Showing every spoken contribution, including 141 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
For clarity, will the onus be on the Government to prove the change, or will it be like reapplying from scratch each time? Again, my casework shows that we are more used to the Home Office asking for chapter and verse from the applicant each time. If the Minister is prepared to promise that it will be for the Government to prove changes, that would mean a lot to many people listening.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. <em>Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.</em> <em>Clause 21 disagreed to.</em> <em>Ordered, </em>That further consideration be now adjourned. —<em>(Jade Botterill.)</em>
Students in Gorton and Denton tell me they often have to spend two to three years on a course before they can even be considered for an apprenticeship. Make UK reports that 39% of manufacturers do not think our education system can deliver the skills that they need. Does the hon. Member agree that we need to make apprenticeships more accessible and flexible so people are not held back from skilled jobs and manufacturers can get the workers they desperately need?
Two.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing this important debate. I represent the Green party. For many years, we have supported the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement by a fully elected second Chamber. I am personally fairly agnostic about the exact format of how that should be done, but I fundamentally believe that a basic principle of democracy is that the legitimacy of the lawmakers comes from the trust put in them. I am talking about the authority entrusted in the legislature by the people, the voters—not by the people in charge of a political party who draw up a list from time to time, some of which is clearly related to the amount of money donated for years by some of the people who end up in the other place. It is not even through the legitimacy that an individual achieves within their specialised field of expertise because of many long years of practice in that field. We should absolutely as a Parliament draw on expertise from across the full panoply of sectors in our country, but we need to ask ourselves who should be making the laws. It should be people who work on the basis of the trust given them by the voters, by the people, and on the basis of every vote having equal weight. That is why I am equally passionate about the importance of a proportionally elected Parliament. Fundamentally, we have a system in the House of Lords that is undemocratic and hugely unrepresentative in all sorts of dimensions and areas of demographics. It is untransparent because so much of the decision making about who becomes a Member is done behind closed doors. How can that be suitable for the 21st century? We have a huge problem with not only the composition but the functioning of the House of Lords. It is, of course, important that legislation is properly scrutinised and that there are full opportunities to amend it. We have questions to ask ourselves in the Commons about how well we do those things and how well our system enables us to, but we do not fix them with an institution such as the House of Lords—no matter how effective individual Members of the Lords may be. Like colleagues here, I pay tribute to the work of so many Members of the Lords who take their role seriously, bring expertise and pay attention to the job that they <span id="370WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="370WH"></span>are there to do. However, as the hon. Member for Stroud has pointed out, there has been a huge failure in the functioning of the House of Lords because, effectively, the will of a few of its Members has overridden the will of the House of Commons. That cannot be right, so we desperately need reform. I welcome the proposal from the hon. Member for Stroud of a national commission on reform of the House of Lords. To address a point raised by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), I should say that I would strongly favour the inclusion of a citizen’s assembly as part of that process. I fundamentally believe that a representative sample of the British people, representing all demographics and engaging in the detail and questioning of how we construct our political system, so that the people’s voice is heard, must be a fundamental part of any reform process. We cannot continue as we are—with an undemocratic, unrepresentative, untransparent second Chamber. We must have reform.
Constituents in North Herefordshire and across the country want an end to the current postcode lottery in access to adult social care. The King’s Fund published a report on equal access just last week. Has the Minister read that report, and does she agree that social care needs to be locally delivered, but nationally funded?
I am afraid I still cannot find the updated impact assessment, either on the website, by email or on the table in this Committee Room. I would very much like to see the new information that the Minister referred to yesterday.
It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair today, Mr Twigg. I take completely the opposite position from the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire in almost every respect. I am going to speak against clause 18 and its inclusion in the Bill, and I am going to oppose the Government amendments that would put further tests on parent-child relationships and parental involvement for refugees. I will also be opposing the Conservative amendments, which would put even tighter constraints on family life. I am here to defend our article 8 protections—I say “our”, because I believe it is really important that we set laws for refugees and asylum seekers that we would happily be subject to ourselves. That is absolutely at the core of the universal nature of human rights and the international agreements we have made to respect human rights around the world in the way that we would want them to be respected should we be in the horrible position of needing to claim asylum. Article 8 protects the right to family life specifically for us under the European convention on human rights. Although it is not absolute, it requires any state interference <span id="221" class="column-number" data-column-number="221"></span>in these rights to be lawful, necessary and proportionate. I do not agree with the Government when they say in their human rights memorandum that they are taking “proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims.” To me, paragraph 26 in the memorandum clearly admits that there is interference in our rights with this legislation. The Government are using the argument that they are taking “proportionate means” of “achieving the legitimate aims”, but the legitimate aims they lay out are: “maintaining effective immigration control, economic wellbeing and the prevention of disorder or crime.” I honestly do not see how clause 18, on family life and people making claims for reuniting their families and maintaining this essential human right protected under article 8, comes into those “proportionate means”. It is about reducing the ability of families to reunite. The impact assessment clearly says that many thousands of people who would be able to come here under current laws will be denied their claims. This is a reduction in human rights and it seriously needs looking at. I am neither equipped nor planning to add further arguments relating to Northern Ireland and the Windsor framework, but further conversations are needed about what is currently in the Bill, never mind what would happen if we withdrew from the ECHR. Everybody on the Committee wants a fair, robust and effective immigration system—one that works and upholds the rule of law and on in which people have confidence. Article 8 is not an abstract concept within all this; it is the law that decides whether a parent can stay in the country where their children live or whether a British child grows up with both parents. We do not want to see families separated or children separated from the parents who care for them, yet that is precisely the risk posed by clause 18, according to the Government’s own impact assessment.
I thank the hon. Member for his perspective. He must appreciate through his constituency casework, as I do, the general principle that article 8 claims need to be assessed on an individual basis. The Bill tries to codify and generalise things in ways that reduce the ability for anyone making decisions to look at the genuine family lives of those making the claims. Bad decisions can result from people misunderstanding different cultures, from unconscious biases and from all kinds of things like that. It is really important that we do not try to prescribe family life under state definitions. I will come on to talk more about that and about the toxic <span id="222" class="column-number" data-column-number="222"></span>rhetoric and the awful anecdotes, such as the examples we have heard from Ministers, which increase the toxicity of the debate. We can do much better than this Bill to reduce that. Clause 18 would replace the reality of family relationships with statutory presumptions. Families today come in many forms. We have single-parent households, blended families, grandparents raising children, and parents who do not live under the same roof through circumstance rather than choice. A family does not stop being a family because it fails a cohabitation test. I will always stand up against people trying to define what a normal family is. The Government’s stated objective is to confine family life “normally” to the core cohabiting family unit. A parent who does not live with their child must prove that the relationship is genuine and be judged on how often and how recently they have had contact, even where work, shared care or the immigration system itself has kept them apart.
I thank the hon. Member for making those points, but as we spoke about on Second Reading and in earlier debates on this topic, the muddle lies in the bad initial decision making in the Home Office. If it is not clear what kind of evidence people need to establish family life, it should be dealt with through better processes, better information and more support for legal representation. Codifying it, as is done in the Bill, is not the right way to deal with that.
I disagree wholly with that. During the speeches made by Opposition Members earlier in the debate, I kept thinking about the people who, due to natural disasters or wars, are left without core family, and have to find another family member who will take them in and take that place. There is an inherent danger in putting in place these limits, and in the amendments tabled by Conservative Members that would add rigid definitions. Given the stories about the different ways in which people have experienced refugee status over the years, which all hon. Members will have heard about in <span id="223" class="column-number" data-column-number="223"></span>casework and read about in memoirs and novels, the need for this change does not ring true. We should keep the system as it is now, where the reality of every single case needs to be looked at.
I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Member. We need to look at individual cases individually, as no two families are the same. We could imagine many circumstances for which we would want exceptions to this rule. The Government have rightly left caveats in the Bill, but the Opposition are arguing against them. Putting in rigid criteria on top of what is already in the Bill is absolutely the wrong way to go about addressing the issue. The best way to deal with any problems we might see is to do so in the initial decision making. Clause 18 says that financial or emotional dependence, illness, or living in a conflict zone alone is not enough to establish family life, yet families routinely support each other financially, emotionally and practically. Ministers say that those factors can still be weighed at the public interest stage, but once family life is ruled out, that stage is never reached. What will that mean in practice? As I have hinted at, the Government’s impact assessment says that their article 8 reforms will mean 14,000 more refusals every year. Even after appeals, around 11,700 people more will be refused each year. Under the law as it stands, those people would succeed. That shows that clause 18 does not simply clarify existing principles, but is intended to change outcomes at a substantial scale. The clause does diminish human rights for refugees in this country, as is admitted in the Government’s human rights memorandum. The way the clause is doing that is very troubling for two main reasons. First, it suggests that family relationships deserve protection only when they fit a model chosen by the state, but article 8 has never worked that way. The European Court has always looked at the substance of an individual relationship, not its form. Indeed, the very cases the Government cite require an individualised assessment of all the circumstances. As the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire said, we have been here before. The examples we are hearing from the Home Secretary and the Minister come as part of what is now a mini-tradition of Home Secretaries using exaggerated anecdotes to add to toxic rhetoric about migrants.
I thank the hon. Member for trying, but he is talking to a person who cannot read the universal declaration of human rights without welling up, and I will never give up making arguments of this sort.<span id="224" class="column-number" data-column-number="224"></span> Previous legislation on these matters, to which the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire referred, followed on directly from the infamous 2011 party conference speech of the then Home Secretary—now Baroness May of Maidenhead. She repeated false claims from newspapers that judges had permitted a man to escape deportation because he had a pet cat—something she says she did not make up. In reality, neither of the judges’ decisions in the case was based on the man having a pet, and the second and final decision was not based on any human rights consideration at all. It was straightforwardly based on a failure by the Home Office to apply its own policy. Amnesty International gave us more information in its written evidence: “This—together with the readiness of many political commentators to cherry pick often minor or irrelevant facts that are mentioned in tribunal or court judgments and present these as if the main or sole reason for a decision that may have little or nothing to do with them—continues to underpin criticism of Article 8 in immigration-related decision-making. That criticism is plainly misinformed, often careless and, in some cases, on its face, clearly ill-intended—including out of dogmatic hostility to the ECHR and other political motivations.” On Second Reading of the Bill, the current Home Secretary summarised an unnamed case. She said: “In 2025, an Albanian man jailed for growing cannabis escaped deportation not because he had any right to be here, but because it was deemed unduly harsh on his partner to deport him. She was not his wife or life partner—instead, this relationship began only after a deportation order had been served. Why was the deportation deemed to be unduly harsh? The partner spoke no Albanian and had never visited the country before.”<span id="vol789_col675" class="cross-reference" data-house-id="1" data-column-number="675" data-volume-number="789" data-external-id="EB75D38E-6943-461F-BEF4-8664C19ECA0E">—[<em>Official Report</em>, 13 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 675.]</span>
Yes, I will respond to that shortly with some data. To return to the anecdote from the current Home Secretary, Amnesty again corrects the record: “A key error in this summary is the statement that the relevant relationship had only begun after a deportation order had been served. That is not correct. The judge’s decision makes clear that it began significantly before the order. Of especial relevance was that the notice that such an order might be made was served in December 2019, but no order was then made for more than four years. By the time it was made in January 2024, the relationship had developed over a relatively lengthy period.” The Home Secretary mentioned the criminal conviction. Amnesty also corrects that information. It says that he was jailed for four months for a relatively minor offence, and was now “working lawfully and supporting himself.” It also says: “There was no suggestion of any risk of reoffending. His partner, who had no connection and had never been to Albania, was working and providing daily support to her sister and mother. Whatever may have been the position in 2019 was clearly not the position in 2024; and the relevant facts were clearly not adequately presented in what had been reported or at Second Reading.”<span id="225" class="column-number" data-column-number="225"></span>
I have said that, based on my own casework, my experience of the Home Office’s errors, and the cases that I have seen, I would like to see investment in Home Office decision making to make it better in the first place. That would be the best way to deal with this issue, particularly when more than half of appeals are being approved.
It is pretty clear that I think the Bill is a result of the Government responding to toxic rhetoric coming from other parties, and that it is an attempt to be seen to be doing something.
I will finish my point. In an evidence session, we challenged the National Crime Agency on the roots of the organised crime that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes mentions, which is doing huge harm. I will not argue that the small boats system is the best way to bring people to this country. Small boat numbers started to grow the moment safe routes were closed. We need safe routes, and that is the approach the Government could take to reduce small boat crossings. The law that protects our rights does not need to be undermined. I would absolutely argue that.
I am happy to clarify that I am talking primarily about Reform UK. That party is not represented on this Committee and can answer for itself in other ways, but it has, until recently, been taking votes from the Government on the right. I am happy to come back in future sittings with further examples of anecdotes being used instead of evidence. I chose to highlight two examples of Home Secretaries doing that, because the Minister is here to represent a Home Secretary.
This is turning into a very broad debate, but I give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West.
Much appreciated, Mr Twigg. I would say that the best way to stand up to toxic rhetoric is to stand up to it. We are familiar with the concept of the Overton window, and I am distressed that a Labour Government have been moving in this direction through their immigration policies. As I said at the beginning of my speech in the previous debate, the Government ought not to bring forward this Bill or row back on other civil liberties and human rights legislation—that would be the right thing to do. I am a lone voice on this Committee, but that cannot be right when we know that people around the country want migrants to be welcomed and want to see more unity, inclusion and social cohesion. The way to build that is not to hear the argument about how article 8 and the ECHR need to go and then do a little bit of that. The answer is to stand up to the rhetoric and build a better country.
One more time, then I will press on to the end of my speech.
I do not concede that we are taking in too many refugees. As I said at the beginning, we have an international obligation to take our fair share of people <span id="227" class="column-number" data-column-number="227"></span>seeking asylum, because of all the causes around the world that the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier—he left out climate change, but I will forgive him that. There are many, many reasons why we ought to take a humane approach to asylum. Some Government Back Benchers talked earlier about safe routes. There have been good schemes, aimed at particular conflicts in particular countries, and I hope the Government will continue to bring in more such schemes, but it is not good enough to cherry-pick particular conflicts or the kinds of refugees that we find acceptable. The volume of Ukrainian refugees has been absolutely huge, and has not caused social cohesion problems. We can make that work for many other countries as well, but the volumes in other schemes have always been too low. We need a universal framework of law that will work for all kinds of refugees.
Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any. I really think that the current law needs to be administered better, and that we need better decision making, more humanity in all of this, and more support for people to get good decisions made the first time. I would be very happy to receive from the Government any clear evidence of abusive claims under the current law that does not rely on anecdote, but I am absolutely sure that, in clause 18, the Government are seeking to prevent people who would currently succeed from achieving asylum in this country and from being reunited with their families. Let me move on to more things that the Government have said. The Government tell us that clause 18 is consistent with Strasbourg case law, and they even cite the cases, but, as other hon. Members have mentioned, they cannot have it both ways. If the clause simply restates the law, it is unnecessary. The Government’s impact assessment says that they expect grants to be cut by a third by those reforms. If the clause goes further, it risks putting the country in breach of the convention and inviting years of litigation. Either way, the clause does not deliver the clarity that Ministers promise, and I think that Opposition Members are united on that today. I believe that a fair immigration system should tackle abuse while protecting genuine family life, and that it should put the best interests of children first and reflect the reality of modern families. Clause 18 does neither. It risks real hardship for genuine families, with little evidence that it will achieve anything else. I urge the Government to think again. We can maintain effective immigration control without using this clause to break up thousands of families. We can protect our borders without sacrificing the fundamental British values of compassion and fairness. For those reasons, I ask the Committee to agree that clause 18 should not stand part of the Bill.
<em>rose</em><em>—</em>
<Question HRSContentId="{12A330C1-1532-4A59-88AF-E8146689C47C}">2. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{1CAC1AD1-7792-41F8-AB2F-E10B1273D82E}">What assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the withdrawal of UK Research and Innovation funding for Jodrell Bank observatory from 2028.</QuestionText> </Question>
Funding for the e-MERLIN radio telescope network is due to end in 2028, putting Jodrell Bank’s future at risk. People across Gorton and Denton have made clear to me the vital role the observatory plays in opening science up to people of all ages. Many of us went there on school trips as kids. The Prime Minister assured us that his Government will find a funding solution, so will the Secretary of State explain how the Government intend to honour that heartfelt commitment and secure Jodrell Bank’s long-term future as an active sovereign scientific facility?
The Minister knows, because I wrote to him the day after this latest SFI shambles, that farmers in North Herefordshire are livid about the problem. Farmers in Ocle Pychard, Pudleston, Linley Green, Kimbolton, Dilwyn and more have all written to tell me that they are not only hopping mad; they are distressed and depressed at the devastating impact that this situation is having on their livelihoods and the prospect of them continuing to run their farms. Will the Minister recognise that farmers need to hear “sorry”? They need support, sustainability and certainty, not a lottery of fingers on buzzers. Fundamentally, they need direct answers to the following questions. Why is there less money available under the scheme than there was previously? Why did the Government not learn the lessons from the failure last year? And what are they going to do to genuinely own the problem?
Last week I was contacted by a constituent who faces a £300 a month shortfall between her rent and her local housing allowance. She is deeply concerned about the rent arrears and the risk of her and her family being forced into homelessness. That situation is affecting people across the country. On the very same day, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report showing how rent controls could reduce the cost to the Exchequer of the unfreezing of local housing allowance by more than a billion pounds by 2030-31. Can we have a debate in Government time about the urgent need to unfreeze local housing allowance and to institute rent controls so that we can avoid the risk of homelessness and the devastating impact, worry and distress that it is causing to so many of our constituents?
I welcome the statement from the Minister, as I am sure will many people in North Herefordshire—people who draw on care and people who provide care, both paid and unpaid. Does the Minister agree that we need to end the lottery of care—the postcode lottery of care being provided in different ways in different places, the life lottery of people’s access to care being partly determined by their circumstances, and the lottery of whether someone ends up having catastrophic care costs at the end of their life and potentially losing their life savings? Can we agree that we need to ensure that care is locally provided but nationally funded, and will she lobby her colleague the Chancellor to include fair taxation of wealth in the mechanisms considered to fund that?
I beg to move amendment 64, in clause 1, page 2, leave out lines 1 to 5 and insert— “(5) In the exercise of its functions, the IIAA must— (a) be accessible, fair and independent, (b) handle its cases quickly and efficiently.” <em>This amendment would remove the requirement for the IIAA to “aim to” operate fairly and independently and handle cases quickly and efficiently, so that the IIAA instead has a duty to so act. It would also remove the requirement for the IIAA to have regard to the public interest.</em>
It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I am moving amendment 64, to make fairness and efficiency duties of the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority. I should add that in this group I also support amendments 48 and 49, tabled by my Lib Dem colleagues, I oppose amendment 87 tabled by my Conservative colleagues and I support the Lib Dems’ new clause 12. My amendment would impose on the IIAA a duty to operate fairly and independently and to handle cases quickly and efficiently. The Bill only imposes an obligation on the IIAA to aim to do those things. The amendment also removes the requirement for the IIAA to operate as part of the immigration system. The Independent Immigration Appeals Authority will be a body that is independent in name; the reality, however, will be much murkier and more ambiguous. The Home Secretary will personally appoint senior figures in the IIAA, including its chair, and a Home Secretary appointee will be responsible for appointing adjudicators who make appeals decisions. The effect of the Bill is to make asylum decision making less independent, <span id="93" class="column-number" data-column-number="93"></span>less fair and less expert. It brings asylum appeals under greater political control, putting at risk people’s basic human right not to be persecuted for who they are. The major driver of the appeals backlog is the poor quality of Home Office asylum decisions, not tribunal judges. The Refugee Council has shown that about two thirds of Home Office asylum decisions that are challenged are overturned, either by the tribunals or by the Home Office itself. My preference, therefore, is for the Government to scrap all of part 1 of the Bill and get back to the day job of making good asylum decisions. If part 1 does go ahead, however—I will debate later whether that should happen—it should contain safeguards for basic standards of independence and fairness. The amendment deals with two ways in which the Bill tries unfairly to align the IIAA with the Home Office’s policy priorities, rather than the requirements of justice and fairness. First, clause 1(5) states only that “the IIAA must…aim to be accessible, fair and independent”— not that it must be independent, fair and accessible in practice, but merely that it must aim to be so. By contrast, under existing rules for tribunals, there is a duty, an overriding objective on tribunals, to deal with cases fairly and justly. That is not an aim, but a requirement. As such, subsection (5) is a watering down, a weakening and an undermining of the independence of asylum appeals. My amendment would make it a legal duty for the IIAA to be independent, fair and accessible, as it is for tribunals, and not merely an aim. Secondly, the attempt to draw asylum appeals into the Home Office’s sphere of influence is seen even more clearly in the fact that subsection (5) requires the IIAA to prioritise “in particular…the fact that the IIAA operates as a key part of the immigration…system.” That, I think, is an unambiguous push to align the IIAA not with the requirements of justice and fairness, but with Home Office policy priorities. My amendment would therefore remove any risk that the IIAA will be pressured into aligning with the Home Office’s immigration policy priorities, and let the IIAA be what it is meant to be: a quasi-judicial body for deciding appeals fairly and independently. Ultimately, without my amendment, the IIAA will be a body with a conflict of interest at its heart: a requirement to aim to be independent and fair, but also a priority to view itself as part of immigration control. If the Government are sincere about creating a body that can deal with cases independently and fairly, without interference from the Home Office, the IIAA’s duty to operate independently and fairly should be more than an aim; it should be a requirement, just as it is for tribunals. Moreover, there should be no pressure on the IIAA to align with the Home Office’s political vision of immigration control, whoever is in charge of the Home Office. The amendment would create that safety against the priorities of future Governments, as well as this one, being able to put political pressure on the IIAA. The amendment would put all that beyond doubt. It gives the IIAA the best chance of being truly independent and fair. I will seek a Division on this amendment.
I am not convinced by anything I have heard from the Minister. She talked about my amendments not allowing flexibility, but let us be clear what she has said: she is asking for flexibility in fairness, but not flexibility in the political definition of public interest. The risk to human rights here is huge. Let us not forget that these are life and death decisions for people who are among the most vulnerable in the world. It is clear from the data that the backlog is being driven by the fact the Home Office is deciding to refuse more cases, and the risk that those decisions are bad ones is also pretty clear; we see the frequency with which they are overturned, or the Home Office’s objections are withdrawn, when they go to the current tribunal. We know that bad decisions can be driven by a target-based culture. We saw that in the Windrush lessons learned review, which said that there was a target-dominated work environment and low-quality decision making. Those things go hand in hand, and we will create a hugely dangerous risk by putting the IIAA together with these objectives right at the heart of what it does. We risk doing Windrush again; we risk huge injustice; we risk huge costs for the Government in compensating people who have been subject to enormous detriment. This would be a really simple thing to fix at this stage. I will not withdraw my amendment, but will press it to a Division. <em>Question proposed,</em> That the amendment be made.
I beg to move amendment 65, in clause 1, page 2, leave out lines 11 to 14. <em>This amendment would remove the provision which prevents individuals from being able to initiate judicial review proceedings against decisions made by the IIAA.</em>
<strong> </strong>Amendment 65 to clause 1 would allow judicial review of decisions. It would remove the provision in the Bill that excludes all judicial review of IIAA <span id="103" class="column-number" data-column-number="103"></span>appeal decisions. Clause 1(8) is a so-called ouster clause, as the explanatory notes confirm. It is designed to immunise the IIAA’s appeal decisions from judicial review in the High Court. The purpose of the amendment is to remove the Government’s attempt to undermine the rule of law. There will be two ways to challenge an IIAA appeal decision in the Bill as it stands. The first is that the IIAA can review its own decisions, under clause 6, and the second is that the upper tribunal can hear an appeal based only on a point of law, under clause 7. I hope we can agree that judicial review is a mechanism of fundamental constitutional importance and therefore should be restricted in only very limited circumstances. The Ministry of Justice has referred to judicial review as “the rule of law in action”. It ensures that public bodies act only in accordance with their legal powers and with respect for our human rights. The Home Office’s wish for faster and cheaper appeals does not come above the rule of law. Ousting judicial review is unnecessary and disproportionate. Where there is a suitable alternative remedy, such as an appeal to the upper tribunal like the one for which the Bill provides, the High Court will normally refuse permission for a judicial review anyway. That is because the High Court considers that the alternative remedy will protect the rule of law. If the High Court considers that the upper tribunal appeal in clause 7 is sufficient, there will rarely be judicial review cases. Retaining the claimant’s ability to apply for judicial review would simply mean that the High Court could grant permission in residual cases where it believed that an upper tribunal appeal would not be an effective alternative remedy. Clause 1(8) attempts to remove that residual right entirely. It is a rare absolute ouster clause, which does not permit judicial review of an IIAA appeal’s decision in any circumstances. Even the previous Conservative Government, when creating an ouster clause in section 1 of the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, retained access to judicial review in some circumstances. Clause 1 of this Bill is constitutionally exceptional, and I would like the Minister to explain why this absolute exclusion from justice is deemed to be okay for those seeking asylum, when even the previous Government would not apply it to unnaturalised citizens.
I appreciate that, and I have laid out the possible alternative remedies, but judicial review is an essential backstop. I do not see why the Government are trying to remove it. This is constitutionally exceptional and I want the Minister to explain why it is okay.<span id="104" class="column-number" data-column-number="104"></span> This measure will not only undermine the rule of law; it will inevitably provoke litigation in the courts about how this ouster clause should be interpreted and effected. It is concerning that the Government want the IIAA, which is a novel—experimental, even—non-expert body institutionally close to the Home Office, making life or death appeal decisions, to be made completely immune from judicial review at the outset. It demonstrates the Government’s continuing and concerning prioritisation of speed over the rule of law and justice, which we have seen in other Bills. In those circumstances, my amendment is completely necessary. It would ensure that judicial review remained available in those cases where the High Court believed it was necessary. I hope that all Members will support it.
I appreciate the hon. Member’s laying out the process, but can he honestly say that, if he were subjected to any area of justice, he would accept those arguments and the process for taking away his right to appeal twice, which the amendment would effect? Does he believe that that genuinely represents justice without fear or favour?
On a point of clarification, is it not correct that under clause 7 the upper tribunal can hear an appeal only based on a point of law? Will the Minister comment on the way that challenging the processes or the administration of someone’s claim could therefore not be taken to the upper tribunal? Is she removing that safeguard? I remain concerned that the complexity of the law and the lack, often, of legal representation, as well as the difficulties that we all see in our casework of people claiming asylum, dealing with the Home Office’s processes and making their way through all this, mean that quite often there are process problems that ought to be challenged, and that this has been denied to people at the upper tribunal.
I will speak to why clause 1 and schedule 1 should not form part of the Bill. Although I will not speak to every clause, all these reasons equally apply to the rest of part 1, which deals with the creation and implementation of the IIAA. It is a real shame that this policy has not yet become another U-turn from this Administration. I compare this Bill with the Courts and Tribunals Bill, particularly how adjustments were made following feedback from the legal profession and human rights experts on the establishment of truncated legal process and rights, which was one of the Bill’s most misconceived parts. After the Government pressed on with those plans during the Bill Committee, on which I also sat, today it is being debated on Report without several of the clauses that would have put jury trials out of reach for far too many offences. Although they were quite rightly not selected, I tabled amendments to this Bill that would have removed part 1, which creates the independent immigration appeals authority and all its workings, and I look forward to seeing such proposals also being removed before its Report stage. The Government said that clause 1 and the rest of part 1 are needed to clear a backlog of more than 150,000 appeals, which currently take an average of over 60 weeks to decide. That backlog is real, and it is important that actions are taken to clear it, but part 1 <span id="111" class="column-number" data-column-number="111"></span>misconceives the issues. Evidence shows that delays are driven by poor initial Home Office decisions and a severe shortage of legal aid, but part 1 addresses neither. Instead, the Bill would replace a working, independent judicial tribunal with a costly body that risks being ineffective and lacks independence and fairness. Above all, creating unfair processes and further adding to a hostile environment for asylum will not help stop the boats. In its written evidence, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called for “a comprehensive strategy addressing the drivers of irregular movement, expanding safe, regular pathways, strengthening international responsibility-sharing, and enhancing practical cooperation with European and other partner States.” In oral evidence, the Government’s own National Crime Agency had no analysis or explanation about the real drivers of small boat crossings, being concerned only with the Government’s approach of layering an even harsher deterrence and enforcement regime on to the real causes. It is those real causes that need attention. I want the Government to listen on this issue, and that depends on Ministers hearing the arguments—that is what this Committee is for. I will be here throughout the Committee to highlight the points made by experts on the needs and real lives of those seeking asylum. They are talking about the difficulties they face in gaining a hearing for their case or in dealing with Home Office processes. In particular—this is something we all know as MPs, because we try to help constituents navigate this system in our casework—they talk about how poor the decision making in the Home Office is, and how the Bill does nothing to improve it. I want to bring some evidence from Brighton, given by one of a large number of charities that are providing direct support to refugees, as befits a city of sanctuary. The organisation One Church, which does a lot of work in this area, told me: “The impact of UK immigration policies for the past 15 years has at times crippled our ability to do business and operate a charity focussed (ironically) on marginalised people across Sussex. The escalating cost of filing for visas, the precarity and punitive nature of asylum claims and other proceedings, and the emotional devastation when facing all-too-common Home Office errors have all contributed to outcomes including business costs we can’t afford, charitable work that we’ve had to stop or rein in, and full-on mental health breakdowns that rupture communities and cost incalculably more in long-term complications.” One Church gave me several examples, but here is one: “An asylum seeker from Zimbabwe…was unable to earn income or work a job for more than eight years—even as he also was barred from public funds—while his own appeals went through the Home Office system, requiring the community to house him for free and support his basic living needs for many years. He ultimately won his case as well, including a public apology from a judge, but struggled to cope with the effects of such a long stint in a precarious and dependent position. This entire cascade of events was due to an unclear Home Office deadline that meant his paperwork was alleged to have been filed less than 24 hours late.”
I disagree. I think that the Government are focusing on the wrong part of the system here. As MPs, we are all aware of the processes involved in the initial decision making of the Home Office. The number of similar messes that my caseworkers have had to try to clear up—we often succeed—is absolutely huge, so not to focus on getting that initial decision making right the first time, and instead for the Bill simply to take away people’s rights of appeal, is absolutely the wrong approach. With all such problems, the people who need asylum also need real knowledge of their rights and real access to people who can support their claims, but all that is really hard to get. Late claims and appeals with new information, when people finally get the right support and legal guidance about the grounds on which they should be making their claim, are all necessary to protect asylum rights. Therefore, judicial processes should not be downgraded and truncated, and people who are not legally qualified should not be hearing those cases.
As I am sure the hon. Member will have imagined, I cannot agree, given the number of cases overturned. We have had some data from the Minister in her letter of 6 October, and 44% of human rights appeals are being allowed. Those are appeals where the initial decision was wrong. Emphasis needs to be on clearer processes, in which people can truly participate and get their information to the Home Office the first time, with the Home Office not losing it or reading it mistakenly, or any of the other problems. That is so important. These changes to the judicial process are the wrong solution to the wrong diagnosis, as with those in the Courts and Tribunals Bill.