§ Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow)I am grateful for the opportunity to debate a subject on which for some years I have tried to explore and influence Government policy.
Usually people who have been given exceptional leave to remain in the United Kingdom will originally have applied for asylum and been given exceptional leave instead. However, there are other people who fall into that category. The current policy is expressed by the Home Office as a concession, allowing family reunion once someone has had exceptional leave to remain in the United Kingdom for four years.
A couple of examples illustrate how that policy can operate. In a case that I came across a year or so ago, a man from Sri Lanka who had arrived in 1991 as an asylum seeker was given exceptional leave in 1993—so he had waited two years for that decision. Four years later, in 1997, his family in Sri Lanka—his wife and three daughers—applied for family reunion. The wife and two of the daughters were given entry clearance visas, but the third daughter was refused, on the ground that she was no longer dependent because she was 19. I remind hon. Members that the man had been in this country six years when this happend. In every other respect he fitted the immigration rules.
That is not an isolated case. I recently saw a man who was worried about his family. He has been given exceptional leave and knows that he may now have to wait four years before his family can join him. He is suffering serious mental health problems caused by stress.
The consequence of our present policy on people with exceptional leave is, in some cases, permanent separation. When the wife of the Tamil man was told that one of her daughters could not come to the United Kingdom, she said that in that case she would not come. She would not leave her 19-year-old daughter on her own in Colombo.
The policy certainly makes it far more difficult for people to settle down and adapt to life in a new country. Also, it leads to pointless appeals against refusal of asylum. When a person whose asylum claim has been rejected, but who has been given exceptional leave, discovers that the latter status does not allow family reunion, he or she appeals on the asylum claim. The result is the clogging-up of tribunals with appeals that are pointless because the person has permission to remain here in any case.
I recognise that there is an argument that exceptional leave to remain is not the same status as asylum and that the very strict terms of the 1951 convention are different from the other grounds that permit someone to stay in this country. Once we have granted exceptional leave to remain, for a year in the first place and then, usually, for three further years, the numbers of people who do not qualify for permanent permission to stay are absolutely minute. The last time that I asked for figures on the number of people who were refused an extension of their exceptional leave at the end of one year, then after four years, the numbers for any one year could be counted on one's fingers. The reality is that those who are given 82WH exceptional leave will, in time, be given permanent permission and qualify for family reunion. All that the present policy does is delay the process and cause problems.
I want to concentrate on the broader context of the issue and consider how our policy on family reunion fits in with other changes. In October this year, the Human Rights Act 1998 comes into force and the European convention on human rights will become part of UK law. The convention includes an article on the right to family life. The Government are also emphasising the importance of family life in other contexts. Last year, the Home Office published a welcome consultation paper on the settlement and integration of refugees—the first such paper—which referred to the importance of people being able to settle, put down roots and develop a normal life. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees believes that a reunited family is in a better position both to settle and to consider its options. Some UNHCR papers refer to the possibility that a family might consider voluntary repatriation to its country of origin if conditions there have changed, and is more likely to do so if it can discuss the issue as a family living together rather than as one that is scattered.
The policy must also be regarded in the light of the draft EU directive. In October last year, in Tampere, the European Council reiterated the point that the European Union must try to offer fair treatment to third-country nationals who reside legally in the EU. As one of the steps towards that objective, the Commission now says that third-country nationals legally resident in EU member states should have rights of family reunification, subject to several conditions. The Commission makes the point—a fair one—that family reunion in its broadest sense is the main form of legal immigration to most of the EU, as it has been for some years and as is the case in north America. Reunification of families produces stability and enables people to lead more normal lives and put down roots.
We now have a draft EU directive and we have seen the first response from the Home Office in the explanatory memorandum. I suspect that this is, if not the first, one of the first of several such proposals that we shall have to consider during the next few years in the field of asylum and immigration law, which flow from the Amsterdam treaty. The key issue for the UK is to decide what our position is in relation to that treaty and whether to opt in to the proposals. Therefore, it is appropriate to examine the directive and the initial response of the Home Office. I have some concerns about the Home Office initial response, although I agree with parts of it. I am not clear why the Government believe that action at Community level, rather than at member state level, will not produce benefits. If we do not opt into the directive, we might operate family reunification policies that do not reach the level of such policies across the rest of the EU. I am not sure to whose benefit that would be.
The directive would give a right to family reunion to EU citizens who are not exercising their right to free movement, and to third-country nationals who are legally resident. Safeguards are built in, although I have doubts about the wording of some of them. One that especially caught my eye would allow member states to reject an application if it could be shown that the marriage was contracted for the sole purpose of 83WH enabling the person concerned to enter or reside in a member state. That reeks of the return of the primary purpose rule, in a form little changed from the one that we rightly abolished a couple of years ago.
The directive requires applications to be decided in six months. The Home Office's response is that it needs flexibility to allow for geographical and seasonal variations in application numbers. It might have other reasons for not wanting such a time limit. However, saying that decisions cannot generally be made within six months is not a strong argument.
A key issue, relating to my earlier point about people with exceptional leave, is the provision that the qualifying residence period for family reunification must not exceed one year. I was puzzled by the Home Office response, which suggested that, at present, families could join the sponsor only when they had been given indefinite leave to remain—when they had permission to remain permanently in the UK—and that the time scale for that would vary depending on the nature of the case. It would vary, but it would do so because of where it happened to be in the Home Office computer system, rather than the nature of the case.
We do not restrict family reunion to people given permanent permission to stay. I have heard it argued that the status of exceptional leave cases is temporary—different from refugee status, which is permanent—and that we should therefore not give family reunification. However, we allow people with temporary status to bring families to the UK, such as students and people with work permits. The argument about temporary status does not hold water, even for our present policies. If we have a policy that allows students, who are certainly not regarded as permanent residents, to bring their family with them, it seems odd that we would not allow families to join people given exceptional leave—technically a temporary status, but one that would almost certainly become permanent.
A couple of the articles talk about settlement given to family members who have been in the UK for more than one year, and whose family situation is changed by separation, divorce or death. I am again puzzled by the Home Office response, which talks about the current policy on victims of domestic violence and people who become bereaved, because it applies to such people during their first probationary year. They would get indefinite leave to remain once they had got through that year in any case—they would have a right to permanent permission.
Our current policies are somewhat harsh and cause problems for families. In time we may find that some of those policies fall foul of the Human Rights Act 1998 and end up being less generous than the EU proposals. The key issue is how we approach those proposals, given that they may be the first of many on immigration and asylum.
It would be a mistake if the immediate signal that we gave was that we were likely to pull out because we were not interested in being in there. We should agree that the gap between the rights of EU nationals and third-country nationals is too wide and we should recognise the value of family reunion. We must approach the directive from the point of view of the desirability of 84WH agreeing and achieving good common standards across the EU and influencing the parts of the directive about which we have doubts. I hope that we will be fully engaged in that process and thereby improve our own legislation. By becoming involved in influencing the directive, we shall contribute to a fairer system across the EU.
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mrs. Barbara Roche)First, I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) on securing a debate on this important issue. He and I may approach it differently, but we agree that it is important. I congratulate him most warmly on bringing it to the attention of this Chamber, because these proceedings are followed closely by people outside. My hon. Friend comes to the debate not only with constituency expertise, but as the distinguished chairman of the all-party group on refugees.
The Government have made it clear that they are determined to operate asylum policies that are fair, firm and fast. That is why, when we took office, we commissioned the work that led to the White Paper and put in place measures to ensure that the legislation operates as we wish it to, in what is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of recent immigration and asylum matters. Our family reunion policies not only form part of that legislation, but right the wrongs in the system that we inherited.
As my hon. Friend rightly said, although the families of those recognised as refugees in the United Kingdom are eligible to join them in this country immediately, the families of those who have been refused asylum but granted exceptional leave to remain must normally wait until they have completed four years in that category before their families are eligible to join them. My hon. Friend has covered the reasons for that, but it is worth my mentioning them briefly.
As I am sure hon. Members appreciate, exceptional leave to remain may be granted for a variety of reasons. As my hon. Friend conceded, a person who is granted exceptional leave does not have to meet the strict criteria required of someone recognised as a refugee under the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees. Therefore, there is a considerable distinction between the two groups.
People who have been granted exceptional leave to remain have considerable entitlements in the United Kingdom, but I am not persuaded that it would be appropriate to offer them the full range of benefits currently available to refugees. Under the 1951 convention and the way in which it is applied by countries that are signatories to it, that is a special status and carries with it special entitlements. It is right to maintain those special entitlements.
I must make it clear—my hon. Friend will know this from his constituency experience, as do I—that our family reunion policy includes a concession with some flexibility, which allows discretion for humanitarian reasons. There is some discretion within the family reunion concession and, in such cases, consideration is given to whether the families of people with exceptional leave to remain in the United Kingdom should be allowed to join them in this country before the four-year 85WH period has elapsed. My hon. Friend will have brought such cases to the attention of the immigration and nationality directorate.
When considering whether it is appropriate to exercise discretion in that way, we have regard to the United Kingdom's international obligations. The circumstances of the sponsor in the United Kingdom, or the applicant abroad, may merit compassionate treatment. It is not possible, and would not be right, to detail all the factors that might be taken into account when deciding whether to exercise discretion, but they include the degree of dependency, the hardships faced by the applicant, the health of the sponsor or the applicant, and the age of those concerned. I emphasise for the record that that is not an exhaustive list, because exceptional circumstances are, by their nature, exceptional and it is not possible to list them in one place.
It is important to point out that we are prepared to extend the family reunion policy in response to international circumstances, particularly when the need to provide immediate protection warrants that, as was the case during the Kosovo crisis when we operated a humanitarian evacuation programme. Under those arrangements, procedures were put in place for applications to be processed quickly and allowed members of asylum seekers' extended families to join them in the United Kingdom if that was justified.
My hon. Friend referred to the European Union draft directive on family reunion and I am grateful to him for doing so, because it provides me with the opportunity to outline the background. I fully appreciate that the Commission's proposal is intended to identify guiding principles for a common European policy on family reunion. However, if the United Kingdom opted in, many of the directive's provisions would entail changes to our family reunion policy which we would find it difficult to accept. Some of those difficulties are that the sponsor in the United Kingdom should make the application for the family reunion, no fee should be payable, there should be a minimum standard for maintenance and accommodation—my hon. Friend may not be happy with some of those provisions—and family members should have an autonomous right to settlement. The Government also have difficulty with the aim to make the position of European Union citizens who have not exercised their right to free movement comparable to that of citizens who have exercised it by bringing them within the ambit of Community law. That would significantly weaken the United Kingdom's marriage rules and efforts being made to tighten them up in the face of marriage abuse for immigration purposes.
86WH Furthermore, we would also have the difficulty with existing Community law in relation to dependent relatives, who are currently required to meet strict qualifying criteria. I hope that that is helpful background information, in addition to that provided in the explanatory memorandum. We will consider our position in relation to the proposal, and will advise Parliament accordingly. I assure this Chamber that we will participate in discussison of the text, and that policy issues will be drawn to the attention of the Commission and other member states.
I want to deal with others issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow. I am delighted that he mentioned the paper on refugee integration, which I regard as an important contribution to the debate. I am sad that it has not received the publicity and focus that it deserves. It is vital to those who are interested in the issue. Those to whom refugee status is given should be aware of all the possibilities available to them to make a new life. I am grateful for my hon. Friend's endorsement of that aspect of our work.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the delays in the process. However exercised he is on the matter, he is not as exercised as I am, as it is my job to speed up the process as much as possible. I am sure that he will have seen the figures that we published on Friday, which show record numbers of decisions being made. We want to make progress on that. I am not complacent; I appreciate that much remains for us to do, and that people's individual circumstances and futures are at stake. Delays in the asylum process are unacceptable. They disadvantage those involved in the process, which is why, as he will know, we took steps to improve the system inherited from the previous Administration. Resources are being introduced to ensure that all initial asylum decisions are taken within two months, and appeals resolved within four months. That is the target towards which we are working.
My hon. Friend also raised the issue of the four-year period for entry clearance. I assure my hon. Friend and this Chamber that we are trying to apply the principles of joined-up government to the processes. A joint unit to combine the work of the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be established, which we hope will drive the speeding up of the process.
I end as I began by congratulating my hon. Friend on securing the debate and presenting it in the manner in which he did. Fundamental issues are at stake, and we are at one in wanting to speed up the process, and on the need for it to be firm, fair and fast.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Two o'clock.