Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Sentamu

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am particularly interested in the student visa amendments, which are both very helpful. There is now an informal assumption that there is a problem with some overseas students playing the system and potentially using their student visas as a mechanism for seeking asylum. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, presented a balanced and sensitive case so that all of us can understand, first, the importance of overseas students to the UK and, secondly, the legitimate use of asylum seeking if circumstances change, while at the same time understanding that there is potential abuse of the system. The problem is that while there is a focus on, for example, small boats, maybe a focus on universities does not feel quite as newsworthy and headlines will not be generated, or it seems somehow more legitimate if they have come to do even a media studies course—they cannot be criminals. None the less, there is a problem if the system is abused.

There are two additional points that have not been referred to. I fear that UK universities themselves have mis-sold universities to overseas students, treating university courses as cash cows. One of my first more militant acts at university, many decades ago, was a week-long sit-in to defend overseas students from increased fees, and I have always thought that it was an important part of our education system to defend them. However, universities simply sell inappropriate courses for money to students who often cannot to speak adequate English for a degree. That is not to criticise them; I am criticising the university managements who sell their courses in that way. That kind of cynicism is likely to rub off on students, who will not necessarily come here and think, “I must take seriously my duties and responsibilities to higher education and the pursuit of knowledge”, because the universities have, in an entirely instrumental, business-like fashion, sold them a course that is maybe not very good and not taken any notice of their facility for education. Why would you not become cynical in those circumstances?

Finally, I hope that the Government will take the opportunity provided by both these amendments to think about universities and overseas students, because this is very much in the news in the context of Sheffield Hallam University. We now know that Sheffield Hallam’s management betrayed one of its own academics and compromised academic freedom to guarantee a continued flow of Chinese overseas students, stopping that academic’s research because the Chinese state found it inconvenient. It is not in any of our interests to allow universities to become politicised instruments of overseas students, be it the state, using them in a particular way, or those who recommend that, if you study in the UK on one of these courses, you will easily get asylum. I know that this happens. It is a form of people trafficking that is just not hitting the headlines, but I can assure you, it is happening. I therefore support both amendments and I was very pleased to see them.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, as the House knows, I have sat in a lot of these debates and never stood up to speak, but I feel compelled to speak today. I declare my interest as having been chancellor of two universities, York St John University and the University of Cumbria, for well over 12 years. We had a lot of overseas students. I am not persuaded by what I am hearing today. It is very easy to cast aspersions when you are not within the university itself. Most of our universities do a fantastic job in registering people who really want to study here. Both York St John and Cumbria had training centres in China, so the students had a good command of English before they got here. All the students in those years actually went back, unless they remained to do some research, which was also allowed. Please let us not have these generalised statements about universities all being the same.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to clarify, in case there was any confusion, that I have worked with and have great admiration for many Chinese students in this country. My contribution was not an attempt, in any way, at smearing them. That is not to say that there is not an abuse of the system in some instances. I was querying whether we should be attentive to that, because the students are betrayed when they are not given proper education in this country and are used in a particular way for political ends. That does not mean, at all, that all Chinese students are doing that.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My experience is quite different. I have been a chancellor of two universities that have actually recruited students from all over the world—for education, not for any other purpose. They were also wonderful universities for students within our own country. Before the founding of the University of Cumbria, students used to leave Carlisle to go to different universities in our country and they never went back. The creation of the University of Cumbria benefited local businesses —we have talked about manufacturing in places such as Barrow—so it has been wonderful seeing our own local students rising up to the possibility of being very good engineers, manufacturers, nurses and doctors, or being trained in other ways. I stood at the podium giving out degrees to students from all over the place. At York St John, there were always four ceremonies, each with about 400 students at a time. That is what I know from what I experienced—it is therefore possible for me to say that.

I must declare a second interest: I came here on a student visa in 1974, which was renewed every 12 months until I was ordained in 1979. Later, when I became Bishop of Stepney, I was given indefinite leave to remain but I never applied for naturalisation in this country, which was a possibility, until 2001. I was a faithful student who came here on a student visa. It is no good anybody telling me that if some Ugandans come here—let us say there are four of them—and involved themselves in criminal acts, we can then use those four as a test case to say that people from that country should not get visas. From all that I know, most of the students from Uganda went back—my circumstances were part of something different. Please can we not express guilt by association, where we say, for example, that if some people from Nigeria do something, all of them must be the same, so we must always gather the figures and numbers?

This has always been a free country for me, and it has helped quite a lot of people who have been in great difficulty. I came here because of Amin’s trouble; I had to give up my law job. My staying here has to do with me continuing to study and then being invited to become a chaplain of a prison in Richmond, which I did for four years. Indefinite leave was quite a different thing. I always resisted naturalisation to become a British citizen; at the time I thought that I was natural and that there was no need to be naturalised. Still, occasionally, whenever I hold my British passport, I say, “To get this, I had to be naturalised”. That term is pretty offensive, because there is nothing unnatural about me that needed to be naturalised.

My dear friends, yes, there is now concern about people, who either are on student visas or came here on asylum, having committed offences, but these amendments make it seem that Britain’s history has nothing to teach us. For that reason, should the amendments be voted on, I will move in the direction of the Not-Content Lobby.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Sentamu

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, explained very well what I would have liked to say, so “hear, hear” to that. I was beginning to worry that the debate might be getting a bit dull—until the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, spoke. He so infuriated me that I feel I have to say something. I am not able to stay for the rest of the evening, but I wanted to clarify a number of things.

It is true that there are some people who own lease- hold flats who are not poverty stricken, but the characterisation of the 5 million leaseholders in this country as wealthy is ludicrous. The main reason why people—certainly me—are forced to buy leasehold flats is that they are cheaper than non-leasehold flats. As I will indicate in an amendment to be discussed on the next day in Committee, very few of us were originally aware of what a leasehold meant. We thought that we were entering into the housing market and buying a house, having saved up very hard to do so, without realising that we were, in effect, pseudo-tenants with very few rights. That has all been discussed often in this House.

The other thing that I wanted to clarify—I hinted at it, and it will come up again—is the notion that any charity that is a freeholder is doing good in the world; that strikes me as at least open to question. Many of the problems that leaseholders face are due to their being local authority—local authorities are not charities, but there are real problems with local authority flats. Also, housing association leaseholders have endured incredible problems with how the leasehold is set up. It is not appropriate to assume that, because charities say that they are doing charitable work, they are not accountable for some of the uncharitable consequences of the fact that they are, in effect, freeholders making a huge amount of money out of leaseholders.

In that sense, what really wound me up was the idea of this being a limitless expropriation scheme. Leaseholders have felt for some time that they are on the receiving end of a limitless expropriation scheme. The reason why this Bill is here and why people across the political parties, from right to left and in between, are so committed to tackling leasehold is that the inequity is in that capacity to expropriate, via the service charge, ground rent and so on. It means that leaseholders feel there is no way to defend themselves against a freeholder who can just take, take, take. Having paid quite a lot in service charges, I know that you do not necessarily get a service and there is not very much you can do about it, which is what the Bill is trying to address. I am pleased that the Government are addressing this, although they are not going far enough.

This is whipping up a climate of fear, and the notion that mad socialists are going around stealing property from freeholders is absolutely mythical. It is very important that we do not allow myths to emerge in the midst of this discussion, and that we have a proportionate sense of how to respond. I do not think that all freeholders are evil, but the system is iniquitous. I mentioned before that it has taken a few years of me being here to hear so much enthusiasm for feudalism, but it seems to be coming up again. It might make it difficult to untangle the law—as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, explained, this goes back many hundreds of years—and I am not trying to be glib, but there have been a lot of commissions looking into this. However, it is not appropriate to sing the virtues of feudalism, either. Feudal property rights are not in the interest of modern democrats, whether they are on the left or the right. The idea that this is the equivalent of the difficulties of expropriating from Putin does not make any sense.

As to the European Court of Human Rights: the irony of the position of Conservative Peers! By the way, I am one of the people who would leave the ECHR— I know everyone here will hiss and boo when I say that —because I do not think it should determine the decisions we make in this or the other House. But Conservative Peers, who would otherwise say that the European Court of Human Rights is unreliable, defending it for hedge fund managers is ludicrous. Freeholders are not necessarily virtuous, benevolent, benign landowners; some are, but most are money-making rentiers. It is actually a criticism of the failures of capitalism that the only way anyone thinks they can make money is by ripping off leaseholders—and then describing them as rich, just because they have got a decent flat. Noble Lords get the gist.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I remind the noble Baroness, in light of what she has just said, that it was in this place in 1215 that the barons said to the King, “This is the Magna Carta”. This principle was established and made very clear that a person’s property could not be seized by the King, except by the lawful judgment of his Peers over the law of the land. The assumption is that if you take the property, compensation must follow, even if you are taking such property because you want to convert some or all of it into leaseholds, so that they too can become owners. The Magna Carta will tell you, “Have you forgotten your history? Have you forgotten your law?” The rule of law in this country is what gives us liberty. It is not just a question of the European Court of Human Rights; it is also Magna Carta, which is really the foundation of all these things. To seize somebody’s property, even by an Act of Parliament, would go against the whole reason why Magna Carta came out and gave us the rule of law, in the end.

Let us be very careful in this Bill. If you take away somebody’s property without compensating them, those barons from 1215 will be rising up and saying, “Remember your history, remember your law, remember the tradition that it has created, and safeguard it”.

I do not think that freeholders are simply wanting to hold on to things, in the way that the noble Baroness described some of them, or are not doing any good charitable thing. I live in Berwick in Northumberland, and the duke there has plenty of other things. I have also seen some of the charity work that is being done.

Let us not use language and words because we are enthusiastic in one direction or another and ignore the Magna Carta. It is what has given freedom and liberty even to newcomers such as me. My friends, the rule of law cannot ever simply be brushed aside because of a desire to correct a particular question. The rule of law matters. The Magna Carta matters.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Sentamu

Report stage
Wednesday 12th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I cannot say that I know many teenagers who, growing up, aspire to be police crime and commissioners. However, I was convinced by the arguments made in Committee and I wanted to just make a couple of additional small points. For me it is not just about unfairness; there is a principle here. If you work with teenagers and one of them has made a mistake and has been fined or has broken the law in some way, you say to them, “Now we want you to rehabilitate and become a fine upstanding citizen”, and, “The world is your oyster and you can do anything.” I cannot imagine anything that is more proof of being fine and upstanding than growing up and then saying, “I want to be a police and crime commissioner.” I do not even know whether I agree with the idea of police and crime commissioners, but that is not my point.

The other thing, on a kind of principle, is that increasingly I would like public servants and people taking on roles such as police and crime commissioners to have some real-life experience—and that might involve youthful indiscretions.

I completely support the amendment. There are principles here that could easily be upheld by the Government simply accepting it; it makes perfect sense. I think even the public would cheer.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, since I have been gratuitously referred to, I ought to say some words. Archbishop Robert Runcie said, “A saint is a person whose life has never been fully examined.” All our lives have never been fully examined, but I confirm that I never committed any crime at the age of 15 or 16, and have not done even now. Even if I committed one, I am already excluded from becoming an archbishop again because I am now 72. Age would discriminate against me and push me out.

What I do not get is why being a police commissioner is the only calling where there is discrimination if something was done at the age of 16. I would have thought that, 40 years on, the person has done their time. Yes, there is a record but it does not have to be the only thing over which you exclude them, because they have come on in age. In wanting to remove this for police commissioners, we are not sending out a message that it does not matter whether you commit a crime at the age of 16. We are saying: why is there this hindrance to this profession? Because one day I may become a saint and my life will never be fully examined, I want to vote for this amendment. I hope that the Minister will just accept it and it will be put into statute without more debates, because this just does not make sense. But I speak like a fool.