Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Harper

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. Unlike a number of noble Lords here, I was unable to take part in the earlier iterations of debate on the Bill. I was a very strong supporter of it, but, as a member of the Government, it was not within my area of responsibility, and I was, sadly, excluded. Therefore, unlike others, I relish the opportunity to volunteer my support for it this afternoon.

Fundamentally, this argument is about whether or not you believe in the deterrent effect. As was mentioned in Tuesday’s debate, and on previous occasions, the challenge we face—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, highlighted this in the Joint Committee’s report when he was introducing his amendments earlier in the week—is the enormous number of displaced people around the world who, under the refugee convention, would potentially have a claim for asylum. The fact is that those volumes cannot all be accommodated here. The extra challenge we get from the issue of small boats crossing the channel goes directly to one’s interpretation of that convention; this was the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised when she talked about people coming across the channel from France.

It is the Joint Committee’s view, but it is not a universal view and it is not my view, that the refugee convention protects people fleeing persecution who come directly to the United Kingdom. Most of these people enter the European Union on the southern borders, so they have crossed—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I will finish the point and then of course I will take the noble Baroness’s intervention. They cross a number of safe European countries before they get to their final safe EU country of France. I absolutely accept that a number of them—not all of them; some of them are economic migrants—are absolutely fleeing persecution, but they have not come directly to the UK, and therefore I do not feel that they benefit from the protection of the convention. On that point, I will take the noble Baroness’s intervention, and then I will make some progress.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. It is not simply what I say or the Joint Committee on Human Rights says; it is the UN High Commission on Refugees, which is given the responsibility of overseeing the refugee convention. It is very clear that the Rwanda Act went against that convention, and it does not accept this interpretation of what coming immediately from a safe country means.

While I am up, the noble Lord talked about all these people coming here, but what proportion of asylum seekers do we in this country take in, as opposed to other European countries? My understanding is that we are not a country that is taking more than our share.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I shall deal with those points briefly. First, I do not accept that the UN is the arbiter of what the convention means. It is our job in this House and the House of Commons to make laws and set out our immigration policies. We should not subcontract that to outside organisations that sometimes have a very eccentric view of the world, and it is not one that is supported by the British people.

This comes down to the point about numbers. I am a strong supporter of our long tradition of taking genuine asylum seekers and refugees in the United Kingdom, but we can do that only if we retain public support for it. I say to those who oppose stronger and tougher controls on who can come here and make it clear that it is only people who follow our laws that they are in danger of forfeiting that public support and confidence. If we do not deal with this issue, at some point—and I think we are getting very close to it—the public will say, “We just don’t want anybody. We’re not interested in their circumstances. We’re not interested in what’s happened. We want to control the number of people that are coming here”. I think that would be a tragedy. I say to those who oppose tougher border controls that they are running a real risk of altering public opinion so that it does not support it.

When we get these schemes right—I referenced earlier in the week the scheme that we set up for those fleeing the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine—they have huge public support. In my part of the world, I had no complaints about the Ukraine scheme. But when people think people are taking the mickey out of us, as they do with these small boat crossings, public support is not there and is not supportive. In a democracy, we should be mindful that we have to carry the public with us.

On this issue of deterrence, I think you have to have a deterrent. My noble friend demonstrated earlier the success in Australia. It was very telling that one political party in Australia opposed the scheme, and then when it came back into government it recognised that it was necessary. Although it would be politically convenient if that happened to this Government—if, in the end, what they are proposing was a failure and they suffered some political damage from it—the bit of me that wants my country to be successful, having had some responsibility for our borders in the past, does not want that to happen. I want to get this right. If we had won the election and been able to implement the Rwanda scheme, it would have been a deterrent. It would have sent a very clear message to people that paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers to cross the channel was a fruitless endeavour. The one thing we know about the people who pay people smugglers is that they expect to get what they pay for and, if they were not able to get to the United Kingdom and stay here, they absolutely would not have carried on paying people smugglers and that business model would have collapsed.

I completely accept that it was perfectly reasonable for people to disagree with the Rwanda scheme in the way that it was set up, whether it was Rwanda or a different country, but the problem the Government have is that Clause 37 repeals our scheme and, as my noble friend said, replaces it with no alternative deterrent at all. We have just seen this afternoon what the Prime Minister has announced. Obviously, we have not seen all the detail—we have just seen the headlines—but a one-in, one-out scheme has now been announced. The problem with that is twofold.

First, as my noble friend said, I am not sure what the legal underpinning of that is. It would be helpful if the Minister could set out whether the scheme that has been announced today, in both its pilot and its full form, will require any further primary legislation to make sure it can be implemented, and if it does need primary legislation, whether it is going to be inserted into this Bill before it leaves the House. Also, I fear it will be subject to enormous legal challenge and the Government will have exactly the same problems as we had with the Rwanda scheme. It will take them ages to be able to scale it up. The final flaw is that the public want to stop the volume of people coming here and, although a one-in, one-out scheme might alter the composition of the people coming, by definition a one-in, one-out scheme will not reduce the numbers. If we can only send somebody back to France and get another person, we might change who they are, but we are not going to deal with the numbers problem at all, so for a lot of the public the scheme will be a failure by its very definition.

As I said, I strongly support what my noble friend said. I think the Government are making a terrible mistake with this clause—not from my perspective, but from their own perspective. They are going to find that, welcome though some of the measures in this Bill are that support the powers the Government have—I have already referred to some of the later clauses that strengthen the controls on those working illegally, and where the Bill has measures in it that are strengthening the system, I support them—completely removing a deterrent without putting anything in its place, not amending it but completely scrapping it, is a mistake, and I fear that the Government will come to regret it. That will not be a good thing. It might be a short-term political advantage for us, but it will not be a good thing for the country. I would rather, if they had some disagreements with the detail of the scheme, that they had reflected on that and altered it.

If there was a clause here that was making changes to the Rwanda scheme—for example, the way it was dealing with the processing, or maybe even picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about who did the processing—that would have at least been an argument that we could have entered into, and it would have been a better argument than scrapping it overnight without anything at all to replace it. I fear the Government will come to regret having done so. We will know from the robust remarks of my noble friend that we did our best to stop them making that terrible mistake. I only hope that we are not proved to be correct.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is not in her place, I will move Amendment 102A and will speak to the consequential amendments, because I was planning to speak in support of this amendment.

I had assumed that the noble Baroness would be here to explain it, so I will briefly quote from briefings that some of us have received from ILPA, BID and Detention Action. The briefing says:

“Section 12 IMA, since 28 September 2023, has sought to enable the Executive to (a) decide the reasonableness of the length of all forms of immigration detention, intending to overturn an established common law principle which provides for judicial oversight over the length of detention as an important safeguard against arbitrary detention, and (b) continue to detain persons after the reason for their detention (pending examination, removal, or deportation order/decision being made within a reasonable period of time) falls away”.


I probably will not be quite as helpful to my noble friend the Minister as I was on the previous group, but I will start by welcoming the repeal of most of the Illegal Migration Act; needless to say, I do not support the other amendments in this group. However, the omission of Section 12—one of the very few sections to survive—is worrying, because I fear it may reflect an attitude towards detention that I had hoped we had seen the back of with a change in government.

We will be returning to the question of detention and the case for a time limit at a later date but, as I will probably be away then, I hope the Committee will bear with me for raising some more general points about detention. In justification, I cite the UNHCR’s observations on the Bill. It emphasises:

“Detention of asylum-seekers and refugees should be a measure of last resort and both necessary and proportionate in each individual case”.


It therefore recommends the repeal of Section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act, which it fears could mean in some cases detention for periods inconsistent with standards in international refugee and human rights law. Previously, it had pointed to the policy of indefinite detention as a key point of concern. This concern has to be the greater so long as Section 12 remains on the statute book.

It has been a full decade since the inquiry into the use of immigration detention on which I served, established by the APPGs on refugees and migration, called for a 28-day time limit on detention. It argued that detention should be an absolute last resort, with a presumption in favour of community-based solutions. It is depressing that, despite countless reports, including that of the official Brook House inquiry, making the same case in the intervening 10 years, here we are again.

One of those reports was by the Home Affairs Committee in 2019, chaired by the now Home Secretary. It pointed out that the UK is the only country in Europe without a limit on the length of time someone can be held in immigration detention. Having reviewed the evidence, it concluded:

“There is a rapidly growing consensus among medical professionals, independent inspectorate bodies, people with lived experience and other key stakeholders on the urgent need for a maximum time limit”.


The committee called on the then Government to

“bring an end to indefinite immigration detention and to implement a maximum 28-day time limit with immediate effect”.

That was in 2019. Of course, nothing happened. One has to ask: what has changed the Home Secretary’s mind?

The consensus is still very much there. Indeed, the evidence of the harmful effects on health, particularly mental health, has mounted, including last year from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Moreover, as Refugee Tales, which met with some of us the other day, found during its walking inquiry into immigration detention, the damaging impacts last long after release. It notes that:

“For those with lived experience, ‘detention never leaves you’”.


A series of reports by Women for Refugee Women over the past decade have underlined the particularly damaging impact of detention generally on women, the majority of whom are survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence. Their most recent report warns:

“Locking up women who have already survived serious violence and abuse retraumatises them, causing profound and longlasting damage to their mental health”.


Shockingly, its latest research found that despite the Home Office banning such practices, male detention centre staff still subjected women in intimate situations to constant supervision.

For a brief period, the previous Government flirted with alternatives to detention with two pilot schemes. In an assessment of these pilots, the UNHCR wrote that:

“Alternatives to Detention provide a people centered approach to supporting asylum seekers whilst waiting for case resolution without any evidence of a reduction in compliance with UK Home Office directives”.


The evidence from the pilot shows significant improvement in the mental health and well-being of participants and that alternatives to detention are cheaper and offer better value for money compared with the cost of detaining asylum seekers. One would have thought that would appeal to Governments of any persuasion.

It was thus disappointing that, when we debated the guidance on the detention of vulnerable persons last October, my noble friend the Minister told us it was the new Government’s policy to “expand the detention estate”. Apropos of that, I understand that the review of that guidance is still ongoing. Can my noble friend the Minister give me an assurance that any changes it proposes will strengthen, and not weaken further, the safeguards for vulnerable people in detention?

Just about finally, returning to the question of indefinite detention, whenever I raised the issue with Ministers in the previous Government, I was met with the semantic response that detention is not indefinite because it comes to an end. We all know that, in this context, “indefinite” means without a specified end or time limit. I hope this semantic distinction did not lie behind Minister Eagle’s recent response to an Oral Question, when she stated:

“Immigration centres are not used for indefinite detention”,—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/25; col. 18.]


because, if there is no reasonable prospect of removal, the person has to be released. Yet in the year ending 31 March 2025, just over a third of those leaving detention had been held for 29 days or more, and as many as 533 for six months or more.

I trust that my noble friend will accept that we do apply indefinite detention, with important, limited exceptions, in this country. I hope he will acknowledge the harm that this does to those affected. Will Members of your Lordships’ House still have to be making the case for a time limit and minimal use of detention a decade on from now?

In conclusion, repeal of Section 12 of the IMA is the absolute minimum needed to even begin to meet the UNHCR’s concerns, echoed by the JCHR, which, like the UNHCR, also called for its repeal:

“to restore certainty and ensure compliance with Article 5”

of the ECHR. This point is underlined by the Bar Council, which, along with numerous other bodies, argues for repeal with reference to the rule of law and access to justice.

I hope that my noble friend will give serious thought to this, and also to the case that will be made in later amendments for a clear time limit and the development of alternatives to detention. I beg to move.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose this amendment. I am afraid—and she will not be surprised, I suspect—that I broadly disagree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has just said. Let me set out the reason why.

First, she mentioned that the Home Secretary changed her mind and wondered why that might have been. I obviously cannot get inside the Home Secretary’s mind. I suspect what has changed, between chairing the Home Affairs Committee and now, is that she is now the Home Secretary and responsible for protecting the borders and the security of the United Kingdom. Whoever holds that responsibility is sometimes confronted with reality; despite things that they might have liked to have done, they are confronted with the reality of keeping the country safe. What the Home Secretary, I suspect, will have realised is that there is a cohort of people here who she thinks should be removed, as they have no legal right to be here, and she has realised that unless you detain them, you are not able to carry out your functions of keep the country safe.

Now, I do not know whether that is the reason why—the Minister may or may not confirm it—but I suspect that the realities of office have changed her mind, for this reason. We do not detain people indefinitely. The power to detain people is in order to facilitate their removal from the country and to protect the public. The Home Secretary has to have reasonable grounds to believe that, and people are able to challenge that through the judicial process.

The noble Baroness quoted some statistics; I will quote the same statistics but the other way around. Two-thirds of people are detained for 28 days or fewer. It is true that some people are detained for a long period of time. In most of those cases, the reason for the lengthy detention is the responsibility of the individual themselves: it is because they are trying to avoid being removed from the country that they have no legal right to be in, throwing up legal challenge after legal challenge. That is the reason why they are detained. If they wish to cease being detained, they could comply with the deportation order that they have been issued by the Home Secretary, get on a plane and leave the country. It is the fact that they do not wish to comply with the law that means they are held in detention.

The Home Secretary must have a reasonable belief that she can ultimately remove them—otherwise, she would not have the legal power to detain them. If we were to have what the noble Baroness suggests, which is a fixed statutory time period of 28 days, all that would do would give a bigger incentive to people with no right to be in this country to legally challenge decisions. Unless you could get all those legal challenges heard and decided within 28 days, all those people would have to be let out of detention, and we would cease to be able to remove any of them from the country. That would include some people who are not just here illegally but a present danger to people in this country. I strongly support the ability of the Home Secretary to detain people and not to have a fixed time limit, which would simply be an incentive for those people to delay.

If the noble Baroness looks into the details of who stays here in detention for a long period of time, it is people trying to avoid having to leave the country when they have no right to be here, throwing up legal challenge after legal challenge. The alternative way of dealing with it, if you really want not to detain people, is to reduce the opportunities for them to challenge the decision, and for deportation orders to be able to be carried out swiftly. Then we would not need to detain people. I am afraid that I suspect the Home Secretary has realised that detention is necessary to protect the public and to make sure that we can enforce the necessary deportation decisions.

I understand why people do not like it, but I am afraid it is a bit naive to think that everyone who comes to this country, or who overstays their welcome and is in this country without legal authority, goes when they are asked to. You sometimes have to use the power of the state and detention, and you sometimes have to enforce their removal, because otherwise they do not go. If you do not demonstrate that you have a robust system, you will have even more people coming here because they think that, once they get here, they are never going to be removed.

One of the important reasons for having a deterrent is that, if you look at the total number of people we remove, you want to get to a position where the balance between enforced removals and those who go voluntarily is much more in favour of those who go on a voluntary basis, because it is quicker and cheaper for everybody, but that happens only if people realise they are going to have to go at some point. If people think they can get away with staying when they have no right to be here, we have to use the powers that we have at our disposal. I accept that it is not ideal, but I am afraid there are limited choices for Ministers if they want to enforce a robust immigration system. Detaining and removing people where necessary ensures you command the confidence of the public that you have a robust system. If that confidence disappears, the public will not support anybody coming here, whether legally or not. As I have said in debates on earlier clauses, that would be a tragedy.