Stephen Kinnock
MP for Aberafan Maesteg · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the shadow Secretary of State for her kind words and look forward to our exchanges across the Dispatch Box. I am ready to engage with her on getting the maximum benefits for the people of Wales.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady and look forward to working with her. My understanding is that there were challenges around the helicopter capability. Decisions were taken by Natural Resources Wales some time ago to change the way that the tendering for helicopter capability works. We certainly need to look at that.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. Like him, I pay tribute to all those involved in the collective and heroic response to the wildfires.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. Many of the ideas coming forward for devolving power right across our United Kingdom, beyond Cardiff Bay and Holyrood, are very exciting, and I look forward to exploring them with her.”
“Just to be clear, this is not about staying out of the issue; it is about respecting the devolution settlement, but being prepared to work constructively where we can in partnership with the Welsh Government. The hon.”
“I know about and welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s strong connections to Wales. I recognise the connectivity benefits that WSMR’s proposal could deliver, particularly for passengers in Wales and the west midlands.”
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“When will he adopt Labour’s plan to recruit 1,000 additional immigration enforcement officers to a new returns unit, so that we can have a system that is based on common sense—”
“The shambolic incompetence of this Government across every aspect of its disgraceful mismanagement of our country’s asylum system knows no bounds, but today I will highlight a particularly egregious example. We already knew that the number of removals of asylum seekers whose claims had been rejected had collapsed by 50% since Labour left office in 2010, but over the weekend it emerged that the Home Office had lost contact with an astonishing 85% of the 5,000 people who have been identified for removal to Rwanda. Where on earth are those 4,250 asylum seekers who have gone missing? Will the Home Secretary drop all the smoke and mirrors and acknowledge that the Rwanda plan is just an extortionately expensive and unworkable distraction?”
“What impact, if any, will the addition of these two countries to the section 80AA list have on outstanding asylum claims that predate the entry of these regulations into force?”
“Can the Minister tell us what assessment the Government have made of the agreement’s impact on the level of returns from the UK to Georgia, both in terms of the overall number of asylum-related returns and the percentage of failed asylum seekers who were returned, both before and after the agreement came into effect? Another significant area of uncertainty relates to whether the addition of any new countries, such as India and Georgia, to the section 80AA list will affect the decision-making process for claims that predate these regulations. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked the Home Office the entirely reasonable question of whether the inadmissibility rules will be applied to such claims retrospectively. The Committee received no answer to that question, which I must therefore put to the Minister today.”
“How does the Minister explain the still relatively low number of returns, particularly of failed asylum seekers, to India since the agreement with India came into effect? Secondly, does he recognise that the addition of India to the list of safe states in section 80AA will make it all the more important for the Governments of both countries to identify and address any barriers to such returns, if the intended effects of these regulations are to be seen in practice? If so, can he tell us what specific actions are being taken in this regard? With respect to Georgia, a bilateral agreement in the form of a treaty was laid before Parliament in February 2023. That agreement relates specifically to the readmission of persons residing without authorisation and is thus somewhat narrower in scope than the agreement with India.”
“If the guidance has not yet been published, would he give a clear indication of when the Department will do so? It should also be noted that what marks Georgia and India out from many other countries of origin for asylum seekers is the fact that, in both cases, the UK has a bilateral agreement on migration returns. A broad agreement with India on a range of migration-related issues, including the return of people “in an illegal situation” was announced in May 2021, and has thus been in place for some time. The impact of this agreement on the actual number of returns has been less than Ministers may have been hoping for. In the 12 months to September 2023, there were 4,710 asylum claims from Indian nationals. During the same period, however, the number of asylum-related returns was a paltry 302.”
“The Home Office currently takes a nuanced approach that recognises that, in spite of a relatively low grant rate for Georgian and Indian asylum seekers overall, there remain situations where discretion can, should and must be exercised for certain individuals. Following the entry into force of these regulations, it is important that Home Office decision makers are provided with updated guidance at the earliest possible opportunity to reflect the addition of those countries to the section 80AA list and, crucially, the kind of circumstances in which an exception to the requirement to declare claims inadmissible should be made. Can the Minister confirm whether or not such up-to-date guidance has been published by the Home Office for the decision makers?”
“As ever, a helpful report on these regulations by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee cites the Home Office’s own country policy and information notes as recognising, in the case of India, that there are risks: “Human rights abuses including rape, torture, and deaths in custody are reported to be widespread and conducted with impunity. Excessive force by security forces in areas of conflict are also reported, including extra-judicial killings, rape, torture, arbitrary detention, kidnappings and destruction of homes”. In Georgia, the relevant note recognises: “High-profile government opponents and managers of media channels opposed to the government may be subjected to…politically-motivated prosecution” and detention with a politically biased judiciary.”
“It follows that a general presumption against asylum claims from such individuals is a reasonable approach for the Government to take. However, there remains a significant minority of claims that are ultimately successful, particularly with respect to Georgia, where the grant rate has fluctuated between 15% and 30%. As such, it is important that Ministers make clear to decision makers in the Home Office the kind of circumstances in which it is likely to be considered appropriate for exceptions to be made to the otherwise automatic declaration of claims as inadmissible. As yet, this has not been made as clear as we would like.”
“Historically, during the time in which the UK was part of the EU, the designation of safe countries of origin applied mostly to other EU and European economic area member states. Those countries remain on the list, with the more recent addition of Albania, and with Georgia and India now marking the first significant expansion of that list beyond the EU and EEA. The Opposition are broadly supportive of these changes in principle, notwithstanding a few important questions. The Minister’s answers would be much appreciated. As he kindly explained, the context of these changes includes a recent increase in the number of asylum claims from nationals of those two countries. More often than not, these claims are rejected by the Home Office. For Indian nationals, the grant rate has not exceeded 10% in recent years.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. As the Minister has explained, these regulations mark another step toward implementation of the few parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 that have actually come into force since it received Royal Assent, the key sections on the duty to detain and remove asylum seekers arriving by small boat, among other provisions, having apparently been accepted as unworkable by the Government, at least for the time being—but, maybe that is a debate for another day. The current list of safe countries of origin from which it is expected that, in general, people will not have grounds for asylum in the UK is set out in section 80AA of the 2002 Act as amended by section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act.”
“Therefore, my final question is whether he can provide more detail on the impact on poorer migrants and on how the impact on those who will struggle to pay the IHS in combination with increased visa fees will be mitigated.”
“However, the provisions for lower paid or otherwise vulnerable migrants to request a waiver, or a full or partial refund of charges already paid, appear to be little used in practice, with less than 2% of those subject to the IHS being granted a waiver by the Home Office, according to the Government’s impact assessment. Visa application fees are set to increase sharply alongside these IHS increases, and there is still no mechanism to allow poorer migrants to spread those huge costs over, for example, monthly instalments. It is therefore incumbent on the Minister to provide assurances and reassurances to hon. Members, and indeed more broadly to our constituents, that the Government will take steps to ensure that the most vulnerable migrants are adequately protected from the threat of poverty or outright destitution.”
“The Government themselves acknowledge that risk in their own impact assessment, but they offer very little in the way of plans to mitigate any such impacts, or to reassure universities and employers that the actual effects of this order will be closely monitored by Ministers, with appropriate steps taken to mitigate any unintended consequences of which they may become aware in the coming months. Any light that the Minister could shed on those questions—specifically the potential impact and unintended consequences of these changes—would be gratefully received. On a more practical level, the Minister will no doubt be aware of the concerns raised by many people about aspects of the IHS that they see as inefficient or unfair. The Government’s ongoing commitment to exempting health and care workers from the charge is welcome.”
“However, it would be remiss of me not to ask questions of the Minister about what could be wide-ranging consequences of raising the IHS to the level set out in this order. The impact assessment acknowledges that the higher charges “could deter some potential migrants from applying to enter or remain in the UK.” However, there simply is not enough evidence for the Government to be able to produce reliable forecasts of how such effects will play out in practice. The Government have already been warned by some of our leading universities that they could face tuition fee losses in the hundreds of millions of pounds if, as they expect, the increasing costs of studying in the UK become prohibitive for many international students and academics, who may simply vote with their feet and choose to study elsewhere.”
“While Government revenues from the IHS have increased massively since its introduction—far in excess of increases in health spending, by the way—the intent of the policy seems to have shifted significantly. While the IHS has, to date, primarily served as a means of topping up health spending—according to Ministers—the increase provided for in this SI is explicitly linked to the Government’s commitments on public sector pay. To be clear, that amounts to a massive cross-subsidy from the Home Office to other Government Departments, with the IHS now raising money for pay increases across the public sector, including for police and prison officers, teachers and members of the armed forces, as well as doctors and nurses. Labour supports the planned pay rises for hard-working and hard-pressed public servants.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. The immigration health surcharge, or IHS, was introduced in April 2015, at which point it was set at £200 per year. The stated purpose of the policy was to “ensure that migrants make a proper financial contribution to the cost of their NHS care.” Well, we have come quite a long way since then. The level of the charge first rose from the initial £200 to £400 per year in 2019, and then to £624 in 2020. Now, thanks to this statutory instrument, the main rate is set to rise further still to £1,035 per year. That represents an increase of 66% from the current charge, and more than 400% compared with five years ago.”
“[Laughter.] Conservative Members do not like it, but the fact is that their plan is not working. They need to come clean over these costs. They need to clear this backlog. I urge Members from all parts of the House to support our Humble Address today so that we can begin the long road back to recovery.”
“Did they seriously think that they could pull the wool over the eyes of the British public? What an insult to the intelligence of the electorate. They should come clean to the British public, with a full breakdown of the 35,000 withdrawn claims: who are they; where are they; and are they simply reapplying, or are they drifting away into the underground economy never to be heard of again? Last summer, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) described that trend as an amnesty by the back door. Is he right? The Minister must come clean on these points. We need a serious plan. We need the end of these headline-grabbing antics. We need common sense, hard graft and international co-operation, as has been set out in Labour’s five-point plan for the past year.”
“Meanwhile, we see that: more than 100,000 asylum cases are unresolved, despite the deceitful nonsense the Prime Minister puts out on social media; nearly 400 hotels are being used for asylum seekers—a number that has gone up not down under this Prime Minister; and 56,000 asylum seekers are languishing in those hotels, costing the taxpayer a staggering £8 million per day. We need transparency on this. We need transparency around the issue of withdrawn claims. Astonishingly, they make up one third of the recently processed asylum claims that the Prime Minister has been boasting about clearing, yet they have not even been processed properly. As an exercise in the politics of smoke and mirrors, this is surely without parallel. Did the Prime Minister and Home Secretary seriously think that nobody would notice?”
“They should ‘fess up and reveal what the real costs are both in terms of what it will cost to fly each individual asylum seeker halfway around the world and what it will cost in terms of processing and related support. We know that it is at least £169,000 per asylum seeker, but can they confirm whether it is even higher—£200,000 or more, as was said earlier? What have they got to hide? Well, perhaps we know what they have to hide—that this Rwanda plan is unaffordable and unworkable. Even if flights take off, they will be about 1% of the 30,000 channel crosses at a maximum. That will not even scratch the surface of the people smugglers’ business model.”
“There has been plenty of pie in the sky, but not a single plane in the sky. I mentioned earlier the strong contributions from those on the Benches behind me. I was however struggling a bit to understand the logic of the Minister’s point about the information being requested around the costs of the Rwanda plan being somehow commercially sensitive. The Government were all too happy to reveal that they are forking out £500 million on paying the French police to puncture dinghies on the beaches of Calais. The permanent secretary told the Public Affairs Committee that the Rwanda- related costs would be revealed in the accounts in July. Why not just reveal them now? What are they afraid of? Well, they are clearly terrified of admitting that they are blowing £400 million of taxpayer money on this failing scheme.”
“Perhaps the most absurd aspect is that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary agree with the Labour position on this whole sorry mess—they are Rwanda sceptics and non-believers. Last week, it emerged that when he was Chancellor and during his leadership bid, the Prime Minister privately indicated that he had profound concern over the value for money and the workability of this hare-brained Rwanda scheme. “The deterrent won’t work”, he wrote. How extraordinary then that he is now staking his entire premiership on a scheme that he does not even believe in. How humiliating it must be for him to know that his Back Benchers are pushing him around. They are calling the shots. When all is said and done, what has the Tories’ farcical Rwanda fixation delivered? They have sent three Home Secretaries to Rwanda, but not a single asylum seeker.”
“It is crystal clear that the money being wasted on this fantasy—this fixation—in which Members on the Government Benches choose to indulge would be far better spent on proper investment in a cross-border police unit and a security partnership with Europol to go after the criminal gangs upstream, smash those gangs and stop the boats getting in the water in the first place. That is what the Labour party has spent the last year urging the Prime Minister to do and that is what we will do in Government, to help end this Tory small boats chaos. Yet the Prime Minister has instead chosen to bury his head in the sand and double down on failure. The Rwanda farce is so riddled with absurdity that it is difficult to know where to start.”
“I pay tribute to all colleagues who have taken the time to speak today, particularly the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), and my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali), for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks), who made excellent contributions to the debate.”
“After all, £400 million with absolutely nothing in return, no questions asked, really is a sweet deal—although never let it be said that the Government have failed to get any flights off to Rwanda, because they absolutely have. They have proudly flown not one, not two, but three Home Secretaries to Kigali. I suppose we could say that so far it is £130 million per Home Secretary, which I am sure the British people will see as an excellent use of their taxes.”
“Secondly, the Bill says that Rwanda is safe for refugees, but then also states that the Government might need to offer refuge to asylum seekers from—checks notes—Rwanda. Thirdly, the Bill is meant to be about preventing what the Government call “illegal migrants” from seeking sanctuary in the UK, but if one of those asylum seekers commits a crime in Rwanda, that person can be sent back to—checks notes again—the UK. Never mind Operation Save Big Dog. This Bill is Operation Dog’s Breakfast. The Rwanda scheme is not only unlawful; it is also unaffordable and unworkable. First, let us give credit where credit is due. The Rwandan Government have played a blinder on this one, and they are laughing all the way to the bank. They really did see this Prime Minister coming.”
“The Supreme Court judgment was his opportunity to stop flogging the dead horse that the Rwanda scheme has clearly become, but he has chosen not to take it. He is also not prepared to go with the full-fat option that some on the Government Benches are urging him to adopt. So, inevitably, his semi-skimmed formula satisfies no one, because, as everyone—from this side of the House to even the former Home Secretary —has said, it is destined to fail, both legally and in operational terms. The fundamental contradictions at the heart of the Bill are also quite astonishing. First, the Home Secretary told us from the Dispatch Box last week that it complied with international law, but the very first page confirms that he is actually not sure that it does.”
“It argues that black is white and white is black; that the grass is blue and the sky is green. In the spirit of this legislation, I might try to introduce a Bill that deems that Wales actually won the rugby world cup recently. Further still, the Rwandan Government are calling the shots. Having extracted £300 million from the British Government—today we think we heard £400 million—Mr Kagame is now instructing the Prime Minister not to do anything that might break international law. It really is quite extraordinary. How ironic that some on the Government Benches rail against our international legal obligations, yet seemed content to allow Kigali to dictate the terms of our asylum policies. So much for taking back control! The upshot of this fiasco is that the Prime Minister has gone for a fudge.”
“Yet here we are 18 months, two Prime Ministers, two Home Secretaries and three immigration Ministers later, and those on the Conservative Benches are still shackled to a policy that was only ever designed to be a diversion from a scandal. True to form, the Rwanda scheme is still being deployed as a skin-saving operation, the only difference being that it is the current Prime Minister who is desperately trying to cling to power by burnishing his Faragiste credentials to keep the circling vultures at bay. It really is déjà vu all over again. I turn now to this new “Please, Please, Please Make Rwanda Safe Bill”, which is without doubt the most absurd piece of legislation I have ever seen. It does nothing at all to make Rwanda safe; it just asserts that Rwanda is safe and that our courts are not allowed to say otherwise.”
“Now we have my third opposite number, who has well and truly taken one for the team by agreeing to introduce this utterly absurd piece of legislation, a Bill that his predecessor described as “a further betrayal of Tory voters”. The deckchairs have been rearranged, but the Titanic is still steaming towards the iceberg. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Rwanda scheme is the story of its origin. Cast your mind back to April 2022, Madam Deputy Speaker. Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, and he was in the eye of the partygate storm, so he cooked up a cunning plan to rescue his premiership, which I believe became known as Operation Save Big Dog. And lo, the Rwanda scheme was born. Like every other scheme Mr Johnson has ever been associated with, it was extortionately expensive and doomed to fail.”
“When I began in this post two years ago, my first opposite number was fronting the Nationality and Borders Bill, which effectively handed each asylum seeker who crossed the channel a badge saying, “I am inadmissible for asylum” while making no provision for what practically could be done with those unprocessed claimants. They duly ended up in taxpayer-funded emergency hotels at the cost of £8 million a day. Next up was my second opposite number, with the Illegal Migration Bill. It was rushed through Parliament, yet not a single one of its core measures on detention and removal have been enacted. The Act is on the shelf, gathering dust.”
“It is very tempting to respond by taking a more conciliatory approach to this debate, but given the state of the legislation before us, and given everything that my mother stood for, I think she would be absolutely appalled that such a thought might ever cross my mind. So, let’s get stuck in, shall we? First, I thank the House for an excellent debate. I express gratitude in particular to my hon. Friends on the Labour Benches, who spoke with such passion, logic and conviction. I also of course welcome the latest immigration Minister to his post, the Minister for Illegal Migration. I note that the performance of his predecessor led the Prime Minister to conclude that the job was too big for one Conservative Member alone, so they cut the position in two. Well, the more the merrier, I say. Welcome one and all!”
“I rise to join the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), in supporting the reasoned amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. I start by sending my condolences to the friends and family of the asylum seeker who tragically died while on the Bibby Stockholm this morning. I thank all those across the House who have sent their condolences to me and my family over the past 10 days. We have been overwhelmed by the flood of tributes and messages, which have made us prouder than ever of what my mum was and all she achieved.”
“The reality is that the Prime Minister was not actually at the table at all; he was on the menu, being consumed by the warring factions in his party and devoured by his own weakness and lack of judgment. Our country simply cannot afford more of this chaos. We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis and our public services are crumbling, but we have a Conservative party that is at war with itself and completely incapable of governing. The good news is that the Prime Minister does have a way out of this mess: he can call a general election so that voters across this country can kick him and his shambolic Administration out of office and finally give our country the leadership that it needs and deserves.”
“Our reasoned amendment sets out why this Bill is a sham and what the Government should be doing instead, and I urge all Members across the House to get behind it. I trust that, in his concluding remarks, the Minister will confirm whether the Government will be accepting any significant amendments in Committee, because the House really deserves that clarity. The Conservative party is no longer a serious party at all. It is a rabble, an alphabet soup of factions and cabals. The former Home Secretary is constantly on manoeuvres and the former Immigration Minister is firing broadsides on a daily basis. We have a Prime Minister who is so desperate to save his own skin that he apparently invited an outfit called the New Conservatives to No. 10 for breakfast this morning.”
“The Labour party has therefore been steadfast in our opposition to this madness from the very outset. We are absolutely committed to stopping the Tory boats chaos, but we will never vote for a madcap gimmick that is unaffordable, unworkable and unlawful. We have constantly said that the Government need to redirect the money that is being squandered on this nonsense to a cross-border police unit, a new returns unit, and a security partnership with Europol that can stop the Tory boats chaos at source. We have also consistently called for the Government to speed up decision making and remove swiftly and safely the 30% of asylum seekers who fail to secure leave to remain. A small upfront investment in Labour’s plan would save the taxpayer an enormous £2 billion.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. He is right to suggest that the vast majority of people fleeing war and persecution end up in neighbouring countries in the region in which their plight is generated, and of course we need an overseas development programme that is focused and seeks, through enlightened self-interest, to ensure that we support those countries. We are constantly told by Conservative Members that the Rwanda scheme will act as a deterrent, but that claim simply does not stand up to scrutiny, because Rwanda can take fewer than 1% of the asylum seekers who cross the channel in small boats. It is inconceivable that people who have already risked life and limb to get as far as northern France will be deterred by a 1% risk of anything.”
“In light of our profound concerns about the regulations, I confirm that Labour will seek a Division this evening and will vote against them.”
“I am sure the Minister is aware of statements that several trade unions have made to the effect that they may adopt a strategy of deliberate non-co-operation or non-compliance with the proposed changes. With those unions responding with understandable anger to the changes under discussion, does the Minister accept that the Government’s heavy-handed approach to setting the minimum service levels we are discussing—and, particularly, his Department’s wilful refusal to carry out the most cursory of consultation processes with its own employees—risk seriously undermining his ability to bring union members to the table for negotiations in good faith on any potential disputes in the future? In so doing, have not the Government made even more likely the kind of industrial unrest that the legislation is supposed to be aimed at preventing?”
“Beyond that, can the Minister explain the rationale for HMPO to be brought into scope, and can he explain why his Department failed at any stage to consult the trade unions and employees who stand to be significantly affected by the regulations? More broadly, some of the most obvious questions and concerns are conspicuous by their absence from the Government’s impact assessment. In other words, it seems that the Home Office is simply ignoring the questions that it does not wish to answer. For instance, have the Government made any assessment of how the introduction of the proposed minimum service levels might affect the ability of both Border Force and HMPO to recruit and retain the qualified and experienced staff that they need? If so, information on any such assessment is not included in the impact assessment. Why is that?”
“In a foreword to the consultation document, published over the summer, the previous Home Secretary suggested that other services under her remit could potentially be included alongside Border Force within the scope of the new rules. She asked for views from the stakeholders consulted as to whether any additional services should be included and if so, which ones. According to the Home Office, the majority of the responses it received said that only Border Force staff should be subject to minimum service levels among the Department’s employees. There were no suggestions from any stakeholders that Passport Office staff should be included. The first and most obvious question is when the decision was made.”
“In the absence of the key data from the impact assessment, perhaps the Minister could tell us now exactly—or even approximately—how many HMPO staff are likely to be required to meet the service levels the Government intend to impose, and exactly which roles in HMPO are likely to be included. If he cannot answer those questions, would he accept that bringing that agency into the scope of the new minimum service levels today is at best premature and at worst impossible to justify. These questions matter because the consultation process that the Act requires, as part of the process of setting new minimum service levels, made no mention of any prospect that HMPO staff would be included.”
“On the first issue, we were led to believe during the Bill’s passage that the only services for which the Home Office is responsible that were likely to be covered by the legislation were those relating to border security—namely, roles carried out by Border Force employees. The regulations go much further than that. Their scope will also include some Passport Office employees, but we have no idea how many or which roles, because the Government are not saying. The impact assessment tells us only that what is likely to be a small number of employees of HM Passport Office will be covered. This apparently last-minute addition to the draft regulations is so poorly defined that it is impossible to scrutinise, and the Opposition will never accept that.”
“As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott. The ink is barely dry on the primary legislation under which these regulations are being made, yet the Government are already telling us quite a different story from the one they set out in the arguments made during the passage of the Bill—now an Act—through Parliament. As Members will recall, one of the Bill’s primary stated purposes was to give Ministers the power to define, in secondary legislation such as this, the scope of the definition of the relevant services covered and the particular minimum service levels that will apply to the services in question.”
“Since the previous Home Secretary was removed from her post, I think it is fair to say that the Immigration Minister has become a law unto himself. First, he briefed the media that he has been instructing the Prime Minister to tear up all our legal obligations to fix the unfixable Rwanda policy. Then he set himself on a collision course with his new Home Secretary by appearing to bet the house on the Rwanda flights taking off. To add insult to injury, he went behind his new boss’s back to present his laundry list to the Prime Minister, including a cap on social care visas and abolishing the shortage occupation list. Does the Immigration Minister have any respect whatsoever for the authority of the new Home Secretary? Given that he is said to be on resignation watch, will he confirm that he will resign if his proposals are rejected?”
“Therefore, my final question to the Minister is this: what thought have the Government given to how they might be able to implement the measures that he has set out today if professionals in the sector are not willing to operationalise them? My question specifically is this: do the Government have a plan B in the event that the key practitioners are not prepared to operationalise the measures that have been set out today?”
“These questions really matter, because there is clearly no evidence of consensus among experts in support of the Government’s plans—far from it, in fact. From a report in a recent edition of the New Scientist , it is clear that a widely shared view among experts is that what the Government describe as scientific age verification is based largely on what those experts describe as pseudo-science. Based on their public statements, a range of expert bodies, representing such diverse fields as social work, paediatrics, dentistry and radiology, also seem to be proactively urging their members to play no part in such practices.”
“We would be very grateful if the Minister could shed some light on that question posed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. We also find that House of Lords Committee expressing palpable frustration at the repeated running-up against a brick wall of any reasonable requests to Ministers for basic information, in this case about the extent of any further consultation between Ministers and experts from the medical and wider scientific communities beyond the members of the Government’s hand-picked Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee, to which the Minister referred. More importantly, what specific feedback have Ministers received from experts beyond the members of that committee in the course of any consultations that have taken place?”
“These are questions that any reasonable Member would expect the Government to address in their impact assessment. However, no such assessment has been provided, on the basis that, in the Government’s words: “the policy and design are still under development.” I note that the explanatory memorandum commits to preparing a full impact assessment as implementation of the policy moves forward. If the Minister could commit to a timely publication of such an assessment, I am sure that Members from all parties would be very grateful. It is also unclear to me, as it was to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, why the Government should feel the need to move forward with legislation that is still in the process of being developed.”