Extracts from Parliamentary proceedings - May 18

Tuesday, 19 May 2020 07:57

Extracts from second reading debate (Commons) of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP) [V]:...I turn first to the coronavirus pandemic and I join others in paying tribute to those on the frontline. I pay particular tribute to the migrant workers who are there, including too many who have lost their lives—consultants from Sudan, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Uganda and Pakistan, a hospital porter from the Philippines, doctors from Germany and Iraq, nurses from Zimbabwe, Trinidad and South Africa, support workers from India and Ghana, and many, many more. Each and every one deserves our tributes and our gratitude, but the more fitting tribute would be a coherent and robust response to the crisis—one that genuinely seeks to ensure that we are all in this together and doing whatever it takes, but that is not what the Bill provides...

Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con):...The Bill means that the nurses, doctors, engineers and scientists from the Philippines, Canada, India or the USA will be treated equally to those from Germany, Italy or France. The Bill is not anti-immigration; it is about fair immigration. It will mean that applicants will be judged on their skills and talents, not just their country of origin. The European backdoor will be closed, but Britain will be very much open to the brightest and best, wherever they come from. It is absurd that someone from outside the EU might be denied access to this country based on criminality, while someone from the EU who met the same threshold would be free to enter. It is wrong and it must end...

Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab) [V]:...Another example is the high number of refused visa applications: the applications of around nine in 10 of my constituents who reach out to my office for assistance with visitor visas for family and friends from Pakistan, India or Bangladesh are refused. The Home Office states that these decisions are made by a computer system but it is clearly either broken or the Home Office has programmed it with an inbuilt racial bias as those applying have a good financial history and visitor history and are often visiting on compassionate grounds...

Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con) [V]:...Immigration is a good thing for the United Kingdom, but more than that, immigration has shaped many aspects of life in today’s United Kingdom. People have come to this country from overseas for centuries, bringing their skills, ideas and cultures. For the last 40 years, however, people wanting to live here have been treated in different ways based not on what they can offer, share or contribute, but purely on whether or not they came from the European Union. Those from some of our oldest allies, such as the United States, and from our greatest friends in the Commonwealth, such as Australia, New Zealand, India and Pakistan, have all been treated differently. In fact, it has been worse than being treated differently—it has been discrimination. This Bill will end the discrimination and replace it with equality and fairness...

To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE

Extracts from Lords debate on Covid-19: International Response

Baroness Buscombe (Con):...On 6 March, I witnessed their decisive action following one suspected case: a tourist who had travelled from India. Within 24 hours, every tourist was traced and tracked, and we were contacted daily thereafter. All citizens were asked to socially distance themselves, while trucks travelled across the land distributing sanitiser. A quarantine period of 14 days kicked in for arrivals across the borders and all incoming tourist flights ceased, thereby avoiding a wide-scale lockdown across the country. Philanthropic hoteliers and businessmen supported their efforts and, in stark contrast to our Commons colleagues, all MPs donated a month’s salary to the cause. The king immediately rolled up his sleeves, working with doctors and encouraging anyone feeling unwell to attend clinics. He continues to work tirelessly across the country...

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab):...Everywhere, women face a terrifying increase in domestic violence and murder. In the Middle East, in India and Pakistan, and globally, women are harassed and victimised on social media. They are seeing their children abducted, and marriages forced on girls. In Poland, under the cover of Covid, abortion rights have been removed. The same is going on in parts of the United States. Police and military forces are using the virus as a pretext for rounding up dissidents. They use it to abuse minorities, LGBT people and those whose religion is not the dominant one. Thousands are in detention in El Salvador. In Kazakhstan, there has been a rounding up of people. In the Philippines, Duterte has given instructions to shoot dead anyone breaking the lockdown rules. Throughout India the opportunity to turn on Muslims has been seized, and we know what has been happening to the Rohingya and the Uighur in China. I am afraid that the pandemic is accelerating the horrors that they are experiencing. In Kashmir, restrictive laws are being enforced in cruel and shocking ways, and the internet lockdown enforced by Modi means that people do not even know how to access help if they are ill...

Lord German (LD):..Russia, India and the USA were missing from the table at the EU/UK summit. Political leadership is critical to success, so can the Minister tell us what steps the UK Government are taking to, in Theresa May’s words,

“ensure the effectiveness of a system of co-operation through shared institutions”?

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB): My Lords, in welcoming the Minister’s opening remarks, perhaps I might pursue some issues about which I have written to her, particularly about people facing Covid-19 without safety nets—in war zones, shanty towns, slums or refugee camps, or as one of an already persecuted minority. What is the international community saying about the stigmatisation and violence directed at Muslim minorities in India who are blamed for the spread of the virus, or Christian and Hindu minorities in Pakistan, who are denied access to food packages?

To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE