Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Hamwee

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is not just ordinary people who do not understand it. I do not understand it at all, logically. Mind you, I am an ordinary person.

The discussion so far has been very helpful in raising some key issues that the country is preoccupied with. The sensible way to approach this, which people have started to do, is to say that there should be a proper, open debate on it. We need to have a proper discussion about whether the 1951 refugee convention is appropriate for 2025 and very different circumstances. Some of the amendments have allowed us to reflect on that.

Every word of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was on the money—absolutely hear, hear. We sometimes have discussions in this Chamber that bear little relationship to the political, social and cultural context of what everybody else in the country is talking about. There have been times during this debate in which the discussion about what constitutes safety and fleeing unsafe countries gives us a hint as to how we have got into a very serious political crisis in this country. The definition of what constitutes unsafe, the definition of what constitutes asylum and the definition of what constitutes refugee have become so expansive that it is a miracle or a mystery to me that anyone has been deported. If anyone was listening, you would just think, “Oh well, we can’t do anything”.

To give an example of some of the things that were argued, I was involved in a debate on the radio some months ago about whether Albania was a safe country. The example given was one that has been cited here today about the levels of domestic violence in Albania. I pointed out that most of the people that I had seen in the small boats who were Albanian did not look like they were the victims of domestic violence. Given the historic split, sex-wise, in terms of domestic violence, they might well have been the abusers.

I point this out only because, every time you say, “Surely, there is no reason why they should be in this country; they are from a safe country”, people will say, “No they’re not”, and you get left in a situation where you cannot remove them.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I will make the point, before the noble Baroness moves on, that that is exactly the point that many of us are making—you cannot generalise. I will just put it that way.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I was about to go on to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who said that a country may be safe generally but not for a particular section of the population. The noble Baroness more or less made the point there that she has just made now about not generalising. I agree that it is difficult to say, “This is a safe country” or “This is not”. The problem I have is that we have a situation where we either say, “These countries are not safe” or “Every country can be safe, but not to some groups of people”. We end up, therefore, saying that the whole world, and sections of the whole world, are likely to be unsafe and the people there can come to the UK. We cannot be in a situation where we open up to everybody from around the world who is in an unsafe situation.

By the way, that would also be true of this country, when it comes to the threat of violence against women and girls. You could say that the UK is a safe country. Let me tell you that it has not been a safe country in hundreds of towns for thousands and thousands of young women, girls and children who were sexually abused and raped in their thousands, in an industrial fashion, in the “safe” country of the United Kingdom. I am not prepared to generalise, but we cannot simply say that, because of the lived experience of those individuals who have suffered at the hands of others in other countries, it should be automatically assumed that they can move to the United Kingdom.

Finally, therefore, I want to ask for some guidance from the Minister on the status of the Bill. I read through a lot of the sections and notes in preparation for what I was going to say today and for other forthcoming days in Committee, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this Bill is completely out of date”. I do not mean it is out of date as far as I am concerned but rather as far as the Government are concerned. Looking at a number of the amendments I have put my name to, I now look like a lily-livered liberal type in comparison with some of the comments made by Labour Government Ministers on the Front Benches. I suddenly thought, “Oh, I was being rather tentative there on the European Court of Human Rights and so on”. But it is full throttle—the Home Secretary covering herself in Union Jacks and flags, as she has told us. I thought, “I don’t know where to go now”.

In all seriousness, the Government have said, perfectly reasonably, that parliamentary time is short in general, and we all know that the Bill is under a lot of scrutiny. There are an awful lot of amendments to the Bill. Would it be possible for the Government Front Bench to assess all the amendments from across the House in different directions and tick off all those that the Government might now agree with, so that we do not waste parliamentary time on things on which there is general unanimity on the Government Front Bench, if not on their Back Benches?

As we continue to discuss the Bill, we should constantly bear in mind that the reason why there is concern about international conventions, the European Court of Human Rights and so on, is that this Parliament—the whole point of us being here—has to pass legislation it considers to be in the best interests of the people who live in this country and are of this country, the national interest being important. If the will of the people, as expressed in Parliament, cannot happen because of international conventions and human rights laws, as liberally interpreted by a plethora of lawyers, then it means that democracy is threatened. I therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, when he said we should look at some of this again. I hope the Government will look at it again and that we do not have to waste time on amendments that they will, broadly speaking, agree with.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Hamwee

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to attend Second Reading. I have put my name to a number of later amendments, but I wanted to say how much I support the spirit of this group. On the issue of boat crossings, there is a feeling in relation to smashing the gangs that there is a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and not enough transparency and understanding. I fear that there is a climate of public distrust in which politicians are just not believed.

These amendments would therefore be really helpful to the Government, because they give assurances that this will be fully accounted for and not just a slogan, as has been indicated. The area around these crossings is a territory for rumour and potential misinformation. All sorts of figures are bandied around and people, because they no longer believe in the official figures, are open to all sorts of untrue figures. These amendments would help pin down exactly what this Bill will have achieved, which is very important.

There was an interesting incident recently where journalists—Patrick Christys and a team from GB News—helped to smash the gangs themselves. They did this by going on Instagram and pretending to be trying to get a crossing; they organised one and had WhatsApp communications, voice messages and so on, partly as a sting operation to show how easy it is to infiltrate the gangs and get this information. They passed on the information to the appropriate authorities. They have chased it up, and nothing has happened. Even though they had the names and phone numbers—because they were WhatsApp messages—of two gang leaders, nothing has happened to those people. Those journalists understandably used this to say, “For all the rhetoric about the gangs and this new piece of legislation saying that it will smash them, will it really?”

The first two amendments in this group will tell the public what they want to know about this Bill—how many gang leaders have been arrested and what exactly has happened. I urge the Government to look at these amendments favourably, as helpful to their cause and to the general atmosphere, so that we do not have public cynicism about political rhetoric without action.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am intrigued by Amendment 20 requiring a statement of

“the number of … gangs that have ceased to operate as a result of enforcement action”.

As I understand it, that is very difficult to know. The characteristic of these gangs is that individual smugglers group and regroup. You have smaller fish who may be better known than the bigger ones. Obviously, the objective that is the subject of this amendment is exactly the right one, but I do not know that there could be any useful or meaningful reporting in quite the way that the amendment suggests. I am sorry not to be supporting it.

On Amendment 21, I note how important it is to have good data, whether or not the six headings here are precisely what the commander should be producing. The more general point—I will go on repeating it—is that the responsibility lies with the Secretary of State, not the commander. It is important to have full and accessible data much more frequently, and more up to date, than in an annual report published some time after the financial year to which the information relates.

I agree with the noble Lord to the extent that this is about accountability, but I do not agree—as he will have gathered rather tediously from me, and I am sorry about that—that the accountability is that of the director. It is that of the Secretary of State.