UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I am coming to an end. If it is morally and legally right for the French to try to prevent people leaving their shores, and for us to pay and support the French in so doing, it should be morally and legally right for us to return them. If they cannot be returned, it is reasonable to try to deter them by saying, “If you come here, you will go to Rwanda. You always have the opportunity to stay in France.” I submit that we do not always consider these opportunities.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, we have been particularly generous with the timings. I remind noble Lords that it is an advisory Back-Bench speaking time of six minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, what a privilege it is to follow that. The prodigious amount and breadth of work that my new noble friend has done in his community—his communities—is extraordinary. He has invested his energy in making life better for people across the spectrum, with special emphasis perhaps on the Sikh and Punjabi communities. He has written a book of poetry in Punjabi. As a lover of poetry, I wish I could read it. I shall sit with my noble friend and expect some explanations. He has spent his time cheering up so many people.

I last officiated at an event for a Shropshire lad at the funeral of the late Lord Murray of Epping Forest, and Telford, and I quoted then, as I quote now, although the energy with which that speech was made makes it clear that this is not a funeral:

“You and I must keep from shame

In London streets the Shropshire name;

On banks of Thames they must not say

Severn breeds worse men than they.”

My noble friend Lord Sahota is a force of nature and part of what I hope will be a levelling-up moment in the life of this House. I am most grateful—as indeed I am to the most reverend Primate. It is the first time in a long time that I have wanted to stand up and cheer—although that would have been against all propriety in this House—because he said so much that many of us would have wanted to say.

Perhaps I should declare is that I am a member of the delegation from the British Parliament to the Council of Europe and I sit on its migration committee. I was there two days ago in Paris considering a whole host of things related to and consequent upon the problems being faced not just in this country but across our continent and around the world. I heard from the most reverend Primate and others a question about a possible updating or modification of the 1951 convention. I was asked by the migration committee to compose a report for the 70th anniversary of the convention that was approved by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe just one year ago. I will certainly be taking back to the migration committee a proper expression of the need—it would have to be an international need—to look again at the convention to see what modifications are appropriate at present.

However, I have to say that, for the moment, the 1951 convention is embedded in our law. It is the law that we must obey. We had discussions about this in the Nationality and Borders Bill as it moved through this House, and great dismay was expressed at our apparent readiness to depart from our legal obligations. That is the most worrying thing. Noble and learned Lords expressed their views forcefully on this matter. I, in my work for the report I prepared, worked with UNHCR offices in London, Strasbourg and Geneva, and all of them have given the British Government a very clear and lucid understanding of the law that would have taken into consideration even what I have to declare to be the extraordinary views of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, which he expressed after his time was up a moment ago.

So, it is the law. We must obey it. We can modify it. The most reverend Primate called for international consensus around this and other matters, and this is perhaps the moment for that. At the heart of the convention lie three principles: non-refoulement, non-discrimination and non-penalisation. Those are cardinal elements in the way that the convention is spelled out, and an examination of current British practice measured against those cardinal elements would—let us say—raise questions of an inordinate nature in our minds and force us to look again at our moral position against the law under which we sit in a country that prides itself on the rule of law.

Two days ago in Paris, statistics that are not the usual ones came my way from a high official of the international Red Cross who spoke to our meeting. She told us about the numbers of people who are registered missing. Only 13% of those registered missing in their attempt to find refuge somewhere are ever found and forensically identified; 87% never are. Although it is not my custom to read parts of a report, this chilling paragraph is the one with which I will conclude my remarks:

“These extremely alarming numbers are only the tip of a tragic iceberg, and many more migrants are likely to have lost their life or become untraceable. Their families and friends typically do not have any sign of life or death of their loved ones. Anonymous dead migrants are washed ashore in Europe and the southern Mediterranean Sea or are found in forests and cities or even lorries, requiring forensic analyses and the transfer of corpses or their burial.”


The figures are 14 in the English Channel and 25,271 in the Mediterranean Sea. Should we not be worried? Should this debate not apply the greatest possible pressure, as far as we are concerned, to obtain the highest possible standards?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Can we now please make it six minutes?