Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Hamwee

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 95 is about the use of information supplied by HMRC. I acknowledge that many—possibly most—people believe that if information is given to a government official in one part of government, the Government as a whole have it. That is not the case, and we do need to take care with protecting data. Clause 28(1) allows for the use of any of an organisation’s functions, and the amendment would limit it to the functions for which the information is supplied, it being for the purpose of any other functions of the persons in in subsection (3).

I have explained that extraordinarily badly. This comes of thinking that you can write brief notes instead of a complete speech, which I try and avoid for Committee. I refer noble Lords to the authority of the Bill. Basically, I want to limit the use of information provided under the Bill and to ask the Minister how this will work, how it will be policed and what sanctions, what remedies, there are if information is misused.

Amendment 190—in his absence, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson—raises again the issue of a firewall to protect vulnerable people. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Katz, is going to hear a repetition of points that I made on the Employment Rights Bill, because they are relevant here too. The objective is to protect workers who are in particular need of protection because of the abuse, the exploitation, they are experiencing. The amendment would restrict the use of information disclosed for enforcement purposes—enforcement against abuse or exploitation—regarding a subject of abuse who is seeking support, and of information regarding a witness to that exploitation. I shall return to witnesses in a moment.

I became aware during the passage of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 of the conditions to which some overseas domestic workers were subject. Slavery was the right term for them, and a change in the rules was made. It was minor and, frankly, quite inadequate. Our law did not and does not protect migrant workers—not just domestic workers but those in agriculture, care, health and so on—as it should. They are particularly vulnerable to abuse, not just because of the consequences if their existence comes to the attention of immigration authorities, but because of their fear of the consequences. People who do not know their way around the system, who are in fear of any authority figure, are very open to unscrupulous employers who can make threats—the threats may have no foundation at all—that the person may be detained or deported, or that the person’s children will be taken away, so they cannot take the risk of reporting abuse and exploitation. I am told by the sector that this fear is not ill-founded. There is evidence that data is often shared between labour market enforcement agencies, the police and Immigration Enforcement.

The current situation has a widespread effect: mistrust by migrant communities prevents police and labour inspectors doing their job properly, which drives down conditions for all workers. It is not impossible to deal with this. Secure reporting has been implemented in the Netherlands and Spain. I understand that Surrey Police has implemented a firewall, and the Greater London Authority is undertaking a pilot. During Committee on the Employment Rights Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, mentioned that the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found that allegations raised during inspections were not investigated by the Home Office. As she said, the rights of all workers are only ever as strong as those of the most vulnerable.

One comment made during that debate was that nobody should fear. Another comment—with which, of course, I agree, and which came from the Conservative Benches—was that one of the gravest human rights abuses is modern slavery and human trafficking, and that vulnerable individuals risk slipping through the gaps. The Minister on that Bill argued that blocking information-sharing

“could have unintended consequences and make it harder for the vulnerable individuals concerned to get the help they need and deserve”,

and that the right balance was

“between protecting vulnerable workers and maintaining the integrity of our immigration system.” ”—[Official Report, 18/6/25; col. 2078.]

I would argue that the system actually deters those vulnerable workers from seeking protection, and the clear view of those working in the sector is that the current position is to their very considerable detriment.

The immigration White Paper states:

“We recognise the challenges migrant victims of domestic abuse can face”—


“domestic” is quite a wide term in this context—

“and we will strengthen the protections in place to support them to take action against their abusers, without fear of repercussion on their immigration status.”

This is an opportunity to make an adjustment that would make a very considerable difference to people who do not always get the help they deserve from those who are in a position to make that difference.

The Conservative Front Bench has tabled Amendment 188. I am really intrigued as to why it wants to amend the Data Protection Act, given paragraph 4 of Schedule 2, which we on these Benches have often opposed. We will see. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief, because I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, particularly about the position of domestic migrant workers. This is something we will come back to at later stages of the Bill, but as the noble Baroness has raised it now, I just put on record how much I agree with her. The noble Lord, Lord German, and I recently met with Kalayaan, which does so much extraordinary, wonderful work in this field. We were reviewing with it how things have changed—and what else needs to be changed—in the years that have passed since 2015. I have with me a publication it issued called 12 Years of Modern Slavery, the Smoke Screen Used to Deflect State Accountability for Migrant Domestic Workers.

I know that the Minister agrees with Kalayaan’s 2015 findings, because there is a photograph of the Minister and me, both of us looking considerably younger, alongside our redoubtable friend, now retired from this place, Lord Hylton. We were celebrating the passage of the 2015 legislation but recognising that more still needed to be done. I will not quote at length from the report. If the Minister has not seen it, I will be more than happy to share my copy with him, so that he can study the photographs and see the effects of too much engagement with Bills such as this.

The report says:

“Government data tells us that from 2005 to 2022, the number of visas issued to migrant domestic workers has remained consistent at around 20,000 per year”,


so this does affect a significant number of people doing significant work. Kalayaan urged the Government to take immediate steps to amend the Immigration Rules and reinstate the rights provided for under the pre-2012 visa regime. Among those is the right to renew a domestic worker visa annually, subject to ongoing employment. That is a reasonable demand. I hope that at some stage during the proceedings on the Bill, the Minister will see whether there is a way to address that issue. So I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has said.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Hamwee

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support almost all the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I said to him yesterday that I thought that the committee’s work had been—I thought carefully about this word—painstaking.

My name and that of my noble friend Lord German are not to a couple of the amendments because he and I had already tabled amendments on the same point when the noble Lord’s were tabled. My noble friend will pursue the point of a defence of not doing action if one was not doing so for financial gain—the same point, in effect, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has made. As my noble friend has said, and we are going to go on saying, the clauses in the Bill should not sweep up asylum seekers, whom one could also describe as victims of smugglers.

I have Amendment 51A, which I picked up from the JCHR report, to add to the list of excepted articles in Clause 15. One of the things that people in this situation, and I am thinking of the asylum seekers now, must feel that they are losing is their dignity. The JCHR suggested adding—“At a minimum”, to use its words—hygiene products. If one is without hygiene products, that adds to one’s sense of a loss of dignity, a loss of looking after oneself as a real person with a proper place in the world, and so on. It is a matter of proportionality.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

The noble Baroness is quite right. This issue was specifically raised by Mr Alex Sobel, Member of Parliament for Leeds, who encouraged us to include those words about hygiene. It was based on exactly what the noble Baroness has just said about our concern for human dignity. We talk a lot during these debates about human rights, but let us also remember human dignity.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I think one has a right to human dignity, actually. That is probably a point at which I could stop and commend the amendment.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Hamwee

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I appreciate that this group looks rather indigestible, so let me put it in a different way. I will give the amendment numbers so that they are there in the Official Report and it is understood that they have to be read as packages, each relating to a different clause but on the same point. To Clause 13, as well as Amendment 29, I have Amendments 34, 36 and 37. To Clause 14, I have Amendments 40, 43, 45 and 48, and to Clause 16, I have Amendments 52, 54, 58, and 61.

Chapter 2 of this part of the Bill creates various new offences, and these amendments are addressed to what is an offence and what is a defence, and in brief, who has to prove what. As the clauses are constructed, there is an offence if, to take Clause 13, P supplies a relevant article, and P will have a defence if he/she/they show that they had a reasonable excuse. The explanatory statement puts it more elegantly than I could—I credit the Public Bill Office with this; the drafting defeated me, and it was extremely helpful. That is not saying that I do not take responsibility—of course I do. As the explanatory statement says, the amendment

“makes the lack of a reasonable excuse a component part of the offence of supplying articles for use in immigration crime, thus placing the burden of proof upon the prosecution”,

which, of course, is normally the way we do things in this country. If the supply is without reasonable excuse—the prosecution has to show this—P would not be prosecuted if he has a reasonable excuse. One would not start on that journey.

I am very uneasy that the burden is on P. Innocent till proved guilty should be the position, not the equivalent of guilty until proved innocent. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to support this string of amendments, which has been introduced very digestibly by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and deals with the reverse burden of proof and reasonable excuse.

Earlier in our proceedings, I referred to the publication of the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights last Friday. It deals at some length with these issues that the noble Baroness has laid before your Lordships. These amendments seek to strengthen the safeguards in these new offences. Paragraphs 20 and 25 to 28 of our report—to which I particularly draw to the attention of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson—deal specifically with defences and the potentially reasonable excuses referred to in this group of amendments.

Clause 16 provides two defences, the first requiring the person to show that the

“action or possession was for the purposes of a journey to be made only by them”.

If it applies simply to the individual—and not, for instance, to couples travelling with children—it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us the estimates, and I accept that they can only be estimates, of how many channel crossings in small boats are made by one person travelling alone, how many by couples and how many by family groups. I understand that we might not be able to have that information in Committee, but if we could have it between now and Report, I would be very grateful.