Tier 5 Religious Worker Visas

Debate between Valerie Vaz and Ged Killen

Thursday 4th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gapes. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for it. The issue is of great concern to parishes in my constituency, as it is in others, not least because many Catholic parishes rely on tier 5 religious worker visas to bring priests to the UK on supply placements, which allows cover for illness, retreats, outings and, of course, much needed holidays. The hon. Gentleman has covered many of the salient points and concerns in his remarks, so I intend to be brief.

I am disappointed not to see the Minister for Immigration, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), here, but I am sure that the Minister who is here will convey to her our concerns. I simply ask the Minister this: where is the evidence that the changes were necessary? Where is the evidence that large numbers of people were coming to the UK on tier 5 religious worker visas for another purpose? Where is the evidence that ministers of religion are coming in large numbers to the UK to preach, despite not having the English language skills necessary to do so? Is it not a matter for the parish to determine whether a priest or a minister has the appropriate level of English to preach to their congregation? The alternative in many cases is that services will simply not go ahead at all, and we all know the impact that can have when people, many of them elderly or at risk of social isolation and loneliness, lose out on the opportunity to come together as a community to worship, to support one another, and to seek spiritual and practical help.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

My constituents, particularly those at the Sikh gurdwara, rely on tier 5 for religious workers to come in. They do not want the tier 2 so that their religious workers can be here a long time, and neither do they want to stay indefinitely. It really is a short-term issue and religious workers are being absolutely excluded. In my constituency they have already spent more than £1,000, having been refused a visa while the change of policy went through. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need something in the interim, a bit like the old tier 5, so that short-term religious workers can come in and read from the holy book, which is what they need to do? They are not lecturers or cultural exchange people; they are religious workers who do not want to stay here for a long time.

[Ged Killen]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I absolutely agree. Another senseless decision seems to be based once again on the ideology of the Conservative party, rather than on any evidence. The Catholic Church in Scotland is in no doubt whatever that the changes will mean fewer priests will be able to come to Scotland to support local parishes. Perhaps the Minister can tell us, if he is aware, what assessment has been made of the likely impact of the changes. How many people have been refused under the new system who would have been granted a visa under the old one? Is the Home Office aware of how many other people are likely to be refused entry at a later date?

We all have casework that demonstrates how often the Home Office gets decisions wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) raised in a debate in this place just a few weeks ago concerns revealed in the Financial Times that the Home Office is using algorithms to process visa applications. Many of my constituents have had applications inexplicably refused, usually because of Home Office errors, which were later overturned following an intervention from my office. As the hon. Member for Glasgow East said earlier, we do not want to get into the wider debate, but I will mention the recent example of my constituent Sabir Zazai, the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council. He was being honoured by Glasgow University for 20 years of remarkable contribution to civil society, but his father almost missed out on going to the graduation ceremony, where he was to receive his honorary doctorate, because he was refused a visit visa. That is exactly the type of case that speaks to the heart of the issue that we are talking about today, although we are talking about a different tier of visas.