Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

On these Benches, we seek to improve this Bill by giving an effective legal remedy to those who are judged in this manner, in a way that is woeful by European standards. We support these two amendments. If the right reverend Prelate and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, wish to test the opinion of the House on both—we see them as a package—we on these Benches will definitely support them.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

I am sure that everybody wants me to sit down and not speak. I want to make just one point, taking us back to the initial remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham; it is crucial. The Home Office knows that its age assessments are unreliable. It is therefore immoral—I was delighted to hear the right reverend Prelate use that word—to prevent young people having the right to appeal against those age assessments. It is also immoral to allow a child to be removed from this country while a judicial review of those age assessments is under way. I want us to focus on that point from the right reverend Prelate.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher for her last comments; I am sure all of us agree with them.

I support Amendment 156A in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. It is a very important amendment. Of course, when people come forward with sensible and constructive suggestions which would improve an amendment that has been put forward, I have no problem with that, and I know the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has no problem with that either. In line with the remarks made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, were the noble and learned Lord to move Amendment 158A, we would be minded to support that too, because it seeks to improve the Bill in the way that he said. It would be silly not to do so. I thank him for tabling it and hope he will spare me a heart attack from running around to make sure that it is all is in order.

The serious point is that the amendment would improve the Bill. As has been said, rather than restricting this to areas of law only, it opens it up to grounds of fact. It is a much more sensible, improved amendment, and it would be silly not to accept it. We will see what the House has to say should the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, be minded to move his amendment after Amendment 156A.

Nobody doubts the difficulties that can arise in respect of age assessments, particularly as many of the disputes for unaccompanied children arise around the claimed age of 16 or 17. The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 had relevant provisions, but those have been superseded by the Illegal Migration Bill. The Bill specifically allows for an individual, where there is a disputed age assessment, to be removed—in other words, an individual’s challenge to a decision by way of judicial review is non-suspensive. Amendment 156A, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and others, seeks to address that injustice.

The Government will quote evidence saying that large numbers of individuals claiming to be children are not, and that the system is open to abuse. I point out that in the JCHR report the Helen Bamber Foundation states that, in 2022, 70 local authorities had 1,386 referrals to their children’s services of young people sent to adult accommodation or detention, but 63% were then found to be children. It is therefore deeply concerning that judicial oversight of these decisions is being ousted, and that they will then be removed from the UK while decisions are confirmed or not. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, says, how can that possibly be in the best interests of the child—something that has driven public policy in this country for decades?

Others have raised the child’s rights impact assessment. Since we got it only at 5 pm yesterday, it has been difficult to go through it, so I apologise for asking questions that would really be more appropriate in Committee. On the deportation of children—were the Bill to go through unamended—it may interest noble Lords for the Minister to explain why there has been a change of public policy with respect to the use of reasonable force. On the use of force by the Home Office under the Bill, page 4 of the impact assessment says:

“While this is technically not age restricted, use of force against minors is not permitted under current policy except where in the rare circumstances there is a risk of harm”.


I think we all accept that; if a child is going to hurt themselves, you necessarily expect someone to try to intervene in that circumstance. It goes on to say:

“Use of force is not currently used against minors for compliance/removal purposes. We do not envisage the use of reasonable force being used for such purposes under the auspices of the new bill”—


this is the important phrase—

“unless it is necessary as a last resort where other methods to ensure compliance have failed”.

That is a major change of public policy, included in a document that we are being asked to consider at the last stages of Report. The Government are saying that reasonable force can be used in the deportation and removal of children under the auspices of the Bill, rather than it just being used in the circumstances of preventing harm. Nobody would disagree that if you are preventing a child hurting themselves, of course you have to use force and intervene appropriately, but this does not say that. I repeat: it says

“as a last resort where other methods to ensure compliance have failed”.

The House deserves an explanation of why the Government not only have changed public policy with respect to the lack of judicial oversight of age assessment but are now proposing, to ensure that children can be removed under the Bill, to allow reasonable force to be used.

I will not do this but, if this were Committee, noble Lords can imagine all the questions we would ask about training, about what “reasonable force” means and so on. That is not available to us, which makes it even more important that we support the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham—with the improvement suggested by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, if he moves his amendment as well—to protect children, some of the most vulnerable people who come to our shores.

--- Later in debate ---

All my amendment seeks to do is to say that, on an annual basis, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on illegal migration in the UK and the statistics as required by this amendment. It is not a particularly contentious or difficult amendment. To those who think, “If they are here illegally, how can we possibly find out where they are?”, I say that you can find that out—the supermarkets have a system and there are other systems that I spoke about in Committee, which I will not repeat this evening. It is a question of will to find out how many people are in this country already and what the total population of this country is. I believe that, once we have that information, it will better inform people’s views about the levels of migration they want to see in the years ahead.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak in this debate, but I feel I must rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker.

The Prime Minister repeatedly talks about “stopping the boats” as one of his top five priorities—you often get the feeling that it is in fact his top priority. If this Government really wanted to tackle the villains, the traffickers and the modern slave owners and, along with the French Government, round them up and put them where they need to be, they would have done it. Instead of doing that, however, the Government think, “No, we will leave those guys alone; we will focus on removing the rights of the victims, the trafficked people, the modern slaves, the unaccompanied children, the people escaping persecution and appalling treatment”.

This amendment is unusual. In all the debates we have had, the focus has been on the victims and on removing the safeguards for the victims. This amendment is appealing to the Government to give a duty to the NCA to round up the traffickers, the modern slave owners, and so on. It seems to me that the Government cannot say, “Oh, sorry, we cannot do that, it is too difficult; we just have to make life hell for the victims—that way we will deter them from coming”. I really hope that everybody in this Chamber will support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, as being the single attempt—throughout all these debates—to have the Government focus their efforts where those efforts should be focused.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 168AZA. The noble Lord, Lord Swire, has explained why it is a very modest but important part of this discussion.

One reason why I think there is substantial public support for the Bill, at least in terms of the headlines and broad brush strokes, if not the detail—we have heard from the wide range of amendments the potential problems when looking at the detail of the Bill—is that people feel as though things are out of control. That is viscerally expressed by people seeing the boats arriving. The difficulty is that, in a discussion—even in this Chamber, but certainly beyond this Chamber—about what is really going on, many people feel as though they are confronting smoke and mirrors. They do not know who is here and under what status they are here.

I said at Second Reading—or at some stage, anyway—that many people feel as though they are being gaslit. When they raise concerns, they are told—as we have just heard a bit of—that these are trafficked people and victims. One reason why I support the amendment introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, a moment ago is that I feel that the terms “asylum seeker” and “refugee status” are being sullied by being used in a way that is unhelpfully broad and vague, often quite promiscuously and illegitimately, in order to say to the British public, “What are you worried about?” The problem is that the generosity of spirit around refugees is being tested, to say the least.

Therefore, we need to have a sense of proportion and to know what is going on. It is quite straightforward: we do not, which means that people bandy around emotive headlines and accusations against the British public—often unfairly—as though they are all xenophobic, they do not care, and so on. Also, quite grand statements are made. I think people want to know very clearly who is here illegally and in what category they are here.

I commend the noble Lord, Lord Swire, for making the point that it is the obligation of this Government—or a Labour Government or any Government—to know who lives within our borders. If you do not know, then you do not have national sovereignty. You cannot run a country in which you say, “Oh, sorry, it is too difficult to know”. Anyone who says, “Find out for yourself” has not tried. We have all tried and we want to know that the people who run this society do know and therefore have a handle on it.