Damian
Green: I want to follow up on that briefly. As the
Minister rightly said in response to the important point raised by the
hon. Member for Rochdale, it is not the child’s fault. Clearly,
under the Bill and the general provisions, we would not want children
themselves to suffer in any way. Would he take this opportunity to let
us know the state of play with funding for local authorities that are
particularly affected by being in charge of unaccompanied minors who
find themselves in this
country? The
Minister will be aware that responsibility falls disproportionately on
a small number of local authorities, notably Kent and Hillingdon but
others as well. He will also be aware, as I am, that, to put it
crudely, they thought that a settlement had been reached about a year
ago but it seems to be not quite falling apart but fragile at best.
This might be an opportune moment for him to reassure the Committee
and, through the Committee, the local authorities concerned about the
state of
play.
Mr.
Woolas: I hope you will allow me, Miss Begg, briefly to
answer that question. It is related to the clause.
Arrangements
are made through the Local Government Association committee, which is
helpful and pragmatic. The directors and councillors are very helpful.
My answer to the latest parliamentary question on the matter stated
that we were satisfied with the
arrangements. I
know that Hillingdon in particular has had some concerns. The hon.
Gentleman will have seen the recent press reports. I am not denying the
importance of the reports, but they relate to a period that was covered
by the old agreement. There is a new agreement for the period covering
the last financial year and this
one. We
have designated officials who liaise with the key authorities. For the
benefit of the hon. Gentleman and the Committee, I will check whether
there is an outstanding problem. I do not believe that there is, but,
if there is, we clearly have an obligation to reach an
agreement.
Damian
Green: I am grateful for that reassurance, and the
councils involved will be as well. Could the Minister write to me with
the results of his check? That would be
helpful.
Mr.
Woolas: Yes, of course I will do that. We had meetings
with Hillingdon prior to the press coverage. To be fair to
Hillingdon—I praise its staff and their
professionalism—the implication of the press report was not
actually the case, as the hon. Gentleman knows. The incidents, serious
though they were, related to the previous period. I will write to
him. Question
put and agreed to.
Clause
34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clauses
35 to 37 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
38Interpretation Amendment
made: 29, in
clause 38, page 28, line 16, at
end
insert— ‘“Community
law” means— (a)
all the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and restrictions from
time to time created or arising by or under the Community Treaties,
and (b) all the remedies and
procedures from time to time provided for by or under the Community
Treaties, as
in accordance with the Community Treaties are without further enactment
to be given legal effect or used in the United
Kingdom;’.—(Mr.
Woolas.) This
amendment provides a definition of “Community law” for
the purposes of Part 1, which is a term used in amendments 19, 22 and
26. Clause
38, as amended, ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
39Exceptions
to application of this
Part Damian
Green (Ashford) (Con): I beg to move amendment 43, in
clause 39, page 29, line 7, after
‘person’, insert
‘who came to the UK under the
Highly Skilled Migrants Programme’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment 44, in
clause 39, page 29, line 9, after
‘person’,
insert ‘who came to the
UK under the Highly Skilled Migrants
Programme’.
Damian
Green: We now move on to a different and—as I am
sure the Minister and the Committee accept—much more contentious
part of the Bill, within which this is probably the most contentious
clause. I know that it is always a crude measure of how dangerous and
damaging a piece of legislation is, but judging by the letters and
e-mails that I and other colleagues on the Committee have received over
the past couple of days, this is certainly one of the most difficult
parts of the Bill. Indeed, that is partly because we owe the existence
of the clause to the debates and votes in another place.
The clause as
it stands, of course, does not reflect what the Government want to
happen. The Government have been resisting any kind of protection
against the retrospective application of their new proposals on
citizenship; indeed, they have tabled an amendment that would delete
the clause. I understand that that amendment has not been selected for
procedural reasons. At the moment, I assume that the Government still
do not want the clause to survive and that they are seeking to return
the position to what it was when the original Bill was introduced in
the House of Lords. I assume that the Minister will speak to his
amendments.
Mr.
Woolas: It would help the Committee in its proceedings if
I indicated that although it is our intent to remove the existing
clause 39, it is also our intent to meet the argument that has been
advanced at a later stage in the proceedings on the Bill. I will go on
to explain our thinking in relation to that at the
appropriate
time.
Damian
Green: I am grateful to the Minister for making that clear
at this stage. He will be aware of the controversy to which I have just
referred and that many people observing the debate will have had some
hope restored. It goes without saying, of course, that we have not yet
seen the details of the Government’s proposals. Clearly,
everyone involved will reserve their position until they know what the
Government are proposing. I am grateful that he has accepted the logic
of his own position. I confess that I was slightly bemused when I saw
that the Government’s amendment had been tabled, because on
Second Reading he
said: “The
hon. Member for Ashford fairly raised a point relating to the highly
skilled migrants scheme; I concede that point, the court has ruled, and
we will of course obey.”—[Official Report, 2 June
2009; Vol. 493, c.
236.] Having
heard those welcome words on Second Reading, as I say, I was surprised
that the Minister had taken the action he
had.
Mr.
Woolas: The hon. Gentleman is accurately reflecting the
position. It might help the Committee and the debate if I were to say
that, on advice from my lawyers, the existing wording of clause 39 does
not do what was intended. The Government would have tried to change the
clause in any event, but in light of the position that he has just
outlined, I wish to come back the
matter.
9.30
am
Damian
Green: I am grateful for that. This will, in some ways, be
a procedurally difficult debate because it would clearly be sensible
for the Minister to make a speech, to which I could then respond. The
procedures, within which we have to operate, mean that I shall make a
speech first and then the Minister will respond, despite the fact that
he clearly has things to say that would set the rest of the debate in
context. However, off the top of my head, I am not conscious of the
procedural device that we could use—other than the
world’s longest ever intervention—to conduct the debate
more rationally.
Mr.
Woolas: I could speak in support of your
amendment.
Damian
Green: Whatever. In a sense, I am, unusually, more
interested to hear what the Minister has to say than what I have to
say. I hope that he does not take that as a
precedent. The
Government will introduce some new proposals and I am obviously not
aware of the level of detail they will contain, although I do not
suppose that the Minister will lay out a new clause. Nevertheless, it
is worth the Committee considering why the issue has raised such heat
and why it is so important. The root of the Government’s
worry—and something that infuses the whole of this part of the
Bill—is that grants of citizenship are at an all-time high in
this country. The number of people granted British citizenship in the
UK increased by 7 per cent. in 2007 to 164,635, which is
straightforwardly the highest ever number in our country’s
history. To put that in some kind of perspective, 10 years earlier, in
1997, only 37,010 people were granted citizenship. That is a
significant quantum of
increase. The
Minister himself, last December, announced one of his various
crackdowns. He said that migrants would have to earn the right to
benefits under new citizenship rules. That was the first time the
Government had floated the idea, which we will come to in later
clauses, of probationary citizenship before earning a British passport.
My understanding of the context of the clause is that we are moving
away from the current three-stage naturalisation process. That process
comprises a period of temporary leave with restricted access to
benefits and services, then a definite leave to remain, during which
that access is no longer restricted, and finally British citizenship.
That has been the system for the past few decades. I understand that
the Government’s proposals are for a new three-stage process,
which will comprise, first, a period of temporary leave much the same
as now, with restricted access to services and benefits. However, there
will then be another period of temporary leave, which the Government
are calling probationary citizenship.
The Minister
knows that that nomenclature was a subject of some controversy in the
Lords and beyond. It was felt that the word “probation”
gave the wrong flavour to those who are, by and large, working hard and
contributing to our society. At some stage somebody might come up with
a better name. Finally, after that probationary citizenship period,
there is, again, the granting of British citizenship, which gives
permanent residence and the access to services and benefits that we all
enjoy as British citizens.
Given the
figures I have mentioned, I can see why the Government seek to change
the procedure and, in some ways, make it more difficult. A new British
passport is granted every five minutes, and I share the
Minister’s concern that everyone who wants to settle here should
be enjoined to play a positive role in the life of this country. The
elaborate new procedure that the clause helps to set up might not be
the ideal way of doing that. There is a great danger of introducing new
layers of bureaucracy. I agree with the Minister that British
citizenship is a privilege and not necessarily a right, but significant
changes could be made that would more effectively achieve what he
wants.
The
citizenship test is clearly inadequate for the Minister’s
purpose. It is not a real test of knowledge or of commitment to this
country. Being able to take the test again and again until you pass it,
does not necessarily achieve a great purpose. I suspect that the
Minister shares my view of how we need to tighten up marriage
loopholes. To some extent, that frames the debate. It is why successive
Ministers who have held his position have wanted to put up hurdles to
make it more difficult to progress to citizenship. As a result, the
House of Lords took out the Government’s original proposal, and
it now seems that the Minister will remove its clause and put in a new
and better one. At some stage soon we will hear what he has to
say. The
purpose of our amendments 43 and 44 is to narrow the debate slightly to
those areas where the Government have been embarrassed in the courts:
they have been taken to court and have lost. We would all agree that
this country benefits from highly skilled migrants, and the amendments
are specifically about such migrants. The root of our objections to the
Government’s original proposal—objections that were
carried through the Lords by my noble Friend Baroness Hanham—was
that highly skilled people who had been here a number of years and
wanted to stay, and who were working towards citizenship, found the
rules changed from under them, retrospectively, in their view. The
rules were changed halfway through the game, which they thought unfair,
and I agree with them. I feel particularly strongly for those who have
come to the end of the process. It is not as though they have just
arrived in this country. As a society, we still have to decide on
them. Many
of the people most hurt by the original proposal have been in this
country for a number of years and have been contributing both to our
economy and our society. Changing the rules to make life more difficult
for them seems perverse as well as unfair. In many ways, they are
precisely the people we should be encouraging to come to this country,
although, as the Minister will be aware, Conservative Members believe
that the sheer numbers and the scale of change induced in our country
by immigration over the past 10 years have been too great and have
caused unnecessary stresses and strains. I am conscious that the
Minister himself sympathises with that view, which is why he says and
does lots of the things that he says and does in his current
post. Nevertheless,
in the modern world there is clearly a need for any advanced economy
that wants to stay an advanced economy to attract not just its fair
share of the brightest and the best from around the world but
more than its fair share. We can use the many attractions that there are
in coming to this country to attract highly skilled migrants who will
help us to create the wealth of the future. As a result of that view,
which I cannot believe the Minister disagrees with, we have on
principle consistently opposed the retrospective elements of the
changes to the rules affecting highly skilled migrants to
Britain. In fact, as
long ago as 2007, I was one of those delivering a petition with 4,000
signatures to the then Prime Minister. The petition opposed the
Government’s original proposals to increase the qualifying
period for indefinite leave to remain from four to five years for
highly skilled migrants. As the Minister will be painfully aware, that
was a cause that did not restrict itself simply to handing in a
petition to Downing street or engaging Opposition parties. The
campaigners took the Government to court and won.
The Bill in
its original form sought to do exactly that—make changes to
indefinite leave to remain. A previous Bill sought to do similar things
with those who are close to completing their path to citizenship.
People who have made a commitment to the country are having that
commitment flung back in their faces. There is a moral aspect, but also
a practical aspect, because that sends a signal around the world. If
the highly skilled people around the world believe that this is not a
country that welcomes them, they will stop coming here. The more highly
skilled one is, the more marketable one is in an international context,
and the more choice one has about where to live for large parts of
one’s working
life. The
hon. Gentleman will be aware that, in such terms, we are competing not
just with other European economies, but particularly with other
English-speaking countries. Many of those people will have English as a
second, if not a first, language. Therefore, they can look to Britain,
Australia or America—to lots of prosperous, attractive countries
where they might want to live out their working lives. That is why we
tabled the amendment in the Lords. Our amendments seek to refine that
proposal to make it clear that we are talking about highly skilled
migrants.
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