Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Ludford and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response. The tone and approach go very much in the direction and spirit of the amendments, even if their drafting is not entirely fit, in the Minister’s mind. He is right that they were designed to illustrate the very welcome change of approach of the current Government, who regard co-operation with Europol—and, indeed, with the EU generally—as important.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, said that we must be driven by operational need, not ideological nostalgia. I do not think you could find anything in the drafting of the amendments which is not operational. To be honest, I take slight exception to any suggestion that they are driven by ideological nostalgia. If there is any ideology, it is coming from those on the Opposition Benches, who are still displaying an allergy to the European Union.

I have the pleasure of serving on the European Affairs Committee with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. We are going to have some interesting discussions when we finalise our report on the reset. He referred to the leads from the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council giving evidence to us a few months ago. I looked it up while he was speaking, and they referred to the more cumbersome, clunky and process-heavy post-Brexit arrangements. They were engaged in mitigation, so they were making the best—I am now using words they did not use—of a not great job. I am afraid that what is coming from the Benches to my right is a prejudice against working with the European Union.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to the noble Baroness. She knows that there has been cross-party support on, for instance, information-sharing in respect of the Schengen Information System’s second iteration, which we were members of in 2015, and it is incumbent upon this Government and the European Union to negotiate that information-sharing. We could ameliorate the clunkiness were the EU to be a little bit flexible, for mutual benefit, in sharing the SIS II data.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

There are all kinds of things we can aspire to. Unfortunately, the arrangements the noble Lord’s party negotiated have certain constraints in terms of the legal operation of the European Union, and he knows that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Swire. I begin with a confession, which I think is shared by most of my colleagues on these Benches, that we were all whipped in 2006 or 2007 in the other place when in opposition to oppose identity cards. It was a period when there were serious concerns about the infringement on civil liberties of identity cards. Tony Blair, our former Prime Minister, got a lot of things wrong over the years, but he was absolutely right on identity cards. If I were to go back in time and vote again, I would support identity cards, for many reasons. We are talking almost 20 years ago and the world has changed significantly in terms of transnational travel, patterns of serious organised crime, and the challenges of large numbers of people moving across the world, a minority of whom are doing so for nefarious reasons and for criminal enterprises.

The Minister knows that I have great respect for him. I know he serves in the greatest tradition of patriots in the Labour Party who have served in government and he wants to do his best to protect our borders and the safety and security of our country. However, we can no longer have these slightly erudite debates about ID cards and civil liberties when we have so many huge challenges, particularly the threat of Islamist terrorism and other serious organised crime. If we look abroad, we see that other countries have taken this very seriously as well, including many English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and of course the United States. What bedevils us is the lack of co-ordination and collaboration in terms of sharing data.

I have been nice about the Minister and now I am going to be nasty. I have asked him four or five times the same question—I dare say it is his officials’ fault, not his—about whether we collect data on students whose visas are rescinded as a result of criminal activity. For various reasons, he has had to answer that he cannot give me that information, telling me the Home Office does not collate that data, there are too many databases, or it would be too expensive to collect that data. I am not blaming him as such, but that is symptomatic of the difficulty of being able to properly co-ordinate data in the public interest to fight crime. Therefore, we should consider anything that can assist that, whether it is facial recognition—I know there are civil liberties issues and in China we see some very major infringements of civil liberties, so I do not want to go down that road—iris scans, fingerprints, et cetera. The ability to collect that data for people coming in—

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My noble friend Lord German is going to speak on the entirety of the amendments, but I did not want to lose the theme of ID cards. I have a question, because I genuinely do not understand. We have had big, long debates about ID cards in the past and maybe we will again in the future, but how are ID cards supposed to help in the case of irregular migration? Employers who are employing people illegally are presumably meant to be checking documents at the moment to make sure that people have the right to stay and the right to work. How does an ID card actually help?

If employers have the means to check whether someone has the right to work legally—that is an alleged pull factor, although of course the Migration Advisory Committee has always advised that that is actually not true—can the noble Lord explain to me what ID cards add as a supposed deterrent to irregular migrants, when employers should already be checking documentation? How do they add value to that particular issue?

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Ludford and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, he seemed to suggest that the amendments from my noble friend Lady Hamwee would somehow be unusual in criminal law. She is obviously saying that, rather than to require the person to prove a reasonable excuse as their defence, the prosecution would have to prove “without reasonable excuse” as a component part of the offence.

I was looking at driving offences. I admit that this appears to be an AI overview, subject to correction by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but, apparently, careless driving is

“driving without due care and attention”

or

“driving without reasonable consideration for other road users”.

Presumably the prosecution has to prove that you were driving without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other road users. It is not, at least in the first instance, for the driver to have to prove that they were taking due care and attention or that they were showing reasonable consideration for other road users. I forget any criminal law that I learned many moons ago, but I know that there are circumstances in which the burden can shift. But, overall, the prosecution has to prove the component parts of the offence.

What my noble friend is trying to achieve is the normal rule in criminal offences, where the burden lies principally on the prosecution. I query the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that my noble friend somehow wants to be out of line with the normality of the criminal law in what she suggests in her amendment. I think that it is the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, who, not for the first time, wants to be out of line.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I take that in good heart, as the noble Baroness and I are members of a committee of the House in which we share rumbustious debate. I am sorry that noble Lords have stumbled into “immigration law for dummies”, because neither of us is an expert on it. However, I think she is comparing apples and pears, because the example that she uses of dangerous driving is actually a strict liability offence, where mens rea is not an issue; in other words, it is not presumed that you would wilfully desire to get into a car and drive drunk in committing the offence. It is not necessary to prove it.

I am not saying that the noble Baroness is doing or saying anything out of line; I am merely demonstrating that one has to address wider issues in this policy area. For those reasons, the amendment is unhelpful in meeting the Government’s strategic objective to reduce illegal immigration.