Draft Immigration Act 2014 (Current Accounts) (Excluded Accounts and Notification Requirements) Regulations 2016

Debate between Simon Kirby and Jim Fitzpatrick

Tuesday 6th December 2016 General Committees

[Simon Kirby]

My understanding is that the Home Office can consider any exceptional circumstances. If I have heard correctly, my hon. Friend’s case involved an appeal. Someone appealing a decision would not be subject to this legislation in the first case. I reiterate that only those people who have no right to remain and who have exhausted all the avenues available to them will be subject to it.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My point is that I have had a number of constituents over the years who have exhausted, or apparently exhausted, those avenues and been declared illegal, who have then found—to pick up on the comment made by the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield—another route to challenge the decision. Sometimes they are straightforwardly delaying until such time as they can succeed; in some instances, they are not delaying, and genuinely new evidence has come to light, or an error has been identified.

The period between being declared illegal and winning that particular point of law or correcting data that the Home Office has got wrong can be years. What the Minister is saying is that during the course of those years, they will not be able to access what little money they might have in a bank account, and will rely on the charity of friends and family, churches, food banks and mosques. To reply to the point made by the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, we are on this planet; we just disagree with the points that he is putting forward.

[Simon Kirby]

The hon. Gentleman raises a valuable point. My understanding is that if that were the case, the Home Office would be open to argument. The instrument is a small piece of legislation in a wide range of tools. I feel obliged to mention the £140 million announced at the Conservative party conference for a controlling migration fund specifically designed to ease the pressures on public services in areas of high immigration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey raised an alternative perspective. It is about getting the balance right and providing the welcome that the UK is famous for—not putting up barriers, being outward-facing and globally-looking—while, at the same time, providing a degree of fairness when it comes to people who should not remain in this country.