It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). He knows that I have great respect for him and his huge experience. He and I, like every other Member of Parliament for Greater London, come to this debate representing a huge number of people from all over the world. That is also reflected in the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather).
I should declare an interest, which can be found in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. My brother and I inherited from our late mum, who died a couple of years ago, a house that we rent to non-Brits, as it happens, through a letting agency. I will come back to the question of lettings later.
I come to this debate from two perspectives. First, I regularly do a huge amount of immigration and asylum work, which is consistently about 40% of the work in my constituency. The overwhelming experience of that casework, which is frequently acute, is that far too often the wrong decision is made at the beginning. Of course, some people abuse the system, but many do not, and come here perfectly properly. I am talking not about asylum seekers but about immigrants who come here legally but may overstay and so on. When they go to officials to put their case, we often have an enormous struggle to try to deal with that. The Minister, to whom I pay tribute for his courtesy in always dealing with matters I bring to him, as did his predecessor—and whom I rarely trouble, because I seek to deal with his officials—knows that in the end many colleagues become hugely frustrated because the most deserving cases imaginable are not understood or dealt with properly in the system.
The overwhelming concern—I have checked with the person who leads in my constituency office on immigration and asylum work—is not to introduce lots of new legislation but to provide a system that works well by making administrative improvements. That has always been the case, but sadly there is still a huge backlog of cases both in immigration and asylum, and a huge number of cases that go to appeal.
There are some really good people working in what was the UK Border Agency and is now part of the Home Office again. I pay tribute to them, and I am grateful for their courtesy, but there are some poor people who do not understand immediacy and the way in which things should be dealt with. There are some very good people in our outposts around the world who deal with cases, but as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee, said, it is illogical to ask the same person to review a decision that they have made and expect them to think that it is the wrong decision only a few weeks later.
Secondly, we must proceed carefully when we seek to legislate yet again on immigration and asylum. When I served in opposition, for too long I saw Governments introduce immigration Bills, few of which sorted out problems to the extent that people could say that they were a great success. However, there are real issues, and our constituents and the country are concerned. Of course, people are fair-minded, I hope, and would always realise that we are a country of immigrants—they are from around the UK, from outside the UK and Europe, and from all over the world—and that in London and many cities, and most of the UK, immigration has enriched our culture hugely. None the less it needs to be controlled, and there has to be a limit. We also need to make sure that those who are here illegally do not remain here illegally.
One of the things that my party tried to do at the last election was put this issue on the agenda. It was difficult, because the issue of addressing illegal migration has over the years been something that the public have found hard to come to terms with. President Obama has sought to do so in the United States in a brave way with Churches and faith groups across the parties, and in this country the issue has not gone away.
We need a firm but fair immigration system, and we need firm processes for policing it. I also believe that, because we are a country of islands, we should not opt into the Schengen agreement, and that we should have our own border controls. It is not a view that all the colleagues in my party take, but it is an advantage in managing migration to deploy that tactic. Irrespective of other European controls we should have our own. I have always taken the view that we should check people out as well as check people in, and that when we admit other countries to the EU we should have gradual admission. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made the wrong decision to allow mass admission in one go from the eastern European countries. In the end, everyone accepts that that was the wrong decision. Again, I think I was in a minority in my party at the time in arguing that the process should be phased.
We should be clear that the Bill does not deal with asylum. Asylum cases will, I hope, always be dealt with compassionately. We must be seen to be a country that is always willing to receive people who come to us fleeing from persecution because of their politics, faith, gender, sexuality or whatever else it might be. I hope the Minister will say amen to that.
I hope, too, that we will always be positive that any changes that we make have been tried and tested and will not have disproportionate or unfair outcomes. That is why I am troubled that yet again we are dealing with a Bill that has not had pre-legislative scrutiny, that it was not preceded by a Green Paper or a White Paper and that it has not been the subject of full consultation. This is bad legislative process and there is no need for it. There is no immediacy that means that we have to get the Bill on to the statute book in two minutes. We must do better. We had the same problem with the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. This Government, whom I support, have said that we will do these things better. Well, we must do them better consistently. Whatever view we take of the Bill, there is no disadvantage in pre-legislative scrutiny and going through the proper processes to
make sure that unintended consequences are avoided. I regret that that has not been done and as a result I may not be able to support the timetable motion. We need much more time to examine the Bill and I am sure the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, will want to look at it too.
I have three other quick points. Colleagues on the Opposition Benches—they include the right hon. Member for Leicester East, whose speech I entirely agree with, and others—have made the point that we have not looked at the Bill in the context of the changes that we are making to legal aid and judicial review. They are all interrelated issues. I have outstanding promises from Ministers on the Front Bench that they would review previous changes. If we reduce the chances of people going to court to challenge decisions, then reduce the chance of an appeal at all and then insist that people go back to countries from which it may be very difficult for them to appeal, we are denying the right of appeal altogether. We must be extremely careful about that, but we need simpler appeal systems. I welcome the fact that that is on the agenda of the Bill. We have too many different processes and they need to be brought together, but they must be simplified in a way that makes them both workable and understandable.
We must make sure that we do not breach international conventions, especially in relation to children. I am not satisfied that the Bill does that, and the Joint Committee on Human Rights has not been satisfied in relation to other legislation. We have obligations nationally and internationally that we must fulfil. The Government have done well. Our Government ended the detention of children for immigration purposes, which I welcome. My hon. Friend the Minister was party to that, as were other Ministers, and we must not now undo the good work that we have done in relation to children.
On the parts of the Bill that deal with marriage and civil partnerships, nobody wants to condone sham marriages and sham civil partnerships. We must have robust processes for dealing with that, and in principle those changes are welcome. I have no objection to people from outside this country being required to pay for public services. It seems to me that that is the proper principle, and therefore the proposal that the national health service has a charge is one of principle. I support the principle. The question is whether it is practical and how it is going to be implemented. It also seems proper to have a bank account control mechanism that means that people who are legally not meant to be here cannot process their moneys around and be supported in doing so. The same principle, for me, applies to driving licences. I have severe problems, however, believing that the residential tenancy plans will work. I know that that is a pilot scheme and that it will be trialled only, but it will be very difficult for honourable, perfectly respectable landlords to carry out that process properly, and I would prefer that that part of the Bill were not included.
I indicated earlier to the Home Secretary that there are sufficient good things in the Bill to make it worth taking on to Committee stage and looking at carefully, but I hope the Government do not try to push us to rush things. I hope they will be responsive to constructive criticisms from those of us who deal with this sort of work in huge volume every day of our lives. I hope that at the end we can get the message out that we should have tough immigration policies, we should be firm but
fair, but we must make sure that we have a better system that works behind those policies, and we should be clear that another set of legislative changes will not solve all the problems that are a legacy of poor, incompetent Home Office government over many, many years.
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