Weekly Update – Friday 23 July 2021

Anti-Refugee Bill

This week the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill passed its first parliamentary hurdle on the way to becoming law. It is difficult to understate just how inhumane this Bill is. If it becomes law refugees will be criminalised, removed to offshore camps, or forced into destitution in the UK. As a consequence, we will be breaching international law by punishing refugees who arrive in the UK by ‘unapproved’ methods.

One of the key elements of the Bill is that it divides refugees into two groups. The first group are those that the Government has decided arrived in the UK using pre-approved routes. The second group are refugees who arrived here by any means necessary, having fled for their lives. However, the Government has made it nearly impossible for refugees to arrive in the UK using their approved routes. In effect this Bill therefore criminalises most refugees.

The consequences will be disastrous. The Home Office will deport more people back to countries where they face a risk of torture and death. They will push more people into destitution on our own streets and still others will be shipped to offshore camps. Anybody who still believes in basic human rights and freedoms must unite to oppose this Bill and stop it becoming law when Parliament returns from recess in September.

The Government is mass deporting pro-democracy activists

Earlier this week I was contacted by one of my constituents who had been told by the Home Office that he would be part of a mass deportation to Zimbabwe. He had spent his entire adult life in this country. The UK is his home and he can’t remember any life in Zimbabwe. Before the deportation risk had arisen, he was looking forward to studying engineering at a good university.

Sadly, despite my representations to the Home Office, he was deported on Wednesday to a country he cannot remember, where he doesn’t know a single person.

Many of the others who were on the flight were ripped from their children, partners and lives that they had built over decades in this country and placed on a plane to face the possibility of torture in Zimbabwe because of their record fighting for democracy in that country.

As with previous mass deportations, the Home Office likes to paint those it is deporting as ‘foreign criminals’ but the truth is that they are often British in all but name and may have been convicted of non-violent crimes decades ago when they were in their teens. The fact is that this is the exact cruelty that created the Windrush scandal and continues to be inflicted on foreign born nationals across the country. That cruelty shows no sign of ending.

Uber Exploitation needs to end

Over the last few years, I’ve received an increasing number of emails from Uber drivers who have been dismissed without notice or due process. This is in line with Uber’s insistence that its drivers are self-employed but is completely out of step with reality and multiple decisions by courts that indicate otherwise. Whether the company likes it or not they should therefore be entitled to the same employment rights as all workers in this country.

In many cases a driver maybe working 40-hour weeks, week after week until one day they turn on the app and find that they are unable to log in. That is how they find out they have been sacked, sometimes after years of service.

In 2021 no worker should be subjected to such exploitation and the Government should have stepped in to secure the rights of gig economy workers and bring an end to this behaviour by the likes of Uber. That is why I wrote this week to Uber’s CEO and made my views clear. Uber need to stop this terrible exploitation of the workers who have made the companiy’s shareholders and executives so wealthy.

The Home Office is scamming vulnerable people

This week I finally received some answers to written parliamentary questions I’d tabled for the Home Secretary on the topic of the ‘priority’ and ‘super priority’ service the Home Office offers. They revealed that this so-called service is often no more than a scam.

Home Office delays mean that the department is currently often taking years to make decisions on applications. Until a decision is made applicants are often stuck in limbo, unable to work or claim unemployment benefits or generally start a life for themselves. But the Home Office tells them that if they pay £500 they can get a decision in just 5 days. If they pay £800, they are told they can get a decision in just one.  However, the Home Office’s own statistics show that in many cases they are unable to deliver on that time frame yet take the money anyway.

Applicants pay the money and are quickly told that their application is ‘not straightforward’ and therefore cannot be completed within the paid for time and then the Home Office keeps the money and refuses a refund. Over one 3-month period in 2020, the Home Office failed even once to deliver on the ‘super priority’ service for those making EU Visitor applications. This is simply a scam, and I will continue to push the Home Office to change their policy and offer refunds when they fail to deliver the service applicants pay for.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my latest update, if you have any issues that you would like to raise directly with me then please do email  edmontonconstituency@parliament.uk. I’m always happy to help whenever possible.

Kind regards,

Kate Osamor MP