Antisemitic Attacks

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, whose point goes to the heart of intelligence-led policing. We need to look, through intelligence and the security services, who do a great job, at who is behind motivating these attacks, the actors who are undertaking them and whether they are being supported or directed by other state organisations, and we need to take action accordingly. The security services, the police and the Home Office are constantly on that ball, trying to ensure that we find out who are the perpetrators and stopping attacks as well as dealing with the consequences.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My noble friend Lord Palmer quoted his local rabbi as saying that this is unacceptable for us as a nation. That is what I would like to emphasise. The Minister has given us an account of a lot of the good work that the Government have done, but I cannot help thinking that we are not really getting down to the roots. Even the title of the Statement is “Antisemitic Attacks”, which is a bit precise. Antisemitism is a virus, as has been said, that ideally we want to cure, but first we have to look at all the root causes and the way in which it is changing and mutating. We need something bigger and bolder to get across to the nation what is happening to the Jewish community, such as the Prime Minister going on television, if that is not a daft idea. We need to sock it to our fellow Brits just what the Jewish community is experiencing at the moment.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The title of the Statement is what it is because my honourable friend the Security Minister wanted to make a Statement to the House of Commons straight after the events just over a week ago. He went to the House of Commons last week and we are discussing that Statement today. He also visited the synagogues, as did my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on Friday last week.

It is absolutely vital that politicians of all parties stand with the Jewish community and look at the very issues that the noble Baroness mentioned, which are the root causes. We have an antisemitism commissioner, my noble friend Lord Mann, reports coming through about what we need to do in the long term and the social cohesion strategy, which is funded by £800 million of taxpayers’ resource and is trying to bring together actions to make sure that we have the social cohesion that we want. We will also continue using intelligence-led policing to track down those who are undertaking this type of activity.

Student Visas

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is important that the Government take a whole-government approach to this issue. I know that my colleagues in both the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and in some cases in the Ministry of Justice, are very focused on ensuring that we have a whole-government approach on the removal of individuals who have no right to be here. I will supply the noble Lord with figures on the removals, which have increased. It is important that we focus on continuing to remove people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, is it really not possible for the Government to have a more targeted approach—similar to what my noble friend Lady Hamwee suggested—by increasing the workforce to assist asylum applications? Rather than the blunderbuss of removing the right of nationals from certain countries to apply for visas, can the Government not home in on the individual abuse of the system? The blanket approach risks being unfair.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The brake on the four countries is a temporary brake while we assess the reasons for the rise in numbers that took place. The Government are trying to speed up the asylum processes along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned. We have put additional staff in to approve the processing, because we want to get to a stage where individuals know quickly whether they have a genuine asylum claim, whether they have been accepted—and, if they have been rejected, that they have the right to appeal—and whether we have to remove them. That is self-evidently part of the Government’s approach to this issue.

Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Lab)]

My Lords, it pains me to intervene to say that I think Ministers have got these changes wrong. It pains me even more to say that this is an all too common feature of Home Office decisions at the moment. I want to focus, as my noble friend Lady Royall did, on the provisions in these changes for students, and I do so, of course, as chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

The total ban brought in on students from four countries, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, not only removes opportunities from students severely affected by war and regimes in those nations—and let us not forget the impact on Afghan women students particularly—but diminishes the experience and opportunity to learn for British students too. Overseas students bring life and cultural difference to our universities, and we are infinitely the richer for it. Welcoming international students also represents a rather crucial bit of British soft power, and we should not forget that advantage either.

Why on earth is the Home Office deciding to remove any possibility for students from those countries to come here to the UK, even Chevening scholars, simply because a small number of those who have been here in the recent past have asked to stay? While I am at it, can I ask, as I have done before, why students cannot be removed entirely from the immigration figures? Students, by definition, are not immigrating—they are here for a temporary, defined period. The statistics are there to record permanent immigration. It is high time for the Home Office to think seriously about that change, and not the changes in front of us this evening.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with everything that has been said this evening. I do not remember a debate where that has been quite so true. I will jump from international students to the EU settlement scheme, quite briefly, as I know that the bulk of this debate has been on other matters.

First, however, the Immigration Rules represent an astonishing degree of executive power over substantive policy changes, surely not envisaged in the Immigration Act 1971, which conferred those powers. I am grateful to the Hansard Society podcast, which I listened to, about how this has grown. It is an incredible imperial edifice that is largely immune to parliamentary control or even scrutiny. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who reminded us that the other place has no scope to debate them at all, so this is the only place they get any airing. They are even below the level of secondary legislation, because all we can ask the Minister and the Home Office to do is think again—we can only regret, not negative these changes.

I want to raise the proposed changes to the Immigration Rules Appendix EU and ask a series of questions. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee regretted the lack of impact assessments. I think there were only two on the page on GOV.UK—there certainly is not one on the changes to Appendix EU—and I must admit that I find them difficult to understand.

In paragraph 5.54 of the Explanatory Memorandum, the Government suggest that they need to tackle

“identified abuse by EEA citizens sponsoring EUSS applications by those falsely claiming to be eligible family members”,

and that they will

“enable an EUSS application to be refused where it is more likely than not that … the person has assisted another person fraudulently to obtain … entry clearance”.

No assessment is available of this identified abuse or its scope, why these powers are necessary or how they will be exercised. If the Minister does not have time tonight then maybe he can write to me on this, but the Government say they want to extend

“the current provision allowing a non-EEA national applicant to use an expired biometric residence card as proof of their identity”.

I do not understand why the point about a “non-EEA national applicant” is in Appendix EU. Does it mean to the EU settlement scheme? It is not very clear.

There is the assertion in paragraph 5.55 that

“we continue to see attempted abuse of the EUSS family permit route”

and the Government want to bring in additional validity requirements. What is this attempted abuse? Can we have some evidence of what it is and what the scope is? The Government say they will

“require the applicant to provide evidence of the sponsor’s EUSS status”.

I am surprised that that is not already required. I do not understand why an applicant applying essentially for family reunion does not already have to provide evidence of the status of the person they want to join—the sponsor. That is really weird. They will also require the applicant to provide evidence or information to attest to the family relationship. I do not understand how anyone could make an application of this kind without already providing such evidence. Those are some of the issues raised for me by page 12 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which are pretty unclear and seem to provide lots of scope to the Government to do things on rather unclear grounds.

Finally, I highlight the fact that the organisation the3million, with which the Minister and I have had a lot of contact in the past few years, is sadly having to take legal action because the Government do not allow people who have applied for status under the EU settlement scheme and are waiting for a decision to come to the UK while that application is pending. There are probably about 75,000 people waiting for a decision on their application whom that is affecting, of whom 9,000 have been waiting for more than four years. Some are waiting for an administrative review; some are waiting for the outcome of an appeal. All together, we are talking about a not inconsiderable number of people.

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.