Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Swire

Report stage
Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to open our first few hours of debate on Report. Noble Lords who have taken an interest in the Bill throughout our deliberations so far may recognise Amendments 1 and 2. At both Second Reading and in Committee, I said that this new commander was little more than a gimmick. I had hoped that, come Report, I would have heard more persuasive reasons to change my opinion of the Government’s policy. Unfortunately, I have not.

Since we finished Committee on the Bill, 589 people have entered the United Kingdom illegally via small boats. Since the start of this year, 36,954 migrants have crossed the channel. It does not take a genius to figure out that this Government’s policies are not working. The Government entered office with a promise to “smash the gangs”, end the use of hotel accommodation and prevent illegal crossings. They have done none of those things. In fact, the problems have exacerbated.

My Amendments 1 and 2 seek to make minor changes to the method of appointment of the commander. In my opinion, this is an important and strategic role. I will not pretend they are seismic alterations that will shift the dial demonstrably. They are, nevertheless, intended to make an important point that I genuinely hope the Government will take on board.

The point is that the whole of Chapter 1 of the Bill is essentially pointless. The commander is already in post and the Bill provides no substantive new powers. In Committee, when asked by my noble friend Lord Goschen what the commander will be able to do under the provisions of the Bill provisions that his office cannot do already, the Minister said:

“The clauses in Chapter 1—for example, ‘Duty to prepare annual reports’, ‘Duties of cooperation etc’ and ‘The Board’ overseeing all that—underpinned by statutory function give this House the confidence that there is a legislative background to those requirements”.—[Official Report, 26/6/25; col. 395.]


So it appears the Government believe that designating a civil servant as a commander and granting them the ability to prepare a report and to chair a board meeting every now and then is the solution to all our border security woes.

Noble Lords will be aware of the report into the operation of the Civil Service within the Home Office. How can we have faith that another civil servant in post as the commander would make any difference? Amendments 1 and 2 are intended to press the point that the commander, if their appointment is ever to be anything more than pure performance politics, needs to be more than simply a civil servant. It is wise, is it not, to have a guarantee in the Bill that the commander will be a senior law enforcement or military officer, so as to ensure the requisite competence, leadership and experience is brought to the role.

I have one question for the Minister. Earlier this year, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration investigated the Home Office’s operation to deter and detect clandestine entrance to the UK. The first recommendation of the independent inspector was to:

“Designate a Home Office-wide ‘owner’ for clandestine entry”.


In the Government’s response, the Home Office agreed with that recommendation and said that the

“Border Security Command … will ultimately provide the structure to support this role”.

However, it said that it will not implement that recommendation until October 2026. We have a Border Security Commander who the Government tell us is critical to co-ordinating our response to threats to border security, and yet they are not willing to make him responsible for tackling all methods of clandestine entry until next year. Why is this?

Does this not demonstrate the issue with this Government’s approach to the problem? Every can must be kicked down a very long and winding road. Why not designate the commander as the Home Office-wide “owner” for clandestine entry now? Why wait until next year? It is unfortunate, and we on these Benches will be pushing the Government to go much further over the course of Report. The British public want this border crisis solved, and they are watching. I beg to move.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Davies in his amendments. They seem to me to be eminently sensible. I wholly concur with him, as do most people increasingly in the country, that there is no sense of urgency, no sense of grip and a total lack of confidence when it comes to the Government’s handling of the immigration crisis.

The appointment of a Border Security Commander, and limiting that appointment to a civil servant, is a mistake, particularly when we look at other civil servants. When I was a Minister, I had excellent civil servants, and I have nothing to say against them. The great majority of them do an extremely good job. But when we have Joanna Rowland, the Home Office’s director-general for customer services, in charge of accommodating asylum seekers, standing down because of the failure of that, why should we have faith that someone just selected from the Civil Service should be appropriate to fulfil this role?

We are missing a huge mistake in this whole immigration debate. There is a huge backlog in the processing of asylum cases. Why have the Government not come forward with an idea of having an equivalent to Nightingale hospitals, which is what we had during the Covid pandemic, to process this? In my opinion, there is a whole raft of professionals in this country who are retired far too early. We in this House are the last vestiges of people who never retire, but there are an awful lot of people in this House who have retired, or been forced to retire, from their professions—be they judges, solicitors, army officers from the military or magistrates—who would willingly serve, if encouraged to do so, on a series of tribunals up and down the country, so as to better process the backlog in immigration cases.

If you look at the appointment of this incredibly important role, the Border Security Commander is in charge of liaising with Border Force, the National Crime Agency, the Immigration Service and Immigration Enforcement, and the goal is to deliver a safe and effective border. That has not happened to date. I just do not understand the rationale behind why this legislation is limiting the appointment of such a person, with the very narrow criteria that it has, to a civil servant. There must be plenty of other people out there who would be qualified to do this job who are not necessarily from the Civil Service.

I urge the Government to underline the sense of crisis there is in this country. It is benefiting parties and groups in this country that we would rather it did not, because there is a feeling up and down the country that the Government simply have not got control of our borders. There are those who may argue that the appointment of this individual is totemic, that they do not have sufficient power and that the powers will not kick in until later. Those are other arguments. My argument is that, if we have a national crisis which is set to get only worse, we should look at the whole cadre of recently retired professionals who would step up to serve, right across the board, in dealing with the backlog and this immigration crisis. We should look at the best candidates available to fulfil this particular job and not limit it to somebody from the Civil Service.