Police and Crime Commissioners and Panels
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
It is fair to say that the role has evolved to some extent. Whether it is appropriate to have an overall review is already under discussion.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, before the Government introduced police and crime commissioners, we had police and crime panels, just as we now have to oversee the police and crime commissioners. If that system was so bad that we needed to introduce police and crime commissioners, who cost a huge amount of money and whose ability is variable, why do we now have police and crime panels to oversee them?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I made it clear that there is a transparency and accountability issue. I am grateful to my friend Katy Bourne, the Sussex police and crime commissioner. She tells me that PCCs are more visible and approachable than the police authorities that they replaced. Many hold monthly accountability meetings with their chief constable, often online, which the public can attend and contribute to.
Police National Computer
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
As I said earlier in answer to another question, it was the only viable alternative. Other companies were invited in and, for reasons most of which were around the time it would take to implement new systems, Fujitsu offered the only solution. Of course, I agree with the public perception argument; however, I do not think we had any alternative.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, given that the flaws in Horizon software by Fujitsu were the cause of an awful lot of distress and misspent money, are the Government confident that so far there have been no similar mistakes on the police national computer?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
The Government are confident. There has been one incident of data loss, but it was a human error, as opposed to a software error and all that data has been recovered. So, yes, the Government are confident.
Corruption in the United Kingdom
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effects of corruption in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords very much for coming today. It has been incredibly difficult for me to finalise what to say this afternoon, simply because I wanted to mention a current fiasco—a current example of corruption—and there were so many popping up that I had to keep delaying what I was putting into my speech. I decided to go with the Kwasi Kwarteng issue, because I thought that was a rather nice one.
For me, the point is that political corruption is absolutely endemic in our country, and we really ought to be ashamed of that. It is embedded in our system. We often fail to recognise it simply because we do not know about it, because it is covered up. It does a huge amount of damage. It damages our social fabric and individuals who engage in it. It is not all about personal greed—it is sometimes about corporate greed—but it is about greed, and it contributes to the growing gap between rich and poor. It also stops us dealing with major issues such as poverty and our climate emergency.
In 10 minutes I do not have enough time to deal with all forms of corruption, as noble Lords can imagine. For example, I cannot deal with corruption in the police, in prisons, in local government, associated with our borders, in the construction sector or even among Lords appointments, which of course would be a rich source of stories about corruption. I will deal with four types of corruption, and there is some overlap: political access, corporate lobbying, party donations, and procurement and privatisation.
First and foremost, and most obvious, is political access. In his previous job, our Chancellor held undisclosed meetings with—I could list them all—the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer; the chief executive of SABIC, the world’s fourth-largest petrochemical company; and the chair of Alfanar, an industrial conglomerate. Obviously, meetings with these people are absolutely fine and could easily be part of his job, but they are meant to be logged by civil servants. A government spokesperson said there had been an “administrative oversight”. It leads to the question: how many administrative oversights of this kind never come to light? Kwarteng was flown around the kingdom by various helicopters and jets, which apparently provided the opportunity for the oil company to lobby the Minister then responsible for the UK’s energy policy on opportunities for the company. Other points of discussion on the flights were redacted, so we do not know what they talked about. Although it is perfectly okay to take lifts, he really should not have taken them from private companies.
Then we have people such as Owen Paterson working for Randox as a second job and David Cameron using his inside track to lobby for Greensill. Money buys access to, for example, the personal phone numbers of civil servants, Ministers and officials. A recent Public Accounts Committee report said that it could not be sure that all the Randox contracts, which were worth £777 million, were “awarded properly” and that there was obvious potential for conflicts of interest. On Greensill, the Treasury Committee accepted that
“Mr Cameron did not break the rules governing lobbying by former Ministers, but that reflects on the insufficient strength of the rules”.
So we cannot hold people to account.
The public view becomes that there is one rule for people like us and another for them. Of course, it is not only things such as partygate, which showed a clear division on what people were allowed to do—it is also clear from the way in which the Government tried to change the rules to get Owen Paterson off the hook. This is systemic corruption, not isolated, individual corruption. We should all be very concerned. These examples are the tip of the iceberg—the individual cases that we get to hear about because of media activity.
My second issue is corporate lobbying, and its influence over policy. Uber spent £75 million a year on public relations and lobbying to successfully swing policies in its favour. Companies spend that kind of money only because they think that it will guarantee them a profitable return. Many second jobs that MPs have are actually a form of corporate lobbying, a value-for-money addition to the company’s PR budget that buys them the access they need. For example, Nadhim Zahawi allegedly earned £1.3 million from his second job at Gulf Keystone Petroleum. Again, this is not illegal—he can do that—but it is a much bigger and more damaging influence on our politics and policies than parliamentarians want to admit.
As well as individual companies lobbying, there is a network of right-wing think tanks that refuse to declare their corporate donors but launch policy reports on issues that directly benefit those donors. The media should be demanding transparency, and so should Parliament, when we see those policy institutes give us opinions disguised as evidence. Sometimes their members are even promoted to jobs in government. To quote George Monbiot in 2011, “Downing Street and government in the last decade has been completely captured by this network.” He is referring to the right-wing think tanks.
The third form of corruption, party donations, is more direct and visible, because big donations to political parties have to be declared. We can strongly suspect that the reason why we are still building houses and new developments without solar panels, without the best energy conservation standards available and without charging points or heat pumps is that property tycoons account for around one-fifth of donations to the Conservative Party. The reason why people are buying new homes and are energy bill payers rather than net contributors to the grid is because developers paid a toll of £891,000 to the Conservative Party in the first quarter of 2021 alone. The reason we are struggling to get a common-sense measure such as charging points for electric vehicles as standard on new buildings is that developers do not like it, and they pay good money to ensure that the Conservative Party listens to them more than it listens to climate scientists.
Is it not strange that oil and gas companies are getting new licences in the North Sea despite the climate emergency, or that they are getting £150 billion of taxpayers’ money which they have not done anything extra to earn, or that taxpayers are carrying the burden of that £150 billion for the next 20 years, instead of a windfall tax? Systemic political corruption has real-world consequences and real victims, so it is important to put this on the record now so that the next generation understands how Parliament did relatively little while the world started to heat up and burn in our climate emergency.
The fourth category of corruption, and perhaps the largest in terms of profitability, is the British system of procurement and privatisation. It has become a visible form of corruption due to the excesses of the Covid crisis. The system for preventing conflicts of interest failed, with firms referred to the Government’s VIP lane, a dedicated mailbox for parliamentarians and officials, where they were 10 times more likely to win contracts. Twenty-five of the 50 companies in this VIP lane supplied PPE worth £1 billion that was not fit for purpose, amounting to 59% of all money awarded to VIP-lane companies for PPE. The Covid purchasing fast track was open to abuse, and that is what the Government encouraged in the middle of a pandemic.
This is a reason why the Government are now burning £4 billion of unusable PPE supplied by donors and friends of the regime and bought with taxpayers’ money. This corruption was hidden behind a wall of lawyers, who worked on behalf of the Government to hide the most basic information about who benefited from the contracts and who they spoke to in order to get them. This is collusion or corruption and points to systemic corruption.
Of course, we are not immune here in your Lordships’ House. In June, it emerged that one Conversative Peer accepted £3,000 a month from a private firm to open doors with No. 10 and Ministers. Now I like open doors. I nudge a few doors open myself to help people. But I do not take money for it. I do it for people who cannot afford to pay for it, and I make sure that they get their voices heard. It is not a democracy if you have to pay for access. It is more like a Putin-style oligarchy run for and by the rich and corporations.
I think I am running out of time, which is absolutely infuriating because I have another two or three pages. Of course, I could spend all day here listing the problems and the corruption. We need this Government gone. I am not so naive as to think that that will be the solution to everything, because of course it will not. What we need is strong, decent rules and for people to understand that they are going to get caught.
Slavery and Human Trafficking (Definition of Victim) Regulations 2022
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I rise to support the regret amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has tabled. He has powerfully laid out the arguments why the amendment is needed, for reasons of substance but also of procedure. I raise my concerns that the draft regulations narrow the definition of a victim; depart from international standards; provide insufficient distinction between adults and children; and could lead to many victims being excluded from identification and, therefore, from support and assistance. I join the noble Lord in urging the Minister to redraft the regulations and properly consult the anti-trafficking sector to ensure that redrafted definitions of “victim” are workable and consistent, in line with international law and informed by the lived experience of survivors and those who assist them.
I declare my non-financial interest as a trustee of the Arise Foundation, a charity that works with people who are victims of human trafficking or modern-day slavery. As the Minister knows, it is a matter that is particularly close to my heart. I am therefore saddened not to be able to support the draft regulations as written, and saddened that we have to have a regret amendment at all. Of course, it is of the utmost importance that victims of modern slavery are properly identified and supported, so in one respect I can warmly welcome the intent outlined by the Minister that lies behind these regulations, in so far as they determine who will be considered a victim of modern slavery for the purposes of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Sections 48 to 53 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which I and many Members of your Lordships’ House who are present this evening, not least my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and others who participated in those proceedings, will recall.
I shall identify reservations that I hope the Minister will listen to carefully and address when she comes to reply at the conclusion of today’s debate. I start by underlining the way in which the procedure has been used to bring these regulations forward. I do not think that the Minister can have seen the joint briefing by the Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit, ECPAT UK, Focus on Labour Exploitation, the Helen Bamber Foundation, Hope for Justice, to which the noble Lord referred, and others, which has been circulated to Members of your Lordships’ House—otherwise she would not have said to us that there had been an adequate consultation process. They have also written to the Home Affairs Select Committee of another place to express their concerns, along with more than 30 other organisations and experts—so, clearly, there is dissatisfaction right across the sector.
How can there have been a proper consultation, and how is it possible to say to your Lordships that there was one? Anti-trafficking organisations tell me that they did not see, and did not have the opportunity to give feedback on, the definition and wording before they were published. Can we be told why not? Under the old courtesies that used to be followed that, before legislation or orders were brought before Parliament, the leading organisations in the field would be invited in to meet Ministers and civil servants to discuss these things. It is not good enough simply to say that there was a broad consultation about modern-day slavery and that people could have replied. Those definitions should have been before them, and they should have been invited in specifically.
As those organisations and I argue, it is deeply disappointing and troubling that the regulations as drafted seem to curtail the capacity for victims to be identified, and ultimately to get access to support. That is because the regulations narrow the definition of “victim” and therefore reduce the scope for victims to be identified. It is the view of the anti-slavery organisations, in contrast with the Minister, that the definitions are not, as she told your Lordships’ House, in alignment with international law—such as ECAT, the European convention against trafficking, and the Palermo protocol. In this context, I put it to the Minister, as I and other noble Lords, including her noble friend Lord Horam, did during discussions on what became the Nationality and Borders Act, that matters such as these require broad and considered consultation. Legal definition of a victim is clearly a matter of huge importance, and it is surprising at the very least that formal consultation has not taken place, particularly within the anti-trafficking sector and other relevant stakeholders with first-hand experience of supporting victims of human trafficking or modern slavery. Surely, it would not have been too onerous, and nor would it have precipitated a lengthy delay, to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, also referred to our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has reviewed these regulations and has highlighted the potential for them not to achieve their objectives. That surely will be of concern to the noble Baroness, I would hope, and to her officials. This and the uncertainty as to whether the definitions of the draft regulations in fact meet the UK’s international obligations under Article 4 of ECAT, which I have referred to, are serious matters, and I hope that the Minister can shed light on both these points in her response to the debate.
To summarise, I strongly urge the Minister to listen carefully and to reflect on the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, today and consider withdrawing this version of the regulations. We all want to see victims properly identified and subsequently supported and given the tools necessary to stand the best chance of recovery. These regulations do not do that. They raise the threshold for identification, they set a definition of exploitation that is too narrow, they are not in alignment with international law, they do not distinguish between adult and child victims, they do not include criminal exploitation, they do not feature practices similar to slavery, they overemphasise arranging or facilitating travel and they are completely defective on the means of eliminating trafficking. I hope the noble Baroness will think again.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I support the regret amendment and I wish we could use something stronger. It has been a long slog since December 2019 with all the legislation that has come through and this little painful reminder of the Nationality and Borders Bill is part of the problem that we have had to face. A lot of this legislation is cruel and uses new definitions for things that we thought were settled some time ago.
These regulations seem to be deliberately drafted to disregard the international norms around slavery and trafficking; they create special UK definitions that limit government assistance to a narrow category of survivors. Regulation 2(2)(a) has already been mentioned. It specifies that when determining whether somebody has been enslaved you have to consider
“any of the person’s personal circumstances … that significantly impair the person’s ability”.
This is victim blaming, pure and simple. The Government are proposing that normal people who can “protect themselves” from being subjected to slavery are unlikely to be genuine victims of enslavement. I do not understand why any Government would do this to people who have been trafficked.
In my view, the Government do not want to help enslaved people; they simply want to label these people as illegal immigrants or economic migrants and deport them as fast as possible. It is a cruel piece of legislation, giving effect to a cruel policy.
The lack of consultation is quite appalling and I echo all the requests for the Minister to explain that. If there had been consultation, I think this would be a very different set of regulations. I think the problem here is that the Government do not actually intend to support all victims of slavery and human trafficking and I think that diminishes us as a nation.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I am not at all sure that I am allowed to speak, and I seek the approval of the House. The reason that I arrived late was that I was having an MRI scan for a bad back. Am I too late to speak?
Immigration (Restrictions on Employment and Residential Accommodation) (Prescribed Requirements and Codes of Practice) and Licensing Act 2003 (Personal and Premises Licences) (Forms), etc., Regulations 2022
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
As noble Lords have said, we have discussed this sort of thing several times before; I will be quite brief. When faced with this sort of legislation, of which I do not have first-hand experience, I tend to read the briefings we get from NGOs very well, get ideas from other places and even check Green Party policy. This time, I read the briefings and I just thought, “Why? Why are you doing this to some of the most vulnerable people, who are migrants displaced from their countries by war, famine, environmental conditions and all sorts of reasons?” They come to this country in search of some sort of safety and well-being. Why can the Government not design an accessible, inclusive system?
It is not as though there are no ideas. We hear quite a lot from individuals in the Cabinet saying, “This is a good idea because nobody else has any ideas.” Actually, we do have ideas in this House and quite often the Government completely ignore us. I will mention a number of organisations whose briefings were very good: the Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit, City Hearts, the Snowdrop Project, Hongkongers in Britain, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the3million; they give a voice to EU citizens in the UK. I come back to the question of why? Why have a system that is so difficult and will create even more pressure and distress for people who may already be distressed? I just do not understand.
The Government have talked about e-visas as though they were something wonderful—modern, streamlined and so on. They are clearly not. They do not work particularly well, they are difficult to access and they create more pressure. If the Government tried to do this to British citizens, or, let us say, Tory MPs—actually, not Tory MPs as they would probably get their staff to do it, but British citizens anyway—there would be a public outcry. People would not like this. We all like to have a document. I always carry my Covid vaccination certificate in my purse. It is a tiny little card but I carry it as a useful reminder for myself and because I could perhaps use it another time. Everybody likes some sort of paper copy.
Not only is this not appropriate for secondary legislation—particularly in view of the resistance there has been in your Lordships’ House already—but it is not a good piece of legislation. Again and again, we see poorly thought-through, poorly drafted legislation, and this is another example. Please—we need an inclusive, accessible system. The noble Earl mentioned using a QR code, for example; there are better ways of doing this. I find this hard; I have a lot of friends on opposite Benches and I believe them to be good people but, again and again, we see legislation like this going through and you cannot help feeling that it is a spiteful and cruel way to treat people.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating this debate on a system that has, of course, already come into operation. I look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s explanation of these measures and their desirability. However, I have had a very helpful and reassuring briefing from her officials, for which I thank her.
I am sorry that there is no impact assessment. Large numbers of organisations and individuals are potentially involved—businesses, landlords and others. The Explanatory Memorandum suggests that there may even be savings in costs for them. Frankly, it would be worth detailing this for review, if there is a good story to tell. Perhaps I could make a wider point. We now have human rights and climate change statements on Bills and equality assessments on everything, but we have forgotten the importance of cost-benefit and impact assessment, which can be vital to productivity and growth. Perhaps the department could consider its approach for the future and talk to Mr Rees-Mogg as part of his quest for efficiency and opportunity and fight against bureaucracy, which often needlessly costs money.
In the absence of such an analysis, could my noble friend outline the response of businesses to these various measures, from employers generally and from landlords? Will a largely digital system be manageable by small businesses, especially if there are IT problems of the kind that some previous speakers have described? I believe that there is a new telephone helpline, and it would be good to know how it is coping and to hear about reactions to the move to digital. Finally, I understand that new codes of practice have been devised for employers and others, which I have not been able to find, and I would very much appreciate a summary of what they are trying to do, and a link.
I look forward to the Minister’s comments, and very much hope to be able to support her in the Lobbies.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I really have heard everything now: a former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, calling for an uprising. I am right beside him.
The general trajectory of modern history has been away from oppression and towards human rights. It has been a pathway of liberalisation, more fairness, more opportunity and more freedoms—as well as less state power, greater checks and balances, and more accountability. However, this Government are obsessed with rowing back on that progress. We have a Cabinet and a Prime Minister who want more authoritarianism; they are trying to transform the whole state apparatus to hold them in power indefinitely. The Bill of Rights pushes on with the Government’s repressive agenda. It is perhaps the first Bill of Rights in world history to curtail individuals’ rights and allow the state to interfere with people in ways which are presently unlawful. Yet the first paragraph of the Queen’s Speech says that the
“Government will play a leading role in defending democracy and freedom across the world”,—[Official Report, 10/5/22; col. 2.]
apart from here in the UK, it seems.
The National Security Bill will grant unspecified new powers to the security services. This decades-long slippery slope continues: it is always more powers and less scrutiny; more spying and less privacy. The giant of the security state is never satisfied with its amassed power, so who knows what will be in that Bill, which we will be expected to pass this time.
The Public Order Bill brings back legislative proposals that were flatly rejected by your Lordships’ House in the last Session. The Government say that this legislation is urgent in response to new tactics used by activists, but this is clearly untrue. The suffragettes and suffragists used methods such as locking on, even in this very Parliament building. Under this Bill, they would be criminalised and labelled as serious criminals, yet in the end they were proved to have been right to protest. Their actions were not popular at the time, but they eventually won the right to vote.
You can complain about Extinction Rebellion but, as a result of its actions, Parliament passed a declaration that we are living in a climate emergency—I must remind the Government that they passed this. Local campaigners blocking roads and equipment stopped the fracking industry bypassing local democracy and being imposed on residents by a top-down Government. In the last few days, a protester at a rally was not arrested there but later at her home by the police. The police explained that they did not want to arrest anyone at the rally, so they arrested her later. The Government want to stop any protest that might get noticed and be effective. They want to clamp down on peaceful, non-violent protest that people use to get attention. This is the crucial point: protesters are people. They are people who work, pay taxes, study or collect the pensions they have earned; people who see something wrong and want it to stop; people possibly like your Lordships, but definitely like me. I hope that, once again, we will reject this legislation. I honestly think that it will encourage protesters to be even more creative.
All this legislation is moving us in the wrong direction. We should be granting people more human rights, not fewer. This Government are absolutely incapable of making positive change; everything is regressive. At a time when more of us are sinking into poverty, the Government are not doing their job to promote the well-being of all. As Peter Walker from the Guardian pointed out, we have 38 government Bills, none of which helps reduce energy bills or deals with the climate emergency with a national programme of insulating homes. Instead, the only mention of insulating Britain is talking about locking up the campaigners who wanted action. On Twitter, an account called “The Secret Barrister” said:
“The criminal justice system has never been in more chaos. This government has defunded every element—from police to CPS to legal aid to courts to probation to prisons. There has never been a better time to be a criminal than under this Prime Minister and this Home Secretary.”
It looks as if we are set for the busiest 12 months of scrutiny in the nine years I have spent in your Lordships’ House. I hope that, together, we can do exactly what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, suggested: try to insist to the Government that what they are doing is not legal. I have tabled a regret Motion. I wanted to table a Motion that repealed all of last Session’s legislation, but apparently I was not allowed to do that, so I have tabled a regret Motion which is a series of complaints. It is a puny Motion, but it will come up at the end. I would like the Government to understand that, although I perhaps use more invective and rhetoric than other noble Lords, there are a lot of people—perhaps in this House, but definitely outside it—who would agree with me and would like the Government to be in more of a listening mode.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
At end to insert “but regret the failure of Her Majesty’s Government to provide for a constitutional convention to create a 21st century democracy where every vote counts; instead seeking to further concentrate power in the executive by weakening judicial oversight of government decisions and undermining the right to peaceful protest; and further regrets Her Majesty’s Government’s failure to provide safe and legal routes for people to claim asylum in the United Kingdom”.
Nationality and Borders Bill
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb ExcerptsTuesday 26th April 2022
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Nationality and Borders Act 2022 View all Nationality and Borders Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Message as at 26 April 2022 - (26 Apr 2022)
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I shall add a little balance to this debate by speaking on behalf of the Government on this particular Bill. I speak in particular to Amendment C1 from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, Amendment B1 from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and Amendment H1 from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I say straightaway that I have great sympathy for the point of view they put forward in those three amendments. In particular, it is almost certainly the case that there are not enough legal routes for genuine refugees to this country. I recognise what the Minister said about the extent to which we have already accommodated refugees and the figures she quoted, but I still think that we do not have enough legal routes for the generality of refugees, leaving aside those from Hong Kong, the Afghans and Syrians and so forth.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made the point very well on the previous group of amendments that if we compare the number of asylum seekers to the number of economic migrants—the number of work visas, for example—that is the real problem: in numbers. It is numbers I am concerned about principally and not the number of asylum seekers, which is comparatively small. I would trade a reduction in the number of economic migrants—people taking work visas, particularly the golden visas we have heard about more recently as a result of the Ukraine war—for an increase in the number of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers. That would be a very sensible thing to do. Not only that but it would be humane. I would do it on the simple humanitarian grounds that some people need legal routes more than purely economic migrants.
But the problem with that argument is that it only goes so far. First, there is the capacity to absorb new immigrants, given where we are with a large number of work visas, family visas and undergraduate visas each year and, on top of that, the Ukrainians, those from Hong Kong and the rest, and particularly as most immigrants go into the poorer areas of our country. If you read about or experience, as I have done as a former Member of Parliament, the effect on housing, schooling and GPs in the poorer areas of this country of a rapidly increasing number of immigrants over quite a short period, you can see the anger and despair of ordinary British people dealing with this situation. You cannot leave that out of account, particularly when one of the Government’s major objectives is the levelling-up agenda, which is precisely to help those areas most affected by the number of immigrants coming into the country, whether those are the large number of economic migrants or the smaller number of genuine refugees.
Finally on this point, however many legal routes we may have, we will not stop the traffickers in human beings just by having more legal routes. We have to tackle the problem directly. While there is a way of getting to this country by paying somebody £2,000 or £3,000 to come across the channel, people will take that opportunity. That is the difficulty. While I respect the views of the Opposition and the independents that we need more legal routes, that will not solve the problem of the traffickers across the channel. That is why we have this Bill; we need to tackle that problem directly.
I fully agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on the important point they made about the 2001 refugee convention. I do not want this Government to step outside that in any way. It would be a tragedy if that happened. It should not be allowed to happen; I believe that it will not happen. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said that there had been no really serious arguments from the Government against his position on this issue, but he must have heard the arguments from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, earlier in this Bill’s passage. At some length and across several columns of Hansard, he set out in detail exactly what the Government’s position was. Surely the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, must agree that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, was very persuasive. He may not agree with him, but he was certainly persuasive in his full and detailed account of the Government’s position and why what they are doing remains within the refugee convention. That is the first point.
Secondly, lawyers such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, are arguing this in theory and in absentia, being in the Chamber as we are. However, it has already happened in Australia, which has for many years had an offshoring policy agreed between all the parties. In the early stages of that process, its Government had to argue precisely what our Government are arguing now: that what they were doing by way of offshoring was within the 1951 convention and did not abrogate or step outside it in any way. There were court cases in Australia on precisely this point. The Australian Government won them all, because they showed clearly that they were not stepping outside the 1951 convention. So there is that evidence from another country which has done precisely what our present Government are doing.
In addition, the Australian Government did a sensible thing. Throughout the long development of their offshoring policy—it took two or three years; this is not something that will be resolved here overnight, perhaps not even in a year or two—they made a point of having a dialogue with the UNHCR, which is the guardian of the refugee convention. At every stage, they took the trouble to talk to not only the UNHCR’s headquarters in Geneva but to its local regional representatives and to allow them to inspect exactly what was happening in the offshoring areas and in Australia itself. This kept the UNHCR on board, if you like, so that it had no reasonable reason to disagree with what the Australian Government were doing. I hope that our Government will do exactly the same thing, because it is sensible to do so. We want the UNHCR to have an understanding that what our Government are doing is sensible and appropriate. We do not want to be excessively controversial.
There is a more general point about this Bill, which I have mentioned before. It is an enabling Bill. It simply sets the scene and gives the Government the power to do something. It is not the final policy. We are way off a final policy. For a start, we must have a sensible arrangement with France to deal with all this. I am sure that that will be a necessary part of any government policy. Having a sensible arrangement with France may be rather easier now that we know who its president is, but it will not be enough for Boris Johnson to say, “Donnez-moi un break, Emmanuel”. He will have to have a much more rounded policy, which may take several years given all the other issues we have with France on shipping, the Northern Ireland protocol and all the rest of it. It will take a long time to sort that out; it is far from finished.
Equally, on offshoring, although I hear what my noble friend the Minister said about what information is available, I still feel extremely vague about what is happening. I have no idea whether it will work. I have many questions about how this is going to be pursued. It may be a disaster for all I know. I think that a great deal will depend on how exactly it is executed. Again, the Australians, who did this, always say to me that it takes great effort to get these sorts of policies going because they are international policies involving other Governments and you have to get that all right.
So what we are saying here is that this is an enabling Bill. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to think back to his period as a distinguished diplomat. He might well be saying to the Government, in these circumstances, “Keep the Bill as broad as possible. Give yourselves as much room to manoeuvre as possible, because you simply do not know what will come up in the course of these negotiations with France, Rwanda or whoever”. You have to allow for that and, if you find yourselves in a situation in which you would like to pursue a course of action but cannot, because the Bill simply does not allow for that and we do not have the legislation in place, it would be a disaster for the Government.
In that respect, we should consider that the Government do not have a final policy. We have an enabling Bill. Is it right for the Lords to prevent the Commons from even trying to have this policy, which may or may not eventually work? We should remember that, in the most recent votes on this, there was a majority of 70 or 80 in the Commons—more or less the government majority, without any dissent—on every single resolution put to it, against us and in favour of their arrangements. I cannot quote the present Attorney-General, but I can quote a recent one, Sir Robert Buckland. He is not necessarily any friend of the Government, as we know, because of the history there. He was the Attorney-General and is now the MP for South Swindon. He said that he worked with Priti Patel on the Bill and that
“it is in direct fulfilment of our manifesto commitment. There is no doubt in my mind about its importance and about the need for it to be passed.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/22; col. 212.]
That was the view of a recent Attorney-General, Sir Robert Buckland, who is no one’s idea of a raving right-wing Tory.
Finally in all this, I think the Government should try to get as much consensus as possible, because I suspect this will be with us for several years—perhaps even over more than one Government, as it was in Australia. They should establish a forum for debate, where critics of the Government can talk and explain their worries and concerns. Maybe churchmen should be in it, and maybe the Refugee Council. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is a trustee of the Refugee Council, so maybe he should be on this forum. Something like that would be a means of discussion whereby we do not just talk at each other across the Chamber and in the newspapers, but talk seriously about this very important problem, which any Government of whatever description would have to resolve—namely, these illegal boat trips across the channel.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I will be very brief after that monologue, which I found extremely boring. Forgive me if I am being rude; I do not know whether I am trespassing on any rules. But, really, if the noble Lord is coming to the Chamber, perhaps he could bring a speech and not choose to deliver some sort of long ramble, when we are quite short of time.
I am going to talk about Motion F1. I have listened to the Government and the Minister talking today about Rwanda and, quite honestly, I think their representation of Rwanda is extremely flawed. I draw the House’s attention to one report from Amnesty International, in 2021, last year, which produced a review on Rwanda that said that there were huge human rights concerns. For example, abortion remains illegal in most circumstances. The Government interfere in the right to fair trial, including torturing the accused, denying access to legal counsel and confiscating legally privileged material. They arrest journalists and opposition politicians, and there are deaths in custody.
What is happening? The Government talk all the time about stopping these trafficking gangs, but our Government are becoming a trafficking gang. They are going to take people abroad and leave them there. They are taking them to a country that has human rights abuses. This is inhumane and cruel, and I will be voting for every single amendment today, because the Government have overreached and are making themselves an embarrassment for us in the world.
Town and Country Planning (Napier Barracks) Special Development Order 2021
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for raising this issue again and, as others have, I pay tribute to the Minister for the hard work she has done throughout this Session and hope that she has a very good Recess.
I speak on this issue because I regularly drive past Napier barracks and, even though there have been improvements—which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham acknowledged—it is still an extraordinarily sorry sight. For anyone to be incarcerated there for more than a few days must be deeply depressing. Clearly, 12 to 14 people in a dormitory is better than the 26 who were originally there, but it is by no means perfect. The sooner we can get people out of Napier barracks, the better.
I have one specific question for the Minister about the people who are not at Napier barracks but are housed at nearby hotels: the youngsters and adolescent boys. At the height of the summer, those youngsters were in the hotel with windows closed and guards outside ensuring that no one came or left the premises. Can the Minister assure us that innocent children are no longer housed in accommodation such as that hotel with no means of getting fresh air, and that this will never be allowed to happen again in this country?
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I spend my life in a state of barely supressed fury at the things which this Government do, particularly in their treatment of vulnerable people—whether they are poor, disabled or whatever. When it comes to asylum seekers and refugees, the Government surpass themselves in their cruelty and inhumanity, and I simply do not understand how anyone can accept that.
The High Court judgement was nearly a year ago— 3 June last year—so I ask the Minister: are we sure that, in Napier barracks, the reported intimidation and mistreatment does not happen anymore? Are the conditions still unsanitary and crowded, and are the standards and operational systems still unlawful? These are people who are traumatised. Where I live, we have been discussing what would happen if we got stormed by Russian tanks and, quite honestly, most of us feel that we would just up and run with whatever we could carry—and this is the condition which many of these people are in. Sometimes they have almost nothing; they are traumatised, possibly injured and damaged in all sorts of ways, psychologically and physically, yet we treat them like this. I do not know how it is acceptable; I really regret that we will pass that Nationality and Borders Bill and that we are just going to carry on treating them badly.
Mr Mike Veale
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I will not repeat what I said earlier on, but on the panel that will investigate this, we have a legally qualified chair, an independent panel member and a member of HMICFRS. In terms of independence, I do not think there can be any argument, and there is certainly no argument about the rightly named Independent Office for Police Conduct.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
The IOPC report said that Veale had been found guilty of lying about damaging his work phone so that he could not be held accountable. I understand some senior Tories at No. 10 have done something similar, so what is happening with them?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I will just repeat what I have already said: that the IOPC is by its very name independent and will conclude its investigations in due course. This House trying to get me to opine on an ongoing investigation is not the best idea for the outcome of that investigation.
Nationality and Borders Bill
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb ExcerptsMonday 4th April 2022
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Horam (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her leadership on this issue, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who has pursued this for many years, and Henry Smith in the other place, who has played a notable part as well. Indeed, I also thank my noble friend the Minister and the Government, who have pursued this and given way on quite an important principle and made a unique situation for the Chagossians in this country. I now hope that the Foreign Office takes the cue from the Home Office and deals with the real problem, which is giving the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius—that is the real issue. We only got four votes in the United Nations on this issue—with 150-odd against us. It is a lasting disgrace, and I hope that the Foreign Office, which is not normally behind the Home Office on these issues, takes the cue accordingly.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I take the rare step of agreeing completely with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, particularly in his praise for the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who has worked so incredibly hard and has been so effective, as well as the Minister, who clearly smoothed the way for these changes. I will ask one question. One difference in the Commons amendment is that it does not state:
“No charge or fee may be imposed for registration under this section.”
So can the Minister tell me what fees or costs will be imposed on Chagos Islanders to rectify this injustice?
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, there is a danger for a Green such as me in agreeing so strongly with two noble Lords from the opposite side of the Chamber—the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Horam—but it is not my fault; they have moved towards my position, just to be clear. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made a wonderful speech.
I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on the other place having treated this House with “disdain”. It is worse than that. It is contempt. It is real contempt that they have not read what we have done. I say to the Minister that here we have some incredible legal advice, from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Brown. It is free and it is good, so why are we not taking it? Why do the Government still resist that we are breaking the law if we allow the Bill to go through?
The brilliant Twitter lawyer, David Allen Green, often mocks the use of “for the avoidance of doubt”, because well-drafted text should not allow any doubt in the first place. However, the Government seem not to understand that this is what they are doing. They are opening an option for a lot of court cases, and they have slashed the amount of money that is going into the legal system anyway, so it will be very difficult to do those court cases. They are not just avoiding taking the advice of this House but allowing themselves to break the law. I do not understand why any Government would think like that.
If we are to comply with our duties and obligations to the refugee convention, we must vote for Motion C1.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I might offer a slightly different perspective. One of the difficulties that we have had with the Bill throughout is that we are considering things back to front. Normally, when there is policy proposal, you get a White Paper, then a period of consultation, then you come down to the details of the Bill when you can see in law what the proposals are and discuss them in detail. Here it is the opposite way round. We have a Bill, but we do not know what the policy is. Essentially, the Bill has come forward as an enabling Bill to allow the Government to address the issue of illegal crossings of the channel, so we are doing things the wrong way round. It is even worse than that; old hands here will remember the halcyon days when we had Green Papers, which proposed a certain progress of action. We would then have a White Paper setting out a government policy, and then we would have legislation. Here, we are doing it the wrong way round.
The reason is a fairly practical one, as I understand it. In this case, dealing with cross-channel migrants, we must deal with foreign Governments. We must have agreements, certainly with the French and possibly with the Belgians, Dutch and other countries that we want to deal with. That is the problem, and the practical reason why we are doing things the wrong way round.
It leads to a difficulty in that the Opposition rightly have questions which they want answers to, but the Government cannot answer the questions because they do not yet know what the policy will be. There is a package of measures, some of which we can imagine would work and some that would not work, but we do not know what those practical measures are. Equally, the Government have difficulties. They cannot answer some of the questions that are being put by the Opposition because they do not know what the policies are either. Certainly, we Back-Benchers are in darkness. There is a real problem there.
That has a bearing on the arguments which have taken place and which we cannot entirely resolve in this sort of debate. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the point, which I think is the Opposition’s principal position, that the problem would be solved if we could open legal routes to all the refugees who wish to come to this country. The problem would be resolved that way if we had enough proper legal routes.
The Government’s position is clearly that this probably would not work, because even if you had large numbers of legal routes, if traffickers were still able to give the clear message to their victims that they could get into this country and could stay, work and have a life here, they would still be in business. That is a matter of practicality and judgment. Would having enough legal routes solve the problem? Remember that the traffickers deal not just with human beings but with drugs and all sorts of criminality. If they remained in business, doing business across the channel, you would still have this trade in human beings. That is the practical, judgmental issue at the bottom of this, and we do not know the answer because we do not know the package of measures that the Government will come forward with. We are looking only at the enabling legislation.
I fully accept the additional point that we must look at the effect on refugees of international law. I take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, that there is a significant issue here. However, those who make that point must accept that the Government are equally sincere in thinking that there is an issue here on which they remain fully compliant with the 1951 convention. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, gave a very well-organised defence of the Government’s position, setting it out very clearly. I am not a lawyer so cannot comment on that. All I can do is accept the Government’s advice that they are compliant with the convention.
Finally, I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that there is a problem with the House of Commons considering these issues because of timetabling. This is a pervasive issue in the House of Commons. It has been there for years, and they have found no real solution to it. Just as we can go on for as long as we want and for as long as time and patience permit, they are timetabled for six hours or whatever it may be and, therefore, inevitably, immensely important and worthwhile issues such as this as compressed, very often into a few moments, with a ministerial response of a few minutes. This is wholly unacceptable. We have found no way round that, but we must deal with a situation as we have it. For example, in response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, the vote in the House of Commons was a majority of 98 against his proposal that there should be differentiation between group 1 and group 2—that decision to differentiate passed by a majority of 98 in the House of Commons.
That is a massive majority and reflects not just questions of law but the justified concern of the House of Commons about human trafficking across the channel. I am sure that we are all concerned about refugees not only from Ukraine but from other countries —everyone is concerned about that—but how we stop illicit human trafficking across the channel is a separate issue. Everybody is trying to do their best here; in some cases, the procedures that we have to adopt are very unsatisfactory but I hope that people accept that the Government are trying to do something that, in their judgment, is a practical answer. Even those who do not agree with them should understand that this is a matter of judgment. We will not know the full consequences for some time to come, until the Government’s policies are clear—but not to allow them to pursue their policy with the flexibility and elbow room that they need would in my view be a grave misjudgment.