Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Lord Coaker and Baroness Helic

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 95 and the consequential Amendments 99, 101 and 104 in the name of my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, who unfortunately cannot be in his place today. He has asked me to speak on his behalf and has made it clear that if he were here, and if he could not find agreement with the Government, he would test the opinion of the House.

This amendment has been slightly modified since Committee in order to ensure parity for victims across the whole of the United Kingdom, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. The core intention remains the same: to preserve the existing recovery period for victims of modern slavery.

I emphasise one point in particular: removing modern slavery protections will not help stop the boats. In fact, it will make reducing illegal migration harder. Many victims of modern slavery, often through no fault of their own, have come illegally under the terms of this Bill, even if not necessarily by boat. The protections which give them the space to escape from their exploiters will be removed. This is bad in itself, but the really relevant point for the Government is that, as a result of removing those protections, prosecutions will become harder, as others have pointed out. The position of the people traffickers and criminal gangs who bring people into the United Kingdom illegally and hold them in modern slavery will be strengthened. The core purpose of this Bill—to prevent illegal migration—will be undermined.

The evidence is clear: for a successful prosecution, support for victims must come before engagement with the police and courts system. As drafted, the Bill inverts that, setting a high bar for co-operation before any person can be considered for an exemption from immediate deportation. In Committee, when asked by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about the effect of removing victims of modern slavery to another country on the likelihood of their co-operation with prosecutions, my noble friend the Minister said:

“One would hope that a victim of trafficking would want to facilitate the prosecution of their traffickers”. [Official Report, 12/6/23, col. 1705.]


Most victims do, but they need support in order to do that. They need trust in the system. Threatening them with immediate deportation is not the way to build that trust, and I am afraid that I do not share my noble friend’s confidence that prosecutors will be just as easily able to work with victims in Rwanda as they can with victims in the United Kingdom.

These amendments do not confer a permanent right to settlement or residence in the United Kingdom on modern slavery victims. They retain the existing 30-day recovery period and provision for proven victims to stay in the United Kingdom only at the Secretary of State’s discretion—for example, to support prosecutions. That is not really an exclusion or exemption of the sort my noble friend the Minister says will fatally undermine the Bill, but it can create the space needed for victims of modern slavery to receive the support they need to escape the cycle of abuse and begin co-operating with the police. I hope the Government can recognise the benefits of this and re-think their position.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to rise to support many of the amendments in this group, but in particular Amendment 12. I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for moving such an important amendment.

I start by saying that, as a proud Labour politician, I am the first to recognise the phenomenal achievement, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out, of the Conservative Government in passing the Modern Slavery Act. That is important, and he pointed out the cross-party nature of that. That is why it is so bewildering that we have a Conservative Government driving forward this legislation.

Notwithstanding that, Amendment 12 goes to the heart of the various amendments. It is important to reiterate the explanatory note to my noble friend’s amendment, which simply seeks

“to amend the Bill so that potential and recognised victims of trafficking will not be detained or removed before they get the opportunity to submit an application to the NRM and have it duly considered”.

That seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but of course, under this Bill, everybody who arrives irregularly —primarily by small boat, as far as the Government are concerned—is automatically excluded. That inevitably means that victims or potential victims of modern slavery and trafficking will be caught by the legislation and their needs will not be met.

We have talked about evidence. Helpfully, on Monday the impact assessment was at last published. The Government recognise the draconian nature of these provisions, as they have put in their own sunset clause, and they say they are doing this because the system is being gamed. On page 24, the impact assessment states:

“For context, of the 83,236 people that arrived in the UK on small boats between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2022, 7 per cent (6,210 people) were referred to the NRM”.


Of course, as was made clear, that 7% of those 83,000 were referred by government-approved officials. They were not necessarily then deemed to have conclusive grounds; they were referred in order to have their situation considered.

That is the issue Amendment 12 seeks to address. It does not say there are not sometimes people who apply who should not, but that the purpose of the Modern Slavery Act is to ensure that victims have the right to have their case heard, to be supported where necessary, and to not be removed from the country during that process. Amendment 12 is therefore perfectly reasonable and if my noble friend chooses to test the opinion of the House, I hope that many of us will support it, because it is a simple but very important amendment.