Immigration: International Students

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I appreciate that within statistics we can say all sorts of things. However, it is not a myth about the Indian students. People who come here and use services and infrastructure for more than a year are counted as migrants.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, at present, the number of international students is clearly more than 100,000. If the Government persist in their commitment to keep immigration under the tens of thousands, does that mean that there is no scope for increasing the number of international students, for which there appears to be cross-party support as it would benefit the UK economy? I refer to my interests as recorded.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

There are well over 100,000 students. In the 2015-16 academic year, 438,000 students enrolled—almost half a million—and visa applications sponsored by universities are 19% higher than they were in 2010. There is no limit on the number of international students who come to this country, and we welcome them all.

Refugees

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like other contributors to this evening’s debate, I welcome the report from the APPG and thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for bringing this Question for Short Debate this evening.

Like the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, I found the report and the contributions eye opening. This is clearly an issue which ought to be much more the subject of public thought and debate than has been the case. We have talked about the Syrian refugees who were being brought to the United Kingdom, and the former Prime Minister was clear about bringing people over from the camps. That was a laudable aim, but we have not talked sufficiently about what we do to integrate refugees once they are given that status.

In September last year, the present Prime Minister said at the leaders’ summit on refugees:

“We must ensure refugees can live with dignity and self-sufficiency, as close as possible to their home countries, to deter them from making dangerous onward journeys, and to enable them eventually to return home and rebuild”.


That all sounds absolutely laudable. However, what are Her Majesty’s Government doing to ensure that those individuals and their families who are not rehoused, rehomed or resettled near to their home countries and who make it to the United Kingdom and are granted refugee status are indeed able to live with dignity and self-sufficiency?

Being awarded refugee status, as noble Lords have said, ought to be the start of something new and hopeful, but for many refugees that is not the case. As my noble friend Lord Scriven pointed out, the starting point for most asylum seekers is not being accorded refugee status—as is the case for the Syrians under the resettlement programme—but may be a detention centre. The very name “detention centre”, for somebody fleeing for their life, sounds like an unfortunate place to start. We then ensure that those people, who might be highly skilled, talented, and who might have been professionals in their own country, cannot work; that has been brought up on a regular basis by my noble friend Lord Roberts, and I suspect that it may come up again this evening.

We do not allow asylum seekers to work and we give them a small amount of money; are we really treating them with dignity? Once they are accorded refugee status, as noble Lords have already pointed out, they have 28 days to claim benefit, which they will not get for six weeks, and to get new accommodation, which will be difficult. If you do not have references, do not speak English and have just arrived and have no contacts, how do you do all those things? Finding accommodation is difficult at the best of times for people who speak English and know how to work through the rules and regulations of this country. If you are new and you do not have advice, how do you do that?

It is extremely worrying that the APPG report talks about the difficulty of getting ESOL training and about the apparent cuts, despite a government commitment to increase provision of language training. Could the Minister tell the House what provision is being made and how far the provision of English language training is being thought about as part of a strategy for integrating refugees?

Finally, on health, the report notes the difficulty of getting access to GPs. That is very much the start of primary care. However, if people have fled difficult situations, they may have mental health issues, post-traumatic stress disorder or a whole range of complex medical issues that need to be dealt with. Many of those are difficult to talk about, even in one’s mother tongue. If you do not speak English fluently and do not have the ability to express yourself in English, what provision is the NHS able to give to ensure that refugees are able to get adequate training and that interpreters are available? It is a second best, but at least it would be of some benefit in getting adequate healthcare.

In sum, there is a question about how we treat asylum seekers before they are given refugee status and how we treat refugees once we have given them asylum. Under the Geneva Convention on Refugees we have a duty. But there are also moral obligations: duties of hospitality. Do Her Majesty’s Government believe that they are delivering on those?

Brexit: Acquired Rights (EUC Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the report by the European Union Justice Sub-Committee. I did not serve on the committee and so I can say that it is a splendid report. It would be easy simply to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, has said everything that needs to be said and sit down, but, needless to say, I have a few questions that I would like to raise with the Minister.

It is often suggested that debates are timely, as was said at the start of the previous debate on the Middle East; it is always said that the debate is timely, but this is beyond timely. For the past year, Members of your Lordships’ House, Members of the other place and ordinary citizens in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the European Union have been crying out for answers to questions about the rights of EU nationals resident in this country and UK nationals resident elsewhere in the European Union. It has been apparent to almost everyone that some of these questions could be dealt with unilaterally and could have been dealt with last summer. However, Her Majesty’s Government chose not to do that.

After a year, some proposals were published last week. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said that the Government have not formally replied to the committee’s report, but we now have the government paper on safeguarding the rights of citizens. It has been six months since the committee produced its report, during which time men, women, husbands, wives, children, extended families have been unclear about what the future holds. One of the biggest difficulties since June 2016 has been the mantra that we kept hearing that, “Nothing changes until the day we leave”. However, everything changed on 24 June 2016 for people who were living in one country but with family in other countries. All sorts of questions have been raised again and again, and we still do not have many answers. The paper brought forward last week on safeguarding the rights of citizens does not go very far in dealing with the uncertainty that has been raised. It goes a little way—I give it a cautious welcome—but not very far.

Last year the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, introduced a debate from the government Back Benches on the rights of EU nationals. He asked: what is the problem? Surely there is a way of dealing with the rights of EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom. There appeared to be only one problem at that stage. I thought, and it was muttered at the time, that perhaps it was the former Home Secretary, who then became the Prime Minister, who was the one person who might have had the ability to say that we would secure the rights of EU nationals. Recently, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has been reincarnated as a journalist and editor of the Evening Standard, has suggested that Her Majesty’s Government wanted to secure unilateral rights for EU nationals and that the one person who refused to do that was Theresa May.

It is therefore with reluctance and perhaps schadenfreude that we listened to the Prime Minister’s words last week when, on introducing the paper on Safeguarding the Position of EU Citizens Living in the UK and UK Nationals Living in the EU, she stressed, “we want certainty”. So does everyone else; the difference is that we have all been saying it for a year. She went on to say:

“I have always been clear that I want to protect their rights”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/6/17; col. 302.]

So do we all; the difference is that none of us individually was able to change government policy. The one person who could have been clear and made decisions a year ago was the Prime Minister.

It is good to see the safeguarding paper, but it is rather little and rather late. The proposals are an improvement on the uncertainty that has dogged people for a year, but it is far from the generous offer that was being heralded. At best, it gets down to the “fair and serious” that has been suggested more recently, but it still relies on reciprocity. Certainly over the last months and the last year, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, pointed out, many people will have received letters, emails and pleas from UK nationals resident in other EU countries saying, “What about us? You keep talking about the rights of EU nationals in the UK. Don’t you care about us?”. Of course we do, but reciprocity raises certain issues.

The only way there will be a reciprocal deal is if there is a negotiated solution for withdrawal. At the moment, the European Union expects that the rights of its citizens should be dealt with by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In its paper, the British Government seem to suggest that cannot be the case and that any decisions would be taken by UK courts. How are we going to get to a solution that allows reciprocity and justiciability that will not leave UK citizens and EU citizens uncertain and insecure?

There are some welcome elements of the paper, particularly that EU citizens will no longer have to prove that they have had comprehensive sickness insurance. That is one of the slight peculiarities at present about proving they have the right to be here and have been here for five years. But the tests of residency remain rather unclear. Will the Minister explain to us what the streamlined processes and light-touch approach the Prime Minster has talked about mean in practice? How will continuous residency be shown? Can we be assured there will be no more 84-page documents?

What will the cost be? Getting British citizenship is prohibitively expensive. One of my cousins is married to a German national. She has not taken British citizenship because it is simply too expensive. Many people are in that position. It is often suggested by those who have perhaps not thought about the cost, “Why don’t people just take British citizenship?”. It is because it is time-consuming and expensive, and people have assumed they have not needed to. For those EU citizens legally resident here for five years, who we understand from the Government’s document will be given the right to remain—so indefinite leave to remain or settled status—will it be possible for them to do that free of charge, or at a minimal cost, perhaps akin to getting a British passport, rather than going through the costs we have seen for residency rights or taking citizenship?

Will the Minister tell us what is meant in the safeguarding paper by,

“these rights will apply to all EU citizens equally and we will not treat citizens of one member state differently to those of another”?

I ask that because three nationalities are currently treated differently: citizens of the Republic of Ireland, citizens of Malta and citizens of Cyprus, the latter two being Commonwealth citizens. At present, if you are a citizen of Malta or Cyprus, you can vote in local elections and European elections but also British general elections; if you are an EU national other than from Malta, Cyprus or Ireland, you do not have the right to vote in general elections. If they are all being treated the same, are we proposing to take away voting rights from Irish, Maltese and Cypriot nationals? Are we proposing to give voting rights to the nationals of other EU countries? Or is that something the Government simply have not thought about?

All this presumes there will be a satisfactory outcome to the negotiations. After all, the Government’s offer is predicated absolutely on reciprocity, and that presumes a deal. What happens if there is no deal? We have heard a lot about no deal being better than a bad deal. For EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom, who have suddenly been given a glimmer of hope by the Government’s paper on safeguarding their rights, no deal would surely be worse than a bad deal. Yet, if the UK is so reluctant to countenance a role for the Court of Justice of the European Union in enforcing the rights of EU citizens, do Her Majesty’s Government really expect to get a deal?

There are many questions. Some of the questions raised in the European Union Committee’s report had been partially answered by the Government’s safeguarding paper, but only partially. If the Minister can give us some answers this evening that, would be most welcome.