War Criminals: International Mechanisms for Prosecution

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hylton

Thursday 21st March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will make proposals for international mechanisms to identify and prosecute suspected war criminals, in particular in the Middle East, in consultation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant parties.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Hylton, and with his permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hylton

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.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hylton

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, at Second Reading I said that indefinite detention without charge was completely repugnant to public opinion in this country. Therefore I welcome Amendment 216 and other amendments in this group. It is hard to imagine a subject which calls out more loudly for review than this one. My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, with his long experience of inspecting official institutions, pointed out very strongly that for years now we have been subject to drift on this very subject. We have excuses, palliatives and promises, which have fairly seldom been fulfilled.

It may help if I give some figures on the length of time that people have been held. During the full year 2014, 857 people were held for longer than six months, and by the time that those people had been released, 26 had been detained for between for between two and four years and one person had been held for over four years. Of course, these figures do not include those held in prisons under immigration powers. Of the 161 people who were released after more than 12 months, only 70 were actually removed from this country, while 86 were granted temporary admission, temporary release or bail. That throws some light on the seriousness of how things have been running lately.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly intervene to support the speeches that have been made thus far in favour of these amendments. In doing so, I will return to something my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham said earlier on about the inappropriateness of our procedures. It seems that the cart and the horse have been confused here. Why did we bother asking Stephen Shaw to carry out his review and examine these procedures while we were steamrollering through legislation? Surely we should have waited for that review in the first place.

The terms of reference for the Shaw review were interesting in themselves. They were to “review the appropriateness” of the Government’s,

“policies and practices concerning the welfare of those who have been placed in detention, whether in an immigration removal centre or a short-term holding facility, and those being escorted in the UK”.

That goes to the very heart of this legislation. Surely it would have been wise to await the findings of that review before the other place considered this legislation, and before we in Committee were asked to look at 64 recommendations and consider which of those could be incorporated in amendments, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said before.

Stephen Shaw called for a complete overhaul of the Rule 35 process, a supposed safeguard against the detention of victims of torture which—as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, implied in his remarks earlier on—he said is not working. That something as serious as people who have been subject to torture is now being addressed in amendments to legislation at this stage shows again the inappropriateness of the procedures we are using.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hylton

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 134B, which is in my name. Last year, on what became the Modern Slavery Act, we made progress even on the long-vexed question of foreign—that is, non-EU—domestic workers coming to this country on the tied, short-term visa or working for diplomats here in London.

The Government appointed Mr James Ewins QC to do an independent review of the effects, in practice, of the restrictive visa. He took evidence and considered whether there was sufficient protection from abuse of those workers’ fundamental rights, such as would amount to modern slavery and human trafficking. In November last year, as has been mentioned, on the balance of the evidence, he found that the tie to a specific employer without the right to change or to apply for a visa extension was incompatible—I repeat, incompatible—with reasonable protection, as was mentioned previously by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. Today, his Amendment 133 goes a long way to meeting the Ewins recommendations. I believe that it repeats the wording of my previous amendment from last year, which was approved by your Lordships on a Division during the progress of the Modern Slavery Bill.

However, I wish to go just a little further and be a little clearer on the instructions to the Secretary of State. My amendment would implement the improvements by changes to the Immigration Rules, making them variable but without recourse to new primary legislation. Proposed new paragraphs (a), (c) and (f) in my amendment are the same as those in Amendment 133. My paragraph (b) provides for an,

“information session within one month of the commencement of their visa”.

This would allow the workers to be fully informed of their rights. Checks could be made at that time that they had contracts of employment and understood them, that they had access to their passports—a point which has been mentioned very often in previous debates —and that they knew how to raise complaints.

My proposed new paragraph (d) would probably not apply to workers on a six-month visa unless the employers themselves obtained extensions of stay, as does in fact quite often happen. It would also be helpful for diplomatic employees and in some irregular situations where time had passed by but there were strong grounds for allowing settlement. It would, furthermore, make possible applications in this country without the applicant having to return to another country and therefore apply from outside the United Kingdom.

My proposed new paragraph (e) would not apply automatically but would helpfully assist family reunion and parental ties—for example, in cases where small children had been left behind in the country of origin. This is obviously a very hard choice but one into which mothers may be forced by extreme poverty. With these explanations, I trust Amendment 134B will commend itself to your Lordships and provide the Government with satisfactory guidance on how to implement the Ewins recommendations. This protection for highly vulnerable people is urgently needed, and further delays would be quite unacceptable.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to support Amendment 133, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and to say a word in support of my noble friend Lord Hylton’s Amendment 134B. In March last year, at the last gasp of the then Modern Slavery Bill, your Lordships voted down the amendment that my noble friend has referred to, which would of course have provided greater protection for domestic migrant labour in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, described. My noble friend Lord Hylton has of course persistently championed this cause, and this new legislation gives us an opportunity to rectify what is a long-standing injustice.

In March, those of us who divided the House pressed for the most basic of protections: first, the right to change employer but remain restricted to domestic work in one household; secondly, if in full-time work as a migrant domestic worker in a private household, the option to apply to renew the visa; and thirdly, in instances of slavery, a three-month visa to allow the workers to look for decent work. We argued that without these sorts of provisions, we would leave in place a system found repeatedly over the previous three years to facilitate exploitation, including trafficking of migrant domestic workers.

One of the foremost charities working with these groups, Kalayaan, described how such workers have literally sacrificed themselves to the well-being of their wider families. They do not self-protect in the way that someone with more choices would expect. Many explain that they are prepared to put up with any amount of mistreatment if they can provide for their children and ensure that the same will not happen to them. Kalayaan reports that 65% of the 120 domestic workers on the new visa who they saw between 6 April 2012 and 6 April 2014 did not even have their own rooms but shared children’s rooms or slept on the floor of communal areas, while 53% worked more than 16 hours a day and 60% were paid less than £50 a week.

In 2009, the Home Affairs Select Committee, quoting Kalayaan, said in its inquiry into trafficking that the visa issue was,

“‘the single most important issue’ in preventing the forced labour and trafficking of such workers”.

I recognise that the wholly unacceptable exploitation of domestic workers will not be entirely abolished by the acceptance of these amendments, but it would certainly be an improvement on the current situation.

In reply to the debate last March, the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Bates—urged Members of your Lordships’ House to resist our amendment and to await the outcome of the review of James Ewins, which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has mentioned. The Minister said:

“Most crucially, the amendment is defective because a serious and considered piece of work is currently going through its process under the widely respected James Ewins. Our argument is that that should be allowed to take its course”.—[Official Report, 25/3/15; col. 1448.]

In the review, which followed the debate, Mr Ewins takes as his fundamental question,

“whether the current arrangements for the overseas domestic workers visa are sufficient to protect overseas domestic workers from abuse of their fundamental rights while they are working in the UK, which includes protecting them from abuse that amounts to modern slavery and human trafficking”.

We now have the result of that review, and Mr Ewins has recommended removing the visa tie:

“On the balance of the evidence currently available, this review finds that the existence of a tie to a specific employer and the absence of a universal right to change employer and apply for extensions of the visa are incompatible with the reasonable protection of overseas domestic workers while in the UK”.

He goes on to say:

“The review recommends that all overseas domestic workers be granted the right to change employer … and apply for annual extensions, provided they are in work as domestic workers in a private home”.

Who are the kind of people we are talking about? The Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit provides a number of examples, of which I will give only one, relating to the plight of an African national caught up in the cat’s-cradle of domestic labour exploitation. She entered the UK as a domestic worker under the rules in place before April 2012. Her visa has been extended a number of times and she has continued domestic work. She worked for an employer for over three years and was mistreated: she was paid less than promised, shouted at and rarely allowed to leave the house, and her passport was taken by her employers on arrival—the key point. She of course felt very scared. She managed to gain their agreement to a short holiday after the three years, and when she got her passport back, she changed employers. She was advised about the protection available under the national referral mechanism but has been reluctant to pursue this as she fears she will be sent home to her country of origin by the Home Office. The study shows that a common form of control is retention of documents, psychological abuse and restriction of movement.

However, domestic workers who are allowed to change employer can solve problems that arise with one employer by changing employment and moving away from the problem. The case also shows that the NRM will not be the right fit for everyone, even with advice. Individuals can be frightened of being perceived to cause trouble for others and of repercussions from that.

Although Amendment 133 has provided this welcome opportunity to debate what provision should be made for overseas domestic workers, this can all be achieved simply by amendments to the Immigration Rules, so the full range of options is open to the Government. Either way, Mr Ewins’s recommendations, which he identifies as the minimum necessary to protect overseas workers, should be implemented without delay as an essential first step towards comprehensive protection.

As my noble friend Lord Hylton said, he would go slightly further in Amendment 134B. Maybe these two ideas, which are not in conflict, could be taken together before Report. What is abundantly clear is that the Government must get on with resolving this issue and providing reasonable and basic protection to those caught up in a tangle of exploitation and coercion.

Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hylton

Monday 8th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, Amendment 86M, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is important in its own right and I am happy to support it. The amendment includes a period for reflection and recovery, which will be particularly helpful to overseas domestic workers who have been exploited or abused and who may have little or no English. I believe the amendment could be a ladder by which these overseas domestic workers in England, and particularly in London, could have access to legal aid and due process in civil cases as provided for by the Government’s Amendment 85, which was accepted earlier. In particular, if applications on behalf of aggrieved persons could be made by NGOs and law centres, the thing might be made to work and it would help those who particularly need it. For years we have seen bad and vicious employers enjoying a large measure of impunity. This must be ended. The amendment seems to agree with the Government’s stated wish to improve protection for victims.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I would like to be associated with the remarks from my noble friend Lady Cox concerning the potential gaps that people could fall through and her remarks and questions about the national referral mechanism and legal representation for those who are caught up in trafficking.

I particularly support Amendment 86J, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and Amendment 86M, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McColl. There is a link between these amendments because the noble Baroness quite rightly identifies those who may have been psychologically traumatised by their experiences. She rightly said that people could be extremely vulnerable and very badly damaged. Any of us who have met people who have been trafficked know that that must be true. If people have been concealed in a vehicle, smuggled into the country and exploited in the ways that have been described in speech after speech in Committee, these grotesque experiences will have maimed them psychologically. Hence it is important that there should be some psychological assessment and support for people who may be suffering from acute trauma and mental illness of one kind or another—something that is always neglected anyway in the National Health Service for our own citizens, let alone for people who have come through these kinds of experiences.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is right to say that people should be assessed psychologically during the investigation of the offence. That theme is picked up in Amendment 86M, in subsection (6)(c) of the proposed new clause, where the noble Lord, Lord McColl, would make provision,

“to assist victims in their physical, psychological and social recovery”—

a point returned to in proposed new subsection (10)(c) with,

“medical treatment, including psychological assistance”.

This is a recurring theme in these two amendments and I am surprised that provision is not being mandated anyway by the Bill and wonder whether it is not possible to do what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord have argued for. What do the Government intend to do to safeguard people who may be suffering from mental illness and who may have been traumatised through their experiences?