Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I feel very much in tune with the noble Lord, Lord Morris, but luckily I was not asked for the rugby score when I crossed the border from Wales to England on Monday morning; I do not think that I would have been let in, either. Often when we debate these issues, we go for the minutiae—the clauses, the subsections and so on—and avoid looking at the tenor, direction and spirit of the legislation. This Bill and the immigration Bills that we have had in recent years cause me some concern. In the past, we had a great reputation and a fairly noble place in history. However, what will the verdict of history be on us and our times when we propose legislation that is restrictive and negative? Will we remember this time with pride? Will history remember us as people whose contribution would be best forgotten? Each generation and each one of us personally is judged by our attitude to the most vulnerable in our society. Britain has a mixed reputation. We have had our golden moments of humanity and compassion. Just two years ago, we celebrated the work of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce which brought the slave trade to an end, and we said what a wonderful contribution to history that was. Since then, a great deal of legislation has strengthened the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. However, has this new century seen a change in our emphasis and an inability to respond in a caring fashion to changing global circumstances? Sadly, many who need our help feel rejected and condemned to destitution. Sometimes we seem to take the easy route, as if the only way to penalise people is to make them even more vulnerable. Others have spoken of the destitution arising as a consequence of our legislation, such as Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act, which enables us to withdraw all benefits from failed asylum seekers, or Section 4, which in certain circumstances gives a family only a £35 voucher. Only the other day, I realised how our slowness in dealing with asylum applications can lead to total destitution. Last week, I spoke to someone from Afghanistan who showed me the original letter responding to his claim. It was dated 2002, which is six years ago, and there are many other people in the very long queue of applicants. I understand that 230,000 people are still waiting. That is not just a number; they are human beings—children, fathers and mothers. They are ordinary people like us, part of the same human family. Now we are adding to that number. Only a few days ago, we were told that 17,500 applicants’ files had been lost. What are the implications of that? Do those 17,500 people have to go to the end of the queue? What is the process here? I spoke to a colleague who is better at maths than I am and discovered that if those 17,500 files were each three inches thick, they would be higher than Snowdon when piled up. The number of people involved is nearly as many as live in my native town of Llandudno. These people are in a serious situation. There are delays in responding and, unless the outcomes are positive, they lead to real stress. I sympathise not only with the applicants but with those at Lunar House in Croydon who have to deal with them. The stress for them must be tremendous. Months and years pass and people do their best to settle down and bring up their children. They even find ways to pay their bills, but they then find that they are faced with a heartbreaking scenario: in the end, they are denied the asylum status that they seek. Only yesterday, a lady from the south coast wrote to me on the subject of indefinite detention for asylum seekers and foreign national ex-prisoners. She said: "““I am a member of the Dover Detainee Visitors Group, which visits Dover Immigration Detention Centre. At present I am not visiting since my last detainee, an asylum seeker from Iran, went on hunger strike, sewing his lips together in protest at his detention””." We have also heard about the situation facing people from Zimbabwe. Again, I quote from a report: "““We are told that the measures in this Bill are urgent and cannot wait until the Simplification Bill. If this Bill is about urgency, then it is a shame that the Government have not taken the opportunity to deal with one truly urgent issue—the destitution of 11,000 Zimbabweans in the UK. The Government says that it does not remove Zimbabweans. It says that all Zimbabweans here are treated with dignity and respect and are not left destitute.""Yet less than a month ago several hundred Zimbabweans demonstrated outside 10 Downing St. Most were people whose asylum claims have been turned down and who are now destitute in the UK. They certainly would not agree that they are treated with dignity and respect””." That report, which goes on, has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, and those mentioned in it are people; they are human just like us. The queue is even longer than I have said. The National Audit Office estimates that something like 430,000 unregistered asylum seekers are in the United Kingdom. People say that we must remove them, but how long would it take to remove nearly half a million people, and at what cost? It is said that £11,000 is required to remove each unwelcome asylum seeker in the UK, which would amount to £5 billion in total. I suggest that the Liberal Democrat policy of letting those who have spent, say, 10 years in this country apply to have their status regularised is a much more sensible approach to this situation. The Bill says little about those questions. Many amendments will be tabled and we are told that there will be another Bill in the autumn. However, these numbers are not just cold statistics; they relate to living people, and we should ask what contribution they could make to society if only they were allowed to take part in our cultural and other activities. I end by mentioning Watoto, a village in Kampala for 1,600 orphans whose parents have died from AIDS. I was grateful for the Minister’s intervention when the Watoto children came here, and some will come again. Some of them were literally rescued from the rubbish heaps of Kampala. When they were asked what they would like to be, their answers included a pilot, a teacher, an accountant, a singer and a lawyer. They all had their dreams. I ask this House whether we are going to have a golden moment in our history or whether it will be a time that we regret. Are children to be allowed to dream and enhance their skills? This Bill, and the one that will follow, could do much to let that happen. There could be new opportunities, not only opening doors for the most vulnerable but enhancing our own position in history.