Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Viscount Goschen

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 35. We really need the data to understand the problem and how efficacious our measures to control it are. My noble friend asked a number of different questions in a number of different ways, and he has not been given the information the House requires. We need to understand why that is. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, is not in his place, because I was about to pay him a compliment. I managed to extract a truly startling statistic from him when I asked what proportion of people in these circumstances—those who have arrived through what is now termed irregular routes—are removed from the country against their will. The answer was 4%, so there is a 96% chance of success in remaining.

In order to understand the reasons why people typically want to come to the UK, one needs to understand the strength of the regime that deals with those applications, and the chances of staying versus being deported or removed from the country through one means or another. Unless the Government can really come forward and answer my noble friend’s question, or agree to his amendment, it is very difficult to take seriously the actions the Government are taking. We know that the Government do not know who is in the country at any one time; our systems do not record exits from the country as they do people coming in. It will probably lead us to a much wider discussion about how we can get the data and know who is here and who has overstayed the terms of their visa. It is entirely reasonable for my noble friend to ask those questions, and it is the Government’s duty to respond in detail.

[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.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Viscount Goschen

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, and I certainly support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Cameron. The first of my amendments, Amendment 22, is very straightforward in saying that the commander should publish financial accounts. Clause 4 refers to the financial year but not the publication of financial accounts. It is very important that we have discipline around what the purpose of the organisation is and what will be the return on the investment the public are making in it. When the Minister comes to respond on this group, perhaps he will guide the Committee as to whether the £150 million that has been mentioned is, in effect, new money being put into this organisation or whether it represents a reallocation of existing budgets. Perhaps it is a blend of the two.

That brings me on to Amendment 24, which could almost be thought of as post-legislative scrutiny on an ongoing basis for the new structure that is envisaged. It is a new layer—I will not use the word bureaucracy, but it is a new agency essentially—designed to co-ordinate other agencies, rather than necessarily operationally deliver outcomes itself. There is, therefore, undoubtedly a danger, which I am sure the Government recognise, that having another cook in this kitchen could destroy value rather than add value. We need to be clear about what the real outcome is, over a period of years, of the initiatives that the Government have brought forward. We certainly give them credit for doing so for all the right reasons.

Perhaps my drafting was rather inelegant, but this is not about the performance of the individual commander; I am talking about the commander’s organisation—the BSC. It is about asking whether the partner agencies continue to believe that the new agency is adding value and doing things that could not otherwise be done. If it does not work as we all hope it will, there must be an argument that it should be stood down and the co-ordination function perhaps be taken up by another agency or indeed by the Home Office itself.

These are two very straightforward amendments. The first point is that the Government need to be accountable for the money spent, and the second is that the partner agencies that will be the beneficiaries—or otherwise—of this co-ordination should be able to express their views about the efficacy of the structure. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[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.