Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 102B in lieu—

102B: After Clause 58, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to establish safe and legal routes
(1) The Secretary of State must, within three months of the publication of the report required by section 59(1), make regulations specifying additional safe and legal routes.
(2) In subsection (1), a “safe and legal route” means a route which allows relevant persons to come to the United Kingdom lawfully from abroad.
(3) In subsection (2), a “relevant person” is—
(a) a person who, if they were in the United Kingdom, would be a refugee within the meaning of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees done at Geneva on 28th July 1951 and the Protocol to that Convention,
(b) a person who, if they were in the United Kingdom, would be eligible for a grant of humanitarian protection in accordance with the immigration rules, or
(c) a person who, if they were in the United Kingdom, could not lawfully be removed from the United Kingdom by virtue of Article 3 or 4 of the Human Rights Convention.””

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I brought a variation of this amendment to the House on Report. I refer to my entry in the register of interests. I said in that debate that this amendment is very simple. It is designed purely to place a duty on the Government to do what we have just heard they intend to do anyway—introduce safe and legal routes. This should therefore be a simple amendment to respond to. The moral credibility of the entire Bill depends on the existence of safe and legal routes. The basis on which we are disestablishing illegal and unsafe routes is that we are committed to creating legal and safe routes. That therefore needs to be reflected in the Bill.

For the purpose of clarity, I will take two minutes to lay out both the framework that sits alongside this Motion already and why the Government can feel confident in accepting it. First, as we have just heard, the Government have total freedom to undertake consultation with local authorities in any way they choose to ascertain the capacity that exists for local authorities to welcome refugees and asylum seekers through safe and legal routes. This is already committed to in the Bill.

Secondly, the Government then draft their own report, which they have already committed to doing by the end of January. This is already committed to in the Bill. Even then, the number of people who would be able to come via those safe and legal routes would be subject to a cap, as decided and voted on by this House. This is already in the Bill. This is the framework under which this Motion would sit. Its purpose, therefore, is that, within those limits and that context—all of which are already committed to in the Bill—the Government would then have a duty to do what they say they want to do: create safe and legal routes. The lack of a substantial commitment in primary legislation to this end is a serious omission and one that this amendment gives us an opportunity to address.

I am grateful to the Minister for making the statement that the Government intend to outline new safe and legal routes in the January report and implement them as soon as is practicable—in any event, by the end of 2024. However, if this really is the case, surely the Government would want to place it in the Bill, too, so that it cannot get lost with the passage of the time and electoral cycles, as has happened with the consultation, the publication of the report and the structure of the cap. Surely, at the very least, the Government would want to place a duty on themselves to have brought in safe and legal routes no later than the end of 2024.

Let me turn to the timeframe that has been introduced to this revised version of the Motion. I have chosen a timeline of three months after the publication of the Government’s report on safe and legal routes for three reasons: first, this will be nine months after the enactment of the legislation, which is more than enough time to develop and implement a serious proposal and respect the proper process to which the Minister referred; secondly, it is enough time for the Bill to have had effect in stopping the small boats if it is going to do so; and, thirdly, it will ensure that the commitment as set out in legislation should not cut across a general election or purdah next year. As I mentioned on Report, if the Minister would like to propose putting an alternative timeline in the Bill, I would welcome that conversation, but I have not yet heard of an alternative legally binding timeframe from the Minister.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. For all the talk of safe and legal routes, we have reached ping-pong with no commitment to them as part of the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I will support the noble Baroness if she presses her amendment to the Motion. I wish to make two points very briefly, but before doing so I declare an interest. I returned last night from the Horn of Africa, where, as I am sure the Minister will be aware, many of the discussions I had with parliamentary colleagues from that region related to this Bill and the damage we are doing to our international reputation.

My first point relates to a letter that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, sent me after the conclusion of Report stage. I thank him for it. It referred to one of the existing schemes that the Government operate. It is an uncapped scheme—the UK resettlement scheme. In Committee and on Report I asked for clarification of whether the Government’s uncapped scheme has, by virtue of ministerial discretion, in effect become capped.

That scheme, which is global, is now being prioritised only for those from Afghanistan, in effect closing routes from all other countries that we have debated in this debate so far. It took until the 10th paragraph of the Minister’s letter to say, effectively, that I was correct. He said:

“As a result, we are necessarily prioritising those who have been referred by the UNHCR and who are already awaiting resettlement”.


That means that we have closed the safe and legal routes that we are seeking to expand, as the noble Baroness has argued for.

The Advocate-General for Scotland suggests that the Government should not be criticised for having a delay. The outstanding question is: why do the Government not have a baseline capacity now that any safe and legal routes would operate under, and what funding would be available to it? Which countries are the Government considering as candidate countries for new safe and legal routes? The Government’s opaqueness suggests that they do not have a plan that would be ready on the conclusion of the Bill, so it is necessary that we put in statute the guarantee that we will have these routes.

The second point I wish to ask the Minister for clarification on is the use of overseas development assistance. The Government have used overseas development assistance to score all the budgets for those to be resettled under the Bill—indeed, for asylum under all the schemes for safe and legal routes. This is at a cost of £1.9 billion of ODA, which has been taken away from other development projects in many of the candidate countries from which we are seeking safe and legal routes.

I understand that the Bill, and the way it has been drafted, means that the Home Office will no longer be able to score any of those individuals who will be deemed inadmissible under overseas development assistance. That means that, under the current budget, the Home Office itself would have to find up to £1.9 billion of expenditure which could not be scored against overseas development assistance. Under the Development Assistance Committee rules, the Government are now placing on the taxpayer inordinate sums of money for a Bill that cannot be operated and is inoperable. Will the Advocate-General confirm to me now that that is the case and the measures under this Bill will mean that the current way that the Government are funding those to be resettled will no longer be able to be used and there is an enormous black hole in the funding of this scheme?

Regardless of the answer, we support the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud. We need the guarantee because, so far, the Government have been woeful in offering any reassurance.

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[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, we do not characterise the time taken properly to consider the identification and implementation of safe and legal routes as being in any sense a delay. Rather, it is a proper, considered application of thought to make sure that the measures will work correctly. Beyond that point, I have nothing further to add.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I would like to test the will of the House.

Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I again note my interests as laid out in the register. I will speak to Amendment 162. In Committee, I explained the well-intentioned nature of this amendment and hoped it would have afforded the Minister the opportunity to clarify that any cap placed on safe and legal routes would exclude current named schemes already in operation. I appreciate the Minister’s comments. He said:

“The cap will not automatically apply to all current and new safe and legal routes that we offer or will introduce in the future.”—[Official Report, 4/6/23; col. 1980.]


But, with respect, how can local authorities reflect on accommodation provision for new routes without excluding their current commitments from this assessment?

“Safe and legal routes” is not a term that is tightly defined in the Bill, so we are left, as is now unfortunately commonplace, with regulations in this area. Arguably, however, it is not unreasonable for Members to presume that “safe and legal routes” would be for those seeking protection outside existing visa schemes who would be granted refugee status. Therefore, why are the Government leaving the possibility that those who are not granted refugee status could be included within the cap? This applies to schemes such as Homes for Ukraine, which requires a visa—the people in question are not refugees—Hong Kong BNO visas, which are actually for overseas citizens, and the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, which is in recognition of all that happened in Afghanistan. As my noble friend Lady Brinton put it to the Minister in Committee, those from Hong Kong are actually British citizens. I thank the Minister for the meeting that he held with me and her on that specific question.

We still have no credible evidence on the deterrence impacts of this Bill, but we know that offering accessible and safe routes will help prevent people having to make the agonising decision to travel irregularly to reach sanctuary. However, by including current schemes in the proposed cap, we will severely restrict our ability to implement any such safe routes, as there would be limited room, if any, for additional routes. Over the first quarter of this year, 22,000 Ukrainians and British nationals from Hong Kong were resettled here. If we had a cap of 20,000 and those 22,000 were included, we would have a problem. It is to the Government’s credit that these 22,000 have come, but it cannot be used as a justification to abdicate our responsibility to do more across a wider global cohort.

If we do not provide safe routes to those who have had no choice but to uproot their lives to seek safety, we are choosing to require them to rely on dangerous journeys. Perversely, this will create a market for those smugglers determined to capitalise on others’ suffering.

The child’s rights impact assessment states:

“Anybody arriving in the UK through the methods specified in the bill presents a risk to the public due to the very nature of their arrival”.


I put it to the Minister that the vast majority do not pose a risk to our country; what is at risk is their lives. That is why they have fled. I therefore welcome that the Prime Minister has promised that the Government will create more safe and legal routes. This amendment will enable the Government to do only what they have set out to do. Without it, I fear this vital and necessary work will stop before it has even started and the world’s most vulnerable will pay the price.

I wonder whether using the word “person” in Clause 59(1) is unhelpful here and whether it should say “asylum seeker and refugee” instead. Would the Minister consider bringing that back at Third Reading? Beyond Amendment 162, I support the other safe and legal routes proposed here, in particular that in Amendment 164 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kirkhope and Lord Kerr, and the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for adding their names to my Amendment 164. I also lend my support to the right reverend Prelate’s Amendment 162, which he has just outlined, and to Amendment 163 in the name of my noble friend Lord Alton.

I brought a variation of this amendment to the House in Committee. As I said in that debate, it is very simple. Amendment 164 is designed purely to place a duty on the Government to do what they say they intend to do anyway—introduce safe and legal routes. As I said in that debate, the moral credibility of the entire Bill depends on the creation of more safe and legal routes. The basis on which we are disestablishing illegal and unsafe routes is that we are creating legal and safe routes. The lack of a substantial commitment in primary legislation to this end is a serious omission which this amendment gives us an opportunity to address.

In the previous debate, the Minister said that the Government intend to outline new safe and legal routes in the January report and to implement them “as soon as practicable” and

“in any event by the end of 2024”.—[Official Report, 14/6/23; col. 1982.]

I am grateful to him for making this commitment. My primary motive in bringing this amendment back is to ensure that this commitment from the Government is enacted and that the commitment made from the Dispatch Box to enact safe and legal routes is in the Bill and carries as much weight as the commitment to disestablish unsafe and illegal routes.

I have heard commitments to policy positions from the Dispatch Box which have not been fulfilled and, while I have the greatest respect for the Minister, legislative certainty is what this House needs. I am particularly concerned by the promises made about the establishment of safe and legal routes at an indeterminate point after the next general election.

This brings me to the timeframe which has been introduced to this revised version of the amendment. We have chosen the timeline of two months after the publication of the Government’s report on safe and legal routes for two reasons. First, this will be eight months— I repeat, eight months—after the enactment of the legislation, which is more than enough time to develop and implement a serious proposal. Secondly, it will ensure that the commitment, as set out in legislation, should not cut across a general election or purdah next year. If the Minister would like to propose putting an alternative timeline into the legislation, I would welcome that conversation, but we do need to put the duty into the legislation now.

I was grateful for a conversation with the Immigration Minister in the other place, when he assured me that the Government would consider the importance of clearly demonstrating that they are committed to fulfilling their word on safe and legal routes. To restate: this is something the Government actively want to do, and for that reason I will want to test the will of the House this afternoon.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, and to endorse everything she has just said; if she does decide to test the opinion of the House, I certainly will support her in the Lobbies. I support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham in his Amendment 162, and Amendment 165, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and Amendment 166, in the name the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.

My own Amendment 163 takes me back to an issue I raised in Committee. It concerns the provision within the designated safe and legal route, which I warmly welcome and I applaud what the Prime Minister said about the principle of doing this. The amendment contains within it an element and a number, to be determined by the Secretary of State, for people with protected characteristics under Section 4 of the Equality Act 2010. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, who is in his place, will recall that I raised this issue on an earlier amendment on Report.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, but also to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, for signing this amendment. I will listen carefully to the Minister’s response. A few moments ago I heard him say that there will be a consultation process; perhaps he could flesh that out and say even that the principle in this amendment is something that could be consulted on—that would go some way to meeting my concerns.

I have raised this issue a number of times previously. I tabled an amendment to the Immigration Bill, debated in your Lordships’ House on 21 March 2016, which specifically focused on those groups of people, such as the Yazidis and Christians, persecuted and even facing genocide because of their religion or belief. I raised it again during the Nationality and Borders Bill, debated on 8 February 2022. I focused on the Yazidis, an ethno- religious group targeted by Daesh for annihilation as a clear-cut case of genocide.

Earlier this afternoon, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and I held a meeting with officials from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office about the continued failure of the United Kingdom to respond to the genocide of the Yazidis, even though a German court has now determined that such crimes have been committed against the Yazidis. I visited northern Iraq in 2019 and took evidence from the groups I have just described. Germany, along with Canada and Australia, famously opened its doors to the victims of this genocide, offering them sanctuary and a safe haven. By contrast, we have used the absence of safe and legal routes to prevent these vulnerable and targeted communities being able to find a way of accessing refugee or asylum status in the UK.

If our present mechanisms are working as intended, why have Yazidi victims of the Daesh genocide in Iraq not been granted resettlement in the UK? Of course, we may not be able to help all victims but why can we not help a few? This is unacceptable, which is why I have tabled this amendment.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Absolutely—that is why, in my opening remarks, I said that the noble Lord’s Amendment 163 was movingly produced and discussed. My question on the cap was aimed at Amendment 164, which I stand ready to be corrected on, and the generality of Amendment 162, where no numbers are mentioned at all.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

It may be helpful, therefore, to clarify what is happening in Amendment 164. In January, the Government will lay a report detailing the safe and legal routes that they are choosing to introduce. The amendment says that, two months later, the Government have a duty to implement what they say they want. The amendment makes no mention of numbers and does not throw open the door at all; it purely says that, if the Government have a narrative of instituting safe and legal routes, they have the responsibility and duty to implement them. They must safeguard the passage of the Bill not just by narrative but by action.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

164: After Clause 59, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to establish safe and legal routes(1) The Secretary of State must, within two months of the publication of the report required by section 60(1), make regulations specifying additional safe and legal routes.(2) In subsection (1), a “safe and legal route” means a route which allows relevant persons to come to the United Kingdom lawfully from abroad.(3) In subsection (2), a “relevant person” is—(a) a person who, if they were in the United Kingdom, would be a refugee within the meaning of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees done at Geneva on 28th July 1951 and the Protocol to that Convention,(b) a person who, if they were in the United Kingdom, would be eligible for a grant of humanitarian protection in accordance with the immigration rules, or(c) a person who, if they were in the United Kingdom, could not lawfully be removed from the United Kingdom by virtue of Article 3 or 4 of the Human Rights Convention.”

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend’s Amendment 51 on maintaining the current protections for unaccompanied children. The commitment that the Government would set out a new timescale under which genuine children may be detained—made by the Immigration Minister in the other place and my noble friend in Committee—was very welcome. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will at this point on Report be in a position to provide further detail. If not, the other place will want the opportunity to discuss the matter further with the Government.

I fully acknowledge the verbal reassurances that we have been given by the Government on their ambition to limit the use of powers given by this Bill in relation to the detention of children, which are very welcome. However, accepting my noble friend’s amendment, or bringing forward one of their own in relation to the timescale for the detention of children, will really provide the reassurance that we are looking for.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I too support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Mobarik. As we have heard, the abolition of child detention in 2014 was one of the landmark achievements of our Conservative Government. Along with the Modern Slavery Act, it was a major step forward in the protection of the most vulnerable in our society. The arguments for this amendment have already been made, so I will keep my remarks short, but I want to make a couple of brief points.

The new detention powers have no time limit in the Bill and apply to unaccompanied children and children with their families. Obviously, this is deeply concerning. The Government have rightly stated that we do not want to detain children, and have acknowledged the vulnerability of unaccompanied children in debates on this Bill. However, there are still no protections enshrined in the Bill to guarantee that protections remain in place for minors, and there has been time for the Government to clarify this. This really needs to change before the Bill becomes law.

Having spoken with the Minister in the other place, I am aware that the Government are considering these arguments, so this amendment gives them the opportunity to think again. I commend my noble friend Lady Mobarik’s amendment to the House.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, we on the Labour Benches strongly support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, and if she presses them to a vote on Monday, we will be supporting her. Her amendments address the removal of safeguards for children put in place when a Conservative Prime Minister sat in No. 10, and it is clear that potentially thousands of children could be detained, some potentially indefinitely. This would undoubtedly cause long-term damage to their health, well-being and development. We are happy to support those amendments, and we are very interested to hear about the ongoing discussions which noble Baronesses on the other side of the House have mentioned.

Regarding the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German, I interpret them as probing amendments into the rules concerning detention and, particularly in the case of barges with the quite astonishing figures he gave today, the cost and where there will be areas for people to walk around and exercise in the vicinity of the barges. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that in response to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord German. We are happy to support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik.

Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Most of us here will never know the pain of having to take the unfathomable decision to risk everything to reach safety and the courage it must take to leave home in hope of sanctuary. The Government have the opportunity to offer accessible and safe routes that will provide hope for some of the world’s most vulnerable and, ultimately, save lives, and to do so alongside international partners offering similar routes in their nations. It is a privilege and a responsibility that we should never choose to abdicate. For this reason, I beg to move.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 128C in my name, I shall also lend support to many of the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 128B in the name of the right reverend Prelate, which he has just outlined and to which I have added my name.

Amendment 128C is very simple. It places a duty on the Government to do what they say they want to do and are going to do anyway. This amendment imposes a duty on the Home Secretary to create additional—I emphasise “additional”—safe and legal routes by 31 January 2024, six months after the anticipated passage of the Bill, under which refugees and others in need of international protection may come to the UK lawfully from abroad.

The whole purpose of the Illegal Migration Bill is to shut down unsafe and illegal routes and its whole narrative is to ensure that genuine asylum seekers and refugees can then come via safe and legal routes. If that is the motive for the Bill, as the Government have repeatedly communicated, this amendment will not be difficult for the Minister to accept.

I have been asked why I believe it necessary to establish a duty on the Government to create these routes: why is it not enough for the Government just to be required to lay before Parliament a report detailing the safe and legal routes that they intend to introduce? There are pages of the Bill weighted towards eliminating illegal and unsafe routes, but only a few sentences indicating an intention to create legal and safe routes—and then only to lay a report before Parliament detailing the Government’s intention to create safe and legal routes.

This is simply not certain enough. If the Government are genuinely seeking to establish safe and legal routes, they would do so with the same weight of legislation as is committed to the abolishing of unsafe and illegal routes. I have the greatest respect for the character and integrity of my noble friend the Minister but, with the all the best will in the world, many assurances have been given and many reports written that have never delivered on the well-meaning and well-intentioned promises of Ministers. For this House to be certain that the abolishing of unsafe and illegal routes will genuinely lead to the creation of safe and legal routes, a legal duty set out in the Bill is what is required to balance the Bill and make good on the Government’s intent.

When announcing the Bill, the Home Secretary told the other place:

“Having safe and legal routes, capped and legitimised through a decision by Parliament, is the right way to support people seeking refuge in this country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/3/23; col. 170.]


This amendment would simply create a duty to have these safe and legal routes, capped and legitimised through a decision by Parliament, as the Home Secretary so eloquently laid out. Indeed, in December the Prime Minister announced that through the Illegal Migration Bill:

“The only way to come to the UK for asylum will be through safe and legal routes”,


and he indicated that that would be through the Illegal Migration Bill. He promised that

“as we get a grip on illegal migration, we will create more of those routes”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/12/22; col. 888.]

The Government assure us that the Bill will swiftly get a grip on illegal migration so this amendment provides assurance that the Government will deliver on the Prime Minister’s stated intent of creating, through the Bill, safe and legal routes. Vague promises for establishing safe and legal routes towards the end of 2024 or commitments to establish safe routes after we have stopped the boats are not sufficient. A duty is required in the Bill that the Home Secretary must, by 31 January 2024, make regulations specifying additional safe and legal routes.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness and the right reverend Prelate. Amendment 130 is in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Carlile, Lord Kerr and Lord Dubs, to whom I am very grateful for their support.

First, I must apologise for inadvertently misleading your Lordships’ Committee in the early hours of Tuesday morning, when referring to age-assessment data from Full Fact, at col. 1805. Although, in the absence of transparent published data there remains a big question mark over the Immigration Minister’s claims about the percentage of adult males pretending to be children, and similar ministerial claims, the Full Fact data were not in fact comparable and had been misinterpreted by a journalist. Clearly, I should have checked my facts rather than relying on a newspaper report. I apologise for that.

The amendment provides for a visa scheme that would allow those with viable asylum claims who meet specified conditions to travel safely and legally to the UK to make such claims. Before providing a more detailed explanation, I emphasise that the proposal is based on the premise that unites us, so clearly articulated by the right reverend Prelate: a desire to stop unsafe travel to the UK, be it by boat or other routes, such as hidden unsafely in a lorry. As such, it would damage significantly the people smugglers’ business model—again, a goal that unites us. Where we differ from the Government is in our belief that the way to do this is not by, in effect, ending the right to claim asylum in the UK. There is a clear distinction between deterring people from making dangerous journeys and stopping them claiming asylum.

Of course, safe and legal routes are part of the answer, and here I support in particular Amendment 128B, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 128C. Personally, I am unhappy with the idea of a fixed cap on the numbers entitled to enter on safe and legal routes if it is what the JCHR describes as a “hard” cap. The right reverend Prelate makes an important point in excluding the listed schemes from the cap, on the grounds that these schemes are not currently capped. I also support the Children’s Commissioner’s recommendation that children should be excluded from the cap. I would be grateful to know the Government’s response to that. It should also be noted that she emphasises that

“safe and legal routes must be agreed in parallel to the passage of the Bill”,

which is relevant to Amendment 128C.

But however generous the safe and legal routes option is, the UNHCR makes it clear that it is not a substitute for the right to claim asylum under the refugee convention. As my honourable friend Olivia Blake said when she spoke to a similar amendment in the Commons,

“as it stands … there is no way for the many thousands of people who have already started their journey to get on to a safe and legal route … You cannot reduce the number of boats if the people who are going to try to make that journey are already on their journey and have no alternatives to come to the UK”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/3/23; col. 754.]

This proposal offers a means of reducing significantly the numbers arriving by boat or other irregular and unsafe means. It does so by retaining the right to claim asylum, but in a way that, in effect, opens up another safe and legal route. I thank Care4Calais and the PCSU —two organisations working on the front line—for all the work they have put into it. When a similar amendment was proposed in the Commons, the Minister did not grace it with a response, so we are giving the Government an opportunity to do so today.

The proposal builds on the Ukraine model of safe passage, for which, for all its difficulties, the Government can take credit. I hope that they will learn and apply lessons to other groups with a strong case. It is no coincidence that no Ukrainian has, to my knowledge, crossed on a small boat or used people smugglers. Where the proposal differs from the Ukrainian scheme is that, on arrival in the UK, applicants holding a safe passage visa would enter the normal UK asylum process —speeded up considerably, I hope—and if, at that stage, they were found not to be eligible for asylum, they would not be allowed to stay in the UK.

A safe passage visa would typically be claimed online, as in the Ukrainian scheme, although provision would be made for applications also to be made at existing visa centres. I am assured that NGOs would undoubtedly help those with literacy problems. To qualify for a safe passage visa, a person would have to be in the EU—although, if successful, it could be expanded at a later date—not be a national of the EU, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland, and have a viable asylum claim. The viability of the claim would be determined in a similar way to the initial screening interview that currently takes place at the first step in the asylum process in the UK. This would ensure that clearly unfounded claims would be turned down at this point. Successful applicants would be sent an electronic letter that they could use to enter the UK lawfully. On arrival, they would be required to visit a UK centre to provide biometric data.

An initial fear that I had was that well-founded claims might be turned down as a way of reducing the numbers entering the UK, and that, although legal aid would be available on appeal, an applicant not in the country would clearly be at a disadvantage. The point was made to me, however, that the scheme relies on it being applied in good faith. It will work only if it is seen to work fairly—if claims are processed in a timely manner and a realistic number receive visas. If the Government are genuine in their claim that their primary motivation with the Bill is to stop unsafe journeys on flimsy boats, they have a real incentive to make it work.

I know, too, that some fear that this represents an open-borders policy, so I emphasise that it does not. The reverse is the case: it offers a way of replacing the current chaos in the channel—the Government’s attempts to regulate that have failed—with managed and controlled borders, where we know who is making the crossing. As I said, safe passage visas would be available only to those with viable asylum claims. Those refused a visa would receive a clear personal communication explaining that they do not have a viable claim, nor, therefore, the chance of a safe future in the UK were they to try to reach it by irregular means. Surely that would be a more effective deterrent, consistent with our international obligations, than the Bill—the deterrent effect of which is at best uncertain.

Nor does the evidence support the fear that this would attract more asylum seekers to the UK. Research suggests that immigration policies do not drive asylum seekers’ destinations. The introduction of the Ukrainian scheme, on which the safe visa scheme is modelled, did not lead to the great majority of those fleeing Ukraine seeking refuge in the UK. We know that the great majority of those seeking asylum in Europe do so in other European countries and there is no evidence to suggest that they will not continue to do so.

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[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister just spoke of “alternative” rather than “additional” routes. Can he confirm that these would in fact be additional routes, rather than just taking one route out and putting another route in?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Yes, I was simply using the word “alternative” to discuss that particular route, but there is no intention to withdraw any routes. Obviously, it may be that routes are consolidated or changed so that they are incorporated—I do not want to tie any future Government’s hands on that—but I can reassure my noble friend in that regard.

Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Randall’s Amendment 86, to which I am delighted to have added my name. I also support other amendments in this group. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests as a member of RAMP. I debated whether to add my comments to this already extended debate, but it is important that the record clearly demonstrate that voices on all sides of the House have raised their concerns about this clause.

This nation has a proud history of ending the evils of the slave trade, and on multiple occasions the Government have recognised the importance of building on this history. My noble friend the Minister used the standard Home Office line to take when he said:

“The UK has led the world in protecting victims of modern slavery and we will continue to identify and support those who have suffered intolerable abuse at the hands of criminals and traffickers”.


I agree that the UK has led the world in bringing forward legislation that protects victims of modern slavery, and some of us were deeply involved in bringing it about, but I simply cannot see how the Bill enables us to continue to identify and support those who have suffered intolerable abuse at the hands of criminals and traffickers.

As it stands, the Bill will prevent the care of victims of slavery and in so doing will damage our reputation. When I was a Conservative special adviser, we talked about the modern slavery legislation as one of our proudest achievements, but clauses in this Bill, coming fresh on the heels of the Nationality and Borders Act, are systematically dismantling that achievement, as we have already heard.

Through the Illegal Migration Bill two things are happening regarding slavery. First, support is removed for those who have been exploited and enslaved if they arrive in the UK via irregular routes. Secondly, the Bill makes it much harder to catch and stop the traffickers and slave-drivers, who are the real villains. Amendment 86 would rectify those two serious moral and practical issues in the Bill.

First, if someone is trafficked to the UK via irregular routes and is enslaved in the UK, the provisions in the Bill will prevent them being referred to the national referral mechanism or having the protection of the Modern Slavery Act. This covers most of the men, women and children who are trafficked into slavery in the UK. Amendment 86 would ensure that those who have been exploited and abused while in the UK, whether they are a UK citizen or not, receive the care and support they need. It would level the playing field by saying that, regardless of your mode of entry, if you are a victim of slavery you cannot simply be detained and removed.

Secondly, the amendment would address the misguided nature of the legislation. As we have heard, victims of slavery hold the key to the prosecution of perpetrators. This is vital to remember. As drafted, the Bill will prevent victims coming forward to give evidence because of the fear of being detained and removed.

Evidence is already starting to emerge from UK police forces that the erosion of victim protection from the Nationality and Borders Act is severely hampering the prosecution of perpetrators. If we leave this Bill as it stands, it will hamper prosecutions even further. Surely, its whole purpose is to stop these illegal acts. Amendment 86 creates space for victims of slavery to come forward.

UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard this morning, from Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin to French Huguenots fleeing persecution, Britain has a proud heritage of welcoming those in need to these shores. Tragically, refugee and asylum policy has now become one of our most divided and polarised debates. We urgently need a better and unifying story, a clear narrative about refugee and asylum policy as distinct from illegal migration, and a better and more effective national refugee strategy. I am delighted that it is the most reverend Primate who has called this debate today. It is the Judeo-Christian foundation of this nation that makes it the country that people fleeing war, intolerance and conflict want to come to, with its principles of fairness, safety and dignity.

Of course, there is no question that control and integration are also paramount. The Government have a duty to their own people, and our failure over decades to properly control our borders has fuelled the anxiety which underpins much asylum and refugee discourse. But it is not those in need who are driving this. According to the ONS, small boat crossings accounted for only 3.5% of the total immigration figures in 2022. Let me give a broader example of what is happening: 277,000 non-EU citizens arrived on long-term study visas, 151,000 people arrived for work, 89,000 Ukrainian visa scheme holders arrived, and over 100,000 BNO Hong Kongers arrived. Meanwhile, an estimated 35,000 people arrived by small boats, the majority of whom applied for asylum. If we want to reduce net-migration numbers, asylum claims are the smallest of categories.

Today’s theme is how we balance compassion with control, as my noble friend Lord Horam has just mentioned. My argument is that there will be no constructive way forward until the Government address three public priorities: the control of our borders; control of our asylum system; and controlled safe and legal routes.

I begin with the control of our borders. This matters because narratives about the Calais border are often equated with headline migration numbers and wrongly tied into refugee policy. It also matters because, by putting the numbers in context, it becomes clear that the catastrophising rhetoric about the so-called crisis is overblown. We need clarity in our language. One of the reasons why 56% of those polled say that immigration is too high is that politicians and the media relentlessly use terms such as “illegal migration” and do not distinguish between illegal migration, economic migration and those who have been trafficked or are seeking refuge or asylum. This is disingenuous. When I explain the numbers that I have just shared with the House, people are genuinely stunned and say that they had no idea that the number of people claiming asylum here was so small in comparison with those that we are actually inviting to come here.

If we want to regain control of our borders, diplomacy with our European allies should be our first port of call. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has been seeking to deepen his collaboration with his French counterpart on this matter. It is the most likely way of genuine control being restored.

Although control of our borders needs diplomacy, retaining control of our asylum system is a matter of administrative competence. If application and decision rates stay the same as the last year, by June 2024 the backlog will be over 200,000 cases. The status quo is quite simply not sustainable. We must take immediate action to clear the backlog. I was pleased to see in the Times that the Government are looking to fast-track claims from countries with a high grant rate, as well as those from safe countries where claims are very unlikely to be credible. If this policy were enacted, at a stroke a considerable amount of the burden on the taxpayer would be lifted. We must also improve the processing of cases. While Britain made only 16,400 asylum decisions in the year to September 2022, France made nearly double that number of decisions between July and September alone. We can quite obviously do better with our decision-making.

Much of this, though, will take time. But given that we are in a time of labour shortages, it is a matter of pure common sense that people who are in the backlog should be granted the right to work. In fact, I profoundly agree with the most reverend Primate that they should be not just granted the right to work but expected to work. The arguments for this are fundamentally Conservative, and I made them at some length during the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act, so I will not go into them in depth here. In short, we need their skills, and we do not need to pay for their accommodation or support their incomes—they can do this themselves. Surely this, at the very least, should be addressed.

As I come to conclude, I turn to the final area where we need to develop control in our asylum system: controlled safe and legal routes for genuine asylum seekers. It seems extraordinary that, whether you are a victim of the Yazidi genocide or of state oppression in Eritrea, there is no safe route to come here. I suggest that, if the Minister laid out controlled routes for people from Iran to Eritrea who genuinely need our support, he would find broad support in the House for getting a grip on the border and would significantly depolarise this divisive issue.

We need a British national refugee policy which is grounded in the best of British values, ranging from compassion to control. This is the only viable way forward.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, while supporting all the amendments in this group, I speak to Motion D1 in my name, taking up the baton from the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, whom I thank for her persistent commitment on this issue, which remains undimmed. As previously, the amendment would give asylum seekers the right to work in any occupation after six months, but it introduces a review after three years—rather than four, as previously—to assess whether government fears about such a right creating a pull factor are founded.

The Commons reason for not accepting the previous amendment states that

“the Commons consider that asylum-seekers (save in limited circumstances) and their adult dependants should not be permitted to work while a decision on their claim for asylum is pending”.

This is the equivalent of a parent telling a child that they cannot do something “because”. It is not a reason.

During the debate in the Commons—such as it was—the Minister reiterated concerns about undermining the economic migration scheme, and our old friend the pull factor. But there is no reason why a right to work after six months should undermine the economic migration scheme, and, as Sir Robert Buckland pointed out, he and others

“have said on many occasions that there is simply no evidence to suggest that a limited right to work is a pull factor.”—[Official Report, Commons, 20/4/22; col.240.]

In fact, the academic evidence suggests the opposite, and the Migration Advisory Committee has expressed considerable scepticism.

The other argument put by the Minister in the other place, which was repeated by the Minister here, was that the Government want to see claims settled within six months. However, when he was asked by one of his Back-Benchers to confirm that the Bill and other measures

“will mean that there should be no asylum seekers still in a state of limbo, waiting for their asylum status to be determined, after six months”,—[Official Report, Commons, 20/4/22; col.253.]

thereby making the amendment unnecessary, answer came there none. It would be wonderful if the amendment proved to be redundant, so that there were no longer 62,000 people awaiting a decision for more than six months, but the Government’s resistance to it suggests they are not confident that claims will be settled within that timescale. The Minister this afternoon suggested that the amendment would create significant operational costs for the Home Office. I am not quite clear what those costs are, but presumably there are savings from asylum support, and calculations have been done, which I know are contested but suggest a considerable fiscal saving overall from the amendment.

If we believe in integration, for which, according to MAC, the right to work is a key foundation stone, in preventing poverty and in protecting mental health, we should not give up on this amendment. In the Commons, 11 Conservatives, including a number of former Ministers, supported its previous iteration and 53 abstained. Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, in this House, emphasised that, on basic Conservative principles concerning paid work, current policy fails dismally. Public support has been growing steadily to a point where the latest poll last month showed that at least four in five support the reform, regardless of political affiliation.

Once more, I would like to give the final word to asylum seekers themselves. MIN Voices, which I recently had the pleasure of meeting virtually, in its call for the right to work, asks us to

“remember that we are human beings and we have dignity”.

I fear that, in its refusal to countenance change, the Home Office is failing to remember. Let us, at least, accord to asylum seekers their humanity and dignity by asking the Commons to think again.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment D1, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her eloquent introduction to the amendment. This is a common-sense change. It would be a boost for the Treasury, for recruiters and, not least, for asylum seekers themselves. They often wait years for a decision on their claim while battling poverty, isolation and mental ill-health. However, the Government appear to want to maintain a ban on employment for asylum seekers, even after the introduction of their offshoring policy. They say that giving people the right to work will still encourage more people to come to the UK.

This pull-factor argument, however, is simply not supported by the facts. Evidence for it remains unclear, unshared or—as many suspect—non-existent. A challenge to Ministers from the Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee to show proof of a link between the employment ban and a pull factor has so far gone unanswered. Publicly available and up-to-date figures show no correlation. If such a correlation, or even causation, existed, asylum migration would look very different from how it does today. Certainly, 28,000 refugees would not have risked their lives crossing the channel in boats in 2021 to come to the UK, where they cannot work; they would have headed to Sweden, which received just 10,000 applications for refugee status, even though asylum seekers can work after day one.

The 62,000 people who claimed asylum in Spain last year, where they must wait for six months to work, would have simply crossed the border into Portugal, whose 1,300 asylum applicants can get a job after one week. The people who applied for asylum in France—over 100,000 of them—where they must wait six months to work, could have just stopped in, or headed to, Italy, where they can work after two months. That some countries with stricter labour access laws often receive more asylum seekers, while, in many cases, fewer refugees go to countries with more relaxed rules around work, shows the lack of link between application numbers and employment rules. As we have repeatedly said in these debates, what the overwhelming evidence does point to as pull factors are those things that make almost all of us feel safe: our families, our friends, our communities, our language, a sense of shared history, and a country with a stable Government and respect for human rights.

We have an environment in which Ministers are nervous of appearing soft: I understand that. They are so nervous that even a widely beneficial, evidence-based, common-sense policy such as the right to work has yet to be accepted because it might make Britain a magnet. But I believe that this is wrong, and, while the negative and costly effects of this ban might not seem obvious, they are real. The ban costs the taxpayer an estimated £210 million a year. It leaves asylum seekers in poverty and institutionally dependent; it leaves businesses up and down the country without extra hands at a time of record job vacancies; it takes a terrible toll on people’s mental health; and it damages any attempt at integration and future employment success.

It should not be so hard to reach agreement on a policy that has so much cross-party support and so many benefits. I spent years at the DWP, as a Conservative special adviser, working to support people into work and off welfare, only to be hindered from advancing the same opportunity to those who have sought the protection of this nation.

The instinct to work, to contribute and to provide for one’s family is universal and integral to who we are as human beings. It is what it means to be human, each one according to their talent, gift, capacity and capability. We damage people when we forbid them to contribute. I urge the Government to keep thinking and to think again.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I confess that I thought I had finished with ping-pong when I laid down my bat as table tennis captain of my college at university more than four decades ago. This is my first time at it in this rather different setting.

I rise to speak in support of Motions F1 and H1 in my name. I am extremely grateful to my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham for his excellent previous work on these Motions. He is unable to be in his place today, so we worked on them together. I am also grateful for a letter I received this morning from leaders of many of the main Christian denominations in the United Kingdom, urging me to continue to press on these matters.

Clause 11 continues to be the most challenging part of the Bill in the way it differentiates the treatment of those who seek sanctuary in the UK. Therefore, I continue to support Motions B1 and C1. I also support Motion D1 and pretty well all others in this group.

It is a long-established principle of UK law that, when removing an individual to a third country, the UK has an obligation to ensure that this will not violate the person’s human rights or the UK’s obligations under international law. It is also a long-established principle, affirmed by the Supreme Court, that it is not enough for the third country to have signed international human rights treaties; it must respect them in practice.

Motion F1 would ensure that the UK can transfer an asylum seeker to another country only if that country is genuinely safe, both in law and in practice, for the individual being transferred, and where that individual’s rights under the refugee convention and human rights law will be respected. The Motion would also prevent transfers under agreements such as the recent Rwanda-UK memorandum of understanding, which as I understand it is not legally binding on either party, where the standards of treatment in the receiving country are unspecified and unenforceable in any court. It is essential that clear minimum standards are set to ensure the UK does not send people we consider to be refugees, both legally and morally, to a country where they may be denied protection and put at risk of refoulement.

I listened to the Minister’s assurances earlier and am grateful for them, but the UNHCR is clear:

“Such arrangements simply shift asylum responsibilities, evade international obligations, and are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention”.


In its latest annual report, Amnesty International set out that in Rwanda:

“Violations of the rights to a fair trial, freedom of expression and privacy continued, alongside enforced disappearances, allegations of torture and excessive use of force.”


Moreover, the Home Secretary’s response to understandable concerns about Rwanda’s human rights record that were raised in the other place demonstrates the risk that the designation of a particular country as safe may not be simply because it is safe but may become politicised or be influenced by broader foreign policy concerns. It is right that this country has foreign policy concerns, but they must not bleed into decisions about what is a safe country to which an asylum seeker could be sent. We need a clear, independent and enforceable legal standard.

My right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford set out in a recent letter to the Home Secretary that the current plan to offshore asylum seekers to Rwanda

“treats the most vulnerable in our midst in a cruel and inhumane way”.

My most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury has put it even stronger, in words I will not remind the House of this afternoon.

Without the provisions set out in this amendment, the only bar to relocating an asylum seeker to a country with which they have no connection would be for each individual asylum seeker to demonstrate that removal there would violate their human rights under the European convention. Furthermore, demonstrating a risk of refoulement from a third country requires demonstrating that its asylum provisions are inadequate. This is something that requires expert knowledge. That is not practical for the vast majority of asylum seekers to demonstrate in their individual cases.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might offer a slightly different perspective. One of the difficulties that we have had with the Bill throughout is that we are considering things back to front. Normally, when there is policy proposal, you get a White Paper, then a period of consultation, then you come down to the details of the Bill when you can see in law what the proposals are and discuss them in detail. Here it is the opposite way round. We have a Bill, but we do not know what the policy is. Essentially, the Bill has come forward as an enabling Bill to allow the Government to address the issue of illegal crossings of the channel, so we are doing things the wrong way round. It is even worse than that; old hands here will remember the halcyon days when we had Green Papers, which proposed a certain progress of action. We would then have a White Paper setting out a government policy, and then we would have legislation. Here, we are doing it the wrong way round.

The reason is a fairly practical one, as I understand it. In this case, dealing with cross-channel migrants, we must deal with foreign Governments. We must have agreements, certainly with the French and possibly with the Belgians, Dutch and other countries that we want to deal with. That is the problem, and the practical reason why we are doing things the wrong way round.

It leads to a difficulty in that the Opposition rightly have questions which they want answers to, but the Government cannot answer the questions because they do not yet know what the policy will be. There is a package of measures, some of which we can imagine would work and some that would not work, but we do not know what those practical measures are. Equally, the Government have difficulties. They cannot answer some of the questions that are being put by the Opposition because they do not know what the policies are either. Certainly, we Back-Benchers are in darkness. There is a real problem there.

That has a bearing on the arguments which have taken place and which we cannot entirely resolve in this sort of debate. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the point, which I think is the Opposition’s principal position, that the problem would be solved if we could open legal routes to all the refugees who wish to come to this country. The problem would be resolved that way if we had enough proper legal routes.

The Government’s position is clearly that this probably would not work, because even if you had large numbers of legal routes, if traffickers were still able to give the clear message to their victims that they could get into this country and could stay, work and have a life here, they would still be in business. That is a matter of practicality and judgment. Would having enough legal routes solve the problem? Remember that the traffickers deal not just with human beings but with drugs and all sorts of criminality. If they remained in business, doing business across the channel, you would still have this trade in human beings. That is the practical, judgmental issue at the bottom of this, and we do not know the answer because we do not know the package of measures that the Government will come forward with. We are looking only at the enabling legislation.

I fully accept the additional point that we must look at the effect on refugees of international law. I take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, that there is a significant issue here. However, those who make that point must accept that the Government are equally sincere in thinking that there is an issue here on which they remain fully compliant with the 1951 convention. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, gave a very well-organised defence of the Government’s position, setting it out very clearly. I am not a lawyer so cannot comment on that. All I can do is accept the Government’s advice that they are compliant with the convention.

Finally, I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that there is a problem with the House of Commons considering these issues because of timetabling. This is a pervasive issue in the House of Commons. It has been there for years, and they have found no real solution to it. Just as we can go on for as long as we want and for as long as time and patience permit, they are timetabled for six hours or whatever it may be and, therefore, inevitably, immensely important and worthwhile issues such as this as compressed, very often into a few moments, with a ministerial response of a few minutes. This is wholly unacceptable. We have found no way round that, but we must deal with a situation as we have it. For example, in response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, the vote in the House of Commons was a majority of 98 against his proposal that there should be differentiation between group 1 and group 2—that decision to differentiate passed by a majority of 98 in the House of Commons.

That is a massive majority and reflects not just questions of law but the justified concern of the House of Commons about human trafficking across the channel. I am sure that we are all concerned about refugees not only from Ukraine but from other countries —everyone is concerned about that—but how we stop illicit human trafficking across the channel is a separate issue. Everybody is trying to do their best here; in some cases, the procedures that we have to adopt are very unsatisfactory but I hope that people accept that the Government are trying to do something that, in their judgment, is a practical answer. Even those who do not agree with them should understand that this is a matter of judgment. We will not know the full consequences for some time to come, until the Government’s policies are clear—but not to allow them to pursue their policy with the flexibility and elbow room that they need would in my view be a grave misjudgment.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Motion E1 in my name, and refer to my entry in the Members’ register of interests and my connections with RAMP. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the constructive way in which she has engaged with me since we last debated in this House the right of asylum seekers to work after six months. I will not rehearse all the arguments for extending the right to work as we have done that on multiple occasions, but I want to address some of the arguments that have been put forward by the Government. I am grateful to the Minister for sharing some of her concerns with me; I will briefly address three of these.

First, there appears to be a concern that, if we extend the right to work for asylum seekers, we will extend that right to those who are convicted criminals in their home country. Although only a tiny proportion of those who apply for asylum fall into this category, it is a legitimate concern. However, I do not believe that it should stand in the way of right-to-work reforms because all those in this category should be held in immigration detention anyway and would be unable to work by virtue of that status.

Secondly, there is a concern that this may encourage more mendacious claims; again, I believe that this has become an exaggerated argument. The figures as they stand find that 72% of people who apply for asylum get accepted on the initial decision before any appeals process has begun. This is a sign that the vast majority are not applying with mendacious claims but are genuine refugees. There is a danger that, in our current system, we are penalising these people by not allowing them to work and unnecessarily putting significant stumbling blocks in the way of their integration.

Thirdly, there is a concern about incentivising the pull factors; we have heard an awful lot about this. I once again believe that this is exaggerated, based on anecdote rather than raw empirical data. I also think that this adjusted amendment before the House today addresses any possible concern by introducing a four-year trial period with a review three years in to determine whether indeed there is any pull factor. This has the pragmatic benefit of meaning that we will be able to address existing labour shortages in the immediate term while giving the Home Office an opportunity to assess whether concerns that this contributes as a pull factor have any backing in meaningful empirical data. There are no studies that currently back this perspective.

In summary, the Government say that the amendment is not needed because, in the new system, all those coming by legal and safe routes would have an immediate right to work—but this actually supports the amendment. Why are we happy to give an immediate right to work to Ukrainians but not to others who come to this country? The Government say this is not needed because in the new system, even including appeals, the process will take only six months. That is great, but we are not there yet and, to my knowledge, we have never been there. The Government say this is not needed because the new system will be so clear that they will be able to focus on the backlog and on those who come in via alternative routes. Again, this sounds great but, at this moment, all evidence is to the contrary.

Even the new system for Ukrainians cannot flex or adapt quickly enough and already shows signs of significant strain. No one more wants the system to be sorted than me or other noble Lords, but we have waited many years to see it happen. There are between 60,000 and 80,000 people who need to be able to work; they should be experiencing a Britain that enables asylum seekers to rebuild their lives and create their own pathway from poverty to prosperity.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

At end insert “and do propose Amendments 7B and 7C in lieu—

7B: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Changes to the Immigration Act 1971
(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 3(2) (general provisions for regulation and control) insert—
“(2A) Regulations under subsection (2) must provide that persons, and adult dependants of persons who are applying for asylum in the United Kingdom are granted permission by the Secretary of State to take up employment if—
(a) a decision at first instance has not been taken on the applicant’s asylum application within six months of the date on which the application was made, or
(b) a person makes an application or a further application which raises asylum grounds, and a decision on that new application, or a decision on whether to treat such further asylum grounds as a new application, has not been taken within six months of the date on which the further application was made.
(2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A), regulations must ensure that permission granted allowing people applying for asylum in the UK, and their adult dependants to take up employment, are on terms no less favourable than the terms granted to a person with recognised refugee status.
(2C) This permission is to be valid until the claim is determined and all appeal rights have been exhausted and individuals granted permission to work will be issued with physical proof of the right to work.”
(3) The Secretary of State may, by regulations made by statutory instrument, repeal subsection (2) of this section, if the conditions set out in subsections (4) and (5) have been met.
(4) The first condition is that within four years of the coming into force of this section, but no sooner than three years after the coming into force of this section, the Secretary of State has commissioned a review of whether the provisions inserted into the Immigration Act 1971 by subsection (2) have acted in such a way as to encourage persons applying for asylum, and adult dependants of such persons, to travel to the United Kingdom.
(5) The second condition is that the Secretary of State has, within four years of the coming into force of this section, published the outcome of the review under subsection (4).
(6) Regulations under subsection (3) may not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

12: Schedule 4, page 93, line 23, leave out paragraphs 1 and 2
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment leaves out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 4 to the Bill, which would amend section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (no removal while claim for asylum pending). It is consequential to Amendment 35 at Report Stage which was agreed on division.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

35: Clause 28, page 33, line 20, leave out paragraph (a)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is linked to the amendment to leave out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 3.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope due to Covid, I will be moving Amendment 35 in his name.

It is disappointing that the concerns expressed by many noble Lords in Committee have gone unheeded and the practical questions that were posed are yet to be answered. My noble friend Lord Kirkhope is a former immigration Minister, who speaks with authority on this matter. Many years ago, after carefully examining this policy of offshoring, he rejected the proposal to offshore asylum seekers on the basis that it was impractical and ineffective. The reasons that he did so still apply today.

There is still too much that we do not know about this policy, even at this late stage. How would the powers given be used by the Government? Whose legal system would be used to assess asylum seekers that we have offshored—Britain’s or the third country’s? Once assessed, would these asylum seekers be returned to the UK? How would the Government exercise their safeguarding responsibility for families thousands of miles out of UK jurisdiction? How much would each case cost? The numbers from Australia suggest up to £2 million per year just to keep one person who is in need out of this country.

All this fails to fit in with our legal and international obligations, let alone our constitutional principles. Today, we see this clearly, more clearly even than when we were discussing it last time, through the events in Ukraine. This tragic and unnecessary unfolding humanitarian crisis will certainly play out through the European continent. Many refugees fleeing Ukraine may well attempt to come to the UK. Last Saturday evening, the Prime Minister clearly stated that we would welcome refugees from Ukraine here. By Sunday, that commitment had become that we would support refugees in neighbouring countries to Ukraine. Today, we can see that the approach has moved again and that the Government are committed to expanding their family visa scheme and introducing a new community sponsorship scheme for Ukrainians, both of which are significant and welcome steps.

However, are we still saying that every other Ukrainian refugee who reaches these shores would fall into tier-2 status, have no recourse to public funds and be subject to potential offshoring? How would this work practically? How are we going to apply an operation that would be, at the best of times, excruciatingly complex to execute on a potentially huge scale? Of course, there is the irony of people seeking safety only to find themselves in a position of renewed vulnerability, potentially held indefinitely in detention abroad. Instead of designing a structure that draws a proper distinction between economic and humanitarian motivations for migrants trying to reach our shores, it seems that the Government are muddying the water and resorting to this extraordinary measure of offshoring.

As we have learned more about the realities of life in the Australian processing centres, many noble Lords have become increasingly concerned by the reports of what children have been forced to endure. The Nauru files—a cache of more than 2,000 leaked incident reports from the detention centre on Nauru—highlight hundreds of reports of neglect, violence and abuse against children in the detention centre, often by guards. I cannot fathom a situation where the UK would tolerate the mistreatment of children, but in the absence of explicit protections and the rule of our own legal system, we have to assume that any scenario is possible.

In conclusion, this proposal is deeply concerning and unworkable on numerous levels. The powers it would grant our Government are on the one hand ill-defined and on the other far-reaching. They are potentially hugely expensive and yet ineffective, exposing vulnerable people to further trauma rather than offering protection.

As great as these concerns are, I have one further concern: what does this policy make us? This is our moment as an independent nation that can demonstrate western liberal values at a moment when they are under attack—values of democracy, rule of law and freedom of speech, yes, but also the value and dignity of every human being. We all believe in taking back control, but if there is one lesson to learn from Australia’s experience, it is this: any country that chooses to outsource its constitutional responsibilities compromises its control. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, in rising to support Amendment 35 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, to which I have added my name, I declare my interests in relation to both RAMP and Reset and set out in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for the way she introduced this amendment, and I fully support all her points.

I set out my reasons for supporting this amendment in Committee. However, a significant concern for me now is that the Minister was not able to give assurance that children in families would be excluded from offshoring, nor that families would not be split up in the process. This is deeply concerning. I appreciate that the policy document of 25 February sets out that exemptions will depend on the country where people are being offshored and tat publicising exemptions will fuel the movement of the most vulnerable not subject to offshoring.

However, I would set out that, for children, onward movement to any country after an often traumatic journey to the UK, in addition to the trauma in their country of origin, is simply never in their best interests. All the concerns I set out in my Committee speech regarding the monitoring of the practice of offshoring processing centres are especially true for children.

The Home Office has processes to confirm identity and actual family relationships, which it uses for a range of visas as well as in the asylum process. It would seem that, if this is the concern, there are ways to avoid children being used in this way. Given the deep harm that offshoring would do to everyone, particularly children, I fail to see why the Minister cannot give this commitment.

I am deeply concerned that throughout the Bill, where we have highlighted the deep harm of policies on the most vulnerable, we are told that guidance and discretion can be applied on a case-by-case basis. I understand the logic of that, but what worries me is that it does not speak of any standardised process where everyone can be confident that there is equal treatment.

I further ask whether an economic assessment of the costs of offshoring has been properly made, and, if so, what the outcome of that assessment has been—and if it has not, why not? I ask these questions while fully supporting the need to remove this clause of the Bill in its entirety.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, it would depend on the circumstances of the case.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, it is clear that a number of very serious outstanding questions about this policy need to be answered before we can give the Government these powers. In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam, I agree that it is right to explore every possible policy, and that some of them will turn out to be impractical—or even, as he stated, impossible. But that process is undertaken before you bring in legislation and take powers like this: you do not bring in the legislation and then work out whether it is impractical or impossible. So I believe it is right to test the will of the House on this policy.

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[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, again in the absence of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, who still has Covid, I wish to speak to Amendment 49, tabled in his name, which introduces a global resettlement target of 10,000 people each year.

We have just heard from the Home Secretary that the Government have committed to expanding their family visa scheme and introducing a new community sponsorship scheme for Ukrainians, both of which are significant and welcome steps. I thank my noble friend the Minister for the further policy details that she gave us earlier. But it is difficult to know exactly what is being proposed and, more critically, exactly how many Ukrainians will be able to access these routes and the timeframe in which they will be able to do so.

Community sponsorship, while effective, is typically not a rapid response option and requires considerable planning, resource and buy-in from local community advocates and groups. I have long been an advocate for this kind of policy but it is a solution that requires people to be able to plan and build the infrastructure to support it, as exists in, say, Canada. However, as we are all too aware, the moment of crisis is now. This is the second time in a few short months that a major global refugee crisis has emerged, with Ukraine swift on the heels of Afghanistan. The reality is that on both occasions we have simply not had the infrastructure in place to care for people properly in terms of both civil society’s response and local authority capacity.

With that in mind, I turn to Amendment 49, which offers the Government an effective, carefully planned and responsive solution for refugees as regards not only the protracted crisis that we expect to develop in Ukraine but those seeking protection on these shores from other conflict zones. There are two important reasons for that amendment. The first is that we would be playing our part as a nation in responding to global crises and resettling 10,000 of the world’s most vulnerable each year. Secondly, it would mean that we could plan and build a basic level of infrastructure at a local community level to be resilient to crises like the one playing out before us right now.

One of the greatest challenges for Afghan arrivals has been the fact that we have not had the capacity to take in such a big influx so quickly. That is largely because we have not had the stable infrastructure in place for welcome and integration. The success of the Canadian approach to refugee resettlement lies in its consistency. There is strong integration infrastructure there, well-resourced civil society groups and genuine expertise in the local authorities. That is why the Government setting a baseline target for the number of refugees who will be resettled by safe and legal routes could help to build the infrastructure required. If the response to Afghanistan proves one thing, it is that we need to guarantee consistency to both the local authorities and civil society groups that do so much to ensure the smooth transitions for asylum seekers.

A predictable but flexible global resettlement model in which the Government retain control over how places are allocated enables the Home Office to react swiftly to international refugee crises and in a co-ordinated fashion with local authorities, to scale provision in line with demand. Without this amendment, we will continue to lurch from one major crisis to the next. The best way to avoid that outcome is to ensure that we can plan and prepare the infrastructure and manage the flow of refugees. Amendment 49 does not prescribe the exact manner in which the Government should meet their target but simply seeks to address the underlying and fundamental issue—that at the moment we are unprepared and are not playing our part fully in the emerging international crisis.

The success of the Syrian programme in no small part was due to the political commitment and leadership associated with the 20,000-person commitment, which produced voluntary buy-in from local government and, in turn, enabled the build of a well-functioning and properly resourced system. The baseline of 10,000 people is an appropriate number for the future.

I conclude by taking a step back. If we fail to enshrine safe and legal routes, I fear that the two-tier system that the Government are creating with this legislation will come back to haunt us. Does the Minister imagine that the British public will endorse this legislation when its consequences become clear and we criminalise or remove public fund provisions for Ukrainian and Afghan women and children, who will inevitably in their desperation seek other avenues to reach our shores? War clarifies public opinion. The British public are hugely supportive of those fleeing Vladimir Putin’s war. I urge the Minister to consider whether, in the heat of the most major war and potential refugee crisis in a generation, it is the right moment to introduce a two-tiered refugee system. Surely it would be better to pause this legislative process to allow for reflection and see where the land lies.

However, if the Minister cannot consider that, I commend Amendment 49 to the House as a pragmatic way in which to ensure that we have the community infrastructure needed to support people for the long haul. It will send a signal both at home and abroad that we are a compassionate and fair nation.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I support all the amendments in this group but particularly Amendment 48, which has my name on it, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, spoke. It is a great pity that the Government wound up the Dubs scheme for unaccompanied children, which was doing a great deal of good, and that the Government did not want to stay in Dublin III or try to negotiate on that. We are not part of that agreement, and that removed two safe routes for unaccompanied children.

Under the Immigration Rules, as I understand them, it is not possible for a child to come to stay with a grandparent, sibling—a brother or a sister—uncle or aunt. It has to be a parent. Suppose the parents are lost or the situation is such as that unfolding in Ukraine now. Suppose the child has lost the parents en route. Why can he or she not come and stay with their grandparents in this country? The Immigration Rules seem to be too harsh. I therefore support the language of Amendment 48.

The more worrying point for me is the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, when he cited the Safe Passage numbers. It is alarming that the number of unaccompanied children coming in by a safe route has dropped steeply now that we are no longer in Dublin, the Dubs scheme has gone and these Immigration Rules are being applied. Where are these children going? Safe Passage tells us that in more than 50% of the cases that it is trying to follow, the children just give up, drop out and disappear off the books. Where do they disappear to? I fear that they disappear down to the beach and into the hands of the crooks.

Safe and legal routes really matter, so Amendment 48, which opens up the possibility again of having a safe and legal route for unaccompanied children, matters in my book. It was in this Chamber that the Dubs scheme was first approved by large majorities. For exactly the reasons that we approved it then, we should approve Amendment 48 now in a world that is, if anything, more dangerous, with more children in such a plight than then. I give my strong support to that amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

49: After Clause 37, insert the following new Clause—
“Refugee resettlement schemes
(1) The Secretary of State must arrange for the resettlement in the United Kingdom of at least 10,000 refugees each year.(2) The target under this section includes the numbers of people resettled under—(a) dedicated schemes for the evacuation of people from a geographical locality, such as a specific third State,(b) a general UK resettlement scheme,(c) the mandate resettlement scheme or equivalent replacements, and(d) other routes as appropriate. (3) The Secretary of State must be guided by the capacity of local authorities and community sponsorship groups in delivering the target under subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This reflects the Prime Minister’s commitment to make the dedicated Afghan resettlement scheme of 5,000 refugees a year additional to the longer standing Government commitment to resettle 5,000 vulnerable refugees per year from elsewhere in the world.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I beg to test the opinion of the House.