On the 22 October, I joined 19 other Members of Parliament in the “No” lobby of the House of Commons to oppose the 2nd Reading of the Immigration Bill, a piece of legislation which has very few redeeming features.
Some of the headline provisions in the bill have received a fair amount of media attention, predominately the proposals to force landlords to check the immigration status of potential tenants and to charge temporary migrants and foreign students up to ?200 a year to use the NHS, even those who have private health insurance or who don’t use any NHS services. Both of these policies are riddled with problems and are incredibly short-sighted.
Forcing landlords to perform the role of immigration officials is an unwarranted extension of the state that could have serious consequences. Instead of tackling the problem of rogue landlords, there is a real possibility that the only result of these checks will be that anyone who happens to look or sound a bit foreign will find it increasingly hard to find accommodation and will be forced into overcrowded and unsanitary housing. And the health levy is designed to tackle a problem that the Government has repeatedly failed to define, while ignoring the considerable contribution that migrant workers make through the tax system and the ?13bn foreign students add to the economy each year.
Beyond the headlines, there are contained within the bill plenty of other changes to the way we as a country treat visitors and would-be visitors that should be of concern to anyone who believes that the immigration system should be humane and fair.
Among these worrying changes is the dramatic constriction of the ability for individuals to challenge decisions taken by the Home Office. The bill, if it becomes law, would mean that people could only challenge a decision if it is related to asylum or humanitarian protection, or if there were Article 8 (the right to family life) grounds for appeal. The ability to appeal against a decision because of an error in applying the immigration rules would be taken away in nearly 40,000 cases, despite the Impact Assessment for the bill showing that half of the appeals against decisions are currently successful.
The high success rate of appeals is a symptom of exceptionally poor quality decision making, which report after report has shown to be endemic to the immigration system. However, rather than improving the quality of decisions, this bill instead removes the opportunity for those decisions to be challenged. What makes this part of the bill even more objectionable is that it comes on top of moves to restrict access to legal aid and Judicial Review. The promise to replace appeals with an administrative review by the very people who got the decision wrong initially is hardly a guarantor of justice.
Also under attack in the bill is Article 8 – the right to family life. It has been well publicised that the Government is often less than pleased with the way in which the courts have applied Article 8 in regard to immigration decisions and this is the latest attempt to seek to impose the will of Parliament on the judiciary. Yet what is quite starkly absent is any mention of the UK’s obligation, under international law, to act in the best interest of any affected child. Instead children are only a material consideration in immigration decisions if it would “not be reasonable” for an affected child to be forced to leave the UK.
Yet my concerns about the impact that this legislation could have run far deeper than the proposals contained within it. The Immigration Bill represents the worst type of politics – a politics which plays up to common misconceptions of the impact of immigration in search of headlines; a type of politics that is designed to chase votes rather than identify and address the very real problems that beset the immigration system. It is a type of politics that creates and defines enemies to demonstrate potency, in doing so pitting individuals against one another and dividing communities.
The General Election is now only a little only 18 months away, and, largely as a response to polling numbers that all three main parties see, there is a consensus across the political spectrum that there is a need to “get tough” on immigration. Political leaders are in an arms race to the bottom, trying to prove their party can look and sound hardest on immigration, ignoring the very real impact this debate, and the language used it in, has on the lives of individuals in our constituencies. Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that only twenty MPs were prepared to publicly vote no on second reading, despite much unrest about the proposals in the bill in private.
The UK is far richer, both economically and culturally, as a result of our diverse communities and cultures. I see this everyday in my constituency of Brent Central in North West London. But this bill, and the way in which immigration is currently debated in this country, puts all this at risk, making the UK more hostile to all migrants and creating tension and mistrust towards many who have contributed much to our country and to whom we should actually be jolly grateful.
Some of the headline provisions in the bill have received a fair amount of media attention, predominately the proposals to force landlords to check the immigration status of potential tenants and to charge temporary migrants and foreign students up to ?200 a year to use the NHS, even those who have private health insurance or who don’t use any NHS services. Both of these policies are riddled with problems and are incredibly short-sighted.
Forcing landlords to perform the role of immigration officials is an unwarranted extension of the state that could have serious consequences. Instead of tackling the problem of rogue landlords, there is a real possibility that the only result of these checks will be that anyone who happens to look or sound a bit foreign will find it increasingly hard to find accommodation and will be forced into overcrowded and unsanitary housing. And the health levy is designed to tackle a problem that the Government has repeatedly failed to define, while ignoring the considerable contribution that migrant workers make through the tax system and the ?13bn foreign students add to the economy each year.
Beyond the headlines, there are contained within the bill plenty of other changes to the way we as a country treat visitors and would-be visitors that should be of concern to anyone who believes that the immigration system should be humane and fair.
Among these worrying changes is the dramatic constriction of the ability for individuals to challenge decisions taken by the Home Office. The bill, if it becomes law, would mean that people could only challenge a decision if it is related to asylum or humanitarian protection, or if there were Article 8 (the right to family life) grounds for appeal. The ability to appeal against a decision because of an error in applying the immigration rules would be taken away in nearly 40,000 cases, despite the Impact Assessment for the bill showing that half of the appeals against decisions are currently successful.
The high success rate of appeals is a symptom of exceptionally poor quality decision making, which report after report has shown to be endemic to the immigration system. However, rather than improving the quality of decisions, this bill instead removes the opportunity for those decisions to be challenged. What makes this part of the bill even more objectionable is that it comes on top of moves to restrict access to legal aid and Judicial Review. The promise to replace appeals with an administrative review by the very people who got the decision wrong initially is hardly a guarantor of justice.
Also under attack in the bill is Article 8 – the right to family life. It has been well publicised that the Government is often less than pleased with the way in which the courts have applied Article 8 in regard to immigration decisions and this is the latest attempt to seek to impose the will of Parliament on the judiciary. Yet what is quite starkly absent is any mention of the UK’s obligation, under international law, to act in the best interest of any affected child. Instead children are only a material consideration in immigration decisions if it would “not be reasonable” for an affected child to be forced to leave the UK.
Yet my concerns about the impact that this legislation could have run far deeper than the proposals contained within it. The Immigration Bill represents the worst type of politics – a politics which plays up to common misconceptions of the impact of immigration in search of headlines; a type of politics that is designed to chase votes rather than identify and address the very real problems that beset the immigration system. It is a type of politics that creates and defines enemies to demonstrate potency, in doing so pitting individuals against one another and dividing communities.
The General Election is now only a little only 18 months away, and, largely as a response to polling numbers that all three main parties see, there is a consensus across the political spectrum that there is a need to “get tough” on immigration. Political leaders are in an arms race to the bottom, trying to prove their party can look and sound hardest on immigration, ignoring the very real impact this debate, and the language used it in, has on the lives of individuals in our constituencies. Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that only twenty MPs were prepared to publicly vote no on second reading, despite much unrest about the proposals in the bill in private.
The UK is far richer, both economically and culturally, as a result of our diverse communities and cultures. I see this everyday in my constituency of Brent Central in North West London. But this bill, and the way in which immigration is currently debated in this country, puts all this at risk, making the UK more hostile to all migrants and creating tension and mistrust towards many who have contributed much to our country and to whom we should actually be jolly grateful.
