Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Committee stage
Monday 5th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Meacher, my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I begin by referring to a meeting that my noble friend Lord Singh and I held with Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, quite recently. She had personally seen children coming off the boats. The Refugee Council found that, of the 45,000 people who made the journey in 2022, some 8,700 were children—one in five of the overall number. In response to the questions put by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, perhaps the Minister could confirm the numbers.

Dame Rachel has also visited the accommodation in which many of these children are placed. I would like to ask the Minister a number of questions. When the Children’s Commissioner was consulted, was she consulted about this Bill? How did she respond? How does he respond to her view that the Bill drives a “coach and horses” through the Children Act 1989?

The position of children should certainly concentrate our minds. My noble and learned friend perhaps knows better than anyone in this House, as a former head of the Family Law Division, how important it is that we have proper cognisance of the effects of law on children. I asked Dame Rachel about the origins and stories of some of the children whom she had met, to which my noble and learned friend referred as well. Some had travelled from Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iran; some had taken journeys that lasted a whole year; some had been left as orphans; and some had been traumatised by war. Many told horrific stories. For instance, she described the story of an Iranian boy who watched his parents being killed and who made the long and arduous journey here to safety. She also referred to a Down’s syndrome child left on their own. She said that decisions about their treatment and future were being taken by inappropriately low-ranking officials who had “no understanding of safeguarding”. Will the Minister urgently look into this question about whether safeguarding criteria are different from the safeguarding used in children’s homes? Are the provisions in the Bill compliant with the duties contained in the education Acts, and are they Gillick compliant? Does the Minister recognise the Children’s Commissioner’s description of the Bill as a “traffickers’ charter”?

No child should be assumed to be an adult—a point made very well a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. There is no cliff edge. There seems to be an assumption woven into the web and weave of this Bill that there is a magic moment when you cease to be a child and become an adult. The position of children should certainly be put into the impact assessment, which we all wait to see with great anticipation. But it is not simply an impact assessment that has been missing from the legislative scrutiny to which I referred earlier. Only one Select Committee—the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member—has had the chance to scrutinise this Bill, and it has had to do so at a crazy pace, with many of our meetings clashing with the Bill’s proceedings. All being well, it will reach its final iteration tomorrow—not, I am glad to say, “in due course”. This is simply no way to make legislation. When we legislate in haste, we end up repenting at leisure.

At Second Reading, I referred to my misgivings about a number of aspects of the Bill, and among these was the treatment of children: the subject of these amendments. They are affected by every aspect of the Bill, which clearly infringes the rights of children set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, referred to by my noble friend Lord Hannay.

The Home Office says, as its justification for doing this, that it is protecting the best interests of children by seeking to deter them and the adults accompanying them from embarking on these journeys in the first place. This is a straw man argument. It relies on the assumption that the child or adult knew in advance how dangerous the journey would be and assumes that, in any event, the journey would be less dangerous than, say, staying in Sudan, where millions are now displaced; or think of the plight of women in Iran; or think of those in Nigeria who are facing execution because of their beliefs or orientation, or facing genocidal attacks from Boko Haram. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not revolve around such calculations.

The desire for deterrence cannot negate or supplant the duty of the UK and this Government to protect all children—every child, whatever their origins—within our jurisdiction. How a country treats its children is a mark of whether that country deserves to describe itself as civilised. How do convention duties square with indefinite detention in whatever place the Secretary of State and her officials deem appropriate and for however long she decides is reasonably necessary before she maybe decides that they should be cast out? How can our convention rights be squared with dispatching children to far-flung places without any true idea of what circumstances will await them there? Who will verify that appropriateness? What will be the criteria? How will such assessments be undertaken?

Too many of the Bill’s provisions relating to children are vague and insufficiently rigorous. The Bill puts on to a statutory footing the provision of accommodation for unaccompanied children, but then fails to define what form such accommodation must consist of. It is as if we have learned nothing from the endless ordeals of children in institutional care. I repeat: why is Home Office accommodation not being made subject to the duties set out in the Children Act 1989? Why are standards or requirements not set out in the Bill itself? I ask this against a backdrop of the Home Office accommodating unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hostels since 2021. Can the Minister remind us how many of those children have gone missing? How many remain missing? How can the Minister justify the provisions to take a child from local authority accommodation, which is subject to the 1989 Act, and put them into Home Office accommodation, which is not? There are also convention implications from age assessment, not least invasive body searches of children who may have undergone trauma or have been subjected to abuse. Is that Gillick compliant?

We should be clear that these and other provisions mean that the Bill is likely to fall short of compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is also likely to fall short under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and potentially Article 3, which deals with prohibition of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment. Has the Minister also considered Article 22 of the convention and any use of powers to remove a child without first considering their asylum claim? These are crucial questions; if they cannot be resolved here in Committee, they will certainly have to be resolved when we reach Report. I hope the Minister will be able to give the Committee the courtesy of a reply to some of these questions today.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with some hesitation after so many speeches—such powerful speeches—from every corner of your Lordships’ House. Having attached my name, however, to two amendments here—Amendment 17, in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and Amendment 27, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—I will make two points.

First, I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that no children who arrive as refugees should be covered by this Bill—indeed, no one should be covered by this Bill—but there is a special case to be made for unaccompanied children who have no adult with them to support them. I invite Members of your Lordships’ House to consider what it would be like if, tomorrow, you were dropped into a foreign country where you do not speak the language—or speak it very imperfectly—you have no resources and you know nobody. While you have decades of life experience, think how difficult it would be to cope. Then imagine what it would be like for an 18 year-old who has known only a life of war, torture and suffering; who thought they had found safety but then were thrown out again.

Secondly, I want to pick up a point that the Minister made in the previous group. He suggested that this Bill was the result of an emergency situation that had suddenly arisen overnight and that this was the excuse for why we did not have an impact assessment. Of course, what we have is a situation that has been developing over a decade or more. We saw people seeking to come across the channel, including—since we are focusing on the many unaccompanied children—people getting underneath the axels into sealed lorries or under trains and, all too often, dying as a result.

I am going to go back to 2016—seven years ago—when I went to a memorial service for one of those people, a 15 year-old called Masud. He was an Afghan who died in the back of a lorry trying to get to the UK to be with his sister. This picks up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about the lack of means for such children to get here legally. Masud should have been able to get here, but he could not. He took his chances and he died. Had he made it, think about where he would be now. Masud, as a 15 year-old, would have had three years—or maybe more—in our education system. He would have been part of our society and contributing. Imagine, however, a Masud who arrives here after this Bill comes into operation—this picks up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, among others. What is Masud going to do just before his 18th birthday? What would any of us do? He is going to have to go into the black economy or the grey economy, which we know our hostile economy has thrust so many people into already: into the illegal car washes or into the illegal marijuana farms, where recently we saw four Vietnamese men, almost certainly victims of modern slavery, die in horrific conditions. Thrust into the gig economy—there has recently been coverage about this—you can rent an identity to be a delivery driver for a night, all under the carpet and all open to abuse and exploitation. Is that what we really want to do to children? Is that what we really want to do to our society: to make a society in which that segment of it grows and grows? As others have said, there is no way that the Government are going to be able to make the removals that they say they are seeking to do.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Report stage
Wednesday 30th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I can be brief. I thoroughly support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said to us in moving his amendment. I do not need to repeat arguments that I placed before your Lordships earlier this week on Monday, in December last year, and then again in January and March this year, and even in the Question that we had just before our proceedings on PPE, which continues to be stored in the People’s Republic of China at a cost to us of some £770,000 every day.

I am extremely grateful that the Minister responded so quickly after our debate on Monday with a letter that I received this morning. For the purposes of the record, I will read out one paragraph. She wrote:

“You made a number of points about PPE contracts which have been found to have underperformed. I also understand you have asked written questions … on these matters. I appreciate your desire for more information on this and I will be writing to the Secretary of State highlighting both your views and those expressed by others in the House.”


That is a very welcome response and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for going to that trouble.

I have sent a copy of our Hansard from Monday to my noble and learned friend Lady Hallett, who is chairing the public inquiry to which the Minister referred during our debate on Monday. The Minister said that lessons would be learned, and that the Covid inquiry would

“cover procurement and the distribution of key equipment and supplies, including PPE”.—[Official Report, 28/11/22; col. 1593.]

I am grateful to her for that.

I have only one other point. On Monday, I raised the issue of repayments. That is not something that can wait for the several years it might take the public inquiry to make its recommendations. I refer the Minister to my two questions about defaulting PPE suppliers and the actions that will be taken through the faulty contract PPE recovery unit. I also asked about individual settlements, which, as she said, are protected by commercial secrecy. I asked

“how will Parliament and the public be notified about money returned to public funds by defaulting PPE suppliers through the actions of the faulty contract PPE recovery unit?”—[Official Report, 28/11/22; col. 1581.]

How will that work? Can the Minister illuminate us a little further? If she cannot, would she be prepared to put pen to paper in a follow-up letter to me as a result of today’s debate? I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for giving us the opportunity to explore this issue further.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, who raised such important points about payment terms for small and medium-sized enterprises. That is a long- term issue that has not been addressed. There is a real opportunity here, as the noble Lord outlined.

I will speak briefly to Amendment 72, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, who so comprehensively introduced it, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I confess that I attached my name to it at the absolute last minute because I expected a rush of Members from around your Lordships’ House doing so. I thought it was important to demonstrate that there was a breadth of support.

I should perhaps warn the Minister that that support appeared to come from the Government Front Bench earlier, when the noble Lord, Lord Markham, responding to the PPE Urgent Question repeat from the other place, said that the earlier procurement

“should not have been on the basis of referrals”.

It would appear that this amendment delivers exactly what the noble Lord said should happen in future. That is a very interesting reflection of what is happening in your Lordships’ House.

Briefly, we know that the Government would like to treat all this as ancient history, but I and, I am sure, other Members of your Lordships’ House have seen that for members of the public this is still a source of very deep anger and concern. This morning I was on Radio 5 Live’s politicians’ panel and a caller raised this issue, albeit in the context of Matt Hancock’s appearance on “I’m a Celebrity”.

There were a couple of powerful letters in the Guardian this week. I do not know either of the correspondents. Dr Tristram Wyatt noted that in 1919, after the First World War, the President of the Board of Trade introduced a profiteering Bill to ensure that profiteering by suppliers would never happen again. In the same paper Dr Jeremy Oliver questioned why all these PPE contracts were not let on a full cost plus margin basis. This is of great concern to the public. I am hearing from all quarters again and again that people are simply saying, “Never again.” What happened in the Covid-19 pandemic with the VIP channel must not be allowed to happen again. This clear, simple amendment delivers just that.

I will also briefly express concern about government Amendment 116. We had an extensive discussion about this in Committee, which I will not revisit, but this appears to be a significant weakening of the protection of public concern about potential conflicts of interest. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation of that.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I made my substantive points when we debated this on Report, so I will not be tedious in repeating all those arguments about the nature of abortion, why I feel there should be a more thorough consideration of the way the law works in Britain today and why there have been 9 million abortions—one every three minutes. That does not suggest a lack of access to abortion in this country. But I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said to us about the lack of safeguards in the amendment that we passed, against the wishes of Health Ministers, during the tail end of the Report stage consideration of the Bill.

If the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, was right that there had been substantive discussion, I would feel easier about this, but she will agree that there was no discussion of this at Second Reading or in Committee here, and there was no discussion of it in another place. When this was voted on in another place, there was a relatively close majority at the end of a very short debate—215 votes to 188. This demonstrates that this question is not settled.

If one winds back the clock to 1967, only 29 Members of the House of Commons voted against the Abortion Act 1967. That demonstrates that not only is this not settled but there are deep concerns about the way that this public policy has been enacted. That is why I pleaded, on Report, that rather than making policy on the hoof, it would be far better if—despite our differences of opinion, some of them fundamental, on the substantive issue—at some point, there is a review of the legislation, in which we can at least talk to one another, in a civilised way, about the best approach.

That brings me to this amendment, which was introduced with such sensitivity and compassion by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and which deals with safeguarding issues. I will not repeat the quotation that was just given to us by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, but it comes from a royal college. The royal colleges may be divided about this too—I do not dispute that—but that is exactly the sort of thing that should be laid before a commission of inquiry or a Select Committee of this House to examine the workings of the legislation.

We have heard the quotation about the safeguarding, well-being and physical needs of children from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, but I was also struck by what a designated doctor for child safeguarding said in a briefing which many of us have been sent by the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Safeguarding Children. Dr Helen Daley says:

“The considered expert position of the NNDHP is that all children (i.e. those under 18) and looked after individuals under the age of 25, should be seen face-to-face when applying to take both sets of abortion pills at home so as to prevent coercion, child sexual exploitation and abuse, and so that clinical assessments can be made to check the risk of an inadvertent mid- or late-trimester abortion.”


I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said about specific individual cases. I do not know about the individual cases, other than that one was cited, and one is enough. It struck me, as a parent and someone who has worked with children with special needs, some of whom had significant emotional problems, to think how it would be if, in a home abortion, someone was to abort a late-trimester baby and the children in that household saw what happened. I think that would remain with them for the rest of their lives and it could have a deeply distressing and traumatic effect on them. That is why we should listen to Dr Helen Daley when she says

“We have very real concerns about the harm”


that this amendment to the Bill

“(which would allow girls to take abortion pills at home without a prior face-to-face consultation for any early abortion) will do to children.”

There is one other point, which was not referred to in our early debates. There is evidence about the physical effects on women. For me, this is not a choice between the unborn child and the woman—both lives matter. One in 17 women, or 20 a day, who had taken at least one abortion pill at home in 2020 needed hospital treatment for side-effects. This evidence was provided through a freedom of information request by the previous global director of clinics development at Marie Stopes International. There are significant risks.

I plead with your Lordships: when we make laws on issues such as this, let us always be respectful of each other’s opinions, attitudes, beliefs and principles, and listen to each other carefully, which we are doing in this House tonight; bluntly, I think we are a very good example to others about how this debate should be conducted. When the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talks about the risks of, for instance, sex-selection abortions, we must take that seriously, because there have been examples of it and we know to what it can lead; we have seen that in other jurisdictions and countries. When the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, tells us there could be risks to children over safeguarding, we must take that seriously. I promised to be brief and will now sit down.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly, having contributed quite significantly to the debate on Report. I support the Government’s amendment, which is not a position I find myself in very often. I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who said this was not settled. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg—who has been such a leader, working on this issue in the House with great tenacity and determination to defend the well-being of patients—said, it has been settled in both Houses of Parliament and has been debated extensively.

The point the noble Lord, Lord Alton, just made about the sex-selection question was comprehensively answered. The dates do not work; we are talking about early medical abortion and you do not know by that stage. We have to come back to the evidence. We had an unintended experiment as a result of Covid, which showed us that telemedicine not only reduced the rate of abortion complication but increased the level of safeguarding disclosures. It is really important that we think about an equalities issue here. Access to telemedicine is medically preferable and results in more safeguarding disclosures. We do not want to deny that to young women where it is judged that it is medically appropriate.

I note that the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Safeguarding Children is working with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to develop standards. It says that this should not be subject to discrimination in the law, as the safeguarding standards and guidelines are adequate. If we think about this as an access issue, this minimises the risks of young people going to provision outside the healthcare system. This is a crucial equalities issue.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and to join the noble Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Crisp, in backing her important amendment. The introduction the noble Baroness provided was powerful and comprehensive, so I will not speak at length. I endorse the two asks she put to the Minister; it is important that we hear very clear, direct answers to them.

As the noble Baroness powerfully put it, there is a contest between public need and private profit, and we know that the reality of how our current system works is that private profit comes first. That means that human rights and public health trail behind. We know that so much of our healthcare system has been dragged in the direction of the disastrous US model, the most extreme example on the planet of a private, profit-driven healthcare system that has disastrous outcomes for massive costs. We also know that there are healthcare systems around the world that spend even less than we do but have a very fair and reasonable distribution of resources and money.

We often talk about these issues in moral terms; we must make sure that everyone has these medicines, and I endorse that moral approach, but in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, nationally and globally, we must come back to the phrase, “No one is safe until everyone is safe.” It is in everyone’s interest that everybody in the UK and around the world has access to the best possible medicines and medical devices and that the research effort and all that wonderful power of human ingenuity are put into the best possible causes and results for public health, for the good of us all.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I spoke at some length on this issue in Committee and am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has given us the opportunity to explore it again. She has done so with her usual thoroughness and thought. I am also pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who spoke so well. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has exchanged letters, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred to; that has been extremely helpful, as she intimated, and I think will avoid the need for a Division, but it is right we explore this issue thoroughly.

I will not repeat all the detailed arguments made in Committee, but, in headline terms, Amendment 10 is being considered in the context of exclusive intellectual property rights which can in some circumstances create monopolies, leading to high prices and supply issues for medicines and medical devices. We are seeing those issues come to the fore in the Covid-19 response.

In an Oral Question that I asked on the Floor of your Lordships’ House on 30 November to the Trade Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, I argued that in the context of hundreds of millions of Covid vaccines being held in the United Kingdom and the significant sums of public money invested in developing new drugs and treatments, notwithstanding the need to generate funds to enable future research and development, when companies such as Gilead repurpose drugs such as remdesivir and charge $2,340 for a Covid treatment that Liverpool University estimates can be done for $9, the Government should invoke their powers in such circumstances to use Crown licences to prevent patent monopolies impeding access to medicine, to ensure equitable access, prevent exploitative profiteering and recognise that affordable drugs and their fair distribution are a public good that this country should be at the forefront in providing.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 14th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I am the first person who signed Amendment 51 to speak on this group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for providing such a clear introduction to both the need for a physical document and the difference between these two amendments. Amendment 51, which I signed with the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Kennedy of Southwark, calls for the automatic provision of the document, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates said, and Amendment 49 would provide one on request. I would argue that Amendment 51 is stronger because “on request” requires people seeing into the future and predicting when things might not work. It would be simpler and easier for the department to administer, but either one of these amendments would be a significant improvement on the situation we have now.

As the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said, both the3million and Britons in Europe have done a great deal of work to spread the information about the need for this document. I was at a briefing earlier with the Children’s Society and the3million, focusing on the situation of the 260,000 children who have acquired settled status and the 150,000 who now have pre-settled status. If we think about the situation where—in about 10 or 15 years’ hence—one of those young children has to suddenly prove their status, recovering all the emails, the phone numbers and all the other information they might need to do that is likely to be far from simple.

I also want to address the situation for adults. Can the Minister confirm my understanding of what the process would be? My understanding is, for example, if someone wants to prove their right to work—as we were discussing in an earlier amendment—they will need to access their status via a website, providing the passport or ID card they applied with and their date of birth; they will then have a choice of getting a code with either email or phone; that code will need to be entered on the website; if that is successful, their status will appear on the screen and there will be an option to prove their status. They will then have to fill in the employer’s email address; the system will attempt to email a code to the employer, who will then need to find the correct website, enter the code along with some security information and finally see a screen with a photograph and proof that the person has the right to work. Does the Minister acknowledge that this has many moving parts? If any one of these fails, then it all fails.

We were talking before about landlords being reluctant to go through the extra hassle. We can also imagine plenty of employers who might be similarly reluctant—if they are choosing between two nearly equal applicants—and thinking, “Well, let’s just go for the simpler option.” We saw research from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants that showed that only three in 150 landlords said they were prepared to do those digital checks. Perhaps employers might not be quite so prepared—if they are concerned about discrimination legislation—to talk about their reluctance to do it, but you have to wonder if it would be there.

Of course, as other speakers have already said, this is really very frightening; it makes people feel very insecure. It is estimated that 22% of people do not have the essential digital skills to complete this process. It might be that they rely on someone else—such as the small child that I started off by talking about—but what happens when that person is no longer accessible or available to them or in contact with them? Physical back-up would provide people with certainty and security. It would be good if everyone had it, but either way it should certainly be available. Therefore, I commend both of these amendments, but particularly Amendment 51, to your Lordships.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support Amendments 49 and 51. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said in introducing them so cogently and reasonably, and I had the advantage of being able to have had a conversation with him last week where he explained the generalities of the amendments to me. I thought the arguments were compelling; the noble Lord, Lord Polak, put it well when he said this was a practical and sensible option. All three speeches that we have heard so far have underlined why this is not one of those ragged political debates that require us to take positions; it is something about which we can do something useful this evening in Committee.

I will turn, if I may, from the generalities to something specific, a particular case of people who will be especially disadvantaged by the impact of digital-only status: the Roma community. On 2 August, Roma Holocaust Memorial Day commemorated the shocking liquidation of Roma in August 1944 at the so-called Gypsy family camp at Auschwitz- Birkenau. On that infamous day, 2,897 men, women and children of Roma or Sinti origin were murdered by the Nazis. Of around 23,000 Roma taken to Auschwitz—and hundreds of thousands more perished during the Holocaust—an estimated 20,000 were murdered there. At the time of the liberation of Auschwitz, only four Roma remained alive.

Now, 76 years later, Roma people still face discrimination and liquidation. I especially commend the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Roma in ensuring that Parliament understands the horrors that this community has experienced and the special circumstances and challenges which it faces today.

In debates like this, I miss the voice of Lord Avebury, a good and long-standing friend and the author of the Caravan Sites Act 1968. At the memorial event celebrating his life, Damian Le Bas, a Roma who wrote The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain—a remarkable insight into the world of Travelling people—spoke powerfully about how parliamentarians such as Lord Avebury can act to ensure that the UK’s 200,000 Roma can lead lives of dignity.

Lord Avebury would have been the first on his feet to support these amendments, pointing to the lack of awareness within the Roma community of digital immigration status and the way in which digital exclusion simply builds on the other exclusions which Roma historically have experienced. The Roma Support Group says that only 3% of Roma are able independently to complete online applications such as those required by the European Union settlement scheme. Very little data exists about how many Roma have applied to the EUSS so far and been given settled or pre-settled status. As the debate proceeds, I will hand the Minister a copy of the Roma Support Group’s briefing on this so that she can read some of the cases illustrating this point. I would be grateful if the Minister could say how this problem can be addressed, especially as the Home Office data does not include a breakdown of ethnicity.

Enabling those who need it to receive physical evidence of their status in the UK would certainly be a start, and enabling programmes to be developed which could address the issue of digital exclusion, on which this debate has helped us to focus, would be a very good outcome.