King’s Speech

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I wish we had extra time today in order to hear more from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. It is so fitting that it is he who speaks of civility, tolerance and duty of care. We will miss him.

Following the tradition of bemoaning what is not in the legislative programme, I would have mentioned SLAPPs but instead I can welcome the PMB of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—this is not to ignore the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. There is also a tradition of calling for more cross-government working and, declaring an association with the charity Missing People, I note the number of people dying while missing, mostly by suicide. It is up 30% in six years. The current response, led by the police, just is not working. Their role is vital, but they are not alone responsible. All the agencies that deal with safeguarding, exploitation and care need to be mandated to work together. The Home Office should lead on this.

Modern slavery and human trafficking have grown, while our response has been weakened by a series of regressive reforms. As the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner notes in her recent report:

“It appears in shocking cases that briefly make headlines but then fade quickly from collective consciousness … Without widespread public awareness, even the strongest laws will struggle to deliver real-world impact”—


and they are not the strongest laws or the best practice. She is emphatic that people with lived experience see risks and problems long before institutions do, yet we fail to learn from them.

At the same time, government claims of widespread misuse and abuse of the national referral mechanism are not supported by the available evidence base, as the University of Nottingham Rights Lab points out. In an increasingly diverse and complex exploitation landscape, the statutory guidance was changed last week to put a higher burden on survivors to explain what they have gone through. The Home Office should not be using the term “trauma-informed” when it is so clearly lacking, as is any evidence of understanding retraumatisation.

Slavery is still conflated with immigration and immigration enforcement. We know that legislation in that area will herald measures that these Benches will not be able to welcome. The new independent appeals body is to be staffed by adjudicators, not judges. On stricter age assessments, the priority should be ensuring that fewer children are incorrectly treated as adults. The Government are requiring refugees to repay the cost of Home Office support without removing barriers to employment so that they can more easily contribute. The lifeline of family reunion is still paused. I am sure that my noble friend Lord German will say more about that.

The writer Horatio Clare puts it well:

“The story … misrepresents everyone. Brave and resourceful people crossing the Channel in hope and belief have been disfigured into faceless threats. The volunteers … aid workers and very many members of the public who help and support refugees, migrants and asylum seekers are slandered, denigrated or ignored. The populace of Britain, who are as overwhelmingly kind, sympathetic and generous as the people in the small boats believe us to be, are made to feel fearful, mean and foolish. All the good we and our institutions have done has been redacted”.