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Immigration

I want to make a few points, but I will be very brief because I want to hear the Minister's reply to the debate. First, we are debating rules that came into operation several months ago and have caused a great deal of complication, hardship and confusion. Unless the Minister has some very good news for us, the rules will be approved in tomorrow's vote. That is not a very satisfactory system of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability, and it seems to be a negation of the parliamentary process. Secondly, I would be grateful if the Minister told us exactly who was consulted before these rule changes were brought in. I understand that very few people were consulted. Organisations dealing with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, children's charities and bodies such as the Immigration Law Practitioners Association would have had something helpful and useful to say, and we should be well aware of it. Thirdly—this follows on from the point made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes)—there is the question of discretion. That concerns me a great deal. I have been dealing with immigration cases since I was first elected to this House, and a very large number of them too. One has always known that there is a degree of discretion, either with an official or ultimately with a Minister. That is absolutely essential, because it is almost impossible to draw up rules relating to children seeking asylum or to immigration in general that can define every possible circumstance. Once the Minister throws discretion away, he is, in effect, getting it off his table and handing it over to immigration courts to decide, however perverse those decisions might be, and he will end up back here having to reform the rules or legislation to cope with that. It would be much better all round to keep that degree of discretion. Fourthly, I am very concerned about the penalty imposed on children for the circumstances under which they came to this country. My constituency, like that of the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey, has a considerable number of Somali people who sought a place of safety in this country because of the war in Somalia. There has been a war going on in Somalia for a very long time, and I suspect that sadly it will continue for a long time to come. I have encountered many people who arrived in this country as children and who cannot remember how they got here, do not know by what route they came, do not know who brought them, and do not know what documentation was involved—it was probably false, and they were probably smuggled, with a people-trafficker involved. There were probably some desperate parents somewhere back home in Somalia who just wanted to get their children to a place of safety. The priority should be at least to look after those children in that place of safety. My understanding of the rules that are being introduced is that if, at a later stage, it became apparent that the documentation was false or that people-traffickers were involved, the child would be penalised in some way. That simply cannot be right. The same applies to children coming from Congo or from very many other places. I hope that the Minister will be able to help me in that respect.