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Gladys Taulo

I think that I should apologise to the House on two counts. The first is because I said only a couple of days ago that I was making my last speech in this House, but that was before I realised that I was going to be lucky in the lottery at the last moment. The second reason why I should apologise, if not to the House, certainly to the Minister, is because this is the second time within seven days that I have caused him to be detained late at night to answer a constituency case. This serious case demonstrates a malaise that is only too prevalent in official life—I hope that I may put it that way—in this country. I do not even say that that is solely the fault of this Government, because this malaise has been creeping up on us for a long while. However, this Government's obsession with targets and driving everything by numbers has meant that the malaise has intensified under them. The case of Mrs. Gladys Taulo is a very good illustration of that, because when officials are told that they have to work to targets and they have to secure a certain number of removals or a certain percentage of enforcements, it means that they are not going to spend a great deal of time on one very difficult case if they can push the score up by dealing with 20 easy cases in the same period. So, instead of pursuing immigration cases involving those people who have deliberately defied our law, who have come to this country unlawfully and who have disappeared and are very hard to trace, officials find it much easier to go for the people whose whereabouts are known and who are operating and functioning in society according to the law but who have committed, sometimes inadvertently, some technical breach of the law. They may not even have committed that, and such is the case of Mrs. Gladys Taulo. Let me say at the outset that when I raised the other case, that of my constituents Mr. and Mrs. Acott, in this place last week the Minister was extremely encouraging towards me and I am very hopeful that that encouragement will result in positive action. I hope that he will be equally encouraging tonight in respect of the case of Mrs. Taulo. She is a senior care worker who came to this country perfectly lawfully on a work permit in November 2004. She came with a national vocational qualification level 3 qualification and she came to work as a senior carer at Winterwood UK Ltd, trading as Barty nursing home. She did that work in a most satisfactory fashion and she extended her work permit with the same employer—I stress that—in November 2006, when her leave was extended by the Home Office up to November 2009. By November 2009, my constituent had been in this country lawfully on a work permit and had been doing a vital job. Mrs. Taulo is accompanied by her husband and three children, two of whom are at sensitive stages of schooling. One is 19, but one is 17 and doing A-levels and one is 14 and embarking upon a GCSE course. Therefore, the uncertainty to which the family have become subject, which I shall explain in a moment, is having a disturbing and unsettling effect on them all. My constituent worked continuously for the employer named on the work permit, but she also took up part-time employment at a nursing home managed by Allied Healthcare Group. Her solicitors have stated clearly to the Home Office that the employment was not for more than 20 hours per week. My constituent never stopped working in all this time for her specified employer, and she only took up part-time work with the other employer. In July 2008, the Home Office intervened in her immigration status and served removal directions on the basis that she should not have taken up her second employment. There followed a series of appeals that, the Minister will doubtless tell the House, were not successful. Initially, Mrs. Taulo believed that she had been wrong to take up the secondary work, which I stress was over and above her full-time work for the employer named on the work permit. That never changed; the work was secondary to that and taken up outside her normal working hours. She did it because there was a shortage of carers and because the employer very much wanted her to do it. However, she also did it to improve her own position. Considering the number of those who would come here and seek to be maintained at a cost to the public purse, I would say that it is admirable that she sought to add to her income by doing a useful job in exactly the same field as, and over and above, her main job covered by the work permit. Mrs. Taulo worked for only one other nursing home, so it is not as though she was down with an agency and working all hours—that nursing home was managed by the Allied Healthcare Group—and she worked, as I said, for fewer than 20 hours a week. She carried on working a full week with her specified employer. Initially, she believed that she should not have done that, but in fact she has been advised that, according to immigration law, it is permitted for a work permit holder to take up supplementary employment, provided it is for not more than 20 hours a week and that it is outside his or her normal working hours. Those conditions were met in the case of my constituent. Mrs. Taulo and her solicitors say—and on the information available to me, I would say—that she has not breached paragraphs 128 to 130 of the immigration rules relevant to work permit holders. Nor has she failed to observe any condition of leave to enter or remain, and therefore she is not a suitable person to have removal proceedings taken against her. Yet, everybody has been obdurate, including the Home Office, in insisting on this removal. [Interruption.] The Minister looks as though he is about to dispute that statement, so I shall look forward to hearing from him; I would love him to dispute it. If he is not obdurate, if he has changed his mind and if the previous letters that we have on file from the Home Office are all wrong, I will rejoice and regard it as a splendid ending to my time in the House, and I shall give the Minister all credit and say what a reasonable Minister, in this instance at any rate, he has been. I hope very much that the Home Office has not been obdurate, but according to all our papers and previous replies, it has been. Discretion and common sense should prevail. I would say that kindness also should prevail, given the situation with the family: the husband is receiving health care and two of the children are at vital stages of their education. However, discretion and common sense, above all, should prevail. Had Mrs. Taulo departed from her named employer and been working all over the place, and had she departed from the field of work on the basis of which she was allowed to enter this country in the first place, I would say that the Home Office was justified, but she has not been doing any of that. To insist on removal, which is a tremendously serious step, is not only unfair to the family but completely detrimental to those who depend on that lady for the job that she does. If she goes, who will be the carer? Who else is going to do the job? Someone else coming in on a work permit. It would be in everyone's interest—including the public interest—if that lady and her family were allowed to stay, having been in this country quite lawfully since 2004. I very much look forward to the Minister's reply, and if he wants to throw in two lines on the Acott case as well, I would be delighted.