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Immigration

I think the Minister will be getting the message by now. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who speaks for the Conservative party on immigration, and the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), whose Joint Committee on Human Rights considered the matter at a very appropriate time, have made the strong general case that the rules that we are discussing, which were presented to Parliament without consultation, are clearly not justified. They would not only fail to remedy a mischief but would leave the system for dealing with people who want to come to this country properly far worse than it is now. I want to add two points about procedure. As the Minister will know, we have a ridiculous system, although I do not blame him personally for that. The changes to the immigration rules were published on 6 February. The Joint Committee met on 19 February to consider them. Hon. Members have 28 days in which to pray against rules and, with the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh and other colleagues, we did so. That hopefully triggers a debate. However, some of the proposed changes came into force on 29 February, while the changes that we are concerned with tonight came into force on 1 April. From 1 April all the new rules were in place, even though we had not yet held the debate on whether they should be in place. The Leader of the House has accepted that the system is nonsensical. This is not a Home Office problem, but a general Government problem. We must change the system whereby important rules introduced under secondary legislation come into force before we have had the chance to debate them. If we had had the chance to debate them, the point about the absence of consultation, made by all three colleagues who have spoken so far tonight, would have been pre-eminently made, and Ministers would have said, ““We understand, and we'll reflect on those points.”” Happily, there was a debate in the House of Lords between 6 February, when the rules were laid before Parliament, and 1 April, when the changes that we are most concerned with today came into effect. The debate was initiated by my noble Friend Lord Avebury, and he was supported by my noble Friend the Liberal Democrat Lord Roberts of Llandudno. Anyone who reads that debate—as the Minister, the hon. Member for Ashford and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh have clearly done—will see that it showed overwhelmingly that the situation is nonsensical. To his credit, the Minister in the Lords accepted that it was nonsense, and at the end of the debate he said that the rules in question would not come into force on 1 April; instead, their implementation would be deferred until October. Like friends and colleagues from all parts of the House, I deal with a huge number of immigration cases of the kind that we are discussing. It is not a record that I aspired to hold, but I think that I am currently at the top of the Home Office league table because of the number of cases that I have brought before it. Colleagues who are present, including the hon. Members for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), for Hendon and for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), also deal regularly with significant numbers of cases that would involve the rule that we are discussing. Let us be absolutely clear. The changes are misguided. If there was a breach of any of the rules, or if there was a failure—it is set out in these terms in the proposed changes—by overstaying, which could be by a day, or by a breach of a condition, which could be one failure to report, or by being an illegal entrant, which is obviously more serious but the applicant could have been as a child, brought as a relative, brought as a teenager, brought with somebody else, brought against their will, or brought not knowing what was happening, or by using deception in an application for entry clearance, whether the deception was theirs or was carried out on their behalf by an agent, by somebody whom their family had paid or whatever—any of those circumstances would automatically lead to a series of blanket bans, depending on the circumstance of the person's departure. If the migrant leaves voluntarily, it might be a year before they can come back in any circumstance; five years if they left voluntarily at public expense and only if they had repaid the cost; 10 years if they were removed or deported; and 10 years if they used deception—no questions, no qualification, no exemptions, a blanket ban. The case has been made as to why that is nonsense. To give the Minister some credit, his Department during his tenure as Immigration Minister and under all his predecessors from both the Labour and the Conservative parties since I have been in the House has always had a system whereby, as well as the immigration law and the rules, discretion has been available to the Home Office. That is normally exercised by officials and occasionally by Ministers, if the matter needs to go higher, so to speak. Officials regularly exercise that discretion because there is a good case, and so they should. Ministers occasionally do so, too. That is as it should be. The case for the changes to the rules would not be justifiable in human rights law, as the hon. Member for Hendon pointed out, on the basis of the right to family life or on non-discrimination, and the system would not be sustainable or tenable if discretion were not allowed as a remedy for the person who, for example, was due to leave on a certain day and whose flight was cancelled, or who was due to go and report and was taken seriously ill. There are all sorts of examples. In my office we were alerted to the issue pretty well immediately by people with whom we work, who represent immigrants and asylum seekers. They are highly respected companies and organisations, particularly the Immigration Law Practitioners Association. This had an immediate effect and rang alarm bells, hinted at by previous speakers. When I saw that Lord Bassam had agreed that there would be concessions until October, I advised everyone in my constituency who was likely to be affected to go immediately. I explained that if they went by October, there was a chance that they would benefit from the exemption and be allowed back in if they made an application. That was no different from the practice that I have adopted for years when people come to me. I have many Sierra Leoneans in my constituency. Let us suppose that one of them had married a Sierra Leonean who had indefinite leave to remain in the UK, or who had become British by nationality, but they did not have proper status, possibly because they had been a student and overstayed, or had come as a visitor and overstayed, or had a work permit and overstayed for whatever reason, and they thought that that would be valid. I have always said to them, ““The best way for you to deal with this is for you to go back to Sierra Leone now that there is peace and not civil war, and make a proper application. Provided everything is in order, provided you have somewhere secure to live, provided your partner or spouse is working, and provided you're not going to be dependent on the state, you would be given probably one year initially, then possibly a second year, and then you would be allowed to stay.”” They would do that. The effect of the changes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh suggested, is that those people would not say, ““Fine, Simon, that's what I'll do.”” They would say, ““Thank you very much, Mr. Hughes. I may not see you again, and if you see me in the street, don't tell anybody where I am.”” Let us be realistic about this. If somebody has married and has a child, or has a long-term relationship and has two children, or has just got engaged and is desperately in love with someone, they will not suddenly give that up, with the prospect of at least one year and possibly two, five or 10 years before they can come back. That is just not realistic. I was dealing with a case only the other day involving somebody whose children were in care in this country because there had been difficulties, but not the sort of difficulties that meant the family had given up links with them or that the children would not benefit from still having links with both parents. People make mistakes and want to put their lives right. There are all sorts of such cases in which people behave as anybody here in the Chamber would behave.