Immigration Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on raising some very important points about which she spoke with great knowledge, and I respect her decision on this important but difficult matter. If I may, I will not follow her down that avenue, as I want to make a more general speech about the importance of the Bill.

Several comments have been made in the House today about why there seems to be an immigration Bill every two years. It is a fair point, but it is perhaps worth saying that it has been some time since Governments have felt able to deal with this matter in a serious way. It is inevitably a long march in a civilised country when we have to take steps to remedy something that has gone very badly wrong for our country. I welcome the Bill as a further step forward along that path in this Government’s determined effort to get immigration down to a sensible level that is acceptable to the public and above all serves the interests of our country.

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration on their relentless focus on what needs to be done to restore long-overdue order in our immigration system. Let us not forget why we are here today. Regrettably, the dysfunctional Labour Government lost control of our borders. Net foreign immigration on their watch was nearly 4 million, while roughly 1 million British citizens left in that period. This is an extraordinary scale of immigration, absolutely without parallel in our history. We now face the massive task of integrating these huge numbers into our society.

The Balanced Migration group, which I co-chair with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), is especially concerned about the impact on our population of continued immigration on anything like this scale. On current projections, based on net migration of 200,000 a year, immigration will account for two thirds of our population growth—not, incidentally, one half, as the BBC repeatedly and erroneously tells us. Such immigration would add a further 5 million people to our population in the next 15 years. This is completely unacceptable to the British public. According to a recent opinion poll, two thirds of the public want to see drastic action to reduce immigration and three quarters of the population want to see it reduced.

The Government have already had considerable success, for which they have not been given due credit. Non-EU migration—that part of the equation which is subject to Government action—has been substantially reduced from 217,000 in 2010 to 157,000 in 2012. This has been achieved without constraining access for business to the skilled migrants that it needs if it and we are to prosper. There are no limits on the transfer of international staff. The only cap is on work permits, and only half the 20,700 available work permits have been taken up. There is much to be done to improve delivery, but the policy is clearly right. Nor has there been any significant effect on our universities, which have seen student visa applications increase by 10% between 2010 and 2012. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), the fall in student numbers has been at the colleges where much of the abuse of the system had been taking place.

It is sometimes claimed that the Government are sending out mixed messages; in one week they are encouraging business and tourism, in another they are clamping down on immigration. In fact, there is no contradiction between encouraging legal migration and discouraging abuse of the system, as is the purpose of this excellent Bill. It is right that we should seek to encourage tourists, business visitors and genuine students, while reducing the scale of permanent migration. That is how we in this country should reap the benefits of a globalised world, while ensuring that we are not, as a nation, overwhelmed by it. It is that fear which drives so many people’s anxiety about immigration.

The Bill tackles a long-standing weakness in our immigration system—namely, the relative ease with which those who originally come quite legitimately can stay on illegally once their visa has expired. These overstayers frequently work below the minimum wage. Those who do so undercut the wages of British workers. They also allow unscrupulous employers to undercut employers who offer decent wages and conditions. Overstayers also add to the pressure on our public services, so it is right that they should be firmly but fairly discouraged from staying on. An important consequence of such illegal immigration is the added pressure that it generates on our housing, which already faces a crisis. I therefore welcome the proposal in the Bill for landlords to carry out checks similar to those now required of employers, although I recognise that the nuts and bolts may need some examination. I note the points that the hon. Member for Lewisham East made in this regard.

The proposals to close off access to driving licences and to bank accounts to those who have no right to be here are entirely sensible and I hope they will be widely supported. I remain concerned, however, that we still await news of any effective measures to ensure that our national health service is no longer wide open to all comers, whether or not they have contributed to its enormous costs. The proposals in the Bill are, to put it mildly, extremely modest.

I recognise that we cannot and should not look to medical staff to carry out what are essentially immigration functions. That is why we have suggested that joint Home Office/Department of Health offices should be established entirely separately from GP practices in order to decide on eligibility. We keep being told that there is no evidence of significant abuse of the NHS. That is simply because there are no effective checks in place. If we were to turn off all the speed cameras, there would be no evidence of any significant speeding. So, with the exception of this important lacuna concerning the NHS, I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister—

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I would like to draw to his attention the detailed, independent and peer-reviewed research that our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published this morning, which shows that the NHS fails to collect some £500 million a year. We are not proposing to withhold treatment from people, but trying simply to ensure that people who are not entitled to free health care make a fair contribution towards it.

[Nicholas Soames]

I have seen that, and I welcome the appointment of a senior figure as chairman of the NHS body that will look further into this. I simply say that if my hon. Friend really thinks that the amount of money involved is only £500 million, he is well wide of the mark. Part of my group’s concern about that paper is that it simply does not go far enough. It makes too many heroic assumptions on the most enormous margins, and I and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead will be making available to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister further important details from the NHS that we have been given and which show that these figures are well south of the figures that need to be dealt with.

As I say, having regard to that important lacuna in the Bill, I nevertheless wish to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister on their courageous and successful efforts to tackle one of the foremost concerns of the British public. I wish my right hon. Friend every continued success as a Conservative Government move towards a system that has the confidence of the public.

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[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on Second Reading. The debate has been, and will continue to be, wide ranging, but I shall restrict my comments to three specific matters, the first of which is the potential unintended consequences of the immigration health charge.

Clauses 33 and 34 introduce the immigration health charge, but offer no clarity on the administration or policing of it. That leaves the presumption and fear that checks will be in place before people access primary care, even if there are no measures to that effect in the Bill. I am concerned that that will create serious risks to public health, including an increase in HIV infection. That is not only my view, but the view of many charities and organisations working in the field that have contacted me, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS. They have serious concerns.

Currently, 100,000 people living in this country have HIV, a quarter of whom are undiagnosed. Half of new infections are passed by people who are undiagnosed. Evidence shows that the migrant communities are less likely to go to sexual health or specialist clinics to be tested because of the increased stigma for them and their communities. They are much more likely to go to a general practitioner because it is not as obvious that they are attending to be tested—the stigma is not related to GPs.

My fear is that any sort of barrier erected between migrant communities and GPs and primary care access will be another contribution to the shameful increase in HIV infection in this country in recent years. GPs carrying out any sort of immigration check sends out the wrong message entirely. I urge the Government to listen to the experts. I have a lot of information and letters on the subject to show that the measures could have a grave effect on tackling infection numbers and late diagnoses in migrant communities in the UK.

[Mr Harper]

To reassure the hon. Lady before she continues, nothing in the Bill refers to GPs. Even the proposals my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has set out today make it clear that provision for public health conditions such as HIV will remain free for everybody, because that is the right thing for public health purposes, as she has set out.

[Pamela Nash]

I appreciate the Minister’s intervention, but the fact is that there is no clarity in the Bill—it leaves that fear for communities seeking primary care. If they believe they will be kicked out of the country for going to the doctor, they might not go and therefore might not be tested.

Public health experts agree that increasing the offer of HIV testing to a wide range of facilities is key to tackling the UK epidemic in all communities. In addition, the purpose of primary care is to assess the broadest range of health needs and identify how best to meet them. Anything that delays or prevents anyone with an infectious disease from seeking medical advice denies them the opportunity to be diagnosed and increases the chance of them passing on the infection to someone else. Someone on HIV treatment is 96% less likely to transmit it to others. Therefore, the Bill clearly risks unlimited and unintended consequences to UK public health.

The Bill may increase the risk that we will fail to tackle HIV in our communities, and it may also be costly. According to the Department of Health’s review of overseas visitors charging policy, referred to in the explanatory notes, a comparison of the administration costs of the current system with the amount actually recovered showed that it barely broke even. The Home Secretary failed to address that point, and I hope that the Minister will do so in his closing remarks. The new system may not be cheaper and we may fail to reclaim any money.

According to the review, in order to recoup the money and achieve the Government’s aims, the NHS structure would need to be radically changed. It said:

“Only a fundamentally different system and supporting processes would enable significant new revenue to be realised.”

I would be grateful if the Minister provided more clarity about the administration of the proposals and the collection of the money from those who have entered the country.

I am also concerned about the effect that the proposals will have on reciprocal arrangements with other countries, which has not really been mentioned today. The Bill refers to our EEA partners, but we have arrangements with 27 countries that are not in the EEA, including Australia and New Zealand. Many of our students go backpacking in those countries or to work on short-term visas, and they access health care free of charge, like the people who come here from those countries. Can the Minister clarify how the Bill will affect reciprocal arrangements? Has he had discussions with representatives of those countries? Will we have new reciprocal agreements, or will they not be affected?

The final area of concern is the devolved aspects of the Bill, which I mentioned in an intervention earlier. I am surprised by how vague this issue is in the Bill. There is no detail on how charges for devolved public services will be made, or on how landlord checks will work in the devolved nations.

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that information.

[Mr Harper]

I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Lady again, but the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has—inadvertently, I am sure—misled the House. What he says is simply not true. I wrote to several Ministers in the Scottish Government, and my officials liaised with their officials over the summer, before the publication of the Bill.

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the Minister for that intervention. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was extremely animated and angry earlier—understandably so—about some of the aspects of the Bill, but when I asked about the SNP’s position, he simply replied that he remained to be convinced, instead of saying that it opposed it. I ask the Minister to provide some clarity about the discussions and agreements reached with the Scottish Government and the devolved Administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland. What impact assessment has been conducted on the cross-border issues that the Bill could bring about?

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I am glad to be able to speak about the Bill. I have taken an interest in immigration policy for very many years, first as an administrative trainee in the Home Office, and secondly as somebody who year on year is in the top 10 of MPs processing immigration casework. I have also, of course, taken an interest because I represent a constituency with very many immigrants from all over the world, and, finally, because I am the child of immigrants. I say from my knowledge and experience of the immigration system that it is bedevilled by poor administration and rushed and incoherent legislation, motivated by short-term political advantage—and I do not except the Labour party from that. I am afraid that this Bill is more of the same.

I say right at the beginning that there are many details in the Bill that I agree with—which is not surprising, because some of it merely puts into legislation matters that were regulations under the Labour Administration—but I deplore the rhetoric and I deplore the political direction of travel. I remind the House that immigration as an issue has been freighted with emotion since the days of Enoch Powell, and since those days immigration has been a synonym for black, Asian and foreign-looking people—for “the other”. Any Member of the House who pretends that immigrant, immigration and anti-immigrant rhetoric does not have that underlying narrative in British politics is being naive.

If people do not believe me, I urge them to read the report of the royal commission on alien immigration in 1903 and the subsequent Aliens Act 1905, which deal with exactly the ideas that those on the Government Front Bench are trying to push forward today. What people say about east European migrants today is what was said about east African migrants in the ’60s, what was said about west Indian migrants, what was said about Jewish migrants to the east end after the first world war, and what was said about Irish migrants in the 19th century: driving down wages; living in terrible housing conditions; assaulting our women. It is always the same narrative, which should be a clue to the House that it is always the same issue.

I remind Government Members who think that they can get away with all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and not pay an electoral price that the Republicans in the United States thought that. They went to town with anti- Hispanic, illegal migrant rhetoric; they thought that anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric was a huge vote winner. But at the election they found that perfectly legal migrants ran, not walked, away from Republicans. Not just Hispanic migrants but Chinese, Japanese, Indian migrants—every migrant community—voted in unprecedented numbers for the Democrats, in what was a difficult election for them in many ways, because when people of immigrant descent hear that anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric they think, “Actually, they are talking about me, my dad, my mum, my auntie, the people on the landing.” Government Members should not think that they can continue down this anti-illegal immigrant path and not pay a price with the votes of the children and grandchildren of migrants. The danger with the Bill is not just that it will create the hostile environment for illegal immigrants that the Home Secretary was boasting of, but that it will tend to create a hostile environment for all of us of immigrant descent and our children.

I know as much about the UK Border Agency and abuse of the system as anyone. I worked in the Home Office and I knew about Croydon. People say that the Government inherited a shambolic immigration department from the Labour party, but as long as I have known the immigration department it has been dysfunctional and shambolic, and there are systemic reasons for that. It was always seen as an outpost of the Home Office in Whitehall and no one wanted to work there, so it was allowed to remain in a welter of administrative confusion. I bow to no one in my knowledge and my disapproval of the chaos, unfairness, inefficiency and poor administration of the immigration department. I also know—this has not been mentioned—of the abuses practised on my constituents by so-called immigration advisers. People talk about abuses of the system, but they are often triggered not by people who are simply looking for a better life for their family but by a class of so-called immigration advisers who systematically rip them off. My constituents come to me years later and I have to try to pick up the pieces of a case that was mishandled right from the beginning by people motivated only by profit.

I agree with what my long-standing friend and colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), said about administrative problems, and I give him every credit for his work on the matter over the years. I also agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said about people who are left in limbo, even though they are here legally, because the UKBA has not sent them their paperwork. There are systemic problems with the UKBA, but that does not justify trying to turn doctors and landlords into immigration officers on wheels. We need to deal with what is wrong with the administration before we ask untrained people to pursue matters that the Government and a state agency should deal with.

I want to say a word about what people hear on the doorstep, which keeps coming up in this debate. I hear about that from Government Members, and I am afraid that I hear about it from some hon. Friends. First, let us kill the myth that Labour had an open-door policy on migration. I have an office with filing cabinets stacked full of files about the thousands of cases that I dealt with year on year under a Labour Government. There was the issue of the miscalculation of the number of people coming from the eastern European accession countries—no one denies that—but if there was an open door, why did so many of my constituents have to wait years and years, divided from their family, to bring their children in? There was no open door. Far from apologising, the Labour party should make that point more clearly and more often.

What do we hear on the doorstep? I can believe that Members hear people complaining about immigrants. I have the children of West Indians complaining to me about eastern European migrants. However, in an economic downturn people always complain about the other, and want to blame the other for their economic circumstances. Of course we as politicians should deal with the underlying issues when people complain, whether about a lack of housing or job insecurity, but we must not allow public policy to be driven by people who are frightened of the changes they see around them, of economic insecurity and of the fact that the so-called upturn is not helping their living standards. We are now in danger of passing yet another ill thought-out Bill to go on the pile that has been heaped up since the 1960s.

Let us not forget that much of what we hear on the doorstep about immigration is simply not based on fact. It may be easy to say to people, “Oh, yes, you’re so right, we’re going to have fewer of them; we’re going to do this; we’re going to do that”, but politicians should deal with the facts first rather than pander all the time to urban myth, which leads to a downward spiral of rhetoric.

Turning to the content of the Bill, other Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), have dealt with the issue of landlords. Even landlords’ organisations are against the Bill. Richard Lambert, the chief executive officer of the National Landlords Association, has said:

“Existing referencing will pick up immigration issues anyway”.

Gavin Smart of the Chartered Institute of Housing has said that the measures will

“make it much harder for non-British people to access housing even when they have a legal right to live in the UK. Checking immigration status is complicated so landlords may shy away from letting to anyone who appears not to be British.”

That is landlords speaking. The effect of the Bill will be that when people such as my son and the children of some of my colleagues go to see a flat, they will be told that the flat is taken. Landlords will not want to take the chance of letting to someone who “might be” an illegal immigrant. I do not believe Ministers understand how it feels to knock on a door and be told, blatantly wrongly, that the flat or room is taken. That is what will happen as a consequence of the Bill.

Ministers like to give the idea that the problems in accident and emergency and the health service are caused by illegal immigrants. That is quite extraordinary. Even if their figures are true—I believe that they are scare figures based on the assumption that every person who comes here and gets treatment came only for the treatment in the first place—we are still not talking about the systemic reasons for problems in the NHS.

My mother was of that generation of West Indian women who came here in the ’60s to build the health service. Whether people like it or not, without immigrants we would not have an NHS. For as long as I am in this House, I will not allow Members to get up and say without challenge that the NHS’s problems are caused by immigrant workers. I owe that at least to my parents’ generation.

Also, there is already legislation about people who are not legally entitled to NHS health care. Why do the Government not get on with collecting money under that legislation, rather than introducing new legislation to do the same thing? It is because they are trying to make a political point and pander to UKIP voters.

We have already heard that 60% of successful appeals are due to administrative error. Why can we not move towards a more robust system for making decisions, rather than cutting people’s appeal rights, which currently are the only guarantee they have of some kind of recourse against administrative error? There is also the way the Bill would undermine article 8 of the European convention on human rights, the right to family life.

In drawing my remarks to a close, let me say this: it is simply not true that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are responsible for the current pressures on public services. To say that, or to imply it, is to slight the millions of people of immigrant descent who keep all our public services, not just the health service, going, and they will take it as such.

It is also not true, as some people seek to imply, that immigrants cause low wages. That has been the anti-immigration attack since the 19th century. Immigrants do not cause low wages; predatory employers, insufficient workplace protection and weakened trade unions do that. That was true in the 19th century when people accused the Irish of driving down wages, and it is true today when people make the self-same accusation against the eastern European community.

[Mr Harper]

I just want to draw the hon. Lady’s attention to a quote from the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), who is now the Labour party’s policy co-ordinator. At the end of 2010, just after the Labour Government had been kicked out of office, he wrote:

“At the macro-economic level, we’ve been using migration to introduce a covert 21st century incomes policy.”

It is people on her side of the House who think that the previous Government used migration to keep down wages, not people on the Government side.

[Ms Abbott]

People on my side of the House say a lot of things, but I do not necessarily agree with them. As Labour Front Benchers have pointed out, the Bill does not address the labour market issues properly.

We have to be honest about what the anti-immigration narrative in British politics has always been about. The Bill has more to do with political advantage, with demonstrating to UKIP supporters that the Government are cracking down on immigrants, as with the racist van, and with Lynton Crosby’s dividing-line politics than it has to do with good administration. I will believe the Government on immigration when they come forward with practical policies to improve the working of the UK Border Agency and when I see them cracking down on the employers who benefit by employing people off the books.

This is a very difficult issue, and it is confused by all sorts of urban myths, fears and worries. Generally speaking, immigrants are not the most popular group of people in politics today. Not a day goes by when we do not open the tabloid newspapers and read about some immigrant woman living in an eight-bedroom house in Knightsbridge paid for by the British taxpayer. The test for this House is how we deal with difficult subjects and speak up for people who are not necessarily popular or liked and who do not have a voice. By any test, this Bill is about short-term political advantage. It is of no real benefit to Britons, black or white, or would-be immigrants, black or white. Nobody on the Opposition Benches believes that people who are not entitled to NHS care should be able to get it for free, or that we should have a completely open-door immigration policy. We believe in speaking the truth about immigration, because if some people do not do that, we will see a race to the bottom, both in rhetoric and political practice.

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[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I oppose the Bill and will vote against it because I think that it will be defined, in practice, as a racist Bill and that that will have implications for society. I believe that the Bill is the result of electoral positioning; it is not about good governance or the long-term interests of the country. I fear for our long-term interests if we are to be governed by prejudice in this way. I abhor the society that the Bill seeks to create.

Like many Members, I represent a diverse, multicultural constituency. My west London constituency contains Heathrow and two detention centres, Harmondsworth and Colnbrook. I am often the last representative voice that detainees have recourse to before they are removed from the country. I have been visiting Harmondsworth for nearly 40 years. I remember when it was just a couple of Nissen huts with a dozen people in them. There are now two prison-like institutions that detain 1,000 people, most of whom have committed no crime whatever.

For many, the migrant’s story is one of desperation. People come from war zones or, like my Irish grandfather, areas of poverty simply to work and lift themselves out of poverty. I am fearful of what the Bill will do to the society that greets those people. In effect, it begins to echo some of the pass laws of apartheid South Africa. It is a society—

[Mr Harper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

No, I want to get this on the record. It is a society that echoes those pass laws, a society in which people can be confronted—stopped in the street—and asked for their documentation.

[Mr Harper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

No, I want to get this on the record. It is society in which people can be asked for their documentation to prove their identity and status.

Under the Bill, immigration officers will be able to use physical force for all their powers. I have been involved in cases that concern the exercise of physical force. In one case a person was killed, and in others people have been seriously injured as a result of the physical force used in removals. Time and again, concerns have been expressed to the Government about the lack of training for those staff and about the brutality that has taken place as a result, and yet in this Bill we are extending the use of physical force to all immigration officers in exercising their powers.

Many fear, and I do too, that with the removal of the directions notices, so there is no clear process of informing people when they are to leave the country and what their destination is, we are going back to the process of dawn raids where vans turn up and drag people and families out of their homes. One of the first cases I dealt with after being elected as a Member of Parliament involved an elderly lady who came to my constituency surgery because the family next to her had been dragged out of their house at 6 o’clock in the morning, children and all. She went into the house, obtained the children’s teddy bears and followed the van to Harmondsworth so the children at least had their toys. Is that the society we are returning to as a result of this proposed legislation?

I believe that the Bill will result in the escalation of detention. It will make it more difficult to challenge detention, to obtain bail and to secure appeals. As was said earlier, a third of appeals usually win, with nearly 50% winning entry clearance appeals. The Bill will mean that more people will be detained.

What is detention like? I refer people to the report of the independent monitoring board of Harmondsworth. These are volunteers appointed by the Minister, reporting to the Minister. Its latest report, from April 2013, is worth reading. It says that many people handle detention stoically, but that many others suffer intense distress. Many are mentally ill. They self-harm. We have had suicide attempts time and again in Harmondsworth and in Colnbrook. At the last count, last year 125 people were assessed under rule 35 by doctors who found that their health was suffering so badly that they should not be detained. Many Members know what rule 35 is: it means that the person should automatically be released. Of the 125 people so designated by doctors in Harmondsworth last year, only 12 were released. One was released because of ill-health, went to Hillingdon hospital and died soon after. That is what detention means. That is the type of suffering the Bill will increase, yet 20% of people in the detention centre get released back into the community. Some have been detained for a long time. I refer back to the report published in April. Two of those people had been detained since 2008, and 38 had been detained for more than a year. For many people, detention is not just a short-term measure before removal.

I am concerned about what the Bill will mean for the wider community. Nearly 50% of my constituents are black or people of colour. The Bill will mean that any person who is black, is of colour or who just looks foreign will be challenged. They will be challenged by bank managers and landlords, and by the vicar if they want to get married. They will also be challenged if they apply for legal aid. I find that offensive. I voted against identity cards in this House when my own Government brought them forward. The Bill will yet again bring the process of ID cards forward. There will be no ID cards for white people; it will be ID cards for black people, people of colour, or people who look slightly foreign or who have a foreign accent. That is what the Bill will do.

I find it offensive that the Bill will push more people to the margins. In my constituency, I have enough problems with Rachmanite landlords as it is, with people living in appalling overcrowded conditions and being charged too much. The Bill will create a shadow market, where people who are unable to secure accommodation through some landlords will have to go to others with higher rents. There will be a system of blackmail for those rents by those landlords.

What if people cannot get a roof over their heads? Where do they go? They go to the streets. This is an immigration policy of destitution, isn’t it? Let us be frank about that. If people cannot get a roof over their heads, they go on to the street or are forced out of the country. I deal with many people who would like to leave the country, but cannot even get their papers out of the black hole of the Home Office.

The banks, the landlords, the driving licence agency and so on will be only the first step in this process of introduction of these pass laws. We know from leaks from the Department for Education, which were exposed in The Guardian earlier this year, that the Government wanted to introduce this sort of system by having teachers check the nationality of their pupils.

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[Mr Harper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

No. I am not giving way.

What happens now for people who are sick? They go to their GPs, and, yes, they will be treated, but what about the next stage as a result of this Bill? This is the first step. Charges are being introduced and people will be checked to see whether they have a visa and have paid the charge, but the next step will inevitably involve GPs. What happens if nurses and doctors want to fulfil their Hippocratic oath? Will they be fined or imprisoned as landlords will be?

I am concerned about the society we are creating, and about the premise on which the Bill is being introduced. When it comes to the reality, as MP after MP will demonstrate—particularly London MPs—a documentation check will take place, but many of our constituents have no documentation, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, many have not applied for passports. Others live chaotic lives, and many, as a result of going through the system, have mental health problems and do not have control of their documentation. As I have said time and again, that is a result of not even being able to get their papers back from the Home Office.

The Bill will create a society that is lacking in compassion, brutal, and lacking in humanity and respect for civil liberties, a two-tier apartheid society that flies in the face of, and is incompatible with, everything that British people associate with their country: compassion, rights, mutual respect, and, yes, support for the underdog. The Bill is derived from the gutter politics of Lynton Crosby; it is an attack on immigrants because supposedly that plays well in British politics. I think that is a fundamental misjudgment of the British people, their values and their decency. I will vote against the Bill because I believe that bringing it forward in this House degrades this House.

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[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

In the limited time available—the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) could not help taking slightly more than half the time left—I will do my best to deal with as many of the points raised as I can. I welcome the contributions from Members on both sides of the House in what has been a good debate. I listened carefully and shall try to deal with the main issues.

Listening to the right hon. Gentleman, one would never know that Labour left behind a legacy of 450,000 asylum cases, border checks that were frequently relaxed to deal with queues and out-of-control net migration—and the latter was not just from eastern European countries; under Labour, twice as many people arrived from outside the EU as from within it—and of course it was that record which made our constituents rightly concerned about the issue, as many of my hon. Friends said.

The Government are firmly on the side of the vast majority of law-abiding migrants who play by the rules and contribute much to our society. We have a proud history of lawful migration, and this Government will continue to welcome the best and brightest to the country—

[Pete Wishart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

No, I want to deal with some of the points. I listened to the debate, and if the hon. Gentleman will give me the opportunity, I will deal with the points raised.

The Government will continue to welcome the best and the brightest, be they skilled workers, the number of which is increasing, or students going to our universities, whose number is also increasing. For those who have overstayed their visa or were never here lawfully in the first place, however, there must be consequences for unlawful behaviour.

[Pete Wishart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

No, let me make some progress.

We always prefer migrants who have had an application refused or who have overstayed to do the right thing and leave the UK under their own steam, and we will promote that compliant behaviour, but the Government want to put the law squarely on the side of people who respect the law, not those who break it. The Bill will deliver several important reforms to do that, cutting the number of immigration appeal rights, enabling us to require foreign criminals—not migrants in general—to leave the UK before appealing, ending the abuse of article 8 and introducing important measures to prevent illegal migrants from accessing services or the labour market.

[Pete Wishart]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

Despite what the right hon. Member for Delyn says, we are toughening up controls on employers and putting in place measures to collect fines more effectively. Together, these reforms are incredibly valuable.

[Pete Wishart]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has made his point—he wants to get in—but it is up to the Minister to give way, and quite obviously he wants to make some progress.

[Mr Harper]

I am trying to do justice to the many Members who spoke in the debate, including the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).

I particularly enjoyed the remarks from my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Crawley (Henry Smith), all of whose constituencies I have had the opportunity to visit in my current role, and the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), from whom I am sure I will receive an invitation in due course.

The right hon. Member for Delyn is right about the issues that we will not have a chance to debate in the remaining seven minutes; I want us to have a good debate in Committee and to go through the issues in detail, and I am confident that when we lay out our aims, we will take Members with us, having first tested their concerns. We want the Bill to leave Committee and this House in good shape. As Members will know from my previous roles and challenges, I do not think we should leave it to the other place to put Bills in good shape. I want to ensure it leaves this House in good shape, and I look forward to the debate in Committee to do so.

In the time remaining, I shall try to deal with some of the issues raised. A number of Members raised important points about the proposals on health. To be clear, we are not talking about denying access to health care. We are talking about making sure that those who have no right to free health care have to make a contribution towards it. One of the points raised by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) was about public health and access to health for HIV treatment. I intervened on her to say that public health access will still be available for free. What I did not remember at the time was that this Government abolished treatment charges for HIV for overseas visitors exactly to protect the sorts of public health concerns she raised.

We are talking about making sure people pay a fair share. For those temporary migrants coming to Britain either to work or to study, we will collect the money before they come into the UK. It will go into the Consolidated Fund, and it is well above my pay grade, Mr Deputy Speaker, to tell colleagues in the Treasury how to do public spending. But if money is then distributed, any funds that go to the NHS in England will of course be distributed to the devolved Administrations in the usual way according to the Barnett consequentials. I hope that that is clear. We are not proposing to change the way in which the devolved Administrations can charge under the overseas visitors arrangements. Those aspects of charging are of course devolved. We will talk to the devolved administrations to make sure that there are no unforeseen consequences from different parts of the UK having different regimes for visitor charging.

As I said earlier in response to the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), these are significant sums of money. She asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary how much we thought was not collected from health tourists. In the report that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published today, we say that we think that between £20 million and £100 million is the cost of deliberate health tourism for urgent treatment and between £50 million and £200 million for regular visitors taking advantage. Clearly there is a range, but this is an independent report that has been peer-reviewed and it is the best information we have. The hon. Lady is right; it is not a massive proportion of the overall NHS budget but £500 million that we are not collecting is a significant sum and it would make a real difference if we were able to collect it.

The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), made some points about landlords, and we will test those issues in Committee. He also referred to e-Borders. He deserves a reasonable reply since he shared the blame around with the previous Government. We do already collect a significant amount of information on those coming into Britain and those leaving and we are working on improving that. I know that he will continue to question my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and myself when we appear in front of his Committee.

The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and I do not always agree, but she made an important point about refugees. The reason I think it is important to deal with people who have no right to be in Britain is that I want Britain to continue to be a welcoming place for those genuinely fleeing persecution. I fundamentally believe that we will only carry the public with us and have the public support a system where we protect genuine refugees—those fleeing persecution—if where we decide someone does not need our protection, and an independent judge does not think they need protection, those people leave the UK. By the way, we are not removing appeal rights for those where there is a fundamental right involved. If they abuse our hospitality by trying every trick in the book to stay here, they are damaging the interests of genuine migrants. It is our duty to make sure we do that.

[Pete Wishart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

I do not have time to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s points.

There were many issues around appeal. Administrative review is a better way to deal with caseworking errors than forcing someone through the appeals system. I also listened very carefully to the genuine concerns raised about landlords. There will be a chance in Committee to deal with the practical implications of that. We have thought through the issues that colleagues have raised and we will be able to deal adequately with them in Committee and take colleagues with us. If there are things that we have not thought about, we can deal with those. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) dealt with that issue very well.

I am looking forward to debating the issues in Committee. The Bill continues our reforms of the immigration system, and it will ensure that the public’s expectations of a fair system are delivered. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Immigration Controls

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a pleasure, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on securing this debate. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said that she served an aperitif, or a full plate of hors d’oeuvres. This is the first chance I have had to welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his post. He said that he has been doing the job for 10 days, and I look forward to our debate in the House this afternoon and the time we will spend discussing the Bill in Committee.

The right hon. Gentleman said that the issues are important and referred to the labour market. He also referred to the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Democratic Unionist parties. I am astounded that no Labour MPs thought the subject worth debating. I am sure their constituents raise the matter with them all the time, and I cannot for the life of me understand why they did not want to come here. Perhaps the previous Labour Government’s record will explain that.

[Mr Hanson]

They trust me.

[Mr Harper]

I am sure they are wise to trust the right hon. Gentleman, but I have not noticed before in debates that because he is a Labour party spokesman, Labour Back Benchers did not believe it necessary to come along and contribute.

I want to spend some time responding to the points raised by my hon. Friends, but first I want to explain briefly why the issue is of great concern. My hon. Friends the Members for Witham and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) put their finger on it when they said that we inherited a shambles. The previous Government had let migration run out of control at more than 250,000 a year.

The asylum system was also out of control, and my hon Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) alluded to that. When we came to office, we inherited 450,000 cases that had not been concluded; my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), did a sterling job in sorting that out and driving the number down. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that we have not completed that work; we are still working through some very old cases. We know from the work of the chief inspector of borders and immigration that there was a period from 2007, under the previous Government, when, when there were queues, checks were not carried out, to manage the length of the queues. That does not happen now. We have an operating mandate: everyone who arrives at an airport is checked.

The right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned the one mistake that I believe the Labour party has acknowledged. The lack of transitional controls on accession countries in 2004, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster mentioned, was a huge mistake and is part of the reason that immigration is an issue. Parts of the country saw significant and fast growth in the number of migrants, which put public services under pressure. However, the right hon. Gentleman did not mention something that the Labour party skips over. During its period in office, the number of people coming from outside the EU was twice as high as the number from inside the EU. Yes, the Labour Government made a mistake with transitional controls for EU migrants, but what they do not talk about is the fact that twice as many came from outside the EU and there were no legal constraints from EU rules. They let that run out of control.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about the importance of welcoming people who contribute. That is absolutely right. Ministers are always clear, although this is not always reflected in what is reported, about achieving a balance. We want the best and the brightest to come to Britain and we want people to contribute. The Queen’s Speech referred to an immigration Bill and it was clear that it would have two purposes. One was to attract those who wanted to come and to contribute, and the other was to deter those who did not. We must get both parts of that story right; I will touch on the detail in a moment.

My hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster and for Witham talked about issues with EU nationals and where we need to tighten up on those who abuse free movement, particularly when there is criminality. There are some real issues of criminality in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. Immigration enforcement officers are working closely with his local authority and the Metropolitan police to deal with those involved in what we tend to call low-level criminality, but which has a real impact on UK nationals and visitors who want to come and spend money in our country. We have taken significant steps.

The real issue with EU nationals is that although we can remove them from the country and we have had some successful operations—for example, we removed a significant number of Romanian nationals from Hendon— they can come back. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster should be aware that we are looking closely at the legal scope to take a tougher approach, and I hope that he will welcome that.

My hon. Friend should also be aware that because of pressure from the Home Secretary at EU level, we finally got the message home. At the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 7 and 8 October, the Commission accepted for the first time that there is an issue with abuse of free movement rights. Commissioner Reding stated that free movement is a fundamental achievement, with which I agree, but the Commission also noted that free movement rights are weakened by abuse and that it would support member states to use existing EU tools—including sanctions such as expulsion and re-entry bans in certain circumstances, with the appropriate safeguards—to fight such abuse. That is very welcome.

The Home Secretary raised those issues with the Commission and with colleagues from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, and we have started to build a sense that there is a problem to solve. If we solve that problem and the problems of abuse, we will strengthen the benefits of free movement across the EU, from which many British citizens benefit, and make Britain a more attractive home for inward investment. I can give my hon. Friends the Members for Witham and for Cities of London and Westminster some comfort that we are addressing that situation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster will also be familiar with Operation Nexus, on which we are working with the Metropolitan police to identify foreign nationals at the point of arrest and to consider where we have immigration powers that may be used alongside criminal justice interventions to remove people from the country who should not be here and who are potentially involved in criminality.

[Jim Shannon]

Operation Nexus is a campaign run by Scotland Yard, which I understand has indicated that it is seeking more resources so that it can do its job better. I understand that Scotland Yard is seeking resources from Europe, too. Have those resources been allocated? If so, are they allocated from Government funds or through European funding?

[Mr Harper]

On resources—I mean to present this in a balanced way—it is not surprising that about a third of criminals in London are foreign nationals, but that is not a hysterical point; it is understandable, because broadly a third of the population of London are foreign nationals. The Metropolitan police’s core job of addressing criminality involves dealing with a significant number of foreign national criminals. The number is not disproportionate; the proportion is about what would be expected, given that there are significant numbers of foreign nationals in London. The tools we are able to give to the Metropolitan police, working with our immigration enforcement officers, means that it can do that job more effectively. We have seen significant success, and we have started to roll out those resources in the west midlands, for example, and increasingly in other police forces across the United Kingdom. I think that will be helpful.

The Home Office is also leading work with the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to address foreign national offenders. We have 16 priority countries—not 10, as my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said—including two EU member states, Portugal and Romania, which we are supporting in the use of the EU prisoner transfer agreement. We are working closely with colleagues in Romania to consider the effectiveness of Romanian criminals arrested in the UK being able to serve their sentences in Romanian prisons.

As the right hon. Member for Delyn said, we are working closely with the Nigerian Government. That work is not just the agreement, in which he rightly said that the previous Government had a role; the agreement had to be translated into Nigerian law, which has now been done. We have just signed a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement with Albania.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to address some of the points raised earlier in the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about the importance of being open for business, and I draw his attention to an excellent one-page guide circulated yesterday by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who ran the all-party group on balanced migration. The document is an excellent quick guide showing some important statistics on Britain being open for business, the number of business visitors and how easy it is to get a job here after university.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster is right that there are issues, although, largely, they are not issues of perception, but that does not mean they are not important. Of course, part of the job that the Chancellor and the Mayor of London were doing last week in China was to ensure that perceptions catch up with reality. For example, in China the average time for a business visitor to get a visa to Britain is some eight days, and we are looking to make that even faster for high-value visitors. I am not pretending that there are no real issues on the business side, because there are, but, certainly for overseas visitors, we have seen very strong growth.

There are many perception issues, which is why we have to be clear about what we are doing. I regularly meet universities and businesses, and I have met the City of London corporation. We are incrementally improving the system, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that that is important for Britain.

My hon. Friend is also right to draw attention to health issues and the pressure on St Mary’s hospital, Paddington, in his constituency. He will have seen today that the Health Secretary has published a significant independent audit, which has been peer-reviewed and shows that the NHS is failing to recover some £500 million of income that it should be getting from the foreign nationals that it treats. Frankly, I find it extraordinary that the Labour party, or at least its health spokesman—I do not know whether he talked to the right hon. Member for Delyn—has said that it will not support our proposals on that. I do not know whether that is connected to the Unite union’s opposition to those health proposals. In fact, Unite has said that health workers should not collect money from foreign migrants. I do not know whether Unite is setting Labour’s policy, but that statement is extraordinary. We have a national health service, not an international health service. We are not talking about not treating people, which is one of Unite’s scare stories; it is about charging people who have no right to free treatment.

If my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary and I go to another European country, that country is much better at charging the UK for our health treatment; we are not very good at charging for such treatment. If we went to another country, we would be expected to use private health care. In some countries we would not get health treatment before paying for it. In the UK, though, we are talking about never withholding urgent treatment but ensuring that people pay for it, which is fair to taxpayers. I look forward both to the changes that we are making in the Immigration Bill and to my right hon. Friend’s proposals for charging overseas visitors and being more effective at recovering the money.

I will forgive the right hon. Member for Delyn because he has been in his job for only 10 days, but he should be aware that the Government who stopped fingerprinting clandestines at Calais were the Government of whom he was a member. That change took place in January 2010, which, as far as I can tell from looking at the calendar, was prior to the general election. Perhaps he should check. We will consider whether that is still correct and whether we could improve the process.

In her comprehensive speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Witham referred to ways of improving how we deal with cases. She is right, and several Members have touched on there being in-country issues in the United Kingdom when assessing cases, which is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary broke up the UK Border Agency. We now have a UK visas and immigration operation that has a real focus on customer service for people who are paying for visas and coming to the United Kingdom to work hard, study and contribute. We want to give them good customer service. We are not there yet, but we have significantly improved on the backlogs that we saw in 2012-13. We are trying to improve both the overseas performance we deliver and the performance in-country.

I will continue meeting universities, as I did with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge—I had an excellent meeting with his university. We have taken some of those meetings forward. I meet the Russell Group, and I meet other top-quality universities in Britain to address their real issues, so that we can continue to increase the number of university students who come to Britain while ensuring that those institutions that are selling not education but immigration permits, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about, are put out of business and cannot abuse the immigration system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witham talked about people who make lots of claims and delay things, and she is right. I fundamentally believe that we should offer asylum to those who are genuinely fleeing persecution, but if the system is to work and to command public confidence, the flip side is that those whom we find do not need our protection—and where an independent judge agrees that they do not need our protection—should return to their country of origin. We should not have to spend thousands and thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money detaining those people and enforcing their removal. Everyone who abuses our system in such a way is damaging the interests of genuine refugees, to whom I want Britain to give a warm welcome and to enable them to rebuild their lives. [Interruption.] With the greatest respect, this debate was called by my hon. Friend the Member for Witham and I am trying to cover all the important points.

The Immigration Bill will streamline the immigration process and ensure that for foreign national offenders, if we can, we will have non-suspensive appeals so that, as long as they do not face irreversible harm overseas, we can deport them first and hear their appeal afterwards. In many cases, I suspect that will mean that we never hear the appeal, because my hon. Friend and I both know that the appeal is a mechanism to delay their removal from the United Kingdom.

We have had a comprehensive debate that is perhaps a warm-up for the Second Reading of the Immigration Bill, which I look forward to.

Home Department

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Ministerial Corrections

[Sir James Paice]

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many certificates of sponsorship for tier 5 visas have been issued by each sponsoring body in each of the last three years.

[Official Report, 25 June 2013, Vol. 565, c. 167-8W.]

Letter of correction from Mark Harper:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) on 25 June 2013.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Harper]

[holding answer 10 June 2013]: We are unable to provide the data regarding all tier 5 sponsors as the low volume of certificates issued by a third of them would make it possible to identify individuals or personal data.

The following table shows how many certificates of sponsorship (CoS) for tier 5 visas have been issued by the top 50 sponsors in each of the last three years. This information has also been placed in the House Library.

[Mr Harper]

[holding answer 10 June 2013]: We are unable to provide the data regarding all tier 5 sponsors as the low volume of certificates issued by a third of them would make it possible to identify individuals or personal data.

The following table shows how many certificates of sponsorship (CoS) for tier 5 visas have been issued by the top 50 sponsors in each of the last three years. This information has also been placed in the House Library.

“Go Home or Face Arrest” Campaign

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned that, because I saw the Minister this morning, going from studio to studio, defending this decision. I think that he took some comfort from the fact that the ASA only banned it because it was misleading, not because it was offensive or racist. However, that is cold comfort to the Minister, because the ASA said that this campaign was reminiscent of the anti-immigrant campaigns of the ’70s and that people would find it offensive.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

indicated dissent.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister is scowling. The saddest thing about these TV appearances this morning is that he is still prepared to defend this absurd campaign and to revise it and bring it back to us, once again, aping his boss, the Home Secretary, who made the same remarks in an interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday. We might see the son of hate vans in the streets soon.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asked me lots of questions and has not left me a great deal of time to answer them, but I will do my best. If colleagues will forgive me, I shall address my answers to him, as it is his debate. If I have chance, I will take interventions from others, but it is right that I try to address his questions.

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman and I, from the sound of his remarks, will not agree on the merits of the campaign, but it is worth setting out our thinking, because the campaign is not what he suggests. It is not focused at migrants; it is focused at people who are in the United Kingdom illegally—people who are here and breaking our laws. The campaign is not about migrants.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil)—I apologise again, because I always mangle the name of his constituency—said that the Government do not welcome people to Britain, which is not true. Every single time we make a speech or publish something, we make it very clear that Britain is open to migrants from across the world: people who want to come here to work, to study and to make a contribution. That message, which is welcoming to people who want to follow our laws and rules, is perfectly compatible with a message that says, “For those people who come here and do not follow the rules, and who want to break our laws, we should be equally firm about telling them that we want to enforce those laws.” Frankly, if people are here illegally, they should go back to their country of origin. There is nothing wrong with suggesting that they do so. If it is as bad here at the moment as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire suggests, the obvious question is why people are in this country illegally and not returning to their country of origin. We have worked closely with community groups and those involved in supporting migrants to help them to deliver that message sensitively.

The campaign to which the hon. Gentleman refers was a pilot, and we were trying to give a tough message about what will happen if people do not leave the country voluntarily: they will leave themselves open to arrest, detention and enforced removal. But the message also said that there is something that those people can do: they can contact the Home Office, and we will assist them in returning to their country of origin voluntarily, perhaps supporting them to do so. A significant number of people, more than 29,000, do that each year. That way of addressing the problem is greatly preferable, and it is much better for the taxpayer.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the cost. The cost of the pilot was just £10,000. If an individual who was in the country illegally chooses to go home as a result of the pilot, it will have paid for itself. We are doing a full evaluation. At the end of the three-month period, which is a reasonable period because of the time it takes to get travel documents, we will do the evaluation and then make a decision about the pilot.

However, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the first voluntary departure as a result of the pilot took place on 2 August. It was that of a Pakistani national who had been living in the UK illegally since December. Interestingly—colleagues might find this slightly ironic—he did not see the ad van itself; he saw a picture of it in The Guardian newspaper. He texted the number and we arranged to support him for his flight home, so at least one individual has left the country as a result of the pilot. From a cost perspective—something that I think the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs has mentioned—the pilot has already paid for itself. If we had had to arrest, detain and enforce the removal of one individual, it would have cost the taxpayer probably the best part of £15,000, so from a cost perspective, if we can persuade people to go home voluntarily, that is clearly the right thing to do.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire referred to the Advertising Standards Authority, but I do not think he accurately set out its view. It was very clear today and did not uphold any of the complaints about the vans or the allegations that the vans were offensive or racist. It said:

“We considered that, in context, the claim would be interpreted as a message regarding the immigration status of those in the country illegally...not related to their race or ethnicity.”

It concluded that

“the poster was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence or distress”

and was

“unlikely to incite or exacerbate racial hatred and tensions in multicultural communities...it was not irresponsible and did not contain anything...likely to condone or encourage violence or anti-social behaviour.”

The van referred to someone’s area, and the hon. Gentleman is right about the ASA’s view that people would interpret that as being quite a narrow area. For example, in a London borough, people would assume that it meant the London borough. Since our statistics were from a slightly larger area, the ASA said that it was misleading. We have therefore agreed not to use those advertisements in the form that was used.

The ASA did not support the outlandish claims that I think the hon. Gentleman suggested. He should also be aware that his views are not supported by the public. The poll conducted by YouGov on 13 August found that 66% of those polled in the United Kingdom did not consider the poster to be racist, so two thirds of those polled do not agree with him. Also, the comprehensive poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft and published on 1 September found that 79% of those polled supported the messaging in our posters, because they can see that giving a firm message to people who are in the country illegally is perfectly compatible with being welcoming and supportive of those who come to our country legally, follow our rules and comply with the law.

The hon. Gentleman got very heated on that point, but I do not think that he has the measure of public opinion on this issue. People want to welcome those who come here for the right reasons, but the public want to deal firmly with people who should not be here. The advertising campaign was squarely aimed at those who are in the country illegally and have no right to be here. Asking people in that context to return to their country of origin is perfectly reasonable.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the Scotland reporting centre. He should know that that pilot ran from 29 July, which is prior to his letter, to 4 October. It did not use any of the materials that we used for the ad van campaign. A significant proportion of those using the reporting centre are people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom. They should not be here and should be returning to their country of origin. Partly, the message is a tough one, but the other side of the message tells people that we can support their return and help them to go home.

Our immigration enforcement officers work closely with many communities in the United Kingdom. They work with faith and voluntary groups that know of people who want to return home, but need support to do that. They do not want to be arrested or detained; they want to come forward in such a way that they avoid that experience, and I think that that is perfectly reasonable.

The hon. Gentleman asked what we might do in future. As I said, we are evaluating the campaign to see how successful it has been in driving up significantly the number of voluntary returns. We will make that information available and then decide whether to continue.

On the street operations that we conducted, the hon. Gentleman referred to racial profiling. I absolutely refute that. Our officers do not have the legal power, and we do not have the ability, to do that. We use intelligence to identify where to run the operations, and when we encounter people, we decide whether to talk to them based on their behaviour, not their race, ethnicity or appearance. I absolutely refute his allegation that we are involved in racial profiling in street operations, and it is not supported by the evidence. Again, it is worth saying that the general public support the work that we do in enforcing illegal working laws and in making sure that people obey the law.

Our officers have a difficult job to do. I have been out with them on operations. They take their responsibilities and the intelligence seriously, and they are well aware of the legal environment. They have proper briefings before the operations and they deal with the people they encounter sensitively. I have seen operations where, for example, we have encountered people who have done nothing wrong, and our officers have dealt with them very sensitively and handled a difficult situation well. I do not think that the way in which the hon. Gentleman characterises the issue reflects the reality on the ground. It is hard and difficult work. Just as the police have a difficult job in enforcing criminal laws, our immigration enforcement officers have to enforce immigration laws. They deal with people who should not be in the United Kingdom, and who might not wish to return to their country of origin, but it is important that we enforce the law. It is difficult work and will remain so. It has to be done sensitively, which is what we have been doing.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

Nobody is questioning that we are talking about illegal immigrants. We support the idea that there should be no illegal immigrants, but we question the tactics used—for example, when there is forced entry into shops and other places where they cannot find anybody and the intelligence is poor. The small sample of 500 people supporting the idea is not good evidence.

[Mr Harper]

On the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about entry, our officers have to obey the law in the same way as other law enforcement officers. I have attended operations on which we have encountered the “beds in sheds” phenomenon in his part of London, where there are some appalling pieces of accommodation. When we have to gain entry to those properties, we have to work with the local authority. The local authority has to seek a warrant for entry. We have to go through a proper legal process. We have to have evidence and intelligence when we deal with those things, and it is the same when we do illegal working operations. We have to have intelligence; we do not simply do it on a speculative basis. If we have intelligence, we approach people and gather evidence on whether people are working illegally. I make no apology for doing that, because it is not simply about the fact that they are breaking our laws. Employers who employ people illegally undercut legitimate business people. They compete with them unfairly, and we should deal with that.

The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire both said that they are against illegal immigration. I am glad that they said that. All that the campaign was about was trying something—a pilot—to see whether it was successful. We have been frank about it and we will be guided by the evidence. If the evidence suggests that the pilot has been successful, I might flip the question round and ask why we would not go ahead with a pilot that is successful and that leads to more people leaving the country voluntarily. If the pilot proves unsuccessful, we will not roll it out. It will be based on the evidence. We will analyse the pilot properly.

The evidence from the public is that they support a tough approach. I make no apology for dealing with the concerns of the public. We are not, as was suggested, talking about a recent phenomenon. We said at the general election that we would deal with immigration. We have reduced net migration to the country by a third. We have cracked down on abuse. We have seen an increase in the number of students and skilled workers coming here. We want to give the message that we are open for business for the best and the brightest, but that should be combined with dealing firmly with people who break our immigration laws and either come here illegally or overstay their visa. Those things are compatible, and that is how we wish to continue.

Registered Travellers

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

On 24 September 2013, Border Force launched a registered traveller scheme. Registered traveller will be beneficial to high value, regular travellers to the UK and have a positive impact on economic growth.

Individuals from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States of America who have travelled to the UK four or more times as a short-term visitor in a preceding 52-week period will be able to apply to join registered traveller online at a dedicated website. Applications will be initially restricted to those registered on the iris recognition immigration system (IRIS) scheme, which has been in place since 2005 and will be fully decommissioned later this year.

Successful applicants will submit information contained in their passport to allow Border Force to undertake background checks prior to their next arrival in the UK, when, if their application is accepted, they will be able to enrol on the scheme. Once enrolled on the scheme, users will be able to access expedited clearance processes at the border. The scheme will initially be in operation at Heathrow and Gatwick airports before being rolled out to other ports in due course.

The period between now and April 2014 has been designated as a proof of concept phase for registered traveller. It is currently intended for registered traveller to operate on a permanent basis from 1 April 2014. The Home Office also intends for there to be an annual charge for the scheme from this point.

I have made an arrangement under paragraph 1 (d) of schedule 23 to the Equality Act 2010 to enable Border Force to process selected individuals from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States of America as “registered travellers”. This arrangement came into force on 24 September 2013 and will allow the scheme to operate on a sound legal basis.

The arrangement is made under the nationality exception contained in the Equality Act 2010. The nationalities covered by the arrangement will be reviewed by the Home Office on a regular basis.

I am placing a copy of the arrangement in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.

Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Friday 13th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Lord]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing us back to the key point of the Bill with a good local example of how it will work.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I should like to assist the House on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I ask him to hold on to the thought about naturalisation requirements, because I shall touch on them in my remarks at the end of the debate. I shall clarify how the current rules work, and how we expect them to work in the future. I hope that that will be helpful.

[Jonathan Lord]

We look forward to hearing the Minister later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin]

The question is whether those troops settled in Gibraltar and what the rules were for their naturalisation as British citizens prior to 1981. I can honestly say that I do not have the faintest clue, but that is an interesting historical point.

I was evacuated to the British sovereign base of Dhekelia as a child when, as a British citizen, I was growing up in Cyprus. We were living in Nicosia at the time, and we were often under threat of invasion by Turkish forces. I remember being evacuated to Dhekelia, and feeling incredibly safe and secure there, on British sovereign territory. My father, however, had to remain behind in Nicosia to do his job. He put a Union flag on the roof of our house, and we sincerely hoped that the Turkish air force would be able to spot it from the air should it decide to bomb Nicosia. However, I digress, Mr Speaker.

I am trying to find out how my hypothetical examples would be affected by the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking told us that the provision would probably apply to a citizen of Fiji. Let us imagine that that citizen of Fiji joins Her Majesty’s armed forces, does exemplary service and decides—I do not know what the residence requirements would be—that he or she wants to remain in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Does the territorial extent of the Bill mean that the first date of the five-year period includes residence in one of the territories I have listed? That is my interpretation.

In relation to the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, a situation might arise in which, as we heard, a Jamaican citizen who joined our armed forces abroad and served with great courage with them in other parts of the world decides to settle in Gibraltar, or perhaps closer to Jamaica, in the Cayman Islands. From there, could that person apply for naturalisation as a British citizen, without ever having resided in what we might more naturally think of as the United Kingdom? I particularly want clarification on that point. I understand that the 1981 Act requires people to spend five years resident in the UK, but does the territorial extent in the Bill define the UK more widely? I look forward to hearing from the Minister about that.

The first residence requirement in the 1981 Act is that applicants must have been resident in the UK for at least five years, and I am again interested in the Minister clarifying the territorial extent of the United Kingdom in that regard. The second requirement is that they must have been present in the United Kingdom five years before the date of application, which is the provision that we are tackling; the third is that they are free of immigration time restrictions on the date of application; and the fourth is that they are free of immigration restrictions for a period of 12 months before making the application. Will that remain in force when the Bill is passed?

The fifth requirement is that the applicants have not spent more than 450 days outside the United Kingdom during the five-year period. I understand that that is covered by the Secretary of State’s discretion with regards to serving members of the armed forces. The sixth is that they have not spent more than 90 days outside the United Kingdom in the last 12 months of the five-year period. The final requirement is that they have not been in breach of the immigration rules at any stage during the five-year period. Can the Minister confirm that all those aspects of the residency requirements in the 1981 Act will continue to apply, and that the Bill will change only one particular area?

Since the 1981 Act, there has been one major modification to what it takes for someone to be naturalised as a citizen of the United Kingdom. I refer, of course, to the UK citizenship test. I do not know whether you have ever had the chance to see whether you can pass it, Mr Speaker, but in preparation for this debate, I thought that I would see whether I could do so. I looked at some sample tests, and I regret to inform the House that in the first sample test I failed to reach the necessary 75% required to pass.

Let me give some examples of questions that I did not answer successfully. I will not put you on the spot, Mr Speaker, although I know you are an encyclopaedically knowledgeable man. The following question stumped me: in which year did married women get the right to divorce their husband? To help the applicant there are four possible answers, and I am happy to take an intervention from anyone who can answer the question correctly. The options are 1837, 1857, 1875 or 1882. I do not know the correct answer, but I know I got it wrong. I am glad to say that I did know that it is not the Prime Minister who calls a by-election and that we have two Chambers in our national Parliament, so I sailed through some of the questions.

Here is another question that I failed miserably to pass: what is the number of children and young people up to the age of 19 in the UK? Again, Mr Speaker, I will help you out, but I will not put you on the spot. I will take interventions from colleagues who know the answer. The four possible answers are 13 million, 14 million, 15 million and 16 million. I failed on that one and I can see that the House has also failed on that measure of citizenship. I was getting rather depressed with my results from the test until I discovered a crucial fact. I compliment my hon. Friend the Minister on any involvement that he may have had in this crucial fact, which is that this Government have now introduced a much more sensible citizenship test. Those examples were taken from the citizenship test that can only be described as a new Labour fantasy about the level of knowledge that we would all have about our country.

I will not go on with further examples of questions that I failed—

[Mr Harper]

Please do.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Shall I? In that case, here is another one.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I had prepared only a brief speech, but the debate has been so wide-ranging, and Members on both sides of the House—including the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson)—have asked such complex questions, that I fear that I may need to draw on some more material.

The Government’s support for the Bill will not come as a surprise to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), because he quoted my remarks earlier. I am grateful to him for presenting it. I had forgotten, until I was prompted by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), that this was his second private Member’s Bill in what has so far been a short, but I know will be a very long, parliamentary career. He has been rather more successful in the ballot than I have been during my time in the House, and he has used his opportunities well. I know that his first Bill was very good, and I hope that this one reaches the statute book as well. I am also grateful to those who have supported the Bill.

My hon. Friend said that part of his reason for presenting the Bill was the fact that the Pirbright establishment was in his constituency and was important to a number of his constituents. The 1st Battalion the Rifles is based at Beachley barracks, on the southern tip of my constituency, and I have spent a great deal of time supporting it. I was privileged to be invited to join members of the battalion for their pre-deployment, before they embarked on their first tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2009. I was fortunate enough also to join them—all too briefly—in theatre to observe their operations. The battalion contains a number of foreign and Commonwealth members, and I have provided many of them with advice on immigration matters in my capacity as their constituency Member of Parliament. I know this measure will be welcome, and I hope it will benefit one or two of them as well.

I also draw on my own experience from the last Parliament when I was a shadow Defence Minister and I had the opportunity to visit a number of armed forces establishments and meet many people who serve in our armed forces. From that, I know what a great contribution they make to our country both here and overseas. It is right to acknowledge that some Members of this House have served in our armed forces, including the Whip who is present, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster). This matter is just one small part of the armed forces covenant and the process we are undertaking, which I think is very valuable.

I will not talk about the covenant at length, as I know that would test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I want to refer to it briefly. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) drew attention to the fact—indeed, it was a public service announcement—that each year we publish a thorough report that is available in the Library. That report sets out very comprehensively the purpose of the covenant with a foreword by the Secretary of State, and it also sets out a range of measures we have taken across Government policy to deliver benefits and to remove discrimination in respect of serving personnel.

I also want to refer to the embedding of the work we do with external groups as part of that process. There is a covenant reference group, the successor to the original external reference group. It includes service charities and those very knowledgeable about these areas. I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the ministerial committee looking at these matters and the covenant reference group. It was held at No. 10 Downing street and the Prime Minister attended for a period. That close working between Government and the service charities means we have been able to deliver on these achievements, and it is one reason why this measure is supported by a number of organisations and not, as far as we know, opposed by any.

Veterans Aid says:

“We warmly welcome any initiative that removes obstacles to those who have served this country with honour from settling here legally and have campaigned on this issue. Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign & Commonwealth servicemen and women disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy…This was an injustice and we applaud the Government for listening.”

I am grateful for those generous words. I worked with Veterans Aid when I was a shadow Minister and it is good that it has welcomed this move. The Army Families Federation has also welcomed it and fully supports the changes.

I should say at this point that I am grateful to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North for two things. First, she put on record her party’s support for the work our armed forces do. That is a good cross-party acknowledgment which we can never hear too often. Secondly, she formally put on record the official Opposition’s support for this private Member’s Bill, which I hope means it has a relatively smooth passage through this House and the other place. You were not in the Chamber earlier, Madam Deputy Speaker, but my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) referred to the citizenship test and I am very pleased to say that she passed one bit by being able to confirm that she knew there were two Houses of this Parliament. Once the Bill is finished in this one, it will wing its way to the other House, where I hope it will be as successfully endorsed and can then reach the statute book.

We had a wide-ranging discussion on the citizenship test, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you will be delighted to know—as I am sure Mr Speaker would be if he were here—that although I have a copy of the guide containing all the material used for the citizenship test, I left it in my office so I will not be tempted to draw on it at length or, indeed, at all. My hon. Friend brought her copy with her, however, so she was not as disadvantaged as I am. I know that she did slightly test the patience of Mr Speaker, but he clearly was not upset with her, as he then referred to her “racy and intoxicating” speech. I have never made one of those in this House, and the Whip is probably hoping that I never do so. However, her speech was very welcome, and I am grateful for not only her support, but that of colleagues.

A number of hon. Members raised important points about the Bill, and I wish to deal with a couple of them. First, however, I should say that my hon. Friend the Member for Woking was supported formally in his Bill by my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Richard Fuller), for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) and for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who appended their names to it. It is worth saying that they are fully in support of it. For the benefit of colleagues in the House, the Home Office sought the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking to prepare some explanatory notes, which he gave. I hope that the notes are helpful, and I know that a number of hon. Members have drawn on them today.

The explanatory notes briefly set out the purpose of the Bill and the fact that it amends the 1981 Act. Although I was not intending to go through this at length, my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) both asked for a little more detail about how the naturalisation rules work and whether they are automatic or otherwise. The notes deal with that, but I will take the opportunity to discuss it, although not at enormous length, because I know that that would test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will just set out for the House what the requirements are and how the Secretary of State uses her discretion, to the extent that she has it.

Foreign and Commonwealth personnel in Her Majesty’s armed forces generally apply to naturalise under section 6(1) of the 1981 Act, and they have to meet the following requirements: five years’ residence in the UK; be aged 18 or over; and be of sound mind, a point to which my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire referred. My understanding is that the reference to “sound mind” in this context simply means that the person has the mental capacity to complete the application for naturalisation. I can reassure her that where a former member of the armed forces has a mental health problem, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, whether as a result of their service or otherwise, that would not prevent them from successfully applying for and securing naturalisation if they met the other rules. She rightly says that both in the armed forces and outside we have moved on in our understanding of such mental health conditions, and I am pleased to say that we do not, in any way, discriminate against people, be it deliberately or inadvertently, in this matter.

Applicants must also intend to continue to live in the UK, or to continue in Crown service, the service of an international organisation of which the UK is a member, or the service of a company or association established in the UK. That will be relevant when I go on to talk about the overseas territories, to which my hon. Friend referred. Applicants must also be able to communicate in English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic—I heard lots of sedentary interventions from Opposition Members when that was mentioned and, although I cannot speak it, I try to pronounce it correctly. Applicants should also have sufficient knowledge of life in the UK and, importantly, be of good character.

I will not go through the residence requirements in enormous detail, but they are broadly that the person has been resident in the United Kingdom for at least five years; has been present in the UK five years before the date of application—that is, of course, where we run into the problem; and is free of immigration time restrictions on the date of application.

Foreign and Commonwealth personnel in Her Majesty’s armed forces are exempt from immigration while they are serving, which means they automatically meet the requirement to be in the UK without a time limit attached to their stay. The Secretary of State already has the discretion to overlook absences, and there are things in the rules that say for how many months someone is allowed to be outside the UK. She generally exercises her discretion in armed forces cases where the absence is caused by service overseas.

Therefore, foreign and Commonwealth personnel in the forces are eligible to naturalise as British citizens after they have served for five years. Alternatively, under the immigration rules, they might qualify for settlement—indefinite leave to remain—on discharge, after four years’ service. They cannot obtain settlement in service because someone who holds indefinite leave to remain is subject to immigration control. If the person opts to be discharged and settles in the UK after four years’ service, they can apply to naturalise after they have held ILTR for one year, thus fulfilling the five-year residence requirement and the requirement not to have a time limit attached to their stay.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough referred to family members. Partners of members of the forces can qualify for naturalisation in their own right or as the spouse of someone naturalised. They have to meet the same requirements of residence and good character, but they are subject to immigration control, so they cannot meet the requirement not to have a time limit to their stay until they have obtained settlement, and it takes the partner of a service person four or five years to obtain settlement.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

What does “settlement” mean? Say someone is married to a member of the armed forces and has been overseas most of the time. Their partner’s clock is ticking, but what is happening to their clock? Do they have to come back and gain settlement? I am sorry, but I do not quite understand how it works.

[Mr Harper]

The rules operate differently for the spouse. When serving, the service person is not subject to any immigration restrictions, so they could get naturalisation more quickly. Once they have been naturalised, that opens up some opportunities for their family member.

New section 4C of the 1981 Act, introduced in January 2010, enables a child born to a member of the armed forces serving overseas on an operational posting who would have been born in the UK but for that posting to register as a British citizen on application. Children may also register as British citizens if a parent is naturalised or settles in the UK.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North referred to a specific case. Obviously, I would not go into a specific case in the House, and I do not have all the details to hand either. As a general rule, there is provision in the immigration system, outside the immigration rules, for people to make an application for leave to remain on compassionate grounds. The Secretary of State and I have the ability to allow that. Clearly, we would not set out the details, but look at the application in the round, but we can grant that if the case is sufficiently compelling.

On the hon. Lady’s general point about testing the Secretary of State’s discretion, all the Secretary of State’s decisions in such matters are of course subject to judicial review. Although we do not use the powers frequently—that would drive a coach and horses through the rules—even during my time as Minister for Immigration we have allowed people to visit the United Kingdom on compassionate grounds when they would not normally have met the rules.

It is helpful to be able to operate with such discretion, which is of course the purpose of the Bill. The requirement for an applicant to have been in the United Kingdom at the start of the five-year period is unwaivable, and the Secretary of State cannot waive it however compelling the case. That is the benefit of putting the Bill on the statute book.

It is worth saying that there is already a provision, of which Members may not be aware, to waive that requirement in Crown service cases, but it applies only to those who are still in service and overseas when they apply. The Bill will enable the requirement to be waived for members and former members of the armed forces who have been discharged and have then applied for naturalisation or who have returned to the UK.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend might be going on to say this, but there is already a provision on the statute book, in section 39 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, that is identical to the provisions of the Bill. Why not use the legislation that is already on the statute book, rather than re-legislating?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend appears to be working seamlessly in tandem with me, because if I turn over the page of my brief, I can see that I was about to refer to the 2009 Act. His general point is good. I am not someone who wants to legislate when provisions already exist in primary legislation. In general, more legislation does not necessarily make the world better. He has a formidable reputation for ensuring that all provisions brought before the House are properly scrutinised and challenged to make sure that they are necessary.

The reason we were not able to make the provision is that there was a provision in the 2009 Act to which my hon. Friend refers. However, it was all bound up with the earned citizenship measures that the previous Government wanted to introduce, and it is not possible, I am advised by lawyers, to implement the armed forces provisions independently of the earned citizenship measures because they contain references to the provisions that are not being implemented. That is why it was necessary to implement the provisions separately.

We announced in July 2010 that we would not be proceeding with the earned citizenship provisions in the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, because we felt that the previous Government’s provisions under those regimes were considerably more complicated and bureaucratic than the current arrangements and would have imposed unwelcome administrative and bureaucratic costs on both central and local government and voluntary sector partners. Both parties represented in the coalition Government voiced concerns about those measures during their parliamentary passage.

So although there are measures on the statute book, they are bound up with measures that we do not wish to commence, and they cannot be commenced separately. I think I can give my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch the reassurance that he seeks, which is that this provision is necessary. There is not a current provision on the statute book that could be commenced by itself which would enable us to achieve the aim. Although I know that he is normally and rightly sceptical of legislating, I can assure him, given that he and others have welcomed the purpose of the Bill, that it is necessary to do so in the Bill. There is no existing provision on the statute book that we could use. I hope he will find that reassuring.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire referred to the British overseas territories. I will not repeat the list that she read out, but she may be interested in one fact. She mentioned the Cayman Islands. It may interest the House to know that as of 6 September the Cayman Islands has a new governor, Helen Kilpatrick. The only reason why I mention that is that until she was governor of the Cayman Islands, she was the director general of finance and corporate services at the Home Office and is now resplendent, having been appointed by Her Majesty the Queen from 6 September, as governor of the Cayman Islands. It is not relevant to the Bill, but as I am a Minister in the Home Office and worked closely with Helen Kilpatrick, and as my hon. Friend mentioned the Cayman Islands, I thought there was sufficient reason to mention it in the House. But I digress only briefly.

My hon. Friend spoke about the British overseas territories and whether somebody living in an overseas territory could naturalise under the provisions of the Bill. I mentioned in response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough in my list of conditions that normally the person is supposed to want to settle and live in the United Kingdom, so if someone was settling in an overseas territory, they would not normally be able to naturalise under section 6(1) of the British Nationality Act because they would not meet the requirement of intending to make their principal home in the United Kingdom. They could qualify if they were intending to continue in Crown service. For example, if they still worked for the Crown and were based overseas in an overseas territory, that would apply.

The appropriate route for somebody in that circumstance—a former member of the armed forces settled in an overseas territory—would be for them to apply for British overseas territory citizenship. They would then need to meet the requirements on the knowledge and good character test.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for beginning to answer some of the questions that I raised about the territorial extent of the Bill. Does he have any plans to amend the territorial extent of the Bill in Committee, in the light of the fact that there seems to be some ambiguity about whether someone may reside in one of those other territories at the point at which they apply for British citizenship?

[Mr Harper]

The question is not so much where the person physically is when they apply, but what their intentions are. One of the requirements in the Act, as I read out, is that somebody is supposed to intend to continue to live in the United Kingdom. They are supposed to have residence in the United Kingdom or continue in Crown service. If they intend to continue to live in the overseas territory, they ought to apply for British overseas territory citizenship, rather than British citizenship, as in the Bill.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I know that I am being obtuse, but I do not understand what the purpose is, then, of having all the overseas and dependent territories in the territorial extent of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I would never accuse my hon. Friend of being obtuse. She and I had a great exchange on her previous private Member’s Bill, as she mentioned, when I occupied a different ministerial role. Of course, it is not just the overseas territories, because the Bill states that the Act will extend to England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the British overseas territories.

On my hon. Friend’s specific question about why it is necessary to refer to the overseas territories, I will reflect on that and, I hope, come back to it at the end of my remarks. Her specific point was about where someone resides. If someone intended to live in an overseas territory, they would be applying for British overseas territory citizenship, rather than what we have been discussing today.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the requirement to have a sufficient level of English and asked whether that requirement can be waived. The Secretary of State can waive the knowledge-of-life and language requirements for citizenship only in very limited circumstances, which are set out. That means someone who is under 18 or over 65 or someone with a specific physical or mental condition that prevents them from being able to fulfil the requirement. My view is that someone who has served for five years in our armed forces will have no problem with being able to speak English. I do not think that it is unreasonable to expect them to do so.

[Harriett Baldwin]

What I am really trying to clarify is that language acquisition takes place in a specific part of the brain, in the cerebral cortex, that can be damaged later in life, perhaps as the result of a stroke, so someone might have had a good command of English during their period of service but lost that later. Would the Secretary of State have the discretion to waive the requirement in those circumstances?

[Mr Harper]

The Secretary of State has the ability to waive the requirement if someone’s physical or mental condition is such that they cannot meet it. That would of course mean somebody who has had the particular medical circumstances my hon. Friend raises, and it would of course cover a former member of the armed forces who had suffered an injury in service that had damaged their ability to communicate. The Secretary of State will have the ability to waive that requirement in those circumstances. Assuming that someone does not suffer from that sort of disability, we would expect them to be able to speak English, and I do not think that would be a problem for someone who had served in our armed forces for a period.

My hon. Friends the Members for West Worcestershire and for Gainsborough referred to the extent to which applying for naturalisation was automatic. It is not automatic; it is something that is considered. There are requirements to be met. Some of them are tick-box requirements, such as how long they have resided, but some are more judgment-related, such as those about good character. For those, the Secretary of State has to apply a considerable amount of judgment.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire referred to the new citizenship test that we have introduced, which is much more focused on understanding Britain, our history and culture and, in particular, our democratic values and institutions. I will probably make her blush, but she mentioned that she scored 100% in the test, and the pass mark is 75%, so she is well up there. She referred to how the statistics might have changed. I do not have the precise figures, but the pass rate under the old test was around 75%. It was getting higher as the tests became older and the question bank became out of date and the number of questions reduced. Now that we have introduced the new test, the pass rate has fallen a little, down to about 60%, so it is still quite a challenge. But citizenship is something that people should have to work for. She brandished a book earlier, and all the information required for the test is available. We do not expect people to know it all without putting some study in, but the information is all available.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Is the Minister saying that although the pass mark for both tests has remained at 75%, about 75% of people got through on the previous version of the test but the more recent data suggest that the pass rate has dropped to between 60% and 65%?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is spot on.

I have now been inspired so let me answer my hon. Friend’s question about the territorial extent of the Bill. Because the Bill amends the British Nationality Act, we were keen to make the territorial extent the same. Because the BNA has provisions dealing with British overseas citizenship, it extends to the British overseas territories. If the extent of the amending Act were different, that could cause confusion and doubt in a case in which the overseas territories were involved. The amending Act therefore needs to have the same territorial extent as the Act that we are amending.

[Harriett Baldwin]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I had hoped that that was a good explanation.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the Minister for his excellent explanation. It answers the question I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) about the territorial extent of the 1981 Act. However, it remains for me to ask the Minister whether, because this is a separate piece of legislation, it could have a narrower territorial extent in order to address some of the points I raised about the possibility that someone could not even live in the UK and still acquire British citizenship.

[Mr Harper]

I heard my hon. Friend ask that question of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and I think that he disabused us of our expectation that he was supposed to have followed all the detail when he reminded us that he was not in the House in 1981 when the Act was passed. Whether the original oversight was, to use his phrase, cock-up or conspiracy, I know not. I was only 11 when the Bill went through the House. I fear that I did not follow parliamentary proceedings very closely when I was 11—perhaps that is a terrible admission—and so I did not follow its passage very closely either. I suspect that he is right and it was more cock-up than conspiracy.

When I was setting out the details on family circumstances, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough asked whether, to use his phrase, the clock was ticking. Family members of armed forces personnel are not exempt from immigration control, but, provided they have appropriate leave under the immigration rules, the time they spend with their armed forces sponsor, either in the UK or when they are on accompanied service, is time they can count towards naturalisation. They need to meet the residency requirements, but, as for service personnel, the Secretary of State has the discretion to waive and overlook those requirements if the absence from the UK was as a result of accompanying a person on service overseas. I hope that that is helpful and answers my hon. Friend. He is nodding, which suggests that that is the case.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North asked about medical discharge. For settlement applications, the requirement for four years’ service can be waived if an illness or injury is attributable to service and is sustained in an operational theatre. If not, a number of factors will be considered, including the severity of the injury, length of service, the prognosis for recovery, and the applicant’s ability to support himself or herself. We may give limited leave where the applicant does not qualify for settlement but needs a period of recovery before they leave the United Kingdom. A member of the armed forces who is granted settlement following medical discharge will be able to apply for citizenship after 12 months. I do not know whether the specific case that the hon. Lady mentioned relates to one of her constituents. If so, and she wants to write to me to raise particular issues, I will obviously be happy to look into them and respond accordingly.

I shall return to the remarks I intended to make—I have not made a great deal of progress because I have dealt with a number of questions. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said in introducing the Bill. The Government agree that it is wrong that a member of our armed forces should have to wait longer to gain citizenship just because they happened to be posted overseas at the relevant time. The service charities have told us that, and it was recognised as a priority commitment under the armed forces covenant. Once implemented, the Bill will enable us to overlook the requirement to be in the UK on day one of the qualifying period for naturalisation in the same way that we overlook the requirement to have resided in the UK.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough or my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—I forget which, because they were sitting next to each other and both raised a number of points—asked whether the Bill will be retrospective. The Bill will not be retrospective in the sense that it will go back and alter anyone’s existing naturalisation status. However, there is a retrospective element in the sense that the Bill will look back at what happened to applications five years ago and where people were. When the Bill is enacted, not being in the UK at the beginning of the five-year period will cease to be a disadvantage. To that extent, the Bill will be retrospective, but it will not alter the position of someone who has gone through the process of making an application.

When the Bill becomes law—I hope it will—someone who made a failed application or who held off making an application and had to wait for a longer period because they did not meet the requirement will be in a position to make an application under the new rules. If the other conditions are met, the Secretary of State will be in a position to overlook the requirement to have been in the UK at the beginning of the process. The Bill will therefore benefit people who are not currently serving but who have served previously, and that will be welcome.

[Mr Chope]

I raised the issue of retrospection. As a result of the retrospective nature of the Bill, how many people will be eligible who would not otherwise have been eligible?

[Mr Harper]

It is difficult to be precise, because we do not know how many foreign and Commonwealth members of the armed forces would necessarily want to become British citizens. We estimate—that word has been used previously—that 100 to 200 members of the armed forces each year could benefit from the Bill. That estimate is based on the number of people who seek naturalisation and the number of those who could benefit. That is the order of magnitude. It is not a huge number, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, that relatively small number of people have served our country. In the past decade, many of them have probably served our country in an operational theatre on not just one occasion, but on several occasions.

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Jonathan Lord]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

As it is my hon. Friend’s Bill, I will take his intervention first before listening to the response of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

[Jonathan Lord]

Perhaps my intervention will pre-empt a further one. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is interested in, and perhaps even concerned about, the retrospective element of the Bill. However, I should point out to him that, by the Bill’s nature, the time elapsed will mean that the people affected— whether they live in the UK, are in the armed services or are in Crown service and wish to naturalise as British citizens and live in the UK—will already have qualified. In that sense, there are no great numbers waiting for any retrospective aspect of the Bill. They will already qualify. I hope that that point is helpful.

[Mr Harper]

It is helpful. Before I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, it is worth saying that the disadvantage suffered by members of the armed forces under the existing legal position did not mean that they could not seek naturalisation. The disadvantage was that they had to wait longer than someone who was not serving overseas.

To the extent that the disadvantage they suffered was a delay in seeking naturalisation, my hon. Friend is right that the people who suffered from that disadvantage in the past will almost certainly have been in a position to seek naturalisation since.

[Mr Chope]

My concern was about eligibility: I did not ask how many people would take advantage of the Bill. I wanted to know how many people would legally be eligible. That brings us back to the big national debate about how many people are eligible to come here from Bulgaria and Romania to work, compared with the number of people who will come. How many will be eligible as a result of the retrospection?

[Mr Harper]

The difficulty with answering that question is that, technically, everyone who is a foreign or Commonwealth member of the armed forces could potentially, depending on their circumstances, be eligible. The problem is that the provision will make a difference only if five years before the point at which someone makes an application for naturalisation they were not in the UK because of their service. It would be impossible to go through everyone’s record of service and do that calculation, because we do not know how many will apply for naturalisation or how many would have been delayed in seeking naturalisation because of where they were five years before making the application.

We think that the number who will not have to suffer a delay is in the order of 100 to 200, and that is based on the fact that most foreign and Commonwealth personnel do not have this problem. Veterans Aid talked of “many cases”, but that is tens and hundreds, rather than thousands. It also said that the Bill would help “quite a few” of their clients, and our estimate of 100 to 200 is based on our knowledge of the process and on talking to those service charities that talk to people who have fallen foul of the existing provision. It is our combined intelligence that enables us to say that it is around 100 or 200. That is the kind of number that we are thinking about. Those who are concerned about the numbers need not worry that the Bill will extend to thousands of people. A relatively small number of people will be affected, but it is important to make the change for the benefit of those people who have served their country. In the last decade, many of those people have served not only in the armed forces generally, but in an active operational theatre, so it is important that the House makes sure that they are not disadvantaged.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch also wanted some clarification of the MOD’s general position on the number of foreign and Commonwealth service personnel. This is largely an issue for the Army, rather than the other two branches. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North also referred to the numbers. In a written statement on 11 July—relatively recently—made by the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), the MOD said that it would now be enforcing the five-year UK residence requirement when recruiting Commonwealth personnel. The residency rules already exist for Commonwealth recruits to the regular armed forces, but since 1998 they have been waived. My right hon. Friend informed the House that from 11 July those residency rules will be more strictly enforced, which means that applicants to the armed forces will have to demonstrate that they have lived in the UK for five years lawfully—with leave to remain. That requirement will not affect Gurkhas, because they are recruited only in Nepal under separate arrangements agreed with their Government. If my hon. Friend wants more detail, he can look at the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State.

Without wishing to be too slopey-shouldered about it, if my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has detailed questions about the attitude of the Ministry of Defence and recruitment processes and so on, to which I think he alluded, I suggest he speak to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces. I do not think that the Home Office wants to start trespassing on those requirements, although it is worth putting it on the record that as a result of the work we have done on the covenant, officials and Ministers in my Department, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence have worked very closely to ensure that the system does not disadvantage anyone. I know that that has been welcomed by members of service charities, who have seen an improvement in how we deal with service personnel, their families and former personnel when they go through immigration and naturalisation stages.

This is probably a good time, as I move towards the end of my remarks, to say that the Home Office takes its responsibilities under the armed forces covenant very seriously. In addition to this proposed legislative measure, we have made good progress against a number of our other commitments. We introduced a new process earlier this year, where service leavers could obtain settlement on—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I would just say to the Minister that of course the covenant provides important context, but only where it is relevant to the Bill. I hope he is not now going to go into a rather lengthy set of comments about other items in the covenant. I hope he will stick to the Bill, because time is ticking on.

[Mr Harper]

I am conscious of that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not have a lengthy list. It is a short list and the reason for raising it is that it is relevant to the Bill. For example, we have made provision whereby service leavers can obtain settlement on the day of discharge. Of course, settlement for some is the precursor to seeking naturalisation. That is important, because there is not then a gap. Several hon. Members referred to making sure that there is no gap, so that personnel have settled status and no problem in seeking support from the Government or elsewhere.

I will not, Madam Deputy Speaker, test your patience by reading out the list, but I would like to draw to the attention of the House the new set of armed forces rules that will come into force in December. You will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I laid out the details in a written ministerial statement on 4 July, to which I draw the attention of hon. Members on both sides of the House who are interested in the subject. The new rules will address a number of areas that have been problematic in the past, and I hope that that is helpful.

I will not refer to every paper in my sheaf, but I want to refer to a couple of important questions that came up in the debate. We take the criminality or good character provisions seriously, but we have made a change, which was referred to by at least one Member. Any offences that are offences in service law but not in normal criminal law will no longer be treated in a way that is not subject to judgment. There were a number of cases where it was felt that service personnel who had had a conviction under military law that would not have had the same level of seriousness in civilian criminal law had suffered, and that we had had no ability to judge their case in the round, based on their service. We do, of course, expect the highest standards from our armed forces and apply the same standards as those for civilians. Non-criminal convictions or disciplinary offences are considered when good character is considered, but there is no automatic factor in ruling out somebody. A number of hon. Members referred to that issue, so I thought it was right to deal with it.

A couple of Members referred to what was encapsulated by the definition of “the armed forces”. The definition is the same as that used in the Armed Forces Act and, for the avoidance of doubt, applies to those who serve in our reserve forces, to which several Members have referred.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge gave a wide-ranging speech, in which she referred to some of the service charities and the points they have made about the service they received from what was the UK Border Agency. It is worth putting it on the record that the splitting of the UK Border Agency and the creation of UK Visas and Immigration, which is the relevant part of the Home Office that deals with naturalisation applications, means that we are focused on delivering better customer service. Some of the changes we announced in the written statement mean that we will be better able to look at applications from the armed forces, which will be made on a special, separate application form, to ensure that we can deliver a settlement on the day of discharge.

[Mr Chope]

I think the Minister is nearing the end of his remarks, but before he does, can he address my question about why this issue cannot be dealt with in the forthcoming immigration Bill? Doing so would enable us to consider, for example, the case that I raised of a constituent who has been out in Russia for a long time, because she has been married to a British citizen living out there, looking after their children. She has been unable to apply for naturalisation because she has not been living in the UK.

[Mr Harper]

Without tempting Madam Deputy Speaker to chastise me, what I would say is that if my hon. Friend writes to me, I will look at the details. At the end of my remarks, I will set out briefly why the immigration Bill would not be the right place to deal with this issue, but I will not do so at any length.

Let me finish what I was saying in response to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge raised. I hope that former members of the armed forces and the service charities they deal with will notice—indeed, I hope they have noticed—an improved level of customer service from UK Visas and Immigration. That is certainly something that the Home Office wants to achieve, and I hope we will be able to deliver that.

Before I close my remarks, let me briefly address the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch raised earlier—to be fair, I said that I would do so. His question was: why would it not have been appropriate to deal with this issue in the immigration Bill? The short answer is that that Bill addresses three topics: first, access to public services; secondly, putting into primary legislation the rules on article 8 that the House put in the immigration rules last year; and thirdly, dealing with appeals and removals. That Bill does not make changes to the nationality provisions of our legislation, because I did not want its scope to be that wide. I wanted to focus on the Government’s priorities for reforming the immigration system; I did not want us to get bogged down in the many nationality questions that I know we might otherwise have considered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Woking has introduced a focused Bill, dealing with a genuine problem. It is not a problem that affects thousands of people; rather, it affects potentially hundreds of people, but they are people who have done great service to our country. The approach he has adopted, in introducing a very focused Bill that has support from both sides of the House—the official Opposition and the Government—is the right way to proceed. I very much hope that the Bill will receive a Second Reading and a fair wind in reaching the statute book.

[Mr Chope]

rose—

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme/Sector-based Scheme

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The seasonal agricultural workers scheme (SAWS) allows fruit and vegetable growers to employ migrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania as seasonal workers for up to six months at a time. It will close, as planned, at the end of 2013. The Government do not intend to open any new SAWS for workers from outside the European economic area (EEA) as our view is that, at a time of unemployment in the UK and the European Union there should be sufficient workers from within those labour markets to meet the needs of the horticultural industry. The agricultural technologies strategy will support innovation by agricultural businesses, which will also help to offset future impacts.

Currently, there is an annual quota of 21,250 SAWS participants. From 1 January 2014, when the transitional labour market controls on Bulgarian and Romanian (EU2) nationals are lifted, growers will have unrestricted access to EU2 workers. Since the controls on the EU8 (the member states that acceded to the European Union in 2004) workers were lifted, those workers have continued to form the core of the seasonal agricultural workforce. At present, UK growers recruit about one third of their seasonal workers from the EU2, and about one half from the EU8. Seasonal agricultural work can pay good wages and the sector should be able to attract and retain UK and EEA workers.

Our migration policy is to allow only highly skilled workers from outside the EEA, with an annual limit of 20,700 workers. Unskilled and low-skilled labour needs should be satisfied from within the expanded EEA labour market. The SAWS was previously open to non-EEA nationals but was restricted in 2007 to EU2 nationals, consistent with an intention to phase it out as the EEA labour market expanded. That remains the Government’s position. We do not think that the characteristics of the horticultural sector, such as its seasonality and dependence on readily available workers to be deployed at short notice, are so different from those in other employment sectors as to merit special treatment from a migration policy perspective.

The independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) reviewed the impact of the closure of the SAWS on the horticulture sector earlier this year. They concluded that there was unlikely to be an impact on labour supply in the short term, although this might change in the longer term. They noted, however, that there is a wide range of uncertainty around the effects on migration flows to the UK of ending restrictions on labour market access for EU2 nationals. The MAC was also clear that a replacement SAWS would amount to preferential treatment for horticulture.

The Government recognise that the SAWS has for many years provided an efficient supply of labour for the horticultural sector. The Department for Work and Pensions has been working with JobCentre Plus, Lantra (the sector skills council), the National Farmers’ Union and others, including growers and horticultural recruitment firms, to help unemployed UK residents into horticultural work through training and guaranteed interviews. A pilot scheme to encourage unemployed UK residents to apply for, train and secure jobs on arable farms has shown encouraging results with a high proportion of participants going on to secure employment in the sector. We want to build on this and other innovative approaches. The Government, including the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government, look forward to working with the sector to monitor and address the issues, and will keep the situation under review.

The Government have also decided they will not replace the sector-based scheme which operates in the food processing sector when this closes at the end of the year. The scheme is not heavily used and the MAC concluded closure was unlikely to have any negative effects on the sector’s ability to meet its labour needs.

Spousal Visas

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for the opportunity to discuss this issue. He said very clearly at the beginning of his remarks that he very much supports the Government’s general position on the immigration system and the desire to restore some sanity to it after the uncontrolled immigration system that we saw under the Labour party, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

As my hon. Friend correctly said in his opening remarks, the family rules have three aims. The first, which I know he strongly supports, is to deal with abuse, which is why we have extended from two years to five years the probationary period before partners can apply for settlement, to test the genuineness of the relationship concerned, which should help to deter applications based on sham marriages. Secondly, we are promoting the integration of family migrants by requiring those applying for settlement from 28 October this year to pass the new “Life in the UK” test and demonstrate that they can speak and understand English to the intermediate B1 level. That means that those intending to live permanently in the UK can communicate in the wider community and have a basic understanding of British history, culture and democracy. My hon. Friend said that he supported that as well.

The third issue, about which my hon. Friend has concerns, is the aspect of the rules seeking to prevent burdens on the taxpayer by introducing the minimum income threshold of £18,600 a year to be met by those wishing to sponsor the settlement of a partner. He said that that was an arbitrary number. It was the Migration Advisory Committee, the independent body that advises the Government, that proposed a range of numbers based on its analysis of the problem; we adopted a figure from the lower end.

In talking about regional pay, my hon. Friend touched on the interaction between the welfare and immigration systems. As I said in the Westminster Hall debate, it is interesting that Members who, in the context of this debate, say that £18,600 is a high number, often suggest—I am not suggesting my hon. Friend does—suggest in the context of a welfare debate that it is not high. We selected that number because it is broadly the amount more than which a couple must earn if they are not to be eligible for income-related benefits.

My hon. Friend is right that in the period when the migrant spouse is in the UK before they get indefinite leave to remain, they are not entitled to benefits, but they will be once they are settled and their spouse may be entitled to income-related benefits because of their being here—housing benefit, for example. As he said, we do not have a regional benefit system and that is one of the complexities of the case.

In practice, the previous requirement for adequate maintenance meant that any sponsor earning, after tax and housing costs, more than the equivalent of income support for a couple—about £5,700—was deemed to have sufficient funds to sponsor a partner. That was not an adequate basis for sustainable family migration and did not provide adequate assurance—

[Fiona Mactaggart]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will try to address my hon. Friend, whose Adjournment debate this is. I want to deal with his issues.

The requirement provided little assurance of a sustainable basis over the long term. That is why we came up with the new financial requirement, based principally on the expert advice from the Migration Advisory Committee. It is the level of income at which a couple, once settled in the UK and taking into account children, generally cannot access income-related benefits. My hon. Friend said that his constituent had no intention of claiming benefits, but of course there is no way for us legally to enforce their not claiming benefits once they are in the United Kingdom.

We think that we have set out the right basis. The Migration Advisory Committee looked at whether there was a case for varying the income threshold across the United Kingdom, which is the substance of my hon. Friend’s point—I know that he did not want to make that point, but I will take it as a suggestion floating around that I can comment on. The Migration Advisory Committee looked at that approach but concluded that there was not a clear case for taking it. It would mean that sponsors, for example, could make an application when living in one area and then move around the United Kingdom. It would also penalise a sponsor living in a relatively wealthy part of a poor region; they would have a lower income threshold than a sponsor living in a deprived area of a relatively wealthy region. A single national threshold may not be more acceptable, but it makes things clearer for people than a much more complicated system of regional targets.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, I said in the previous debate that we would continue to monitor the impact of the new rules and make adjustments when appropriate. People who have raised issues with me—I see Members here who came to see me—will have noticed that in the immigration rule changes that I laid before the House on Friday last week, we set out changes in the flexibility of evidence, allowing details of electronic bank statements to be submitted. There will also be flexibility around the cash savings that people can have, to include net proceeds from the sale of a property owned by the applicant and a partner. That has been an issue in some specific cases.

We are also making provision for British sponsors returning from overseas to count future on-target earnings in some circumstances and to allow subcontractors under the HMRC construction industry scheme to evidence their income from that work as if it were from salaried employment. We have made changes.

On the change that my hon. Friend mentioned about taking account of the job offer of the migrant spouse, I have asked officials to look at that. The real challenge is how we could come up with a set of rules that were not liable to massive abuse. He highlighted that risk when he said that we would obviously have to deal with people being able to have fictitious job applications and people abusing those rules. I have asked for work to be done on that, and I will consider it. I know from the work that was done when the rules were introduced that it is not an easy issue to deal with, but we are looking at it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. This is a Back-Bench debate and he gets plenty of opportunities to speak.

I am conscious that in the specific case my hon. Friend raised, the gentleman concerned is not able to hit the income level. As I said, the real concern is about the interaction of the welfare system and the immigration system. That is why we have set the income level as it is. I suspect that a lot of Members who want us to reduce the income level would probably not support what would have to go with it—a reduction in the level at which someone could claim income-related benefits. Indeed, when I raised that in the Westminster Hall debate, many of those who were arguing for a lower level of income were rather silent in their support for a reduction in the welfare system. That is one of the interesting interactions that we have to deal with.

My hon. Friend said that people in his constituency have highlighted the difference between those coming from the EU and those coming from outside it. Several other Members who are present have raised that issue. I would say several things. First, it may not be the case in his constituency, but nationally EU migration remains the smaller part of immigration. About 30% of immigrants come from EU countries and over half come still from outside the EU. It is important to put that into context. It is also the case that if people coming here from the EU want to stay for more than three months they cannot just come here for no reason—they have to be working or looking for work, or to be self-employed, self-sufficient or a student. There are some rules around the treaty rights that have to be exercised.

The Government are concerned about the abuse of free movement whereby people may come to the United Kingdom simply to try to claim benefits or to get round the rules. My hon. Friend might be aware that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, together with her colleagues and her equivalents from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, has written to the European Commission and demanded action on this. We are in the process of putting together evidence that will be discussed at a relevant Council meeting—I think in October or November—when we will look at how we can deal with the abuse of free movement, which I know from my hon. Friend’s remarks is a concern for a number of his constituents.

My hon. Friend suggested that this might be an area where a future Conservative Government may wish to look at detailed changes to our relationship with the rest of the European Union in order to deal with some of our constituents’ concerns. I know that he may well want to go a little further than the party’s policy, but whether it is leaving, as he would prefer, or having a robust negotiation, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister intends, either of those situations would improve the position that his constituents and many of mine are concerned about. We cannot apply the same rules to EU citizens because we are bound by our treaty obligations. It is important that we make sure that we enforce the rules that already exist. I completely understand that his constituents may find that a challenge.

Since I have three minutes left and I think I have dealt with my hon. Friend’s points, I will take a couple of interventions—one from my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) and then one from the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart).

[Jane Ellison]

I am grateful to the Minister. I thank him for the flexibility that he has shown and his preparedness to look at the rules and make adjustments. He is aware of a very long-running case that he has been dealing with and about which we have spoken very often. Self-employment can be an issue, particularly for someone who has had periods of maternity leave. Obviously, that challenge particularly affects women. Will he remain open to looking to make adjustments on such issues?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend mentions a case that she has raised extensively with me, including in writing, and I have set out a solution for her constituent. On self-employment, a couple of the changes we have made with regard to evidencing income will be helpful. We will continue to look at the detailed issues that are raised with us and we will, of course, deal with those that make sense and that we do not think are amenable to abuse. The rules have only been in place for a little over a year and we will continue to change them to make them more sensible where we think there are unintended consequences.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank the Minister and am grateful for the changes he has made already; I think they are moving in the right direction. He has said that couples require a minimum income of £18,600 before they get benefits, but the problem with that is that the burden is placed on the British resident and citizen, not the couple. Will the Minister do more take into account the capacity of the migrant spouse to earn while they are here?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady raises a perfectly good point, which was also raised in the Westminster Hall debate. The difficulty is dealing with the matter in a way that is not easy to abuse and to use as a way of driving a coach and horses through the system. We continue to look at the matter, but I know from the abuse we have seen in other areas of the immigration system that if we simply require, for example, a job offer without any detailed back-up, I am afraid there are plenty of people around who have—

Immigration Rules

Mark Harper Excerpts

Friday 6th September 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is today laying before the House a statement of changes in immigration rules as set out below.

I will expand the process of genuineness assessments and interviews to tier 1 (general), tier 2 (minister of religion), and tier 5 (temporary worker) applications for entry and leave to remain, and to tier 4 students applying for further leave to remain. I will also be replicating for tier 4 in-country extensions the existing power to refuse applications where the applicant cannot speak English. We will add Barbados to the list of countries whose nationals benefit from different documentary requirements and are exempt from the genuineness test when applying for a tier 4 visa.

I am making several small changes to economic routes to make them more attractive and more flexible for businesses. These changes include new provision in tier 1 for artists of exceptional promise, removing the English language requirement for intra-company transferees, making it easier for graduate entrepreneurs to switch into tier 2, and waiving share-ownership restrictions for senior staff earning £152,100 or more.

I will also be introducing flexibility for tourists and business visitors to undertake some study where it is incidental to the main purpose of their visit, as well as increasing the permissible activities a business visitor can undertake in the UK. I am retaining the student visitor route for those whose purpose in coming here is for short-term study. The prospective student route is being removed because it is little used and anomalous.

I am adding Hong Kong to the list of participating countries and territories on the UK’s youth mobility scheme, further strengthening business, trade and cultural ties between us.

I am introducing rules to give effect to the Secretary of State for Defence’s statement to this House of 4 June 2013, which provides for some locally engaged staff, who have been or will be made redundant as a result of our draw down, to relocate to the UK in recognition of the unique contribution they have provided to the UK’s efforts in Afghanistan. The new rules allow eligible applicants, their spouse/partner and their minor dependent children to be granted a period of five years’ leave to enter if their character and conduct is satisfactory.

In line with the statement of intent “Knowledge of language and life in the UK for settlement and naturalisation” published on 8 April, I am also making changes to the way in which applicants for indefinite leave to remain are required to demonstrate their knowledge of the English language and of life in the UK, together with necessary consequential amendments. These changes will come into effect on 28 October.

I am making changes to slow the path to settlement for refugees, and those granted humanitarian protection, who have committed crimes. Applications for settlement from refugees will be refused for 15 years from the date of their sentence if they have been sentenced to over 12 months’ imprisonment; for seven years if they have been sentenced to up to 12 months’ imprisonment; and for two years if they have been given a non-custodial sentence. Discretion to delay the route to settlement will apply in the case of repeat offenders.

I am creating new temporary immigration rules to facilitate the entry and stay of certain Commonwealth games participants and personnel during the 2014 Commonwealth games.

I am making minor changes and clarifications to the immigration rules, including those relating to family life.

I am making minor changes to repeal measures that are no longer required.

I am making a minor change to the curtailment rules. This change adds a power to curtail leave where a migrant’s offending is persistent or causes serious harm. The change supports the Home Office in its work to take tough action against those who commit offences while here.

I am making changes to the rules for dependants in the points-based system and other work routes, following the High Court judgment in R—(on the application of Zhang) v Secretary of State for the Home Department. The changes will allow dependants to apply from within the UK, providing they are not here illegally, as visitors, or on temporary admission or temporary release. They will still need to satisfy all other existing requirements.

I am making changes to the visit visa requirement for Kuwaiti nationals holding diplomatic and special passports issued by Kuwait. When travelling to the UK for the purpose of an official or general visit, they will no longer have to obtain a visit visa to travel to the UK.

Immigration (Detention of Pregnant Women)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) for securing this debate. As he acknowledged, he and I have had detailed discussions on this issue. Yarl’s Wood, the principal immigration removal centre holding female detainees, is located in his constituency, so I completely understand his interest in this particular issue, both from a policy and a constituency perspective.

First, I would like to emphasise that the decision to detain someone is never taken lightly and only as a last resort. My hon. Friend acknowledged that in his speech. Generally, when we decide that detention is appropriate, we ensure that we take care of detainees’ welfare. That obviously includes pregnant women, who have particular needs. He set out the Government’s policy quite fairly. It is that we do not, in general, detain pregnant women except in two sets of circumstances. The first is when a woman’s removal from the UK is imminent and medical advice suggests that her baby is not due before the expected removal date. The second is, under the asylum system, when the decision not to grant asylum would allow for the woman to be removed.

I thought that the statistics that my hon. Friend cited suggested that we were doing as the policy required. He described the significant number of people who were detained, then said that only 100 of those were pregnant women. I think I have got that figure right; I was listening carefully to his speech. That shows that we detain very few pregnant women and that we do so only in the circumstances that I have described.

We factor into our decisions the timing issue that my hon. Friend raised. Obviously I do not have the details of the specific case that he mentioned, but I will explain in a minute why I do not think that that case would have contravened our existing policy. We factor into the decision on timing the International Air Transport Association’s guidelines to airlines on carrying pregnant women, which provide for travel up to 28 weeks or, if medically certified, up to either 32 or 36 weeks depending on the circumstances of the pregnancy. Women who are less than 24 weeks pregnant may also be detained under the fast-track asylum process operating at Yarl’s Wood, which would allow for a case to be processed and, if appropriate—that is, if asylum is not granted—for removal to take place within those time frames.

In regard to the case that my hon. Friend described, I can give him only a general answer as I do not have the details. If he would like to write to me after the debate with those details, however, I will of course look into the specifics of the case and correspond with him about them. We might have detained the woman for removal, and the removal might then not have gone ahead for a reason that was not anticipated at the time. There might have been a further legal challenge, for example, or perhaps a travel document was unavailable. Alternatively, she could have been detained under the fast-track process prior to the 24-week point. All those circumstances would fall within published policy, but it would be better if my hon. Friend could furnish me with the details of the specific case so that I can look into it.

[Richard Fuller]

The Minister has just indicated in his answer the very reason the current policy does not work. It is based on imminence, and imminence cannot be predicted, for the very reason that he has just set out. He has therefore just stated why ending the detention of pregnant women would be a clearer, fairer, better and more moral policy. We are talking about 100 women. That is it. Would it not say more about the ethics of his policy if he were to accept that reality and stop the policy now, rather than pretending that the policy is actually happening in practice?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend, for this reason. The use of statistics was mentioned, but we do not collect statistics on this matter because women are not, of course, obliged to tell the Home Office whether they are pregnant. They may tell us, and if they do, the information will be held on their individual case file and they will be provided with appropriate health care, broadly comparable to what is available from an NHS general practitioner. The women are under no obligation to tell us, and I do not think forcing them to disclose the information would be right. That is an issue about the statistics.

Making decisions about the imminence of removal is clearly based on our best intelligence, but as we know, the people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom and who should leave the country voluntarily often throw all sorts of legal obstacles in the way. We may detain a woman when removal is imminent and she may attempt to secure a last-minute legal challenge to throw a roadblock in the way of her removal, and we have no way of anticipating that before she does so. That provides my hon. Friend with an example.

If we were to do what my hon. Friend suggested and have a blanket policy of not detaining women, first, having read many cases, I fear we would find quite a lot of people saying they were pregnant as another method of delaying their departure from the UK. I have seen people throw many obstacles in the way when they have no right to be here, and I do not want this to be one of them. We are committed to treating pregnant women properly, providing proper health care and treating them well. I do not want this to be an excuse that women who are not pregnant dream up in order to throw a legal obstacle in the way. I fear that that would be the result of adopting the blanket policy suggested by my hon. Friend.

A logical follow-on policy from what my hon. Friend suggests would mean not removing the women from the UK when they were pregnant and allowing them to give birth to their child, but then seeking to remove both the woman and the very young child from the UK to their home country or country of origin—and I am not sure that that would be an improvement. If I anticipate correctly, if we did that, we would then be criticised for trying to remove the mother with her very young child back to their country of origin. As I say, I am not sure that that would be an improvement on the present situation, because the fact remains that these women have no right to be in the UK: they should not be here and they should leave voluntarily. [Interruption.] I cannot quite tell whether the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) is dying to intervene.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I was squeaking—the Minister is right—because I cannot believe that someone is going to get pregnant in order not to be detained. Secondly, it is quite easy to find out whether someone is pregnant, so that bit of the Minister’s excuse proves his hon. Friend’s very powerful argument that this is a moral case. I fear that I hear in the Minister’s response a kind of Home Office “jobsworthness”, which I think he should be above and is usually above.

[Mr Harper]

I am not going to let the hon. Lady put words into my mouth. I did not say—I chose my words very carefully—that women would get pregnant; I said women would say they were pregnant in order to throw a legal challenge. I know it is perfectly easy to test whether women are pregnant, but we do not have the right to do that. The Home Office does not have the right to insist that a women disclose that she is pregnant. We do not have the right forcibly to test people to see whether they are pregnant. If I were to propose that, I doubt whether the hon. Lady would support it. To be clear, I did not say that people would get pregnant; I said that they would say they were to throw a legal obstacle in the way of their removal from the country. I have seen enough cases—and I know the hon. Lady has—to know that there are people who would stoop to doing that to delay their removal from the UK.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

However, the Home Office could easily say, “We will release you if you provide evidence of pregnancy.”

[Mr Harper]

That may be the case, but our objective is not to let the people out of detention, but to remove them from the UK. That it is the point, and it is one I think my hon. Friend is missing, too. The fact is that these women have no right to be in the UK and should leave. I am not sure that a policy that allowed them stay in order to give birth to their child, when we would immediately want to remove both the woman and the child from the UK, would be a better policy than the one we have today.

[Richard Fuller]

If the purpose is to remove people, will the Minister counter my statistics with statistics of his own, and explain why only five out of 100 women have been deported and 95 have been returned to the community? I am not sure that his argument stacks up.

[Mr Harper]

I am not sure that I agree with my hon. Friend’s statistics, but I do not have the details. Because, as far as I know, the Home Office has not been given the details of the 20 people to whom Medical Justice referred, it is difficult for us to validate its assertions. The difficulty with giving my hon. Friend overall statistics is that although when women provide the information that they are pregnant, that information is held on their health records, we do not log it statistically, and obviously we can do so only when they disclose the information to us. Of course, in the early stages of pregnancy they may not even be aware of the fact themselves.

When a pregnant woman is detained she will, like all other detainees, have access to free on-site health care facilities and medical advice broadly equivalent to that which is available from national health service GPs in the community. At Yarl’s Wood, for instance, all midwifery services are provided by Bedfordshire NHS Trust. Midwives from the trust visit the centre every week. At Dungavel immigration removal centre, where women may also be detained, midwifery services are provided by NHS Lanarkshire. In line with practice in the community, the visiting midwives will determine how frequently they need to see patients.

Women can make requests for additional midwife appointments through the health care centre if they wish. The centre is staffed by nurses around the clock, and the GP can be called upon seven days a week when necessary. In the event of a particularly difficult medical problem, health care staff can refer women to the antenatal clinic or early pregnancy unit in the local hospital, or to another appropriate health care service. I therefore do not agree with my hon. Friend that there is a health care issue.

My hon. Friend asked about pregnant women being returned to countries where malaria is prevalent. We take steps to ensure that they are given the appropriate course of anti-malaria medication before their removal, but decisions about that medication must, of course, be made by doctors.

As for my hon. Friend’s point about advice to British nationals who are travelling, he should bear in mind that these women are nationals of their home countries, the countries where they should live. The NHS is a national health service whose purpose is to provide health care for citizens and residents of the United Kingdom. It is not an international health service. I do not think that the comparison between the health care that a woman would receive in the United Kingdom if she lived here and the health care that is available in her home country is relevant. Her home country is the country in which she should live. It is not the job of the national health service to become a health service for everyone in the world. If it were to do so, it would rapidly collapse, and I do not think we want that to happen.

[Richard Fuller]

The Minister is right to say that the NHS is a national and not an international health service, but that is not quite the point that I was making. One of the consequences of losing control of immigration is that people have been in this country for a long period, and when people have spent a long period in another country, their immunity to malaria is lowered. We are sending back pregnant women with low immunity. Their health condition is not the same as the health condition of a lady who becomes pregnant in her country of origin. That is the comparison that I was trying to make. I certainly do not want us to have an international health service, but I think the Minister must accept that delaying the repatriation of people who are here illegally has consequences in terms of their health status, particularly when it comes to malaria. That is a key point for pregnant women.

[Mr Harper]

And that is exactly why we ensure that pregnant women are given a course of anti-malaria medication. We also provide them with mosquito nets, free of charge, to use in their countries of origin. I am not sure that I follow the logic of my hon. Friend’s argument. If we allowed those pregnant women to remain in the United Kingdom and give birth here, we would still later be removing both mother and child to that same country of origin where malaria may be prevalent.

The fact is that we will not allow women to stay here when they do not have a right to do so. Not only will their cases have been judged by the Home Office, but a number of appeal routes will have been open to them, and only when all those routes have been exhausted will we be in a position to remove them from the country. We try to persuade people to return home voluntarily, and that includes providing assistance when they are in their home countries. Those whom we do detain—those to whom my hon. Friend is referring—will be people who have no right to be here. We will have tried to persuade them to leave voluntarily, and to give them support that would help them to do so. Only when they have refused all those offers of assistance and help from the United Kingdom will we seek to enforce their removal. Therefore, by definition they are people who are not co-operating in their removal from the United Kingdom. That is why I anticipate that if we change the policy to the one my hon. Friend suggests, people will use that to throw legal obstacles in the way—not to do what the hon. Member for Slough said, but at least to suggest to us that that is the case, which would at least delay, if not stop, their removal.

I am therefore unable to give my hon. Friend the outcome he desired. I am very happy to continue this dialogue with him and to look into the case he has raised with me, and if he thinks there are other cases where the Government are not following the policy we have set out, I will look into them. On his central request, however, I am afraid the Government have no plans to change the current policy.

Question put and agreed to.