Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I find myself persuaded by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford. Her arguments need to be listened to.

Archbishop Robert Runcie defined a saint as a person whose character has never been fully studied or explored. We all have a dark side to ourselves. If we talk about good character, it may appear in a person’s life only when they have moved away from all the bad stuff that was hanging around them. We carry within ourselves both a sainthood and some not so good characteristics—that is why Archbishop Robert Runcie’s definition of a saint was right.

When I arrived in this country in 1974 and went to Cambridge to study theology and my doctorate, I was so unwell in the first seven months that I was going in and out to see doctors. Eventually, they said that I must have lost a lot of blood through internal bleeding, from the blows received from Amin’s soldiers. I was very angry—extremely angry—that I should be subjected to such terrible things. Of course, that was all bottled up, but I was very angry. Had someone said to me at the time, “We want to know how good your character is, so that we may see whether you can become a citizen”, I would still have been extremely angry in those interviews.

It was not until one night, when I remembered my mother saying, “John, never point a finger at anybody, because when you do, three others are pointing back at you”. Friends, noble Lords, noble Baronesses, this whole question of good character can be very subjective and misleading when the person first arrives, particularly when they come as children. We all have the grace and ability to grow out of some of the not-so-good bits of us, but we still remain a very rough diamond. We are never fully polished until we go through the gate of death.

I find it strange that this country—that I have grown to love, that always shows give and take, that always has this magnanimity of meeting people halfway—would, I am beginning to understand, now use good character as a ground for someone being accepted as a citizen. How do you know that at the time you receive them? They could go on and do some outrageous stuff, because within all of us there is the good and bad. Legislation based on good character as a way of allowing someone to be a citizen has probably not understood that we are on a scale of learning, of growing, of finding ourselves in the future. Even when we die, there will still be lots of stuff that we have not dealt with.

May I plead that when the guidance comes, particularly on dealing with people who arrived here as children, there is more grace than the harshness which I sometimes hear has come into this most green and pleasant land. People become more harsh, more judgmental, more unloving, more uncaring. The legislature should be the guardian against such attitudes and behaviour. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, we listened to the right reverend Prelate talking about coming to this country, as indeed did the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu. Just think for a moment: the right reverend Prelate and her parents arrived in this country as refugees from a place they could not go back to, and where, I seem to remember, the right reverend Prelate’s brother had been murdered. If they had come to this country illegally, would we really have sent them back, as being of bad character? If one thinks about it, it is quite extraordinary.

As Members of this House will know, like the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, I was a judge. I spent a lot of my time hearing evidence, often from people of bad character. Bad character is, of course, a wide definition. Technically, I suppose, you are of bad character if you speed: to that I admit—on more than one occasion. Are you of bad character if you are fleeing a place you had to leave because you might otherwise be dead, and are coming to this country by the only means you could? Let us bear in mind that the places people can go to in order to come legally to this country are almost non-existent. Consequently, nearly every refugee to this country comes illegally. Are we to say that doctors, lawyers, nurses, accountants, all people fleeing for good reason, are to be treated as being of bad character? I say to all Members of this House: we really need to reflect every now and again on what comes before this place and what we ought to do.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I am not able to support the right reverend Prelate on the first occasion she has tabled an amendment, and hope that I will be able to do so on future occasions. I will make a few points to balance the argument.

The right reverend Prelate and one or two noble Lords who spoke in favour of the amendment put the case on behalf of the individual seeking citizenship. The amendment refers to citizenship, not to sending people back—that is important to bear in mind. The amendment is also about the decision the Home Secretary and her officials have to make in protecting the rest of the country. They have to make a judgment on whether someone should be granted citizenship. The right reverend Prelate referred to the way in which decisions are made regarding children and the assurance the Minister gave before. Given that over 256,000 people have been granted citizenship this year, it seems that the department is not being overly harsh in its decision-making when it grants citizenship on that scale.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder whether that is quite reasonable, given this amendment. I do not think anybody would suggest that I am an extremist on this, but it seems a sensible amendment to me because it is carefully written. I hope that the Minister will take it very seriously. The reason is this: if we are going to get through this difficult period, we have to face those things which the public in general find most difficult. We have discussed before the fact that the public find it very difficult to accept that we do not deport people who have committed crimes in this country. The second thing they find very difficult to accept is when people appear to get away with pretending to be children when they are not. All this amendment does is to ask the Government to take this seriously and to produce, within a reasonable period, the advice that they are going to give. I find it awfully difficult to understand why one could possibly vote against that.

I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, but the amendment does not refer to the insistence that we should use some invasive system. What it asks is that the Government produce a clear statement as to what may properly be used; I find that perfectly acceptable. If we were talking about the details, that would be a different issue—I am not sure I would agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, but that is not the issue. I hope that right across the House, whatever view one holds generally, Members will recognise that we have a responsibility to try to meet those points where the public are particularly concerned. If we do not then those on the far right, who have no understanding of what it must be like to be an asylum seeker and who have no care for those people, will have another opportunity to lead other people astray. I very much hope the Minister will take this amendment very seriously.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I very much deprecate people who come to this country and commit crimes. The sooner they are deported, the better. However, I do not really understand why we need these amendments. I am hoping that the Minister is going to tell us, as he previously said he would, how the Government are going to move forward in identifying the age of people. Again, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that those who are not children—and pretend to be—should be found out.

However, as I said at an earlier stage of discussion on the Bill, when I went to a drop-in centre with Safe Passage some years ago, I met two 16 year-old Afghans: one with a beard and the other with a bushy moustache. We need to recognise that boys in other parts of the world mature, particularly facially, at a much earlier age than they do in this country and in western Europe. That is an issue which raises real problems for identification.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that, over the last four to five years, we have been round the Houses on this issue, not just in this Bill but in a large number of Bills. It keeps returning because there are concerns.

I want to start by trying to find some common ground on this issue, as we did last week, with the noble Lord, Lord Harper, in particular. Age verification—determining whether someone is 18 or not—is extremely difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, it is completely inappropriate for people who are well over 18 to come into a school system where they are treated as much younger, and even these Benches would not support that.

The difficulty—and the reason why we keep raising this—is that it is clear that no doctor will apply any of the scientific methods. We have had this debate since 2023, when the BMA made it clear that they were unreliable. On that occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, spoke in your Lordships’ House about how hormonal change because of poor diet, and the possibility of hormonal change because of minor and benign tumours, are impossible to tell just from looking at an MRI.