Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 8th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Amendment 144, as my noble friend has said, is critical, as it seeks to remove subsection (2)(c) which currently allows a person’s EUSS status to be removed without applying the procedural safeguards enshrined in the withdrawal agreement—those safeguards which I listed at the beginning. The Home Office’s stated reason for this provision is to remove EUSS status granted in error. However, this creates a group of individuals who lack procedural protection to challenge the Home Office’s assessment, risking arbitrary outcomes and denying them their withdrawal agreement rights. This amendment would ensure that all actions relate—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I do not understand why one should object to protecting people with these four protections in circumstances in which it appears that the Home Office has made a mistake. It seems to me that the most unsuitable moment to remove the protections is when the Home Office has made a mistake. Indeed, if the Home Office has made a mistake, one would hope there would be greater protections because there was a mistake.

[Lord German (LD)]

The noble Lord is correct. If the Home Office recognises it has made a mistake, then it should apply the protections which are provided by the withdrawal agreement, which is precisely the major point that is being made in this set of amendments. Amendment 144 would ensure that all actions related to EUSS status are subject to clear procedural safeguards, as laid out in the withdrawal agreement.

Taken together, these amendments reinforce fairness and legal certainty for EUSS beneficiaries, ensuring that administrative decisions respect individual rights and that the procedural safeguards are consistently applied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the Committee does not need me to repeat what has been said about Clause 43 by the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Kirkhope. I agree more than I can say with what they have said. Tagging, curfew, and requiring someone to be or prohibiting someone from being in a particular place at particular times, et cetera—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has explained what “et cetera” could mean in this situation—are all huge interferences with life in practical, emotional and psychological terms. It basically means that you cannot live a normal life. For instance, how would an international student pursue a course with these restrictions?

As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned, the Constitution Committee made a recommendation regarding this clause in its report on the Bill. We have had a response today from the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, saying that the person affected can make representations to the Home Office and apply for a judicial review, which the Home Office says in its letter would “provide appropriate scrutiny”. That may be the topic for a whole other, long debate. Noble Lords will understand that I do not feel—I say this personally, because the committee has not had an opportunity to discuss this yet—that that is an appropriate or particularly helpful response.

The comments—the assurances, perhaps I should call them—made by the then Minister for Border Security and Asylum have been referred to. I would be surprised if this detail had yet been discussed within the Home Office, but one never knows, so perhaps it would not be out of place to ask the Minister whether the change of various Ministers within the department means that these assurances remain in place. Is this still what the Government think? Would they be able to give some sort of undertaking to this effect? However, I do not think that would completely answer our objections to Clause 43.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, in an earlier debate on the Bill, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel reminded me that it is the purpose of the Opposition to oppose. That is why I find it impossible to understand why the Opposition are not opposing this clause. I thought that Conservatives were wholly against Governments being given powers without very clear parliamentary restrictions.

I understand the argument that, if people are allowed into this country with conditions and they break them, all kinds of things, perfectly rightly, can be carried out; I am not disagreeing with that. But I would have thought that it would not take much, looking around the world at the moment, to see how dangerous it is to have a law which can be used by Governments of any kind to do almost anything that they want to. We can look at the United States and see a President who appears to be trying to do things which the law does not allow him to do. Think what would happen if the law did allow him to make the kinds of decisions this clause suggests. I also say to my noble friends that, if this clause applied without any restrictions to citizens of this country, the very first people to object to that would be the Opposition.

Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be serious in accepting that the argument is not about immigration; it is about what powers the Government should be given, unfettered by parliamentary decision-making and the courts. It seems to me that the powers given to Governments under this clause are unacceptable. I am sure that they would not be misused by the Minister or any of his colleagues, but that is not to say that we do not have in this country politicians whom I would not trust with these powers—some of them, indeed, have been in power, and I would not have trusted them with these powers.

Having been a Minister for some 16 years, I always found it valuable that my decision-making should be kept within particular parameters laid down by Parliament. One was constantly being asked by civil servants and people outside to do this, that or the other, and one was able to say, “That is not within my power”. I do not think this is a suitable clause for a British Parliament to pass. We should rely on the law we have already or, if there is any gap in it, reduce that gap in a clause which is very specifically restricted so that we do not tempt any future politicians to behave improperly.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I agree with everything that the noble Lord said, although I slightly dissent from his description of his discussions with his civil servants. I used to be a civil servant and I thought that the main job of civil servants was to stop Ministers doing things they should not do or did not have the powers to do. Otherwise, however, I entirely agree.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, made a powerful case. To me, this is a very strange clause. We have to listen to what our Constitution Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights said. I followed what the Minister said in the Commons, which was that the power conferred on Ministers would be used only in cases involving conduct such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, extremism—I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson—or serious crime, or when a person poses a threat to national security or public safety and, presumably, cannot be deported. If the clause said all that, limiting and ring-fencing the powers of the Minister, I could understand the rationale for it and might even support it. However, with no ring-fencing, it is—as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, said—a sledgehammer. The absence of any judicial oversight provision is wrong. It is dangerous to give Ministers the power to add such other conditions as they think fit. This is just too broad and, if it is to be there at all, it needs to be limited. If the Government’s intentions are as Angela Eagle said in the other place, let that be spelled out in the Bill.