Syrian Refugees

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Of course, because it is necessary to distinguish between simple arithmetic and administration and policy. We are working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to ensure that appropriate numbers are brought in. The numbers vary from quarter to quarter, depending on those who are determined by the commissioner to be available for resettlement. The numbers vary.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, at a meeting in your Lordships’ House this morning with the Red Cross and UNICEF we were told that the figure of 10,000 unaccompanied minors who had disappeared in Europe is an underestimate. We were told that there is no system, that it is hit and miss and that many are still falling through the cracks. Will the Minister tell the House how many unaccompanied minors have so far arrived in the United Kingdom under the terms of the Dubs amendment, which was approved by the House of Commons and has now been enacted?

Modern Slavery (Transparency in Supply Chains) Bill [HL]

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Friday 8th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to support the Modern Slavery (Transparency in Supply Chains) Bill, a Private Member’s Bill, which is being promoted by my noble friend Lady Young of Hornsey. She is a formidable and effective parliamentarian with a long track record in contesting modern-day forms of slavery. Her eloquent speech today was an impressive extension of that record.

I support the requirements in her Bill which would be placed on commercial organisations and public bodies to include a statement on slavery and human trafficking in their annual reports and accounts, and the requirement for contracting authorities to exclude from procurement procedures economic operators which have not provided such a statement. With the United Kingdom Government awarding £45 billion of contracts annually, it is self-evident what leverage this policy could provide in forcing businesses to strengthen their slavery and trafficking statements. I was particularly pleased to see that, following the publication of the BMA’s report in March on the 150 billion medical gloves used globally, not least here in the National Health Service, the BMA is strongly supporting my noble friend’s Bill because there are significant concerns, as we have heard—the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to this—about labour abuses in many of the factories which produce disposable gloves.

This is a very modest Bill and a first step to addressing the concern of the Transparency in Supply Chains Coalition that early indications are that the majority of initial,

“company statements on modern slavery in supply chains appear not to meet the Act’s requirements”.

I am also glad that the Bill is before your Lordships as it enables us to have a broader and wider debate today. It could be used, as others have suggested, to meet the real expectations which we all had of the 2015 Act. Thanks to my noble friend Lady Young, we have the opportunity now to plug some of the gaps left in the legislation. Although the Government opposed my own amendment in 2015 proposing post-legislative scrutiny, my noble friend’s Bill gives us an opportunity to do some of that. We have already heard the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, refer to the extension of the role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. We have also heard some concerns raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss and others about other issues in the Bill: everything from domestic visas to the national referral mechanism and the central repository, which was alluded to by the right reverend Prelate and which I will return to in due course.

Seven years ago, in 2009, I accompanied my noble friend Lady Young to see the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to support her amendments in Committee to the Coroners and Justice Bill, which sought to make it a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment to hold someone in servitude; and to make it an offence for a person to subject another to forced or compulsory labour where the victim had been threatened with harm if they did not perform the work. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, could not have been more receptive or helpful, and I hope that that will set the tone for the response given by the noble and learned Lord to my noble friend’s Bill today.

These abhorrent practices were the issues to which we all returned during the passage of the flagship Modern Slavery Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I pay particular tribute to the right honourable Theresa May, the Home Secretary—I hope that that tribute does not do her too much damage—and to our own Home Office Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for their diligence and effectiveness in promoting flagship legislation which commanded support across both Houses and all sides of your Lordships’ House.

I might say in parenthesis that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, is due to return to the United Kingdom around 8 August, having walked a staggering 2,460 kilometres so far, from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, while raising money for UNICEF and awareness of the 2016 Olympic Truce. Although his sons tease him that he is more “Beer and Grills” than Bear Grylls, he and his wife have, through their earlier walks, already given more than £200,000 to charity.

Through the noble Lord’s work in government, a different gift will be the enduring legacy of the modern slavery legislation, not least the provision which requires businesses with a commercial presence in the UK and a worldwide turnover in excess of £36 million to report annually on steps that the business has taken to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not taking place in its supply chains or any part of its own business. However, it was the noble Lord, Lord Bates, himself who admitted that, admirable though the Act was, it would never be the last word on the subject. The US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, published only this week, refers to our legislation in the United Kingdom and notes:

“Media and NGOs report compliance so far has been incomplete, in part due to misunderstandings among businesses about what the law requires. Critics noted the lack of monetary or criminal penalties for companies that did not comply with the reporting requirement”.

It is obvious that there is a need for us to go further than we have done even in that admirable 2015 legislation. That need was underlined at a meeting held here, on Tuesday, in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association room. Mr Kevin Hyland, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, said at that meeting that the Act had been judged the world’s third-strongest response to this cancer of modern-day slavery, surpassed only by legislation in the Netherlands and the United States. Nevertheless, it is not perfect and is not a panacea.

During consideration of that legislation, at Second Reading, in Committee and on Report, I argued that modern slavery is, by its very nature, a global phenomenon. It cannot be tackled by one Government alone but requires a global solution and a concerted and coherent global strategy. We heard again from Kevin Hyland that, for every person trafficked in the UK, there are dozens of children in forced labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton mills, men and women enslaved in Mauritania, and Syrian children used as child labour in Lebanon. In addition, 90% of North Korean escapees are trafficked in China, women and children are exploited in bonded labour in India and Pakistan, and all over the world women and girls are trafficked into brothels. Your Lordships could recall, too, the fatal consequences of the collapsed garment factory in Rana Plaza in Bangladesh and ask themselves whether we are doing enough to deter suppliers that display such a fundamental disrespect for human rights.

On Monday, I met with representatives of India’s Dalit community—so-called “untouchables”—who form a significant proportion of the 21 million people the International Labour Organization says are in forced labour around the world, who in total produce an estimated $150 billion in illicit profits. Then there are the 45 million people estimated to be living in modern slavery by the Global Slavery Index. India and China are among the top five countries on that index. It was of course good that earlier this year Her Majesty’s Government ratified the Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, but perhaps the Minister will tell us when that protocol will come into effect and what penalties will accompany it.

Consider the abuses and exploitation of workers in such places as the cotton mills of Tamil Nadu in India. The mills in that region have supplied high-street retailers such as C&A, Mothercare and Primark. The Flawed Fabrics report, published by the SOMO Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and the India Committee of the Netherlands, details many examples of forced labour abuses. Verité, an organisation promoting fair labour, estimates that 85% of migrant workers in Malaysia alone are in some form of forced labour. Modern slavery is so common in the fashion industry that each of us is probably wearing at least one garment that has been made with some element of forced labour. Modern supply chains are complex, many steps removed from the company, and operate across multiple countries with different approaches to workers’ rights. This year both H&M, the Swedish multinational retail clothing company, and Next found modern slavery during an audit of their supply chain, specifically in the form of Syrian refugee children working in Turkish factories.

On Tuesday, at our meeting, the commissioner reminded us of how Nigerian boys have been lured to England with promises of riches from playing football in the Premier League but forced into slavery once they arrive. Many people, often immigrants and migrants, are forced into economic servitude, often wholly unremunerated or on paltry wages. It is thought that in industrialised nations, some 360,000 people work in such exploitative conditions.

This is to say nothing of the barbarity which often accompanies enslavement—and outright genocide— of Yazidis and Christians in Syria and Iraq by Islamic State. Their plight was highlighted again this week through the harrowing story of an 18 year-old Yazidi woman, Lamiya Aji Bashar, who was enslaved, raped, tortured and left partially blind and permanently scarred. She was given wonderful help by our colleague, my noble friend Lady Nicholson, who played a central role in Lamiya’s escape. Two of the other enslaved girls who attempted to escape with her were killed. Her nine year-old sister, Mayada, remains a captive.

On Wednesday this week, along with my noble friend Lady Cox, who has done so much on these issues, I raised the genocide being perpetrated by Khartoum in Sudan’s Nuba mountains and South Kordofan, where enslavement of Africans has been systematic and routine. Just last month, Sudan bombed the St Vincent school in El Obeid. This town in Kordofan is also where, in 1877, a girl aged seven who had been kidnapped in Darfur was forced to walk for some 600 miles, and was sold and bought by slave traders twice before she even arrived there. She was forced to convert and even her name was taken from her. To ensure permanent scarring, a total of 114 intricate patterns were cut into her breasts, belly and right arm. Subsequently, she was bought by Italians and ultimately freed. She then gave her life to the service of others, and in 2000 Josephine Bakhita was declared the patron saint of Sudan. The outcome of this 19th-century story may suggest the triumph of hope over cruelty, but her story, as a trafficked child, is one being repeated even while we meet.

On Wednesday, Mende Nazer, a former slave from the Nuba mountains, was in Parliament. She has described how she was abducted from her home in the Nuba mountains aged 12, and suffered rape and other forms of abuse while working for a family in Khartoum. In 2000, Mende was sent by her host father with false documents to work in the UK. She lived as a house slave for four months at the home of the Sudanese diplomat Abdel Al Koronky in Willesden Green, where she was not allowed to stray further than the front door. She managed to escape and applied for asylum. Her first application was denied two years after it was submitted, but that decision was reversed in November 2002. Understandably, Mende was traumatised by the events of her childhood and adolescence, and struggled to adjust to being free. Her story has been told in the book Slave by Damien Lewis, the TV show “I Am Slave” and the play “Slave—A Question of Freedom”. Some Members of your Lordships’ House may be familiar with that play, as extracts were performed here. Mende founded the Mende Nazer Foundation, which works with Nuba communities to build schools, wells and water purification systems, and she continues to be a fierce advocate of peace and human rights for the Nuba community.

Our Modern Slavery Act is exemplary, but we must not get into too much of a self-congratulatory mode until we have persuaded every country and every sector of society to play their part. Yesterday, the Home Office Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, wrote to me following up my Oral Question on 13 June, when I asked about the plight of 10,000 unaccompanied children who Europol say have gone missing in Europe. I am grateful for the letter, but it does not answer my question of what has happened to those children and whether that number is being added to. I will ask again, and repeat a question asked by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss on an earlier occasion. How many of the unaccompanied children whom we said we would take have actually arrived in the UK?

This is important because the anti-slavery commissioner told us this week that there is a direct connection between this vast exodus of refugees and vulnerable children, and modern-day slavery and trafficking. Indeed, this week the Dutch media reported that hundreds of children are living in what they described as a modern Oliver Twist story, some held against their will and others in thrall to their handlers, as they are forced to beg and steal their way around European cities. Some are just eight years of age. Fagin, the Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist should be the characters of Victorian literature, not 21st-century Europe.

On Tuesday, Mr Hyland said that Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, had told him that the figure of 10,000 is a conservative one and that the number is probably higher. Mr Hyland said that there is a “clear” link between trafficking and these crimes, and that it has become a “crime of choice”. I would be grateful if the noble and learned Lord would tell us what action is being taken by the Government about that and about the failure to refer the position of children through the national referral mechanism, especially where minors are involved, on to prosecution.

I realise that I have probably said too much in this debate and will bring my remarks to an end. I just want to press the Minister on something I raised in Committee and at Report and divided the House over, which is the national referral mechanism. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, said,

“we want to see these statements in one place so that people can monitor and evaluate them to ensure that the intended action takes place”.—[Official Report, 25/2/15; col. 1750.]

Sadly, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, contradicted that answer in answer to a question from my noble friend Lady Young when he said:

“There never was an intention to establish any central monitoring system with respect to these provisions”.—[Official Report, 13/4/16; col. 256.]

I ask the Minister today, in advance of the opportunity to table amendments in Committee, kindly to outline the Government’s current thinking on the creation of a central repository and tell us which of those two ministerial statements represents the Government’s position.

We must take the Government at their word that they wanted this to be flagship legislation, which is why my noble friend’s Bill is so welcome. I hope that it receives support from right across your Lordships’ House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I can understand the observation but, as the regulations are to be complemented by a code of practice that I believe is going to be brought into force in October this year, I do not think I am able to anticipate how compliance may occur. I will address in writing to the noble Baroness the question of whether there will be some form of requirement for compliance auditing in respect of that matter.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby raised the question of central repositories, and mentioned an instance of an organisation in Bristol. I am not in a position to go into individual cases at this time. As noble Lords are well aware, the Government have not launched an online repository, although we are aware of a number of proposals from third parties who suggest that they could develop a website to host these statements and to help people to search for them. I would like to complete a quotation that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, made regarding an answer I gave in April this year when I said:

“There never was an intention to establish any central monitoring system with respect to these provisions”.

That was in the context that there was never any government intention, which was perfectly clear. I went on to say:

“The Government have always been clear that it is for others to establish such a mechanism. We are aware of a number of organisations that propose to set up a central repository”.—[Official Report, 13/4/16; cols. 256-58.]

The right reverend Prelate went into some detail regarding a particular development in this regard, and I undertake to write to him on that matter because he raised a point that I am not in a position to address this stage.

The noble Baroness made the point, which was also made by other noble Lords, that these are early days. I remind your Lordships that this legislation came into force in October 2015, requiring companies to respond and to obtemper their Section 54 statement in their financial year from March 2016 onwards. We are at the very beginnings of this process.

That brings me on to a point made by my noble friend Lord Smith, who asked me a number of questions about the number of companies that have complied and the number that have relied upon Section 54(4)(b) of the Act and said they could not make a statement. It is simply too early to say what the position is regarding those matters. Those figures have not been collated and cannot be, because it is only from March this year that companies have had to address the question of compliance. I regret that I cannot provide figures at this stage.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, raised the issue of local authorities and government departments. I hope that to some extent I have addressed the point that she was making by seeking to explain that the original legislation was designed particularly for the private sector, and that there are parallel provisions. They may not be regarded as quite as absolute as those that apply to the private sector, but there are parallel provisions that we have under the procurement regulations and which are being developed by reference to the code of practice.

I turn to the observations from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Again, he referred to early indications of how the Act is being complied with. I underline that point: these are only early indications. We have to look further and consider how the Act is going to bed in. In my submission, it is too early to suggest that we should be tinkering with the legislation before we know how it is actually going to work in practice. He also alluded to the alleged lack of any monetary penalty for those who simply ignore the provisions of the Act. I remind noble Lords that the provisions are civil. The Secretary of State has the right to bring injunctive proceedings against a company that persistently fails to obtemper its Section 54 obligations, and if it still fails thereafter to obtemper those obligations it will be in contempt of court and liable to an unlimited fine.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Before the Minister leaves that point, he will recall that in fact the quotation was not mine; it was from the US State Department’s observation about the working of our Act. I believe it is important to get the question of penalties on the record so I am grateful to him for doing that, but will he return to the question of post-legislative scrutiny? He will recall that, when I moved amendments in 2015 on that subject, the Government opposed them. Is there not a strong case for at least saying that there will come a point where, just as there was pre-legislative scrutiny of this legislation, which was incredibly effective, there will be post-legislative scrutiny so that we can decide what is working and what is not? Then it will not be a question of “tinkering”, as he put it.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I understood that he had quoted the US source because he agreed with it, not because he simply wanted to put it into play. Be that as it may, I also observe that there is provision for review under the terms of the Act, albeit a five-year period. I am not suggesting that we wait that long because, as I indicated, I am perfectly content to sit down with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and discuss these proposals further. We are sympathetic to some of the suggestions, or at least to the aims, but we do not believe they require primary legislation. I am quite happy to discuss some of these aspects with her.

The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, referred to the fact that we must not forget the past or past wrongs. I entirely concur with that, but perhaps he can appreciate that I can give no commitment with regard to Memorial 2007. He asked a number of questions about the tasking of high commissioners and ambassadors with regard to these matters. If I ventured into the realms of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I would fear for my future. I might fear for it anyway, but I hope the noble Lord will appreciate that I am not in a position to address questions that fall within the ambit of that particular department.

However, I have just been given this information: “18 minutes”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

As I say, the public sector is subject to Section 6 of the Human Rights Act; that was merely one aspect of my explanation as to why it was not considered appropriate to extend this legislation to the public sector. The other issues concern the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the codes and guidance that apply in that context.

As regards the Secretary of State having resort to the courts to bring a penalty, we will see consumers, NGOs and peer pressure bringing out the question of who is complying and who is not. I will give one simple example. If a retailer on the high street discovers that their competitor is retailing T-shirts at 50p each when they know perfectly well that they cannot be produced for anything like that sum, and they persist in doing so, they will detect that something is amiss. As the large corporate retailers observed in the consultation period, they want a level playing field and their one way of doing that is to ensure that their competitors comply with Section 54 and, if they do not, to bring that to the attention of the Secretary of State.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Before the noble and learned Lord sits down, I raised with him the position of minors and those who have been referred through the national referral mechanism when it has not led to any kind of criminal action being taken on their behalf. Will he agree to write to me on that subject?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The noble Lord also reminds me that he raised the question of children coming from Europe under the immigration scheme. He may appreciate that I do not have figures on these matters for the purposes of this debate, but I will be content to write to him on the point he has just raised.

Refugees: Unaccompanied Children

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

We are working very closely with several agencies, but I will write to the right reverend Prelate specifically on that agency. I assure her and all noble Lords that, where there are agencies and NGOs which can assist in this process—I return to the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—in the interests of the children it is important that we identify those children urgently and resettle them.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that Interpol said that around 10,000 unaccompanied children have gone missing. Can he tell us the fate of those children, whether other children been added to their number and whether we take seriously the problem of children simply disappearing into the ether?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, of course the Government take very seriously any child going missing anywhere in the world in any place. The noble Lord spoke specifically about the 10,000 mentioned by Interpol. I will write to him with an update on that number. The important thing to identify is that there are some people who are taking advantage of vulnerable young children—people traffickers in particular—and that is why it is important that we see the kind of co-operation we are now seeking across all European states, particularly with our partners in France and Greece, to ensure that we identify the children who are most vulnerable and resettle them at the earliest opportunity.

Refugees: Unaccompanied Children

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

These children, we hope, will be fostered along with British children and educated alongside British children, and we believe that they will acquire the same outlook and values.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, reverting to the question asked by the right reverend Prelate, will the Minister confirm that Citizens UK, cited in the letter referred to by the right reverend Prelate, has said that there are 157 children in Calais, in the “Jungle”, in horrific conditions of mud and squalor, who have a legal claim to come to the United Kingdom because they have relatives here? Will he confirm that he will speak to his officials to see that all possible things will be done to expedite those claims, to see if they have the standing to come to the United Kingdom and start the academic year in September in our schools?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The French authorities are taking steps to improve the conditions in Calais, as noble Lords will be aware. As regards the precise number of 157, I cannot comment—but I can say that the Government have made provision in Calais to ensure that those unaccompanied children who have direct relatives in the United Kingdom follow the appropriate path, which is to register with the French authorities and proceed by way of the Dublin regulation.

Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall detail the House only briefly. I am most concerned about this issue. I fear that the Government have completely overlooked a very important point. You are not just detaining a pregnant woman, you are detaining the foetus inside that pregnant woman. The effect on that foetus is something about which science is increasingly concerned. The recent science of epigenetics tells us clearly that the foetus at certain stages during pregnancy is extremely vulnerable to the environment of the mother. Indeed, I have been involved in this area of research at Imperial College, and I shall refer briefly to research going on not only at Imperial but at the University of Singapore, which I shall visit later this week, and McGill University in Canada, among other places.

It turns out that at a certain stage in pregnancy, if a woman’s stress hormones, particularly cortisol, are raised, the effect on the foetus may be profound. Working after the ice storm in Ontario some years ago, Michael Meaney undertook cognitive tests on infants aged five, who had effectively been interned within their own houses because of the darkness and lack of electricity over a period of time. He found significant cognitive impairment. There is also some evidence that after massive stress to the mother, some children may behave aberrantly when they grow up —particularly, for example, being more aggressive.

Unfortunately, at this stage the science is not absolutely clear but there is a massive amount of evidence from work on rodents and some other animals. The evidence from human work is increasingly that certain stages of pregnancy—for example, once the foetus is identifiable in the uterus, usually at around 22 to 26 weeks—are a particularly vulnerable time. That is when stressing a woman may have a severely adverse effect.

For that reason, the Government need to recognise that they may be responsible for a heritable effect on that child and possibly even on the grandchildren of the mother. Until that is firmly worked out, I beg the Government to consider that internment, if it must be done at all, must be done only under the most serious circumstances. We cannot go back for women who have previously been detained in prison and other places, but in future we must make sure that we make law which is humane and amendable, so that we cause the minimum amount of damage to future generations.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to support the amendment moved so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, this afternoon. I supported her on earlier occasions when we debated these issues. I am particularly pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston, who has returned us to an aspect of the debate which we discussed at earlier stages.

Members of your Lordships’ House may recall the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, during our earlier debates. She focused on the effects on the unborn child of being detained in these stressful circumstances. I referred to work by the late, eminent psychiatrist, Professor Kenneth McCall, who described the effects later in life on children who had been affected by traumatic events that they had experienced in the womb. On the other side of that coin, of course, the world-famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin said that he believed that he learned his love of music during the time that he was in his mother’s womb. So it may be that the empirical evidence needs to be extended and much more work needs to be done around these things—but our own common sense and knowledge of our own human development probably take us in that direction.

But this is not just about concern for the unborn child. The noble Baroness quite rightly reminded us of the recommendations of Stephen Shaw, which were at the very heart of the debate when we looked at this earlier in our proceedings. He of course recommended that there should be an absolute ban—so this falls a long way short of his recommendations. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in her phrase, “very exceptional”, is reminding the Government that it cannot be right for us to have pregnant women held in detention in these ways.

I was particularly pleased, like the noble Baroness and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to read the remarks of the Conservative Member of Parliament for Enfield, Southgate, David Burrowes, who spoke so well in the other place yesterday. I hope that when the noble and learned Lord comes to reply, he will respond to the concerns that David Burrowes raised and to the remarks of the Royal College of Midwives—referred to earlier by the noble Baroness—which were quite categorical in saying that we should never keep women in these circumstances.

I have one or two questions to put to the noble and learned Lord. What kind of pre-departure accommodation will be made available when a pregnant woman is being held? Will he say a word about that and will he talk about how those particular needs will be met? Will he also assure us that pregnant women will not, for instance, as has happened in the past, be picked up in dawn raids, put in the back of vans and taken miles away to accommodation, with appalling consequences for the women in those circumstances? There are accounts of nauseous experiences, of vomiting and of people being incredibly distressed by those kinds of experiences. This should be in very exceptional circumstances, as the noble Baroness said.

Finally, I underline the point made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Lister, about the second part of Amendment 85E. An odd phrase has been included at this late stage to say that,

“a person who, apart from this section, has power to authorise the detention must have regard to the woman’s welfare”.

Those words—“apart from this section”—are, at the very best, ambiguous, and I really cannot see what point they have. Could the noble and learned Lord enlighten us when he comes to reply?

[Lord Rosser]

Perhaps I could add to the point just made and express the hope that the noble and learned Lord will not only respond to questions raised in this short debate in this House but be doubly determined to do so. I find it extraordinary that when our amendments were discussed in the Commons last night, although they have the not surprising procedure that a Minister opens the debate, there was no reply by a Minister at the end of the debate. So all the legitimate questions raised in that debate after the Minister had finished speaking were not answered at all by the Government. I know very little about House of Commons procedures —that is quite obvious—but it is certainly a fairly remarkable procedure to have a debate where questions are asked of the Government but there is no Minister replying at the end. I hope that that is a defect that the noble and learned Lord will be able to rectify when he replies to this debate.

We accept that the Government have moved on this issue to a position of not allowing the detention of pregnant women beyond 72 hours—or up to a week with the Secretary of State’s approval. This House of course wanted the Government to go further and provide additional safeguards, which were reflected in the amendments sent to the Commons. In the Commons last night, the Minister said that the Government had tabled amendments that made it clear that,

“pregnant women will be detained for the purpose of removal only if they are shortly to be removed from the UK or if there are exceptional circumstances that justify the detention”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/16; col. 486.]

As has been said, the Minister went on to say that the guidance will also make it clear that the guidance would also make it clear that the power to detain should be used only in very exceptional circumstances. Why does the government amendment passed last night in the Commons refer to “exceptional circumstances” and not to “very exceptional circumstances”, which is and will continue to be used in the guidance?

What in the Government’s view is the difference in this context between “exceptional circumstances” and “very exceptional circumstances”, since it is they who have decided not to use the same wording in the Bill as is and will continue to be used in the guidelines? Through her amendment, my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett seeks a credible and reassuring answer to that question, and I hope that the Government can provide it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I do not accept that. The purpose of the policy guidance is to lend emphasis to the test that is being applied, and that is what is happening here.

I shall move on to address a point raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Hamwee, which concerned the reference to the welfare of the pregnant woman. I emphasise that this provision is there as an additional safeguard. I will not claim that the draftsmanship of this clause is distinguished by its elegance, but its effect ultimately is clear.

In circumstances where it is thought that a pregnant woman may be detained, the party who may be exercising the right to detain will also have to have regard to the welfare of that pregnant woman before a final decision is made. For example, in circumstances where the pregnant woman has arrived at a remote port and there is nowhere in the vicinity that could properly be utilised to detain her when she is in a state of pregnancy, that factor must be taken into account—indeed, it must be a determining factor—in deciding whether to detain her. Somebody in a state of pregnancy arriving, say, at Heathrow can and should be detained because the circumstances are very exceptional and there are facilities to detain her in her state of pregnancy. However, if somebody arrived at a remote port where it was felt that there were very exceptional circumstances that would justify detention but where there was no suitable place for her detention, having regard to her welfare would mean that detention would not take place. I hope that that assists in explaining the purpose of the provision. It is an additional safeguard.

I turn to the question of and/or, which was raised in the context of whether or not detention should take place. Of course, the intended effect of these provisions, so far as pregnant women are concerned, is that they will, like all detainees, be detained only for the purposes of removal. Because there will be a time limit on the detention of pregnant women, all cases of detention of pregnant women will be necessarily short. Some of these cases will have exceptional circumstances attached but, by definition, not many. For example, cases at the border are quite likely not to have exceptional features. The clause as drafted therefore allows for the detention of pregnant women only when they can be removed quickly, or when they can be removed and exceptional circumstances pertain. It is merely to allow for the two circumstances—namely, that they can be quickly removed, or that they can be quickly removed and exceptional circumstances pertain. I hope that that explains the way in which that particular provision is drafted.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked about a further review. With respect, we have already had the review from Stephen Shaw, and he will be instructed to carry out a further short review about the implementation of these provisions. No additional or alternative review is being contemplated. Of course, the policy guidance that we have has been addressed already. The noble Baroness also referred to an FoI request. I cannot reply directly with respect to that request for the relevant statistics. But, of course, there is a process that can be followed through to a conclusion to determine that the FoI request is responded to in due time and in appropriate terms.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, raised a point echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the treatment of pregnant women and the effect of stress on them. Who can doubt how stressful it will be for a person who travels unlawfully to the United Kingdom in a state of pregnancy and then attempts unlawfully to secure entry to the United Kingdom? That alone is a source of stress. The question is how we deal sympathetically and effectively with such persons, particularly when we find that they are either vulnerable or pregnant. What we have developed here is a rational and reasonable approach to that very difficult question.

Finally, I address the question of facilities in the context of a planned departure. Our continuing view is that immigration removal centres remain the most appropriate places to detain pregnant women. Yarl’s Wood provides a high level of care for pregnant women. NHS midwives are available; general practitioners and nurses can be accessed seven days a week; there are strong links with local maternity services; and support is provided by a pregnancy liaison officer. In addition, there is a new care suite, staffed by a dedicated female member of staff, to attend to women in the state of pregnancy. Very few pregnant women are detained in these circumstances, but suitable and sufficient facilities are available and, as I observed earlier, where they are not for some reason available the welfare of the pregnant woman will be paramount.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I am grateful to the Minister. He will recall that he has been asked by three of us about those words that appear in the final section, in the penultimate line of the amendment, “apart from this section”. I wondered whether he could tell us why they had been included and what they add.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I did say that the relevant provision was not distinguished by its elegance. However, if noble Lords read the clause as a whole, it is intended to refer back to the person with the power of detention in terms of the Bill. How it is drafted at that point is dictated by how that is described in an earlier clause of the Bill.

Hillsborough

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, during the 27 years that have elapsed since the Hillsborough disaster, the double spectre of loss and injustice has hung over the people of Liverpool. Among the 96 who died were former constituents of mine, including a child. Those deaths of loved ones were compounded by the denial of criminal negligence, callous indifference, the subversion of our justice system, collective character assassination and demonisation. If the Minister has had a chance to read the material I sent him this morning, including the letter I sent before the game was played at Hillsborough which questioned the safety of the ground, he will realise that there are still many unanswered questions. I would be grateful if he told us more about the timetabling of the continuing inquiry, which is being held with great diligence and meticulousness at Warrington; I have had a chance to visit it and talk to the people about the way they are going about their work. Will he also answer the question which the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, put to him a few moment ago about the further judicial proceedings that will be necessary and the timetabling for decisions? We certainly cannot wait another three decades.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

To take the noble Lord’s last question first, it would certainly be inappropriate for me to straitjacket the CPS in any respect, but the CPS, the two ongoing inquiries and everyone involved in them are fully aware of the sensitive nature of this issue. As we said, there is a responsibility on all involved in these inquiries to make sure that we reach a decision which ensures that justice prevails as soon as is possible and practicable, but it is very much for the CPS to lead on this. I confess that I have not had time to reflect on the detail of the information the noble Lord sent to me this morning, but I certainly will, and look forward to discussing it with him.

Modern Slavery Act 2015

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The United Kingdom Government successfully campaigned to establish the first ever UN target for ending modern slavery: sustainable development goal 8.7, which was adopted in 2015 and requires Governments to take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour and end modern slavery and human trafficking. In 2015, the United Kingdom also became the third country in the world to ratify the International Labour Organization’s forced labour protocol, which commits to ending forced labour. Steps are being taken by the Home Office and other government departments to ensure the clarity of their supply chain.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, how does the Minister square what he has said to the House about not having a central repository in which people can find out exactly what the interests are of those involved in supply chains, with what his predecessor said when we debated an amendment I moved a year ago in your Lordships’ House? His predecessor said,

“we want to see these statements in one place so that people can monitor and evaluate them to ensure that the intended action takes place”.—[Official Report, 25/2/15; col. 1750.]

How does the Minister square what he told the House with what the anti-slavery commissioner, Kevin Hyland, said, which was quoted during those debates—

“I can confirm I fully support the suggestion of a website as the central repository for reports”—

and the evidence given to the House when the California experience failed because of the inability to have such a central website?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The Government have always been clear that it is for others to establish such a mechanism. We are aware of a number of organisations that propose to set up a central repository. Indeed, I understand that Unseen and the Business & Human Rights Resources Centre have collaborated to develop a central repository for transparency statements linked to the enhanced Modern Slavery Helpline, to be launched later this year.

Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, I, too, speak with a little, although rather different, experience of this matter. The church in Colchester, in the diocese where I serve, is at the forefront of welcoming refugee families to this country and is a wonderful example of what can be done when local government, the local church and local community work together. It is not just about welcoming people but about integrating them into a community. What we have started to do with adults and families we must urgently do with unaccompanied refugee children. As we have heard, it is estimated that there are 24,000 of them in Europe at the moment, many living on the streets and very vulnerable to trafficking, prostitution and other forms of modern slavery. This is the thick end of the wedge of the humanitarian crisis that we are facing, and it is an obvious and very identifiable need that we could do something about.

Why 3,000? Well, that feels like a fair share for the UK to take in terms of our size and place in Europe. This was debated in another place on 25 January, and the Government undertook to work with UNHCR to resettle unaccompanied refugee children from conflict regions and to set up a fund for this work. But of course this does not quite amount to an undertaking to bring unaccompanied children here, which is why this amendment is so important and why I am so happy to put my name to it.

The Government are concerned that, if we take unaccompanied refugee children, their families might claim asylum for family reunification at a later date. Yes, this might happen—but against this, we must look at the plight of these 24,000 children right now. The church, therefore, with others asks the Government to work with UNHCR to bring refugee children who are in extreme risk to the UK in addition to the other pledges that we have made. The hard truth is that at the moment there are no refugee children like this from Europe being resettled in this country.

Clearly, if this were to happen, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, mentioned, the availability of foster parents will be an important issue. But I assure noble Lords that this is another area where the church, other faith groups and other charitable bodies stand ready, able and willing to help. Just last week, I was with a priest in Rayleigh who has fostered two children. One is a boy of 14 who is seeking asylum in this country, having escaped conscription in Eritrea for an unspecified and unlimited period. I spoke with him and was amazed at how, even after a few months, he is integrating into British society and feels that he has a future. There are also charities such as Home for Good which help with the work that we could do. Like the Kindertransport in 1938, we, too, could be part of a story of hope and generosity for children abandoned, bereft, perplexed and in danger in Europe today. This is a small but beautiful thing that we could do.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, like the right reverend Prelate I am a signatory to this amendment. I am delighted to be able to offer my support to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who made a compelling and eloquent case in support of Amendment 116A.

In opposing this, the Government have used various arguments. One is that you cannot distinguish between groups that suffer, but all of us who think about that for very long know that it is at best a disingenuous argument and at worst an unworthy one. The noble Lord referred to the other argument that the Government use about so-called pull factors. In the case of children, surely that cannot outweigh all the points that the noble Lord has just advanced.

Then there is the question of numbers. I was looking today at the total number of refugees who have come to the United Kingdom and the total number who have come out of Syria. Some 4.8 million refugees have come out of Syria over the past five years. Turkey is currently hosting some 3 million refugees, and we will no doubt hear more about this later in the Statement that will be given to the House. Before anybody else suggests that this country is being swamped, just look at the numbers: 5,845 Syrians plus 1,337 under the vulnerable persons scheme is 0.15% of the total. So to ask just for 3,000 unaccompanied minors to come into this country is far from being unreasonable.

In Committee on 3 February, I asked the Minister about a report which had appeared in the Daily Telegraph and Observer newspapers which reported the comments of Brian Donald, Europol’s chief of staff. He said:

“It’s not unreasonable to say that we’re looking at 10,000-plus children, who are unaccompanied and who have disappeared in Europe ... Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don’t know where they are, what they’re doing or whom they are with”.

He said that 10,000 was likely to be “a conservative estimate”.

Arising from those shocking and disturbing figures, I hope that the Minister will tell us when he comes to reply what discussions the Home Office has had since 3 February with Europol about the children who have disappeared and what percentage Europol believes to have been unaccompanied. If thousands of child migrants have simply vanished in Europe while we have argued about how many angels you can fit on the top of a pin, it will be a lasting stain on our collective reputations.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also referred to foster parents. I hope that when he replies the Minister will tell us what discussions he has had with local authorities about promoting fostering arrangements for these children. For obvious reasons, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also referred to the Kindertransport. The reputation of politicians and diplomats from that era is redeemed by the extraordinary bravery and determination of men such as Sir Nicholas Winton, the diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and Eleanor Rathbone, “the refugees’ MP”, as she was known. This year is the 70th anniversary of her death.

In 1938, after Kristallnacht, she established the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees. Two years later, on 10 July 1940 in a six-hour debate, she intervened on no fewer than 20 occasions to insist that Britain had a duty of care to the refugees being hunted down by the Nazis. She said that a nation had an obligation to give succour to those fleeing persecution—in her words,

“not only in the interests of humanity and of the refugees, but in the interests of security itself”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/7/40; col. 1212.]

In words that have an echo in the debates we have been having during the course of this Bill, she wrote that discussions about asylum seekers and refugees,

“always … begin with an acknowledgement of the terrible nature of the problem and expressions of sympathy with the victims. Then comes a tribute to the work of the voluntary organisations. Then some account of the small, leisurely steps taken by the Government. Next, a recital of the obstacles—fear of anti-Semitism, or the jealousy of the unemployed, or of encouraging other nations to offload their Jews on to us”.

It is hard not to see the parallels. The debates about the Kindertransport continued in Parliament until literally hours before war broke out. In 2016 we should do no less than those who preceded us.

The amendment would require the Secretary of States to relocate 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children in European Union countries to the United Kingdom. These vulnerable young people have already had traumatic experience of the chaos and violence of war, the abandonment of hearth and home, horrendous journeys and separation from families, with some placed into the hands of smugglers and people traffickers and some facing exploitation of every kind. They are entitled to international protection and to respect for their rights as refugees—even more so than adults. Surely the lifeboat rule must apply.

Nelson Mandela once said:

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”.

Many of us will be dead when these children come to maturity, but they will never forget, as the noble Lord who moved this amendment has never forgotten, the values that made their futures possible. I am very happy to support an amendment that says the very best about the values of this country.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, as one who signed the amendment, I am delighted to follow the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Alton. The heart beats strongly on this issue, but it has to beat strongly in the future as well. I imagine that as the years go by, with all sorts of issues such as climate change, war and famine, we will be discussing this issue time and again. We must somehow sort out our approach in the long term, and this is an opportunity to do so. It is an opportunity to say to 3,000 children, “You are welcome in our country”. It is an opportunity to show the world that we are not going to be dragged kicking and screaming into receiving refugee children but that we are happy to do so.

It is seven or eight months since Save the Children started its appeal for 3,000 child refugees, and now we have the chance to bring it into being. What an opportunity for us in the House of Lords today to say, “Yes, we welcome children”. The message will be carried to the Commons, and I do not see that they will be able to resist joining in with that welcome.

Alternatively, we could be hesitant and obstructive and say no, but I do not know what would influence anyone to vote against this amendment. Why should anyone go into the Not Content Lobby against children? Your Lordships had grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers and fathers—surely we can look at other children who are less fortunate than our own and say, “Yes, you are welcome, and we in the House of Lords will raise the banner of hope”. That will demonstrate that we are determined to tackle this problem, not only to Dunkirk, Calais and other places but also to the future.

Let us be brave. Let us have a unanimous vote of welcome today. We do not have to vote against this. We do not just have to say no. I do not know how on earth anyone who is a parent, a grandparent, an uncle or an aunt will be able to say, “We are going into the Lobby to stop these children coming over”. I am delighted to be able to support the amendment.

Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who have both signed my amendment. When we debated family reunion in Committee, the only crumb of comfort that the Minister could offer was that the relevant application form had been simplified and better guidance provided for caseworkers. For that small mercy, I am grateful.

Since the official text of the Dublin III regulation, which I have seen, runs to some 13 or more pages of official prose, it is very difficult for laypeople to understand. It was disappointing that the Government saw fit not to accept the very mild amendment from the Labour Front Bench that simply asked for a review of the rules governing family reunion to be laid before Parliament. For this reason, I feel fully justified in bringing back my earlier amendment. This benefits only those people already registered as refugees or in clear need of international protection. It therefore chimes in with government policy to help the more vulnerable people to come to Britain.

The effect of Amendment 120 would be to assist families that are already split, with some members here and others overseas. By widening the categories it would prevent additional families becoming split; for example, by the current exclusion of children over the age of 18. It seems important to make family reunion possible for children of all ages—including adopted children, who are often currently refused. It should be possible also for parents, grandparents, siblings and civil spouses. In all cases, it could be a condition that there be no recourse to public funds. Your Lordships may have noticed the case of Mrs Myrtle Cothill, aged 92, who recently won the right to remain here despite Home Office opposition. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause is important for securing legal aid for this category of refugees.

It can hardly be said that the Dublin process has been a resounding success. How are refugees to know about it? Let us take as an example those in the north of France. Most of them cannot speak French, and anyway distrust all officials, whether French or English. They and other split families need a simple, well-publicised procedure that overcomes a lack of knowledge of where close family members are and how to contact them.

Ideally, those in Britain should be able to sponsor their next of kin, while those overseas should be enabled to contact a central clearing house. This would prevent what the Minister calls “hazardous journeys”, both cross-channel and from further afield. It would prevent people falling into the hands of traffickers and supply safe and authorised routes.

It may be argued that the Secretary of State already has discretionary power to give exceptional leave to enter or remain outside the normal rules. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out earlier, that power is used very sparingly, with only 12 cases known in 2014. Has the Minister a more recent figure than that? Once again, I ask: how can split families know that such a power exists? Further difficulties arise over access to British embassies and consulates, travel to which can be expensive or impossible. Even those who can reach our posts face heavy fees for visas and problems of documentation.

The British Red Cross laid out eight feasible improvements in its briefing dated January of this year. Have these been discussed and, if so, with what result? When I put down a Written Question calling on the Government to meet the Red Cross, the reply was, “We are constantly in touch”. I think that we are entitled to know what has happened.

There is strong support for the amendment throughout the country. It is backed not only by the Red Cross but by Save the Children, Amnesty International, the Refugee Council and the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. Taken together, these organisations have more members and supporters than the Conservative Party. I said in Committee that increasing family reunion provides a triple benefit: to the families themselves; to social cohesion in our communities here; and to the Government by increasing family incomes and reducing demands on statutory services. The Government’s offer to take in 20,000 Syrians who have been approved by the UNHCR looks good, but will they ask the UN body to give priority to family reunion cases, even where the relationship may be more remote than is set out in the amendment? We want happy families, not just families who will be sad and isolated when they come here.

I realise that this amendment may be too widely drawn and is sure to draw the fire of my noble friend Lord Green of Deddington. If that is the case, I urge the Minister to take the amendment away. Either he can give us positive assurances that the procedures for family reunion will be radically improved without delay or he can undertake to come back with a text for Third Reading which puts the matter beyond doubt. I would particularly like to hear the Government’s thinking on involving the UNHCR in family reunion and on the chances of having a clearing house for applications from overseas. I do not propose to press this amendment, but I understand that Amendment 122A, which I also support, may well go to a Division. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 122A, which my noble friend Lord Hylton has just referred to and to which he and the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Roberts of Llandudno, are also signatories—to whom I am grateful—seeks to address the inadequacies of the existing rules on family reunification to prevent families being torn apart and loved ones left behind because of age. It is an issue which we debated extensively in Committee and, in returning to it, I will try to be succinct and simply tell the House what makes this amendment different from that just described.

The Red Cross has provided me with case studies which eloquently illustrate why such a change is necessary, and I am happy to make them available to any Member of your Lordships’ House but particularly to the Minister, who I know has not only been doing sponsored walks for Save the Children, as we heard in relation to an earlier set of amendments, but has done a sponsored walk for the Red Cross as well, walking most of the way across China. So I know that he has great admiration for those organisations. I shall not take the time of the House this evening by going through those examples, but I commend them to him. My noble friend has also set out the points about Dublin III and how the rules apply in that context, so I shall not exhaust the time of the House on that either.

Like the amendment tabled by my noble friend and those tabled in the other place—I pay tribute to the right honourable Yvette Cooper MP and those who have championed this cause in the House of Commons—Amendment 122A seeks to reunite those families but through a very different approach from that proposed in the amendments tabled previously. Instead of expanding the categories of family members who would qualify under the existing family reunion route, the amendment proposes a limited resettlement scheme based on schemes already operated, such as the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. The scheme would be specifically for the purposes of reunited family members and priority would be made for those family members who are currently unable to access existing routes to family reunification.

Amendment 122A seeks to address a key concern of the Government: the difficulty in determining how many refugees might be entitled to come to the UK if eligibility for family reunion were widened. The amendment provides for a managed and limited programme of resettlement specifically for the purposes of family reunification and it would provide a legal, safe route for families to be reunited while limiting the number eligible through such a route. Indeed, Amendment 122A is intended for family members in clear need who have no route to reunion under the existing rules. It states that those covered should include children—adult or minor, grandchildren, parents, spouses, civil or non-marital partners and siblings, and that the scheme should apply to family members of both refugees in the UK and British citizens whose family member has fled conflict or persecution.

The amendment would apply to refugee family members in Europe, such as those in Idomeni or Calais, as well as in Syria and other regions. Your family remains your family, whether in Beirut or Calais, and as the Red Cross and others will testify, the need is no less great.

Under this provision, the Secretary of State would be able to set a limit on the numbers accepted through this route after consultation, and surely that is the key concern of people like my noble friend Lord Green. He has raised the point during our proceedings. Clearly this goes nowhere near as far as the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Hylton, but it is a genuine attempt to meet the Government’s concerns about open-ended commitments. Any number set would be in addition to the existing commitment to resettle 4,000 a year for five years from the camps around Syria.

It has been noted that the family reunion rules provide for a discretionary category which can sometimes apply to other family members in compelling and compassionate circumstances. Ministers have taken a position that these rules are sufficient to reunite those families which do not fall within the existing narrow categories, but the reality is that this has always been an exceptional and little-used category. The number of family members admitted through this route has in fact fallen during the refugee crisis. In 2011 some 77 were admitted in this way, and as my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, have pointed out, in 2012 that number had fallen to just 12.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

Would the noble Lord clarify subsection (3) of the proposed new clause, where I see that the word “may” is used? Is it contemplated under this amendment that those persons falling within the categories shall be admitted, or is it contemplated merely that the power to admit is discretionary?

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I am happy to reassure the noble Viscount that it is the latter. That is why it does not use the word “must”; it is purely discretionary. It is deliberately designed in that way to meet the concerns that the Government have expressed. It does not go as far as I personally would wish it to and it does not go as far as the amendment moved by my noble friend, but it is an attempt to open up the possibility of helping families in this predicament.

Let me conclude by saying that this is an exceptional measure for exceptional times. It does not seek to change the rules in perpetuity; rather, it would provide a solution for those families which have been torn apart by the present crisis. It would provide a managed route to reunite refugee families and to allow British citizens who are desperately worried about loved ones stuck in conflict regions or makeshift camps across Europe the opportunity to be reunited. It also leaves the final decision, reverting to the point made by the noble Viscount, in the hands of the Secretary of State. I hope that if the Government are unable to accept my noble friend’s amendment, they will respond to this amendment in the spirit in which it has been tabled.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment. I was going to talk about the human rights implications, but given how the time is getting on I shall simply quote from one of the many emails that I am sure we have all received imploring us to support one of these family reunion amendments. This email rather touched me: “I have a very personal reason for my concern in that my family were privileged to foster a 14 year-old boy from Afghanistan for five months. He has now moved to an area of England where there are other people who speak his language, but he became such a special part of our family and we remain in very regular contact with him. His story was truly heart-breaking. His mother had been killed and he had been injured by the Taliban when he was 10 years old, and then in recent months his village in eastern Afghanistan had been targeted by Daesh/Islamic State who were forcing teenage boys to fight for them. His father felt there was no choice but to arrange for him to leave, otherwise he faced almost certain death. We have the utmost admiration for this boy. His courage and determination are just amazing and he is trying so hard to make a new life for himself. We are extremely proud of him and know he will be an amazing asset to this country. His sadness at being parted from his family is beyond comprehension, however, and that is where I would like to appeal to you”. I replied and in the response I received the lady said: “I have never before felt moved to contact anyone in this way, but this subject has affected me hugely”.

I take great heart from the fact that there are members of the public with direct experience and who care so much. I hope that we will do the right thing if it comes to a vote.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

121: After Clause 63, insert the following new Clause—
“Conditions for grant of asylum: cases of genocide
(1) A person seeking asylum in the United Kingdom who belongs to a national, ethnical, racial or religious group which is, in the place from which that person originates, subject to the conditions detailed in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, shall be presumed to meet the conditions for asylum in the United Kingdom.
(2) The adjudication of whether the group to which the person seeking asylum belongs meets the description specified in subsection (1) shall be determined by a referral to the High Court after consideration of the available facts.
(3) Applicants for asylum in the United Kingdom from groups designated under this section may submit their applications and have them assessed at British missions overseas.”

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, serendipity, or the way the dice fall, means that the House is having to hear rather more from me than I—or, no doubt, the House—would wish at this time. I thank my noble friend Lady Cox, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, and the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, for their support on this amendment, either today or when we discussed it in Committee on 3 February.

Before setting out the case for the amendment, I draw the attention of the House to one important change in the wording since Committee, following the helpful advice of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Hope of Craighead. They suggested that the consideration of evidence of genocide and the declaration that genocide has been committed should be made by the High Court, rather than the Supreme Court. We have therefore incorporated that change into the text. I also thank the Minister for meeting me to discuss the amendment.

During the debate on 3 February, I cited the decision of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to declare the atrocities which had been committed by ISIS—Daesh—against Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria to be a genocide. The very next week, the European Parliament decisively passed a similar resolution, recognising the killing of minorities in the region as genocide. Since our Committee debate, on 9 March Congress and the State Department received a 300-page report detailing more than 1,000 instances of ISIS deliberately massacring, killing, torturing, enslaving, kidnapping or raping Christians. It had similar evidence about the plight of Yazidis, along with the findings of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Last week, the American House of Representatives, by 393 votes to zero, declared that grotesque and targeted beheadings, enslavement, mass rape and other atrocities against Christians and other minorities indeed constitute a genocide. I will not read the entire resolution of the House of Representatives but the last phrase says that,

“the atrocities committed against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities targeted specifically for religious reasons are, and are hereby declared to be, ‘crimes against humanity’, and ‘genocide’”.

Later in the week, on behalf of the White House, Secretary of State John Kerry, said:

“Naming these crimes is important”,

and that Daesh, in targeting these minorities with the purpose of their annihilation, is,

“genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions”—

in what it says, what it believes and, indeed, what it does. He called for criminal charges to be brought against those responsible.

On Friday last, in a leading article, the Daily Telegraph urged the British Government to recognise the reality of what is under way, saying that the West has a “moral duty” to name this genocide for what it is. It said:

“Sadly, the British government still refuses to do this, insisting that it is up to judges to define genocide. Next week a group of peers will table an amendment to the immigration Bill triggering just such a judicial decision. Government opposition to this amendment would seem odd following Mr Kerry’s intervention”.

For many months, much of the same evidence that Congress and the European Parliament have seen and acted upon has been available to the United Kingdom Government and this Parliament. It has been catalogued in Early Day Motions tabled in another place, during evidence-taking sessions here, and in letters to the Prime Minister from distinguished and eminent Members of both Houses, including the former Lord Chancellor. Anyone who has heard first-hand accounts from Yazidi women of enslavement and rape or read the reports of mass graves, abductions, crucifixions, killings and torture cannot fail to be moved, and I know we will hear more on that from the noble Baronesses, Lady Nicholson and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who have both met Yazidi women.

Last week, Antoine Audo, the Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo, said that two-thirds of Syrian Christians had either been killed or driven away from his country. Zainab Bangura, the United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict, has authenticated reports of Christian and Yazidi females—girls aged one to seven—being sold, with the youngest carrying the highest price tag. Last May, one 80-year-old Christian woman who stayed in Nineveh was reportedly burned alive. In another Christian family, the mother and 12 year-old daughter were raped by ISIS militants, leading the father, who was forced to watch, to commit suicide. One refugee described how she witnessed ISIS crucify her husband on the door of their home.

Nearly two years ago, on 23 July 2014, I warned in an opinion piece in the Times:

“The last Christian has been expelled from Mosul … The light of religious freedom, along with the entire Christian presence, has been extinguished in the Bible’s ‘great city of Nineveh’ … This follows the uncompromising ultimatum by the jihadists of Isis to convert or die”.

I said that,

“the world must wake up urgently to the plight of the ancient churches throughout the region who are faced with the threat of mass murder and mass displacement”.

But the world did not wake up and for those caught up in these barbaric events, the stakes are utterly existential.

Genocide is never a word to be used lightly and is not determined by the number of people killed but by specific genocidal intent. The position of the British Government has been to insist that declarations of genocide are not made by the Government but by the international judicial system, yet there has been no referral of any evidence by the Government to any court in Britain or elsewhere. This has become a circular argument which can be ended only by Parliament.

The Government’s position was reiterated in another place last week, when the Minister of State for International Development, Mr Desmond Swayne, was on the verge of misleading the House with a Parliamentary Answer that only states could commit genocide. He said:

“I believe that the decision as to what constitutes genocide is properly a judicial one. The International Criminal Court correspondent, Fatou Bensouda, has decided that, as Daesh is not a state party, this does not yet constitute genocide”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/3/16; col. 937.]

I hope the Minister will correct this today, or say whether it really is the position of the Government that no non-state party is capable of committing genocide under the 1948 genocide convention.

My understanding of what Fatou Bensouda actually said is that the ICC does not have territorial jurisdiction under the Rome statute over crimes committed on Iraqi or Syrian soil. This means that, in order to investigate, the ICC would need a referral from the UN Security Council. In fact, the prosecutor’s statement in April last year appeared to lament the absence of a referral of the situation from the Security Council, and concluded with the assurance:

“I stand ready to play my part”.

Surely, as a permanent member of the Security Council, we can trigger that by proposing a resolution. We should be leading the process, yet on 16 December last, in answer to a Parliamentary Question I tabled, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, told me:

“We are not submitting any evidence of possible genocide against Yezidis and Christians to international courts, nor have we been asked to”.

As for referring the matter to the International Criminal Court, she told me in the Chamber on the same day:

“I understand that, as the matter stands, Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor, has determined not to take these matters forward”.—[Official Report, 16/12/15; col. 2146.]

In these circumstances, the genocide convention becomes nothing more than window dressing, which is an insult to the original drafters and ratifiers, as “never again” becomes a hollow slogan devoid of meaning.

This brings me to the heart of the amendment. The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, in the wake of some of the worst atrocities in history. It was the culmination of years of campaigning by the Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, and recognised that “international co-operation” was needed,

“to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge”.

When we added our signature in 1970, it laid upon us the moral and legal duty to,

“undertake to prevent and to punish”,

genocide—surely the crime above all crimes.

The minorities in the Middle East, whose very existence is under direct and immediate threat, deserve more than a promise that the international judicial system will investigate without any action to enlarge the said system. If the amendment passes, a judge from the High Court will be able to examine the available evidence and determine whether ISIS’s actions should be recognised as genocide. That in turn would require the Government to take concrete steps to protect the victims of ISIS and seek to bring the perpetrators to justice. Our cross-party amendment seeks to establish a mechanism for the United Kingdom to determine whether acts of genocide are being perpetrated and would then afford those subject to genocidal acts appropriate consideration when it comes to application for asylum.

The provision would not oblige the Government to take in any more refugees than the number to which they have already committed themselves but, within that number, it would prioritise those who have been the victims of this crime above all crimes. It would enable declared victims of genocide to make their applications from overseas, and if the UNHCR is unable to facilitate this, we would expect British overseas missions to assist those affected. In light of the situation unfolding in the Middle East, where minorities are being annihilated before our very eyes, this is of vast importance.

I visited the genocide sites in Rwanda—a salutary and chilling experience. I am always struck that President Clinton and British Ministers of the day say that their failure to identify and take action to prevent that genocide, which led to the loss of 1 million Tutsi lives, was their worst foreign affairs mistake. In the past two years, two serving Foreign Secretaries have similarly lamented the failure of the international community to decry the genocides in both Rwanda and Bosnia quickly enough, despite the overwhelming and compelling evidence that existed. The noble Lord, Lord Hague, speaking as Foreign Secretary on the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, said:

“The truth is that our ability to prevent conflict is still hampered by a gap between the commitments states have made and the reality of their actions”.

His successor, Mr Hammond, said last year that the horror of Srebrenica,

“demands that we all try to understand why those who placed their hope in the international community on the eve of genocide found that those hopes were dashed”.

The reality has been that once it is recognised that genocide is being committed, serious legal obligations follow, and states have proved reluctant to engage with their responsibilities. There are really only two options here. If there is no genocide, our obligations under the genocide convention have not been triggered, but if there is, how could we sleep at night having disregarded the chilling lessons of past genocides and endless equivocating? Instead of doing everything in our power to bring this unmitigated suffering to an end, are we content simply to let these matters pass?

By passing the amendment today, we have an opportunity to prevent history from repeating itself, to close the gap between the commitment we made in ratifying the 1948 genocide convention and the reality of our actions, not to once again dash the hopes of beleaguered and abandoned people exposed to the crime above all crimes. We also have the opportunity to make a step change by moving beyond aerial bombardment to a consideration of justice, to demand that, under our commitment to the rule of law, however long it takes, we will bring those responsible for abhorrent mass executions, sexual slavery, rape and other forms of gender-based violence, torture, mutilation and the enlistment and forced recruitment of children to justice. I beg to move.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Baroness, but the reality is that under the refugee convention and the European convention we could not in legislation discriminate between particular communities, such as the Yazidis, the Christians or the Shia Muslims. It goes further than that because we know that at present there are something like 4.8 million Syrians displaced in the Middle East, in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. It goes even further than that because, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, observed much earlier in the debate on this Bill, according to the United Nations there are something like 19.5 million refugees in the world at present, whether they be in Darfur, Burma, the Middle East or elsewhere. The figure I had was 20 million, but in the context of such a catastrophe, perhaps 500,000 does not make an enormous difference. The reality is that this amendment would, on the face of it, open the United Kingdom to immigration by all 19.5 million people who could claim to be in that position. Noble Lords may scoff, but that is why it is so important that we examine the implications of the legislation proposed. Indeed, I have only to cite the example of Germany to point out the consequences of unintended action.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Will the noble and learned Lord point out where in the amendment it specifies anything about Yazidis or Christians? The amendment says that if there is evidence of genocide, that evidence can be laid before a High Court justice for the justice to determine whether there is genocide. Will he also say what is non-discriminatory about the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme in which we single out a group of people and say that we will give them special protection and support, quite rightly in my view, but impose a cap, as we do, by saying there will be only 20,000? Is this not scaremongering of the worst order?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect to the noble Lord, it is nothing of the sort. On the last point, the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme does not discriminate on the grounds of nationality, ethnicity or religion and therefore does not contravene either Article 3 of the refugee convention or Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That is where the distinction lies.

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[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Before the Minister sits down, if such a Motion was put forward, would it have the Government’s support?

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, ended on an interesting note, which the noble Lord just questioned him about: if a Motion were placed before your Lordships’ House, which presumably would have to be done by the Government, because such procedures are not open to—

[Lord Keen of Elie]

If I may, with respect, correct the noble Lord, the Motion would not be required to be from the Government but could be laid by any Member of this House.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Would the noble and learned Lord like to remind me of the last time a Motion of that kind was tabled on the Order Paper and selected for debate in your Lordships’ House without the support of the usual channels and the Front Bench?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am not aware of the date when that was last done, but, as the noble Lord observed, it would be a matter of securing the support of the usual channels.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, it seems that we are back into the circular arguments that we have been having. The last time I put the question to the Government and asked whether they had any intention of submitting evidence of genocide in Iraq and Syria to the Security Council and through it to the International Criminal Court, they said:

“We are not submitting any evidence of possible genocide against Yazidis and Christians to international courts, nor have we been asked to”.

This argument just goes on and on. That is why, in February, I and other noble Lords from across the House tabled the Motion in Committee. Normally when a Motion is tabled in Committee, the Government respond by saying, “We will discuss with the movers of the Motion ways in which we can take it forward”. Although I had a meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Bates, it was interesting that the first comment of one of the officials who was present was, “We have never done this before”, as though that was an argument for never doing it in the future. I am disappointed that this evening neither the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, nor the Front Bench opposite have offered an opportunity to discuss how an amendment might be framed that could find favour with the Government. It seemed to me from what the noble and learned Lord said that under no circumstances would any such move be countenanced.

I was shocked when the noble and learned Lord started to express numbers that were in the realms of fantasy—the idea that 19 million people in the world might take the opportunity. It would be impossible to do that. First, a genocide would have to have been declared by the High Court. It would then have to go before the Government, who would have to decide how they wanted to treat it, and they could then impose exactly the kind of cap that they have imposed in the case of the numbers of people being admitted to this country under the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme. Therefore there is no question that this amendment would open those kinds of floodgates. As the Minister said, that was not the intention of the movers and it would not be the effect of the Motion. Surely, therefore, we now have an opportunity to do something about this. If the Government had said, “We will take this away and look at it between now and Third Reading”, I certainly would have responded positively to that; or we can pass this amendment, and between now and Third Reading the Government can either amend it or send it to those in another place and let them decide how they want to deal with the issue.

Under the 1948 genocide convention, we have three duties. We have a duty to prevent, a duty to punish and a duty to protect. There are two strands in the amendment. The first is to bring about the punishment of the offenders, and the second is to help some of those people. We cannot help everyone; I recognise that. But no one is more vulnerable than someone who is the subject of genocide. We have heard the speeches of the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy, Lady Nicholson and Lady Cox, and we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and many other noble Lords who have set forward the case that genocide is indeed under way and we should therefore do something about it.

I do not claim that the amendment is perfect. I do claim that we cannot keep on going round and round in these circles. Although I recognise that I may well be in a minority this evening, it is better to be in a minority, say what one believes to be right and seek the opinion of the House. I will do that in a moment, because I agreed with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford when he said that it is our duty to gather up the fragments. I agreed with my noble friend Lady Cox when she said that we should not be silent in the face of evil; with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, when she said that we should break the cycle of inertia; and with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, when she asked why we are last in coming forward. We have the opportunity to break the cycle of inertia this evening, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

122A: After Clause 63, insert the following new Clause—
“Family reunion: refugee resettlement programme
(1) The Secretary of State shall make provision for a refugee resettlement programme to be established under section 59 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (international projects), to provide for family members of persons resident in the United Kingdom to travel to the United Kingdom for resettlement.
(2) The Secretary of State must consult as appropriate before specifying the number of places to be offered under the programme.
(3) Under this section, family members that may be accepted for resettlement under the programme include—
(a) children,(b) grandchildren,(c) parents,(d) spouses,(e) civil or non-marital partners, or(f) siblingsof British citizens, persons settled in the United Kingdom, or persons recognised as refugees or who have been granted humanitarian protection.(4) Priority for family reunion resettlement under this section shall be given to family members not eligible for family reunification under existing rules.
(5) Persons resettled under this section must be in addition to any persons resettled under any commitment on refugee resettlement which exists on the date on which this Act is passed, and must include persons from within the rest of Europe.”

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, we debated Amendment 122A some hours ago, when it was coupled with Amendment 122. It deals with family reunions, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The amendment would: limit the fee that the Secretary of State may charge for the making of an application to register a child as a British citizen to the cost incurred in dealing with such an application; provide that, where the child applicant is being assisted by a local authority, there shall be no fee; and, where the child and/or her parent or guardian has insufficient means, provide a power to waive that fee, because no such power exists at present.

The aim is to remove the barrier to children registering their entitlement to British citizenship and to other children applying to register at the Home Secretary’s discretion that is all too often created by the Home Office fee. The amendment follows on from that moved by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in Committee, and I am pleased to see that he is very patiently still in his place. Like him, I am grateful to Amnesty International UK and the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens—or the project, for short—for drawing this issue to my attention and for their help with their amendment.

The noble Lord drew attention to the problems faced by an estimated 120,000 children in the UK without citizenship or immigration leave, despite the fact that many of them are entitled to British citizenship and many others could and would be likely to be registered at the discretion of the Home Secretary, if they were to apply. More than half of these children were born in this country. Unlike the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, this one is not limited to children in care; it is concerned with all children entitled under the provisions of the British Nationality Act 1981 to be registered as British citizens, and those others who may be registered if they apply. Given the various provisions in this Bill and its predecessor concerning such matters as the right to rent, access to employment and access to higher education, the importance of registration for these children is clear.

The project has much experience of the considerable barrier to children registering as British created by the fee, which rose last Friday to a staggering £936. When I tell people about this, they look at me open-mouthed and say that they had absolutely no idea. Nor, to be honest, had I until I was made aware of this issue. Not surprisingly, many children, and their parents and carers, cannot afford it, many local authorities are unwilling to pay the fee for children in their care, and it is unclear why local rather than central government should bear the cost of these children’s registration. The overall result is that children who could and would be British miss out and in many instances later face the prospect of being removed from the country in which they have lived for all or most of their lives.

The project provided some examples, including that of Danny, who was three years old when he was brought to the UK and was in receipt of assistance from social services. He had been offered a place at drama school but had no leave to remain. He was referred to the project as he was approaching his 18th birthday, and he was able to apply to register as a British citizen. However, he could not afford the fee and the local authority refused to pay it. Had one of the project’s volunteers—and it is totally volunteer-run—not paid his fee, Danny would have lost the opportunity to be registered on turning 18. Surely it is not right that a basic right such as this should be subject to the vagaries of a kind volunteer meeting the cost of accessing it.

It is especially shocking that by far the greater part of the fee is simply profit to the Home Office, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out in Committee. The cost to the Home Office in registering a child was calculated to be £223 in the previous financial year. The relevant impact assessment states that this cost will rise by more than 20% in 2016 to £272, although it is unclear why. The impact on children is not considered in that assessment, and their best interests, and the Government’s statutory duty to promote their welfare, are not considered. The assessment and other government statements failed to acknowledge the fact that in many of these cases what is being charged for is a pre-existing entitlement under the British Nationality Act 1981, and that the Home Office has not been asked to grant but is merely being required to register the child’s citizenship. In any case, making any profit, let alone one of £664, as is now the case, from a child’s entitlement to be registered as British is surely unconscionable, especially when it leads time and again to preventing children from registering at all.

A recent Written Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, explained:

“The power to set fees that are higher than the cost of processing applications is contained within The Immigration Act 2014, which provides that the Home Office may take into account not just the cost of processing an application, but also the benefits and entitlements available to an individual if their application is successful and the cost of exercising any other function in connection with immigration or nationality. The Home Office does not provide exceptions … because the Home Office considers that citizenship is not a necessary pre-requisite to enable a person to exercise his or her rights in the UK in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. British nationality applications are not mandatory and many individuals with Indefinite Leave to Remain decide not to apply. A person who has Indefinite Leave to Remain may continue to live in the UK and travel abroad using”,

existing documentation. Again, the Home Office is failing to distinguish the registration of a pre-existing entitlement from other citizenship applications, particularly naturalisation applications. It is comparing apples with oranges. Those children who are entitled to register are not requesting some benefit from the Home Office but are requiring it to record what Parliament as long ago as 1981 determined to be their right. It is true that those who may apply to be naturalised are not in the same position, and it is correct that many of those with indefinite leave to remain—a prerequisite for applying to naturalise—do not necessarily want or need to be naturalised. Those entitled to register are entitled in the same way as those born in the UK to a British or settled parent are entitled to British citizenship.

The Written Answer seems to imply that the registration of British citizenship is of no real importance to these children, yet in his post-Committee letter the Minister acknowledged the importance of local authorities enabling and encouraging children in their care who need to do so to make a timely application to regularise their immigration status or to register as British citizens. It can be critical for some of these children, because they risk losing their entitlement if they do not register before turning 18. Moreover, the guidance on the MN1 form on which children register as British states:

“Becoming a British citizen is a significant life event. Apart from allowing a child to apply for a British citizen passport, British citizenship gives them the opportunity to participate more fully in the life of their local community as they grow up”.

The project and Amnesty believe this amendment to be crucial to ensuring that children are not denied their right to citizenship because of their inability to pay. They are right to call our attention to what they dub profiteering on the part of the Home Office at the expense of children.

I imagine that the Minister is planning a response on the lines of the recent Written Answer from which I quoted. I hope I have shown why that Answer does not invalidate the case for this amendment. I would be grateful if he could take on board in particular what I said about this being a pre-existing entitlement. There is a real issue here. It may well be that we cannot resolve it today—today now being tomorrow—but I would be grateful if the Minister and his officials could look into it, ideally in discussion with the project and Amnesty, and consider coming back at Third Reading with a considered response. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has just said to the House. As she indicated, this is an issue I raised in Committee. It has been the subject of correspondence between the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and me and of Parliamentary Questions which I have tabled.

If Amendment 145A is accepted, it would mean that in setting a fee in respect of an application for the registration of a child as a British citizen, the only matter to which the Secretary of State could have regard is the cost of processing that application. The amendment provides that fees regulations must provide for the fee to be waived where the child is in care or otherwise assisted by a local authority. It provides for discretion to waive the fee in other cases on the grounds of the means of the child, his or her parents or his or her carers.

In many cases where children have a claim to be registered as British citizens, no application for such registration has been made. Under a number of provisions of the British Nationality Act 1981, to which the noble Baroness referred, the power to register the child exists only while the child is a minor. After I raised these cases in Committee, the Minister wrote in reply on 3 February and described what he called—the noble Baroness referred to this—the importance of local authorities enabling and encouraging children in their care who need to do so to make a timely application to regularise their immigration status or to register as British citizens. So there is nothing between us in that sense. We both agree about the desirability of that.

However, I have had drawn to my attention, as has the noble Baroness, that in many cases the reason why no registration has taken place is precisely the size of the fee. As of 18 March 2016, the fee is £936. In these cases, where the child and/or the parents cannot afford to pay or the local authority will not pay, this money is simply beyond their means. The fee is set above the cost of registering the child, which the Home Office calculates to be £272, while in 2015-16 it was just £223. There is a massive discrepancy between that figure of £272 and the £936 that would be charged to the child in order to be able to register in these circumstances. How on earth can we justify that phenomenal difference? It seems to me like profiteering on children. It is quite indefensible and it is hardly a good advertisement for one-nation Britain.

Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that a very serious proposition is being made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I think that we ought to be very careful about it. The proposition being made is that, however valuable this clause is, it should not be passed because we cannot trust the police to carry it through properly. That is a very serious criticism. I have not been alone in my criticism of the police; I think that, particularly in London, there are very serious criticisms to be made. However, if we are to legislate on the basis that we cannot trust the police to behave properly towards the citizens of the United Kingdom, we had better look much more seriously at what we are doing with the police. We really should take it more much more seriously than is proposed here.

I think that many things happen in the police which are unacceptable. It is still true that relationships between the police and the press are far too close, and many of us have significant criticisms. But if the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggests that the police cannot carry through a necessary activity to ensure that illegal immigrants are properly dealt with and that the activity should be carried through not by the police but by immigration officials—who, evidently, can be trusted to behave in a proper way—then this is an argument not for this Bill but for a wholesale Bill about the nature of the police.

I do not believe that the British people would be very happy if this House decided that it would legislate in a way which was less likely to meet the needs as this Bill presents them simply because we have now accepted the inherent racism of the police force. That seems a fundamentally dangerous step to take. I would be very unhappy if the Minister were willing to be led down that route. Yes, of course, we have to have the toughest guidance; yes, of course, we have to make sure that whenever racist or discriminatory activities are found to be in the police they must be dealt with considerable severity; but we have to solve this problem—if it is a problem, and I am prepared to accept the views of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, from his own experience—by reform and training in the police, not by saying that we will have less efficient laws because they cannot be properly and safely implemented. Are we going to say, therefore, that there should be no stopping of cars being driven in a dangerous condition because the police feel that they would be more likely to stop some kinds of people rather than others? We really cannot run a state on that basis. If this is a real problem—and I am certainly not saying that it is not—it is a problem which has to be dealt with by the Home Office and the police force, and not one which should lead us to make laws which are different from those that we would have made because we are afraid of the way in which they would be implemented.

Therefore, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take this very seriously, not for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has presented but for the reason that a democratic society has to have the laws which it needs irrespective of the differing feelings of people of differing ethnic or any other backgrounds. We are touching something fundamentally dangerous. It is precisely that kind of feeling that causes the resentment which one finds widely in Britain—a belief that we do not legislate in a colour-blind manner but in a manner which takes the view of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and therefore stops us legislating as effectively as we should. I hope that my noble friend will be very careful in the way in which he responds to this debate.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, in briefly following what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has just said, I say that there is a case for examining the way in which policing is conducted, and I agree with him that it is unfortunate that we have to have a debate in the context of the Bill. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, as I did in Committee. That is based not so much on a belief that all our police officers behave badly, but more on the experience I had more than 30 years ago, in 1981, when the Toxteth riots erupted. They did so in part because of bad policing, and indeed they were linked directly to the stopping of a young black man on his motorcycle in Lodge Lane in Toxteth. The riots led to a thousand policemen being hospitalised in Liverpool as a consequence. Everyone who looked at the events in Brixton and in Liverpool afterwards, notably Lord Scarman, found that the overuse of stop-and-search powers had been part and parcel of the problem.

I guess that the question for the House today is: will this take us back to that kind of regime? That is what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is asking us to address. I must admit that I looked carefully at the letter kindly sent by the Minister as part of the compendium of letters he has written during the passage of this Bill. They run to page 146, which probably tells noble Lords quite a lot about the volume of correspondence we have had, and that is to the Minister’s credit. I just want to mention two phrases set out in the letter because they help to bring some clarity to what is intended in the Bill and perhaps might reassure both the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon. The first is that,

“it is important to bear in mind that the police will use the powers contained in these clauses reactively, after they have stopped a vehicle for an objective reason”.

Later in the same letter, talking not now about vehicles but about the entry into people’s homes, the letter states:

“The officer could then only enter premises where there are reasonable grounds for believing the driving licence could be found there”.

All this revolves around the words “objective” and “reasonable”. When the Minister replies to the debate, I hope that he will explain in a little more detail what kinds of circumstances he envisages as objective and those he regards as reasonable. That might give us greater confidence that the powers suggested here will be used properly.

I conclude by saying that it would be dangerous to presume that the police of our country are incapable of implementing the laws that Parliament passes in an objective way, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was right to remind us of that. But we must remember our story. In 1981 Sir Kenneth Oxford was the chief constable for Merseyside. Many people believed, as I did myself at the time, that the policing had been overly aggressive. It is notable that the young assistant chief constable who subsequently came to Merseyside, Bernard Hogan-Howe as he then was, would later rise to become chief constable of the area. He introduced very sensitive community policing, and I suspect that the extremely effective policing he developed during that period is one of the reasons he was appointed the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Good community relations were built up during that time. I would therefore be very nervous of anything that destabilised that delicate balance, which is why I seek further clarity about the reasonable and objective use of these powers.

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[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 80 in my name. Amendment 79 provides for health surcharges levied on non-European Economic Area migrants to be payable in instalments. The annual £200 charge for every adult and child came into effect last April and is payable upfront for the whole period of a visa whenever one is renewed. Since leave to remain, if granted, is normally for two and a half years, the upfront fee payable is £500 per person. The health surcharge comes on top of breath-taking application fees that will rise this Friday from £649 to £811 per person—a huge increase of 25%. To illustrate this, a mother of three will need to find £3,244 for the application fee plus a further £2,000 for the upfront health charge for the period of the visa. Families unable to pay these eye-watering sums cannot renew their visa and are faced with a stark, heartbreaking choice: find the money or face destitution or deportation. That is some choice.

In Committee, the Minister had three reservations about my simple, humane plan to avoid vulnerable people placing themselves in debt or poverty to pay the Home Office. He said:

“Upfront payment of the full amount … is … far simpler than requiring migrants to make multiple payments”.

Yet the provisions of the amendment need apply to only a small number of cases where the migrant simply does not have the resources to pay upfront. These cases could be the exception rather than the rule. The Minister also said:

“It would be difficult, complex and costly … to enforce payment of the charge once the visa had been issued”.

I simply do not accept that because the Home Office could make the granting of the migrant’s leave to remain subject to and conditional upon the fees for the previous leave to remain having been paid in full according to any agreed payment schedule. The Minister’s third concern was that:

“If you offered interest-free credit in the commercial world … most people would take advantage of it”.—[Official Report, 1/2/16; cols. 1613-14.]

Could the Minister name any other service for which he or anyone else would expect to pay fees two and a half years in advance? He cannot justify driving people into the arms of loan sharks and payday lenders just to make the Government’s life simpler. He must surely see the case for at the very least annualising these payments.

Amendment 80 seeks to extend the categories of migrant exempted from the health charge to include those who have fled domestic violence, and dependent children. The Minister recently visited the Cardinal Hume Centre and saw first-hand the outstanding work it does with migrants with little money who are trying to navigate the law. He heard about one client the centre helped: a mother of four children who works for the NHS. She did not have the £5,700 to pay the admin and health fees for herself, her husband and her four children, so first she got an overdraft and then she borrowed the remainder of the money. She now faces crippling debt and is saddled with not just that debt but also the stress of knowing that in 30 months she must find even more money because the fees will have increased when the family need to reapply for their visas. Her case demonstrates that the fee-waiver system available for migrants unable to pay is simply not working. The Minister saw for himself a number of examples of this on his visit.

Of course, the position of these people who have fled domestic violence is even worse. They face an invidious choice between borrowing the money to pay the fees or returning to their abuser. The existing exemption for victims of domestic abuse is far too narrow as it protects only people with British spouses. I hope that the Government can prove their compassion this afternoon by making a positive response to both these amendments, including giving an assurance that they will at least review the operation of the fee-waiver system. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, who introduced Amendments 79 and 80 with her customary conviction and compassion. She made an extremely eloquent case in their favour but also illustrated them with a poignant and vivid example from her visit to the Cardinal Hume Centre. Having spoken in Committee to urge the Minister to visit that centre with the noble Baroness, I pay tribute to him for going there and seeing it first-hand. I know how much the centre appreciated that.

Incremental payments would be a huge step forward for families that find themselves trapped—the sorts of families that the noble Baroness described in her remarks. Migrants such as those at the Cardinal Hume Centre are not trying to cheat the system or avoid paying the fees to remain. They recognise that there are rules they must adhere to and that they must pay the charges. In fact, those who can will indeed save for the visa application fee. However, the burden of having to source the necessary funds to pay upfront the application fee and the health surcharge—which many are still unaware exists—is unsurmountable for many of those involved, especially families.