I rise to support the more than 50 amendments in my name and the names of my hon. Friends. We do not believe that this Bill, which is abhorrent in how it rips up people’s human rights, is fixable. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) suggested earlier, human rights are not a luxury. They are for everybody, everywhere, all at once. We should not try to remove them from anyone, particularly those who have suffered serious trauma.
We tabled our amendments to highlight the Bill’s many and varied deficiencies. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), who has been incredibly diligent in going through the Bill to see what we could take out to try to reverse some of its more harmful aspects.
In clause 37(7), for example, we aim to set tighter rules for the kinds of countries to which we might want to return people, because not all third countries are particularly safe. We should be much tighter about where we return people, which is a point to which I will return tomorrow.
Clauses 40(4)(a) and (b) outline the assurances the Government claim they will take into account in considering a serious harm suspensive claim:
“the Secretary of State must take into account the following factors—
(a) any assurances given by the government of the…territory specified in the removal notice; “
I guess the Government will just take it on trust when another Government say they will not do any harm to a person who might be a critic of that Government. They will just have to say, “Oh, no, it will be fine. Just return that person, and we will look after them.” We will not find out whether they will actually be looked after until after they have been returned.
Clause 40(4)(b) lists
“any support and services (including in particular medical services) provided by that government”.
I have had constituency cases of people receiving HIV/AIDS treatment in this country that has got their condition under control, but the Government cannot guarantee that they will be able to continue their treatment if they are returned to another country. In some cases, returning to a country where that condition cannot be managed is tantamount to a death sentence. A constituent of mine who is waiting for a decision on her case is in renal failure, but she cannot make progress with her treatment because the Home Office will not get its finger out and give her a decision. This is a very pressing issue. The Minister squints at me, but if he actually turned to any of the cases that I raise with him, we would make some progress.
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We also want to amend the incredibly short and absolutely unrealistic claim periods outlined in the Bill. This Government do not do anything in four days or eight days, so it is entirely unrealistic to suggest that they will make any decisions in that time. In a practical sense, it will make it very difficult for people to make a claim and to access a solicitor. Many people who come to this country seeking asylum have experienced considerable trauma, so they are unable to do things in the Government’s suggested timescale. Anybody who understands considerable
trauma will appreciate that it will not be possible over a couple of days to extract from those people all the things that might, in the Government’s view, be compelling evidence.
Victims of torture, victims of trafficking, people who have been forcibly recruited and people who have been told to rape members of their family and in some cases their neighbours cannot disclose all those things just like that. They will need time to work through this. They will need specialist expertise and support to make their claims. They will not be able to make their best case under pressure over a few days. The Government, I suspect, know that, because they are going to make it as difficult as possible for people to make those claims. That is the very purpose of why they are short-circuiting the process.
Had the Government given us time to hear proper evidence, we would have heard from experts from Freedom from Torture and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. A submission to Members notes:
“A claim for suspension of removal must be made within seven days of a notice of removal, which may present challenges for people who are traumatised or otherwise in vulnerable situations, do not speak English, or lack adequate legal advice.”
By making the timescales so short, the Government are trying to prevent people from being able to make claims. It is a deliberate strategy.
Last week I had the privilege of meeting the Rainbow Sisters, part of the Women for Refugee Women group. They told me in great detail how difficult it was for them as lesbians to describe to a Home Office official why they were making a claim. In the countries they came from—I will return to this tomorrow, but they are listed at the back of the Bill and include Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria—they were not allowed to describe the feelings they hold, because they could have been prosecuted, imprisoned or whipped for being gay. They do not have a language to describe their experiences or any evidence to describe their sexuality, yet we expect them to do so in order to provide compelling evidence for their claim. Sending them back to those countries would put them at risk, and in such circumstances it is impossible for those women to describe their situation. Yet the Home Office expects that to happen.
I have sat in an immigration tribunal in which a constituent of mine was asked to provide half a dozen people to testify to her sexuality. Even though she had been here for several years, it was difficult and traumatic for her to do that. Imagine people being asked to provide that evidence when they have just arrived. It would be incredibly difficult for anybody to do under any circumstances, and particularly so for women in those circumstances. Again, I suspect the Government know that.
In clause 50(3), on page 52, proposed new section 80AA(3) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 says:
“The Secretary of State may add a State to the list”—
which is described in subsection (1)—
“only if satisfied that…there is in general in that State no serious risk of persecution of nationals of that State”.
This is a list to which the Secretary of State can add whenever she so feels. The words “in general” are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that proposed new section. In general there may be no risk, but, specifically, there might be a
significant risk to that person, to somebody of that sexuality, or to somebody with a particular protected characteristic. Again, the Bill overlooks the protections that the Government should be giving to people who are seeking asylum here.
Let me turn now to the cap on the numbers. Members on the Conservative Benches have been quite excitable about the idea of a cap, but there is no capped number in the Bill. It is for the Secretary of State to decide on that at some other point. The Secretary of State could set that cap at zero if she so wished.