Transnational Repression in the UK (JCHR Report)

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the JCHR for this very important report, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for moving it.

The Government recognised in their response to the report that not only can transnational repression

“undermine an individual’s ability to exercise their freedoms and human rights”,

but that

“it is also a matter of national sovereignty and national security”.

But there seems to be an insufficient follow-through from these conclusions. Although the Government say they cannot publish their Defending Democracy review, they say that the review found that the UK had a

“hard operating environment for states wishing to conduct transnational repression”,

and that the UK had

“robust tools and system-wide safeguards”.

The JCHR begs to differ, finding that the UK currently lacks a clear strategy to address it, with no clear definition of transnational repression, as we have heard, and a failure to routinely collect data on the issue.

Hong Kong Watch advises:

“Hong Kong activists have highlighted concerns that UK police officers see harassment, disruptions and verbal abuses by Chinese individuals against the Hong Kong diaspora as internal conflicts between groups with differing political views. One activist stated he felt this framing helped the police depoliticise TNR, omitting the role of foreign Governments in pursuing activists and thus avoiding highly sensitive aspects of UK diplomacy and national security”.


We want the Government to show that that charge is not true.

It is a mystery to me why the Government resist a definition of TNR in favour of a description. The Tackling Transnational Repression in the UK Working Group, a coalition of 60 individuals and organisations, has produced what seems to me to be a good definition:

“Acts or threats against individuals, groups and communities across territorial borders carried out by Governments or their proxies, which violate human rights and/or intimidate, control, coerce or silence dissent”.


It seems to me that it is impossible to have an effective policy and operational response from the Government and police to something that is undefined. Therefore, it seems fair to claim that there is an unresolved protection gap between policy commitments and lived experience, and that the UK response is fragmented and difficult to access.

For instance, a dedicated reporting line is something the JCHR asked for. The Government consider this would be

“duplicative and potentially cause confusion”,

which I do not really understand. This seems to me to have slight echoes of the experience of and complaints from victims of domestic abuse and sexual crimes in this sector.

In particular, the committee—understandably—wants China to be specified on the enhanced tier of the scheme. The Government’s response was, “We will not rush this decision”. As has been widely referred to, there is also the lack of proscription of the IRGC. Lastly, I ask the Minister: what are the Government doing at Interpol to stop the abuse of Interpol red notices? This is of course a cause that Bill Browder—Sir William Browder—has long taken up, after the case of Sergei Magnitsky. The other tool of pressure and silencing that the committee mentions is SLAPPs, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, also mentioned. What are the Government doing on all these matters?

Electronic Travel Authorisation: Dual Nationals

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his support. As he knows, this position was introduced by the previous Government, and I am very pleased that we have been able to see it through. He asked how we will use this information for important border control. The whole purpose of the system is to have border control. As he probably knows, today we have had some new figures on immigration positions. They show that asylum hotels are at the lowest level for 18 months, which coincides with the UK Labour Government; the asylum backlog has fallen for the fourth quarter in a row to 64,426; and small boat arrivals are 9% lower than the peak in 2022. This is part of a government strategy to control our borders and ensure that they are firm. I welcome his support not just for this measure but for the wider government agenda.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I am not sorry but pleased to disrupt this cosy consensus because, honestly, the Government’s temporary mitigation measure is no good at all. It leaves discretion to carriers on what evidence to accept for entry, resulting in, as was said by my friend in the other place, Manuela Perteghella, who tabled this Urgent Question yesterday,

“chaos for law-abiding British citizens”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/2/26; col. 351.]

and the separation of families. Why can this Government not do what Canada did: delay enforcement and create a low-cost, temporary authorisation? Why do this Government not do something similarly common-sense? We understand that controls should be properly enforced, but, for goodness’ sake, leave a breathing space for people for whom the impact is very personal.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, rightly said, this scheme has been in planning for three years; it was introduced by the previous Government and we have seen it through. There is always going to be a deadline at some point in any scheme, and the deadline for the introduction of this one was 26 February—today. What we have tried to do is to ensure that, if there are individuals who are impacted today, this week or in the near future, there is a temporary mitigation so that carriers may—at their discretion, as the noble Baroness said—accept an expired UK passport, alongside a non-visa national third-country passport, as evidence of British nationality.

Dual nationals may also ask their carrier to contact the Home Office’s carrier support hub, which is available now. Dual nationals overseas may also wish to contact the embassy. There is provision for urgent travel without a British passport in certain circumstances, as set out on GOV.UK. If there are particular problems, my colleague the Immigration Minister will hold drop-in sessions in the Houses of Parliament next week and the week after. Now that the scheme is available, dual nationals who wish to come to the UK can apply for either a British passport or a certificate that is a lifetime allowance on that dual-national approach.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 472 and 473. On the arguments and all the difficulties and intricacies, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, cannot be doubted, given his involvement and the things he has done. In the end, however, I am a simple person. I know that there are complications and it is difficult, but if these amendments are accepted, it would allow the possibility of exploring all those intricacies and complications.

The really annoying thing for most of us is when people whom we know have committed terrible atrocities—when the evidence is incontrovertible—can leave the places they have devastated and come here to do their shopping and have holidays. This country, and particularly this present Government, say that everything is going to be best under the rule of law. Lord Bingham, in his book The Rule of Law, said some wonderful things—that the rule of law is the nearest thing we have to a universal origin. In other words, there are no areas the rule of law does not cover. I say that because there is a possibility of enshrining what Lord Bingham was talking about.

Globalisation has given we citizens of the world the possibility of living in a global village. It is no longer about living on this little island—we all belong to this huge global village, and whoever touches any citizen in our global village touches us. It is not just the people who live in Ukraine or somewhere else: they touch them, and they are touching us.

We are therefore partly involved in all this. The United Kingdom must not become a haven, as the noble Lord said, for those who committed such atrocities and are escaping justice and the places where they were done. We must not be a place that gives the impression that the door is open and they can come here. They do their shopping, and some even bring their children to send them to university or other places of learning; I have known this. They think that they are getting away with it. To me, that is what must not happen.

Margaret and I came to this country in 1974, and it was another nearly six years before Idi Amin’s Government fell. We were terrified to have any contact with the Ugandan embassy, because the people he had sent before his Government fell had committed terrible atrocities. Margaret and I knew these characters and they got away with it. In his regime, nearly 900,000 people were murdered, including the chief justice, the chancellor of the university, the head of the civil service—I could go on and on. These dictators and people like that seem to have a very long arm that prevents anybody getting near them.

For me, these amendments are opening a door for further conversation. The proposers of the two amendments were wise in saying that this, if it is to happen, should be laid at the door of the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General, who has a lot of advisers and very able people, will look at it and make a decision on whether prosecution happens. They are not simply opening it out to every court, to everybody, to think they can have a go. It is so limited. If we do not do this, as a country that really upholds the rule of law, and if we do not have this universal jurisdiction as an armoury in place, we will simply have people coming here when they have committed terrible atrocities, and they will look as though they are untouchable.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, all the speakers have made a powerful case in support of these two amendments, not least of course the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who moved the lead amendment. I apologise to him for missing the first few minutes. I was caught out because I had not remembered that Amendment 471 had already been debated. I have had the advantage of reading that part of the JCHR report, both on the account of—

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise, but the noble Baroness has just said that she was not in her place at the start of the group. Really, she should not be speaking to the group if she was not in her place. That is the usual convention and courtesy of the House and is set out in the Companion as well.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I support much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said about the problems we face. This links in well with my amendments, which will be taken next week: Amendment 436 on enforcement data and Amendment 437 on police paperwork.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of officer time is wasted. There is too much paper and too much copy and paste, and, as the noble Baroness said, opportunities are missed. I know this because my son works in the Met and often complains when he comes to see me about the poor IT integration, particularly between the police, the CPS and the courts, where cases are being progressed.

I am sure that the Minister is well aware of all this and that steps are being taken to improve things, and I know, having worked in government on IT systems-related work, that it is very difficult. However, there is an enormous advantage to be gained from making progress in this area and spending police time on chasing and catching criminals, not on so much bureaucracy.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make a very brief contribution—cheekily, because I have not taken any role in this Bill. My noble friend’s amendment, what she said in support of it and the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, are highly pertinent to the debate on the Government’s proposal to restrict jury trials. On the Tube in, I read an account of the report from the Institute for Government, which has looked at the Government’s proposals and concluded that the time savings from judge-only trials would be marginal at best, amounting to less than 2% of Crown Court time. It suggests, pertinently, that the Government

“should instead focus on how to drive up productivity across the criminal courts, investing in the workforce and technology required for the courts to operate more efficiently”.

As others who know the situation much better than I do have said, it sounds dire. One is used to all these problems of legacy systems—lack of interoperability and so on. I remember all that being debated at EU level. It is difficult and probably capital-intensive work—at least, initially—but instead of promoting these headline-grabbing gestures about abolishing jury trials, the Government need to fix the terrible lack of efficiency in the criminal justice system. I am not sure that the civil justice system is any better. Having, unfortunately, had a modest involvement in a case in the county court, I found that it was impossible to phone any staff. You might be lucky to get a response to an email after a week.

Making the system work efficiently, with all bits interacting with each other, would do a great deal more to increase productivity and save the time of all those people who are running around. One hears accounts from people who work in the criminal courts of reports not being available, files being lost and staff being absent, let alone the decrepit state of court buildings. All this investment needs to go in before the Government resort to gesture politics and things such as abolishing jury trials.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 432 was so well introduced by my noble friend Lady Doocey. This lack of appropriate technology and how it is handicapping our police services is something that she feels very strongly about. I was delighted to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and my noble friend Lady Ludford had to say, because this lack of the appropriate technology extends beyond the police services into the wider criminal justice system. This proposed new clause would address the desperate state of police data infrastructure by requiring the Secretary of State to publish a national plan to modernise police data and intelligence systems within 12 months.

As mentioned in the explanatory statement, this is not an abstract bureaucratic request. It is a direct response to, among other things, recommendation 7 of the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. The audit painted a damning picture of the current landscape: intelligence systems that do not talk to one another, vital information trapped in silos and officers unable to join the dots to protect vulnerable children. It is unacceptable that, in 2025, we still rely on fragmented, obsolete IT systems to fight sophisticated networked criminality. This amendment seeks to mandate a coherent national strategy to ensure that antiquated police technology is replaced, that intelligence regarding predatory behaviour is shared effectively across police borders in real time and that we finally close the capability gaps that allow perpetrators of group-based child sexual exploitation to slip through the net.

Amendment 432 would ensure that, when the police hold vital intelligence, they have the systems to use it effectively. We cannot claim to be serious about tackling child exploitation if we do not fix the digital infrastructure that underpins our investigations.

Migration: Settlement Pathway

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I believe in an open, integrated, multicultural society where people are respected and valued for the work they do. That is nothing against the many thousands of people who, for example, work in this building, in hospitals or in teaching and bring great skills to this country. However, the question for the Government is: how do we manage future migration issues and future earned entitlement to settlement? We are looking to put some core guidelines around that and some alternatives which improve the earned entitlement, or penalise it by giving a further, longer period. That is reasonable, but it is subject to consultation, and I welcome the noble Lord’s views outside the Chamber.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord German raised many of the puzzling issues in this consultation, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out the divisive and unsettling elements. With all the love I have of France, we have historically done better than France in building a multicultural, multi-ethnic society, as the Minister’s last remarks conveyed. I would not necessarily say that we should emulate everything Frane has done.

I have a particular question about the introduction to the document, which says that the consultation

“proposes that benefits should not be available to those who have settled status”.

I assume that does not cover those who have EU settled status, because that would be a breach of the withdrawal agreement. Even some with pre-settled status can access some benefits. I am sure the Minister will reassure me on this.

The document shows evidence of having been put together rather quickly. The Minister clarified that

“they must have no debt in this country”

means that they must have no debt to this country. There is infelicitous phrasing in the document—it does not stop someone from having a mortgage, student fees, or whatever.

On the theme of divisiveness, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, earlier settlement would be available to “high taxpayers” and people

“who have worked at a certain level of seniority in our public services”.

Good luck to them, but middle and lower earning workers are also very valuable. I do not really see why their worth to this country and their earning settlement should be measured in terms of what they pay HMRC. That is peculiar, to be honest.

I really do not understand the twists and turns in this. The Government have adopted the language of some opposition parties about illegal entrants. They say they accept the refugee convention, but they actually do not, because it is not illegal to enter this country in order to claim asylum. We have said this time and again, and the Labour Party said it in opposition in this House. If you accept that someone has a right to stay in this country, why then make hurdles about when they are allowed to settle, integrate and become a fully-fledged member of our society? I do not understand the discrepancy between those two things. I had better shut up because I can see that other noble Lords want to get in, but I have that specific question about EU settled status.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

I beg to move.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I second what the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, has said, in the same way as I supported her in Committee. I was pleased to join her in one meeting with the Minister the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and I apologise that I was unable to do so again yesterday. He has been very helpful in making himself available to discuss this subject.

Although the merits of the issue speak for themselves, I was specifically drawn to supporting the noble Baroness because I was involved, in a previous life, in promoting access to interpretation and translation services for defendants in the criminal justice system—that was an EU directive. Therefore, I wanted to transfer my support to the area of asylum law.

I will say a few words on EU-derived law. The noble Baroness mentioned the Asylum (Procedures) Regulations 2007. I was interested to see a reference to that in a letter, which was also kindly made available to me, that the Minister the noble Lord, Lord Katz, sent to the noble Baroness on 24 October. That followed the meeting we had had with him and officials, in which it did not cross my mind to look at the implementation of the EU asylum procedures directive. This stuff is all getting quite old for me now; I was involved in the debates on that directive in 2005—good heavens, that was 20 years ago. I was interested, if a little surprised, to see the UK regulations which implemented that directive mentioned, after our meeting, in the letter of 24 October. In it, the Minister says:

“The Asylum (Procedures) Regulations 2007 … implemented basic standards for asylum system procedures including translation provision as part of the UK’s transposition of Council Directive 2005/85/EC … on minimum standards on procedures in Member States for granting and withdrawing refugee status. Regulation 5 provides for a right to an interpreter during asylum appeals and in proceedings in the higher courts. This regulation remains in force”.


I think that there is some confusion or confounding of translation and interpretation in that paragraph.

The second to last sentence there is right that:

“Regulation 5 provides for a right to an interpreter during asylum appeals”.


I have checked the directive and, indeed, it refers only to interpreting; it does not refer to the translation of documents. However, this paragraph in the letter referred to “translation provision”. It is absolutely true that those two terms sometimes get conflated, but I think I have properly understood that the Government are saying that this applies only to interpretation.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I do not know whether the Opposition want to come in on this, but I may as well jump in. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. Her amendment is simplified from her one in Committee. She is quite right that this Government ought to wish to stick to Article 31 of the refugee convention. That is what they maintained over the last few years, and it would be sensible and right to come back to that position. As she said, we can rely on the common law position, which I think was contributed to by the late Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and rely on the court to understand what “directly” means. It can sometimes include short stops in transit— I think we can all understand why that might be—but it is a question of assessment in any individual situation. It is important to go back to the refugee convention definition and understanding for reasons of fairness and justice.

In the closing part of her remarks, the noble Baroness picked up on something that I was keen to ask the Minister. She repeated the statistics that she gave us in Committee: 556 people arriving by small boat were charged with illegal arrival and 455 were convicted, and the vast majority of those charged and convicted had ongoing claims for asylum. In her remarks just now, she added that a lot of these people who were prosecuted had refugee status. I wonder: what is the point of adding new pressure on the criminal justice system, particularly in the light of all the demands on it that we heard about in this House yesterday? It cannot cope. Surely the important thing is to get on with assessing someone’s claim so that you can decide whether they have a valid refugee or other humanitarian claim and are allowed to stay—or not, in which case they ought to be deported. What is the point of wasting time, resources and energy, and putting people who may well get refugee status through that process, when you go on to grant them refugee status anyway? What is the point of the diversion? I have never understood this, to be perfectly honest.

The noble Baroness is offering a way to get back to a sensible position. Of course people who are guilty of smuggling and trafficking offences might still get caught by this, but we have a baroque arrangement at the moment. We need to cleave to the refugee convention, which has been the traditional position of the Labour Party in opposition—and ought to be in government—and not waste resources, time and everything else in prosecuting people instead of just getting on with the asylum determination and removing those who have no claim. The present situation does not make any sense, in justice or in practicality. I hope the Minister can give a positive response to the noble Baroness’s amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, whose long and well-known experience in these matters I greatly respect. I have sympathy for the underlying principle of her amendment, but I fear that, though well-intentioned, it would take us back to the position that, in our view, Parliament quite rightly sought to clarify in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.

Section 37 of that Act was introduced for a very clear reason: to ensure that the UK, while complying with its obligations under the refugee convention, could define in domestic law how those obligations should be interpreted and applied. This amendment would lead to the repealing of Section 37 and the expansion of the statutory defence and, in our view, would go far beyond what the refugee convention requires.

Article 31 exists to protect those who come directly from danger and present themselves without delay. It does not exist to provide a blanket immunity for all irregular entrants, including those who have travelled through safe countries and have not claimed asylum there.

In our view, there has to be a system that is firm, not open to abuse and, above all, determined by Parliament. Diluting the provisions of the 2022 Act would undermine confidence and encourage, not reduce, the dangerous business of people smuggling. For those reasons, although I acknowledge the sincere spirit in which this amendment is brought forward, I respectfully urge noble Lords to oppose it.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Ludford]

36: Clause 42, page 38, line 1, leave out paragraph (c)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes a provision that allows a person’s EU Settlement Scheme status to be removed without applying procedural safeguards contained in the Withdrawal Agreement.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 36 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Oates. My noble friend expertly presented in Committee on 8 September our several amendments to Clause 42, explaining that, overall, we welcome this clause because of its intention to end the distinction that was created between the so-called true and extra cohorts. I will not explain that for those not in the know, as it is a bit nerdish. Anyway, we welcome the clause because it fulfils the Government’s commitment that they would not treat the cohorts differently by granting a separate route to withdrawal agreement rights for the extra cohort. Its intention is therefore extremely welcome, as these Benches have consistently said.

The problem I want to focus on now is that the Government have maintained, in debates and in correspondence, both with Members of the House and with the NGOs the3million and the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, whom I thank for its consistent support and briefing, that Clause 42, namely the enjoyment of Brexit withdrawal agreement rights, cannot apply to those whose leave was allegedly granted in error. Clause 42(2)(c) gives the Home Office the power to remove EU settled status or pre-settled status without affording status holders the procedural safeguards or proportionality test which the withdrawal agreement mandates, where it is contended that settled status was granted in error. What that really means is where the Home Office has come to believe that the status was granted in error, because obviously it does not always know.

The first problem is that withdrawal agreement safeguards are denied even if the error was by the Home Office, not the individual. The second problem is that the Government are creating a chicken-and-egg situation. The Home Office does not know whether the withdrawal agreement applies, yet it will not extend the safeguards in that agreement because it thinks that it does not apply. It is a slightly head-banging situation, but that is it. While it is true that someone genuinely granted status in error is not a withdrawal agreement beneficiary, those of us supporting Amendment 36 contend that the process of establishing that the status was granted in error, and then removing the status, must be compliant with the withdrawal agreement.

Let us think of the comparison with fraud. Status can be removed where someone obtained that status under the EU settlement scheme by fraud, with the result that they are not a withdrawal agreement beneficiary. However, they need to have a withdrawal agreement-compliant process before their status is removed. Article 21 of the withdrawal agreement has to apply for those who are alleged to have committed fraud when applying for status and, in those cases, it is also ultimately, after due process, agreed that the person was not in scope of the withdrawal agreement. It seems unacceptable to us that Article 21 will not apply to cases where the individual does not commit fraud, but instead the Home Office alleges that either it or the person made a mistake several years ago.

By contrast with the fraud situation, the withdrawal agreement says nothing about removing status granted in error, which is one reason why this sort of space exists. The Home Office objection to removing subsection (2)(c) from Clause 42 is that it would result in that person being treated as a withdrawal agreement beneficiary. It appears to think, for reasons which are not entirely clear, that this would mean that the Home Office could not remove their status at all. Home Office policy and practice is that, when it thinks that someone’s status is granted in error, it will simply let it expire—to fall off a cliff—rather than cancel, curtail or revoke the status via a decision that would entail procedural rights, including a proportionality assessment and a right of appeal. When it falls off a cliff, there are no rights and there is no due process.

Allowing the status to expire is a workaround to avoid due process, and one that frankly does not carry a huge amount of integrity because, if leave was indeed cancelled, curtailed or revoked instead of left to expire, safeguards would apply. It is the word of the Home Office against the individual’s when it says that someone’s status was granted in error. The Home Office can make mistakes: it can be wrong in thinking that someone’s status was granted in error. We are only asking for due process in all cases where the Home Office says that status was granted in error. Those entitled to withdrawal agreement procedural safeguards must receive them. This would ensure that those safeguards apply when the Home Office thinks that a person did not meet requirements when in fact they did. That is the chicken and egg: we just do not know in advance. The Home Office response suggests infallibility in Home Office decision-making: we know this does not exist. The Home Office does not provide any due-process safeguards should there be error on its part. This fails to reflect the realities of Home Office decision-making.

The Home Office position incorrectly regards as due process those opportunities for what it calls engagement to prove that status was correctly granted. This is insufficient. It does not amount to due process and it is not what the withdrawal agreement requires. In fact, due process demands a right of appeal against the decision to let leave expire, and a proportionality assessment in case the Home Office is in fact wrong to think someone was granted status in error. If the belief of the Home Office is right, it will win the appeal, and status can be taken away. This is not about people granted status in error indefinitely keeping it, along with all other withdrawal agreement rights. It is simply about not infringing the procedural rights potentially secured by the withdrawal agreement. The Government’s approach means that, by the time the Home Office is proved wrong, it is too late and the withdrawal agreement has been breached. By removing subsection (2)(c), Amendment 36 says that everyone—including those granted status in error—should be deemed to be a beneficiary of the withdrawal agreement, so they get the protection of Article 21 procedural rights.

Now we face an impasse, in so far as the Government have refused to allow these procedural safeguards to apply to the alleged error scenario. They seem to be saying, “We can’t do that because, if you deem these cases in law to be full and proper beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement, then we can’t take their status away at all, because the withdrawal agreement does not provide for status being lost in the case of status granted in error”. This can be regarded as a somewhat unhelpful argument and I happen to think it is rather full of flaws. However, the3million and ILPA have suggested a compromise, which I hereby submit. If subsection (2)(c) is left in Clause 42, so that those granted status in error are refused treatment as full withdrawal agreement beneficiaries, a new paragraph dealing with the precise situation could be added. This would provide that the law at least confers a minimum set of withdrawal agreement-compliant procedural safeguards, so as to ensure that Home Office action to permit status to expire, when it contends that it was granted in error, is procedurally safe.

A new paragraph could be inspired by Article 15, and Chapter 6 of Directive 2004/38, which, as all noble Lords will know, is the free movement directive. The provisions of that directive are the ones cited in Article 21 of the withdrawal agreement. Knowing the genius of parliamentary counsel, it should be possible to do something along these lines: something which is sui generis, inspired by Article 21 and designed for this specific situation. I hope the Minister can tell me that he will try to do something along these lines in the interests of fairness, justice and respect for the spirit of the withdrawal agreement and our relationship with EU citizens, even if he still declines to accept Amendment 36 —although, obviously, prize number one would be the Minister telling me that he accepts Amendment 36.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The argument I put is that the person will have been given every opportunity to show that their pre-settled status was granted correctly. If there was an error from the Home Office, there is a period in which they can make that argument. But if we get to a position whereby staying in the UK with the right to work for the remaining period of leave happens, the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Oates, that people reapply for EUSS status can happen and can be considered. That is a reasonable proposal. We may disagree, but I think it is a reasonable way forward and it gives fairness to the system as a whole.

The noble Baroness’s compromise suggests a number of things, and my argument is that it is not necessary. Procedural safeguards are not dealt with in Clause 42; they are contained in the citizens’ rights appeal regulations. They implement the position in Article 21 and they stand irrespective of this clause. The compromise that she offered is effectively available under the rights in the citizens’ rights appeal regulations.

I may not have satisfied the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, asked whether there are any administrative costs and burdens from this. I do not have an assessment in front of me, but I will take that question away and examine it. I realise that we will have passed this clause by the time he gets the letter, but I hope he can hold us to account on that issue. I will give him further detail at a later stage. I hope that the House can agree to our Amendments 81 and 83 in due course and that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I was remiss not to welcome Amendments 81 and 83. I thank the Minister for those, but I am afraid I am disappointed with what he said. To be clear, my noble friend Lord Oates’s intervention was surely right: I think the Minister made a slip of the tongue and suggested that there was an appeal right if status was left to expire. If the Home Office took a decision to cancel, revoke or curtail the status then there would be a right of appeal under Article 21 of the withdrawal agreement. Our objection is about the Home Office workaround—I called it that earlier, but I could think of a much ruder term. What the Home Office is doing is, frankly, sneaky. It is saying, “We’re not going to give you any right to appeal or apply a proportionality assessment. We’re just going to let it fade out, and if you don’t like that scenario you can make a whole new application and go through all the hassle and, no doubt, expense and trouble of that. Then, if we turn you down, you can go through an appeal right”.

We are talking about letting the status just expire, and the Minister is saying that the individual concerned should have known that the Home Office had perhaps granted it in error. How are they supposed to know that? That knowledge is within the bowels of the Home Office. The individual does not necessarily know that. The Home Office is holding all the power in this situation. It may not even say, “We think we granted this in error”; it just lets it expire and leaves the person stranded. That does not seem a very honourable thing to do. I am not saying that about the Minister, because I like him very much, but I do not think it is a very reputable thing for the Home Office to do. It is a great pity that the withdrawal agreement did not cover this situation. It covers fraud, but it does not cover where the status is allegedly granted in error.

Let us not forget that we are talking about people here: we are talking about EU citizens who ought to have a clear right of appeal and to make a case under an appeal procedure, rather than just having it slide away from them because the Home Office may think—and it may only think—that it granted it in error or that the applicant made an error. They are left hanging there and it will never be established whether it is true because the Home Office says, “Oh, you can just make another application”.

I am afraid I still think that is an unsatisfactory situation, and it is a pity that the impasse continues. I had hoped that there might be some flexibility to provide some creative wording so that the Home Office could maintain its position on the withdrawal agreement that Article 21 did not apply and that it would find some workaround in favour of EU citizens who might be subject to this black hole treatment. I am disappointed that the Minister cannot provide that offer, but he does not, so there we are. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 36 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly support these amendments and agree with all the speakers, particularly my noble friend Lord German. We on these Benches have consistently supported the right to work, and I did so as a Member of the European Parliament. As my noble friend no doubt knows, the reason that so many European countries have a provision on the right to work is that it is in one of the EU’s asylum directives that the UK opted out of—or technically did not opt in to, not least because it included a right-to-work provision. That is a shame.

This does not make sense. We are in the worst of all worlds. Everybody knows that there is considerable work in the black economy. I think I caught on the radio this morning that there was a new BBC investigation into a criminal network that is recruiting people to work in mini-marts, as it called them, which I suppose are small local supermarkets. Journalists can find these people. We do not seem to have much labour market enforcement or inspection—the Government must forgive me if they do not agree with that—but it is amazing that journalists can find out about this while it goes on seemingly largely unchecked.

We have a reputation for being a country where asylum seekers and irregular migrants can work, which has a considerable amount of truth in it. But these people are open to exploitation and are not paying tax and national insurance, so we get the bad reputation without the benefits, either to the state and the taxpayer or to the individuals concerned, of them working above board in the regular economy.

Successive Governments have dug themselves into a hole on this, which is completely unnecessary. I think it was the right reverend Prelate who quoted the polling statistics. The public are ahead of the Government on this. They can see the perfect sense in allowing people to support themselves, and therefore reduce the burden on the public purse, whether from asylum hotels or the frankly miserable amount that these people get to sustain themselves.

My last point reinforces what others have said. Some people wait for years for their asylum claim to be determined. I remember one case I had when I was an MEP, dealing with a doctor from Syria, I think—it could have been somewhere else in the Middle East. He had waited nearly four years for his claim to be determined and, in the meantime, his personal resources and his whole professional standing, as well as his status within his family—he came from quite a patriarchal system—had utterly deteriorated. Even if he were granted asylum the very next day, it would have needed a great deal of effort by him personally, with support from training organisations and the NHS, to get him usefully into working as a doctor. It really does not make any sense whatever.

If the barrier to this is that the Government think that people should not work, I say: they already work, but in an irregular system. There is a great public perception that there is very little enforcement of the law, whether it is street crime, fly-tipping or whatever. People just have a sense that criminals are getting away with it. Here, there is a chance to crack down on the criminals by allowing people to be regularised into the mainstream economy to support themselves and for their dignity and their humanity to be recognised.

Huntingdon Train Attack

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. A number of us in this House spend lots of time on trains. He makes a very interesting point about the distance between stops. On the train I get every week, the last stop before London is normally Stafford, and there is a lot of time between those stops, a lot of carriages and a lot of individuals. I had a very brief conversation with my noble friend Lord Hendy, who said that the most important thing that he expects on a train is the ability to have contact with the driver, so that the driver can take immediate action, such as was taken in this instance by diverting the train to a non-mainline station, Huntingdon, where police and resources were made available. I know that my noble friend has heard what the right reverend Prelate has said on staffing issues and will reflect on that as part of his normal day-to-day duties.

The question of stop and search is an interesting one. I have some statistics, which I hope will help the noble Lord who raised this issue—I may not have given him as full an answer as I perhaps should have at the time. In the last year, 16,066 stop and searches led to an offensive weapon or firearm being found on the individual, but, interestingly, that was only 3% of all stop and searches. It is an interesting statistic. We can make of that what we will in slower time, but only 3% of stop and searches found a weapon on the individual who was stopped and searched.

The question of facial recognition is important. As a Government, we have invested in live facial recognition. We have 10 new vans in static location pilots. We have undertaken piloting of this, and it saves a lot of police time. We need to ensure that we trial it so that the right reverend Prelate’s points on facial recognition and characteristics are taken into account. The main thing it will do is this: in the case of convicted offenders who are known to the system, it will potentially help draw down the ability to identify them more quickly in a large crowd than would be the case otherwise. We are undertaking a public consultation on a new bespoke legal framework for law enforcement on the use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies, and that will be launched very soon. There is an opportunity for the right reverend Prelate and others to raise those issues of interest and concern so that they can form part of our final judgment on the benefits versus some of the challenges.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with everything that has been said about the courage and skill of the staff and the efficiency of response in the emergency services and the police. I also take the point about the signallers. It would be fascinating and would make a good drama—sorry, it is in a tragic context, but the way in which the driver had to communicate with the signallers, and goodness knows who else, is above my pay grade and was all extremely impressive.

I want to ask about the last point on CCTV and facial recognition. I absolutely hear what my noble friend Lady Pidgeon said about how we cannot jump to conclusions about what the police should have done, should be doing or whatever. I have been somewhat intrigued to see it reported that the British Transport Police had the CCTV of an incident on a DLR station and apparently identified the person involved on the police national computer, but that did not go anywhere before the Huntington train incident. I put down a marker that I would be interested to know about that in future as one of the lessons learned. I share all the reservations about privacy issues, CCTV and facial recognition, including the point made by the right reverend Prelate about the accuracy of facial recognition and the way it has been used. It would be interesting to know what lessons we can learn about identification and sharing that data across the country. I am not saying anything could have been prevented, but I would be interested to know what lessons can be learned about what happened between knowledge of the DLR incident and what happened in Huntington.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

On what happened in Cambridgeshire and the DLR, that will be the subject of an internal inquiry by Cambridgeshire Constabulary. It will reflect on that, and I suspect it will produce a report that surfaces the issues. We use facial recognition in a number of ways. There is the opportunity, potentially, to look at a crowd and determine from a database of known individuals—or even, for example, missing people —whether they are in that crowd by identifying them. That is one way. Police can use operator-initiated facial recognition, which is an app that allows officers to take a picture of a person and compare it against any database we have of people who have been convicted of offences, and others. There are ways in which we can have live footage of people passing a camera, which we have been testing and monitoring.

British Transport Police, under my noble friend, will be piloting live facial recognition technology very shortly. That pilot will look for a short period—six months —to determine whether it is valuable and what lessons can be learned. However, as the right reverend Prelate said, it needs to be put into a legal context, and we will also look at that, potentially later this year. The issues about what happened, we need to examine. I do not know as yet what lessons are to be learned from the CCTV and how it was used, but that is what the investigation will lead to.

I want to go back to one point the right reverend Prelate mentioned, which is the early announcement of what happened and who, potentially, is the subject of the investigation. That is an important point, because we have learned from previous examples that putting information into the public domain—although not, in the first instance, the name of the individual, until any charge is made—takes away social media and other speculation that can lead to people having false information that leads them down alleyways that are not productive of public good and public order. I welcome the fact that in this instance, early information was given, and I would expect that in any situation. This individual was described in one way, others may be described in other ways; but the fact that further information was given about who the individual of interest is, is extremely important.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

I am eager for us to make concrete progress on improving access to justice in this area of immigration detention. The current system is not working, and serious steps need to be taken to fix it. This amendment has the advantage, perhaps, of being consistent both with principle—the requirement that all asylum seekers in custody should have early and effective legal advice—and with practicality and good sense, at no extra cost. Indeed, this is an opportunity to save overall public funds. I beg to move.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I enthusiastically support the amendment led by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, which I was pleased to co-sign. The noble Lord rightly spoke about the rule of law and the fundamental right of access to justice. He referred to the UK-France deal. I understand that, at Brook House, a large number of people were detained and notices of intent to remove them were served on 25 August this year, with a deadline of 1 September to respond. But no appointments under the detained duty advice scheme were available until at least 2 September—the day after they were supposed to respond.

Previously, on the attempt to remove people to Rwanda, the Inspectorate of Prisons, during its 2022 inspection of Brook House—which of course is an immigration removal centre—noted that one detainee

“understood that he needed to reply to the notice of intent within seven days but described his escalating panic as he could not speak to a lawyer as the window drew to a close”.

The inspectorate said that, in the five cases it looked at, no detainees had replied to the notice within the seven-day window or before the decision to issue removal directions.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, astutely argued, this is an “invest to save” amendment. It reminds me of the one I am backing from noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on the right to interpreting and translation services—the noble Lord, Lord Katz, has been kind enough to meet with us—in that there might seem to be an upfront cost, but it will actually make the system work more efficiently and save money. At the moment, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, pointed out, there will be costs to the Ministry of Justice and the courts and tribunal services, with unrepresented parties with longer hearings, more support at appeals, more adjournments, and so on. There will be costs for local authorities, with unresolved asylum claims meaning that they have to provide housing support for longer, et cetera. There is a cost to the NHS, given the mental stress and ill health of people who are not properly supported.

This reminds me very much—I hope noble Lords do not think that I am going down a rabbit hole—of diabetes technology. It might seem absolutely nothing to do with this subject, and it is not, but my late husband was a type 1 diabetic. For a long time, the NHS was very reluctant to supply insulin-dependent people with diabetes with technology such as insulin pumps that enabled much better control of blood glucose. Better control means fewer hypos—hypoglycemic incidents—a severe one of which could require hospitalisation. The problem, as I understand it, is that the cost of the technology is on the GP budget but the cost of the hospital stay is on the hospital budget. There was no overall cost-benefit analysis, and you can see that all around the NHS, of course. Eventually, some bright spark realised that, with diabetes taking up 10% of the NHS budget, it made no sense not to invest in people having much better blood glucose control—but it took a very long time.

There has to be someone who takes a holistic view of all this and sees that you do not actually save money in the longer term by failing to support, in this case, an effective legal aid scheme. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, concluded, an effective legal aid scheme saves money; it makes economic sense.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I rise in support of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, of which I too am a signatory. The principle is not controversial; the principle is established, and this really seems to be a matter of organisation, but one that has been as neglected as the somewhat remote but interesting analogy used by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, illustrated with cogency the extra costs to the Ministry of Justice of improving availability of legal aid. There are no extra costs of improving legal aid; there is a net financial saving, as long as the organisation is improved. Indeed, organising the availability of legal aid as required by law would remove not only the expensive delays to individual cases but the controversial delays to them, which in some instances have led to demonstrations—at hotels and other places where significant numbers of asylum seekers are living. I suggest to the Minister that simple adjustments to the system of dealing with asylum cases could make a huge difference to processing that vast cohort of cases, including the required provision of legal aid.

Just so that we see what we are looking at, I suggest that an overwhelming majority of the cases fall into two easily identifiable categories. First, in truth the majority are cases with no or almost no merit, which can be dealt with quickly. Secondly, there are cases with obvious merit that need to be separated from the critical mass early so that they can be dealt with on their undoubted merits.

I have some specific suggestions to make to the Minister—and I am afraid that there are a lot of mnemonics in what I am going to say. I suggest that the asylum intake unit, or AIU, the national asylum allocation unit, or NAAU, and the Home Office Third Country Unit—which, if it has a mnemonic, is HOTCU, or hot queue, which is quite descriptive of what is happening—should all be placed at detention centres or other facilities where applicants are resident in large numbers. The processes could then be completed within days, save in exceptional cases.

When there is a refusal, the appellate tier, the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber, could also sit at or near the same premises. That chamber, without undue difficulty, could locate tribunal chairs to near the point of residence or at it, and each applicant’s case could then be considered first as a paper application. That is exactly the process followed in judicial review cases, where paper applications are considered in large numbers by single judges. I know that because I did it for a number of years, as a deputy High Court judge. Through a process like that, using the Legal Aid Agency on-site too, one could deal with these cases in a short time—within days. At the same centres, the Legal Aid Agency, through its civil aid service, could provide officials directly, not necessarily through law firms, if at each centre there were persons trained in immigration and asylum legal aid to consider each case.

Although we have heard that there is a shortage of lawyers to deal with immigration legal aid—and there is—one of the main problems is the absence of a critical mass for lawyers to concentrate in one place. If there is enough work, there will be some lawyers there to do that work; if there are only one or two cases, the lawyers simply will not do it. That is the law of supply and demand, which applies equally to legal services as to any other service. I suggest that if the Government and the department managed these services holistically and efficiently—heaven forfend that they would—these cases could be dealt with and the numbers reduced in half a minute less than no time, to coin a phrase, or certainly within a very short time.

The sense of urgency that this process requires, as I have described, is uncharacteristic of the legal system. As a lifelong professional member of the legal system, I plead guilty to that much. But knowing it as well as some of us in this Chamber do, I believe that the legal system can adapt to speedy processes when the merits require it and there is a right to legal aid, for example. So let us concentrate on dealing with the backlog, giving people legal aid and allowing them legal advice, but doing it promptly while providing a fair system—including, of course, legal aid.