Immigration Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neuberger (LD)]

My Lords, I support this excellent amendment. This is the least that we can do. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lord Roberts said, there is a huge groundswell of support to bring some of these children—as many as we can—into this country. It is enormously important to get those children out of there, particularly out of Calais and Dunkirk.

I have to declare a couple of interests. I am rabbi of West London Synagogue, which runs a drop-in for asylum seekers and asylum-seeking families, and we have a lot of volunteers who have been going to Calais and Dunkirk. What they say about the situation of those children and the degree of risk to them and the appalling circumstances in which they live is truly ghastly.

I am also a trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust, which was set up in memory of my parents. My mother came as a refugee. She was a domestic servant when her younger brother was still at school. His teacher rang her from Germany and said, “You have to get your brother out of here”. So my uncle came as a semi-unaccompanied refugee and was looked after by the most wonderful foster parents, who responded to general appeals for foster parents. They came forward, took him in and looked after him for months until my mother could cope.

It is ironic that we have been holding these Committee stage debates on the Immigration Bill around the time of Holocaust Memorial Day, when we have been saying “never again” and have been remembering the Kindertransport and the refugees who came. When one looks back on those speeches, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, did, on the whole you think a lot of the parliamentarians in 1938 and 1939 were truly wonderful people. However, I want to mention Eleanor Rathbone who is something of a heroine of mine. She also helped my grandparents, who also got out just before the beginning of the war. She said that our being so slow in taking action—in a slightly different area—was the equivalent of saying:

“’We are very sorry for all the people who are in danger of being drowned by this flood, and we will do our best to rescue them, but, mind, we must use nothing but teacups to bale out the flood’”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/1/1939; col. 151.]

The trouble is that we have been so slow and are taking such very small actions. Three thousand is the very least we can do. We should go to Italy or to Greece and see the huge numbers who are there and then ask ourselves whether 3,000 unaccompanied children on top of the 20,000 who the Government have already said they will take is really too many. I hope the Government will accept this amendment.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very glad to speak in support of my noble friend—and he really is a friend. What he has said has been all the more powerful for us because of his personal story. He speaks with all the authority of having experienced exactly what we are talking about. Having had the benefits of the response and care that he received, he is determined to see that shared with the children of today. That is a very powerful position.

I believe we should do what is proposed in the amendment because it is right. I do not see how anybody could argue that it is not. These children—bewildered and bereft—are totally innocent. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said that they are asking themselves, “Where shall we go?”, but some of them are so bewildered and lost that they are not even asking that. The thought in their minds is, “How are we going to survive?”. They are terrified, frightened and bewildered.

If we have any values in this country, surely we should say that it is imperative to respond. I listened to the noble Baroness’s powerful point about how we are slow to respond, but I am afraid that we are not just slow; inadvertently or not, we seem to be generating a certain message. We have to face the fact that that message is interpreted by many as our seeing something unfortunate or threatening about this situation. The message is that we have to somehow defend ourselves and make concessions where that becomes unavoidable —or clear that it would be impossible not to do so.

We have to face the fact that what confronts us now is only a small fraction of what is going to confront us in the future. With climate change and all the conflicts that are arising, we are going to see the movement of people on a huge scale. That makes it abundantly clear to me that we should establish a record of participation as leading members of international organisations and arrangements, rather than being perceived as defensive and frightened all the time and making concessions. That is not the intention.

I am going to be personal—and this may be embarrassing for the Minister concerned—but I am absolutely convinced that we have a thoroughly decent and very humanitarian Minister sitting with us this afternoon. I have no doubt about that at all. I am also convinced that he doing his level best within government to extend the Government’s response as much as he can. I want the message to go from this Committee that he will have 200% support from us in doing that. I am sure that it will be a message from the House as a whole that he will have nothing but overwhelming support in doing everything possible.

We have to accept that the response of people in this country is not just emotional but practical. I was very struck when all parties in the local authority adjacent to where I live in Cumbria said unanimously—and this very much provides tangible evidence of the case that my noble friend was making—“We must do something. We want to do something. Will the Government help us in pulling our weight as a local authority?”. They were not bludgeoned or cajoled into it. They did it spontaneously. I am sure that my noble friend, who has a home up there too, knows what I am taking about. It was very impressive and I thought it was good: in this community, these values are not just something for individuals but something that the community as a whole is determined to put on record, and we must not let them down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Green of Deddington]

My concern is that, if we are not careful about this, we might encourage families to send children on ahead. We need to look at that very carefully because those children would be at exactly the same risk as those already in Europe now. It is a very difficult and sensitive area. There are almost instant communications between child refugees and the adults in their families. If you open a door and give the impression that, “Get your kids as far as Rome and the Brits will have them”, then the risk is that we will make a bad situation worse, if that were possible.

[Lord Judd]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I thought the noble Lord put his view very morally and I do not believe that it can be dismissed out of hand. However, the question I want to put to him is what would he do about the children who are already in Europe? That is the point: they are already there. As my noble friend said, we are where we are. Although there may be intellectual logic and force in his argument, we have a real situation.

[Baroness Neuberger]

Could I add to that? The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has put the specific number of 3,000 children in his amendment, and we know that these are very troubled children. The situation is particularly ghastly right now and we know that some of those children are disappearing. That sounds alarm bells for all of us.

Immigration Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, the Government should be rather ashamed that this debate is necessary. It has taken the whole consideration of the Bill on to a different plane from all the other amendments that I have listened to. It is so terrible that so-called diplomacy should be unable to do what is right. I have been deeply shocked that the Government, in being asked to give priority to Christians among the 20,000 Syrians who we are to admit during this Parliament as refugees, have said that they cannot do so because they cannot discriminate. The whole concept of refugees and asylum is discrimination. It is giving succour to those who need succour. I will go no further except to say that if the amendment were to come back to the House at Report and the Government resist it, they would be overwhelmingly and humiliatingly defeated.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, apart from all the powerful arguments of support that have been put forward, the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, is one that we must all take particularly seriously. No one in this House has put their own life more on the line on issues of this kind than she has, and she has consistently done that with great courage. When she comes to us and says, “Please take this one step that would help, in terms of all that I have experienced”, we must take that seriously. I also feel very deeply that there is a real crisis in credibility with populations across the world. Governments speak with great rhetoric about these issues, but sometimes fail to provide the practical evidence that that rhetoric adds up to anything. Here is a chance to demonstrate that we mean what we say.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, from these Benches I support the amendment. When I first started going to ceremonies to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, what struck me most were the current examples that were used and of which we were reminded. Each year a theme is chosen and it is salutary to realise how topical those themes are. This is topical. There are many groups of people who are the subject of the treatment which has been described, and it has been notable during debate on this Bill how many noble Lords have referred to the experiences of their families. We may not be directly related to the people who are in such a situation, but as noble Lords have pointed out, we are all part of that one family.

Immigration Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

All of us with children or grandchildren can imagine our own youngsters in that kind of situation. We would not want it for them and we should not want it for these young people. I know that the Minister, in his heart, would not want it either. This is a just and reasonable amendment, and I hope that the Minister will take seriously the request made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in asking for continued discussions around this question between now and Report.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my warm support to my noble friend in moving this amendment. For any of us who have been exposed to the realities of the situation, it is impossible to forget the mental turmoil that is so often present in the case of the person going through the process. The minds of those who have suffered torture are already in a pretty twisted and confused state. Just trying to cope with the procedures is physically and mentally exhausting. That is aggravated, frankly, because sometimes they have been through all the injustice of ill-prepared cases against them by the Home Office, which were subsequently totally dismissed as unacceptable, allowing the person to acquire asylum status. All this adds to the psychological pressure.

The other thing that strikes me—both the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend referred to this—is the amount of arbitrariness in this process. Some come up against wonderful people in the community. I can think of a case not very far from where the Minister lives where there was a wonderful amount of support forthcoming for the couple concerned, and they roped me in on it, but all the time I was thinking, “But what about all those who do not have this support?”. It was bad enough for them.

Let us consider the arbitrariness that people encounter at the appeal stage in terms of the procedures in court. I was present for this couple’s case, and indeed I was called as a witness. The judge was simply incompetent, but fortunately for this couple, they had a superbly good lawyer to present their case. She was able to shred the case brought by the judge almost within minutes. What was again constantly in my mind was the fact that the couple were fortunate to have the support of a wonderful family and an excellent lawyer, someone who was commended by her own profession for her work, but what about all the others? This indicates that we need to look closely at what is realistically possible.

To be fair, I should add that when I became involved in this case, I was given a lot of helpful support by the Home Office. It was obvious that some people there were unhappy about the situation and they were trying to help. But only a minority of cases have the good fortune of the kind intervention of others. We cannot take the business of fairness lightly and we must be able to think ourselves into the shoes of the people going through this process—what they have been through, what state their minds are in and how capable they are of coping with what is required of them during the period of transition. I hope that the Minister, who I know is an extremely fair-minded man, will listen carefully to the plea of my noble friend and resolve this.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, our Amendment 229 also addresses the issue of people who have been granted refugee status, humanitarian protection and various forms of leave to remain accessing mainstream benefits. I am sure that being able to work, and as a secondary to that being able to access mainstream benefits and accommodation, is what people in this situation want. They do not want to be supported. But delays in the Home Office in issuing biometric residence permits and delays at the DWP in issuing national insurance numbers so that people can get identity documents and thus establish a claim to benefits mean that the system is not working as it should.

Our amendment would not make as many changes as its length might suggest. The relevant addition to the definition of when,

“a claim for asylum is determined”,

are the lines,

“and the claimant or dependants of the claimant do not appear to the Secretary of State to be destitute”.

In other words, adding that in as another condition to be met, as it were. I can understand that it must be much easier to have an automatic time trigger for these things, but we have heard throughout the debate on this Bill how matters are considered on a case-by-case basis, and it seems that this is another occasion when that consideration should be applied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I should make one specific point that I need to put on to the record. It is not just a case of extending the time period, it is also about making sure that people apply for these benefits promptly. One of the figures cited in the 2014 British Red Cross report showed that of its sample of 16 individuals, only three had applied for welfare benefits within the first three weeks of being granted status. Part of the issue is getting people to apply earlier.

[Lord Judd]

The Minister has just put his finger on a good example of the difficulty here. He has said that it is important that people should apply promptly, but sometimes their mental condition and the state of confusion they are in makes that a totally unrealistic proposition unless there are families or friends who can take them through the whole process, as was the case with the couple I cited as an example earlier. People have to work hard on it. These are exactly the sort of points which should be taken up in the discussion that I am glad to hear the Minister is suggesting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, having heard my noble friend and others, it is clear how important these amendments are, and I am sure that the Minister will take them seriously. I will make just one point. Those who are behind these amendments are probably the people in the House who are the most experienced in depth about the issues with children that we are discussing. Their commitment to effective work with children cannot be doubted. It would therefore be outrageous if the Committee did not take seriously what they feel is important to put forward as amendments.

The one thought that strikes me is our failure to think ahead, to think in a wider context and to make connections. We agonise about the rising evidence of mental illness. We agonise about delinquency, extremism and terrorism. What are we doing with this younger generation? Are we actually trying to generate mental illness? Are we trying to generate recruits for extremists or, at a lesser level, gangs? Do we really want to build healthy citizens? These children are going to go somewhere, and they are either going to be positive, creative citizens or they are going to be deeply damaged youngsters with all kinds of negative consequences. We really need to bring our thinking together on social policy, health policy and all the policies necessary for a stable society and, indeed, for protection against extremism. These amendments are highly relevant to the imperative of that wider thinking.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the Committee because we have heard the significance of these amendments, to some of which I have added my name. I want to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said because we all know that the consequence of not providing for these young people when they leave the care system is serious because they are going to remain in this country.

Given that these young people are likely to remain here and to go under the radar, I simply ask the Minister to comment on the figures in relation to removal directions served on former unaccompanied young people in 2014. As I understand it, 245 removal directions were served on former asylum-seeking unaccompanied young people, but only 15—less than half of 1%—were forcibly removed. What I cannot see is how any of the proposed legislation is going to do anything other than make that situation worse and make those young people more destitute. The Children’s Society has plenty of evidence of those young people ending up sleeping on buses and selling the currency of their bodies to have somewhere to stay. I cannot think that that is the sort of response that we in this House want or the sort of society we want to create.

I will not go through the list of cases that the Children’s Society has given me of people who have now reached the age of majority and are receiving some support in education and training, putting themselves in a position where they can make a contribution to our society. But if we implement a system whereby they do not get support after the age of 18, as others do, we are storing up enormous trouble for ourselves and huge financial as well as emotional costs.

Litvinenko Inquiry

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I certainly echo the noble Lord’s remarks and pay tribute again to the work of the Metropolitan Police Service. I also pay tribute to the work of the Cyclamen network, which tracks nuclear materials as regards potential terrorist threats, as well as the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which provided important scientific input into the inquiry by identifying what had happened. I am therefore happy to endorse those remarks and confirm my agreement with them.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I think many of us in this House on all sides will want to congratulate the Government on their firm Statement and in particular to thank Sir Robert for the clear and detailed work he has done and for his honest, forthright report. Particularly in view of what the Minister has just said about the wider implications as regards the lethal radioactivity spread around the capital, London, its transport system and the rest, how will the Government raise this matter in the Security Council of the United Nations, with fellow Governments in the European Union, and, most particularly, in the Committee of Ministers in the Council of Europe? The Council of Europe is of course committed to human rights, and we have a very good opportunity there with other Ministers to put the Russians under close scrutiny as regards this report. I was rapporteur for some years to the Council of Europe on the conflict in Chechnya, and what has happened here is all too characteristic of the gruesome repeated action I came up against in Chechnya and in the north Caucasus in general.

[Lord Bates]

References to that engagement in Mr Litvinenko’s background in Chechnya are contained in a report, which makes very interesting reading. The noble Lord asked about the UN Security Council. There are issues that could be addressed through that forum, but the fact that Russia is a permanent member of it makes some of the discussions that need to be had a little more difficult. However, we have said that the European Union plays a crucial part in our security here, and we have made it clear that NATO also plays a very important part, as do the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We need to get the message out that this is unacceptable and to communicate that as widely as possible.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, National Parks England, which is the umbrella body for the park authorities, is making no secret of the fact that it positively welcomes this amendment and sees great opportunities in it. I have one anxiety on which I would like an assurance, but I suspect that it comes at a slightly different angle from that of the noble Lord, Lord Deben. There is sometimes a subjective dividing line between commercialisation of the parks and using commercial opportunities to strengthen their purposes. Elsewhere in legislation the Government have, to their credit, stood firmly by the definition of what national parks are. They are not areas which are ripe for commercial exploitation; rather they are areas in which sensible co-operation between the park and other authorities could do a great deal to strengthen the authority and enhance the well-being of the people in the community. But the purpose of the park is to enable more people from all ethnic groups in Britain to appreciate the contrast of beauty, landscape and all the rest. I suspect that the Minister is 100% on my side on this, but I would like an assurance that this undoubtedly important amendment, containing as it does such great advances, will not be allowed to become an excuse for commercialisation, in the wrong sense, of the parks at the expense of their real purpose.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I appear to have failed to notice that we are dealing with the last group of amendments. Obviously I want to join the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in thanking the Minister for her charming and helpful approach to legislation—this will do her reputation as a Minister no good at all—and to thank the members of the Bill team, who have always been helpful and approachable. That has been the case right from the start, I believe, some nine months ago when the Bill was conceived and has now been delivered in its final shape. It bears a great deal to the way in which the noble Baroness and her colleagues have assisted Members from all sides of the House.

Syrian Refugees: Settlement in the UK

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am so sorry. Although I understand why the noble Baroness is trying to get in, there are occasions when we should give priority to Back Benchers rather than Front Benchers. I suggest that if we are to have one more speaker, it should be a Back Bencher.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

While no one would underestimate the complexities, and indeed the pressures on the Minister and his colleagues, is it not important for the consistency of our position to remember constantly to emphasise the values we are trying to protect in our society, one of which is the Christian value of generosity and warmth towards people in situations such as this? Must we not keep that in mind and remember to consider, with all our preoccupations, what we are adding to the preoccupations and problems of Jordan and Lebanon?

[Lord Bates]

Part of that is the generosity of people directly making offers under the community resettlement scheme. But I am also very proud of the generous commitment the Government are undertaking on behalf of this country in providing £1.1 billion of aid to Syrian people in the region to allay their suffering there. That is the second largest figure in the world.

Aviation Security

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

Airlines share information with their passengers as they consider appropriate. All that it is appropriate for me to say at this point is that the Government receive intelligence reports from across the world. We share certain reports with airlines and we share certain levels of advice. Based on that, and in the light of events, some of which the noble Duke has articulated, airlines make certain adjustments. We could go into the mechanics of the extent to which threats can be realised in some parts of the world and the height at which planes should be flying. All these things are of a very technical nature. However, the authorities, Governments and airlines correspond with each other on a regular basis with regard to security measures to ensure that passengers of whatever nationality, wherever they are in the world, can be protected across the world.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, while essentially the House will be fully behind the Government’s rapid response to this situation, does the Minister agree that we should be concerned about not simply the British people who are affected but all those involved, and that we should express—as, indeed, he has—the strongest possible solidarity and support for the victims and those who have been bereaved by this incident? Is this not another cruel illustration of the nihilistic, brutal techniques employed by those who take such action and a total denial of any concept of human rights for the victims? In that context, is it not more important than ever that in all we do to try to reach international arrangements to prevent such situations, we always demonstrate that we will be second to none in our own upholding of human rights?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The British Government have a very distinguished record in upholding human rights. I totally agree with the noble Lord that we should empathise with all involved in this situation. This is a real challenge primarily for the Egyptian nation itself. Certain actions have been taken. As I said, we are still awaiting further details to substantiate the exact causes of this tragedy. Nevertheless, it is important that, as a responsible UK Government, our first concern must be to ensure the safety and security of UK citizens and residents. At the same time, as I indicated to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, it has always been the case, and should continue to be so today and for future Governments, that we extend whatever assistance and co-operation we can to others when such tragedies occur. We have done so before and we are doing so now.

EU: Asylum Seekers

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for giving us the opportunity to debate this vital subject, I join with him unreservedly in saying that the Italians should have the widest possible and most strongly expressed tribute from us all for the magnificent part that they have played on behalf of Europe and us all in the situation that confronts us.

Similarly—I say this with some joy, as a former Navy Minister—the Navy has behaved with outstanding sensitivity. In watching the interviews the humanity of the people doing the rescuing shines through; it just cannot be suppressed. That is Britain at its best. However, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was right to remind us to have a global perspective on the response to refugee problems. When we look at the burden being carried by Jordan and by Lebanon and see what this is doing to the economy and the pressure that this is putting on local people in their situation, our record, which we love to talk about in terms of our humanity and outward-looking attitude in our past towards refugees, is in danger of being totally eclipsed by the generosity of countries such as those. We had better remind ourselves that we have to live up to our traditions if we are not to be eclipsed by those countries.

What do we do about it? The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was absolutely right: this is just a symptom of an accumulating global problem. What we are faced with now is likely to become child’s play by comparison with what is going to develop. So far as I recollect, we have not yet mentioned this afternoon that climate change is going to accentuate the movement of people. We will have not just conflict and economic pressures but climatic pressures leading to same thing. All this makes it obvious that we have to find international global solutions; we cannot find solutions on our own. By constantly trying to put a finger in the dyke, we are just destroying our chance for influence and leadership in finding international solutions. We are increasingly seen—I do not like saying this, but it is true for any of us who are involved in international affairs—as a mean, defensive, neurotic little country that is concerned only with keeping people out and is not positively engaged and playing a part in finding the solutions that are necessary. That is a tremendous challenge to us all.

I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, allowed himself to digress, as he put it, because whenever we debate subjects such as this we should always have a refrain which we repeat: that if we look at our medicine, our science, our literature, our technology, our industry, our public services and our cultural life, we see that refugees have been a rich investment in the quality, the character and the standing of Britain in our history.