Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 8th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak on the two amendments together. Section 117C, on the deportation of foreign criminals, which the noble Baroness is seeking to amend, provides at subsection (1) that this deportation is in the public interest. I suggest that the well-being of children is a matter of public interest. There is a lot of noise about the deportation of foreign criminals at the moment, and the noble Baroness has rightly focused on the position of children. As the noble Baroness has identified, the family unit, about which politicians talk an awful lot, is generally in a child’s best interest. I am not sure about there being public interest in children being properly brought up. I do not disagree with the concept, but I am not sure how you define it.

In Amendment 187, there is a reference to maintaining contact by electronic means. I have been aware over the years that, although the means have developed, “Skype families”, as they used to be called, were desperately distressing for everyone concerned. I heard one example many years ago of a child who thought that daddy had no legs, because they had never seen the father below chest level. So, although it is not Skype these days, the principle remains.

I wish the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, a quick recovery and I thank her for bringing this to the attention of the House.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I too wish a swift and full recovery to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Her colleague has ably set out the thinking behind this amendment. I suspect I am more sympathetic to it than some members of the Committee, but I suggest the following additional observation on a point that it demonstrates, even to those who feel very anti anyone who has committed a crime ever being able to stay in the United Kingdom.

The amendment demonstrates that Article 8 of the convention is broadly drawn, so there is room for considerable debate about where the line should be drawn on what is a necessary and proportionate interference—for example, to prevent crime or for the purposes of immigration control. A great deal of latitude has always been allowed to signatory states as to where, in the first instance, democratic politics and the elected Government of the day think that discretion should be framed. For many years, Governments of both persuasions have attempted to structure that discretion—just as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is doing in one direction in this amendment—by a combination of primary legislation, Immigration Rules and policy. So, anybody who says that one needs to resile from the European Convention on Human Rights because of Article 8 is either misguided or not misguided at all and is doing this for various political reasons.

I have been a lawyer for only 31 years, but my understanding is that there have been only four removal cases since 1980 in which the UK Government have been found in violation of Article 8. So, if people are upset about the way domestic courts are drawing the line in particular cases, I suggest that that is something for domestic legislation—primary or secondary legislation, rules, guidance and so on. It is in no way a justification for some of the toxic debates about international human rights that we have heard in recent days, weeks, months and years.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I too send my best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. We shall miss, for a temporary period, her distinctive contribution to this House.

I am puzzled by this amendment, essentially for the reasons my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti mentions. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is part of our law. There are suggestions that proposals may be brought forward in relation to its application, but it remains part of our law. The Minister will tell me if I am wrong, but there is nothing in the Bill that purports to remove Article 8.

Article 8 requires adjudicators, tribunals and courts to have regard to family law issues and the interests of children and parents—families—and that seems entirely appropriate. There is a balance to be struck in these cases. We are talking about the deportation of criminals. Sadly, there are people here on a temporary basis who commit serious crimes and who need to be removed. It is right and proper that the interests of families are taken into account, but that already happens. I do not see the need for the amendments.

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[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, all noble Lords who have spoken on the amendment have got a deep understanding of a very complex system—the legal aid system—which I certainly do not, so I will leave the fundamentals of the amendment and how the legal aid system works to those who have a great deal of professional knowledge about the system.

However, I noted the observation from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, when he moved his amendment, that a modest investment would be required now in order to deliver the plans that he has outlined. Can he give some indication of what that modest investment would be? While accepting that it sounds like a simple question, I suspect that the answer is probably complex in terms of the netting off of savings elsewhere through a more efficient process and so forth. Can he also say what proportion of the existing legal aid budget that would represent in order to get the system to the level that he feels would be satisfactory, and where the additional capacity would come from and how long it would take to come through the system?

If the noble Lord could answer those points—or perhaps the Minister could in his winding-up speech—it would be very helpful, certainly to give some context to the non-professionally qualified Members of the Committee.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I also support the amendment from my noble friend Lord Bach and pay tribute to him not just for the amendment but for decades of service to access to justice, not least through successive Labour Governments and leaderships. I also congratulate him on his rather impressive list of supporters; clearly, there were many who were knocking on the door to be supporters but could not get in there quickly enough to be signatories.

I remind the Committee that we are talking about incarcerated people. This is not all migrants by any stretch, though no doubt more and more will become incarcerated in the future; there has certainly been a growth in detention in previous decades. These are incarcerated people, which means that the instinct behind the amendment from my noble friend Lord Bach is not a 1998 instinct or even a 1950 instinct; it is actually coming from a 1215 instinct—and noble Lords will understand that I do not mean 12.15 this afternoon. These are incarcerated people who are not getting access to legal advice around their incarceration and potential urgent removal from the country without legal advice. I do not think that most members of the public realise that that is the situation.

Obviously, I think this is a no-brainer, but I must try to walk in other people’s shoes and think about what the objections to the amendment might be. Clearly, if you believe that Governments and successive Home Offices and their officials always get things right and that legal process, and legal advice in particular, is just a burden and impediment and that we should ask my noble friend Lord Bach questions about how much this is going to cost et cetera, that is an obvious objection to the amendment. Another objection would come if you were of the view that non-nationals have no rights or should not have rights. If you take those two objections together, you very quickly pave the way for many more Windrush situations. I remind the Committee that nationals were swept up in that particular scandal because of the callous approach to non-nationals.

That takes me to the very important speech by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, comparing the lot of these incarcerated people with those who are swept up in the criminal justice system but have PACE protections that these people do not have, even though these incarcerated people are often not even accused of the kind of criminality that many criminal suspects are. These are incarcerated people; yes, for the most part they are non-nationals, but they face very serious consequences, quite possibly for reasons that are not a huge fault of their own.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I put it to the Committee that I sense that my noble friend Lord Bach’s amendment is now being interpreted as being potentially much wider than certainly I took it to be on initial examination of that amendment.

Recess has meant that we have not had as much discussion about that as we may have wanted to have. The main point here is that, under current MoJ/Home Office determinations, 30 minutes is available, and subsequent legal support is available subject to tests of eligibility, et cetera. I think that goes parallel to the wish of the Government to put in additional advisers to speed up applications, to make sure that there is better-quality initial decision-making, but I am always grateful to be advised by the Committee.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for giving way. While he is still on his feet—I love that device—and before my noble friend Lord Bach responds, I think I am hearing an understandable response to the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that at the moment none of us has a view of precise figures, but we could examine that, and maybe that should go into the mix of a future discussion on Report.

However, I have to agree with noble Lords who have said that this is not a zero-sum game between justice and efficiency. Indeed, I just wanted to ask my noble friend the Minister whether he agrees—I think he indicated that he does—with judges who have had to deal with cases of unrepresented people about how much time and energy that adds to hearings that, I believe, the Government actually want to speed up. In any calculation that the Minister comes back with on Report, I hope that officials will add that component for delay—an unrepresented person in an asylum case; that should go into the mix.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I draw the Committee back to where we are at the moment: an individual in detention can have 30 minutes’ worth of legal advice very quickly after they have requested it. There may be an issue around take-up. We are monitoring take-up on a regular basis and want to increase that take-up, but that 30 minutes is there. If further advice is required, on the merits test that can be taken forward as of now.

My noble friend’s amendment may take that issue wider than that discussion. It is the Government’s objective to speed up claims to get to decisions on asylum. We are doing that through executive action, not legislation, increasing the number of people taking decisions and making it much quicker and fairer, because that is in the public interest, as has been mentioned by all. I do not think we are going to resolve that issue in Committee today. I have tried to set out where I think we are, and my noble friend has tabled his amendment.

Serious questions have been raised on these issues by me, by the noble Viscount and by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment, because I believe the Government’s case as I have put it is the right course of action on those issues. If we are going to have even further discussion on the points he has made, we need to have some better information on which to base it, even though I accept that for some members of the Committee, that becomes a matter of principle.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness that this feels a little like a Second Reading debate today, but there are two good reasons for that. First, quite a bit of time has passed since we last met in this Chamber to discuss this subject and, secondly, an awful lot has happened politically. I was fascinated to see, for example, the kite being flown around digital ID cards, which is an incredibly important subject and has a huge bearing on the question of illegal immigration and control of people once they are in this country. I think it is very fair that we have a very wide-ranging debate having kicked off this day in Committee.

When we started looking at this Bill, much of the commentary was that the Bill was thin. I think we spent two days or a day and a half talking about the border controller—essentially a renamed civil servant with pretty much exactly the powers that they had previously. The Bill was not substantive. Since then, we have heard the Government floating various potential initiatives around digital ID cards, the ECHR and reform of family access—if I can describe it as that—so this is very much a moving target. It almost feels as if there is an argument to pause this Bill while some of these initiatives are worked through.

We also really need to be frank about the nature of the situation and the pull factors which drive people, for entirely logical reasons, to choose the UK as their destination of choice. The Minister and I have had a number of interactions to try and get to the bottom of why the Government believe that the UK is so popular among those who go through a number of other countries to arrive here. I am not satisfied: I am not convinced that I have had really a full answer to that question. I think some of it, as my noble friend says, lies around the very low chance of being deported from this country if one arrives in a small boat.

My noble friend Lord Murray in his Amendment 203J at least has come forward with a really substantive suggestion. Whether that works legally or not, I am absolutely not the person to opine on. When I saw the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, anxious to rise to his feet, I thought a massive torpedo was going to be launched from the Cross Benches into the middle of that amendment. A number of us over here sort of scratched our heads and thought, “Have we heard correctly?” We were delighted that we had, because I think we really are all on the same side here—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Very rarely.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

We are very rarely on exactly the same side as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti— I will certainly accept her correction. I think the noble Lord, Lord Empey, described the overall situation brilliantly—we cannot just do nothing or scratch around at the edges, which is an awful lot of what this particular Bill is about. We need to look at different situations and different solutions, and that is why I very much look forward to the Minister’s response to my noble friend’s Amendment 203J.

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[Lord Hardie (CB)]

My Lords, I may have misunderstood him, but did the Minister say that the Government would consider derogating from Article 3?

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

We cannot.

[Lord Hardie (CB)]

I know that. I may have misunderstood what the Minister said, but, if that was the case, I point out that that is not possible.

Public Order Legislation

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the legislation around public order to consider its clarity, efficacy and compliance with fundamental rights and freedoms.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, post-legislative scrutiny of the Public Order Act 2023 began in May 2025. It will assess how the Act operates in practice. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 will undergo similar post-legislative scrutiny between April 2025 and April 2027.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful as always to my noble and learned friend—my almost learned friend—the Minister for that Answer, but the issue is about more than one statute. Indeed, the common law and statute law in this sensitive area has mushroomed under Governments of all persuasions in recent years. Given the summer that we have just had, and given the challenges to both freedom of expression and public order, is it not time that there was an overarching review of all the law in this area to examine not just adequacy and coherence but public and police understanding of this sensitive area of the law?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. As I have just said, legislation is kept under review at all times. We have legislation coming before this House very shortly in the Crime and Policing Bill that will add other measures to the policing of protests. The policing of protests is most definitely a matter for the police, and the freedom to protest and freedom of expression are extremely important. She raises a sensible suggestion to look at how we can ensure that the police and the public understand where the barriers are. I hope that we can reflect on what has happened at any protest and ensure that the right to protest is central but that the right to do so in a peaceful, orderly way is also central. Those are two basic tenets that would be self-evident and central to any review she suggests.

Palestine Action Protests: Arrests

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

This Government—and I personally—have no time for antisemitism. We will take action against it; we will look at the review and the reports that have been made and respond to the recommendations in due course. I hope the noble Lord will be aware that antisemitism is a curse on our society, one that we should tackle very strongly, and this Government will do so. I hope that with his support we will continue to look at how we can build bridges to ensure that antisemitism is no longer a feature of our society.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am quite convinced from listening to these exchanges that my noble friend the Minister well understands the relevant law here, but I am not so convinced that the police do. Does he realise that if they continue to fail to make distinctions between support for a proscribed organisation, opposing the proscription, protesting events in the Middle East or indeed holding up Private Eye cartoons, their behaviour will only call further into question the wisdom, proportionality and legality of the original proscription decision?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I can only repeat to this House that I believe the proscription order is clear in relation to the offences that potentially could be committed under that order. It is for the police to make judgment. I am not even going to second-guess the arrests that have been made, because I do not know the details of why they have been made and it is not appropriate for Ministers to delve into that matter. We set the framework, then the police investigate, execute and bring to the CPS. That is the way the rule of law works in this country.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 99 is not directly related to the previous amendments other than by the connection of biometric data. My question is about which database the biometric data is being checked against. The question comes from the briefing that was helpfully provided by the Minister and his advisers prior to the Bill being laid. At that briefing, I asked whether the databases were being checked for particular purposes, and the advice we received was that they could not be used by the police. I found that confusing when I re-read the Bill and saw that there is a law enforcement clause. The questions today are about whether the databases are being checked for these particular reasons.

If the people you are checking are entering for the first time, they should never have their data in these databases because they have never been to the UK. But, of course, many of the people who arrive, sometimes illegally, have been here before, have left and now are returning—so it is important to establish their identity first, obviously.

The databases that I am interested in are, first, the unsolved crime scene database. Crimes happen every day, samples are taken—DNA, fingerprints and sometimes photographs now—and, of course, not all crimes are solved. A database is kept of those crimes that are not solved, so is the biometric data of the people who are entering being checked against that?

The second group I am interested in is people who are wanted. They might be wanted in this country or in other countries. It may be that we choose not to let the third country know that this person has arrived, but at least we should know whether we are at risk of importing someone who is wanted somewhere else. This is probably quite important, given the group of countries that many of the people who are coming to our country are linked to. When many of our soldiers in Afghanistan were murdered and badly maimed by IEDs, we collected an awful lot of forensic material, which is now stored in this country in case we ever discover the people who carried out those crimes. It would certainly be ironic if somebody claimed to want to come to this country legally and had previously killed or maimed one of our soldiers—we should at least be aware of that. Are we checking this against that database?

This is quite a specific set of questions, but it relies on the data being checked. The advice we received at the briefing was that it was not. The purpose of this amendment is to get on record exactly what it is being checked against.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which have been so ably supported across the Committee—pretty much every voice so far has been in support of them. They are a very useful humanitarian mirror to arguments that have been made on the previous group about the importance of data sharing for law enforcement purposes.

Amendments 97 and 98, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, very much endorse the views of the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Alton, on the need for even more breadth and possibly a government amendment. These amendments are very sympathetic to the Government’s stated policy of smashing the gangs et cetera. It is a perverse outcome to hear that people who were trying to satisfy the Government’s legal and practical requirements for family reunion are having to resort to people smugglers. So, with respect, I hope that the Minister will see that this is a no brainer in terms of the practical facilitation of government policy.

Finally, I talked about these amendments being very much the humanitarian mirror of the need sometimes to share data—in this case, biometric information—for the purpose of giving effect to lawful family reunion. Please do not shoot the messenger, but I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that the Data Protection Act and the UK GDPR contain very broad law enforcement exemptions, but broad is not blanket. I hope I can say to Conservative noble Lords that it is one thing to have a broad law enforcement exemption, but another to have blanket immunity from data protection. I am sure that noble Lords opposite would not want, for example, data controllers to be negligent or not to maintain a secure system so that sensitive information, even about potential criminals, was dumped on the internet, easily hacked or simply negligently maintained. Data controllers, particularly public authority data controllers, and especially of sensitive information, should at least have to maintain a proper, secure system. Yes, data should be shared for law enforcement purposes where that is necessary and proportionate, but they should not be totally negligent with this information.

I hope that provides some reassurance on that issue. In any event, if it does not, the Minister has already said that he can write.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken. The amendments in my noble friend’s name, which I have signed, are, I think, well received across the Committee as a whole. On top of that, I must repeat the welcome for Clauses 34 and 35, which seek to increase flexibility when taking biometric information. I do not want to repeat the cases that have been talked about during this debate but shall simply speak about the practicalities of how this change might take place.

I have had experience of bringing people here for a short time and requiring their biometric information, which was sent from one country to another. Very helpfully, British Foreign Office officials in one country put the machine in the boot of their car and drove it to the other country—I am not going to give the details because otherwise they might get into trouble. Regularly, they have taken the biometric information of people who have visited the noble Lord’s part of Wales, among others; that that might give him a clue. I read today in the newspapers that the Government are to provide Home Office officials with portable biometric equipment. In my day, these things were small enough to go in the boot, but they are obviously going to be even smaller. So, in practical terms, taking biometric information is no longer a matter of using a large machine. Similarly, when you go to hospital for a scan, it is no longer done by big machines. This machinery is getting smaller, and we are now talking about portable methods. Clearly, that can be done, and it makes it more straightforward to take the machinery closer to people who are fulfilling the legal route that the Government have set in front of them. Of course, we should remember that, in 2024, 10,000 of those who came on family reunion were children.

The second thing is whether the Government are interested in using other bodies to take the biometric information. I do not know what the Government have already done on this matter—I saw the Minister checking his phone—but, clearly, if we are to have family reunion, and if President Macron has decided that biometrics can be taken in France, at least that might give some of the information we will need to know anyway about these matters.

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[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I agree with the general thrust of the argument the noble Lord, Lord Harper, is putting to the Committee. He talked about getting the balance right, and that is really what I was arguing. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that these are children or young people, and we owe them a duty of care. We should get the balance right and not categorise them all as potential criminals or as having been involved in acts of terror or criminality. However, I recognise that there is that potential, and therefore, as he says, we have to get the balance right. We do not want a general disapplication of protections. We want to know that they are going to be used in a measured and sane way.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

As a supplement to that, I add that the balance is already there in the international standards, in things such as making sure there is an appropriate adult present. That does not harm any of the ambitions of the noble Lord. It is just what we would normally expect for minors.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I am grateful for both of those interventions. In the clause as set out there are provisions to make sure there is an appropriate person who is not a representative of the government present. All I was saying is that it is important we do not lose sight of the purpose of this exercise, which is to enable people to come to Britain, where they are legally qualified to do so and do not present a risk to us. That is an important balance to strike.

I strongly support the thrust of the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about the use to which this information should be put. In the modern world, with the way we can process data, my experience of how we use it is that it is done in a proportionate way. Checking information against databases protects people. Our security agencies are not interested in, and do not have the resources to spend their time worrying about, people who do not present a threat to the country. The big challenge is dealing with those who do. The noble Lord set out some very important questions, which I hope the Minister can deal with when he closes. I wanted to put that in context, so that the Minister covers it when he responds.

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry to come in on the coat-tails of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, again. My noble friend the Minister discussed the need for flexibility. Surely the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would extend governmental flexibility to facilitate biometrics being taken in more places for family reunion cases. The noble Lord opposite was concerned that this would put an onerous obligation on the Secretary of State. However, the Secretary of State is the person who will authorise people, and he will not make these authorisations if he thinks they are impracticable or overly burdensome. Can my noble friend the Minister reflect on that in future and see this as providing additional flexibility and not an additional burden?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In response to both the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, I will repeat what I said in my preamble today: the Home Office is continuing to assess whether broader policy changes are needed to balance that humanitarian concern. The noble Lord made a very strong point about a child aged two and the length of time for a reunion—that will fall within our assessment of the broader humanitarian concern. We need to balance that with security requirements; however, in the case he put to us, a two-year old child would self-evidently not pose that type of threat.

This is important. I say to the noble Lords who tabled the amendments that the purpose of the clause is to provide the assurances that we have. I accept that noble Lords are testing that; however, while we will examine the points that have been made, I believe that there are alternative ways to achieve that objective. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, not to press her amendments. I also hope that I have satisfied the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

I am afraid that I cannot support most of the noble Lord’s amendments, but the point that he makes about protecting those who are being trafficked is worthy of further consideration at later stages.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here for the first day in Committee. I was with colleagues as part of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe. Of course, I spoke at Second Reading.

Sadly, after the debate on the previous group, it seems that I have to declare an interest as the former director of Liberty. It is not something that I do very often but, given some of the disparaging remarks about my former employer, I thought I had better declare that as some kind of interest. Apparently, to have worked for a cross-party or non-party human rights NGO is now an issue. I should add that in my many years working at the National Council for Civil Liberties, I worked across this House and the other place, including with some very senior Conservatives, who believed very much in fundamental rights and freedoms. I guess that was then and this, unfortunately, is now.

As a preliminary point, on the previous group I was slightly flummoxed by contributions from across the Committee on the Clause 13 offence and defences. Forgive me, I have been a lawyer for only 30 years, but it is easier to prove that I was reckless in my behaviour than to prove that I had actual knowledge or suspicion. If I am right about that, I am flummoxed by every contribution from around the Committee on whether it should be knowledge and suspicion or intention and recklessness—but that was the previous group.

In relation to this group, I have to commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his committee and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for amendments that square very well with—I will not call it a platitude—the caveat that the noble Lord, Lord Harper, gave to his other comments: that he does care about genuine refugees. If I am to take that as a real commitment to genuine refugees who are not abusing or playing any system but are in peril in their home country and fleeing persecution, if that is the commitment—I know it is the commitment from my noble friend the Minister—then I suggest that none of the amendments in this group contradicts the intention that we are going for the smugglers, going for the traffickers, going for the people who are making money out of people’s desperation, but not going for innocents.

Of course, the nature of protecting genuine refugees is that you do not know who will turn out to be a convention refugee until you process them. That means that we have to be a little bit careful about how we go after the people who are coming before we have actually considered their case. To go back to various comments that have been made about the historic origins of the refugee convention, I just remind the Committee that this was the world’s apology for the Holocaust, and that people who fled the Nazis in the 1930s often had to do so by irregular and clandestine means. For those who need a reminder, I recommend “Julia”, the 1977 Fred Zinnemann film starring Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. It would not be a bad thing for every participant in this Committee to revisit that Oscar-winning film, perhaps over the recess, before coming back for many more hours of deliberation on this Bill.

The reason that these amendments are good ones that do not undermine the intention of the Bill but actually speak, to some extent, to the slightly confusing debate on the previous group is, first, that they make it clear that we are going after the people who are monetising this desperation, perpetrating the evil trade and putting people’s lives at risk in the English Channel. The amendments put that squarely into the Bill. Secondly, they refer to the refugee convention, which I know will raise some hackles on the Benches opposite. I believe it is the Government’s intention to comply with the refugee convention as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights has to be dealt with on the front cover of the Bill, as per the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act will also be the interpretive method for looking at the Bill, but there is not anything like that for the refugee convention. What there is instead is a tradition that was begun by a previous Conservative Government in the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993. Check the date: it was a Conservative Government, if I have my history right, who introduced the principle, initially into the Immigration Rules, that the refugee convention has primacy in the context of treating refugees, because the intention of that Government, and previous Conservative Governments, was to comply not just with the European Convention on Human Rights but with the refugee convention as well.

Because we have moved towards criminalisation—not just considering claims, appeals and removals—it becomes important that the refugee convention provides a defence for various immigration offences that are subsequently created. That is why the Joint Committee on Human Rights—a wonderful institution of this Parliament—has stepped in to make sure that no prosecution or conviction under any of these offences will offend the refugee convention. I can put it no better than the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who said that we do not want to use these offences. It cannot be the Government’s intention that these offences and prosecutions are for the victims rather than the smugglers. That is the best comment I can make in support of this group.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, a long-term advocate of the most vulnerable and refugees in particular, has an obvious point about feminine hygiene products. It would be strangely gendered for the Government not to consider adding that to food, et cetera, when we are talking about human dignity. I commend all these amendments to the Committee.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak, because my noble friend Lord Harper made an excellent contribution, but I cannot let the peroration of the noble Baroness go without some response. Her arguments would carry somewhat more weight had she not resisted every attempt at a pragmatic, practical approach to the protection of our borders and the safety and security of our country—the first duty of a Government—through many pieces of legislation, not least the Rwanda Act, which many of us were involved in over the past couple of years. She and other noble Lords like her have never conceded that this is an issue. They want to go forward with this canard that the Conservative Party has in government and in opposition swung to the right—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. First, I pointed out the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993, which is Conservative legislation. I could have gone on. I know that the noble Lord thinks my peroration has been too long already, but we can compare the minutes afterwards in Hansard of how long people are banging on. I was trying to point to a long and noble tradition in his party of caring about the refugee convention and trying to do what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, suggested we must do: differentiate the genuine refugees, who need to get here and be processed and considered before you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Secondly, the noble Lord should not let the fact that the messenger is unattractive to him be to the disadvantage of the amendments—try to ignore me and just consider the amendments in detail. I suggest that they do not offend his ambition of controlling borders or the ambition of the noble Lord, Lord Harper, of differentiating between perpetrators and gamers of the system and people who may well turn out to be genuine refugees. The noble Lord, Lord Harper, has made points about the public on many occasions and their warmth towards desperate Ukrainians, Hong Kongers and so on. Those people were rightly given safe and legal routes to the United Kingdom, in a way that Afghans, Sudanese people and others in equally dire straits were not. The drafters of the refugee convention always understood that that might happen and that some desperate people might have to flee by irregular routes. You do not know who is a refugee and who is not until you have considered their claim.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I do not deprecate the remarks of the noble Baroness. I find her always passionate and compelling, and she added greatly to the strength, colour and nuance of the debates we had over the last two years on the Rwanda Bill and other legislation, so I am not shooting the messenger.

The noble Baroness pre-empts my comments. I was going to say that my party has had an outward-looking, internationalist, liberal approach to bringing into this country the brightest and the best. Going way back, from the Ugandan refugees who were expelled by Idi Amin, and the Asian folk from India and the Indian subcontinent, to, as the noble Baroness says, Syrians, Ukrainians and Hong Kongers, we have a very proud record of welcoming people from different cultures. However, it is important to make the point that it is not strange that nine countries in the European Union are demanding that the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights are revisited because they are simply not working and are not equal to the geopolitical challenges alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, around the mass movement of people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again. I want to move away from me and go back to the amendment. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, that the amendments make that distinction, because the refugee convention will be of no avail as a defence to anyone who does not turn out to be a refugee. The convention’s principles are non-penalisation, non-discrimination and non-refoulement. Whatever the other defects, the Committee ought to be able to unite around those principles.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Before I look at the specific critique of the amendments put forward, I take the comments by the noble Baroness on face value. However, I know that, when my party were in government, those on the other side, the Liberal Democrats and many Cross-Benchers took issue with age-verification tests and other attempts by the state to determine the bona fides of people with respect to their age and background, and whether they were truly subject to oppression, mistreatment, or the misuse of the criminal system in their countries. At every step, those were opposed. It has proven difficult for us to focus on those who are genuinely in need of our support, as my noble friend Lord Harper said.

By the way, I support the very sensible amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about dignity products. Any sensible, sentient, caring, compassionate person would do so.

I end my slightly odd preface to these comments by saying that we have a responsibility. We are not elected, but we should nevertheless reflect the very serious and significant concern among the public about these issues. Many people would be horrified by this otherworldly obsession with the minutiae of amendments when we have a national crisis affecting our borders and the safety and security of our country. We have a responsibility to address that.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry, but this is Committee, where we look at the minutiae of amendments. I plead with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to look at the amendments in this group and at my suggestion that they do not offend his ambition to control the borders and to differentiate between those gaming the system or monetising an evil trade and those victims of trafficking and potentially genuine refugees. It is not about what I have said in the past, who I am or the NGOs that the noble Lord does not like; it is about the specific amendments, because this is Committee in the House of Lords.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am aware of that. I am merely drawing to your Lordships’ attention the fact that there will be real-world consequences from the interpretation of the legislation when it finally gets Royal Assent and becomes an Act.

As has been said by my noble friend Lord Harper, there are other individual groups who have a vested interest—perhaps for the right reasons—to not consider the security and safety of our border. They are perfectly entitled to believe in there being no borders and in a very loose and liberal interpretation of immigration policy. However, we must be careful when we legislate that we do not allow those people—who are massively out of step with the views of most of the public—to put in the Bill, through advocacy, something that will not be in the long-term best interest.

I cannot add anything more to the excellent points on Amendment 33 made by my noble friend. I oppose Amendments 35 and 44. Although it looks on the face of it beguilingly attractive that we should not be in breach of international treaty obligations which we have signed, my concern is that this is a moveable feast. To put in the Bill quite a prescriptive, tight and draconian interpretation of an international regime which may well change over the next few years is not appropriate. I have no doubt that the 1951 refugee convention will evolve—for the better, I hope—and that certainly the ECHR will be reviewed, as it is not only people in the UK who are concerned about it. The amendments are well meant and make a strong argument, but they would tie the hands of our own judiciary and Ministers.

--- Later in debate ---

I will give way to my noble friend and then to the proposer of the amendment.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Given that my noble friend knows what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, means, and given that he has parliamentary counsel at his disposal, might he consider a government amendment that adds “female sanitary hygiene products” to a list that currently includes food, drink or medical products?

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I understand the point that the Minister is making. The JCHR report actually used the term “hygiene kits”, and I did not understand what those might be. They sound a little bit like the complimentary items you might get in plastic wrapping that you cannot undo in in a hotel. Would the Minister agree that we might have a discussion about this? It would require regulations to change the list of articles in Clause 15. It would be far better if we could talk about this as a sensible, non-political point and get it into the Bill.

Police: Facial Recognition Technology

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to introduce legislation to regulate the procurement and use of facial recognition technology by the police.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, facial recognition is a valuable tool that helps the police identify offenders and protect the public. While its use is governed by existing laws, the Government are considering whether further legal clarity is needed in order to maintain public trust and confidence.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful, as always, to my noble friend. Since the groundbreaking Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, in which noble Lords opposite may take some pride, it has been decided that in this country police power is principally a matter for Parliament and statute, not for incremental development by the courts and common law. Can it therefore be right that successive Governments have allowed the procurement of this most intrusive technology from any company or Government in the world, and its deployment to be a matter of discretion for the 43 police forces in England and Wales?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There is a range of legislation that provides protections for the public at large, including data protection legislation and equality and human rights law, along with the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice, the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice Live Facial Recognition, the Information Commissioner, the Equality and Human Rights Commissioner, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner. If that is not enough for my noble friend, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary recently said that she wants to see a clear legal framework in place for facial recognition. We aim to set out plans very shortly, but it is an important tool and it does help identify perpetrators of crime.

Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that we are all incredibly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for this work, as in her previous independent inquiries on behalf of Governments of all stripes. There is, no doubt, a problem when walking on eggshells prevents the investigation and prosecution of particular criminals because of fears of racism. That is clear from this report, but does my noble friend the Minister agree that we have seen these group scandals in relation to child abuse in the Catholic Church and the Church of England—if the right reverend Prelate will forgive me, patriarchal communities where vulnerable people are not believed? With that in mind, and also referring to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is the age of criminal responsibility, at just 10 years old in England and Wales, too young when children and girls who are exploited in this way, drugged and put into prostitution, are then treated as criminals and not as victims?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for echoing the praise and support for the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and the work she has done. She has set down a further set of developments that we can look at and action to help reduce victims and reduce this level of crime. My noble friend tempts me into addressing the age of criminal responsibility. What I will say is that that issue is one that we will reflect on in government. I cannot give her chapter and verse on that today, but what I can say—I said it a moment ago in relation to recommendation 3, which is on reviewing convictions of victims—is that we will legislate in the Crime and Policing Bill to introduce a disregard scheme for the convictions of individuals who were found guilty of prostitution offences as children. The criminal law has rightly evolved to make it clear that children cannot be prostitutes, and it is long overdue that individuals convicted of child prostitution offences have their convictions disregarded and their criminal records expunged. We will do that in the Crime and Policing Bill, and I look forward to His Majesty’s Official Opposition supporting us on that Bill, not voting against it as they just have done in the House of Commons.

Public Order Act 1986: Section 5

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister, as always, for putting equal treatment at the heart of human rights. However, regardless of individual cases that we get hot under the collar about—we pick and choose which ones to get upset about—is it not time to have another look at not just the operation of Section 5 of the 1986 Act but its framing? I suggest that most noble Lords would agree that threatening and harassing conduct should be criminal, but broader, lower-level conduct “likely” to cause “alarm or distress”? Some people are a little bit too easily alarmed and distressed. It is not about just religious freedom; it is about freedom of expression as well.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. The Government keep all legislation under review at all times. The very fact that this discussion is taking place on this question means that we have looked at the legislation today and looked at the applicability of certain matters. There is a balance to be made. Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 has stood the test of 39 years to date, through a range of protests, a range of measures and a range of Governments. It has stood the test of time.

We keep it under review, but the important principle behind it is that Section 5 of the Public Order Act gives a clear definition of harassment and intimidation. Protest crosses the criminal threshold where it goes into harassment and intimidation. That is why the prosecution was taken in the case to which I believe the noble Baroness referred, and why, in other cases, prosecutions have not been taken.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, from this side, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Harper. Whether or not he always agrees with the indefatigable noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I hope that he will find this House capable of always disagreeing well.

It is not so much a declaration of interest as a description of context to say that I am the daughter of late and lawful 1950s Commonwealth migrants to this country and a human rights lawyer of just over 30 years. For the avoidance of doubt, and at possible risk of confounding some potential expectations, I accept this Bill’s underlying premises of both border security and immigration control.

A democratic political community is of course defined by its borders as well as its values and laws. It has a prerogative to assess and balance its social, economic and cultural needs, including some desire for reciprocal international work, study, trade and tourism on the part of its own citizens. As a matter of logic and international law, it retains considerable discretion on the question of how many and what kind of visas to grant to non-nationals seeking to enter its territory for various purposes. This should be exercised, I would suggest, with considerable care, given the often competing interests of different economic actors in particular. Some employers, and—dare I say it—government departments, may have a strong instinct towards importing large amounts of skilled, and even unskilled, workers. This may be laudable, and at times vital to fuel innovation or fill gaps in services or the labour market, but less so if it is designed to suppress wages below what is fair or even sustainable for living.

Since World War II, however, there has been—rightly, in my view—far less discretion about how to treat a much smaller number of people for whom travel comes not from preference, but persecution. Let us please always remember that we have a refugee convention, a European convention and so on, as a direct result of some of the worst atrocities of the past century and the plight of those who were denied safe passage to, and asylum in, countries such as our own at that time.

The 1951 refugee convention in particular enshrines the principles of non-refoulement, sending people back or onwards to their peril; non-penalisation, not punishing them for the desperate and even clandestine means of their escape; and non-discrimination against them. All three of these principles were violated by the legislation of recent years, in particular the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the legislative lie that is the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act. The Government are to be commended for seeking to repeal so much of that toxic legacy. However, I am sure that we will explore in Committee how that repeal does not go far enough, in a number of respects, to achieve either the legality or simplicity that I hope most of us want to see.

Before even the legislation came the politics for which our leaders are just as responsible. In my opinion, a grand political swindle was perpetrated upon the British electorate in recent years. Notwithstanding Brexit slogans about controlling borders, large numbers of international workers were consciously invited into the UK, while a fraction of those numbers of asylum seekers, mostly genuine refugees and often from sites of Britain’s previous overseas military adventures, were demonised beyond recognition. That is dishonest, dangerous and, frankly, immoral.

As we examine both the broad brushstrokes and detailed drafting of the Bill, I hope we can work with care and precision to distinguish between immigration control and refugee protection. I accept that the latter is a responsibility we share with other rule-of-law-loving territories, which, as my noble friend Lord Dubs has said, must be discharged in greater collaboration, including to avoid wherever possible desperate people taking perilous journeys. But it is one thing to criminalise traffickers and smugglers and another to dehumanise, deprive, detain and deport their desperate human cargo, who are not and have never been illegal, let alone criminal.

In life and in politics, just as much as legislation, words matter. They have consequences beyond the next headline. I was born just over a year after Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech. A few months later, my then young parents were violently attacked by violent thugs trying to take their baby from her pram in a London park. That may be too long ago for the bright young things who draft political speeches to remember, but surely not for your Lordships’ House.