Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[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?

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I endorse everything that has been said in the debate so far, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. I particularly want to follow on from what the noble Baroness said to the Committee about the suitability of some countries in Schedule 1 as places to which people should be returned; my noble friend Lord Kerr and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, developed that point in their interventions earlier. I will take one example but the arguments I am going to put to the Committee could be applied to other countries on the list as well.

The country I want to talk about is Nigeria. In a later group of amendments, I have Amendment 85C in my name, which seeks to establish

“how the Secretary of State will assess Equality”

provisions

“listed in Schedule 1 and the potential harm to those with protected characteristics including victims of Modern Slavery”.

However, I want to ask the Minister specifically to engage with the issue of justice in Nigeria. This is a country to which we have said it is safe to return men but not women. I argue that it is not safe to return anybody to Nigeria, given the way in which the internal factors in that country currently stand.

The seriousness of the situation was underlined by the visit of Karim Khan KC, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, to Nigeria in 2020. He is continuing the investigation into the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetuated by Boko Haram and other factions—as well as the involvement, I might add, of the Nigerian security forces. That investigation began in December 2020 and continues. Whether or not the ICC will determine that a genocide or crimes against humanity are being perpetrated against the religious minorities in the north of Nigeria lies in the future, but the evidence of why this is a hostile environment in which people face outright persecution is overwhelming.

Simply consider the role of what are sometimes euphemistically called “bandit groups”. They have killed, abducted, forcibly converted and displaced vast numbers of people, many of whom end up in small boats. According to government figures, 4,983 women were widowed; 25,000 children were orphaned; and 190,000 people were displaced between 2011 and 2019, with more 3 billion naira paid to bandits as ransom for 3,672 individuals who had been abducted.

In one incident last year, IS West Africa killed eight people and kidnapped 72 people on a Kaduna-bound train from Abuja while, in 2022, Boko Haram killed at least 60 people from the community of Rann, in Borno State, and killed more than 15 women in Gwoza, also in Borno State. In June 2022, the United Nations reported that Boko Haram and splinter factions abducted at least 211 children, recruited at least 63 children, killed or maimed at least 88 children, raped or sexually violated 53 girls and attacked at least 15 schools. In September 2022, UNESCO estimated that 20.2 million Nigerian children were out of school as a consequence.

I think particularly of the plight of Leah Sharibu, who has just turned 20. At the age of 14, on 18 February 2018, she was abducted by Boko Haram, raped, impregnated and forcibly converted. She is one of 110 girls taken from the Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi, in Yobe State. Here in your Lordships’ House, I met her mother, Rebecca. I promised that I would never miss any opportunity that might come my way to raise Leah’s case. I do so again today because it illustrates the dangers faced by people being sent back to Nigeria, whether they are women or men; indeed, if they come from religious minorities that do not fit a particular mindset or ideology, they are doubly endangered.

Elsewhere in the country, secessionist forces in the south-east of Nigeria and protests by the Indigenous People of Biafra led to gunmen killing, maiming and destroying the properties of citizens in the region. Armed forces against separatists have also been involved in at least 122 extrajudicial killings. Media reports suggest that more than 287 people were killed in the south-east between January and May.

Liaison Committee: First Report

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, before the House agrees the recommendation of the Liaison Committee, perhaps I may detain your Lordships for a few moments and ask the Chairman of Committees a question. As the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, has just said, this request was placed before his committee by me and by a number of other noble Lords from all sides of the House.

One of the great strengths of this House is the expertise and wealth of experience that one finds here: former Chiefs of Staff, former Permanent Secretaries, former ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps—people with huge experience. Thirteen years ago at the time of my appointment here, I was surprised that there was no Select Committee overseeing foreign affairs. Indeed, in my experience and, I am sure, that of other noble Lords, that fact is often greeted with incredulity when we talk about the work of your Lordships’ House. However, given the wealth of experience and knowledge that exists here, such a committee has been proposed many times to the Liaison Committee, as the noble Lord said, but on every occasion the suggestion has been rejected. Therefore, I sought to raise this issue again, enjoying the support of people such as my noble friends Lord Hannay, Lord Sandwich, Lady Cox and Lord Wright, and the noble Lord, Lord Steel, the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert—that is, people from all sides of your Lordships’ House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, is in Romania and gives her apologies but she e-mailed me yesterday to say that she would like to be associated with these remarks. She wrote to the Liaison Committee in these terms:

“I returned to The House from ten years in the European Parliament … where I served for seven and a half years as a Vice-Chairman of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and subsequently as a member. This committee is considered the senior committee of that institution, with the considerable range of expertise that it contains. It was therefore with a little surprise that I learnt that we do not make use of the far greater expanse of knowledge and experience that we possess in this House”.

At the end of the letter she said:

“I join with the growing body of highly valuable colleagues across the floor who would very much welcome the opportunity to discuss with your Committee the establishment of a committee on the lines I have set out”.

My understanding was that, before a decision was made about this matter, there would be a chance for the noble Baroness, myself and others who hold this view to have a discussion with the committee, and I am disappointed that that did not occur. One of my questions to the noble Lord is: will there be an opportunity for such a discussion in the future? Also, will he take the wide-ranging views of your Lordships into account, and not simply have a consultation with the chairmen of the existing committees, who I notice at paragraph 16 of the report argue for the status quo? The submissions from the chairmen all argued for the reappointment of their committees in this Parliament in the same form. That came as no great surprise to me and I suspect that it will not have come as a surprise to most of your Lordships as well. There are real questions about, for example, resources, which I fully accept, but I think that this is an area to which we should give further consideration.

I was particularly struck by the force of the representations made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, who, after all, is a former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in another place. In a letter written as recently as 1 April to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said:

“This note is just to express my strong hope that this proposal will indeed be very seriously (and I trust favourably) examined at the outset of the new Parliament. In my view (and that of several peers in all parties and on the crossbenches) such an initiative is long overdue and much needed so as to allow Parliament to cover the very wide issues of international policy concerns which lie, understandably, beyond the reach of the EU Committee structure and beyond the areas which the excellent Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons (of which I have some experience) has the time or resources to handle”.

Again, we should not dismiss with disdain the views of the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, who now speaks on foreign affairs issues in your Lordships’ House. These views—I can see the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who has listened to them carefully—should be taken into account.

I do not want to detain the House at length, but we should not show timidity about these things. At a moment when another place has just reappointed Select Committees and for the first time allowed the election of their chairmen, for us simply to make do with occasional ad hoc committees is not the right way to proceed. This is a significantly missed opportunity.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, perhaps I may add briefly to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, with which I wholeheartedly agree. We have no committee in either House which looks at international instruments, to which this country becomes party. We look at European instruments because they will become our law, and in the same way, I submit, we should look at international instruments. There is a democratic deficit in the fact that we have no such committee.