My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for bringing this regret Motion and for so comprehensively setting out the grounds for it.
Time after time in this House and in Grand Committee, other noble Lords and I have questioned the policy that border and immigration systems have to be self-funding. The argument that those using the system should pay for it could just as easily be made for other systems such as the education system or the National Health Service. To say that only those who apply for a passport or visa or for UK nationality use or benefit from border and immigration services is clearly false. Everyone in the UK benefits from border control and control over who receives temporary or permanent leave to remain in the UK, and from the granting of UK citizenship. For example, in terms of counterterrorism, it has been shown that those people who acquire British citizenship are far more likely to show loyalty to the country than those who do not.
The premise is also false in that citizens from EU, EEA and 10 other countries benefit from visa-free entry to the UK and use Border Force services to enter the UK—none of whom at this time pays a penny towards the cost of border control or immigration services. Not only are those who apply for a UK passport, a visa to enter the UK or UK citizenship subsidising border and immigration services that benefit all UK citizens; they are also subsidising hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors who enter the UK every year without the need for a visa.
When asked why the Home Office is unique in being required to make border and immigration services self-funding, the only answer is, “Because this is government policy.” Can the Minister tell the House why it is government policy, and why, for example, the NHS is not required to be self-funding? The safety and security of the people is supposed to be the Government’s primary responsibility, yet a major part of ensuring that—ensuring that foreign criminals and others not conducive to the public good do not enter the UK, for example—has to be self-funding. Why?
On the other aspect of the regret Motion, whether it is in the best interests of children to charge them for securing their right to UK citizenship, let alone £596 over the cost of processing an application, the answer is clearly no. Let us imagine the case of a young person
who has come to the UK as a young child, whose parent or parents are legally in the UK, who perhaps finds the transition to life in the UK difficult and does not receive the love and support any child should reasonably expect from his parent or parents, and who goes off the rails, makes mistakes as a teenager and ends up with a custodial sentence of 12 months or more. Is this young person likely to know about and understand the consequences of not claiming the UK nationality he is entitled to before he is deported by the Home Office as a foreign national criminal? Is this person likely to live with a family who can afford over £1,000 to claim the right to UK nationality they are entitled to?
It is not just that. To qualify for the discretionary waiver on the grounds of affordability, as the noble Baroness has said, a long and complex process of means-testing must be gone through, in which even the guidance to Home Office caseworkers is complicated. Every penny of income and expenditure must be accounted for; money spent on “luxuries” or non-essential items such as a holiday would disqualify the family from the fee waiver. What do the Government mean by “luxuries”? Anything more than 43p per person per week spent on laundry and toilet paper, anything more than 69p per person spent on toiletries, and anything more than £3.01 spent on clothing and footwear is considered non-essential. How many of us could say how much we spent on toilet paper a week over the last six months?
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It gets worse. I shall give an actual example from the guidance. If the child has sports lessons after school and it can be shown that not having those lessons would have a detrimental impact on them, they are allowed. If it cannot be shown that depriving the child of those lessons would have a detrimental impact, they are non-essential. How on earth is any parent supposed to be able to prove or disprove that?
What is the average cost of processing an application for a fee waiver on the grounds of affordability, bearing in mind, as the noble Baroness said, that there is a total of 86 pages if done by post? The guidance says that rarely will a caseworker be able to grant an application in the face of a lack of information, so the caseworker must go back to the family and ask for further information if it is not initially included. If the caseworker is not sure whether they can use their discretion, they must refer the case to a senior caseworker.
Even in the light of the Court of Appeal judgment against the Government, they are clinging desperately to the policy that border and immigration services must be self-funding and that even children have to pay for this—even for an application for UK nationality, which has nothing to do with borders and immigration. Children are having to subsidise foreign tourists coming into the UK—children who may end up being deported because they did not claim the UK nationality they were entitled to but could not afford, or whose parents were unable or unwilling to have their finances trawled through or unable to put forward a convincing enough case that their child would end up being criminally exploited in a gang if they did not pay for them to go to football practice after school.
This Government and Home Secretary care more about maintaining a dogmatic and unjustified policy that immigration and border services must be self-funding than the best interests of children. While welcoming the waiver for looked-after children, we strongly support this regret Motion.