Constituents will be aware of my longstanding interest in the matters of immigration. The Illegal Migration Bill that is currently receiving scrutiny in Westminster came up for debate again this evening as it was “read” for a third time before moving on to the House of Lords.
As some will know, I am broadly supportive of this Bill and have voted in its favour during its progress in the House of Commons. I do, however, have a number of reservations about certain provisions in the Bill.
In an earlier speech, I outlined the potential conflict facing local authorities if amendments aren’t made to this piece of legislation. Since I last spoke about this Bill in the House of Commons, I had the opportunity to raise this with the Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick at a meeting in his ministerial office.
My chief concern arises from a conflict with the Children’s Act 1989 and the issue of age assessment. I know from my time in local government that each local authority has statutory duties of care for underage children regardless of their immigration status. As the Bill currently stands, I am concerned about a future scenario where a local authority faces judicial review for failing to perform its duty to underage children, while trying to meet demands placed by this new legislation.
It is important that Ministers take this back to their departments so that they can remedy this prior to the legislation being passed into law.
