Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has experience far beyond any that I could bring to this House, so I am grateful for his contribution today. He raises an extremely important point. We have established a fund—it is of only £5 million, but it is available to all local authorities to draw on to establish the work that needs to be done. That was in the initial announcement from my right honourable friend in the House of Commons last week and will be kept under review for the future. We have given the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, a remit to look at the existing areas of concern within local authorities. No doubt she will come back with an audit and further recommendations for the Government to consider.

I recognise that the noble Lord has concerns about long-term funding for key services that are about interventions. I can say to him only that we are going to keep all that under review. I know I will have his support, and that of others with great experience, in implementing the IICSA recommendations and when we bring back proposals on the other recommendations, in what might be only 10 weeks’ time.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, although I am speaking in a personal capacity today. About a week ago, when the Minister and I engaged on a similar but different Statement, I asked him two questions and he said he would need to go away and think about them. One was about data. I do not know whether he has seen the reports, based on freedom of information requests, about backsliding. I very much welcome the emphasis on ethnicity data collection and demographics, as the Statement says. Has he seen the statistics? I will give him only three examples. In Hampshire, in the past five years, 58% of offenders sentenced for all sexual offences involving children were recorded as having an unknown ethnicity. In West Mercia, it was 55%, and in Leicestershire, it was 52%. If the police are already not recording identity for fear of being accused of either racism or Islamophobia, what are the Government going to do, before we get the full gamut of actions under the Jay report, to ensure that the current requirements are met?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness had a conversation with me, both in this Chamber and outside. She will know that there are occasions when Ministers can absorb views but cannot necessarily give definitive answers, because policy is developed outside of just the discussions in this House and in government as a whole. I hope she will welcome that one of the policy initiatives in the second Statement made by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary was the collection of data—the very point she raised with me before we made that announcement. I could not give her assurances then because we had not made the announcement; now we have. That data will be collected by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. If it shows matters that need to be addressed, they will be addressed, to try to reduce this curse.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I declare that I—along with Fiona Mactaggart, then an MP—wrote a report on children in northern France, Calais and Dunkirk some years ago. I find this whole group of amendments to the Bill extremely sad.

I want to concentrate on a legal issue, which I raise to some extent with the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was certainly not an immigration lawyer but, as far as I understand the Immigration Rules, civil partners, who come up in Amendment 13, and adopted children, who come up in Amendment 14—both are referred to in Clause 1(5)—are already within the Immigration Rules. Consequently, if the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are right, they are trying to reduce the Immigration Rules, not increase them.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I was unable to attend Second Reading, but I have come in today especially because this debate is a very interesting one. I say to those who really want to hear a well-argued and well-reasoned debate that it is the convention of this House that, when someone seeks to intervene with a point and they ask the speaker to give way, that person should be heard. It is very sad to see the tone of this debate.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest in that I am supported by the RAMP organisation. At the outset, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, if I caught him correctly, said that it was difficult to explain why the amendments in this group were laid. That is what I heard—I apologise if it is not what he said. It seems to me, from the conversation we have had on this group of amendments, that it is primarily about making further restrictions on what is already in the rules of our system and, secondly, about creating differences in timings. Those would then make it more difficult to put forward the principles that lie behind this Bill, which of course is about filling some of the eligibility gaps that currently exist for family reunion.

On timings, it strikes me as strange that we have two sets of amendments pulling in opposite directions. In one set we have amendments from noble Lords on the Conservative Benches saying that they want to restrict the amount of time that the Home Office and the Government have to make the new arrangements, while in the other set they are trying to expand them so that they have longer to do it. I do not know whether we can make a judgment on that, but it seems to me that what is common practice in the timings for dealing with changes that the Government have to make—the current procedure in this Bill of six months for the Government to prepare, and 21 days before Parliament—

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I reiterate my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, for establishing the inquiry in the first place. She was right to do so, and in due course I want to do justice to the recommendations that have come out of that inquiry.

She raised an extremely important point about companies, because online grooming material, the deepfake stuff now coming out and a whole range other material are extremely worrying and perturbing. Social media companies must have responsibility for that as well as society. The Government will introduce a requirement for companies to report online child sexual exploitation and abuse identified on their services to the National Crime Agency. This requirement will be underpinned by regulations which will ensure that companies provide high-quality reports with the information that law enforcement needs both to identify offenders and to help support and safeguard victims. In-scope companies—and we will have to determine which those are—will have to demonstrate that they already report under existing mandatory or voluntary overseas reporting regimes, which will ensure that they are exempt from this recommendation and avoid duplication of companies’ efforts.

I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness completely that online companies have a real responsibility. They cannot just host material; they must have responsibility for some of that content. The steps that I have outlined, which are underpinned by the first three elements of the response to the report, are ones which the Government will take forward with some urgency.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and I want to make it clear to the whole House that I am speaking in a personal capacity today.

I want to ask the Minister about the proposal in IICSA for a single core dataset, which the Government say in the Statement that they are planning to implement. Would this be an accessible dataset, open and transparent? Or would journalists, or others seeking information on that dataset, need to go through the inevitable delays that freedom of information requests and appeals entail? This is particularly important because, as he will know, the other recommendation of IICSA is that a national public awareness campaign be mounted. National public awareness will work only if we call out people, particularly those who are now, we are told, for the first time going to be described by ethnicity in that database.

As, I think, the only person in the House who grew up within those communities, having grown up in Pakistan, I want to refer to deportations to that country. Can the Minister tell the House what steps the Government are planning to take to seek deportation of those who are convicted and who then seek to thwart that through renouncing their nationality—I refer particularly to Pakistan in this regard? Will he call in the Pakistani ambassador and open talks with the Pakistani Government to ensure that those who have dual nationality are not permitted to renounce it once they are under police investigation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those questions. There is a significant amount of detail in the points that she has raised, and I hope she will understand and bear with me when I say that the Government are working through the broad objectives that we have set. The first three objectives I have mentioned are on mandatory reporting, the grooming aggravated offence and online work. These are the three major priorities.

I note what the noble Baroness said about the database. If she will allow me, I want to reflect in detail on that point. It is an important way in which information is put into the public domain and I do not want to commit today to things that we find are impractical or counterproductive downstream. I will note that point and follow up on it.

The noble Baroness made a point about convicted individuals from a particular nation. From the Government’s point of view, people who commit child abuse—whatever their race, ethnicity, background, sexual orientation or other things—should be held to account by the forces of the law and prosecuted accordingly when evidence is brought forward. In the event that she mentioned, of someone who has been convicted who has a nationality which is not British and has served a sentence in a jail in this country, the Government always reserve the right to deport that individual back to their home country in due course. The noble Baroness raised dual nationality issues. If she will allow me, rather than commit today on the detail of that extremely technical and complicated issue, I will take it back and discuss it, but it is an important procedure going forward.

I say to the noble Baroness and to all in this House that I want to focus not just on the nationality of any particular or potential groomers or offenders but on people who undertake grooming and offending and to make sure that we tackle that across the board. Individuals of whatever nationality should be held to account for their criminal actions.

Protest Measures

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

On the noble Baroness’s latter point, those discussions are ongoing and will continue within the Home Office. I certainly raise the subject regularly, not least because I too am concerned about proportionality; I think it entirely right. I am of course aware that the Government cannot ban everything they do not like, much as it might sometimes be fun to do so. On war graves, cemeteries, war memorials and so on, the public outrage was fairly significant, and noted. It was clear that this offended a great many people from all parts of the community. I do not know which officers the noble Baroness spoke to, but they should have spoken to their boss, because he asked for these powers.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. As the Minister would expect, I looked at this quite carefully in the context of Article 11 of the ECHR. He is right, and I accept fully, that Article 11.2 gives the state the right to bring in public order laws and a whole of host of other things. I would say to colleagues who are feeling uncomfortable about this that they need to look at the wording of Article 11.2. However, my question to the Minister is slightly different. It relates to the Aarhus Convention, which the United Kingdom signed in 2002, and which is there to defend the rights of environmental protesters. The Special Rapporteur on the Aarhus convention recently visited the United Kingdom. He has since sent a letter of complaint to the United Kingdom Government concerning environmental protesters. Is the Minister minded to reply to that letter and to publish the reply?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid that this is the first I have heard of this, so I cannot comment further, but I will of course look into it. These changes are compatible with the ECHR and do not prevent individuals exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Many of the offences affected, including public nuisance, which involve serious harm to or obstruction of the public’s rights, are highly likely to fall outside of the protections of ECHR rights or within the state’s margin of appreciation. On the rights of environmental protesters, I do not think we should elevate any particular set of protesters’ rights above any other.

Female Domestic Homicides: Black, Asian and Ethnic-minority Overrepresentation

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate will be aware that, if they do, they are not subject to immigration action—a subject that has been talked about a number of times from the Dispatch Box.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The Minister will know that, in the Istanbul convention, which is the foundation of much of our statutory work in this area, Article 12.5 refers specifically to honour-based killings and violence. The Minister has indicated that a consultation is about to open in this area. Will the Article 12.5 requirement, which calls for the Government to have improved statutory definitions of honour-based violence, be part of that consultation?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I cannot answer the last part of the noble Baroness’s question, but I can say that last week we hosted at the Home Office GREVIO, the organisation looking at our compliance with Istanbul, and I think we had a very positive meeting. It was a privilege to be able to host them in the office and to go through much of the work that we have already done. I will try to come back in writing on the specific question that she asked.

Independent Cultural Review of London Fire Brigade

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The simple answer to my noble friend is that I am afraid I do not know but I will endeavour to find out.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I start briefly by saying to the Whips that when we have an Urgent Question, we cannot entertain speeches, because several of us would like to contribute—I say that very respectfully. I declare that I am chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and I just have a simple point that I would like the Minister to emphasise. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, rightly spoke of a spread of incidents across different public sector organisations where things have gone appallingly wrong. Will the noble Lord consider that all the organisations that have been mentioned today are covered by the public sector equality duty, which they are required in law to have due regard to? What is his assessment of why they have disregarded that duty?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am not sure that it is the organisations that have disregarded the duty, but clearly, individuals within them have. Obviously, that is part of a larger discussion, and I will take that suggestion back.

Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I misinterpreted his “Great”; he was saying that I am great rather than that the number is great. That is good.

It is an extraordinary thing: 1 million people. The problem with immigration is not that immigrants are different from us, but that they are exactly the same. They need homes to live in, medical facilities, schools and everything else. We have not got enough for the existing population, so we ought to be thinking very clearly: is it wise to issue 1 million visas for people to come and live in this country?

Finally, it is constantly asserted that migration is good for economic growth. In the last decade and a half, we have had the highest rate of immigration to this country in our history and the slowest growth in productivity. I rest my case.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I want to briefly make some observations about the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and ask the Minister one or two questions of clarification. Before I do, I point to my interests in the register and make it clear that I am speaking in a personal capacity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I apologise; I am still a new boy, really.

In addition, I was not including overstayers in any of the numbers that I mentioned, so they are in addition to all those numbers.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

The noble Lord is quite right, but they add to all the pressures he was talking about. Perhaps if we had a more rigorous method of knowing who was actually here, and by what route they came, we would be able to ascertain more clearly—and certainly more fairly—whether they should stay or not.

My final point to the Minister is related to but, I admit, slightly removed from this debate. The Home Office has announced that it is to do away with the golden visa route into the country, which is how kleptocrats arrive here. When we think of people coming here—documented or undocumented, but particularly those who have legal documentation—it is not particularly fair that there are people who buy themselves a route into the country by having millions, whereas those who are genuinely in distress and concerned for their lives must go through hurdles such as those identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I have some sympathy with the comments of the noble Baroness on the subject of people overstaying and on the right to remain here. In particular, she made the point that, very often, students overstay—that after their two-year period here they stay on, and so forth. She made the point that neither the coalition Government nor the Conservative Governments have gone along with the idea of having personal identification cards of any kind. She is right about that—but, with respect, that is rather a sledge- hammer to crack a nut. To some extent, it is a responsibility on people who sponsor students to come to this country, for example, to find out whether they have complied with the rules and go back to the country or overstay. There is some personal responsibility on organisations—companies, the NHS and public organisations—to follow that up. That would be simpler than having such an expensive solution. I think personal identification cards for the whole population were calculated as costing about £20 billion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

Very briefly, I was also referring to undocumented people who overstay tourist visas and stay on here. If the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, needs any proof of that, he needs to go to—I should not single out any particular nationality —a fine ethnic minority restaurant in Birmingham and go into the back rooms. He will see plenty of those. Then there are Deliveroo drivers, for instance.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I take that point.

On the main point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, I sympathise with his point about the changes in the Immigration Rules. They have been extensive; there has been a huge number of changes—almost every few months, frankly—and they are practically incomprehensible. It is a paradise for lawyers; the detail they go into and the language they use is virtually incomprehensible. The noble Lord who spoke for the Opposition is nodding with some feeling on that. It is incredibly difficult to understand what is going on half the time. For heaven’s sake, there must be some way of simplifying all this for the ordinary person in the street.

I wish, more than anything else, for some transparency. I am in favour of a transparent framework for asylum seekers and economic migrants of all kinds, which would be debated in the House of Commons annually. You would have a cap for a year; it would be looked at, people would understand where it came from and particular interest groups would be consulted. We could do that for the year and then look at it again to see what had happened—what had gone wrong, what had gone right and so on. We could have an annual debate, like the Budget debate—although perhaps not as long; maybe a day’s debate—in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, so that everyone could have their say about this. It would be a much more transparent and sensible way, and it could deal with some of the ignorance and myths, which, as my noble friend Lord Lilley pointed out, surround this whole subject of immigration and asylum seeking.

Having said that, I do not disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on his point in his Motion. The fact is that there is a huge problem here of human trafficking—we all know that; it is an international business. The smugglers—they are smugglers in effect—started off with drugs and tobacco and so forth, and now they deal in human beings. It is an international trade and all western European countries are facing this difficulty. It is completely illegal and to deal with it you really have to make a differentiation in law. You cannot deal simultaneously, in the same breath, with people who abide by the rules and who come here under acknowledged schemes, such as the Ukrainians, the Hong Kong people, the Afghans and so forth—they are large in number and we admit them freely and gladly to this country—and people from Albania who pay someone £2,000 to illegally enter this country. You cannot treat those people on the same basis; it is impossible to deal with the human trafficking and have the same legal basis for both activities.

Secondly, on safe routes, again, my noble friend Lord Lilley made the point that there is quite a large number of safe routes into this country. How far can you really expand them, realistically? Even now, Manston camp is taking in 3,000 asylum-seeking people, and it is really capable of taking only 1,000. With hotels in the north of England and the Midlands full of asylum seekers, we are now getting to the point where the hotels can no longer take them, because they want to do ordinary tourist business, so local authorities will be asked to take more. That means that council properties will be consumed by asylum seekers and will not therefore be available to local people. Of course, inevitably, it is the poorer parts of the country where all these people end up; they do not go to the Cotswolds or Hampstead because of the house prices. They end up in Blackpool, Middlesbrough or Darlington. Therefore, ordinary people—very often the poorest people—suffer the consequences. In all conscience, we have to consider that, as well as our natural and understandable concern about the position of genuine asylum seekers.

My final point is that, however many safe routes you have, there will still be trafficking across the channel, and people saying to those in Albania, Afghanistan or wherever, “We can get you into England—if you pay us a couple of thousand quid, we will get you across the channel.” However many safe routes you have and however much you expand that—I do not think that it can be expanded too far, for all the other reasons I have given—it will happen none the less. Therefore, there must be some system of deterrence, and I believe that the Government’s proposals—which have not yet come into practice of course because of all the legal objections—are the only answer to deterring people totally.

We are already seeing that some Albanians have decided not to apply for asylum in this country because they are afraid of being sent to Rwanda. They have been sent within 24 hours back to Albania under the agreement that we have with the Albanian Government. In a small way, even despite all the legal problems and judicial reviews and so on, you can see a deterrent factor working. The Government are pursuing the right angle here; it is not working in practice at the moment because of all the judicial reviews and legal difficulties, which is a great pity.

We are in a democratic society, where there is a clear public will to deal with illegal immigration. The Government—the major party—have voted it through the Commons and we have voted the Bill through the House of Lords. For it then to be stopped, potentially for months and months, by judicial activity, makes it seem that democracy is not working properly. That should not be allowed to happen in a functioning country such as ours. On that basis, I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, despite understanding his desire for the whole issue to be treated with great humanity, with which I would agree.

Homes for Ukraine: Visa Application Centres

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for his comments and will try to be as brief as he wants me to be. On the reasons for the visas, I do not recognise the one about the infiltration of secret agents. I do, however, recognise the point about safeguarding, trafficking and so on. I hope that the noble Lord knows that I have done my best to ensure that this procedure is carried out as quickly as possible, but I make no excuses for our trying to identify that people who come here are who they say they are before they arrive. This is very important.

I do not accept what the whistleblower has said in the Guardian. I would like them to come and speak to me, and I would be very happy to go through it with them—that is how I run my whole ministry. I do not recognise that point.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I endorse the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick: as many people as possible want to get in on this, and I will be very brief indeed. Will the Minister please ensure that local authorities respect Section 149 of the Equality Act and enforce their obligations under the public sector equality duty in order to ensure that Ukrainians are not discriminated against as they resettle here?

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I can assure the noble Baroness that I will ensure that there is no discrimination at all in the way Ukrainians settle here. I will write to her on the specific point regarding of the Act of Parliament she mentioned.

Surveillance Camera Code of Practice

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, as expectations of privacy are lower in public places than at home, overt surveillance, such as by street cameras, is generally seen as a lesser intrusion into our liberties than either covert surveillance by intelligence agencies—the subject of my 2015 report, A Question of Trust—or so-called surveillance capitalism, the monitoring and monetising of our personal data by big tech. However, that assessment has been cast into doubt by automatic facial recognition and similar technologies, which potentially enable their users to put a name to every person picked up by a camera, to track their movements and to store images of them on vast databases that can be efficiently searched using AI-driven analytics.

Those databases are not all owned by the police: the company Clearview AI has taken more than 10 billion facial images from public-only web sources and boasts on its website that its database is available to US law enforcement on a commercial basis. This technology, part of the information revolution in whose early stages we now find ourselves, can now more be stopped than, two centuries ago, could the steam engine, but, as has been said, the abuses of overt surveillance are already obvious in the streets of China and Hong Kong. To show the world that we are better, we must construct for those who wish to use these powers, as our forebears did in the Industrial Revolution, a democratic licence to operate.

We start in this country with a number of advantages. We have a strong tradition of citizen engagement and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, a culture of policing by consent. We inherited strong data protection laws from the EU and we still have legislation that gives real protection to human rights. We even had—almost uniquely in the world—a Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Tony Porter. I pay tribute to the extraordinary work that he did, on a part-time basis and without any powers of inspection, audit or sanction, including the issue of a 70-page document with detailed recommendations for police users of this technology.

I regret that the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice is, by comparison, a slim and highly general document. It is not comparable to the detailed codes of practice issued under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 and overseen by the world-leading Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office. The designated bodies which must have regard to it are confined to local authorities and policing bodies; they do not include, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, health, education or transport providers, private operators or, indeed, the Government themselves. Consultation on the latest version made no attempt to involve the public but was limited to statutory consultees.

The recent annual report of Tony Porter’s impressively qualified but thinly spread successor, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Fraser Sampson, commented that his formal suggestions for the code were largely dismissed as being “out of scope”. He added:

“That my best endeavours to get even a sentence reminding relevant authorities of the ethical considerations were rejected on the grounds that it would be too burdensome is perhaps an indication of just how restrictive this scope—wherever it is to be found—must have been.”


I do not know whether the highly general provisions of the code will be effective to improve local policies on the ground and ensure the consistency between them that my noble and learned friend Lord Etherton and his colleagues gently pointed out was desirable in their judgment in the Bridges case. In the absence of an IPCO-style inspection regime, perhaps we never will know. I suspect that the need not to stifle innovation, advanced in the code as a justification for its brevity, is a less than adequate excuse for the failure to do more to develop the code itself against a changing legal and technological background.

The words of the Motion are harsher than I would have chosen but, as the Snowden episode a few years ago showed, public trust in these increasingly intrusive technologies can be suddenly lost and requires huge effort to regain. I hope that the next revision of this code will be more energetic and ambitious than the last.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow three incredibly distinguished speakers in this debate. With reference to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, attributed to the Minister, I must say that if this is a subject for geeks, I am delighted to join the band of geeks.

I fear I shall demonstrate a level of ignorance tonight, because I am a newcomer to the debate. In fact, I emailed the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, earlier today because I had only just realised that it was taking place tonight. I am also speaking in a hybrid capacity—I now understand the true meaning of “hybrid”—so my opening remarks will be personal, but for those that follow, I will need to declare an interest, so I shall do so in advance of making those remarks.

In my opening remarks I have to say just a few things that demonstrate what a parlous state we are in as a country in terms of respect for human rights. The level of permissiveness in the capture—state capture, policy capture—of institutions that operate in authoritarian regimes, a list of which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has given us, is truly staggering. We bang on about how fantastic our sanctions regime is, and so on, yet these companies, many of them Chinese, as the noble Lord described, operate here with complete impunity and we seem entirely content to allow them to do so, while we also recognise, in our foreign policy statements, that some of these countries have very ignoble intentions towards any freedom-loving democracy. I know the noble Baroness represents the Home Office, but I hope it is something the Government at large will take account of, because commercial surveillance, commercial espionage, commercial authority and commercial capture of the economy are all things we need to be incredibly vigilant about. One needs only to look at Russia’s capture of the German political debate, through Nord Stream 2, and what we are facing now with the Ukraine issue, to understand what is being discussed here by the noble Lord, Lord Alton.

Those are my general remarks. My remarks on it as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission now follow. There, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that I am so relieved he managed to secure this regret Motion. Articles 8, 9, 10, 11 and 14—the general article against discrimination—of the European Convention on Human Rights are engaged in this, so the fact that we get a document as thin as this is truly remarkable. I understand why only statutory bodies were consulted—it was a means for the Government to get it through in six weeks without being very concerned about broader concerns—but it is regrettable. The Bridges case directly engaged the public sector equality duty. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the regulator of the public sector equality duty, yet the idea that it was not consulted, post the judgment, on how we might strengthen the code in light of that judgment is a matter of great deep regret to me.

I have a couple of points on the code. In paragraph 10.4 we are told that effective review and audit mechanisms should be published regularly. The summary of such a review has to be made available publicly, so my question to the noble Baroness is: why only a summary? In the interests of transparency and accountability, it is essential that these bodies regularly give a full explanation of what they are doing. The public sector equality duty requires legitimate aims to be addressed objectively, verifiably and proportionately. We, the public, will not be capable of assessing whether those tests have been met if there is only an executive summary to go by.

My other point concerns section 12.3, “When using a surveillance camera” and so on. The third bullet point requires “having due regard” and states that

“chief police officers should … have regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty, in particular taking account of any potential adverse impact that the LFR algorithm may have on members of protected groups.”

Again, no practical examples are provided in this rather thin document. We know from publishing statutory codes that the public, and even the bodies that use this technology, want practical examples. A code is effective, of value and of use, to the providers as well as the public, only when it gives those practical examples, because you cannot test the legal interpretation of those examples until you have that evidence before you.

We, the EHRC, have been unable at short notice to assess whether the code is in compliance with the Bridges judgment—I wonder, myself, whether it is—but we do not take a clear position on the legality of the revised code, and I should say that in clarification. However, we have recommended previously that the Government scrutinise the impact of any policing technologies, in particular for the impact on ethnic minorities, because we have a mountain of evidence piling up to say that they discriminate against people of darker skin colour.

We wanted mandatory independent equality and human rights impact assessments. These should ensure that decisions regarding the use of such technologies are informed by those impact assessments and the publication of the relevant data—this takes me back to my point about executive summaries—and then evaluated on an ongoing basis, and that appropriate mitigating action is taken through robust oversight, including the development of a human rights compliant legal, regulatory and policy framework. That is in conformity with our role as a regulator. We have recommended that, in light of evidence regarding their inaccuracy, and potentially discriminating impacts, the Government review the use of automated facial recognition and predictive programs in policing, pending completion of the above independent impact assessments and consultation processes, and the adoption of appropriate mitigation action. We await action from the Government on the basis of this recommendation.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a founder member and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, a vice-chairman of the Chagos Islands All Party Parliamentary Group. Having once had the pleasure of meeting the Chagos Islanders based in Mauritius, I rise to strongly support this amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Horam, have explained, this issue is an international scandal for which the Government are entirely responsible.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I did not have the opportunity to speak at Second Reading and I apologise for that. I declare my interests in the register and want to clarify that I am speaking in a personal capacity, and I will keep my intervention very brief. I agree with every speech that has been made today, but I particularly want to reference some points made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam.

I gave a speech at the Mauritian Foreign Ministry in 2019 in advance of the United Kingdom’s court case. While my speech was wide-ranging about international affairs and Britain’s role in the world generally, I was astonished by the strength feeling that the people present, mainly civil servants working in the Foreign Office, had about this issue. They were not all affected by the Chagossians’ claims—some were, some were not—but there was a national sense of disbelief that a law-abiding, rules-abiding great power in the world was behaving in this shabby manner towards a very small number of people.

I want to pick up on one point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about the reason given by the Minister in the House of Commons as to why he would not support the amendment moved there. He said that it would overturn, and set a precedent over, years of British nationality law. My simple response to that is: the Government profess that we are increasingly bringing rights home, in terms of their assessment of the Human Rights Act and so on. But, as the noble Baroness knows very well, our courts are increasingly taking account of precedent with regard to Ministers’ intentions when they speak in both Houses of Parliament —and Parliament’s intentions when it decides to do whatever it decides to do.

So, if she has concerns similar to those expressed by the Minister in the House of Commons about setting precedent, all she would need to do when this Bill comes back to the Chamber on Report is to make it clear in her speech that she does not intend this Act—a humanitarian Act—to set a precedent in any other way. That is all she has do to reassure the House, and the courts will take account of that. I hope she will listen with great sympathy to the speeches on this matter across the House today, because that is what this small number of people deserve from us.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Ludford, the Chagos Islanders were evicted by the UK Government in the late 1960s and early 1970s to make way for a US naval base, and they are still exiled from their homeland. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, there are two separate and very distinct issues here. The first, as the noble Lord quite rightly says, is giving the Chagos Islands back to the islanders, which is very much an issue for the Foreign Office. This amendment is about giving Chagos Islanders nationality, and that is very much the responsibility of the Home Office, not the Foreign Office. I would also say, in response to the last speaker and to the noble Lord, that century-long precedents are not necessarily good precedents.

One impact of the eviction has been to deprive descendants of their citizenship rights. The Chagos Islands remain a British Overseas Territory and, as we have heard, were it not for the eviction, they would have passed British Overseas Territories citizenship from generation to generation. In certain circumstances, they could have acquired entitlement to be registered as British citizens and, since 2002, they could have benefited from a general discretion from the Home Secretary to register as British citizens.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, said, the Government’s objection in the other place does not hold water. The situation of the Chagos Islanders is unique and, while the other measures in this part of the Bill to address historic injustices are welcome, they are incomplete without the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, which we wholeheartedly support. As the noble Baroness explained, it is narrow in scope, focused exclusively on the Chagos Islanders’ direct descendants and limited to a five-year window, either from the date the amendment comes into force or five years from when the eligible person turns 18. The Minister will have to do more than simply repeat the words of her colleague in the other place to convince noble Lords not to pursue this matter further on Report.