Clause 1 - Variation of leave to enter or remain
Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill
5:15 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
I welcome you to our deliberations, Mr. Illsley. As you can see, they are complex but extremely important none the less. I am grateful that you and Sir Nicholas will do an excellent job.
I will quickly give my view on the amendments and then deal with the points of substance, because the two are not necessarily the same. First, I agree with the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that her amendments Nos. 18 and 19 are consequential on what we discussed and dispatched yesterday. In that context, she might have been better advised to withdraw them, because on their own they are not terribly helpful either to her cause or to the Bill—not least for the reasons offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow. If the new system introduced by the Bill is to prevail, central to it must be the flexibility afforded by proposed new subsection 4(fb). On its own, and without it being a consequence of yesterday's amendment, the hon. Lady's proposal suggests deleting that. Without a further series of consequential amendments to clause 1, all it would do is ''worsen'' the position, for reasons I shall come to.
I want to respond to points made by members of the Committee and to clarify areas of confusion. First, I am pleased that we are having an extensive debate, but I am troubled, as always, by language. May I gently rebuke the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon? Whatever he thinks of the system, he should not besmirch and undermine serious and committed public servants who do a good job. He can talk about the processes and the structures, but he should not make snide comments to the effect that we will have to wait for ever for good decisions from IND staff. That does not add to the debate, and it casts unnecessary aspersions.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman should not glibly suggest that, in the circumstances of which we are all aware, those with temporary five-year refugee status rather than indefinite leave to remain might as well spend all their time trying to find another status by which they would be better served. That is profoundly irresponsible. He should think about the extent of the process that people have to go through to get refugee status, whether five years or ILR. If anybody in that position reads Hansard, he will see that a senior Liberal Democrat MP is saying, ''It is only five years, so try to do anything but stay with refugee status.'' That is deeply irresponsible. We can argue about what people think of moving to a five-year term rather than ILR, but his words are not useful or helpful.