Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Sentamu

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to express my strong support for everything that the right reverend Prelate said. I will not repeat the principled case I made in Committee, but I thank my noble friend the Minister for the letter he sent me after the debate. In it, he stated that

“it is important to ensure clarity both for applicants and decision makers”.

One way of achieving greater clarity would be to accept the right reverend Prelate’s request that the guidance spell out explicitly that a person must not be refused citizenship because of irregular entry if that were to contravene our international obligations, particularly under the refugee convention, and that anyone who entered as a child should not be barred from citizenship on the grounds of the manner of their entry.

Leaving it to full discretion does not ensure clarity, despite the helpful reassurances provided by my noble friend and other Ministers, with the result that some of those who entered as children might be denied citizenship, even though it is accepted that the immigration breach was outside their control. Indeed, the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, of which I am a patron, has already received reports of refusal on character grounds, based on how the person entered the UK as a child. The PRCBC also contests what my noble friend said in Committee about the guidance providing flexibility; in its experience, the guidance is routinely applied in a rigid fashion.

Therefore, I urge my noble friend not to plead flexibility as a justification for rejecting the very modest request of the right reverend Prelate to spell out in the guidance our obligations under international law, including our commitment to upholding the best interests of children. As the Court of Appeal has advised on sentencing policy, children are not mini-adults. No child who entered the country by irregular means should have that held against them when, subsequently, they would otherwise become eligible for citizenship.

I wish we could strike out completely this unjust and, as the right reverend Prelate called it, immoral rule, which will, as we have heard, impede refugee integration. The amendment would, at the very least, erect some guardrails around the rule’s implementation and thereby mitigate its impact. Failing that, I hope that my noble friend will be able to give the assurances sought by the right reverend Prelate.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I find myself persuaded by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford. Her arguments need to be listened to.

Archbishop Robert Runcie defined a saint as a person whose character has never been fully studied or explored. We all have a dark side to ourselves. If we talk about good character, it may appear in a person’s life only when they have moved away from all the bad stuff that was hanging around them. We carry within ourselves both a sainthood and some not so good characteristics—that is why Archbishop Robert Runcie’s definition of a saint was right.

When I arrived in this country in 1974 and went to Cambridge to study theology and my doctorate, I was so unwell in the first seven months that I was going in and out to see doctors. Eventually, they said that I must have lost a lot of blood through internal bleeding, from the blows received from Amin’s soldiers. I was very angry—extremely angry—that I should be subjected to such terrible things. Of course, that was all bottled up, but I was very angry. Had someone said to me at the time, “We want to know how good your character is, so that we may see whether you can become a citizen”, I would still have been extremely angry in those interviews.

It was not until one night, when I remembered my mother saying, “John, never point a finger at anybody, because when you do, three others are pointing back at you”. Friends, noble Lords, noble Baronesses, this whole question of good character can be very subjective and misleading when the person first arrives, particularly when they come as children. We all have the grace and ability to grow out of some of the not-so-good bits of us, but we still remain a very rough diamond. We are never fully polished until we go through the gate of death.

I find it strange that this country—that I have grown to love, that always shows give and take, that always has this magnanimity of meeting people halfway—would, I am beginning to understand, now use good character as a ground for someone being accepted as a citizen. How do you know that at the time you receive them? They could go on and do some outrageous stuff, because within all of us there is the good and bad. Legislation based on good character as a way of allowing someone to be a citizen has probably not understood that we are on a scale of learning, of growing, of finding ourselves in the future. Even when we die, there will still be lots of stuff that we have not dealt with.

May I plead that when the guidance comes, particularly on dealing with people who arrived here as children, there is more grace than the harshness which I sometimes hear has come into this most green and pleasant land. People become more harsh, more judgmental, more unloving, more uncaring. The legislature should be the guardian against such attitudes and behaviour. I support the amendment.