Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for what has been a very wide discussion, wider than I anticipated. I sense that at the end of the debate I probably will not have satisfied many noble Lords in the Chamber today, but such is the nature of government responsibilities.

I was not intending to say this, but given the comments from the noble Viscount, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, the noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne and Lord Empey, and others, I think it is worth setting out that the Government have taken this issue extremely seriously in their manifesto and in their actions, not just in this Bill but in the immigration White Paper that we have published and in the unilateral actions that we have taken independently without requiring legislation. The issues of illegal entry, defining our asylum system and tackling an effective immigration system are extremely important. I do not wish to rehearse all the arguments, but it is worth placing on the record again that this Government have spent time talking to their allies in France and agreed the treaty looking at an exchange. It is a pilot that will be looked at in detail. We are working with the Calais Group of Belgium, France and Holland on international action to stop smuggling. We are working downstream with the German Government to tackle issues to do with boat manufacture and transfers. We have signed agreements with Iraq. We have put powers in this Bill to establish the Border Security Command and to make some activities criminal, which we discussed earlier today. We have a commitment to end hotel use by the end of this Parliament and we have saved £1 billion-worth of expenditure over the past 12 months by reducing the number of hotels being used but also by maximising the use of those hotels. We have put a lot of energy into cracking down on illegal working to try to stop some of the pull factors that make people think they can come to this country, disappear into the system and work illegally. We are trying to crack down on that and we have increased the number of arrests and prosecutions. We have speeded up the asylum claims system, because at the heart of this is determining who has a right to stay in this country and removing those who do not. We have speeded up the processing of asylum claims and removed 9,000-plus people in the past 12 months who have no right to be in the UK.

A number of Members have said that the Bill seems to have been frozen in time and things have moved on. I can assure the noble Baroness that we will have a debate about how lily-livered she is—we can discuss that in due course in a friendly, competitive way—but we are continually looking at these issues. The measures that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has brought forward this week are based on the assessment that she has made of the situation, which is ongoing. To give the example of this week, if we find that family reunion applications have increased by over 100% in the past two years and there is a big issue in terms of people coming to the country through that route, it is right to suspend that family reunion route to review it, as we will do very shortly. That is what Governments do. We look at the problems and challenges and we review it.

We have set out measures in this Bill to establish a fairer, stronger system. We have done the same in the immigration White Paper and we have taken actions accordingly elsewhere to have a purpose. I do not want to see the type of concerns, distrust and disorder that there are around hotel use and people who are here while their asylum claims are assessed. I want to understand those concerns. I am not making this a party-political issue. The concerns that have arisen over the past nine years are driven by small boat crossings. The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, stood at this Dispatch Box while I had my interregnum from both Houses of Parliament and made cases for the Rwanda scheme, which he has admitted today had some flaws and which we have taken a decision to repeal in full. I think that we have a shared understanding from all sides of this Committee that this is an issue that needs to be challenged and tackled, which is why we are setting out the measures today.

There are a number of amendments before us, and I shall try to talk to them as a whole, starting with the Opposition Front Bench, because they are the Opposition and they are the Front Bench, so it is fair to start with them. I shall return to my noble friend Lord Browne in due course.

The two amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Davies, Amendments 192 and 193, seek to widen the current inadmissibility provisions. Currently, individuals can be removed to a safe third country if their asylum claims are declared inadmissible. That includes illegal entrants as well as other claimants whose asylum claims are liable to inadmissibility. The inadmissibility process is intended to support the safety of asylum seekers and the integrity of the border, as well as the fairness of the asylum system, by encouraging asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, deterring them from making unnecessary and dangerous onward journeys to the UK.

For a claim to be declared inadmissible and not substantively considered by the UK, the individual has to have been present previously in, or have a connection to, a safe third country where they could claim asylum or could reasonably be expected to have done so. Under Amendment 192, anyone who arrives illegally must have their asylum claim declared inadmissible. With due respect to the noble Lord, that amendment would mean in practice that all asylum seekers who entered the UK illegally would have their claims declared inadmissible, with no regard for whether there is a safe third country for them to return to. Such an approach would, in my view, mean a rapidly growing number of people whose claims would be inadmissible, which in turn would mean that we could not establish whether they qualify for refugee status. In that scenario, those individuals would be in a holding position, unable to be removed, including those with genuine claims who would have their claims assessed now under the system, where 60%-plus of people who make a claim have it approved. That is a difficult challenge. It is with integrity that the noble Lord has moved the amendment, but it is difficult, and it would not have the objective that he seeks.

Similarly, with Amendment 193, the noble Lord also seeks to ensure that individuals will have their asylum claims declared inadmissible when they fail to register an asylum claim within 12 months. Again, there is a motive behind that which has an integrity, but it is one that I cannot share. Some people do lodge asylum claims in an opportunistic manner, sometimes to extend the time that they can remain in the UK, but this amendment would not deal with that particular issue. It would simply extend indefinitely the time in which those individuals would be able to remain in the UK because, without an ability to examine their claims, we cannot determine whether they qualify for refugee status.

The amendment also fails to take account of sur place refugees, which would mean that anyone lawfully in the UK from a country in which the circumstances have changed—and we have had much discussion around that today—in a significant and detrimental way, for example if there has been an armed conflict in the 12 months they have been here, would be unable to avail themselves of the protection of the UK.

In contrast to that, we have the amendment from my noble friend Lord Browne, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and the noble and learned Lord Hope, have spoken in support of it. That amendment would repeal Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act, which amends Section 80A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which itself provides that asylum claims from EU nationals must be declared inadmissible to the UK’s asylum system, other than where exceptional circumstances apply. Inadmissibility procedures in this section allow a state to declare an asylum claim inadmissible when the claim is made by nationals of countries that are declared generally safe. It is an important, long-standing process that can help prevent asylum claims from nationals of countries that are safe absorbing the limited resources that we have.

I understand the motivation behind the amendment from my noble friend, but I remind the Committee that Section 59 is not yet fully commenced. Indeed, the only part of Section 59 that has been commenced is the power to add or remove countries from that list of safe countries. However, and this goes to the question posed to me by the noble Lord, Lord German, the Government believe that it is important and the right approach to retain the flexibility to expand the use of inadmissibility in the event that we see asylum claims from individuals from countries that we would generally consider safe. That addresses the point that my noble friend made.

Amendment 203J has had support from a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox of Buckley and Lady Lawlor, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and the noble Lord, Lord Murray, who proposed this system. We have had some discussion around ECHR Article 8 and the French treaty from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. Let me just say again, for clarity and for this Committee, that the Government believe in the ECHR and are committed to our international obligations, for a whole range of reasons that I have outlined on a number of occasions, but that does not mean that we cannot look at things.

The Article 8 provisions that we have trailed that we will look at, which again goes to other points that have been made by other noble Lords, are issues that we will return to in the coming months that we want to consult on, including consulting colleagues in the judiciary to ensure that we have an understanding of the interpretation of Article 8 and whether it needs to be tightened to ensure that the country is not taken for a ride by individuals using that premise under circumstances where effectively they are using it as a last resort, in a way in which we all really think is inadmissible, to use a word that we have used a lot today. I do not think that that is appropriate. That Article 8 review is ongoing. The French treaty that we have established is in pilot form and we will review it during this month. We hope to extend it further and I shall report back to the House on the numbers involved. There are other tools that we are working on to ensure that we help put some energy into tackling this important problem.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

I am grateful to the Minister for taking this intervention and grateful to him as well for explaining in general terms what the Government are thinking about. I understand why at the moment he cannot be more specific. He says that the consideration is to Article 8, but should it not also embrace Article 3, which is very often used in circumstances where many people would raise a question as to how appropriate it is?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am happy to examine that. We have said publicly that Article 8 is the focus for our examination, discussion and wider review. However, that does not mean—and this is the key, important point—that we will ditch the ECHR. Although it is 75 to 80 years old and was established in 1950, as a number of noble Lords, including Lord Kerr, have mentioned, it establishes a number of basic rights, which are important to me and to the people we represent and the people in our communities. They set a basic framework, but that does not mean that we cannot look at how those interpretations are made. That is why we are trying to do that.

To come back to Amendment 203J from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, this would impose a legal obligation to refuse all asylum claims made by illegal or other irregular migrants who travel from safe countries. The stated intention of the measure is to deter such people from using dangerous and illegal methods to enter the UK. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on this: the amendment would not achieve that aim. Refusing a person’s asylum claim and proposing removal to their country of origin without consideration of the merits of their claim would put the UK in breach of its obligations under the refugee convention. We may not want to be in the refugee convention, but we are in it and we cannot in my view unilaterally breach those obligations accordingly. Even if a person’s asylum claim could be refused on account of this measure, the humanitarian protection claim would still need to be properly considered on its merits.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister and I appreciate the difficulty of the position from which he speaks, and the difficulty of the position of the Home Office in this regard. The point of my amendment was not to breach international law. As I hope I made clear, the wording of the convention in Article 31.1 is clear: one has to come directly. This is an opportunity for the Government to comply with their stated intention of not breaching international law but still deliver a policy that has a deterrent. This is a vital opportunity and I implore the Minister not to miss it just because it is coming from me.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let me reassure the noble Lord that this is not personal. I would welcome any suggestions from across the Committee. If we reject the amendment in due course, as he is right to suspect we will, it will not be because it comes from him; if anyone else had moved it, it would still be rejected. The noble Lord knows better than anybody the challenges of the roles that we have in the Home Office. I am grateful for his suggestions and we are trying to examine them.

The key point—maybe this will give the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, a chance to think again as well—is that the merits of the claim could attract an appeal right, removing the possibility provided under the current system for certifying the claim as clearly unfounded. We would end up with even more litigation, which may help lawyers but would not help the resolution of the challenge at home. Without the specific further provisions in the legislation, our decision would need to explain why we considered that this measure applied in an individual’s particular circumstances, addressing anything they raised alleging that their life and liberty were threatened in what we consider to be a safe third country. It is nothing personal to the noble Lord, but we cannot accept the amendment.

Amendment 203E, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, had support from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Cashman. It seeks to provide a definition of “exceptional circumstances” for the working of our inadmissibility provisions. It also seeks to remove Albania, Georgia and India from the list of generally safe countries to which inadmissibility provisions may apply in the future.

I have explained how exceptional circumstances bear on the inadmissibility process. Section 80A already sets out examples of what constitutes exceptional circumstances, which relate to states derogating from obligations under the ECHR and actions taken by EU institutions. These examples are not exhaustive, and there may be case-by-case instances where exceptional circumstances are identified and where that inadmissibility should not be applied. At present, the question of whether a person’s evidence or other relevant matters constitute exceptional circumstances is determined according to case law. The amendment would replace this established approach.

[Lord German (LD)]

I thank the Minister for taking the intervention. He has referred to derogation from the ECHR. I wonder what consideration the Government are now giving to Georgia, which is in clear breach of the ECHR and has taken itself out of the Council of Europe, because it knows it has to do so. This is clearly a country that has derogated. Is that something that the Government are looking at? We can do it by regulation, as we are going to talk about, but since this is the only power that the Government are holding on to, this is a country that needs to be looked at very seriously indeed.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

To add to that, that is a country in which our Foreign Secretary has sanctioned a number of individual Ministers. Is there any correlation between what the Foreign Office does and what the Home Office considers?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We will take a whole-government approach to this issue. I would like to reflect on this with colleagues who are directly dealing with the matter and will respond. We are in Committee, but there will be opportunities later, on Report, to examine this further. I will take away the comments that have been made and contact both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord accordingly.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who I think of as my noble friend, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, although the list has been commenced, the provisions necessary for it to have any effect have not been. If this Government decide that it is right to change the list for inadmissibility decisions, we will at that time, based on up-to-date information, consider whether any countries should be removed. That goes to the point that has been made about Georgia. We will consider those issues and reflect upon them using the appropriate parliamentary procedures, according to the criteria set out in Section 80AA.

In summary, the Government have a solid approach to try to tackle this issue. Some of the measures are still in the pipeline because of the legislation, but there is a strong series of measures to try to make an impact on what is a genuinely serious issue facing this country—one that needs resolution and which has built up over a number of years. However, I do not believe that the series of amendments in this group would assist in that process. For the moment at least, I ask my noble friend Lord Browne, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, to withdraw his amendment, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Murray, from the Official Opposition, and Members from the Liberal Democrats not to press their amendments. There will be an opportunity to reflect on what has been said, with an examination of Hansard tomorrow. There will be opportunities on Report, if need be. For the moment, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I may not be the Minister’s parliamentary friend but I am not his parliamentary enemy either. Seeing as he is in an emollient mood, might I prevail upon him further? He says that a government-wide approach is being taken to the ECHR. His colleague in the Foreign Office has told me twice that they are not looking at the refugee convention of 1951. Surely we have to open a discussion with our allies and look at how that has been operating since its inception in 1951. Perhaps the Minister could persuade his friends in the Government to look at that convention.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, will know that the Government keep all matters under review at all times—that is the political, Civil Service direct answer in response to this matter. I assure him that, from my perspective, our international obligations are extremely important. That does not mean that we cannot examine how we interpret those actions. That does not mean that we cannot examine the measures in this Bill, announced by my right honourable friend this week, and the direct executive actions we can take around hotel use and other things, to ensure that we put some pressure and energy into the system to achieve—let us end on a united note—the objective of all Members of this House to have a resolution to people being exploited by criminal gangs, in small boats, subverting immigration and asylum systems in the United Kingdom. With that, I hope noble Lords will reflect on my comments and do the right thing.

[Lord Hardie (CB)]

My Lords, I may have misunderstood him, but did the Minister say that the Government would consider derogating from Article 3?

[Lord Hardie (CB)]

I know that. I may have misunderstood what the Minister said, but, if that was the case, I point out that that is not possible.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The intervention that I took invited me to examine that issue. I have said I will examine it, but, as I said in response to that question, the focus of the Government as a whole is on Article 8. We anticipate energising the review of Article 8 to ensure that we examine how it is currently interpreted, what actions are taken as a result of the article, and whether further guidance needs to be issued about those matters. In response to the intervention as to whether I would look at Article 3, I have said that I will look at the point that was made then. The focus of the Government is Article 8.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

To clarify the position, I was not suggesting derogating from Article 8. The possibility of giving guidance to judges is, I believe, under consideration and it may be that, in resolving issues under both Articles 8 and 3, it might be necessary for the Government to think again as to what guidance to give to courts.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I thought that was what I said. I hope we can agree, at the end of this group of amendments that was livelier than I initially anticipated, that the Committee can support the Government’s direction of travel. However, I hope the amendment before the Committee today will be withdrawn.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I offer my final remarks with the traditional thanks to all those who have contributed to the debate on Amendment 104. When I saw that I had the overt support of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Brinton—whose support was more implied than overt—and the noble Lord, Lord German, whose support was overt, I began to think the only group that is of similar value to this one are the players that Liverpool signed in the transfer window. I thought, “I cannot possibly lose this argument”, until my noble friend explained operational benefit. I do not know if I should be pleased about the noble Lord, Lord German, reminding him of the possibility of “operational benefit”, but he found it—I will come back to that in a moment.

I heard nine Conservative speeches. I was astonished that, until the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, not one defended it—not one—and I think at least one of them may well have been responsible for the drafting of the legislation that Section 59 was in. I was therefore surprised when the noble Lord found that there was a pretty straightforward principle for Section 59, which is not that much different in its outcome to the speech made by my noble friend Lord Hanson. However, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron—and I will spend some time expanding this argument—if one looks at Clause 38 of the Bill, Section 59 is going to be pretty much alone as something that was in the Illegal Migration Act 2023. It is going to find itself in a very lonely context. The noble Lord’s argument was that one had to see this in context, but that will disappear if this Bill is passed. I will spend some more time between now and Report looking at just what that means for the ambitions that people have for Section 59 as it is presently drafted.

Some of the most important points that were made in this debate are well worth repeating. I do not intend to repeat very many of them because it has been a very wide-ranging debate and there has been a lot of repetition. It is important to start as my friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, encourages us to do, not only in debates but in conversations: to remember that it is people’s lived experience that should decide whether they deserve asylum or human rights protection, not conclusions that Governments or officials have come to about the temporary safety of the environments in which they may be living. This is all about people, and if we start from there and take into account all the other complexities of this legislation, we get to a point where there should be no room for Section 59 in the legislation going forward. There may need to be something similar to provide a benefit to the management of an issue of this scale, but it will not be that particular section in my view. This is a matter that I will come to again.

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose the Question that Clauses 38 and 39 stand part of the Bill. It is a curious feature of this Bill that, on the one hand, it purports to take tougher action on illegal migration, yet at the same time it repeals the very Act of Parliament which would tackle that illegal migration in the most robust and effective way.

The Illegal Migration Act was introduced in the other place on 7 March 2023, in response to the crisis along the shorelines of the south-east and in the channel. It was aimed at stopping the boats, defending our borders and preventing those who enter the United Kingdom illegally from being able to remain. As my right honourable friend Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary at the time, said when moving the Second Reading in the other place:

“The British public know that border security is national security, and that illegal migration makes us all less safe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/23; col. 573.]


At the time, the Labour Party did not agree with that sentiment as it consistently opposed all efforts to stop the boats under the previous Government. It was welcome that the current Government began to acknowledge the necessity of stopping the boats, but it is clear from this clause that they have not yet fully appreciated what must be done. If they had, then they would not be pursuing this course of action.

Central to all of this is that this is what the British people want. They want to stop illegal migration, people making the journey across the channel in small boats and people dying in the channel. The way we do that is by having a credible deterrent to end the demand. That deterrent needs to contain both the ability to remove everyone that enters the United Kingdom illegally and a removals policy involving a safe third country.

The Government have spent much time trying to tear down the sensible policies of the previous Government, both the safety of Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act. At the same time, they have announced that they want to follow the Italian approach and pursue third-country removal centres—or, as the Prime Minister calls them, return hubs. In a visit to Albania in May, the Prime Minister said:

“What now we want to do and are having discussions of, talks of, is return hubs, which is where someone has been through the system in the UK, they need to be returned and we have to make sure they’re returned effectively, and we’ll do that, if we can, through return hubs”.


However, we know that Albania does not want to work with this Government in establishing return hubs. The Government have also spent much of the last few months talking up the one-in, one-out returns deal with France, but, as we all know, this returns deal is not much more than smoke and mirrors. It is very clear that EU countries do not want to take third country returns. It is also clear that the only country willing to take third country returns is in fact Rwanda. That is why we pursued the Rwanda policy and why we passed the Illegal Migration Act.

The effect of repealing the Illegal Migration Act and scrapping the Rwanda deterrent is that people who arrive in Calais know that all they have to do is make their way into British territorial waters and they will most likely be able to remain in the United Kingdom. Even if they are not successful in their asylum claim, they may very well be able to remain in the UK because we cannot return them for one reason or another.

The measures in the Illegal Migration Act placed a legal duty on the Secretary of State to remove illegal entrants, thereby sending a strong and unambiguous message to those who would seek to flout our laws and abuse our immigration system. This Act, taken in tandem with the Rwanda scheme, if allowed fully to operate, could have acted as a suitable deterrent. By repealing this Act almost in its entirety, the Government now lack the ability swiftly to remove illegal migrants and will not be able to deter further crossings. This is highly disappointing. It betrays the simple fact that this Government are not truly serious about stopping illegal migration and defending our borders. I beg to move.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for proposing the clause stand part notice. At the outset, I place on record for the House that 35,052 people were returned from 5 July 2024 to 4 July 2025, the first year of this Government. Of those returns, 9,115 were enforced returns of people with no legal right to remain in the UK, a 24% increase over the period of the previous year.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Of the total returns, 5,179 enforced and voluntary returns were of—

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Noble Lords]

Order.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In a moment. I will always give way, if the noble Lord will let me finish the sentence. Of the total returns, 5,179 were of foreign national offenders, an increase of 14% over the same period in the 12 months prior. Therefore, before the noble Lord puts the premise that we cannot remove people and that this Government are not trying to, those figures put the record straight.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Of the 9,000 that he refers to, how many came across on a small boat?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There were a number. I have not got the figure to hand.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

It is the low-hanging fruit.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If the 9,115 were low-hanging fruit, why was this figure 24% higher than the previous year, when—let me just remind myself —who was the Minister in charge of this system? Would it be, by any chance, the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Because of the provision we brought in.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Right. I think we will just settle at that: that it is 24% higher than in the previous year because of the actions this Government have taken. That is the context in which Amendments 105 and 109 seek to reintroduce the duty to remove measures in the Illegal Migration Act that we are repealing. Therefore, it will not come as a surprise to him to know that we are not going to accept his clause stand part notice today.

Having a duty to remove people who are unlawfully in the UK is easy to say but very difficult to deliver in practice, as evidenced by the previous Government’s failure to implement this part of the INA. Such a legal obligation means taking away all discretion, and defining exceptions to that duty is not always straightforward. There remains a risk of legal challenge, of acting unreasonably in individual cases. For a duty to remove to be effective, there needs to be a destination where it is safe to remove people to when their own country is not safe for them.

We have taken a judgment on the Rwanda scheme for that effect, where there are practical difficulties in proceeding with the removal, and where a host country needs to agree to accept those people. If a third country is not willing to accept foreign national offenders or unaccompanied children, that can incentivise perverse behaviour for migrants seeking to remain in the UK.

We already have well-established powers to remove people who are unlawfully in the UK and have in fact, as I have just mentioned, seen an increase of more than 20% in failed asylum seekers being removed since the election of July last year, along with a 14% increase in foreign national offenders being removed. The Government’s aim is to deliver long-term credible policies to ensure a properly functioning immigration system. Having a duty to remove will not add anything useful to that aim. We are repealing the legislation that the noble Lord brought in; he is trying to reinsert it. There is an honest disagreement between us, but I invite the noble Lord to withdraw the stand part notice.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him a question of fact? There are so many different statistics flying around that I think it would assist the House. Could he advise the House of the ratio of people who, having arrived by small boat, are then successfully deported or removed from the country? I would be very grateful if the noble Lord gave us a figure.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I have given the House accurate figures which show the removals. I cannot give the noble Viscount the figure he asked for immediately in this discussion, but I will reflect upon that question for him, on the ratio of individuals and where they have come from. However, around 35% of asylum claims are rejected. We are trying to speed up the asylum claims system to ensure that we come to decisions earlier and can therefore remove people with no right to be here. I will certainly examine the noble Viscount’s question, and if he is not happy with the response I eventually give him, there are opportunities further downstream for us to debate that further.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I have listened to so much claptrap from this side of the Chamber, I cannot bear it any more. Could we please stop the right-wing nonsense you are all spouting? Could we perhaps hear just how many people who arrive by small boat are actually given asylum because they have a justified claim?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I cannot give the noble Baroness the definitive figure on small boat arrival asylum claims, but roughly 61% to 65% of asylum claims are accepted, and roughly 35% are not. I can reflect on the exact figures, but those are the rough figures. From the Government’s perspective, we then have to speed up the asylum claims so we can make those assessments much more speedily. Part of the reason for the problem of having a large number of people in hotels is that those asylum applications were not speedily assessed. Therefore, people have been left in limbo in asylum hotels.

Those numbers have grown exponentially during the period 2015 to 2024. There was a dip just before the election, which I acknowledge, but further energy needs to be put into that to close the hotels—which we intend to do—and to speed up the asylum claim procedure to determine who has a right to asylum. There are separate issues, which have been raised by a number of noble Lords, such as ECHR obligations, refugee convention obligations, et cetera. But the Government simply believe that we need to speed up those asylum claims, and the measures in the Bill and externally from executive action and the immigration White Paper, along with future proposals, are designed to do that. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his clause stand part notice.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. At this point, I thank my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. I pay tribute to him for the sterling work he did as a Home Office Minister in steering the Illegal Migration Act through this House, and I thank him for his continued, erudite defence of this Act.

The Government have some serious explaining to do to justify how they think they will have a credible system to protect our borders and prevent illegal migration. If they cannot act swiftly and decisively to remove those who illegally enter this country and process their claims offshore, there is no deterrent. Without a deterrent, there is no hope of stopping the boats, and if the Government cannot stop the boats, then I believe this Bill will fail.

I assure the House that we will be returning to this matter in due course, but for now, I will not oppose the clause standing part of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the stand part notice.

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[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Well, they sent an email. The noble Lord, Lord German, is right to point out, from a sedentary position, that it was perhaps not done through the most courteous of routes. However, the point is that those nine countries—Poland was another—are not illiberal countries and they are not led by people who have a hatred of European institutions. They were arguing that the time has come for international action to be taken by countries, collectively, to re-examine the things that we are signed up to, to see whether they are fit for the present time.

I want to say one other thing to those who have tabled these amendments. We have heard a lot about the Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act. At the heart of that was the suggestion that that would be a deterrent and a safe place to which we would send people. Recently, I have been looking again at Rwanda to see what the situation there is at the moment. In its human rights assessment of Rwanda just a few weeks ago, the US Department of State said that Rwanda is raising

“arbitrary or unlawful killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious abuses in a conflict; unlawful recruitment or use of children in armed conflict by government-supported armed groups; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; trafficking in persons, including forced labor; and significant presence of any of the worst forms of child labor”.

I am talking about Rwanda, and that is the US Department of State’s finding within the last few weeks. Recently, Human Rights Watch made a submission to the universal periodic review and reported on the use of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees from 2019 to 2024. I might add that the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ report on transnational repression—which is with the Minister at the present time, and I look forward to his response to that—identified Rwanda as one of the countries responsible for transnational repression. I point the Minister to those details.

Last but not least, we cannot forget about the involvement of Rwanda in atrocity crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with M23 raging on across eastern DRC. Earlier this year, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Law, Justice and Accountability that I chaired published a report on CRSV in the DRC and the abuses perpetrated by that group.

Let us be careful what we wish for. Let us understand the nature of those countries that we are going to send people to and that we say are safe places where people will be able to have good, prosperous and decent lives. Let us be realistic and honest about the nature of these things. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, reminded us that we will get to Amendment 110 from the Official Opposition, which is about lists and, indeed, we can then talk more about the countries that are on that list. Rwanda is on that list that the Official Opposition are pointing us towards.

I just want Members of the House to do what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said: we should stop blaming one another and trying to score political points and realise that this issue is now being exploited by people who have no great love of democracy and the rule of law and are taking people on to the streets and capitalising on this crisis. If we do not find solutions to this, I fear for the stability of our communities and the dangers to law and order and to the very vulnerable people whom I think all of us in this House are trying to protect.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling Amendments 105 and 109. I apologise to the House: in the confusion over the vote we had on Clause 38 stand part, I inadvertently started to discuss not only Clause 38 stand part but, in the last set of discussions, some of the arguments on Amendments 105 and 109. We drifted into that inadvertently because I thought we had finished debating Clause 38, so I apologise to noble Lords if I repeat some of the arguments here.

I start with the very sensible suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. These are complex and difficult issues. We have an inheritance from 5 July last year when we took office which we have had to deal with. I am not seeking to make political capital out of this. I want to have solutions, and the solutions are to have a fair and effective migration system, to speed it up, to ensure that we deal with international obligations on asylum, to remove those people who have failed the asylum system, to remove foreign national prisoners who have abused our hospitality and the privileges of being in this country, to ensure that we have a thriving economy and to ensure that we meet the skill sets that we need for the United Kingdom to succeed. Where we can bring entrepreneurs and others who can offer skills to this country, we do so. As has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, there are many forces outside this House which seek to divide the United Kingdom to exploit these issues. It is imperative that we find concrete solutions.

One of the concrete solutions is the very point that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has made—and it has been echoed by the Liberal Democrat Front Benches—which is how we deal with the real funnel of pressures that are coming, which are driven by terrorism, starvation, war and poverty. People who make that journey and claim asylum have very often faced challenges that I could never imagine. We need to have international co-operation, because the United Kingdom cannot solve those issues alone. That is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister met 51 countries in May of this year; has discussed with former European partners, which are still our neighbouring countries— France, Belgium and Holland—what the solutions can be; is working with the Germans; and wants to have some international action to stem that flow through the G7 and other bodies of people removing themselves from their home nations to seek asylum wherever it might be. It is an important issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, asked, “If not this, what is the deterrent?”. I do not want to repeat the issues today, but I have tried to set out the range and menu of measures that we are taking which we believe are going to add to that deterrence. However, the deterrence also demands that we take action against the criminal gangs that are leeching off that misery, poverty and desperation to ensure that they enrich themselves through criminal action. That is why we need international co-operation on a range of measures to focus on criminals who are using this to exploit people who are in a very vulnerable position. As of today, that may not be the deterrent that the previous Government potentially thought Rwanda was, but I think it is more effective.

Amendments 105 and 109 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Cameron of Lochiel, seek to reintroduce the duty to remove measures in the Illegal Migration Act that we are repealing. I take the contribution from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, very seriously. For a duty to remove to be effective, there needs to be a destination where it is safe to remove people when their own country is not safe for them or where there are practical difficulties in proceeding with the removal and a host country needs to agree to accept those people. That is the fundamental challenge that I put back to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.

Again, in the spirit of the instructions from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, to the House to deal with this in a sensible and noble way, I am not seeking to make difficulties for the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. I simply put it to him that the measures in Amendments 105 and 109 would mean that we would have to proceed with removal when there was nowhere to remove them to. That is the fundamental flaw in Amendment 109.

I repeat what I said in response to the general debate on Clause 38, that we have removed people who are unlawfully in the UK. We have seen that increase in the number of failed asylum seekers being removed. We have seen an increase in the number of foreign national prisoners removed—I have given the percentages to the House in every series of amendments we have had today, so I will not give them again now. The Government’s aim is to deliver a long-term and credible policy to ensure that we have a properly functioning immigration system. I say in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that, yes, it means that we are going to have to occasionally examine things in August and September that we had not considered a year ago. That is because the situation changes. Situations change, and politics needs to change. The measures in the Bill repeal an unsuccessful scheme and try to put in other measures to meet the deterrence that the noble Lord wishes to see.

I urge the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, not to press his amendments and to examine in further detail the proposals that we are bringing forward to the House to achieve the objectives that we share.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. I take very seriously my noble friend Lord Deben’s comments about humility and trying to be constructive about how we approach this; however, we are also a party of opposition. We remain firmly of the view that the Illegal Migration Act created a framework that was real and gave our border system structure, clarity and credibility. We did so because we recognised that the status quo was unsustainable, and we knew that deterrence without enforcement is meaningless. That is why we pursued the Rwanda scheme so vigorously and still defend it as a deterrent.

At the heart of the Illegal Migration Act was a simple premise: that if someone enters this country illegally and does not meet the necessary criteria for protection, they should be removed promptly and lawfully. Our amendments in this group are intended to encourage the Government to reflect on that principle again and really think before they abandon that framework in favour of something that we say is much softer and lacks precision, urgency and the seriousness that this challenge demands. That is a political decision, but it is one with consequences.

If we do not provide our law enforcement agencies with the legal tools they need, we cannot be surprised when the system fails to deliver. We legislated for that; we recognised that the UK needs a legal basis to enforce its own immigration laws. What the Government now propose is to remove that structure without a credible alternative. That is not just a retreat—it is a risk, and it will be paid for in public confidence, in operational paralysis and in yet more lives placed in the hands of traffickers and criminal gangs. We can and must do much better. I hope the Government use this chance to make that change but, reflecting upon what has been said across your Lordships’ House, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nitrous Oxide Misuse: Drivers

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidgeon]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to address nitrous oxide misuse among drivers in urban areas.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

Under the Road Traffic Act 1988, an individual is guilty of an offence if their ability to drive is being impaired by drink or drugs. The Government take road safety extremely seriously and are committed to reducing the numbers of those killed or injured on our roads. A number of police operations have focused on enforcement of the Road Traffic Act 1988.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer, but given the serious increase in this apparent trend of inhaling nitrous oxide through balloons while driving and the deadly danger this presents on our roads, what assessment have the Government made regarding additional powers and tools that may be needed to help detect and deter such drug-impaired driving?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises an extremely important point. From the Department for Transport’s perspective, rather than that of the Home Office, which I answer for, there is currently development of a further road strategy. As part of that, the Government are considering a range of policies relating to motoring offences, such as drink-driving and drug-driving, and other matters of concern that have been raised. That strategy will be before Parliament and this House in an appropriate time.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, what assessment, if any, have the Government made of the increase in the number of young people using nitrous oxide seeking medical assistance? There seems to be a trend of fewer young people but of their using bigger cylinders so inhaling more—more acute use. What assessment have the Government made and what intervention could they make to break this trend?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question. The figures for the last 12 months, which may help, show that 0.9% of adults aged 16 to 59 years old have been reported as using nitrous oxide in the past year. That sounds like a small number, but it is quite a significant number of individuals. We need to look at health advice at appropriate places, as well as at education and support from peer groups and parents. I know from my experience a long time before I entered Parliament, when I worked in the field of drug prevention, that the key thing is to ensure we have action on peer group pressure, education and health advice. To back that up, under legislation passed by the previous Government, nitrous oxide is now a controlled drug. Therefore, there is also the potential for police enforcement activity, which relates back to the initial Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, a close family member works for a fast-food drive-through takeaway, and she was telling me over the weekend about the amount of abuse she receives from drug-drivers taking nitrous oxide openly in front of her, using balloons. I asked what the standard operating procedure was for reporting this to the management of the retail outlet. She said that she reports it to the manager, who then reports it to the police. I am sorry to say that when it is reported to the police, there is no action. An idea for the police is to use facial recognition. We have had discussions in this House about facial recognition in retail outlets to stop shoplifters. Could we do the same thing in this case or suggest that the Minister looks into it, so that those people cannot get away with abuse of female workers in retail outlets?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. It is not acceptable to have that level of abuse, and it not acceptable for people to blatantly break the law. It may interest him that 378 individuals were prosecuted for offences related to nitrous oxide possession or trafficking last year. Of those 378, 240 were convicted. It is an important issue.

Just for the information of the House, it is quite difficult for the police to identify nitrous oxide later on because it disappears from the blood system very quickly. However, the noble Lord’s point on facial recognition is well made. It is one that the Government are examining in relation to a range of potential uses and there will undoubtedly be further developments during this year.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention to a couple of other aspects of nitrous oxide which make this behaviour even more lamentable. First, nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and its concentration in the atmosphere is increasing. Secondly, in terms of destruction of stratospheric ozone, it is now the largest pollutant. Will that add greater urgency to some action on bearing down on this frivolous and dangerous use?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness can be assured that the Government are taking this matter seriously. As I have mentioned, we are looking at further drug and driving offences, and there is now—following the previous Government’s initiative—a ban on nitrous oxide being used for drug purposes. We need to widen the experience and understanding of that legislation and put some of the preventions in place which the noble Lord mentioned earlier. It is ultimately a matter for chief constables and police and crime commissioners whether they take action and highlight that. It is certainly an act of anti-social behaviour; it also adds to the pollution of the environment, and from my personal experience as a former official of a charity dealing with this, I know that it can lead to death at first use—that is an extremely important issue that people do not realise.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister has referred to the legislation passed by the previous Government to criminalise the possession of nitrous oxide for recreational use. Unfortunately, the Scottish National Party voted against the ban, claiming that drug misuse is a public health issue rather than a criminal issue. We know that Scotland has a significant problem with drug misuse, including some high-profile court cases involving nitrous oxide. Does the Minister agree that the SNP’s lackadaisical approach to tackling drug crime is having a detrimental effect on the safety of the Scottish people?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that drug abuse, and in this case nitrous oxide abuse, is both a public health issue and a criminal justice matter. We have devolution in the United Kingdom, and criminal justice is devolved to Scotland. If I were the Minister in Scotland, I would do something different, but that is a matter for the Scottish Government. I think that there is a small election coming up in the next 12 months, where opinion of the performance of the Scottish National Party Government, of my own party and, dare I say it, of the noble Lord’s as well can be tested.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, the cause of the human nitrous oxide business is agriculture, both nitrogen fertilisers and animal waste. While we need to tackle the atmospheric effect of nitrous oxide, we also need to deal with the major source, which is agricultural products.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord tempts me into areas which are clearly not part of my responsibilities, but within the bits that I am responsible for, nitrous oxide—with the legislation passed by the previous Government, with opposition support—should be a policing matter and a priority. We are trying to support that. With the addition of 3,000 neighbourhood police officers this year, and another 9,000 to 12,000 over the next three years, there is greater opportunity for police officers to identify where nitrous oxide is being used for illicit purposes locally and to look at potential solutions in areas where balloons are being used in traffic or, indeed, where abuse is given to staff. With intelligence gathering, they can look at acting in an appropriate way to build a community plan to tackle those specific problems in those specific areas to reduce crime, improve public confidence in policing and tackle anti-social behaviour.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with what the Minister just said; it would be wise for the police to look into that. Can he also consider looking at the retail supply of nitrous oxide? Every year, I used to go Notting Hill Carnival, where the floor was littered with small canisters. They have only one or two legal uses: to blow up balloons and, I believe, for whipped cream. My point is that the supply of it far outweighs those two uses; I do not think that there are that many people filling balloons or creating whipped cream. It might not be a bad idea for retail outlets to be checked for the volumes they are selling, because it must be going to kids. There must be some people buying very large amounts, which they are then selling on. I know that sometimes we all plead for more law, but the retailers and manufacturers—because it is not easy stuff to produce and put into canisters—may also be encouraged to take further action themselves.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises an interesting point about downstream supply. I refer back to the legislation currently in place: it is an offence to possess, use, traffic or supply nitrous oxide in its current form. That is very broad legislation which gives specific powers to police to investigate the type of issue that the noble Lord mentioned. For example, if there were in any particular community excessive use of nitrous oxide, canisters spread all over the place, dens being used and/or trafficking using balloons, my advice—although I cannot give it directly to the police—would be that they might wish to investigate that, with the extra neighbourhood policing support we have given. They could then identify where the supply was coming from and take action, because supplying it is an offence.

Borders and Asylum

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches agree with the Government that the Conservatives “trashed” our asylum system, leaving the backlog spiralling out of control. We also agree that there is no silver bullet to deal with that failure. However, the Government have so far failed to get a grip on the problem as a whole. There may be a glimmer of hope that a comprehensive policy will emerge from the content of this Statement, so we will scrutinise carefully any plan that flows from it. But the real solutions lie in speeding up processing, so that those with no right to be here are swiftly returned, providing safe routes to claim asylum, and ensuring that those with valid claims can get jobs, integrate and contribute to the community.

However, the closure of the family reunion route, albeit temporarily, is a sign that the Government are responding to current events rather than laying out what the complete reform would look like. We are deeply concerned by proposals to tighten family reunion rules and by what we are told will be the reduction of the move-on period from 56 days back to 28, much to the dismay of local authorities throughout our land. The Home Office itself acknowledges that a lack of safe alternative routes contributes to small boat crossings, so cutting these routes risks making that crisis worse. Refugees are not at an equal starting point. They have been forced to leave their homes and families, often in grave danger, and family reunion is crucial for their settlement and integration. What assessment has been made of the risk that tighter family reunion rules will push more families into the hands of people-smuggling gangs?

Regarding the new independent body and fast-track appeals, how will it be resourced to meet the 24-week target, and will there be a recruitment drive for asylum caseworkers to ease the backlog? Given the similarities of these roles to those of JPs, what timescale have the Government got in mind for, first, identifying suitable candidates and, secondly, training them in the legislative framework to undertake such duties? Furthermore, can the Minister guarantee that local authorities will be properly funded by government to support asylum accommodation, rather than having it imposed without consultation? We need a humane and efficient system, not one that continues to fail vulnerable people.

The UK-France returns deal, as we apparently know now, will see its first exchange of people at the end of this month. Can the Minister give us some idea of the timescale for expanding what looks like very small numbers at the beginning?

Finally, what safeguards will ensure that the fast-track appeals process proposed does not compromise fairness or lead to more judicial reviews later? Refugees are entitled to be supported as well. It will be interesting to note what the Government propose to be the manner in which that system will actually proceed.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to His Majesty’s Opposition and to the Liberal Democrats for their initial questions.

I will start, if I may, with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. He makes the allegation that the Government are responding to the protests that have taken place around the country in August of this year, which were relatively small in number. I reassure him that the Government have a very strong plan to remove the mess in which his Government left the asylum system, the hotel backlog and the small boats crisis. The actions that we are taking are part of a long-term wider plan, which includes the immigration Bill that we will debate further tomorrow, to ensure that we resolve this issue in a way that meets our international obligations and, at the same time, deals with the issues that we all have a common interest in removing. I remind the noble Lord that this August saw the lowest number of boats for that month for four years.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

That is one month.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord heckles from a sedentary position. We have been in office for 13 months now, and we have taken action—which relates, as I will come to, to what the noble Lord, Lord German, said—to establish a border command under the immigration Bill, to put in new powers to tackle small boats, which will be taking place shortly, and to scrap the Rwanda scheme that his Government put in place, which wasted £700 million of taxpayers money and removed, from memory, two people, both of whom went voluntarily. We are now using that resource to up the amount of money we are investing in speeding up asylum claims. In speeding up asylum claims, we are doing what we should be doing: assessing people and determining who has asylum and who does not.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned some figures in his contribution. Some 35,000 people with no right to abode in the UK have been removed in the past 12 months. That is up on his Government’s performance—a 28% increase in failed asylum seekers being removed. We have had a 14% increase in the removal of foreign national offenders, and an increase of 50% in the number of illicit work raids that we are undertaking to make sure that we maintain standards in employment.

I am afraid the noble Lord cannot get away from the fact that in 2015 there were very few hotels in operation, and we reached a massive peak under his Government. We are trying now to reduce that peak by closing hotels, and we are doing so by speeding up the asylum claims that he and his Government allowed to remain. So, with due respect to the noble Lord, I am not going to take lessons from him on how to manage asylum, immigration or small boats when the problems that we have inherited are ones that his Government and his Home Office oversaw as a whole.

However, the noble Lord asked some reasonable questions, and I will try to establish some information for him. He asked about the new commission that we are establishing. We will set out further details on it in due course and ensure that we clarify and put into the public domain the roles the commission will have. We will ensure that the commission is paid for with existing departmental budgets, so there is no extra cost to the taxpayer for that. To the point made by the noble Lord, Lord German, we will ensure that people have time to have rigorous training in decision-making and expertise to make decisions on appeal cases. I say again to all noble Lords that we are doing that to speed up the asylum appeal process that led to the highest asylum backlog in the history of asylum backlogs, under the Government of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. We are trying to speed up those claims because, ultimately, we need to determine someone’s right to abode in the UK under asylum, and if they do not have a right then we need to remove them. The previous Government did neither of those things to any effect.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned the French scheme. Noble Lords will know that under the previous Government no attempts at all were made to discuss with the French the issue on the beaches of France in relation to small boats. The noble Lord again shakes his head. Perhaps at some future time, when he gets an opportunity, he could write to me and tell me what agreements were struck with the French regarding small boats and beaches. There were none, and because there were none, we have had to pick that up. Over the past 12 months we have negotiated with the French, and we have a returns agreement in place. That agreement is a pilot scheme. It has not yet removed people to a great extent, as the noble Lord knows, but it is a pilot that we are monitoring and evaluating. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord German, we intend to remove and exchange the first individuals under the scheme by the end of this month. The pilot will be evaluated and monitored, and I hope it will prove a benefit.

As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, knows, because I tell him every time we have this discussion, we have had agreements with the French, the Belgians, the Dutch—the Calais Group—to take action. We have established a proper agreement with the Germans for the first time, to look at how we can stop boat manufacture and sale upstream, and we are putting extra effort into bringing people to justice so that we now have people before the courts for people-smuggling offences. There is going to be a difference between us because the noble Lord, Lord Davies, believes in the Rwanda scheme and I do not, but ultimately it is about delivery on these issues, and this Government, 13 months in, are beginning to deliver on them.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for his welcome for some of the measures in the Statement. I welcome his support over Border Security Command, the speeding up of asylum claims, the new powers in the Bill and the pledge to close hotels, because he is right that we need to ensure that we speed up the asylum backlog left by the previous Government. Those matters are in train at the moment, and we will continue to examine them.

As I have already mentioned, the French scheme will run in pilot form until the end of this month, but we hope to secure some action on that very quickly. I hope the issue regarding the new scheme of the appeals board, which I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord German, and have already mentioned in response to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, is good.

I understand that the noble Lord, Lord German, has concerns, which I recognise, about the family removal issue. I say to him that we intend to ensure that, at a date very shortly in the future, we bring forward a statutory instrument that will end the family reunion issue on a temporary basis while we review family reunion for a longer period. We are doing that for the straightforward reason that the number of family reunions has increased dramatically. I shall give him the figures now: over the seven years from 2015 to 2022, approximately 5,500 individuals were granted refugee family reunion each year. In 2024, 19,709 individuals arrived via this route—a 111% increase, which is just not sustainable. We need to review that, work on it and take action accordingly. At a date very shortly, we will lay a statutory instrument that will suspend the scheme and we will bring forward a revised scheme at a date in future when we are able to do so. The suspension is temporary while we undertake a full review and reform of current family rules.

In the meantime, the noble Lord, Lord German, has asked a legitimate question: what do individuals who want to have family reunion do? They are quite able to apply as of now. Whenever the new scheme comes into effect, we will honour family reunion applications to the date when the scheme was suspended. We will then be able to examine any further family reunion routes through other means on the normal route for family reunion that will take place. We will bring forward in very short order a revised scheme that I hope will address some of the issues that, in my view, need to be tightened.

I say to all noble Lords that there is a common issue here and we should try to address it. That is what I am trying to do with the proposals before the House today.

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

Before we move on to the 20 minutes of protected time for Back-Benchers, I want to make it clear that this is 20 minutes for Back-Benchers only and that the form of the Back-Bench contributions should be questions on the Statement and not speeches.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to raise a question about the legal obstacles to immigration. I suggest that it would be helpful if the Government produced a consultation document setting out in detail the obstacles that they believe arise with regard to immigration policy. I have in mind a consultation document identifying treaties, conventions, international obligations and domestic procedures and laws that may stand in the way of an effective immigration policy. When we have that kind of consultation document, we can have a more informed discussion as to what we should do about it.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the suggestion from the noble Viscount. He will know that we have published an immigration White Paper, which trails a number of potential measures that are going to be looked at in principle, including Article 8 of the ECHR and a range of other measures that we are going to put in place. The immigration White Paper trails those issues because, for the very reason that he has mentioned, we want to ensure that there is further consultation on some of the key issues.

My right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are in constant discussion with countries that were our former European Union partners, as well as countries outside the European Union, about what needs to be done in relation to the pressures and those legal issues. There were meetings in May this year between European Union countries and non-European countries of which Britain was part, and there will be further discussions. I hope that, if the noble Viscount looks at the immigration White Paper, he will see that there is a range of trails that will lead to further policy discussions in due course.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, in 2019 Boris Johnson and the Conservative Government stood on a slogan of taking back control of our borders and our laws. Over the next four years, we saw record levels of immigration and a shambolic and dysfunctional asylum system. Over the summer, we have seen the extreme right try to weaponise this subject, intimidating communities throughout the nation. In spite of that, ordinary people have genuine concerns about the levels of immigration. One particularly relevant issue is foreign prisoners. Can the Minister explain what the Government are doing to ensure that foreign prisoners who come to the end of their sentences are deported?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

To live in this country requires basic adherence to tenets of good behaviour, and if foreign nationals commit offences then they should be deported at the end of their sentence. My noble friend will know, I hope, that, since 5 July 2024, 5,179 foreign national offenders have been removed from the United Kingdom. That is an increase of 14% over the previous year and one that we intend to further increase for those foreign nationals who have abused the privilege of being a resident of the United Kingdom by committing an offence. That is coupled with the other issues he mentioned, such as a 13% increase in returns and a 24% increase in enforced returns. But the key to all of this, ultimately, is to speed up the asylum system and make sure that, when someone arrives and claims asylum, that asylum claim is dealt with speedily and effectively. That is what the new body announced in the Statement and the efforts we have made to date are really going to be focused on.

[Lord Massey of Hampstead (Con)]

My Lords, the Statement from the Home Secretary contains many laudable aspirations, and I am sure we can all agree that the timing of implementation is of paramount importance as numbers seem to be growing, deepening a sense of crisis, notwithstanding August’s favourable figures. One of the proposed measures, and a potentially important one, is to seek reform of the ECHR and especially Article 8. To change the operation of the ECHR would require the agreement of 46 signatories and presumably take many years, but I notice that the Statement refers to

“reforming the way that the European Convention on Human Rights is interpreted here at home”,

which is, I presume, a way of speeding up the process of reform. I have a very simple question. How do the Government propose to implement this change in interpretation and in what sort of timeframe?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

That is a very valid question, and I am grateful for the broad support that the noble Lord has given to the proposals before us. We have said in the immigration Bill, and we have said publicly, that we want to look at how Article 8 of the ECHR, the right to family life, is interpreted. We have seen wide interpretation of Article 8 to ensure that individuals can protect themselves against deportation when asylum claims have failed. In the next few months—and I hope the noble Lord will bear with me on this—we intend to issue a further consultation on what we need to do on that. It does not involve us, as some political parties and others would want, leaving the ECHR; I hope it will revise the guidance so judges can examine it and make different judgments accordingly, based on the information that we will ultimately supply.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware of the detailed and carefully worked-out proposal put forward at the end of last month by the Refugee Council. Its plan could close asylum hotels by the end of next year by putting in place a one-off scheme to give permission to stay for a limited period, subject to rigorous security checks, to people who are almost certain to be recognised as refugees. The proposal applies to people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria who were in the system on 30 June. That would represent four in 10 of the people in asylum hotels from those countries—more than 33,000 people in total in Home Office accommodation. To take some examples, 98% of Sudanese who apply for refugee status receive it, and yesterday in your Lordships’ House there was a great deal of discussion of how terrible things are in Sudan; and 86% of Eritreans receive it. Have the Government considered this carefully thought-out proposal, put forward by the Refugee Council, or anything like it?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We are open to a range of discussions on any issue because it is a manifesto commitment for us to end hotel use by the end of this Parliament. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, myself and others in government want to do that as quickly as possible, but—and I say this, I hope, helpfully to the noble Baroness—we have to do this in an ordered, managed fashion. We are trying to do that in an ordered, managed fashion now by reducing the level of hotel use as a whole, filling up the remaining hotels so that we maximise their use and looking at how we can exit those hotels over time. In the past 12 months, we have saved around £1 billion of taxpayers’ money by the measures that we have taken. We have had limited success to date in reducing the number of hotels, but we intend to speed that up. The suggestions that have been made will always be examined, but the ultimate objective for the noble Baroness, the Refugee Council and for us is to make sure that we exit hotels, speed up asylum claims and make sure that those who have asylum claims are dealt with and allowed to remain in the United Kingdom with a properly adjudicated, speedy asylum claim.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former Immigration Minister in this country and say that I sympathise with anybody who has to conduct the business of immigration, particularly with the pressures we have now. I very much welcome most of what the Government are now proposing. I hope it is possible for us to avoid a build-up of rhetoric, which I am afraid I have seen from all quarters, particularly the more extreme quarters in our country, in recent months.

I will contain myself to asking two simple questions. One is in relation to family reunion. I think it is right to say that the majority of people coming by boat seem to be very young men—of course, we have always had many people arriving to seek asylum in other ways—and in that sense I feel that we can resist the question of family reunion rather more positively than with different age groups and types. I wonder whether the Minister would confirm whether he thinks that particular part of the policy could be successful.

Secondly, does the Minister agree that perhaps we need to make sure that our officials are rather better educated on the 1951 refugee convention, which of course is the basis of all asylum granting? We seem to be allowing a lot of people to come to this country and to have asylum—which is a very valuable thing to grant—without really pursuing the very narrow criteria that grant that asylum. Therefore, the percentage of people who are being granted at first instance has shot up enormously, certainly from my day, and I think it is too high. My own view is that we need to make sure that our officials are clear and fair, but that they stay with those criteria in their deliberations and decisions.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As the noble Lord is one of the former Ministers in this House who have dealt with immigration, I know he will understand very clearly the challenges the Government face and the difficulties we have in delivering on these issues. I very much welcome his comments and suggestions.

With regard to family reunion, one of the reasons that we are going to lay the SI very shortly and put a temporary suspension on family reunion is so that we can review how it is being applied at the moment. I mentioned the figures earlier but they are always worth repeating: there was a 111% increase on 2023 and a 378% increase on 2022. Some examination is obviously needed of who is being granted family reunion and why. That is why the temporary suspension is on. We will bring forward legislation to bring that into effect at some point and will review the operation of family reunion. The points that the noble Lord has made will be part of that consideration as a whole.

The noble Lord’s second point is also well made and I will certainly examine those comments. In the interest of time, for now, I hope it will help him to have had some answers to his questions.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for being a few seconds late; the unexpectedly early start took me by surprise.

Does the Minister agree—I am sure he will at least agree with this point—that it is important that the language everyone uses on this subject is as moderate and careful as it can be? Otherwise, feelings are inflamed and the situation is corrosive. It is important to be positive about the contribution to our society and economy of immigrants. I make this point about language having talked to a friend who attended a protest—a counterprotest, if you like—in support of refugees at a local hotel. She was perfectly clear that there were a lot of people there protesting who were there because they wanted to take part in a general ruck. In fact, one of them said to the highly qualified doctor she was with, “Oh, you ought to learn to read a book”. That is a serious point.

I am glad that we will have the opportunity to debate family reunion because it is, after all, a safe route. It would be perverse if we stopped a safe route. The Minister said we will have the opportunity to discuss the new independent body. Can he tell the House now whether people—I do not know whether they will be called appellants or applicants—will be entitled to legal representation before that body?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her comments and the tone in which she has put them. She is absolutely right about the debate on migration, illegal migration, asylum and border control. In my view it is a challenge and a difficult issue, but I hope that between the three main parties represented here and those individuals from the Cross Benches and others, we can have that debate in a civilised way. I also hope that in the country at large it can be debated in a civilised way.

There is an important issue to discuss about who we allow into the country for immigration purposes and how. There is an important issue of how we stop illegal migration, and an important issue of how we manage and meet our international obligations on asylum. The Government, in these 13 months, have brought forward a White Paper on the first issue, have taken action on the second and are now looking at managing the asylum regime by speeding up asylum claims to get the backlog down. Those are really important issues, and those who seek to divide us are using them in a way that I would not support. The right to protest is always there, but it should be about the tone of that protest accordingly.

We will bring forward further information on the new body in due course. I hope tonight is an hors d’oeuvre for the noble Baroness, as the main course will follow.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome the much tougher Statement from the Home Secretary. Not long ago, politicians making some of those suggestions would have been accused of perhaps being almost racist.

Does the Minister think that the huge pull factors for migrants living in horrible conditions in France are being tackled firmly enough? If we continue what some would describe as featherbedding people who arrive, that is bound to be a pull factor. Does the Minister agree that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights should still be on the table? Does he welcome the report with the foreword by his former boss—and mine at one time—Jack Straw, which makes it clear that whatever your view on leaving the European convention, the Belfast/Good Friday agreement certainly does not prevent that happening?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. When people speak about leaving the ECHR, I always wonder what rights they do not want. Is it the right to a free trial? Is it the right to not have modern slavery? Is it the right to not have exploitation at work? I am never quite sure which one of those rights people do not want. My forefathers and relatives in the past fought hard to ensure we have decent rights at work, including the right to a fair trial and the right to be free from slavery: all those things are embedded. Only a very small number of countries have not signed up to the ECHR. That is not to say—which is why I have said it—that there are not tweaks and interpretations we can make. That is why we will be looking at how we deal with Article 8 in the first place.

I will also, with due respect, challenge the idea that there are pull factors and that people seeking asylum are featherbedded. I do not regard that to be the case. There is no benefit being claimed. No allowance at any meaningful level is given to asylum seekers. We are also trying to end some of the pull factors by tackling very hard illegal working, which undercuts and undermines real people doing real jobs, exploiting people and undermining legitimate businesses.

So I say to the House as a whole that it is a very complex, multilayered issue, but the Government are trying, with a range of measures, to deal with this in a way that does not inflame the situation but looks at long-term, positive solutions to bear down on genuine problems.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

May I tackle the Minister on what he said about the ECHR? It is perfectly true that it incorporates important rights. It is equally perfectly true that those important rights can be incorporated in domestic law, and already are by human rights legislation. The fundamental difference is that, when the European court makes a decision which we as a Parliament differ from, we cannot change its effect in this country. If we were to repatriate the process to the domestic courts, Parliament ultimately would have a decisive say and could overrule the courts. That is what a democratic nation should seek to achieve.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I think we will have to have an honest disagreement with the noble Viscount. That is not my view of how this works. My view is that we are all party to a European court and convention. That is not a European Union issue; it is a Council of Europe issue. There are countries not in the EU and in the EU which have abided, since 1950, in the aftermath of a world war that split Europe apart, by a convention that gives basic rights to individuals. I support those basic rights, but that does not mean we cannot examine how they are interpreted. That is where the Government are coming from. Different parties are asking different things, and that will be a debate we will have, but I am trying to show the noble Viscount that there are, in my view, benefits to the ECHR as well as areas of potential challenge.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, expressed concern about the level of first-tier decision-making in the Home Office. I agree with the noble Lord that there is reason for concern about that, but concern about ill-founded refusals of asylum applications—the evidence for which is in the high number of successful appeals. On that subject, I have two specific questions for the Minister, and I will understand if he needs to write to me. First, Home Office checks in 2023-24 showed that only 52% of initial decisions passed the Home Office’s own quality standards. The figures for 2024-25 were supposed to have been published in August but have not been. Can the Minister say when those now overdue figures will be published? Secondly, Home Office data on appeals has not been updated since the start of 2023. There is data on appeals from the tribunals, but Home Office data historically has been more detailed. Are the Government planning to publish that data on appeals?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In the interests of time, I will write to the noble Baroness on both those issues. I do not have the information to hand, and I would not wish to inadvertently mislead her by giving her an answer that subsequently proved to be erroneous.

House adjourned at 7.58 pm.

Public Order Legislation

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, post-legislative scrutiny of the Public Order Act 2023 began in May 2025. It will assess how the Act operates in practice. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 will undergo similar post-legislative scrutiny between April 2025 and April 2027.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful as always to my noble and learned friend—my almost learned friend—the Minister for that Answer, but the issue is about more than one statute. Indeed, the common law and statute law in this sensitive area has mushroomed under Governments of all persuasions in recent years. Given the summer that we have just had, and given the challenges to both freedom of expression and public order, is it not time that there was an overarching review of all the law in this area to examine not just adequacy and coherence but public and police understanding of this sensitive area of the law?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. As I have just said, legislation is kept under review at all times. We have legislation coming before this House very shortly in the Crime and Policing Bill that will add other measures to the policing of protests. The policing of protests is most definitely a matter for the police, and the freedom to protest and freedom of expression are extremely important. She raises a sensible suggestion to look at how we can ensure that the police and the public understand where the barriers are. I hope that we can reflect on what has happened at any protest and ensure that the right to protest is central but that the right to do so in a peaceful, orderly way is also central. Those are two basic tenets that would be self-evident and central to any review she suggests.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I suggest that Sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 need amendment. To sit in a square and hold a placard is not an obvious act of terrorism. To arrest and prosecute such people is an infringement of the right to free speech and dissent. What needs to be caught are acts of definite terrorism—that is to say, acts which further that crime.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If the noble Viscount is referring to recent actions relating to Palestine Action, which I believe he is, he will remember that the House of Commons voted 385 to 26 only on 23 June and this House voted 144 to 16 only on 3 July to put in place measures to proscribe Palestine Action. One of the reasons for proscription was to ensure that people cannot support that organisation because of advice we were given about the levels of terrorist activity. The police are currently enforcing that legislation for those holding a placard in Parliament Square saying, “I support Palestine Action”. It is important that, in a couple of months, we look at how the legislation has progressed. By that I mean that there will be published statistics on the number of arrests, the number of charges and the number of convictions. I suggest this House awaits that information and remembers the reasons why, at this Dispatch Box and in the House of Commons, Ministers stood up and asked for that proscription order, overwhelmingly supported by both Houses.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I have listened to the Minister talk about the reviews he intends to have on the legislation, but there is serious concern in the country about the erosion of the right to free speech. That is demonstrated by the hundreds of people who have turned out simply to express their opinion about the situation in Palestine. They do not want to commit acts of violence. They believe that our country has always cherished its right to free speech. So although His Majesty’s Government intend to have reviews, this issue is bringing the law into disrepute because so much police time is being used in processing the hundreds of people who are arrested in situations which are, as the noble Viscount said, questionable. What can the Government do short of two years to ensure that our democratic right to free speech is protected?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I assure the noble Baroness that the rights to free speech, to protest, and to make a view known about Palestine or Israel, or any other issue before the House, are central to the democratic rights that we all have as citizens. This House, with the other House, made a decision to proscribe Palestine Action. That does not mean that people cannot protest about the issue of Palestine or support or condemn Israel—it does not mean any of that. It means that Palestine Action has been deemed, on advice to Ministers, an organisation that goes beyond issues of protest and of criminal damage to organise activities which are potentially in the sphere of terrorist activity. I say to the noble Baroness: protest about Palestine, protest about Israel, protest any way you like—wave a flag, hold a placard—but supporting Palestine Action under the terms of the proscription order in this House and in the House of Commons, overwhelmingly passed, deserves to have action taken. That is why the police are upholding that legislation currently.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, a recent report by Policy Exchange has highlighted the chaotic nature of the application of the law regarding unfair and disproportionate disruption caused by protesters as a result of the Ziegler ruling by the Supreme Court. What steps are His Majesty’s Government taking to reform the law of public protest so that prosecutors do not need to prove that a conviction would not be disproportionate interference in convention rights, and so reconcile the problems caused by the Ziegler ruling?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has raised an extremely important point. I do not want to answer it directly at the Dispatch Box now; I will need to reflect on the issues he has raised. I hope he will understand that. I will get back to him in writing so that there is clarity on that ruling.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, I point out to the Minister that the large majorities he is so proud of were achieved by bundling together Palestine Action with two obvious and very extreme terrorist organisations. In Israel, many citizens are lawfully protesting against the slaughter and starvation of the people of Gaza. By contrast, here, right outside this building, 522 peaceful protesters—also protesting about Gaza—were arrested under terrorism legislation. This spectacular own goal against our right to protest was the entirely predictable consequence of the Government’s proscription of Palestine Action as terrorists. That was enabled by our far too broad definition of terrorism, which includes damage to property that most people do not consider to be terrorism. When will the Government review and correct this overreach in the Terrorism Act 2000?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord will remember that, although the three organisations were put together, Palestine Action has committed three attacks that met the threshold set out in the very Act he mentions: at Thales in Glasgow in 2022, at Instro Precision in Kent and at Elbit Systems in Bristol—not to mention the recent situation at the airbase, on which I cannot go into detail because of ongoing legal proceedings. Palestine Action is encouraging terrorist action and working online to do so. There is a definitive difference in supporting a Palestinian state, which I happen to do, issues around the situation in Gaza, which raise real concerns for the Government and beyond, and criticism of Israel, which many Members of this House have made. These are all reasonable. What is not reasonable, under the orders of this Act, is to support the measures that Palestine Action has taken and is taking.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, if it was illegal noisily to call Israel’s actions a genocide then I suggest that many Members of this House and the other place would currently be serving time. It is not, as the Minister has said. He knows that I have supported the proscription of Palestine Action, but will he meet me to discuss my recommendation in the recent review that he is considering that much of this controversy could have been lessened if the Government and the police had had a mechanism to restrict the activities of this organisation, which was wilfully breaking the law and boasting about doing so, before it reached the terrorism threshold?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I will happily meet the noble Lord to discuss his report and recommendations. What Palestine Action is doing now has reached a threshold. Its actions before were criminal; they could have resulted in, and are resulting in, prosecutions, which may or may not result in convictions downstream. The assessment that we have had to make, based on evidence that we have been given, is that Palestine Action has crossed that threshold. He makes a valuable point about how we examine the development of organisations, but the key issue for this House is that there is a threshold in the 2000 Act, which he mentioned, and the neutral assessment is that Palestine Action has crossed it. Therefore, as a Government, we have to take cognisance of that. If we did not and it took actions that caused significant damage or harm to individuals and/or property, which is very possible, we would be culpable for allowing that to happen. I will certainly meet the noble Lord and reflect on his points in due course.

Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, the situation in Epping is already being woefully managed. The police have admitted escorting pro-migrant demonstrators to an asylum hotel, having previously denied having done so, and we know that there have been concerning incidents of violent behaviour. Further and larger protests are expected this weekend, and they have already spread from Epping to London following claims that migrants are being put up in a hotel in Canary Wharf. We on these Benches are clear that violence and disorder on our streets are always unacceptable, so what urgent steps are the Government taking, in conjunction with the police, to make sure that we do not see a return to the violence of last summer? How will the Minister and his colleagues ensure that misinformation, which could cause and inflame unrest, does not prevail?

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I hope that I can help him. Essex Police have issued a statement:

“There are claims on social media that Essex Police officers ‘bussed’ protesters to the protest outside the Bell Hotel on Thursday July 17. This is categorically wrong”.


Now, I can only accept what Essex Police have said: I am not on the ground there. That is Essex Police’s statement. The noble Lord will also know, because it is in the Statement, that Essex Police arrested an individual who was subsequently charged, whose trial is due to start on 26 August and who has been remanded in custody until that time. I am therefore not able to comment on that issue any more.

Essex Police have also arrested individuals in connection with the protest. Going back to the debate we have just had, peaceful protest is legitimate, but if that peaceful protest crosses over into alleged violence or other activity, the police have a right to act, and they have made arrests in connection with that incident as well. So I say to colleagues across the House and across the nation that peaceful protest is acceptable, violent protest is not, and the police walk a very thin line to ensure that they allow peaceful protest while ensuring that acts of violence or intimidation are not acceptable and are not undertaken. I look forward to the noble Lord’s support when this House rises to ensure that we maintain that message through the summer.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as set out in the register; I am supported by RAMP. I also thank the police for their work in Epping in Essex. I listened to the chief constable make his statement just an hour ago. In particular, I welcome the fact that they have now arrested 10 people and referred to those “thugs and vandals”—not my words, but the words of the chief constable—who damaged a number of police vehicles, threw projectiles at officers and injured eight police officers.

We need to put these things in perspective. There is obviously an issue related to asylum hotels. I listened to the Minister in the House of Commons delivering the same Statement and to the questions asked on it. In his response, the Minister said that they will aim to not to have anybody in a hotel by the end of this Parliament. Frankly, that is too long and too late. What can the Minister tell us about the speeding up of the process for getting people out of hotels, which are dangerous for everyone and certainly do not help asylum seekers in their passage through this country?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The key to that objective, which I share, is speeding up the asylum claims process. Therefore, the Government have invested in roughly 1,000 further individuals who are helping to make that processing quicker. It is a long task, because there is a large number of hotels. The number in use is smaller than on 5 July last year, but there is still a large number of hotels. The way to deal with that is to speed up asylum claims and allow asylum for those who have been approved; for those who do not have a legitimate asylum claim, we must ensure their speedy removal from the United Kingdom accordingly. That is what the Government is trying to do.

The noble Lord was quite right to thank the police for their sterling work in protecting society, and to say that we must ensure that those who commit violent acts against the police—or elsewhere—and are arrested should face the process of law, where a judgment will be taken on them. The events in Southport last year show that that happened to a large number of people who went from peaceful to non-peaceful protest. The message we need to send is that peaceful protest is legitimate, but non-peaceful protest is not.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, the evidence is that, when there were troubles last year, there was a great deal of misinformation being spread deliberately to encourage disorder. What action can the Government take to ensure that only proper information is disseminated and this other activity of telling lies to encourage disorder is squashed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

When fake posts are drawn to the Government’s attention, or when they examine those matters, they ask for the posts to be taken down. It is important that we maintain the integrity of the situation that is happening. Part of the challenge we face is to ensure that people are not led by fake news, or not encouraged by others to take action. Members will know that individuals who encouraged people to take illegal action last year found themselves before the court. People need to be very careful about actions taken at any time, because there is potential for further arrests, charges and consideration of matters before the court. I urge all to look calmly at the situation and reflect on how best to express a view to their Member of Parliament or the public in a peaceful, orderly way.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I live very close to the town of Epping, having served as the Member of Parliament for the Epping Forest constituency for 27 years until last summer. It has long been recognised that the Bell Hotel in Epping is not a good place for asylum seekers to be housed. I am sure that the Minister will recall that the then Conservative Home Secretary closed that hotel in April 2024 and the asylum seekers were dispersed to other places. The Minister’s colleagues then reopened the hotel without any consultation with the district council, which is somewhat unfortunate.

However, I join with the Minister in thanking Essex Police for the way they are dealing with this very difficult situation. It should be noted, among the misinformation that is out there, that both of the men who have been accused of serious crimes are now in custody awaiting trial—our justice system is working. Does the Minister agree with me that it is the duty of all elected representatives, regardless of which party they represent, to do their best to encourage community cohesion and to calm down a potentially riotous situation? The Minister said about as much in the past few minutes. The considerable amount of misinformation being spread by a particular political party is unfortunate and working against community cohesion. Will the Minister join with me in calling everyone involved in the situation in the Epping Forest area, and across Essex, to stop inciting violence, to call for calm and to think of the vulnerable people whom we should all be protecting?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, who possibly knows that constituency better than anyone else in the House today; she brings her wise counsel with her comments this afternoon. It is important that everyone who holds office in society, elected or otherwise, ensures that they consider the situation there in a favourable way to ensure that the police have their support and that the criminal justice system is allowed to take its course. Community cohesion and community engagement is the most important issue before the House today.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, does the Minister recognise the legitimate fury and frustration of local people, whether in Epping or Diss, because they feel their voices are not being heard in relation to their concerns about the hotels? They genuinely fear for their children because of crimes committed by people staying in the hotels, even if it is a minority of those staying in them. Secondly, does the Minister acknowledge that some of the misinformation includes calling those local people “far-right thugs”, which, to a certain extent, is the most insulting thing you can call people who are genuinely protesting? Will the Minister distance himself from that misinformation as well as the other misinformation that he has mentioned?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Any potential crime committed anywhere—be it in a hotel or a town centre —is a matter for the police to investigate. It is then for the police to charge people and for a jury of peers to make a determination in due course. In this case, an individual has been arrested and charged and will be before the court in due course, so I cannot comment on the specific circumstances.

If people have legitimate concerns about the hotels, asylum, migrants or people crossing the channel, they have a right to express that view in a peaceful, orderly way. The line is drawn where that protest leads to other potential crimes. In this case, the police have acted to arrest and potentially to charge individuals for crimes, which, equally, will go before the courts and be determined upon in due course. It is the job of us all to appeal for calm in those circumstances and to ensure that we find political solutions to some of the challenges that we have—but not, in any way, shape or form to encourage inflammatory action against the police, the community or people who are not committing crimes and who happen to reside in a particular place at a particular time.

Palestine Action Protests: Arrests

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, this Government uphold the democratic right for people to be free to express their views, but they should do so within the bounds of the law. The proscription of Palestine Action does not diminish the right to lawfully protest or support Palestinian rights. The use of police powers and the management of protests are operational matters for the police, who are operationally independent of government.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, more than 200 people have been arrested across the UK, protesting entirely peacefully for Palestinian rights, one a retired woman priest aged 83 and another for holding up a Private Eye cartoon. Surely this is an unjust, perverse but entirely predictable consequence of the proscription of Palestine Action, or are the police getting it wrong, as was argued in the High Court on Monday? How on earth do the police distinguish between those supporting Palestine Action, now an offence, and those objecting to its proscription without necessarily supporting it? How have we got to the point where peacefully holding up a placard about the carnage in Gaza is equated with terrorism by al-Qaeda on 9/11 or Islamic State on countless occasions? Should not the police be concentrating on stopping real terrorism and real crime, not targeting peaceful protesters?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As I have said to the House, both at the time of the proscription order going through this House but also now, peaceful protest around the issue of Palestine is entirely legitimate if people wish to make that protest. The question is what is defined under the proscription order. The proscription order ensured that action was taken because Palestine Action has perpetrated attacks in which it has forced entry on to premises armed with weapons and smashed up property, and members of the organisation have used serious violence against responding individuals. That judgment has been given to us by the security services as part of the proscription order.

A High Court judgment is being considered; the judicial review took place on 21 July and the judgment will be handed down on 30 July, but in the meantime the police have to enforce the proscription order—but they also have to ensure that peaceful protest is allowed. The decisions are taken by the police, and they will be accountable for them in due course.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, Palestine Action was proscribed after a five-year-long campaign of criminal sabotage and violence against working people. There is a deliberate and deceitful attempt to conflate the protests about what is happening in Gaza with support for a proscribed group. It is a curious conception of peaceful protest where people are clearly expressing support for a proscribed organisation.

Why has no one yet been charged, when many hundreds have been arrested? Do these decisions have to be approved by the Attorney-General? Is the Minister talking to the Metropolitan Police and asking for those files to come through to restore the deterrent effect, which is at risk of not working?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The terms of the proscription order are clear and were passed by the House of Commons and this House. However, ultimately, the charging decisions and whether to seek permission from the Attorney-General remain the responsibility of the Crown Prosecution Service. It is not for me to direct it or to comment on that—but the terms of the proscription order are clear, and it does not include legitimate protest in a free, fair and peaceful way around the issue of Palestine.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, when we debated this issue in the House, we made it very clear that there was a distinction, as the noble Lord, Lord Walney, has just said, between campaigning in favour of the rights of Palestinians, which is absolutely allowed, whatever your views about it, and supporting proscribed organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, in his Question on the Order Paper made it clear that he was objecting to people being arrested for supporting Palestine Action, but in the question that he has just set out he suggested that people were being arrested for expressing support for the Palestinian people. Those are two very different things. The Minister was clear. Can I say that those people who support proscribed terrorist organisations should meet the full force of the law, and can he make sure that they do so?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The purpose of Parliament, both the House of Commons and this House, is to pass legislation. We have done that with overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Parliament in favour of the proscription order—and the proscription order is clear. However, I am also clear that we must not conflate terrorist activity with legitimate pro-Palestinian support. People are free to support Palestinian rights and sovereignty, and there are means to do it without being a member of or a supporter of Palestine Action. I cannot be clearer from this Dispatch Box.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, by handing overstretched and under-pressure police officers more power to decide whether a protest is in fact an arrestable offence in the heat of the moment, we risk creating an environment where almost every protest could be regarded as criminalised. Does the Minister accept that the recent ban, which has already led to many arrests of peaceful and even silent demonstrators, demonstrates how powers that are vague and too broad can be misapplied to unfairly target non-violent dissent?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I do not think I can be any clearer to the House. The proscription order was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons and in this House, and it is very clear. The police have a duty to enforce that proscription order. For the police, what that means is that they will potentially make arrests. It is then for the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether charges are made, and it is then for decisions to be taken as to what happens to those charges. I am not responsible for police interaction on that matter because the police ultimately have to be independent of Ministers and government in making those decisions.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is not, I am afraid, appropriate for the Minister to stand here and say what the police are doing is none of his business. Putting aside for a moment the proscription of Palestine Action—and you know how I feel about that—the police clearly do not understand the powers that have been given to them. They are clearly arresting people who are protesting peacefully. The Minister has a responsibility to make sure the police know what they are doing.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Absolutely, we do. I assure the noble Baroness that the Government take the way in which this is interpreted and executed by the police very seriously. But what I am saying is that it is not the responsibility of this Government to make judgments on the ground, which police officers are trained and supported to do, about what action to take in relation to the legislation that we have passed. It is the job of the police to make those independent judgments—it is not for me as the Minister to say that they should arrest somebody or not arrest somebody. That is a judgment for the police under the legislative framework that this House and the House of Commons set.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The recent review conducted by the noble Lord, Lord Mann, and Dame Penny Mordaunt reported an onslaught of antisemitism since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel—a conclusion reached after a review of evidence from a range of institutions, including the NHS and the police. The noble Lord, Lord Mann, told the “Today” programme recently that Jewish people were ostracised in the work- place simply because they are Jewish. Does the Minister recognise the conclusions reached in the report, and how many of its 10 recommendations will the Government support so that we can begin to end the horrific scourge of antisemitism in our country?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

This Government—and I personally—have no time for antisemitism. We will take action against it; we will look at the review and the reports that have been made and respond to the recommendations in due course. I hope the noble Lord will be aware that antisemitism is a curse on our society, one that we should tackle very strongly, and this Government will do so. I hope that with his support we will continue to look at how we can build bridges to ensure that antisemitism is no longer a feature of our society.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am quite convinced from listening to these exchanges that my noble friend the Minister well understands the relevant law here, but I am not so convinced that the police do. Does he realise that if they continue to fail to make distinctions between support for a proscribed organisation, opposing the proscription, protesting events in the Middle East or indeed holding up Private Eye cartoons, their behaviour will only call further into question the wisdom, proportionality and legality of the original proscription decision?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I can only repeat to this House that I believe the proscription order is clear in relation to the offences that potentially could be committed under that order. It is for the police to make judgment. I am not even going to second-guess the arrests that have been made, because I do not know the details of why they have been made and it is not appropriate for Ministers to delve into that matter. We set the framework, then the police investigate, execute and bring to the CPS. That is the way the rule of law works in this country.

Illegal Migration: Pull Factors

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

The Government are committed to tackling illegal migration and the criminal networks behind it. We have launched campaigns directed at misinformation on pull factors and are taking a tougher action on illegal working in particular. There is no single universal pull factor independently driving irregular migration to the UK. In many cases, asylum seekers or illegal migrants are being directed or even coerced by organised criminal networks. The Government keep all these issues under review.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I thank the Minister for his response. The Minister is currently introducing some minor measures to make it more difficult for the traffickers facilitating small boat crossings, and I support those measures, but does he believe that it is sustainable for us as a nation to admit between 10,000 and 23,000 migrants per week, largely legally, meaning that we are increasing our population by at least 500,000 per year indefinitely? Will he confer with his colleagues in government with a view to convening all-party talks to try to reach a consensus on how migration is to be dealt with long term, and commence a national conversation with the objective of reducing the anxiety and toxicity around this issue?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that we need to reduce the anxiety and toxicity around this issue. I reassure him that, first and foremost, the Government are committed to meeting their international obligations, which include asylum claims legitimately put before the United Kingdom. He may have noticed that an immigration White Paper was produced recently by the Government, which raises a number of issues. We need to look at pull factors, certainly, but the Government are also taking very strong action on cross-border, cross-channel issues, including the removal of people who have failed their asylum claims, the removal of foreign national criminals and the removal of individuals who are illegally working in the United Kingdom, as well increasing prosecutions. There is a range of measures, and we discuss this internally in government every day of the week.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

Immigration is a global crisis, with every wealthy country in the world suffering social and political pressures from unsustainable levels of immigration from poorer countries. Do the Government therefore agree that there needs to be international co-operation involving the British Government before this can ever be solved? Are the Government engaging with the 15 or so European countries and the European Commission in the discussions that they are having about trying to close the southern European border? A policy on that subject would greatly reduce the number of people reaching the camps in Calais. Are the Government involved in that?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. In April and May this year, the Government were involved, along with 50 nations across the European Union and elsewhere, in examining the drive factors—rather than the pull factors that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned—that are pushing people away from areas of conflict, hunger or starvation into the Mediterranean and beyond, into Europe. The Government are looking very strongly, with European partners, at how we can work internationally in Europe and in the United Kingdom to ensure that we tackle those drive factors as well. That is why we have had the Calais Group of Belgium, Holland, France and the United Kingdom, and the recent discussions with the Germans last week and with the President of France only a couple of weeks ago. That international action is absolutely essential.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

Will my noble friend confirm something that the young people in Calais told me when I was there—namely, that if they enter the EU in Greece or Italy they are pretty well obliged to be fingerprinted and indeed recorded as asylum claimants? Therefore, they cannot claim asylum in France, and tell me that there is then nowhere else to go except the UK. Will the recent agreements with France and other EU countries deal with that?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his comments. Through the agreement with France we are trying to ensure that those who reach the United Kingdom illegally by crossing the channel have their biometrics taken and are returned to France as part of an exchange of legal asylum seekers who are being cleared by the French to claim asylum. That is a pilot scheme that is being looked at much more widely. When we have assessed it post the Summer Recess, we will look at whether it has been successful or not. It is quite clear that the taking of biometric information, in Europe and the United Kingdom, is key to identifying and processing individuals who are genuine asylum seekers and distinguishing them from individuals who are here by illegal means or who have been trafficked by people traffickers.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests and to the fact that I am supported by the RAMP organisation. We clearly need robust information and evidence about which factors are actually influencing these movements. Current knowledge is limited and sometimes incomplete and outdated. Will the Minister commit to commissioning and publishing more comprehensive data and research, so that future policy is guided by clear evidence rather than by assertion, assumption or anecdote?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I cannot commit to that, I am afraid, simply because the Home Office currently undertakes significant research on those very factors. Self-evidently, the English language is a pull factor for people, because English is a very common and well-understood language throughout the world. The perception of the UK as a place where work can be gained is important, but that work tends to be illegal, which is why we have had a major push in the last 12 months on illegal working. There are other factors at play in relation to that movement. We are monitoring those at the Home Office. I am happy to look at other research that is done, but this is the daily business of the office that I represent in this House.

[Lord Mountevans (CB)]

My Lords, have the Government given consideration to the introduction of identity cards, together with the requirement that in order to get work people are required to have identity cards? Would this not make a profound difference to the employment prospects of those arriving illegally?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We collect biometric data. I have said many times in this House that, when I was last a Home Office Minister, in 2009-10, we had identity cards and we planned to expand them further. They were scrapped by the then coalition Government. That is a decision that we may all wish to reflect on. Indeed, I know that some Members who voted for that now reflect with some passion that it was the wrong decision at the time. We need to focus on where we are now. It is not about building a wider identity card system but about gathering the identities of those who come here illegally, ensuring that those who claim asylum do so properly, processing them very quickly and returning those who are here illegally or who do not meet the asylum criteria.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, some 22,000 people have used small boat crossings to illegally breach our borders so far this year, which is some 57% up on the same period last year. The situation is quite obviously out of control and the pull factors are overwhelming any deterrent effect that the Government wish to create with their border security Bill. Will the Minister please update the House with the latest biographical information he has on those arriving in small boats—I realise that perhaps he does not have it to hand today? What is the average age of those arriving? What is their sex? Can he tell us the reason most commonly given by them as to why they have come to the UK illegally? As I say, if he does not have that information, perhaps he would write to me and put a copy in the Library.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I cannot give the noble Lord chapter and verse on all that detail in the half a minute that I have to answer his question, but I can say that 35,000 failed asylum seekers who came on small boats were removed last year, which is 13% more than in the 12 months previous, when his Government were in charge. There has been a 51% increase in the number of people who have been arrested and prosecuted on illegal working visits. We are taking action on these difficulties. Although he says that the figure is high now, and it is, it is nowhere near the 43,000 people a year who were coming in 2018. In 2016, only 400 people crossed the channel, and I think he knows who was in charge when that rise occurred.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, could my noble friend the Minister indicate whether the Government considered working in the social care sector as one of the pull factors for illegal migrants entering the UK when they decided in their White Paper to remove the social care sector from the list of occupations that can recruit migrant workers? Did they take into consideration the need for adequate staffing in the sector and the reported high number of vacancies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. She raises a sector where there are employment shortages. One of the tasks of the Government in the employment and immigration White Paper is to reskill and upskill individuals from the United Kingdom to fill those vacancies. With social care visas, there were significant issues regarding non-compliance and exploitation by unscrupulous employers. We have had to take steps to address those concerns and will continue to do so, but we also need to work with the Department of Health in England and with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to ensure that we look at how we fill those vacancies and what the needs are. We have a transition period until 2028, which will permit visa extensions and in-country switching for those already in the country, but we need to make sure that that system is not abused. Sadly, I have to report to my noble friend that it was, so this Government are taking action.

UK-France Migration: Co-operation

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome, in broad terms, from the Liberal Democrat Benches and for the cautious, guarded welcome from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition—who, it must be remembered, had 400 crossings in 2018 and 40,000 in 2023. This is a challenge and a problem for which the previous Government relied on the Rwanda scheme. This delivered £700 million of costs, with further costs of hundreds of millions projected. Precisely four people were returned under the scheme, whom the shadow Home Secretary would not even acknowledge now, because they volunteered to return and were not forced to go accordingly.

In the border security Bill we are considering in this House, I am very pleased to have supported the cancellation and scrapping of the Rwanda scheme and its replacement with positive, constructive, concrete efforts. These include the Border Security Command posts that the Bill brings in and the impact that they are having—we are using the money from the failed Rwanda scheme to support the development of that scheme. There is also the international co-operation visible through the arrangements with France covered in this Statement, and indeed—hot off the press—the new engagement with the German republic to ensure that we co-operate with the German Government on similar issues accordingly.

I say to the noble Lord that the agreement is not on just the transfer of 50 people in this pilot—which is a pilot, as I, and the noble Lord, Lord German, acknowledge—but of 50 people from a date in the very near future, on a return basis, with a proper return to the French authorities. The Opposition asked what the French authorities will do with them. France is an independent country and it will process them itself. I understand that the intention is to do so away from the northern French coast. That will, again, assist in that particular challenge and, I hope, provide the deterrent that the Rwanda scheme evidently did not, given that thousands of people still crossed when it was in germination and operation. It is not just about the 50 people per week we are anticipating—which, even if operated for only one week, would see 46 more people returned than the Rwanda scheme. It also involves establishing a new French barque, Compagnie de Marché, of specialist enforcement officers with stronger public order powers to deal with action on the French beaches; the French authorities agreeing to prevent boat launches before they reach the water; training for additional drone pilots to intercept boat launches; and support for a maritime review instigated by the French.

That is alongside today’s agreement with the Germans, which is worth putting on the record as well. Today, a treaty has been signed with the Germans which increases co-operation against migrant smuggling, strengthens law enforcement and judicial co-operation, and steps up efforts on returns. Germany is introducing a clarification to German legislation on facilitating irregular migration to the UK, which will be brought to cabinet with a view to be adopted by the German parliament before the end of this year. There will be a stronger framework for law enforcement policy and the prosecution of organised criminal gangs. The regional partners of the Calais Group—Belgium, Holland, France and the UK—will develop joint approaches with Germany upstream to deal with these issues.

I put those matters on the record only because not a single one of those things happened when the peak numbers of boat crossings occurred under the previous Government. They did not happen partly because of the euroscepticism of the then Government and partly because the drive to do it was not there and they put all their biscuits in the Rwanda tin, which proved fruitless.

By all means, the noble Lord can be sceptical, critical and quizzical and ask questions. But he will have a record hanging around his neck for a while yet that he will have to defend and which is not improved by his seeming criticism of these actions as being limited actions. These are strong actions from a strong Government.

The noble Lord asked a number of questions. The European Union will make a judgment but we believe we have a legal basis for the agreement. If it is going to be tested by anybody, the French and British authorities are on the same page. The French will deal with the returns accordingly. We will view that pilot in an appropriate way. With the deterrents we have put in place, we will be accountable for the performance on these issues.

After one year in office, the actions of this Government that I have mentioned today are now bearing fruit. We will have to continue to press down on these matters over the next few years, because the legacy we received was one of easy crossings, no action on criminal gangs and allowing the figures to go up, while at the same time—this goes to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord German—not dealing speedily with asylum assessments and removals.

If we are going to talk about the record of the noble Lord’s Government and ours, in the year since the election, 35,052 returns were recorded by this Government. That is a 13% increase on the same period under the previous Government. That includes 9,115 enforced returns, which is an increase of 24%. The total returns since 5 July last year of 5,179 foreign national offenders is an increase of 14%. The figure of 10,191 asylum-related returns is an increase of 28% on the previous year under the previous Government. Those figures are going in the right direction. We are dealing with the issue. There are lots of challenges—I will never ignore that fact—but the push by the Government on all those issues is one that should be welcomed by this House.

The noble Lord, Lord German, raised a number of questions, which I will try to answer as best I can. First, he is absolutely right to say that this undermines the criminal gangs’ model—that is the purpose of it. I welcome his support and thank him for it. Imaginative suggestions from all sides of this House to help undermine the criminal gangs are very much welcome. It is a pilot, which we will monitor. Self-evidently, a pilot is designed to be expanded. In the event of expansion, we will look at both the continuing analysis of the people arriving and being returned to France, and the safe and legal routes from France that will now be open. This limited pilot will be monitored and looked at in due course.

Again, some of the savings from the Rwanda scheme have been put into recruiting nearly 1,000 additional asylum officers to speed up the claims for asylum and to ensure that people move through the system much more quickly. That means that once their asylum claim is approved, they can be accepted as asylum seekers or refugees. If their asylum claim is refused, they can be returned, as we are currently doing.

The noble Lord asked about detention. We operate a policy of ensuring that we have detention because that is important until claims are assessed. I will examine that point in detail and get back to him in due course.

Safe and legal routes are important, as the noble Lord mentioned. Because of the time limit on our discussion, I will leave the other questions and come back to him in writing, but they are important points. I am just conscious that 20 minutes is up, and therefore I want to allow Back-Benchers to have their say.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but I am speaking in a personal capacity today.

The Minister has given a spirited defence of all the international actions that the Government are taking to try to battle this pernicious trade. Closer to home, in terms of our internal domestic actions, he has been remarkably silent on President Macron’s exhortation to our Government to do more in domestic law to challenge what happens here, not least our very lax labour standards in the large grey market, which is the pull factor that brings so many people to come here in such treacherous journeys.

Will the Government contemplate looking at two things proposed by Sir Trevor Phillips, a member of the Minister’s own party? One is digital ID cards, also proposed by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and rolling them out. The objections of 2006—I remember them well—are no longer as palpable as they were then on the part of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives because you can design the system very differently with technology now.

The second thing would be to tax remittances because the whole point of someone coming and trying to work here is so that they can improve things at home. Remittances have apparently gone up from £6 billion to £9 billion, so that would be a lucrative way of filling the black hole. I wonder whether the Minister would comment on those things.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point on some of the pull factors and the illegal grey market and black market in employment. She will know that we spent a lot of time last night on the Employment Rights Bill. That is partly to ensure that we undertake those standards. At the Home Office, we have been engaged over the past six months in an active programme of cracking down on illegal working, removing people who are found to be working illegally and taking action against individuals who have been involved in providing that illegal work. I can supply figures to her after this discussion on the success rates of those actions.

The noble Baroness mentions ID cards. I have said many times in this House that I was a Minister in the Home Office when we had ID cards. They were scrapped by the coalition Government. There are no plans to return to ID cards, but, self-evidently, we want to ensure that we have biometric and other data for people arriving in this country, and that data is collected at a local level. The question of remittances is one that I will reflect on after this discussion, but we have to ensure, from my perspective, that the pull factors are dealt with. The key focus of the Government is to get international co-operation to smash the gangs that are dealing with the aftermath of some big worldwide problems, exploiting people, selling them false promises, putting their lives in danger and allowing people to enter illegally. We believe that on an international basis, we should have that co-operation to manage those pressures in a more positive and constructive way.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I do not blame the Minister for slightly having a bit of fun at our expense at this stage in the political cycle. However, I caution him, given that in this Government’s first year the number of people crossing the channel has gone up by 40%, that when he eventually has to return to a proper deterrent scheme it will be on these Benches that he receives the support that he needs, not from elsewhere in the House. I suspect he may need our support later in the Parliament.

I have some specific questions about this scheme. First, in her Statement to the House of Commons, the Home Secretary said:

“The Prime Minister and French President have set out their expectation that that pilot will be operationalised”—


ghastly word—

“in the coming weeks”.

She was very unspecific about how many weeks—there is clearly a large difference between four weeks and 52 weeks, for example. Can the Minister give us a bit of clarity about the sort of timescale they are thinking about? Is it a month’s time or more like six months’ time?

Secondly, as the Minister referred to, the Home Secretary said that the Government will be trying a number of approaches—very sensible—and seeing what works, and then they will want to scale up the numbers. What sort of timescale are they thinking about for running the pilots? My noble friend Lord Davies of Gower was right: if the numbers remain low—I noticed that the Minister sort of confirmed the figure of 50 a week, or at least he did not resile from it—for several years then that will be no deterrent at all. Unless the Government are going to start the pilots quickly and ramp them up quickly, this has no chance at all of deterring anyone.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Let me put him at ease. I am not having a bit of fun with the previous Government; I am imploring the House to understand what the pressures were under the previous Government, the lack of action—that is a political opinion and my view—and how, as well as the borders and security Bill, the measures that we have taken with Belgium, Holland, Germany and, in this last week, France, in the agreement between President Macron and the Prime Minister, are designed to do what the whole House has a shared objective on, which is to reduce the crossings, hold those criminals to account and break their business model. That is what we are trying to do.

The noble Lord asks when the scheme will come into play. We plan to do the scheme by the summer, which is a definitive date. I suspect that the proposal is for the next five to six weeks, but the summer is our aim. We have not yet set a date to monitor and evaluate the pilots, but, self-evidently, it is in the interests of France, the UK and the people who are being trafficked to smash the gangs as soon as possible and ensure that we provide an upscaling of the scheme as soon as possible. I hope the noble Lord will give a fair wind to what I think will still be a deterrent. We will return to that after the Recess, to be questioned and subject to scrutiny in September, which I regard as the early autumn and late summer.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to a number of his international engagements, but one thing the Government are stubbornly refusing to look at is discussing with our allies a revision of the 1951 European refugee convention. I have asked Parliamentary Questions twice and both have come back with a negative response. It seems to me that talking to allies about something that was done after World War II which is relevant to all this is worth doing, and I hope the Government will do that.

While in broad terms I do not resile from the fact that the Minister is having a go at all this, and I am quite supportive of that, I am far from convinced that the European Union will be happy with it, for a variety of reasons. I hope it works, but it will have no impact whatever on the total increase in our population, which is the thing that we are studiously ignoring in this Parliament and have been for 20 years. Even in a good week, we are still increasing our population by 10,000 people per week. In 2023, we were increasing our population by 23,000 people a week, but no one in the Government or Parliament seems to join the dots between that and the housing shortage, health waiting lists and a stagnant economy.

I will support the Minister in all the measures he has taken with our European allies because I think they can be small contributing parts, and of course the Rwanda scheme never got off the ground and so we will never know whether it would have worked. The fact is that the gangs are not smashed; they are still trading well and they have weeks of good weather ahead of them. I hope that, when we come back after the Summer Recess, we are not sitting here talking about numbers still being 56% up. This scheme must be designed as a deterrent but there are many other pull factors, including our legal approach to all this and how we are dealing with it, subsidising legal actions against our own Government. That in and of itself creates a pull factor.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises a number of key points. As a Government, we are committed to our international obligations. The noble Lord mentioned the 1951 convention. As he knows, a letter has been circulated by some European Union member states calling for that to be examined. We want to maintain our international obligations, and it is important that we do so. In doing that, we still have to undertake the actions mentioned—I am thankful for the noble Lord’s support on those today—as well as other actions.

The noble Lord mentioned the EU’s interests. On 30 March and 1 April this year, we had a border security summit on organised crime that brought together 50 countries that are impacted by this, including key members of the European Union such as Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, and other countries such as Turkey, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Albania, Nigeria and Pakistan. It is very important that those longer-term issues are addressed.

The people who arrive in northern France have usually entered the European Union via southern Italy or Greece, and sometimes via the borders of Poland and eastern Europe. It is in the EU’s interests to examine the French-British scheme and to ensure, if there are positive lessons to be learned, that it is expanded. It is in nobody’s interest to have criminal gangs operating throughout the EU and in the United Kingdom and the channel. As well as the challenges of that movement, the profits those criminal gangs make are going into drugs, guns and other activity that fuels further crime. I hope that the noble Lord’s fears will not be realised and that we can take action.

The noble Lord said that a large number of people are arriving here. I point him to the figure of 10,191 asylum-related returns that took place last year because of the speeding-up of the asylum-claim process. We are speeding up the asylum-claim process and weeding out those people who have paid for a small boat trip and arrived in the UK but have no legitimate asylum claim whatever, having arrived as economic migrants who did not go through a legal route. Those people are being removed.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Minister very gently that his Government have a duty and responsibility to the tax-paying, law-abiding citizens of this country, not just to supranational legal entities such as the European Court of Human Rights.

On the specific issues, other jurisdictions consider this to be close to a crisis and have actively considered the derogation of Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This Government are not even looking at that. Why is this the case? If Spain, Italy, Germany and other countries can do it, why is it impossible for the UK to at least review the situation? The noble Lord, Lord Empey, is quite right that the 1951 convention is out of date, and it is apposite and totally proper for the Government to review it and how it works for Britain.

The other issue is asylum accommodation. Six months ago, when I raised the issue of the Dragonfly Hotel in Peterborough, which has 146 male asylum seekers, the Minister reassured me that his department would improve its communication with local authorities and other key agencies where new asylum facilities and hotels were being opened. Is that the case? Has there been a demonstrable improvement?

My final question comes in the wake of the rather humiliating rebuff that the Prime Minister received in Albania in May. The House will know that the Government are not in principle against a third-country processing facility. What progress has the Government made to date in identifying an alternative to the Rwanda scheme to facilitate the processing of asylum seeker applications?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful, as ever, to the noble Lord for his questions. I reassure him that the taxpayer is at the forefront of this Government’s thinking about the costs of this illegal migration and the criminal gangs that drive it. It is for those very reasons that we are taking action, not just to secure our borders but also to secure taxpayers’ resource. That is why, this time last year when we inherited the positions we proudly hold now, we were paying roughly £8 million a day in hotel fees: because the then Government were not processing asylum seekers and were not taking the actions we have taken in the last year to have a deterrent effect, in our view, against the criminal gangs. We have managed to reduce those hotel costs to around £6 million a day, saving the taxpayer £2 million a day so far, and we intend to drive it down further.

So I hope I can reassure the noble Lord that border control, dealing with asylum and dealing with the impact of people being returned have a cost to the taxpayer. That is why, as I said—without repeating the figures—we are upping returns, upping processing and making sure that we are taking foreign national prisoners out. We are doing that to reduce the illegal pressure on the United Kingdom’s borders.

The noble Lord asked a very fair question about consultation with local authorities. It is the Government’s intent that we consult with local authorities and, if possible, with elected representatives outside those local authorities—Members of Parliament and others—to ensure that they have an understanding of where that dispersal accommodation goes. If he wants to supply any examples of where that is not working, I will certainly look at them with my ministerial colleagues. It is important that we get that right so that there is consent.

On the international agreements the noble Lord mentioned, as I said, it is the Government’s intention to support our international agreements. Any change from that will be done on an international co-operation basis. We keep everything under review. As the noble Lord knows, in the immigration White Paper we have said we want to redefine Article 8 and how that is interpreted by the judges. We will keep things under review, but this Government will not move from our international obligations. Also, it is not a foreign court; it was established with UK support after the Second World War.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on reaching an agreement with Germany. My understanding is that the German law has to change before Germany can prosecute smuggling gangs operating on German soil. How confident is the noble Lord that the agreement to change German law will be reached this year?

The noble Lord mentioned the importance of the EU agreement. The EU normally operates by reaching an agreement among the 27. We have reached an agreement with France and now Germany, but surely, he would wish to reach an agreement with the whole EU to make sure that the smuggling gangs can be tackled at source: Greece and Italy, where most of the people are entering the EU.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. It is extremely important that we reach out to our European partners—they are still partners, although we are not members of the community—to ensure that we tackle this issue across the board. That means the flow through the Mediterranean into Italy and Greece in particular, the flow from eastern Europe into Poland, and the flow from France across the channel, accordingly. As I have said, the Calais group operates with Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, looking at the particular pressures there.

On the agreement with Germany announced today, I say again that Germany remains an independent nation, so it is responsible for its law change. But we have an agreement in the treaty that says that the German Government are

“introducing a clarification in German legislation concerning the facilitation of irregular migration to the UK (to be brought to Cabinet with a view to be adopted by Parliament as soon as possible, within 2025)”.

The Germans are responsible for the Germans, but in the treaty we have signed today, they indicate that they are hoping to make that change and—as any UK Government would—going back to their parliament and securing parliamentary support by the end of 2025. But it is entirely right that we deal with this issue on a cross-Europe basis because it is a cross-Europe challenge.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I knew it would be only a matter of time before the debate turned to the European Union. However, I offer some support on this amendment, which seeks to introduce an annual reporting requirement on co-operation between UK law enforcement agencies and Europol. I do so not out of any dogmatic enthusiasm for greater institutional integration with the European Union, but because it touches on something far more important—that the Government should have a duty to come before Parliament and the British people and show us the work they have been doing to smash the gangs.

We have all these questions already—how many gangs have been dismantled, how many people smugglers have been arrested and what impact that has had on the scale of the crossings—so, once this Bill comes into force, the pressure on the Government to answer them will be even greater. To that end, we think the requirement to report these numbers should be set out in law. This amendment speaks to earlier provisions tabled in our name in which we called for greater transparency about enforcement outcomes. If the Government are serious about stopping the boats, breaking the business model and restoring control, they should welcome the opportunity to show Parliament the evidence.

However, I strike a note of caution. While co-operation with Europol is undoubtedly important, it must be driven by operational need, not ideological nostalgia. This Bill cannot be a backdoor to deeper alignment for its own sake. What matters is whether the relationship delivers results and helps our agencies do their job more effectively. If it does, let us support it; if it does not or if resources would be better deployed elsewhere, we must retain the flexibility to make those choices. I support the principle behind the amendment: let us have the data, see the progress and ensure that decisions about operational co-operation are rooted in the fight against serious crime and not some broader desire to turn back the clock on Brexit. That is the balanced and pragmatic path forward.

The same principle of operational demand underpins our opposition to Amendment 101. We have spoken a lot about giving our law enforcement agencies the tools they need to combat illegal immigration, but we cannot tie their hands. With respect to the noble Baroness, I believe that our authorities can be trusted to determine whether a joint task force with Europol is necessary and I do not think that compelling them to do this in law is particularly sensible.

Our concerns are much the same with Amendment 206. While I am sure that it is well intentioned, I will speak against it. However worthy its stated aim, it rests on a flawed premise: that this Chamber, and individual Members, should be in the business of directing operational law enforcement resources from the Floor of Parliament. Of course we expect the Government to ensure that our law enforcement agencies are adequately resourced. That is a basic responsibility. What I find more difficult to accept is the idea that we should begin legislating where those resources must go, as if we are better placed than the professionals to determine strategic priorities, operational partnerships or the most effective deployment of personnel and technology. Respectfully, what qualifies the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, to decide by statute how the National Crime Agency or our police forces should engage with Europol? Are we to micromanage from your Lordships’ House the balance between domestic enforcement and international co-operation? I do not believe those on the front line will thank us for it.

We should not forget that enforcement against illegal migration and human trafficking is a complex, fast-evolving challenge. It requires flexibility, responsiveness and operational freedom, not rigid legal mandates handed down from Westminster. If law enforcement agencies judge that Europol operations offer the best return on effort and resources, then they will and should participate. But if priorities shift or if intelligence and tactical realities require a different focus, they must be free to act accordingly.

This is a debate not about whether we support the fight against people smuggling—we all do—but about whether we think Parliament should start signing away operational discretion and tying the hands of those we rely on to deliver results. That is not a responsible use of legislative power. We need to be guided by practical application, not political aspiration. Let the experts lead and let Government support them in doing so, not box them in. For those reasons, I cannot support the amendment.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a confession to make—and I hope that noble Lords will bear with me as I make it. As a Member of Parliament, I spent a lot of the period between 2016 and 2019 arguing for a close relationship with Europol when we were agreeing the Brexit referendum and agreements. I put a lot of pressure on the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary to ensure that they valued Europol and our close co-operation with it. I was disappointed in the outcome of the settlements achieved on that relationship. I therefore start from the basis that I believe that the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, are important. The approach of the current Government since 2024 has been to ensure that we encourage and engage in co-operation with Europol and other agencies to achieve the objectives that we have set.

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Those figures are extremely impressive—thank goodness for that—but can the Minister explain why over 21,000 people are arriving in the UK on boats?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord knows that this is a complex challenge and that the Government are trying to undertake a range of measures to address it. He will also know—we will return to this in more detail later—that, with the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme, we have been able both to process more applications on asylum and to remove people from hotels and shut more hotels. We have also been able to provide greater investment in the sort of co-operation that the Border Security Commander will undertake shortly, and I believe that continued pressure will be placed on that issue. The noble Lord knows that it is a difficult challenge—I am not denying that—but we have a duty to disrupt, and that disruption involves close co-operation with Europol.

I get the sense—I mean this in the nicest possible way—that these are probing amendments to get a view from the Government on the issues around Europol; all three press the Government on where we are with that. The noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord Jackson, have challenged the drafting and objectives of the relevant clauses. I will address the first two amendments as probing amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the noble Lord, Lord German, which seek to determine what we are doing with Europol. I accept those challenges and will respond to them.

The Border Security Commander—the legal framework for such a role is in the early clauses of the Bill—will work with a range of international bodies, including Europol, to deliver the Government’s border security objectives, recognising that an international solution is required for the current international, cross-border set of challenges. The recent Organised Immigration Crime Summit brought together over 40 countries and law enforcement bodies, including Europol to unite behind a new approach to dismantle people-smuggling gangs and to deliver on the people’s priorities for a securer border. The amendments are pressing us to address that.

First, there is the argument for an annual report to Parliament. Under the Bill, the Border Security Commander has to provide an annual report to Parliament and his work is very closely linked to that of Europol. We have a very strong relationship with Europol currently and a significant permanent presence in the agency’s headquarters in The Hague. The Home Office will continue to work with Europol to deliver the Government’s border security objectives, and the Border Security Commander has a key role in Europol being one of the agencies through which our objectives are being set.

To answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord German, on joint working with Europol, we have 20 officers embedded as liaison officers in Europol headquarters, with teams across the European community. It would be challenging, and perhaps—dare I say—inappropriate to set statutory requirements that would seek to establish joint taskforce operations when these are currently operational decisions.

Those operational decisions have the full support of government to work closely with Europol to help with data, criminal investigations and to ensure that we work in partnership. That is vital, given that many of the criminal gangs are operating in the European Community—in Germany, France, Belgium and Holland. That is why the Border Security Commander, as well as working closely with Europol, has established and worked with the Calais Group, its member states being France, Belgium, Holland and the United Kingdom, looking at close co-operation in those areas.

We are ensuring that we have adequate resources for law-enforcement agencies to enhance participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations. There is regular interaction with Europol, and the commander is already providing strategic cross-system leadership across current and future threats to UK border security, protecting the UK border and going after the people-smuggling gangs. We believe that the legislation strikes that operational balance but also ensures that law enforcement and the UK intelligence community are supportive of the commander’s approach. By establishing that clear direction and leadership, we are creating a strong, cohesive system to boost the activities of Europol as a whole.

There is a very strong operational relationship with Europol, led by the National Crime Agency. The director-general of the National Crime Agency regularly meets with his counterpart, Catherine De Bolle, to discuss relevant matters. The commander himself has engaged heavily with law enforcement since being appointed. We have doubled our presence at Europol, and we hosted Interpol’s general assembly in Glasgow in November 2024. We have also increased the number of embeds from the National Crime Agency in European organisations such as Europol.

On an operational and strategic level, it is in the interests of both Europol—the European Community—and the United Kingdom to have that close co-operation. That is why in the period post the Brexit referendum, I and others argued for that strong relationship: because it was important. As the noble Baroness said herself, a UK citizen, Rob Wainwright, was the leader of Europol when we were in the European Community.

I hope that there is not a sliver of difference between us. However, going back to what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, said, the amendments demand an annual report and taskforce co-operation, with us determining a third-party taskforce to be co-operated with. They also demand areas of resource—which we are dealing with, without the attack on operational independence that that approach may involve.

[Lord German (LD)]

I thank the Minister very much for the explanation he has given so far, which I think indicates a surprising level of progress, given where we started from with the agreement that preceded this. The Minister has kindly told us that we have officers embedded in The Hague. Does Europol have similar officers embedded in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is probably best if I reflect on that, because although I know who is embedded in Europol, I do not know offhand, unless I can find some inspiration in the next few seconds—I fear that I may have to check. I say that simply because this Minister and this Government are responsible for National Crime Agency liaison; we are not responsible for the Europol aspect of liaison with us. Rather than give the noble Lord an unhelpful answer, if he will allow me I will reflect on that in due course and give him a specific answer in writing, post this very helpful set of amendments, which I still hope will not be pressed.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

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

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

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

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

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

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am sorry to disturb the noble Baroness’s flow, but I want to place on record, in answer to the question raised by Members, that there are no Europol embeds in the UK. There is a Europol liaison unit, which is staffed entirely by UK police officers. I hope that is helpful.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for that helpful information.

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This amendment directly seeks to reduce that risk, keep these important documents safe and ensure that efforts to undermine our borders are both addressed and combated.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Swire, for tabling these amendments, if only because we have been able to revisit matters from the past 17 years on the benefits or otherwise of ID cards. I had the pleasure, or misfortune—delete as appropriate—to be in the Home Office in 2009 when we had the ID card rollout. I think I have said to the House before that I had ID card No. 3 at the time and had lots of biometric information taken from me. In fact, I remember travelling to Austria on my ID card instead of a passport—such was the pleasure of having that ID card.

I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, has revisited his vote in the Commons and that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, has suggested similar. However, that debate is for another day. It is not one we can revisit today, as it does not really feature in any of the amendments before us. While it provides an interesting historical perspective on the rights and wrongs of having ID cards, it is the amendment before us from the noble Lord, Lord Swire, that addresses biometric information, and, if I may, I will focus on that.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

I have enjoyed this exchange with the Minister on that vote. I have been trying to find out if there was any chance that I was not around during that vote; I was Minister of State in Northern Ireland at the time, and I was rather hoping that I was stuck over there. Unfortunately, because of a lack of data collection, there seems to be no way of finding out about my presence or otherwise at that time.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Perhaps I can help the noble Lord. If he was in the building, he would have voted that particular way; otherwise, he would not have been a Northern Ireland Minister for very much longer. However, it is immaterial whether he was in the building or not; the Government he supported voted to abolish ID cards. Let me put that to one side, however; it is a debate for another day.

The proposed new clause in Amendment 102 is intended to require all foreign nationals to provide biometric information on arrival to the United Kingdom or face arrest if they fail to do so. I have no problem with biometric information and using it to secure our borders and protect the public. I have no problem with the fact that it is already a cornerstone of our immigration system, as it enables us to identify foreign nationals who are coming in and out of, or staying in, the United Kingdom. Individuals who seek to enter the UK are required to provide biometric information as part of their application for entry clearance or, indeed, an electronic travel authorisation. This allows us to do what I think the noble Lord wants us to do: to verify identity and assess suitability before arrival. We already compare applicants’ fingerprints against immigration and law enforcement databases, and that already enables us to identify those who may pose a threat in coming to United Kingdom. Requiring biometrics to be provided before a person travels to the UK also reduces the need for Border Force officers to deal with people who pose a threat on arrival.

Where a person arrives in the UK without the necessary entry clearance or electronic travel authorisation, we already have existing powers to capture their biometric information, and we can use reasonable force where necessary to do so. We already check biometrics at the UK borders, using e-gates that can match facial images to images contained in passports. For visa holders, we check their fingerprints at the primary control desks. Let me remind the Committee that the Government remain vigilant in their duty to protect our borders. As recently as March 2025, we introduced new legislation which significantly enhanced our ability to collect such biometric information at the border.

I know the noble Lord has good intentions, but were this new clause to be enacted, all foreign nationals would need to provide their biometric information, including people who are normally excused. This would include people who are physically unable to enrol with their biometrics or who are exempt from immigration control, such as sovereigns or heads of state, and that is neither practical nor proportionate.

For me, this is a key issue. The noble Lord and I are both former Northern Ireland Minsters, so he will know that under the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. As part of the common travel area arrangements, the UK does not operate routine immigration controls on journeys within the common travel area, and no immigration checks are undertaken. Under his new clause, we would be unable to implement a policy of taking everyone’s biometric information as they enter Northern Ireland from Ireland without introducing a hard border. I do not think he wants that, but that is what the new clause would mean.

Turning to Amendment 149, on seizing identity documents—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

If the Minister thinks that my noble friend’s amendment has some merit, one way of dealing with this issue as the EU implements its EES checks would be to exchange biometric information with the Irish Republic so that, as people come into the common travel area, we can collect that information. Earlier, we talked about sharing information with our European partners. Dealing with the issue in this way does not require a hard border on the island of Ireland, but it hardens the border around the common travel area, which I think would be welcomed.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

With all due respect to the noble Lord, I was moving to the view that the amendment does not have merit; that is the nature of political life, as the noble Lord knows. Having poured that large bucket of cold water on Amendment 102, let me return to the question of Amendment 149 and seizing identity documents.

I reassure noble Lords that immigration officers already have powers to seize and retain identity documents and to require them to be produced. Under Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971, immigration officers have a power to require persons, on examination, to produce identity and other relevant documents, which may then be retained until the person is given permission to enter the UK. It allows immigration officers to take all reasonable steps and gives them powers to search and to seize documents relating to identity. Schedule 3 to that Act extends the powers in Schedule 2 to persons liable to detention for the purpose of deportation. Furthermore, there is a power in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimant, etc.) Act 2004 whereby relevant documents in the possession of the Secretary of State may be retained where they may facilitate the removal of a person who may be liable to removal. Amendment 149 is therefore covered by existing legislation.

As for the noble Lord’s third amendment, on the issuance of biometric documents to individuals whose identity documents have been seized, again I must gently express some reservations. We already issue foreign nationals with status in the UK with biometric immigration documents in the form of an e-visa. Unlike physical documents, they cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with. We also issue asylum seekers with application registration cards that contain facial images and evidence that they have submitted a protection claim. We do not issue biometric immigration documents that confirm the holder’s status to people who have no lawful UK immigration status or an outstanding protection claim in the UK. We do not provide documentation that could be used for identification purposes, to avoid creating the impression that someone is in the UK lawfully.

Since November 2024, we have stopped issuing physical biometric cards to foreign nationals granted status in the UK. Having to issue physical biometric cards to people whose documents were seized would generate additional costs—without adding them up, there would be several million pounds’ worth. It is also important that the Committee recalls that the misuse of identity documents is a criminal offence under the Identity Documents Act 2010, and the supply of equipment for the creation of false documents is similarly proscribed under the Specialist Printing Equipment and Materials (Offences) Act 2015.

I hope that that explanation helps the noble Lord. Obviously, he can return to this on Report if he wishes to, but I hope that he will withdraw his amendment, having heard my defence of the Government’s position.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister, but I do not agree with his position. This would have provided him with an opportunity to send a very strong signal out to all those watching these debates and following the issue of immigration very closely. There was a lot in what he said about officials having the power and how they could do this and that, and it was all tentative again. My amendments sought to ensure that they did these things. That is the only way we can get a degree of certainty. I hope that we can return to this in the future. I strongly suspect that the Government’s position on this will have to change but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Lord Horam (Con)]

With respect, it is not completely different. The fact is that the Australians arranged a successful deterrent, which is what all Governments are trying to achieve. What the last Conservative Government were trying to achieve was obviously not entirely the same as the Nauru/Australian example, but it was broadly the same, and, as the noble Lord must agree, with many checks and balances to ensure that people were properly treated.

That is what the present Government are throwing away. All that effort, finance, agreement, and legislation—three Bills, I think—are being chucked aside for, in effect, nothing, because this Bill gives no deterrent factor. It is completely absent. We all agree that the gangs should be smashed, and that work can carry on side by side with any other work on a deterrent, but there is no work on a deterrent going on of the kind that the previous Government had. We need a deterrent.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Can we just nail this myth? It was not a deterrent. Between the signing of the partnership with Rwanda on 14 April 2022 and 5 July 2024 when this Government took office, 83,500 people arrived by small boats—some deterrent.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

It was never deployed as a deterrent. As my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower said, it was never put into operation. The idea that the Minister can say that it did not work is nonsense, because it was never actually tried. First, there were all the judicial reviews and additional challenges that were sustained, and then there was the general election, so it never actually happened. It is a myth to believe that it somehow did not work or that it was not a deterrent. We do not know, frankly.

The great pity about all this is that we will never know whether it would have been a deterrent. I fully confess that I do not know whether it would have acted as a deterrent or not; no one could say until we saw the effects. Indeed, in the case of Australia, it was quite a long time before people realised that this was an effective deterrent. It took about 10 years before it was fully realised that this did work and was a means of doing it, and that would likely have been the case here. A policy without a serious deterrent is not really a policy at all; that is the problem.

I am sure the Minister will say that what the Government are now doing with France has considerable potential as a means of deterring people from coming across, but that depends on relations with France. I am all in favour of having favourable relations with France. I believe that the UK and France are particularly important countries in the European context these days, and I fully commend what happened over the last couple of days—I think King Charles in particular played a blinder in bringing the countries together—but none the less, we have to look at whether this will work as a deterrent. I understand that the talks on this are going on this afternoon, and that therefore the Minister may not have much information and may be unable answer questions, but currently only 6% of people will be sent back under this scheme. It is hardly a deterrent to say that 94% of people will stay here and only 6% will be sent back.

Obviously, it is sensible to start in a small way and ramp it up as time goes on, and I am sure that the Minister will argue that, but if you have a whole gamut of people coming over and only a small proportion are returned, what sort of deterrent is that? Will it not also fall foul of the problems that the previous Government had, where any individual who is asked to go back to France immediately has recourse to a lawyer who seeks to keep them here, and maybe succeeds in that effort, and therefore the whole scheme begins to unwind in a morass of legal challenges? That is what happened to the last Government: they became bogged down in a whole series of legal challenges. That is the danger, and that is why we are becoming afraid of the ECHR. The Government have had a year to think about all this. Unless they have a clear plan that encompasses these other extraneous elements that protrude into the problems they have, there is no serious possibility of stopping the boats.

Therefore, while I understand why the Government, having decided not to go ahead with the Rwanda plan, have given themselves the resources that were devoted to Rwanda and used them in a new way to develop the Bill, they will have to go very much further if they hope to stop the boats. I am afraid that we need a much more decisive, thorough and holistic approach to this problem than that we have had so far.

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[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support this clause in the Bill and support the Government’s action. The rest of it was very irresponsible. Getting rid of that project, which was announced in this Chamber by the Labour Party leader at that time, was the right thing to do. It also means that we can have better standing with our international colleagues, as we have had already with the UNHCR and with the French President, who was quoted as saying that this was a way of getting a better relationship with France.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for this debate on Clause 37. I apologise to my noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for forcing them to go through it yet again. I admire their tenacity and that of those on all sides who were in this House at the time for sticking at it and making this House’s views known to the then Government during the passage of what became the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024.

Clause 37 repeals the Act in its entirety. There is an honest disagreement between me and the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower, Lord Jackson, Lord Harper and Lord Horam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, as to the objectives of the Government. I will try to explain why we have that honest political disagreement.

This Government have taken a view that the Act was expensive, ineffective, contrary to human rights legislation and not greatly meaningful in its delivery of the objectives that the noble Lord, Lord Horam, outlined clearly, including the potential for a deterrent. Between the signing of the agreement on 14 April 2022 and the formation of the new Government on 5 July, 83,500 people arrived in small boats, with 31,079 of them arriving in the year to March 2024. Deterrent or not, I do not think that individuals who were arriving were closely monitoring the passage of that Bill. They were looking at the principles behind it, and there was no deterrent there.

As to cost, I used the figure of £700 million, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, asked me to break it down for him. I am happy to help him with that figure: £290 million was paid to the Rwandan Government as an arrangement fee; £50 million was spent on flights, contemporaneous and in advance; £95 million was spent on detention centres; £280 million was spent on the fixed costs of the scheme. I confess that I slightly underestimated in saying £700 million, because £715 million has been spent to date. If we look at the savings that potentially are in play and not just at the £715 million that we spent, we find that we have potentially saved £100 million in upcoming annual payments to Rwanda, and a further £120 million that the UK would otherwise be liable to pay once 300 individuals had been relocated to Rwanda. That is without the additional internal staffing and operational costs in government to date.

I remind the Committee that with the £715 million, plus the further costs, four people went to Rwanda. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, is indicating to me that the scheme did not have time to develop, but four people went to Rwanda. If not all of them, the majority of them were volunteers. Is that a good use of taxpayers’ money? Let us not rely on me, who has a manifesto commitment on this issue, which the Government are implementing. I happened to be in Committee on Monday 8 July, when the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said:

“I also happen to think that many of us opposed the Rwanda proposal because it was a load of old rubbish—because it was not going to work. That is why we opposed it”.—[Official Report, 8/7/25; col. 1248.]


When I was nobbut a lad in the Labour Party and the then John Selwyn Gummer was a Minister, I never thought I would stand up in the House of Lords several years later and say, “I agree with John”, but I agree with John, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, because it was a load of old rubbish. That is from a Conservative Back-Bencher who has held very high office in government.

I appreciate that three former Members of Parliament in another place—four, in fact, with the noble Lord, Lord Horam—expressed a view, but it is not one that I share.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I appreciate what the Minister is saying, but, ultimately, this is a decision about whether or not Rwanda is a safe country. Do the UK Government believe that Rwanda is a safe country or do they agree with the Supreme Court that it is an unsafe country?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. Members of this House expressed strong concerns when the Bill, now an Act, was debated, particularly about the previous Government’s statements under Section 19(1)(b) of the Human Rights Act. They could not say that the Bill was compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government were seeking to overrule a Supreme Court judgment that the Act did not provide safeguards when Rwanda was subsequently deemed unsafe. I confess that I was not here; I was having what we call an interregnum between the House of Commons and this House. However, having watched the debate from afar, I know that that was one of the concerns that were raised. In fact, the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ report said it was incompatible with the ECHR and, more widely, that the policy outsourced the UK’s obligations under the refugee convention and referred to the difficulties in guaranteeing compliance with the principles of that legislation.

I think that was the reason that members of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party, and from the Cross Benches, and a number of Conservative Peers, rejected the proposal on several occasions, until such time as the then House of Commons fulfilled its manifesto commitment—I accept that—to bring the scheme in. The scheme was never going to work.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Before I let the noble Lord, Lord Jackson in, let me answer the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who asked how I know. I know because four people volunteered to go on the scheme. The scheme did not work and would not work. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, confirmed his view that it did not work. This is an honest disagreement between us, and that is where we are.

I will take the noble Lord’s intervention before I carry on.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am delighted that the Minister prays in aid my estimable noble friend Lord Deben. Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and the fact that he will disagree with his Front Bench.

That aside, on safety, for the avoidance of doubt, the Supreme Court did not express a conclusive view about the risk of Article 3 ill-treatment of relocated individuals in Rwanda. That issue was not the subject of detailed argument at the hearing of the appeal. On the refoulement issue, the Supreme Court concluded that it was unnecessary for it to determine it. As such, the High Court’s determination that Rwanda was in general safe for individuals removed under the MEDP was not disturbed. That is the fact of the matter.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Politics is about the exchange of views and ideas and the delivery of policies. I think we have reached an impasse. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, and Opposition Back-Benchers think that the scheme would have worked, and the Government think that the scheme was expensive and would not have worked. That is the clear blue—or red—water between us on this. I am grateful for my noble friend Lady Lister’s support for the Government in taking the steps that we have taken.

The UK will also exit the UK-Rwanda treaty as part of ending this partnership and it is therefore appropriate for the Government to repeal the safety of Rwanda Act. Clause 37 will achieve this. In doing so, it is also important that we address the issue that has been endemic in the discussion we have had today, that somehow this was a deterrent and the removal of this clause and the removal of the scheme will therefore end that deterrent. I just refer noble Lords to Clauses 1 to 12 of this Bill, which establish a new Border Security Command and put in place resources of £150 million and £280 million over the next few years to establish very strong action on the meaningful issues that are important to us all.

We have created co-operation with the French, Dutch, Germans and Belgians through the new Border Security Commander on tackling the small boats at source. There is the work that the border commander has been doing with the French Government as part of the preparations for today’s conference between the President of the Republic of France, the Prime Minister and other representatives. There is also the work that the Government will do under Clauses 13 to 17 of this Bill to create new offences to bring people to justice if they provide activity on the issue of supplying articles, handling articles, collecting information and offences committed outside the United Kingdom. There is also Clause 18 on endangering another during the sea crossing to the United Kingdom, as well as powers to search on electronic devices to bring people to justice in that way. This Bill is full of deterrent activity that, if and when implemented by the Government after being passed by both Houses, will make a real difference.

I am pleased to say to the House that, hot off the press today, the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic of France have now finished their deliberations and, speaking with the President at a news conference just a few moments ago, the Prime Minister has confirmed a new UK-France returns pilot scheme. The Prime Minister has said that the scheme will come into force in a matter of weeks. Migrants arriving via small boats will be detained and returned to France in short order. In exchange for every return, a different individual will be allowed to come here via safe and legal routes, which individuals in this House have been pressing this Government to have. There will be strict security checks, open only to those who have not tried to enter the UK illegally. The suggestion is that, under the pilot, 50 people per week will be sent back to France across the channel—as I recall, even in this very week alone, that will be 46 more than left under the Rwanda scheme.

For the first time since we left the European Union, the UK has secured a bilateral agreement with France to pilot the return of illegal migrants across the channel. This tightly controlled pilot will be, I hope, the premise for further action downstream. The UK-France summit today has seen both nations strengthen co-operation on border security. We know that there is no silver bullet on this issue. We know that the returns pilot is part of a border crackdown, but it is the culmination—and this goes again to the value of the Border Security Command in this Bill—of six months’ work by the Border Security Commander with the Home Secretary, my right honourable friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, the French Interior Minister and the French-established new Compagnie de Marche. That is real progress in developing real, positive action. I can even go back to our discussions about Europol earlier today, on ensuring that we tackle smuggling gangs and disrupt their business model, that we have stronger law enforcement and that we dismantle this multi-million pound black market. This is not just about gangs; it is about lives.

The Rwanda scheme was ineffective, costly and did not deliver. The Government’s proposals in this Bill, and the statements by the Prime Minister and the President of France today, will add greatly to the potential to impact this heinous crime and business.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Can I just check, now that the Prime Minister and the French President have announced the details of the scheme, whether the Minister’s contention is that what has been announced today—once it has had a pilot and been scaled up—is, in effect, the Government’s attempt to put in place a deterrent that he thinks will, over the term of this Parliament, have the desired effect of driving down the number of people crossing the channel to effectively as low as you can get it? Is that his contention?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government are doing a range of things. The border security Bill is one of them. We have put the £150 million and £280 million for future SRs into the Border Security Command. Our work with the French so far has prevented 12,000 crossings this year alone through joint patrols and intelligence services. We are funding a new unit of specialist officers to increase patrols. We have a new specialist intelligence unit stationed at Dunkirk being launched today. Additional drone pilots are being launched. We have funded an extra 100 specialist National Crime Agency intelligence officers who will be stationed with Europol—to go back to the points that we mentioned earlier.

The NCA has seized 600 boats. Germany is already looking at changing its laws because of action that we have taken with the Border Security Command. We have put in place a landmark agreement with Iraq. We have practised and worked through illegal working raids. Arrests have increased by 50%. We have boosted asylum decision-making. Since the election, 30,000 people have gone back—a 12% increase since the previous Government. We have work upstream with Vietnam and Albania to stop people making the journeys from those countries in the first place.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

So he really cannot say.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Look, if we are going to talk about more people coming, can we go back to 2016? Can the noble Lord tell me how many people arrived on a small boat in 2016, compared with July 2024? I will tell him. There were 400 in 2016 and over 30,000 in 2024. We have a legacy of complete and utter failure by that Government, of which he was a significant member in the Cabinet. These are strong, practical measures; the Rwanda scheme was not, which is why I commend Clause 37 to the House. I ask the noble Lord to reflect on what we have said. If he chooses to vote at some point to remove Clause 37, I and, I think, many other Members of this House will stand together to oppose him.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I thank all the noble Lords who have taken part in this very interesting debate. It has been a microcosm of the numerous debates in your Lordships’ House over the last few years. I was momentarily flattered by being afforded the word “gallant” by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, but I realised quite quickly that it was insincere.

It will not be surprising to noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches and the Government Benches that I disagree with more or less everything that they have said in this debate. In relation to the deterrent, the Government have not created a credible alternative to the Rwanda scheme. They have not grasped the necessity of stopping demand by deterring illegal migrants from making the journey in the first place. I simply cannot understand how they believe that they can stop the boats without a deterrent. The Minister implies that the Bill is a deterrent. The Government claim that simply instituting a Border Security Commander with nothing to command and creating three new offences will deter illegal migrants. This is clearly not the case.

Picking up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I remind the Government of what David Coleman, the Emeritus Professor of Demography at the University of Oxford, told the Public Bill Committee in the other place. He said:

“It is, I think, very much second best to the idea of trying to deter migration for asylum claiming in the first place. That, of course, was dismissed by the present Government as being unfeasible, unworkable and unkind, so the Rwanda scheme was scrapped… it seems to me that the only obvious way of deterring movement to Britain is by making the movement to Britain unattractive”.—[Official Report, Commons, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill Committee, 27/2/25; col. 50.]


Regardless of what the Minister or the Liberal Democrats want to claim, offshoring to a safe third country has worked. As has already been mentioned, particularly by my noble friends, Australia is the only country that has been successful in stopping small boats—by establishing offshore detention facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. This reduced arrivals to virtually zero. It has worked so far for the Government to claim that Rwanda would never have worked. This is manifestly false. I hope that the Government come to realise what a mistake they have made by not instituting a deterrent. However, for now, I will withdraw my opposition to the clause standing part of the Bill.

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 102A, 115A, 115B, 115C, 115D, and 115E, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, seek to repeal Section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. This section sets out that “relevant persons” may be detained for as long as the Secretary of State deems “reasonably necessary” to carry out examinations or removal, to make an immigration or deportation decision, or to issue removal directions.

As with many of the decisions to repeal sections of the Illegal Migration Act, I question the noble Baroness’s intent on this point. Why does she oppose the exercise of reasonable detention to carry out an examination or to facilitate a removal process? As the Government themselves recognise, these are important powers that allow the Government to facilitate an operable migration system. If even this Government believe that Section 12 should be retained, this tells us something about its necessity.

I wonder what the noble Baroness proposes instead. What would she do, for instance, if a person refused to undergo an examination? What would she do if a decision was made to remove a person but, because the state could not detain them, they simply ran off? This does not seem to us to be a reasonable or proportionate amendment and I therefore oppose it on this basis.

Amendment 112 in my name seeks to reintroduce Section 11 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which the Government in this Bill are proposing to repeal. This Section of the Act introduced a new legal power to detain individuals specifically in connection with the Government’s duty to remove people who enter the UK illegally.

Let us be clear about the provisions in this Section. Section 11 provided to immigration officers and the Home Secretary the clear, legal authority to detain people who fell within the removal duty framework, to hold them lawfully during processing and to enforce removals, while also incorporating safeguards for children and pregnant women. What in this do the Government disagree with so much that they feel that they have to repeal this Section of the Act? We are clear on this side of the House that people who come to the United Kingdom illegally must be removed.

I will set out my position briefly and then invite the Minister to explain why he and the Government want to axe this provision from law. We believe, as we have set out before, that those who come to the United Kingdom illegally should not be allowed to remain. What is the purpose of having law if we allow people to break it with no consequence? Is this not the equivalent of allowing shoplifters to hang on to what they have stolen? Is this not the same as allowing those who break into people’s homes to keep hold of the things they have taken after they have been caught?

Without this provision, we are directly allowing people to benefit from their criminality. To us on this side, it is wholly irresponsible for a Government to allow those who break our laws to benefit from their activities. I hope the Minister takes this opportunity to really defend what his Government are doing. To us, the decision to repeal Section 11 seems reckless.

Furthermore, our Amendment 113 similarly seeks to reintroduce Section 13 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which sought to reduce the administrative burden on our courts by reducing the chance that we would be faced with vexatious appeals early on in the detention process. This Section also sought to delay access to immigration bail. This has many benefits, the main one being that it addressed the problem that individuals who crossed illegally could be released on bail before the Home Office could organise their removal, leading to long delays, absconding or the person simply disappearing into the system.

Removing this provision poses a clear risk of complicating the removals process, clogging up the courts and fundamentally undermining the Government’s capacity and ability to get those people who should not be in this country out. I hope the Minister will similarly explain why the Government think this move is a sensible one. Can he assure the House now that this decision will not create any increase in the backlog, and can he confirm that this will not delay the process of removing those who come here illegally? Can he commit now to the reincorporation of Section 13 into this Bill, if any of his answers to those questions are in doubt?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their amendments. I first thank my noble friend Lady Lister for moving the amendment on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

I will first acknowledge the question she raised on the adults at risk in detention guidance. I happen to know also that she has tabled a Parliamentary Question, which is due for answer shortly. I expect to respond to the review within a couple of months and any changes in the proposals that are brought forward will be subject to parliamentary approval. I will be answering her question in much more detail in very short order, and I hope that will help her to resolve that issue.

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord German, the shadow Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, and my noble friend Lady Lister for their contributions. I will start with Amendments 112 and 113 tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Cameron of Lochiel. The amendments seek to retain the powers of detention and the powers to grant immigration bail where a person is subject to the duty to remove under the Illegal Migration Act 2023. They are reliant on the provision to impose a duty to remove on the Secretary of State, which this Government are seeking to repeal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I must disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, yet again, by speaking against the amendments in this group.

I shall touch on each one briefly, starting with Amendment 103, which would repeal Section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act 2024, as set out in the explanatory note. The explanatory note provided by the noble Baroness has a flaw. It fails to recognise that Section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, to which her amendment ultimately pertains, refers both to a person who has claimed to be a victim of slavery or human trafficking in bad faith and to a person who is a threat to public order. Let us be clear about who we are talking about in these amendments: people who have tried to use modern slavery protections in bad faith and people who are a threat to public order and public safety for British citizens. The clause as it stands would allow the Government to remove these people from the United Kingdom and ensure that they would not be eligible for indefinite leave to remain as a result of their claims made in bad faith of eligibility and the modern slavery protections.

We on these Benches raised our concerns about those who would seek to exploit loopholes in modern slavery protections at some length earlier this week. The provisions in Clause 29 of the Illegal Migration Act seek to address this by allowing the Government to identify bad actors who are abusing the system and to remove them from the United Kingdom. Not to do so would be an insult to all those people who suffer at the hands of slave-masters and who should rightly hold a genuine entitlement to protection. The amendment seeks to apply those protections to those who are acting in bad faith or those who are a threat to public order. It is no wonder that even this Government have decided, in their drafting of the Bill, to keep this provision in force.

I seriously question why the noble Baroness seeks to question modern slavery protections in such a way. As such, we cannot support the amendments.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the way in which she has approached the discussion. I hope that I can convince her straight away by saying that the Government are steadfast in their commitment to tackling modern slavery in all its forms and to supporting survivors. That is why we had the debate on Tuesday, in which I re-emphasised that.

Care should be taken to avoid unintentionally weakening the protections afforded to victims of modern slavery and to public order. Repealing the majority of the modern slavery measures in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 would do just that. That Act put protections of and support for potential victims of modern slavery, stemming from the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, into primary domestic legislation for the first time, building on the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The proposed amendments would repeal these.

I come at it from a different perspective from the noble Lord, Lord Harper, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. In my view, the measures being lost would include the right to a recovery period in the national referral mechanism; the circumstances in which confirmed victims may be granted temporary permission to stay in the UK; and where the rights and protections can be withheld on the grounds of public order or bad faith, in line with Article 13 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. These measures ensure that support and protections and removal from the modern slavery system are available to all who require them. It is vital to retain them.

Section 29 is the sole modern slavery measure in the Illegal Migration Act 2023 to be retained. It would, if commenced, amend the public order disqualification to allow more foreign national offenders to be considered on a case-by-case basis for disqualification from modern slavery protections on public order grounds. Here, I share the view of His Majesty’s Official Opposition. Section 29 needs to be retained in its current form so that we can examine the national referral mechanism and agree with partners our priorities for long-term reform.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act sets out a range of measures. It is not necessary to replicate that defence elsewhere in legislation. On restricting information shared in respect of the modern slavery identification, the Modern Slavery Act 2015 provides certain bodies in England and Wales with a statutory duty to notify the Secretary of State. The information provided for that notification enables the UK to fulfil its international and other obligations.

The duty to notify is discharged for consenting adults by making a referral to the national referral mechanism or, where the adult does not consent, by completing an anonymous entry on the digital system. This information allows us to provide a better picture of modern slavery and helps improve law enforcement responses. It does not include information that identifies the person, unless the person consents to that information being included. Child victims do not need to consent. If a person is identified as a potential victim of modern slavery or trafficking, they are eligible for the recovery period that I mentioned earlier. Imposing restrictions on the information provided would be to the detriment of our obligations to such vulnerable people.

I agree that it is vital that the UK complies with its obligations, including as a signatory to the Council of Europe convention that the noble Lord mentioned. Implementation and compliance with these obligations does not require full incorporation into UK law. I say on behalf of the Government that the UK complies with its obligations under the convention by a combination of measures contained in domestic legislation, guidance and the criminal justice system. The modern slavery statutory guidance provides a framework where we can ensure that the convention continues to be monitored through reporting of the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings.

Finally, the Government are committed to ensuring victims can access the necessary support for whatever length of time it is required. Following a positive conclusive grounds decision, confirmed victims of modern slavery receive support from the modern slavery victim care contract and can continue receiving tailored needs-based support through the recovery needs assessment process via the NHS, local authorities and others. That specialist support also includes assistance to access the labour market, vocational training and education and application support for a national insurance number. The Government do not place an overall time limit on how long a victim can remain in support. Following a conclusive grounds decision, victims of modern slavery are considered for temporary permission to stay. That is all important and gives real support to victims of modern slavery.

I have not mentioned the amendments individually, but collectively that response shows that the Government are committed to their international obligations, want to support victims of modern slavery and believe that the retention of the measures in the migration Act is vital to doing that in a fair and appropriate way. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, does not disappoint me because these were his Government’s provisions, so of course I would have expected him to speak in support of them. I think that my speech was in fact accurate as to the content of the amendment that he referred to and was fuller than the explanatory statement.

I think that we and Conservative noble Lords start from different points of view; they seem still to demonstrate a culture of disbelief with regard to people who claim that they were victims of modern slavery and as to whether one gives them the benefit of the doubt as a starting point or disbelieves them. Using terms such as “real victims” discounts the fact that there is an NRM procedure with the reasonable grounds and conclusive grounds arrangements that the Minister has referred to. We do indeed have Section 45, which provides a defence in certain circumstances, but regarding only some offences. As I have said, that is inadequate.

I will not go back over the information-sharing arguments because of the time and because we have—well, I have—addressed them today. However, secure reporting is understood to be very important, including by the previous Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, and the current anti-slavery commissioner has said:

“We need to be able to give these victims the confidence that if they do come forward their perpetrators will be held to account and that they will continue to receive the support and care that they need”.


The current director of labour market enforcement has also said:

“There needs to be an expectation on the part of workers that if they go to an authority to demonstrate that they are being exploited, that will not prejudice their right to be in this country”.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I need to declare my regular interest in the RAMP organisation, which provides support for me and for other Members of this House across all parties. I want to start by reflecting on Amendment 190, which is about protecting trafficked people and those coerced, in many cases, into coming into this country. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, just referred to the session a few weeks ago here in the Palace of Westminster where we heard testimonies from people and how they managed to get out of the modern slavery circumstance in which they found themselves. It is important that those migrant workers are able to report their abuse without fear of the other part of the system coming in and saying, “Well, you’re here illegally and we won’t deal with your case of being coerced to come here in the first place first”.

It is a matter of which part of the system you put first. The amendment tries to make sure that we can protect those being coerced and not subject them immediately to questions about their immigration status rather than about the coercion they have received. It would be good if these things could be worked together, but the harsh reality is that they are not. Migrant workers have heightened vulnerability to abuse and exploitation and are less likely to report it. In many of the cases that we heard of here in this Palace, people were literally running away with nothing, but they could not run away until they had someone they could run to. They feared that the authorities would prioritise their insecure immigration status over the harm that they had received. That is the balance this amendment is trying to correct.

This concern is well founded. Evidence indicates that individuals’ personal data is frequently shared between labour market enforcement agencies, the police and immigration enforcement. This occurs despite the absence of any legal obligation for labour market enforcement agencies or local authorities to verify workers’ immigration status or report those with insecure status to the Home Office. Unscrupulous employers are able to capitalise on this fear with impunity, and it pushes down wages and conditions right across the board. That is the purpose of this amendment, and I commend it to the Minister. In explanation at the end, perhaps he could say how we can deal with the issues of people trying to escape from coerced, abusive and exploitative labour and how that can be dealt with effectively when the other part of the system is working against it.

I want to refer to the amendment on which I pressed the Minister on Tuesday. I am grateful for him pointing out where it is, because the only point that I wanted to make on it was that the requirement now is for the Minister to consult the devolved Governments rather than simply to take note of them, which I thought perhaps was the indication we were getting from his earlier letter. I am pleased that the amendment requires that he should do so.

On GDPR, I understand why the Conservatives have come to this position, because they simply say that everybody coming to this country by irregular means is illegal. Of course, they do not want their cases to be heard; they just want to get rid of them again. Thankfully, in further amendments we are going to deal with today, we are going to remove that universality of approach, assuming that this House passes the Bill in the way that the Government have laid it before us. It is important that GDPR applies to everyone in the UK, including those in the criminal justice system undergoing investigations. Universality in that sense has been a principle of our law, and we should stick to it and not create illegality when it does not necessarily exist.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for commencing this afternoon’s consideration and for the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Before addressing the points made by noble Lords on their own amendments, I just want to point out government Amendment 96 to Clause 33 in this group, which I will come back to in a moment.

I will begin by addressing the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, which have been reflected elsewhere. He may know that during the passage of what is now the Modern Slavery Act, we as the Official Opposition and I as the then shadow Immigration Minister moved amendments. I do not need to see—with due respect now—a 10-year-old photograph of us to reflect on that, but if he wishes to pass it to me, I may have to. In the immigration White Paper, we have made specific reference to Kalayaan and domestic workers, and I will reflect on those points as we go through. We want to look at the visa rules to ensure that they are operating fairly and properly. It is not related directly to the amendments before us today, but I just wanted to place that on the record again for the noble Lord.

Government Amendment 96 in my name does indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord German, said, amend the consultation requirements in relation to the Secretary of State’s powers to make regulations about the purposes related to policing in connection with the trailer registration data that may be used by the police and onwards shared by the police and the Home Office in accordance with the provisions of Clauses 30 and 31 of the Bill. Clause 33(8) creates a power to make police regulations to specify the purposes related to policing and, as currently drafted, the clause creates a duty to

“consult such of the following persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,

and lists Scottish Ministers, the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland and police representatives.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

Can I probe the Minister on the point he made in response to my noble friend’s amendment on data sharing and the GDPR? The Minister said—and I understand why he said it—that he felt my noble friend’s amendment was unnecessary. Is he able, either today, in writing or on a future day, to reassure the House that there are not cases where we are dealing with foreign criminals or those who have entered the country illegally where either his department or relevant officials are stopped from dealing with them because of that? Is he basically saying that it is not a problem—that there are no cases of dealing with criminality or these gangs where there is an information-sharing problem? If he is happy to reassure us that there really is not a problem and the existing GDPR framework works effectively, then clearly that is very reassuring. Is he able to say that?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I will look in detail at the Hansard report of the contributions that have been made today and reflect on them, but my assessment is that I can give the noble Lord that assurance. If there is any difference in the detail that he has mentioned, I will double-check with officials to make sure that we are clear on that.

The noble Lord should know, and I think he does know, that one of the Government’s objectives is to turbocharge the removal of foreign national criminals with no right to stay in the United Kingdom after their sentence, and indeed during it, and to ensure that those with offences that are a bar to their entry to the United Kingdom are monitored and acted on accordingly. That is an important principle. Without rehearsing the arguments around that with him now, I can say that the past year has shown that we have had an increase in the number of foreign nationals who have been removed, and it is our objective to try to do that.

To give the noble Lord reassurance, I will ensure that my officials and I examine the Hansard report, and, if the reassurances I have given are not sufficient for him, he has the opportunity to revisit this issue on Report, as does the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. In the light of that, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment, and that she and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, do not press their other amendments.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, it might help the noble Lord, Lord Harper, to know that, in the paragraph in the Data Protection Act that sets out an exemption to data sharing, the wide phrase,

“for the purposes of immigration enforcement”,

is one that these Benches have opposed. Given our relative positions, that might be a pretty good reassurance for him.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for extending the debate a little. The pre-2012 visa regime was more realistic—if I can put it like that—as to the position of domestic workers. Restricting the period that they could remain in this country after an incident to six months is frankly insufficient to help them recover. You would not employ somebody for six months as, for example, a nanny, if you can find somebody who is able to do the job for longer. I am of course disappointed, but not surprised, by the Minister’s response to Amendment 190.

With regard to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, while I was listening to him, I was struck that we should recognise the agency of people who are affected or abused. The Employment Rights Bill has a clause that raises a very interesting situation: the state can take enforcement action on behalf, and without the consent, of an affected individual. That raises some very interesting and frankly rather troubling issues. However, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 95.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Hanson of Flint]

96: Clause 33, page 28, line 37, leave out from “consult” to end of line 1 on page 29 and insert “—
(a) the Scottish Ministers,(b) the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, and(c) such persons appearing to the Secretary of State to represent the views of a body of constables in the United Kingdom as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment changes the consultation requirements in relation to the Secretary of State’s power to make regulations about the purposes related to policing in connection with which trailer registration data may be disclosed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. At present, we are not minded to support Amendments 97 and 98. I entirely understand the rationale behind them and many noble Lords have spoken powerfully in support of them. The concern we have is simply an operational one, which was hinted at by my noble friend Lord Harper.

The operational implications of these amendments may be very broad and far reaching. It seems to me that they would create a practical obligation for the UK Government to deploy biometric collection facilities or personnel across multiple jurisdictions, regardless of cost or feasibility.

Clause 34 applies specifically to authorised persons, who are, in the definition of the clause,

“a person authorised by the Secretary of State”.

That could come at an unknown and potentially significant cost. Are we to set up biometric processing hubs in every conflict-adjacent state? The noble Lord, Lord German, stated that that could easily be done, but I remain to be convinced. My noble friend Lord Harper was very pertinent about this. If the Government are to support this, I look forward to hearing from the Minister what the logistical burden on government would be?

Amendment 99, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, is a probing amendment designed to understand which organisations will have access to biometric information for the purposes of exercising a function relating to law enforcement. It brings with it the noble Lord’s customary focus and expertise in this area. It is very welcome, and I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to set out which agencies will have access to this information to fulfil the demands set out in Clause 35.

I once again reiterate that we need to make sure that, in the technical solutions we are discussing on this fundamental issue, we are firm and robust in taking steps to mitigate and ultimately end the crisis of illegal migration, not exacerbate it.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions and echo the point that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, has just made. There is a common interest between His Majesty’s Opposition and us on that issue.

The important point about Clause 34 is that biometrics are required as part of an immigration or nationality application to conduct checks on the person’s identity and suitability before they come to the UK. That is a perfectly legitimate government objective and the purpose of the clause is to establish it in relation to the powers in the Bill, which aim to strengthen the Government’s ability to respond flexibly in crisis situations in particular, as noble Lords across the Committee have mentioned. The Bill provides the power to take biometrics—fingerprints or facial images of the applicant—without the need for an application to be submitted. That has had a generally positive welcome from a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the signatories of the amendments, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord German. It is important to recognise that.

The proposals in the Bill will enable the Secretary of State to determine whether the person poses a security threat—this goes to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, which I will come back to in a moment—before facilitating their exit from another country. The Bill will ensure that the power to collect biometrics outside of a visa application process will take place only in tightly defined circumstances where individuals are seeking to leave a particular country due to a crisis or any other situation where this Government facilitate their exit.

Before I move on to the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord German, I hope I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, on the matter that he raised. Where biometrics are collected in connection with immigration or nationality applications, the police will be able to conduct their own checks against the biometrics captured under the clauses in this Bill. For example, the police currently have access to this data when the biometrics are enrolled into the immigration and asylum biometric system. They can then be washed against a series of police fingerprint databases, which include unified collection captured at police stations and other sets of images, including from scenes of crime and special collections, used to identify high-risk individuals. The noble Lord made this very point. This could be particularly important with individuals who have been involved in terrorism activity and appear on counterterrorism databases. The police make checks against the Home Office fingerprint database to help identify a person they have arrested and assess whether they might also be a foreign national offender. I hope the fact that those checks are undertaken will enable him to withdraw his amendment, based on that assurance. I look forward to hearing what he has to say in due course.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, raised important issues and tabled amendments which aim to defer or excuse the request for biometrics from overseas applicants. As I have said, biometrics are normally required to be taken as part of an application to conduct checks on the person’s identity. As the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord Cameron, said, that is important for security.

In all cases, it is the responsibility of the applicant to satisfy the decision-maker about their identity. A decision-maker may decide it is appropriate for an application to be made at a visa application centre, or to enrol the biometrics to be deferred or waived.

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[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I am grateful to the Minister. He will recall the example I gave of a two year-old boy in Sudan wanting to be reunited with his grandmother. It took 11 months to do that, and it required the transportation of information half-way across Africa in order to achieve it.

Will the Minister look at the countries generating the largest number of migrants who end up in boats in the channel, on irregular journeys, as some would put it—we all know that Sudan is one of the foremost of those countries—and see if we can do more to prevent people leaving in the first place by dealing with issues like family reunion in a more expeditious manner? I am not asking him necessarily to come forward with amendments to that effect, but even if he were to facilitate further discussions between his department and particularly the FCDO to see how that might be generated, that would be helpful to the Committee.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I will let my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti speak and then respond.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry to come in on the coat-tails of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, again. My noble friend the Minister discussed the need for flexibility. Surely the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would extend governmental flexibility to facilitate biometrics being taken in more places for family reunion cases. The noble Lord opposite was concerned that this would put an onerous obligation on the Secretary of State. However, the Secretary of State is the person who will authorise people, and he will not make these authorisations if he thinks they are impracticable or overly burdensome. Can my noble friend the Minister reflect on that in future and see this as providing additional flexibility and not an additional burden?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In response to both the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, I will repeat what I said in my preamble today: the Home Office is continuing to assess whether broader policy changes are needed to balance that humanitarian concern. The noble Lord made a very strong point about a child aged two and the length of time for a reunion—that will fall within our assessment of the broader humanitarian concern. We need to balance that with security requirements; however, in the case he put to us, a two-year old child would self-evidently not pose that type of threat.

This is important. I say to the noble Lords who tabled the amendments that the purpose of the clause is to provide the assurances that we have. I accept that noble Lords are testing that; however, while we will examine the points that have been made, I believe that there are alternative ways to achieve that objective. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, not to press her amendments. I also hope that I have satisfied the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

We are all on the same side here, and I appreciate the spirit of the Minister’s remarks. I appreciate that he stated that he will reflect on what we have said from all sides of the House.

It is true that there are alternative ways and that the UNHCR and the IOM can help. However, if you are in Afghanistan, there is no way that those organisations can help you until you have reached Pakistan. Getting across the Khyber these days is not easy, particularly if you are a child—and children make up more than 50% of the family reunion cases. While I appreciate the spirit of the Minister’s answer, I do not believe that it is a complete answer. I therefore press him to go on thinking about the points that have been made today.

I will cheat very slightly by saying that there is also a very direct way in which one could make on-site, in-country visa centres available—to reopen embassies. I am talking about Syria. I do not know why we do not have an embassy in Damascus now for all sorts of political reasons. Given its significance to the whole of the Arab world, we should have an embassy in Damascus. If we had an embassy, we would of course have a visa centre there. I hope that a wish to avoid paying for a visa centre in Syria is not causing the Foreign Office not to reopen the embassy in Damascus.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord brings great experience of the Foreign Office. He will know about this better than I do; I am a Home Office person rather than a Foreign Office person. I am trying to assure the House that, while the points that have been made are a fair challenge to the Government, we believe that the clause meets those obligations, providing flexibility and engagement with the International Organization for Migration, the UNHCR and others.

I mentioned Operation Pitting in Afghanistan in 2021. Some 15,000 people were evacuated and biometrics were collected post arrival in the United Kingdom. In the Sudan evacuation, just under 2,500 individuals were evacuated, with biometric checks taken in third-party countries such as Saudi Arabia. In Gaza, 250 British nationals were supported to exit and biometric checks were taken. The mechanism is there. I have had strong representations from across the Committee on this issue, but I am trying to explain the position of Clause 34. I hope that, with my comments, the noble Baroness can withdraw her amendment.

I have not forgotten the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who may want to intervene—he does want to, so I shall allow him to before I finally, I hope, wind up.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I thank the Minister. First, I am broadly reassured. There is just one area where I hope he might reassure himself and therefore me. I mentioned the Afghanistan IED material. It is probably difficult to talk about publicly, but if he could reassure himself that this biometric data had been checked against that database, I would be very reassured and that might help him too.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I have given a broad description. The police have access to terrorist databases with information and biometrics generally. I think it best not to talk, at the moment, about specific databases. I believe the IED database that he mentioned is covered by the proposals, but I will check with my colleagues who have a responsibility for that, rather than inadvertently give the Committee information that proves subsequently not to be as accurate as I would wish.

With that, I would very much welcome the noble Baroness responding and withdrawing the amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I think that is the third time the Minister has asked me to do so, and I will—but not quite yet. I say to those waiting for the next business that I will not be going down the side roads of the summit, what might happen on the northern shores of France or in Syria—much as I would like to, given my own heritage—or my noble friend Lord German’s escapades with portable biometric equipment.

A number of noble Lords, including me, have referred to the reliance on smugglers, which is ironic in the circumstances. I say again to the Committee—to the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord Cameron—that we are not opposing Clause 34. In fact, we are positively supporting it. We are not challenging the use of biometrics; we are looking at procedures and the candidates for the application of Clause 34.

The Minister referred to the possibilities of what can be done in exceptional circumstances. That is a term that I always find quite difficult; it seems to me that a family disunited in extreme circumstances should be regarded as exceptional. I understand that, from his point of view, that may be different. Frankly, to travel from Sudan to Saudi Arabia twice would be very exceptional in itself.

Given the support across the Committee for the concept of what is incorporated in these amendments, as the Minister said, I wonder whether this is something we might find a moment to discuss after Committee and before Report. There should be a way of taking forward how the procedures can be used, without disrupting the Government’s concerns. With that, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 97.