Immigration: Pausing the Hostile Environment Debate
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Marsha De Cordova
Main Page: Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)Department Debates - View all Marsha De Cordova's debates with the Home Office
Immigration: Pausing the Hostile Environment
Marsha De Cordova Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
So 2,125 individuals have had confirmation of status, which is done via a biometric residence permit. Many of them will then move on to apply for citizenship, and 584 individuals have been granted that to date. The taskforce has taken many thousands of telephone calls. Well over 8,000 call-backs have been made to people who have made contact in the first instance. I can confirm that more than 94% of people who have provided their information have had their status confirmed within the 14-day target, with many having this on the same day.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
I, too, want to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) for his question. We have all seen the disastrous impact that the Government’s hostile environment policies have had on British citizens, so why are the Government just pausing these policies? Why are they not abandoning them? I want to echo my hon. Friends in saying that these people need a hardship fund and the Government must act to introduce it.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. A lessons learned review, to be headed by Wendy Williams, has already been announced, and its terms of reference will be published. It will give independent oversight, which will help us to ensure that we have a clear picture of what went wrong and how we should take this forward. In the meantime, as Members have heard this morning, we are reviewing existing safeguards to make sure that those who are here lawfully are not inadvertently disadvantaged by measures put in place to tackle illegal migration. I have already made it clear that the Department for Work and Pensions is the lead Department in making sure that those who are in hardship have benefits both reinstated and backdated, but of course the compensation scheme will be the main mechanism via which individuals will be able to make sure that any compensation they are due is paid.