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Immigration

My hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on this issue on 19 February, and I am not entirely sure that we saw eye to eye during that session. The first point that I put to him arose from the explanatory memorandum to the document laid on 6 February, which said in paragraph 8.1:"““An impact assessment on these changes will be published on the website of the Border and Immigration Agency…and on the Home Office website””." When he came to give evidence, that impact assessment had not been published and he went away to check it. I do not think that it has been published yet. No doubt the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but the fact that we do not have that impact assessment is serious. Despite what we were told in the explanatory memorandum, no real thought has been given to the consequences of the rule changes for some vulnerable people. I am reminded of a couple of cases that I put to the Minister in Committee. I gave the example of a trafficking victim who is brought into the UK by deception, so her entry is illegal, but who manages to escape from the traffickers. As she has no money to return to her own country, she relies on the UK to pay for her return and is barred for 10 years because of the deception, or for five years because her return is paid for by the UK. The other example I gave was of a child fleeing persecution in his home country who is smuggled into the UK with the assistance of an agent, and who has no travel documentation so has entered the country illegally. The child has no funds of his own and is given discretionary leave, but when his asylum claim is ultimately decided, it is refused, perhaps because the circumstances in the home country have changed. Even if the child agrees to a voluntary return, he has no money to pay for it so either he is excluded for 10 years because of the deception in getting into the country or for five years because he cannot pay for his own return. Those are two examples of hard cases, and because there is no discretion in the system and it is based on mandatory refusals we end up with two pretty appalling cases. We have no special exemptions for children and trafficking victims, and so one would have thought that that sort of thing might be thrown up by the impact assessment, which has not been produced. It is irrelevant if the applicant believes that he had a good reason to believe that the statement was true or the document was genuine or valid, if the statement was made or the document submitted by a third party without the applicant's knowledge, if the applicant did not understand the relevant fact that needed to be disclosed and made an entirely innocent mistake, or if the false document or statement was totally irrelevant and immaterial to the application. None of those factors is taken into account. The refusals are absolutely mandatory, no matter how innocent of any wrongdoing the applicant might be.