Illegal Migration Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The key element at the heart of the Bill is deterrence. We want to deter individuals, families or adults from going into these dinghies, putting themselves at the behest of people smugglers. Ultimately, that is the way that we protect children. If we allow this issue to escalate—that is not the intention of those who oppose the Bill, but it is the logical conclusion—it will simply see more children placed into these boats and we have to stop that. That is what we are setting out to do here. As my hon. Friend has raised the point, I would praise the authorities in Kent, which have gone above and beyond to support young people. I have recently visited the facilities there.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, and then I should make more progress.

[Apsana Begum]

Does the Minister agree that it is deeply harrowing to learn of pregnant women arriving in the UK on these boats and that perhaps they should be exempt from the provisions on removals in the Bill?

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not want to see pregnant women placed in a difficult or compromising position. The scheme is structured in such a way that a suspensive claim can be brought where there is serious or irreversible harm, which, in most cases, is physical harm, that would prevent an individual from being placed on a flight either back home to their own country, if it is a safe place, or to a safe third country like Rwanda. The usual fitness to fly procedures will apply. Therefore, a pregnant woman would not be placed on a flight to Rwanda or elsewhere unless it was safe to do so. There are long-standing conventions of practice on how we would make that judgment.

On the issue of detention of unaccompanied children, I understand the concerns that a number of hon. and right hon. Members have raised about the prolonged detention of children without the authority of a court. I thank those Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, for their very constructive engagement with us on that and other matters. As a result of those discussions, we have introduced Government amendments 134 and 136 to enable a time limit to be placed on the detention of an unaccompanied child where the detention is for the purposes of removal.

I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s and other hon. Members’ concerns—indeed I share them. I commit to working with him and others, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), with whom I have had a number of conversations, to set out the new timescale under which genuine children may be detained for the purposes of removal without the authority of the court and what appropriate support should be provided within detention, recognising the obligations under the Children Act 1989, an important piece of legislation.

I can also confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and others that it is our intention that, where there is no age dispute, children are not detained for any longer than is absolutely necessary, with particular regard to the risk of absconding and suffering significant harm. I trust that those amendments and commitments will assuage the concerns that he raised in Committee and that he will not feel the need to press his amendment 138 on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

That is what we put in the Immigration Act 2014 with the then Immigration Minister, now the Transport Secretary. What has changed between 2014 and 2023 that means apparently we have to detain children indefinitely? We need timescales in the Bill, as we had in 2014. I appreciate there are practical problems about age verification for those who are challenged. We may have to have a two-tier system, but certainly those children who are recognised generally as children should not be locked up in detention centres and Home Office facilities, and that has to be made absolutely clear when this Bill goes to the Lords.

We also need to know how and where the Government plan to accommodate those children once identified. The accommodation does not exist at the moment, and the Government have only a few months to magic it up if we want to get this legislation through in a matter of months. I share the Children’s Commissioner’s concerns. She said:

“The Bill is unclear on what the state of the accommodation will be for children while awaiting transfer to local authority care or removal from the country…What regulations will be in place for Home Office provided accommodation? If the accommodation is regulated which body will inspect them?”

There are a lot of questions to be asked. We are taking the assurances from the Minister on trust. We will not continue with a lack of detail when the Bill gets to the Lords, but for the moment we will not force it, because I trust the Minister to do the right thing before the Bill goes through its final stages.

[Apsana Begum]

I rise to speak to a range of amendments and new clauses seeking to protect people from the attacks on basic human dignity that are before the House today. I am supporting new clauses in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) about the ongoing human rights breaches that migrants endure, which have been happening for some time, but today I shall focus on how the legislation treats those who are pregnant, because not only will the Bill persecute and imprison people fleeing torture, war and oppression, but it will put the health of some of the most vulnerable of them—pregnant women—and the life of their unborn children at risk. That is why I have tabled new clause 2 seeking to exempt pregnant women and girls from provisions about removals. My new clause 3 seeks to require an independent review of the effect of the provision on pregnant migrants, and my new clause 7 is about a review of the effect of the measures on the health of migrants.

I am also supporting related amendments to prevent an immigration officer’s and the Secretary of State’s detention powers from being used to detain unaccompanied children, families with dependent children, or pregnant women, as tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson).

In order to cut through the dehumanising othering that too often plagues debates on migration—I note the awful nature of the comments made earlier today in response to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) about the dental testing of young migrants, which I find dehumanising and an othering of different communities—I would like to draw the House’s attention to a real-life example to illustrate the human reality of what is being debated today.

Najma Ahmadi and her family fled from the Taliban and made 20 attempts to cross into Greece from Turkey—20 attempts. On two occasions, Najma nearly drowned, once while pregnant with her baby daughter. She finally arrived in the UK last July on a boat, her terrified one-year-old baby girl clutched against her. Najma and her family were entitled to asylum, which was granted last December, but we must not forget those pregnant women escaping persecution who have died seeking refuge. For example, Yohanna, an Eritrean woman thought to be about 20 years old, who gave birth as she drowned alongside many others, when the boat she was travelling on, trying to get to safety, capsized. And there are many other women who remain unnamed.

These women are not criminals, but this Government are proposing today to treat them worse than criminals, despite knowing that such women are in fact victims of foreign policy failures and the simple, indisputable fact that there were no safe routes for them. They are fleeing countries such as Afghanistan, which has barely had a mention today. As I said during the previous stage of the Bill, as of last month, 22 people had been granted asylum through the Afghanistan resettlement scheme. If that figure has changed, I would be more than happy for the Minister to address it in his closing remarks, but that is such a small number—unless of course the Government have changed tack and do not think there are women trying to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan and believe that they do not deserve safe routes through which to escape.

Not only will the Government refuse sanctuary to those who survive these horrors, but clause 11 will enable the Home Secretary to condemn them to indefinite detention. The Bill will therefore see migrant women who should have finally escaped persecution facing pregnancy and birth alone, without adequate medical support and with the fear of potential separation from their baby.

There is a wealth of information and evidence that the imprisonment of any pregnant women is wrong. We know that pregnant women in prison are almost twice as likely to give birth prematurely and are five times more likely to experience a stillbirth. Yet pregnant refugees are to be placed in circumstances worse than the already inhumane situation of pregnant women in UK prisons such as Manston, where there are outbreaks of illness and disease, reports of assaults and drug use by guards, and which last year was estimated to be detaining thousands of people arriving in Britain via small boats, some for as long as 40 days or more. No one should be detained in such places, never mind those who are pregnant.

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Midwives, and Maternity Action have all raised that healthcare in immigration detention is often very poor. In 2014, some 99 women were locked up in Serco-run Yarl’s Wood detention centre while pregnant, and research by Medical Justice found they often missed antenatal appointments—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. The hon. Lady is out of time. I call David Simmonds.