are for something that has not even been proven to be deliberate or careless under HMRC’s own threshold for discrepancies and within HMRC’s normal 12-month timeframe for investigation.

Through a number of Government initiatives spanning decades, there has been a consistent call to invite the brightest and best to these islands, with the idea being that the UK would take control over who they allowed to work and live here. Yet somehow the UK Government have systematically failed to build the immigration system that they say they want. Instead, they have adhered to a policy of hostility, exclusion and really disproportionate punishment. I am sure the Minister will likely talk about “minded to refuse” letters that allow migrants to explain the discrepancies, but, in 80% of the remaining cases, those have not been received and, where they have, some have contained more than 100 questions for response within 14 days. Also, it is about issues much wider than tax discrepancies.

There is a concern that the letters are being used not to give a fair and timely hearing of evidence, but to double down on the initial decisions made. The deeply precarious situations that many of these highly skilled migrants and their families are now experiencing highlight the issue only too well.

Highly skilled migrants in the UK have been criminalised and denied indefinite leave to remain based on the Home Office’s discretionary and subjective bad character or dishonesty judgments in paragraph 322(5) of the rules, as I said, for historic tax discrepancies, many up to 10 years ago. Paragraph 322(5) sets out the general grounds for refusal. Unlike other immigration provisions for criminal behaviour, which this is not, it seems to be still applicable even after 10 years. Clarity is needed—I hope the Minister will provide it—about how this immigration rule will be used in future immigration applications of highly skilled migrants who have been granted some form of leave.

I also note with concern that paragraph 322(5) and related clauses in the immigration rules have recently been redacted online. I hope that this redaction is not a means of limiting scrutiny of how these clauses are being used in immigration decisions, and I expect the Minister to have an explanation for that.

I am not the only one saying that the Government are wrong; the Court of Appeal has already ruled in two separate cases that the Home Office has acted unlawfully in this regard. Paragraph 322(5) permits refusal when an applicant is considered

“undesirable…in light of their conduct, character or associations”,

or the fact that they represent a threat to national security. This measure also allows discretionary refusal by inferring “undesirable” character. According to the latest guidance, that could be because of criminal-related activity short of a conviction, or for what are called “wider reasons”. So, with no convictions and no reasoning, the Home Office can unfairly label someone as being “undesirable” or of bad “character”. Can Members imagine how such labels affect someone’s ability to live and work in a community, or impact on their self-esteem?

Being denied their indefinite leave to remain has left these highly skilled migrants in a legal limbo; they are unable to work, rent, drive, receive NHS healthcare, open bank accounts, or get vital access to public funds. Imagine a situation in which someone has a minor tax discrepancy hanging over their head. And bear in mind that, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, around 60% of self-assessment tax returns in the UK contain discrepancies. For anyone who has had to complete one of these returns, that is not difficult to believe; they are not easy. For most of us, a minor tax discrepancy would just mean reminding ourselves to amend our tax return, or we would call an accountant to sort the problem out for us; the worst that can happen is that we will get a slap on the wrist and a cursory fine. We would not be in a situation where we were left destitute, as is the case with so many of the people who we are talking about today.

Understandably, this situation has been described as a “personal purgatory” by some of those experiencing it: a half-life, in which someone is unable to contribute, without any recourse to appeal or explanation. It must be a truly devastating prospect for someone to think that they could be treated as criminal under an immigration rule that was reserved for those deemed a national security threat, based on a simple discrepancy in a tax return.

Although the actual amount of these discrepancies ranges widely, some of the figures involved are shockingly small. As I have already said, a discrepancy of around just £1.30 could see someone being deemed as dishonest or of bad character by the Home Office. In the two cases that were heard in the courts, one involved a small amount of money and one involved a larger figure, but the courts found the people concerned to be honest and granted them leave, which shows that the amount of tax discrepancy per se should not matter and does not automatically mean that the person responsible for such a discrepancy is a criminal. The courts certainly did not think so.

Investigation into the circumstances and a balancing exercise regarding the person involved and their family is key. Indeed, this cohort of people are not criminals. They are hard-working migrants who were invited to this country, which is now determined to use a system of legal loopholes and loose statutory interpretation, which I will come on to, in order to remove them.

Tax discrepancies are neither a criminal nor an immigration offence, and in all of the cases reported, HMRC did not independently pursue the discrepancies at the time of filing. So why is the Home Office pursuing these migrants? Why are the thousands of other cases are uncovered every year—including those of the 60% of people who fill in tax returns inaccurately—not being pursued with the same vigour? And I am not suggesting that they should be.

Tellingly, UK Visas and Immigration has refused applications under this rule, instead of using certain other provisions in the immigration rules that it could use, such as those related to dishonesty. I would suggest that UKVI has done that because of the broad wording of this measure and the lower burden of proof required, because using this rule is an easy and fast way to dispose of the migrants we invited to these islands.

Paul Garlick QC, who specialises in extradition and human rights law, said the following in regard to the Home Office investigations:

“They genuinely have no idea of the difference between tax years and accounting years, or what is a legitimately deductible expense. My feeling is that since Theresa May’s announcement of a ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants, caseworkers have been told to look for discrepancies that could form the basis of an accusation that the applicant is lying, because that’s the quickest way to dispose of an application”.

That is some accusation, and not one that any QC would make lightly.

Since 2016, 1,697 of these highly skilled migrants have been denied indefinite leave to remain after the establishment of a very untransparent Home Office and HMRC data-sharing memorandum of understanding—one that allowed HMRC data to be analysed if an immigration offence had been suspected. I will come on to that point in greater detail later.

These highly skilled migrants have been living in the UK for at least 10 years and contributing significantly to our skills base and our economy. They were once welcomed here because they were needed. What is most worrying of all is that all of those affected are migrants of colour, from six south Asian and African countries. More than half of the remining indefinite-leave-to-remain refusals are Pakistani nationals, and 70% are Muslim. Tellingly, no one whose data was shared and used to refuse their visa was white. As a long-standing antiracism activist, that profiling and targeting of ethnic minorities by the state chills me.

I want to focus on the worrying aspects of data sharing. The people we are talking about were refused indefinite leave to remain through the use of detailed, historical, HMRC-held tax data. According to research by the Migrants’ Rights Network, it is unclear whether any due processes or protections were in place for the access and sharing of that data, especially those that would now meet GDPR requirements.

The memorandum of understanding for data sharing between both Departments was accessed via a freedom of information request. It is an enlightening piece of evidence. It is not a contract, nor is it legally binding. It does not in itself create a lawful means for the exchange of information. It simply documents the processes and procedures for information sharing agreed between the Departments. Yet, when I pushed the Treasury on this issue recently, the Minister who responded leaned heavily on the provisions within the MOU as being

“well-designed, information-sharing gateways…grounded in strict obedience with the law.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 748.]

The annexe of the document provides the legal basis for the sharing of information and conveniently links to several pieces of legislation, including the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, the UK Borders Act 2007 and the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. There are others. What we discover when directed to the signposted sections is that the minor tax discrepancies in question do not amount to the offences described in the memorandum of understanding that could permit the sharing of data between HMRC and the Home Office. The MOU provides no evident lawful due process or safeguards for sharing the data that was used to refuse indefinite leave to remain to highly skilled migrants.

There are huge questions to be asked about how this information was accessed and shared and whether unlawful lists of people of concern, based on a traffic light system of nationalities, were used. I appreciate this cannot all be resolved today, but I would very much appreciate if the Minister would agree to meeting me, other interested Members and the Migrants’ Rights Network to unpick all this and to, I hope, put an end to it.

The tech justice group Foxglove successfully forced the Home Office to scrap its visa streaming algorithm in response to legal action in 2020 and there are analogous similarities with the data-sharing system that I am talking about today. The streaming tool took decades of institutionally racist practices, such as targeting particular nationalities for immigration raids, and it turned them into software. The Home Secretary was willing to admit that the system was required to be rebuilt from the ground up. Surely serious consideration should be given to the system currently persecuting highly skilled migrants.

The Government’s threat to increase their use of data sharing and data matching is now, unfortunately, becoming a reality. There are plans to expand the national fraud initiative. If that happens, we will see the current data-matching powers used in tackling fraud extended to cover other criminal activity, as well as debt recovery and data quality.

I knew little about data matching until this highly skilled migrants issue was brought to light. It involves combining, comparing or matching personal data obtained from multiple sources. The national fraud initiative already collects more than 20 data types over 8,000 datasets from 1,300 participant organisations. That can include public sector payroll, housing benefit, social housing waiting lists, council tax and the electoral register—the list goes on.

An information law specialist, Chris Pounder, has already given examples of how migrants’ details are mixed up in the national fraud initiative, with housing benefit, tenancy waiting lists and the electoral roll all cross-matched with immigration records. We have seen the Home Office go from losing application forms, passports and all sorts of documentation in 2001, to being determined to gather every single tiny piece of data that it can on every migrant in 2021. Information sharing or data matching—call it what you will—has been utilised to unfairly target highly skilled migrants. This cohort sets an incredibly important precedent for how personal tax data could be gathered, shared and used in immigration decisions, highlighting why we need to ensure transparency around data sharing for immigration enforcement.

Through freedom of information requests, we now know that between 2015 and 2020, 463,000 people’s HMRC tax data were shared with UKVI at the Home Office. That is a staggering amount of data sharing that the public are simply not aware of. Any expansion of this already expanding regime will mean a lot more data being shared about migrants, and it will provide numerous opportunities for abuse by the Government, who are already determined to pursue a hostile environment policy. Such data needs protection and safeguards. Any system that seeks to share the data must be built with legal restrictions and strict adherence to GDPR.

The UK Government consultation document on data matching refers to the need to recover debt post covid, but it fails to recognise that any inequalities present before the covid pandemic have both increased and widened, and that extending the powers will serve only to unfairly discriminate further against minorities. I am aghast that the cover of covid recovery is being used to usher in further intrusion into our personal data, and I have no doubt that the wider public would be just as alarmed if this was affecting their right to work, rent, drive or even open a bank account.

When previous and successive Governments implemented schemes that were designed to welcome highly skilled migrants to these islands, it was done with fanfare. The brightest and best would help us fill the gaps that our economy desperately needed to be filled. Nobody arriving on these shores to such a welcome would ever suspect that, a decade later, they would be subjected to an invasive sweep of their personal and financial data in a bid to remove them and their families from the country they now call home. Nobody would have dreamt that, 10 years later, they would be labelled dishonest or as being of bad character, when they are clearly not. Nobody would have imagined that they could have been made unemployed, bankrupt or homeless by the state that invited them to build their lives here, but that is exactly what is happening.

I hope that today’s debate will allow a conversation to be started where it has not been possible thus far. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I repeat my request for him to sit down with me, the right hon. Member for East Ham, the other Members who have been pushing this issue and Migrants’ Rights Network, in order to resolve the situation for the families suffering now, but also for the success of the Chancellor’s new highly skilled migrants scheme.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, MsVey. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) for securing the debate with the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), and for the contribution that she has made. Such debates are an important aspect of the Home Office’s accountability, and they ensure that our decisions are held up to scrutiny. I am therefore pleased to have the opportunity to set out some of the background to this particular cohort of cases and what we are doing to ensure that all the applications involved are treated fairly. There are some legal actions going on, but I would be happy to meet hon. Members and groups that are not involved. Perhaps we can discuss the details separately, given the limited time.

It has to be said that the tier 1 general route, to which highly skilled migrants applied, was beset with problems and opportunities for abuse, which is why the Government closed it to new applications back in 2011. The investigations that we have concluded so far show that the principal issue is not tax records and the evasion of tax payments that should have been made, but applicants falsifying their earnings to obtain their immigration status, often involving five-figure sums. It would be simple to ignore those concerns and grant all the outstanding applications. However, that would not be a right or just outcome for those who did play by the rules, given that the scale of the discrepancies is often far beyond those that might be attributed to innocent mistakes or accounting practice.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Surely the Minister is not suggesting that everyone I am talking about has been denied indefinite leave to remain because they falsified earnings in order to get themselves here. Those people were invited and allowed to come in. He is not suggesting that, is he?

[Kevin Foster]

I am afraid that we have evidence from a range of cases showing that people did look to inflate their earnings from self-employment. In each case we will make an individual decision, but in each case we are satisfied that there is evidence. There will be an opportunity for people to make their representations directly, but we should not ignore the fact that there has been some quite clear evidence. We are not talking about a difference of a couple of quid between their tax return and what they told the Home Office; we are talking about quite significant amounts. We will continue to consider all the evidence fairly and objectively in each individual case and not generalise about them all. We will give applicants the chance to respond to any concerns we have. But, as anyone would expect, we will be firm with those who have sought to play the system.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The Minister says that he will consider every case on its merits, but what happens to those people in the meantime? They are not allowed to work, rent, drive or have a bank account, and they are not allowed any recourse to public funds. Those people have families, with children at school. The kids will not be allowed to go to school. What happens to them in the meantime, because it is taking a very long time to reach decisions?

[Kevin Foster]

There are a number of processes that we are going through, but it might be helpful if I set out the scale of the discrepancies. In cases where investigations have been completed, there were instances of applicants claiming points for earnings that were, in 80% of cases refused, at least £10,000 higher and, on average, £27,600 higher than the earnings shown by their tax records. We would all agree that those are not minor errors. In any context where we were talking about someone with a discrepancy of £27,000 on their tax return, we would probably make a point about whether they were paying the tax they should be paying.

[Kevin Foster]

We do so by sharing information between the two Departments. If someone gives information about their salary to one part of Government, saying that it is an honest declaration of their tax position to meet taxation laws, it should not come as a huge surprise if that is then considered when looking at a declaration of income that they have made to another part of Government relating to rules on immigration status.

Let us be clear that not all tier 1 general cases share those characteristics. Many applicants did find highly skilled employment, and the vast majority were successful in their applications. There are outstanding cases because it is important that we take the time to get to the bottom of concerns in those outstanding cases and establish whose earnings were genuine and whose were not.

With regard to the tax discrepancies, the Home Office does not trawl through people’s tax records looking for any errors or discrepancies in order to refuse applications. Where we have checked tax records, it is because the evidence of an applicant’s claimed earnings was not strong, and we were actually looking for further evidence to support their claims and grant their applications, as we are doing in other parts of the immigration system. Sadly, all too often our investigations found their tax records did not support the claims they made to the Home Office about their earnings.

It is interesting to note that when it became widely known that we were doing that, HMRC saw a surge in requests from tier 1 general visa holders to make some highly unusual amendments to their tax records, often involving large amounts solely for the earnings periods relied on in visa applications. That pattern was actually so unusual that HMRC brought it directly to the Home Office’s attention.

Again, we are not talking about the sorts of minor discrepancies or tax errors that HMRC deals with day in, day out. Our investigations show instances of individuals increasing their earnings on their tax records, waiting until a Home Office application is granted and then amending their earnings back down again so that they do not have to pay the extra tax that these variations would have incurred.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I need to put on the record that I am not for one minute suggesting that in those circumstances, when someone has done all three things, that person has done nothing wrong. However, not all of these people fit that category. Is it just a coincidence that not a single person who has been refused a visa on that basis is white? Is it just a coincidence that 70% of them are Pakistani nationals? What is the explanation for that?

[Kevin Foster]

I will come on to our response to the Migrants’ Rights Network report in a moment. However, to be very clear, in each instance it is the evidence in the case and not any other factors, such as nationality, that is looked at. Of course, given that there was free movement at the time, those from the European economic area would not have been applying under this type of migration system—again, there is a narrower scope for it.

In response to some of the points made earlier, let us be clear that the principal concern is not tax avoidance—it is not the idea that people have not paid tax on £27,000 of earnings, for example—but visa fraud. It is people effectively saying to the Home Office that they made earnings that meet this bar that they did not actually make—not that they did not pay tax on significant earnings. Just saying, “HMRC did not take action, so neither should the Home Office” misses this rather crucial point.

Particular reference was made to paragraph 322(5). It does not relate only to serious criminality or terrorism; it has always had a much broader remit, including an applicant’s general conduct in the UK, which unsurprisingly has always formed a part of immigration decision making. The courts consistently agreed that the use of paragraph 322(5) was appropriate in cases in which applicants failed to give any convincing explanations of discrepancies in the earnings for which they had claimed points. Yet, to touch on the point made earlier, as part of our new immigration system we have been overhauling and simplifying the immigration rules, so this paragraph will no longer apply to future applications. Under our new rules, we no longer group criminality and terrorism together with issues such as conduct or false representation, which is a clearer approach. However, those were not the rules that applied at that time.

I am aware of the recent report by the Migrants’ Rights Network suggesting that only people of certain Commonwealth and former Commonwealth nationalities are being refused. Sadly, the Migrants’ Rights Network has not shared its data with us. However, our own data show that the six nationalities mentioned in its report accounted for 68% of all people in the tier 1 general route since 2010. The same nationalities represent 65% of those granted settlement in the route since 2010. What difference exists relates to the greater proportion, for whatever reason, of applicants of these nationalities who relied on self-employed earnings, rather than earnings via pay-as-you-earn, in their applications. Our approach is therefore is to examine each case individually, look at all the evidence on its merits and not make assumptions based on an applicant’s nationality or any other attributes. We have strengthened our processes further since the Court of Appeal judgment in the Balajigari case to avoid any possibility of procedural unfairness.

For those investigations that we have concluded, we have found that, in a small minority of cases, applicants have provided new and more credible evidence of their earnings, and their cases have now been granted. In all others, we are carrying out a balancing exercise, weighing any false representations that applicants made in the past against any compelling reasons for allowing their stay in the UK in spite of this conduct. Where there are strong grounds for doing so, we are granting these applications. We have also supported applicants through the process and given them extra time to provide evidence, especially when their ability to do so has been affected by the pandemic.

Turning to the queries about the approach for highly skilled migrants in the future, we are looking to implement an unsponsored route. We are going to learn very clearly from the issues and problems of the previous tier 1 route, especially the issue of how earnings were declared to the Home Office. We will shortly provide details of the new route in the forthcoming innovation strategy, and I hope Members concerned to avoid these issues will be reassured by what they read.

We will not ignore the actions of those who sought to play the system by inflating their earnings to seek an immigration advantage, but we will ensure that all applicants are treated fairly, based on the individual circumstances of their cases, and given a fair opportunity to rebut any queries about the earnings they have declared to HMRC and the Home Office. However, no one should be surprised that we check each other’s notes.

Question put and agreed to.