Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 10 and draw attention to my entry in the register with regard to support from RAMP for this and other groups of amendments.

I have lost count of the number of times I have asked where the child rights impact assessment is, only to be told that we will receive it “in due course”. It should have been available from the outset to help develop policy, and yet here we are at Report stage with no sign of it still. Without it, how are we supposed to assess ministerial claims that their policies are in the best interest of the child and that there is no incompatibility with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Yesterday in Oral Questions I asked the Minister. All he could say was that:

“I am sure that it will be provided”.—[Official Report, 27/6/23; col. 574.]

When? After the Bill has gone through?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have looked through these amendments but not put my name to any of them. I have to say that they—in particular Amendment 8—drive a coach and horses through much of what this Bill stands for. Therefore, I am going to ask my noble friend to make sure he resists them.

This is important because we face some very serious challenges in our society as a result of the rapid growth in our population. I will go over this issue only briefly because we are time-constrained, but I just remind your Lordships that this is already a relatively overcrowded island. Last year, we admitted permanently 600,000; the year before last, we admitted 500,000. Stoke-on-Trent has a population of 250,000, Milton Keynes 288,000 and Derby 259,000. If we are going to house those people properly—and we certainly should —we will have to build four Milton Keynes or four Derbies over just two years. On dwellings, we all know how fiercely fought this is. In 2001, there were 21 million dwellings in this country; there are now 25 million—in 20 years, we have built 4 million dwellings.

It is not just at that very high level. The fact that we are introducing hosepipe bans in the south-east of England now is because the population is rising so fast we are running short of water. When we debated this in Committee, I took a certain amount of incoming from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said:

“everyone who has spoken so far has agreed, that we have to control migration. I do not think there is any argument about that, but does the noble Lord accept that of that 700,000 last year, or whatever the number turns out to be exactly, the Bill will cover only 45,000? The Bill is not about overall immigration”.—[Official Report, 24/5/23; col. 897.]

That is a fair point. However, the figure turned out to be 600,000 and it may well be that that 45,000 is 60,000, in which case it is 10%, not a sufficiently significant number, but the real challenge to us is that everybody thinks it is not their challenge. Everybody thinks it is somebody else’s challenge.

We have heard persuasive, dreadful, heart-rending speeches about the positions that people find themselves in—on behalf of interest groups of various sorts—and no doubt we shall hear them again. However, one group has essentially not been heard during our debates, and that is the 67.3 million people who live in this country, 18% of whom are from minority communities.

When I undertook my polling—which, as I have said to Members of the House, is freely available to anyone—I did not want it to be said that it was going to be old white Brexiteers living in the country, as opposed to young trendy hipsters living in the towns. In response to the question “The UK is overcrowded”, between 60% and 70% of people polled, across all social classes, all regions of the country and all age groups, felt that was the case. Every interest group, including those that are seeking to blunt the effect of the legislation before us, has to play its part in reducing the number. Unless we are seen to be responding to between 60% and 70% of our fellow citizens, uglier and nastier voices will emerge to capture that. We need to be conscious of that.

In my view, the amendments would punch holes in the bucket. How much water would flow out I do not know, but I hope the Minister will think very carefully before allowing the bucket to lose too much water because that way difficulties lie for us, for our communities and for generations ahead.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and she quite rightly reminded the House that we are talking about asylum seekers. I have to say that, after that, our paths diverged quite considerably.

In listening to a debate covering 16 amendments and a clause stand part, I discerned three angles. The first, what I might call the ultras, led by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, want to remove the clause completely. The second angle is to take the clause to pieces, as in the amendments from my noble friend Lady McIntosh, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port. Thirdly, there are the other amendments, described by, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, as picking at the scab. If you leave aside the point that the clause should not exist and take the other two, the inevitable result is that what we are doing, maybe imperceptibly, is widening the opportunity for asylum seekers to come to this country. How many and whether it is a good or a bad thing can be debated, but that is going to happen if we accept the amendments put forward in this group.

That, in turn, raises a couple of issues for me about fairness. First, there is fairness to those who have so far followed the scheme for tier 1 and are therefore going to find their position disadvantaged by the arrival of more people who would otherwise have been in tier 2. Once that thread is broken and the rules become more judgmental, then there are obviously issues of fairness for those who have the clearest position.

The second question of fairness is about the contract with the British public. In the debate on Clause 9 at the last meeting of the Committee, I discussed the nature of what I call “informed consent”. I described it as a concept that Peter Bauer had expressed to me half a century ago in a debate at my business school. Here, I touch very much on the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. There is a question of informed consent. The informed consent is not absolute; it is conditional. One of the reasons I think we have had reasonably satisfactory race relations so far is the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke that the public have felt, though stretched, often badly stretched, their consent is still there. But, as I say, it is not absolute and we need to make sure that the British public is able to see rules that are clear, unequivocal and comprehensible in their impact on them, their families, their communities and the society in which they live. The more complex the rules become, the greater the chances of cases emerging that will endanger and maybe break that informed consent.

My second point of concern about this is what I call “foreign shopping”. For a number of years I was a trustee of a charity called Fair Trials International—the name is self-explanatory—which does excellent work in many areas but in particular as regards extradition. We came across the extremely unattractive practice of people seeking extradition going round looking for the best jurisdiction, the best legal system or the best court to enable them to be successful. I think we have to be very careful to ensure that similar practices, which may already exist now, do not grow further as regards asylum seekers.

Again, my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke referred to it. He said, “If I was in Nigeria with my noble friend Lord Horam and we were deciding we were a couple of likely lads and we thought the future looked better outside Nigeria, we would look around at all the jurisdictions that might offer us the best prospects.” Now, I think the United Kingdom is an extremely attractive place to go to. We have had a long debate tonight and I am not going to go through the reasons why I think it is. They include a series of things, not least that people can see that the Parliament of the United Kingdom spends time talking and thinking about it and is concerned about it. What better way to try and find your way into a country that has the interest and the focus to make sure that even the lowest person is looked after and their rights are protected?

When my noble friend the Minister comes to wind up, I hope she will be able to say that the Government are going to look very carefully at the impact of more asylum seekers of variable abilities, perhaps—more people who may risk breaking the informed consent of the British people. For all these reasons, we need to be very careful before we widen the aperture and widen the opportunities any further than proposed in the Bill as presently drafted.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose Clause 11 and simply want to pose four questions, the answers to which I hope might help clarify the mind of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham—my home city.

First, how is it possible to decide a priori whether someone is an economic migrant or a refugee on the basis of how they arrive in the country? It appears to be a key assumption on which Clause 11 and much of the Bill is based. The evidence—in particular the Refugee Council’s analysis of channel crossings—shows that most of those crossing the channel irregularly, and therefore deemed illegal, are likely to be recognised as in need of refugee protection. That does not support the assumption.

I recently met virtually with members of the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile and was told that, in their 32 years of work, they had never met an unaccompanied young person who had arrived by a safe and legal route, yet all had been fleeing danger, with many having seen family members killed and many traumatised. A constant refrain among the young survivors themselves was that they wished Ministers would put themselves in their shoes—a refrain we have heard before this evening—and that they felt the proposed policy was based on a lack of compassion and trust.

Secondly, what assessment has been made of the likely impact on integration—an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, which Ministers claim is still a goal—of creating a second-class group of refugees with no security and only very limited rights?

Thirdly, what assessment has been made of the case made by a number of organisations, including the UNHCR, that placing restrictions on the right to family reunion for this group will, in the words of the Refugee Council, “all but destroy” the

“main safe route out of conflict for women and children at risk”.

Fourthly, and finally, why should we accept the Government’s interpretation of the refugee convention over that of the body with global supervisory responsibility for it? The UNHCR has provided detailed legal observations in support of its claims that the Bill is

“fundamentally at odds with … the United Kingdom’s international obligations under the Refugee Convention”.

Likewise, Freedom from Torture has published a joint legal opinion from three chambers which states that

“this Bill represents the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the UK”

and

“is wrong as a matter of international refugee law.”

To my knowledge, the Government have not published the legal advice on which their claims that Clause 11 is compatible with international law are based. Will they now do so, particularly in light of the very important speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Attlee has just said, I have tabled Amendment 211 in this group, and I have been very grateful for the cross-party support that I have had from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Bakewell. I am further indebted, as I suspect other noble Lords who take an interest in this important subject are, to the work undertaken on it by Nacro. My noble friend has persuasively talked about this issue in moving Amendment 210. I will not repeat his analysis, but I make it clear that I support it, and it seems to me to be very sensible. But I want to add a bit of gloss of my own and step back from the detail, at least initially. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, we can surely all agree that the rate of reoffending by prisoners on release is a reproach to us all. Further, in a well-ordered society, we should be making every effort to reduce it. This is one of the things behind the amendments that he and I have tabled.

Why is this? First, there are some hard economic numbers: the costs of our Prison Service and the ancillary services to back it up are stupendous. But there are other, more hidden but very severe social costs that are difficult to measure but nevertheless have a huge impact on our society over the long term: on the prisoner’s family, partner and children, who grow up in very disadvantaged circumstances, with greatly reduced life chances. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, pointed out, there are other hidden costs. The people who have suffered from crime are traumatised by it. Elderly people whose houses have been broken into find it hard to leave their homes and go out. There is a very severe pressure on the fabric of our society, and it leads to neighbourhoods in which suspicions and concerns run rife.

While of course I understand and regret the economic and social costs, the basic issue for me is the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester: it is about common humanity and behaving decently to our fellow citizens, to offer them the best chance of getting back on their feet. At no time is common humanity more needed than at that most vulnerable time when the prisoner is first released.

With that, I turn to my amendment. It does not take a Nobel prize winner to work out that Friday is not the ideal day for release from prison. A long weekend stretches ahead—longer still if followed by a bank holiday—during which the support systems of the state and the voluntary sector are either entirely or largely shut down, as my noble friend pointed out.

In preparing for this debate, I spoke to one of the groups that has briefed us and said, “Can you get someone to talk about this?” I thought that we would get to this amendment last Wednesday, so this is from a prisoner, Michael—that is not his real name—who was released a week ago last Friday: “I was released from prison last Friday, homeless, and everyone knew for months that I would have nowhere to go when I was released. But there I was, late afternoon on the Friday that I was released, still without anywhere to go. The housing people at the council had gone home for the weekend, and I had already been told that there was no chance for a council property. So I was waiting and waiting for news of some emergency accommodation, even just for a couple of days over the weekend. No wonder people reoffend”. Michael’s resettlement worker said, “The holding cell on a Friday is rammed, as such a high proportion of people in prison are released on a Friday. The pressure on the prisons and the resettlement service is incredible. It can lead to people being released late in the day, and, on the Friday, it becomes a race against the clock before services close for the weekend. The barriers to effective resettlement are just too high”.

My amendment, like my noble friend Lord Attlee’s, seeks to spread the days on which prisoners are released and remove the default option of the release day being predominantly a Friday. As he said, his amendment proposes that the courts should decide the specific release date. My Amendment 211 suggests that the governor of the relevant prison should be given the discretion of selecting the five-day window for the release date for a particular prisoner.

I say to my noble friend that the courts are too distant, and Amendment 210 runs the risk of a slightly clunky and administratively burdensome procedure. By contrast, the governor is the person on the spot, with day-to-day responsibility. He or she is therefore able best to take the decision that reflects the particular circumstances of each case and each individual prisoner. I recognise that, in parallel with this new flexibility, there will obviously be a need to make sure that the governors do not slide back to the old default option—the Friday—and some records need to be kept.

That having been said, what unites my noble friend and me is far greater than what divides us. As he said, he and I are concerned about introducing a policy change at very little cost, and possibly no cost, as a way—perhaps only a modest one—of reducing the likelihood of prisoners reoffending. I very much look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I support Amendment 211, to which I have added my name. The case has been made very powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. I am also supportive of the aims of Amendment 210, although that goes further by leaving less room for discretion—that may be a good thing, given the Scottish experience, which I will mention later—and I suspect would find even less favour with the Government.

I am struck by the strength of the case for change, from both the short-term perspective of the prisoner being released and the longer-term perspective of the likely impact on reoffending that we have heard about. Just last week, the Justice Secretary emphasised the importance of employment in reducing reoffending, and these amendments would help to support the initiatives to which he referred.

I ask the Minister to put himself in the shoes of a prisoner about to be released. Even the most organised of us would quail at the number of essential things they have to sort out: accommodation, health services, benefits and employment support. As an aside—although I know that the Minister will not be able to answer this question, I would be grateful if he could write to me—why does the law not permit prisoners to initiate their claim for universal credit before the actual release? Having a first UC payment available on the day of release would at least remove one obstacle, helping to create a much more effective resettlement process and, potentially, cut the rate of reoffending.

Returning to the matter at hand, I can only begin to imagine the mixture of relief and anxiety that prisoners must feel on release. To face this on a Friday, when many key services will be closing for the weekend, must be experienced as a set of totally unnecessary hurdles to be negotiated. Is it surprising that, according to Nacro, whose briefing I am grateful for, the inability to surmount those hurdles can lead to reoffending and/or turning to the more accessible comforts of drugs or drink. In the words of one prison-leaver, “If you’re released on a Friday and there are issues then they are not likely to be resolved until the following Monday, leaving the weekend to panic/stew/worry which could easily lead to reoffending.” I would panic/stew/worry if I were in that situation, I really would.

It seemed to me that this was a no-brainer, and thus it was with some surprise and disappointment that I read the negative response from the Minister in Committee in the Commons to the same amendment as Amendment 211. It felt as though he was clutching at straws in his rejection of the case made, and contradictory straws at that. On the one hand, he suggested that the change proposed would create pressure on the other days of the week, ignoring the fact that this amendment is purely discretionary and that, apparently, a third of releases currently take place on Fridays. Surely, if it were acted upon, the amendment would help to even out releases over the course of the week.

On the other hand, much was made of the fact that, in Scotland, prison governors have rarely used this discretionary power, which they have. Can the Minister tell us whether we have any information as to why that is the case? It would be helpful to know so that appropriate steps can be taken. Whatever the reason, however, it is surely not a good cause for refusing to follow suit in England and Wales. Even if it helps only a few prisoners on release, surely helping even a small number is better than helping none at all. It would be good if the impact of the change could be monitored so that, if it is shown to have a beneficial effect, it might encourage governors to use the power more.

In the Commons, the Minister acknowledged that there are challenges in making sure that offenders leaving prison are given access to the services they need so that they can get their lives back on track, but he then said that the Government

“would prefer to focus our efforts on making sure that those services are available on Friday.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/21; col. 706.]

He then spoke rather vaguely about investment in reducing crime and tackling the drivers of reoffending as well as pilot programmes in five probation areas. But what exactly are the Government doing to ensure that services are available on a Friday, and functioning in a way that ensures that an ex-prisoner’s needs are sorted out before the weekend? Why do Ministers think they know better than probation officers and others on the front line who have supported Nacro on this?

I do not understand why the Government are so averse to this very modest change. I had hoped that this was an amendment they might accept in some form and that, while the wording may not be quite right, the essence of the amendments put together would be acceptable. I still hope that the Minister might be more open-minded to it than was his counterpart in the Commons.

Dormant Assets Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of these amendments, especially Amendment 59 in my name and Amendment 57, to which I have added my name.

With regard to Amendment 57, I was encouraged by the Minister’s response at Second Reading to concerns raised about the consultation process. However, given what she said and what is said in the fact sheet on the Bill, it seems very odd that the Bill itself suggests a narrower approach to consultation, restricted to

“the Big Lottery Fund, and … such other persons (if any) as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate.”

That “if any” implies that the Secretary of State could well consider that there are no other appropriate persons—not a good look to the outside world.

While it is reassuring to have a commitment to wider consultation on the record, it does not have the same force ultimately as the Bill itself, especially if we are looking to any consultation that might be required in future because of a new order under this clause. Would it not make sense to amend the Bill so that it reflects the Government’s actual intentions, thereby giving a clear signal that the Government would like to hear from a wide range of relevant voluntary organisations and community groups? I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a clearer idea of what is envisaged by way of consultation, but also that she will undertake to take the question away and see whether she cannot come back on Report with an amendment that better reflects the Government’s stated position than the rather forbidding wording of Clause 29(3).

I want to take this opportunity to refer back to the previous group and ask the Minister whether she can confirm that the idea of community wealth funds will be included in the consultation document. If it is not, only those who already know about the idea will be in a position to support it. This links back to what the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said about the Government sending a signal that they consider community wealth funds a worthwhile concept. The Minister again carefully avoided saying what the Government think about community wealth funds, so some kind of signal to all those voluntary organisations in the alliance that they look sympathetically on the idea would be helpful.

Amendment 59 reflects concerns expressed, in particular by the NCVO, that there should be adequate time for consultation. When I tabled the amendment, I must admit that I thought that 12 weeks was the normal recommended time period. It had recently been breached by the six-week consultation on the New Plan For Immigration so I wanted to be sure that it would not be breached in this instance. However, thanks to a note provided for me by the Library, I have discovered that, some time ago, the Government withdrew the guidance on a recommended 12-week period in favour of departmental discretion. Since then, there appears to have been a marked reduction in the typical time allowed for consultations.

The NCVO puts two main arguments as to why consultation on the use of dormant assets should last for a minimum of 12 weeks. First, it is important that the Government hear from a wide range of groups and communities, which may themselves need to consult their members and may not be used to responding to government consultations. The official guidance on consultation introduced in 2013 indicated that, when deciding on the timescale for a given consultation, the capacity of the groups being consulted to respond should be taken into consideration. Timeframes should be proportionate and realistic. This all points to a good amount of time to ensure that such groups have the time they need to respond, even though the most recent iteration of the guidance in fact gives very little guidance at all. I was not at the meeting where the Minister gave assurances about following Cabinet guidelines but I do not think that those guidelines take us very far.

Secondly, the decisions that will be taken on funding have relatively long-term implications, notwithstanding what the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said on the previous group, so it is important to take the time to listen and get the decisions right. I am sure the Minister will point out that it is not usual to specify a timescale for consultation in legislation, but in the face of increasingly vague official guidance, it may be necessary to specify it to ensure that the Government hear from all those they need to hear from. That said, I would welcome a clear commitment on the record from the Minister that the consultation will last at least 12 weeks.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 57. The essence of the case has already been well covered so I shall be brief, but brevity should not be taken as indicating that I do not attach considerable importance to this amendment.

The Committee will recall that, a couple of minutes ago when I was moving an earlier amendment, I emphasised the need for local views to be taken into account and the fact that, to be effective, “local” must mean precisely that. It is charities and voluntary groups, which are often quite small, that can speak most authoritatively about the needs of their local areas and communities, hence the first part of this amendment. It is obvious that the groups that are the likely recipients of funding under the scheme will have the most relevant first-hand experience or views about how the scheme is or should be operating.

There is a danger, of course. I fully accept that trying to discern what local communities really want is not always easy and may require particular effort. That is why there is a temptation to fall back on what I referred to a few minutes ago as gatekeepers. While many gatekeepers are absolutely fine, we need to ensure that those who are holding themselves out are sufficiently well plugged in to the detail.

In that connection, I re-emphasise the point I made—it was also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, a minute ago—that the concept of community wealth funds are relatively unknown and therefore, to get a proper consultation on how they might work, the Government are going to have to do a bit of pitch rolling, if I may use a cricketing analogy, to ensure that the contributors to the consultation process have a full understanding of what they are being asked to respond about. Having said that, Amendment 57 seems likely to provide the objectives to be fulfilled, which is why it has my support.