Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Baroness Chakrabarti

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, in the submission that Clauses 5 and 6 and Schedule 1 should not stand part of the Bill. The reasoning becomes increasingly repetitive and circular, because these provisions are parasitic on the meat of the Bill, which is really Clause 2. That is the duty that the Secretary of State is quite deliberately taking upon herself so that it looks as if no discretion is being exercised, she must remove people and therefore the courts have no ability to supervise that judgment. That is the heart of the moral and practical problem with the Bill, so when we look at the parasitic clauses that follow on from Clause 2, we come back to that central problem.

There are so many reasons why this is wrong in both principle and practice. As always, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, a most distinguished senior diplomat and former Permanent Under-Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—which is important. The poor old Home Office gets lumbered with all the tough talk and rhetoric and with translating press releases into legislation, but the foreign department has to represent this country all over the world, negotiate further treaties and hold its head up in its attempt to do so. The foreign department will no doubt try to persuade people that Mr Sunak is so right and that, as I said last time, we should be the hub of AI intelligence and the world regulator, and everybody should support the idea that these treaties should be formulated here. Once upon a time, we could have said that.

If any noble Lords, particularly on the Benches opposite, want to understand the importance of the refugee convention, not as it is being flexibly interpreted by the current Government but as it was intended after the war, they might care to read the correspondence between our wartime Prime Minister and the then Archbishop of Canterbury. That correspondence between Winston Churchill and William Temple is very revealing of what the obligations of the future treaty were going to be in relation to individuated justice for refugees, which of course is the problem.

We were treated last time to good cop, bad cop by two Ministers, from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice respectively; I will leave Members of the Committee to decide who was which. But I think that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was right in his rather forensic—if I may say so—examination to point out some tensions in the case as it was put by the two Ministers.

The Home Office Minister concentrated, quite rightly, on the message as we have heard it thus far: this is about deterrence; we do not want people to come here; this is all about stopping the boats. Therefore, he stressed the automaticity of Clause 2 and the absolute commitment—no ifs, ands or buts—to a duty to remove anybody who comes by an irregular route; no matter how genuine a refugee, they must be removed. When, as amendment after amendment was debated, and noble Lord after noble Lord gave the litany of heartbreaking cases of trafficked people, of gay people who should not be sent back to certain countries, and so on, the Minister from the justice department pointed up the possibility of exceptional non-suspensive claims—it will be all right, there will be the possibility of individuated justice in those cases. But, of course, both positions cannot be the case, and they were not intended to be. It was excellent advocacy, perhaps, but it does not stand up, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said so clearly in his introduction to the debate.

This is the blanket treatment of claims that were always intended to be considered in a case-by-case analysis. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, there are countries, including very large democracies such as India, perhaps, that are perfectly safe for some people but not at all safe for others—because they are political dissidents, because they are queer, because they are women. That is conceded by the Home Office in the schedule that lists some countries as safe only for men.

It is a diplomatic nightmare to be creating this automaticity of “These are safe countries; these are unsafe countries” and to be telegraphing it in the schedule to the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, will say, “There has been this development for some years under Governments of both stripes to have inadmissibility and presumptive safety”. It is one thing to say to your officials considering individual claims that some countries might be prima facie safe, but you still have a duty to consider the individual asylum seeker before you to determine what their story is. That was always the intention in the refugee convention and that is the obligation on signatories to it—and, I would argue, not just signatories any more because non-refoulement has become accepted as a principle of customary international law. That is what we propose to breach by this legislation.

That is how serious it is. The Bill is wrong in principle, wrong in practice and internally incoherent. Certainly, the arguments that have been put by Ministers—elegantly, charmingly, patiently, late into the night—do not hold together, and these provisions should not stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, following the eloquent speeches of my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I would like to refer again to the proposal that Schedule 1 should not stand part.

Some of those countries breach protected rights. I ask the noble and learned Lord the Minister which of the countries on the list practise female genital mutilation and do not reserve refoulement only for men? Which criminalise homosexuality? Which criminalise humanism? Noble Lords may remember the case of the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, who has received a life sentence.

Surely it is very odd to remove people to those countries. Does the Minister think that that conforms to our signature to the treaties of international law?

Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Baroness Chakrabarti

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, as it is to add my name to this amendment also in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Warsi. I do not need to repeat the compelling points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but I will just say this. We all know that to have the option of voting is a fundamental right, just as to pay tax when it is owed is a fundamental duty. The Government worked very hard, as they should, at ensuring that when people reach the age of 18, they are automatically registered for tax purposes. I really believe in taxation, obviously. They are right to do it, and it ought to be increasingly easy to do that in our automated world. If the Government can do that, why on earth would they not do the equivalent thing when people reach whatever the age of majority is—we argued about that—to ensure that people are registered.

We have had the arguments about voter ID, which is ID when you turn up and choose to vote. No doubt, we will come back to those, but this is an earlier step. If the Government are really serious, as they tell us they are, about not disfranchising people and making sure they have this possibility of exercising their right, why would they not at least ensure they are automatically registered, with all the information and all the tools available to the state? If I may say so to the Minister: if the Government would listen on this issue and be prepared to have discussions, it might go some way to ameliorating concerns about potential voter suppression in relation to ID when people to turn up to vote at the polling station.

This is an infinitely sensible proposal, infinitely possible to achieve. A quarter of the way into the 21st century, with all the wit and wisdom we have at our disposal, and all the resources the Government have, if we are really serious about ensuring people are not disfranchised, they should be automatically registered when they reach voting age.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, the exacerbation of the political exclusion of poorer and marginalised communities—Gypsies, Travellers and Roma in particular —consequent on this Bill was thoroughly aired in Committee on 17 March, when, I regret, I was unable to attend, and on Second Reading. I read Hansard carefully, and I will not rehearse the powerful arguments made by my noble friends Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and acknowledged by the Minister responding—the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook.

I would just add, in support of Amendments 141 and 144B, that only this week, colleagues from Friends, Families and Travellers—I declare an interest as president and my other related posts shown in the register—and the Roma Support Group made the points at a meeting with DLUHC that people from their communities already have difficulty in meeting the identification requirements for exercising their right to vote and would feel even more left out of the system under the Bill’s proposals. The fact that postal voters would be exempt compounded their sense of injustice.

As I understand it, the Government do not actually know the relative proportion of minority ethnic turnout to vote. Nor did their voter ID pilots establish this basic national social evidence. In my opinion, the Government would be well advised to consider positively the assistance offered by these amendments in making sure that no one is left out.

As the Bill stands, Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, and other marginalised citizens, are in effect discriminated against, when they should be enabled to join the mainstream. The proposals deter rather than enfranchise people. They subvert democracy. These amendments would help right that wrong. I urge the Government to adopt them.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Baroness Chakrabarti

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow all those who have spoken in this group. The size of the group and the number of speakers are indicative of the seriousness with which the length of the list of agencies is viewed by Members of the House. I thank the Minister for her fortitude and patience on this fourth day in Committee on this important Bill, and for her letter earlier today inviting Members of the House to further briefings.

I repeat that she has made the case for the value of putting this kind of policy on a statutory footing, and I do not think anyone is really disagreeing with that in principle. The problem is that the detail of the Bill, by accident or design, creates a real constitutional over- reach with a grave risk of what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, called unintentional consequences. That is not to impute the Government with bad motives in this respect but it is to be really concerned about the unintended consequences of the overreach contained in various components of the Bill, in part because it grafts a criminal conduct regime on to what was previously just a surveillance regime, with no extra safeguards to speak of in terms of authorisation; in part because it creates no statutory limits on the types of offences that might be authorised; and of course in part because of this very long list of agencies that do very different work.

Ultimately, I say that the real overreach which makes that combination of challenges particularly problematic is that what is at stake is that the status quo, whereby an authorisation leads to a public interest defence—in practice, almost a presumption that the person authorised would not be prosecuted—will be replaced with total landmark immunity, lawful for all purposes, civil and criminal. That is what makes the list of agencies and the ability to amend it by Henry VIII powers so very grave and ripe for abuse well into the future by a Government of any stripe, whether, as I say, by accident or design.

I ask the Minister to reflect on whether Amendment 63, which is my favourite in this group, can be considered for adoption by the Government. I ask the Government to reflect and adopt some constitutional humility rather than overreach, and to accept that we are genuinely trying to help to improve this legislation so that it can do what it needs to, which is to put criminal conduct on an open, accessible, primary legislative footing, but not create the graver dangers of abuse well into the future.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. I echo her thanks to the Minister for her offer of a briefing. I support Amendments 67 and 70. On Amendment 67, I have little to add to the clear exposition by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. This is a really intrusive provision, and the criterion of economic well-being, to which it seems to be related, is too loose to be safe as far as the liberty of a citizen goes. The authorising officer is not even a relevant professional; it is the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority.

On Amendment 70, my noble friend Lord Sikka has covered the ground most persuasively. I simply add my voice to the alarm, echoing the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, that such procedures, which are important to democracy and to liberty, should be capable of amendment only by statutory instrument outside the full parliamentary powers of scrutiny.