Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Durham and Lord German

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, the will of the people often gets quoted—for instance, by the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell and Lady Lawlor. Many of us work on the ground with refugees and people who support refugees. The will of the people is to be a compassionate, welcoming nation to refugees and asylum seekers, as we have seen demonstrated by the welcome to Ukrainians and Afghans, and as I see demonstrated regularly. The will of the people is also that we find ways of stopping the boats—I agree. That is exactly why we need to get on with doing a 10-year strategy. It is about trying to bring all those people together, who can be compassionate and want to stop the boats at the same time. This is the right and proper time to do that, off the back of the Bill, so that we move forward with a 10-year strategy. I think that what the people want is for us to get the refugee thing out of party-political toing and froing and find a way forward together.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate, because this amendment gives us an opportunity to look beyond the Bill. It is clear from the days and days that we have been debating the Bill that there are severe doubts about whether it will achieve its aims and severe doubts about the way that it is doing it. But we need to look beyond that if we are trying to find something that will beat the situation that we are all going to face in the years and decades to come.

We support this amendment because it sets out a different approach in responding to the global challenges of refugees and trafficking. Global challenges—that is what they are—require global solutions. We just cannot be isolationists. We need to recognise and take responsibility for the impact of our responses in an interconnected global community. We have to work with our European neighbours and global partners, building on frameworks and building new partnerships that should be broad and inclusive, with the active engagement of refugees and victims of trafficking, who can contribute from their lived experience.

In the UK, there needs to be a cross-departmental approach involving real consultation with a range of stakeholders, including local government, our devolved Governments, civil society organisations and international partners, which deliver some of the resettlement and humanitarian responses we have to deal with in this country. Any strategy should include a diversity of routes to safety and a harmonised approach to entitlements and protection once in the United Kingdom, particularly access to integration support. Partnerships with faith groups and their diasporas should be forged to secure good integration outcomes, and refugee family reunion should underpin all the offers of protection that the strategy outlines.

This amendment speaks to a sensible conversation because that is what it is intended to do: to start us on that route of a journey of thinking. There are great people in this House and great wisdom is expressed in a multitude of views, but in the end we are a humane and compassionate country and I would like to see us start on that journey. I recommend the amendment put forward by the most reverend Primate as a way to begin that sensible conversation .

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Durham and Lord German

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to be able to follow the words we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and my erstwhile colleague the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth. There are just a few things I want to add to what I said on the previous amendment. I think that, as a principle—the principle that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, espoused just now—we need to look beyond ourselves. It is only by looking beyond ourselves that we will find a sustainable and effective solution for the problems we have in front of us.

I was thinking about the models for the sort of process that the most reverend Primate is suggesting. One is the Global Campaign for Education. It is known for its Let me Learn campaign, and it works across the globe to bring together people. I have been in meetings in this House with children from around the globe, from the poorest countries to the richest, using modern technology. The Global Campaign for Education basically wants to ensure that every child in this world has the right and the privilege to be educated by being sent to school. That level of collaboration brings together the United Nations, the rich countries and the donor countries, who then meet the poorer countries—there is a whole structure that sits around it. Unless we start thinking about this as being outward looking, and unless we look beyond ourselves, we are never going to find a sustainable solution.

We support this amendment, as it is seeking to recognise that our UK response to refugees has to be considered by how it interconnects with the global community. We cannot pretend that we can pull up the drawbridge and be isolated from the global issues around us. What we do impacts on other countries.

There are some countries which would follow the lead that the UK takes, but that is a race to the bottom. If we seek to discharge responsibilities for refugees to other countries, there is every chance that other countries will follow the UK’s lead. As countries do this, refugees will be pushed back to the border countries and further to the regions from which they fled. A smaller number of countries will end up shouldering the world’s refugee resources, which will be stretched, and regions will be destabilised. That is a real possibility around the globe.

The UK will be impacted in one way or another, and we cannot separate ourselves from this. The whole global refugee protection system would be at risk of collapse. Forced displacement is a global issue which requires a global response. We need to work towards these ends as described in this amendment, and we need to be seen as a country which is able to take a lead.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, the most reverend Primate might be nervous—he did not know I was going to stand up and he has no clue about what I will say. But I will start by saying I fully support his amendment. I will ask the Minister about the Global Compact on Refugees. The UN has been seeking to develop a global strategy on refugees for a number of years, and it was my privilege to join the Home Office team dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis in Geneva in 2018, at its request. It asked me to make an address. I say this partly in answer to my colleague: actually, the Home Office as well as the FCDO has been engaged in some of those discussions. But it seems to me that we have almost lost sight of the fact that we signed up to the global compact. I accept that the Minister may need to write on this, but I ask him: where are we now with our commitment to the global compact on refugees and our commitment to engage in that ongoing development of a UN strategy that responds to refugees? Are Home Office people still involved in those discussions, or has it all moved to the FCDO?

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Durham and Lord German

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I refer to the register of interests and my involvement with the RAMP project and Reset.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for tabling Amendments 57C to 57G to provide us with the opportunity to discuss issues relating to the level of support that will be provided for those declared inadmissible but who are unable to be removed from the country. I too am highly grateful to the Refugee Council for supporting us to probe this area of policy well, especially in the absence of an impact assessment.

Before I outline questions for the Minister, it is important to note that those deemed inadmissible will include not just those whose asylum cases would likely have been found valid but individuals who would not have qualified. In the absence of any return deals, this could leave the Government in the absurd position of needing to support at public expense those who could be appropriately returned to their own country.

The Government will also need to support those excluded from the asylum system, who of course could support themselves and their families through employment after gaining refugee status. Let us remember again that more than three-quarters of asylum cases assessed last year were found to be valid. Support will need to be indefinitely provided to these families, and every year this group will increase in number. I hope that these amendments, while raising technical issues, will also help us to understand the rationale behind this and the costs associated with this approach.

My noble friend excellently laid out the grave mental health impacts of being confined to a life of permanent precarity and inescapable destitution. I remarked at Second Reading that this amounts to the continuation of detention simply without walls. It is therefore vital to understand what level of financial and accommodation support will be provided to those living in this state-sanctioned situation. I will try to add complementary questions to those already posed, but there will inevitably be some overlap.

Currently, far more people are supported under Section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 than under Section 4. According to Home Office statistics, in the first quarter of this year, there were 11,662 applications for Section 95 support, compared with 642 under Section 4. The Bill before us will change that, as those people whose claims are declared inadmissible will, in most cases, not be eligible for Section 95 support and instead will need to rely on Section 4 to avoid destitution.

I will ask the Minister some questions. First, how will someone who is, in effect, banned from claiming asylum be able to apply for Section 4 support? It is not clear, as the current guidance for Section 4 states that those deemed inadmissible cannot apply on the grounds that there is no viable route of return to their own country as they are due to be removed to a third country. Individuals will also not be able to judicially review the inadmissibility decision and cannot demonstrate that they are taking reasonable steps to leave the UK, given that their country of origin may be unsafe, and they will not have permission to enter another jurisdiction. How will applications from those with inadmissible asylum claims therefore be treated when they apply for support?

Secondly, what will happen to those who have arrived since 7 March and are currently in receipt of Section 95 support—a number already in the several thousands? Will their asylum claims be immediately declared inadmissible, removing eligibility to Section 95 support in one fell swoop? Can the Minister clarify what assistance this group will be given to apply for Section 4 support, or will he commit to automatically transferring people to Section 4 support without requiring a further application? Finally, what assessment has the Home Office made of how many people will be supported under Section 4 in the months and years after the Bill has come into effect? I stress that, to support the effective scrutiny of the Bill, we must know how many families with children will be left solely reliant on Section 4 support.

This set of amendments highlights major questions which remain unanswered about how the Bill is intended to work in practice, beyond the mantra that people will be “swiftly detained and removed”. These are not needlessly prosaic questions to frustrate the passage of the Bill, but a genuine attempt to help those on the front line plan their operational response, which we heard the Minister say earlier was well under way in its planning.

As the Government know, the asylum support system plays a vital role in ensuring that those who would otherwise be homeless and destitute, and who are unable to work and support themselves, have access to basic accommodation and financial support. There is a debate to be had about what form that accommodation should take and how much the financial support should be, but that debate is meaningless if the system is inaccessible. If the system is not adapted to respond to the circumstances created by the Bill, tens of thousands of people could find themselves with no support. On top of the intolerable consequences that this will have for individuals and families, it will inevitably lead to local authorities, faith groups, communities and voluntary groups picking up the pieces.

We often find ourselves in moments of our lives needing to console ourselves and our loved ones that this stage is only temporary and that hope remains. I am constantly in awe of refugees who live with such instability but retain that sense of a brighter future. It is therefore only right that I close my comments by stating the obvious: there is a different way, where asylum seekers have their applications processed in an effective and timely manner so that hope, not desolation, remains a possibility.

This is my week for making apologies. I have to be in Durham very early tomorrow and trains up north are limited, so after dinner break business I will not be able to contribute on those things that I said I would. However, I expect my good friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark to be present and to speak, in his name, on those matters.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the right reverend Prelate. I make no apologies for supporting this group of amendments and I signed the stand part proposition to probe these issues, because they are of such great importance. I also make no apology for using the word “assessment” very frequently in what I am about to say. The Minister will gather that what I am after is some of the contents of the promised impact assessment before it eventually appears.

Clearly, the essence of the clause is to ensure that people get some support for accommodation and subsistence while they are in this world of being inadmissible but have not yet been removed from the country. The starting point here is: how many people are there likely to be in this situation? I have previously asked the Minister whether he thinks that people who are covered by the duty to remove will actually be removed quickly. In other words, will it be in six or nine months? An estimate will do. That is my first question, because it will give us a sense of the size of the problem that we are about to face. We would then be able to identify and understand how many people would therefore require accommodation and subsistence under Section 4.

In the absence of a government impact assessment as yet, the Refugee Council has done its own analysis. Based on the current 0.7% success rate of removing people under the inadmissibility rules, it has assessed that, by the end of the third year after the Bill has passed,

“between 161,147 and 192,670 people will have had their asylum claims deemed inadmissible but not have been removed”.

So that could be the size of the problem. We do not know what the Government think, because they will say that they do not recognise those figures. However, as the Government have not given us any figures, we have no means of judging that.

That group of people will then be without permission to work and will be reliant on Home Office support and accommodation indefinitely. If you look at the size of that cohort and the amount of money that it will cost, you see that it will be between £4.9 billion and £5.7 billion in the first three years. That is based on the assumption that everyone deemed inadmissible would be awarded Section 4 support and that there would be few people who would not get it. The issue arises that, if you do not get it, you will be destitute. As the right reverend Prelate said, the destitute can get picked up by the voluntary sector. But, frequently, local government is picking up the pieces, using funds which are due for other things that should be going on in local authorities, so that they do not have families in absolute destitution on their doorstep.

On the assessment process—just to help the noble Lord—has there been an assessment of the numbers of those who will not qualify for Section 4 support? In other words, is there an estimate of how many would be left with no recourse to public funds and would become destitute? On the suspensive claims, will people who have made a suspensive claim be eligible to apply for Section 4 support? That is probably an easy one for the Minister to answer.

Has there been an assessment of the impact of this legislation on local government funding? Clearly, it would be useful for the Government to understand how much they are currently spending on picking up the pieces of those who are destitute, and how much that would cost if it were magnified by the numbers we have just been talking about. That is why there needs to be a risk assessment for those on no recourse to public funds indefinitely in terms of their vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking. Having no money and accommodation are the sorts of things which fuel the operation of criminal gangs in the United Kingdom.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Durham and Lord German

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

I will speak to the issues raised in these amendments. In summing up the last group of amendments, the Minister said that we had to achieve the proper balance between rehabilitation and punishment. This is even more important in the area of youth justice which we touched on—admittedly with a bit of elasticity of the rules—in the previous group of amendments, but which are particularly relevant here and will occur later in this Bill as we deal with other measures.

The balance between what I would call repair and support for young people and punishment is one of great importance, and we must adjust that balance with great care indeed. This country, along with many others, recognises that children should be treated differently from adults in the justice system. However, there is a concerning trend in this government-expressed Bill, particularly in Clause 104, towards what I would call harsher treatment of older children, and bringing the sentencing of children closer into line with adults. This clause in particular proposes extending whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances to offenders aged 18 to 20. These are the most severe sentences that can be handed down by the courts. The other clauses also touch on the balance that I am talking about.

The Sentencing Council gives a full explanation of why children have to be treated differently, referring to lack of maturity, acting impulsively, inexperience, emotional volatility and negative influences as factors that ought to be considered. In particular, it notes that children and young people are likely to be susceptible to peer pressure. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in her example in the last group, referred to exactly that sort of problem, when young people respond to peer pressure and then resent and turn from it afterwards.

Clause 101 would permit the court to diverge from mandatory minimum sentences only when there are “exceptional circumstances”. This is change from the current wording, “particular circumstances”. Neither “particular” nor “exceptional” have been defined in law, or in this Bill, or in the Explanatory Notes associated with the Bill. So who is going to interpret “exceptional circumstances”? If it is to be the Secretary of State, where does that definition exist? Perhaps the Minister could give us the definition at the end.

I went to the dictionary, as one always does to look up words, and looked up “exceptional”. There are at least four definitions, ranging from “only likely to happen very infrequently” to “having much more than average intelligence, ability, or skill”. With that breadth of difference in the understanding of “exceptional”, I am sure that there is a great deal of work to be done on that definition. There is a world of difference between “likely to happen very infrequently” and “beyond the average”, which is the other interpretation that you could give to this word. Either way, it is important that the Government tell us why they have made that change and what it means in practice.

My second point is about the discrimination elements in these amendments. The Government have recognised that these clauses have a disproportionate impact on black and minority ethnic children. We have only to turn to the Joint Committee on Human Rights report. Basing its comments on the Human Rights Act 1998, it says:

“Discrimination may be justified, but only where the difference of treatment pursues a legitimate aim and where there is a reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be realised.”


The report says that many of the witnesses who were interviewed questioned whether the Bill had gone too far and does discriminate. So there are questions to be asked as to whether the Bill breaches the right that people have under that 1998 law.

The report further states:

“The government recognises the unequal effect of these measures in its Bill, but does not provide any mitigation”.


So can the Minister provide an explanation of the measures they propose to mitigate the impact of this discriminatory effect on BAME children? The House will need to consider whether these measures need to be written into the Bill, but I hope the Minister might undertake that action could be taken through government amendments.

The Bill proposes extending whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances to offenders aged 18 to 20, and these, as I said, are the most severe sentences. But those who offend as children should not lose the opportunity to benefit from the youth sentencing framework and rehabilitation periods, because system delays there are not of their fault.

The court delays we have at the moment existed before Covid and have been exacerbated since. In the year ending December 2019, before Covid, the average delay between offence and court completion was 160 days—nearly 23 weeks. That is eight weeks longer than in 2011, despite the reduction between 2011 and 2019 in the number of youth offence court cases. Covid has made this situation so much worse. Can the Minister confirm that those who cross the age threshold because of these delays will not be subject to a more severe sentence?

In a recent report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, the chief inspector said about the impact on black and minority-ethnic children:

“Half of the boys in the inspected cases had faced racial discrimination in their life; a third had been victims of criminal exploitation and a quarter had a disability … Yet many of these children are only receiving support with these needs for the first time through the criminal justice system.”


By looking at the criminal justice system we are looking at the cart, but the horse has already bolted from the stable. This is quite clearly unacceptable. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation says so, and I believe we need to revisit the amendments the Government have tabled to ensure that the proper balance is achieved, as the Minister said in response to the previous group of amendments. Proper balance does not mean turning the dial far more towards punishment than towards the repair of these young people.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I speak on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby on this occasion, who could not be here today. I add my support to Amendments 198, 199, 200 and 201, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which deal with tariff starting points or DHMP sentences as they relate to young people. The noble Baroness laid out well the case for amending Clause 104 so that it takes into account evidence on maturation. I will briefly add the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby’s perspective as a Lord spiritual and as part of a team of Bishops focused on Her Majesty’s prisons, particularly young offender institutions. She also declares an interest as vice-chair of the Children’s Society.

Children ought to be treated as children, and we resist any erosion of that in law. If we are to argue to the contrary we must be content to go against the trajectory of every other arena of English law. Eighteen is soon to become the age at which people can legally marry, leave education and join the Armed Forces. I urge noble Lords to reflect on this. If we project from this that children are to be protected from making decisions about marriage, education and even enlisting in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces until they reach a maturation point of 18, then the same logic surely must continue to apply in this instance.

The net consequence of Clause 104 would be more children spending longer in custody. Put simply, with very few under-16s impacted, the result would be more older teenagers receiving more severe sentences than is currently the case.

I intend to oppose Clause 103 being added to the Bill. Clause 103 would make it possible for judges to impose whole life orders on offenders aged 18 to 20. Our amendment would ensure that the minimum age for imposing a whole life order does not drop below 21. Although these are not legally children, in common with Clause 104, Clause 103 fails to take into account the Government’s 2015 response to the report by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, into the deaths of 18 to 24 year -olds in custody, where the Government agreed that

“It is widely recognised that young adults, particularly males, are still maturing until around 25 years of age.”


I am grateful to the Prison Reform Trust for its briefing on this and for highlighting that the origin of Clause 103 derives entirely from a single recent case. I understand the strength of feeling around that particularly tragic case, as it resulted in terrible loss of life. However, I do not believe there is any justification for extending whole life orders to young adults in this manner.