Refugees: Community Sponsorship
Lord German Excerpts(1 week ago)
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Lord German (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to speak after my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who has so eloquently laid out the position of those groups in which she has some direct interest.
I must declare my interest as being supported by the RAMP organisation, and I must thank the right reverend Prelate for being ahead of the curve again in being able to bring forward debate on an issue that is very potent in the current scene. I must also declare my interest—with a small “i”, not a capital “I”—as the general rapporteur on European migration and asylum policy for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I will be reporting on this debate as it is an important part of the structure we face across the whole of our continent.
For generations, Britain’s proudest chapters have been written not when we turned our backs on the world but when we stepped forward to offer sanctuary to those fleeing terror, persecution and war. We saw that spirit when our towns and villages welcomed displaced families from Ukraine, as we heard so eloquently, and in the response to the fall of Afghanistan. I remember the crisis of the Ugandan Asians many decades ago, when we sought and brought to this country those who were being displaced so horribly. We have seen it across the hundreds of quiet, compassionate community sponsorship groups that have opened their homes and hearts across our country.
The Liberal Democrats have long argued that the best of British values is found in our local communities. That is why we welcome the principle behind the Government’s new community sponsorship scheme. Establishing new safe and legal routes is a necessary step in the right direction. Allowing communities, faith groups, universities and local organisations to step forward to directly sponsor named individuals, to support students and to welcome displaced workers is a proven and powerful concept. When local communities have direct ownership, integration flourishes. Refugees do not arrive as numbers on a Home Office spreadsheet; they arrive into an existing network of neighbours, mentors and friends who help them find work, master our language and truly belong.
We on these Benches reject outright the cynical, ungenerous claims from those on the political right. Those who demand that no safe routes be created until every boat has stopped miss the fundamental reality. People take to dangerous dinghies precisely because safe and legal routes do not exist. We do not smash the vile business model of criminal smuggling gangs by building higher walls; we smash it by opening controlled, orderly doors that render the smugglers obsolete.
Although we support this scheme in principle, we must be brutally honest about its practical realities. Compassion without ambition is mere sentiment. As it stands, this policy suffers from glaring shortcomings that risk setting it up to fail. First and foremost is the question of scale, which was mentioned earlier. The Government talk of this scheme breaking the cycle of irregular channel crossings, but look at the figures to which the Home Office has now quietly admitted. Total arrivals across the reopened UK resettlement scheme—that includes all three new sponsorship routes—will start in the hundreds before slowly growing into the low thousands. Reports suggest an ambition of just over 10,000 altogether by the end of this decade. Schemes need to be known about and understood, and people need to be provided with sufficient information for the schemes to make a difference and for the people to make a choice.
To present a scheme that admits a few hundred people as a serious deterrent to the tens of thousands not just crossing the channel but entering by other means is, frankly, a tokenistic drop in the ocean. The Refugee Council and civil society have made it clear that, if we are serious about safe routes, we must aim for real ambition by restoring settlement to at least the pre-pandemic level of 5,000 people a year, not trickling out places in the low hundreds.
Secondly, the Government are engaged in passing the buck to local communities from local authorities. Ministers say that they want to relieve local authorities and end the reliance on expensive asylum hotels. We agree with closing the hotels, but the Government’s answer is to offload core statutory responsibilities on to volunteers, charities and churches. Under the scheme, sponsors are required to secure independent accommodation for at least two years and to raise substantial private capital.
In the middle of the worst housing crisis in modern memory, how on earth does the Home Secretary expect local charities to outbid the market to find two-year tenancies without statutory backing? Under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the state provided monthly thank-you payments to assist host households, yet under this new scheme Ministers have completely failed to guarantee whether similar financial support will exist. If the state treats volunteer good will as an unpaid substitute for proper governance, burnout will follow and the intake will grind to a halt.
Thirdly, I am afraid that we cannot ignore the punitive rollback of refugee rights baked into this agenda. For years, community sponsorship granted refugees immediate indefinite leave to remain, giving them the certainty needed to rebuild their lives and contribute. Now, the Government have reduced that to a precarious five-year route to permanent settlement, while slashing domestic asylum protections into 30-month temporary visas and threatening 20-year delays on settlement.
Fourthly, there is a serious danger that, by shifting the bulk of resettlement to named, study and employer routes, we risk abandoning the most vulnerable. Resettlement must never become a corporate recruitment fair or an elite academic exercise. We cannot ignore the disabled, the elderly or those who lack language skills and overseas connections—those whom the UNHCR identifies as facing immediate peril.
We want this sponsorship scheme to work. We want British communities empowered to open their arms. But a genuine safe route cannot be treated as an afterthought or a cheap PR shield to justify harsher enforcement. If the Government genuinely want to offer sanctuary, they must meet the four tests and the four queries that we set out earlier. As our immigration moves towards net zero with those coming in and those leaving, we need to be absolutely certain that we are giving people the compassionate best we can. We as a country are at our best when we are open, generous and fair. Let us not build a scheme of token numbers and shifting burdens; let us build a system that is controlled, compassionate and truly fit for purpose.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 (Specified Purposes Related to Policing) Regulations 2026
Lord German Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that description of what appears to be a fairly technical set of regulations—one that closes a loophole in the operation of the system for trailer registration data. It is clear that this instrument will close that loophole so that data can be shared for the full range of operational policing activities. On that basis, we are pleased to support these regulations.
However, I have three questions to pose to the Minister; they relate to what he said about how these measures will be operational. I presume that, when we talk about them becoming operational, there will be operational guidance, instruction or advice—whatever is given to police forces and those who are responsible for the issues about which we are talking.
My first question is: how will access and onward disclosure be controlled and audited, so that we know what information is being passed and flowing one way or the other? My second question relates to the broad final category—the one the Minister stated just now—of any other police duty or responsibility arising from common or statute law. Clearly, I would describe that as a broad context, and it is a broad context. How will such a context be applied in practice if it becomes all-encompassing: is it designed so that there should be no areas that are out of bounds, as it were, in what it applies to? That of course is of particular importance as far as common law is concerned.
Finally, what assurance can we in Parliament have about implementation, given that the detailed operational guidance will not be published and there is no statutory review clause? If we wish to continue to understand in general terms how these regulations are being implemented now and what will happen, how will Parliament be able to deal with that matter? On that basis, I and the Liberal Democrats are prepared to support the regulations.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for setting out the background and context of these regulations. The Opposition support the regulations, the principles behind them and the rationale for them. The only comment I will make briefly today is a procedural rather than a substantive one, given that the regulations are uncontroversial and fit into an existing framework, and the power exists in the Act to create them.
The procedural point I will make is purely to observe that it is quite a cumbersome process to use secondary legislation here for outlining specified purposes when the purposes could have been placed in the Act itself as primary legislation. As the Minister himself said, these are well-established policing functions and it seems cumbersome to spend a year consulting to produce a list that I think anyone could have come up with relatively briefly. I raise these points purely to make an observation about what appears to be a serious problem about current legislative practice and leaving too much to secondary legislation.
With those observations, there is nothing negative in these regulations and these Benches support the underlying sections of both the primary legislation and the regulations themselves.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules
Lord German Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I first declare my interest that, like others, I am helped and supported by the RAMP organisation. I thank those who have already spoken. A huge number of remarks and questions have been addressed to the new Minister; in that context, I welcome him. He may not be as happy as he would like in this particular role because this topic of course causes great controversy within our House. An enormous number of issues need to be raised and dealt with, and we expect to find answers from the Home Office which are sometimes lacking.
Having previously spent three years as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I am able to recognise an excoriating report when I see one, and this is clearly such a report. It is not often that the committee goes to such lengths to make such important points when it does not get answers from the department concerned. The challenge is that the committee itself will address its concerns back to the Home Office and will get answers from it. If it does not get the answers, that will be mentioned in the report and when it does not find that the answers are sufficient it will mention that, too. This report does that and Members on all sides have said clearly that there are questions to be raised and questions that need to be answered as a result.
I am glad about the changed name. When you merge things, you are perhaps supposed to do the merging in turn, but it was clearly an unsuitable title and I am glad that it has been changed, even though it now presents perhaps the same critique and problems that the original title suggested anyway. One of the challenges we face in addressing this issue in this changed piece of guidance and legislation is whether it is a minor change or a major change. I draw on my musical experience here. Things that are minor are usually sad and things that are major are things that we can judge in a more content manner. Clearly, this is not something which can be treated as being of a minor nature.
Paragraph 10 of the report notes that these words were deleted:
“Where the personal interview is omitted, the applicant and dependents shall be given a reasonable opportunity to submit further information”.
The deletion of that sentence suggests that applicants may not be able to suspend the decision-making process to seek expert advice. The major change here is an operational one, bringing together two systems to try to shorten the process for a small number of cases, so we are assured.
What we do in this country and the way we address people’s individual needs for protection are judged against that background. People are not part of cohorts and not to be treated as part of some system that systemically makes things easier; every case deserves to be looked at on its merits. The individuality of assessments is not just present in this country but across the whole of Europe, though sometimes we have to pull those changes up and look at them in a critical way as well.
When you put together two systems, remove such a sentence and make this operational change, which is of some significance because you are reducing the opportunity of individual assessment, it is right that people around this Room ask: where is the legal aid provision? Where is the advice? Where is the training for those who will support people who are genuinely suffering from trauma and other mental health problems that come with the journeys that they have been on?
People faced with life-or-death decisions leave in a traumatic state. That state does not improve just because they have arrived here. They are nervous and their understanding of what will happen to them needs to be addressed. That is why a personalised assessment is so important. The problem with what we have before us is that there was no consultation, not even with the Government’s own consultative body. That was brought in just with the intent of speeding up the process. There was no impact assessment, because the Government maintain that it a minor change rather than a major one. I maintain that the operational aspects are entirely different from what they were before. For people going through this system, the nature of the operation is now entirely different—before there would be a process by which people’s cases would be individually understood.
Finally, as the report says, and as we have asked for, when the Government make changes to the rules of this sort, they should produce the draft guidance alongside the changes. Then we can judge whether the rules are being adjusted for a purpose that is actually accurate, rather than one of simplicity, which is what I think the original intention was. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that, in future, when changes are made to the Immigration Rules, which are of a major nature or can be interpreted as being such, the Home Office will do all three things: a consultation exercise, an impact assessment and guidance, which may be in draft but certainly would help us to make decisions about these matters.
I would like to talk about the trouble with shortcuts. If you take a shortcut and get a back lane instead of going down the main road, sometimes that can lead to barbed wire where the roads are closed at the end or where it is a bit dangerous to proceed. Shortcuts should be taken only if you know where the end is and whether the route is clear or not. That is particularly relevant here. This is a shortcut which has not yet determined whether the right end product is there and available.
The problem with changes that allegedly relate to a particular group of people is that, without a definition, we are left blank as to whether these people will be worse off than they were before and whether the cohort decision will blanket their approval or disapproval because of situations that are not of their making. A lot of strong messages have been sent to the Home Office, both in this debate and in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. I hope that the Minister has listened to and heard them, and that he will act on all those matters.
I want to raise one final matter on the changes to the Immigration Rules. It concerns a case with which I, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, dealt. I have now succeeded in getting the approval of the two people concerned, in order to take this matter forward, but I raise a related question around the Immigration Rules on people with religious occupations.
The case I referred to is that of two nuns from Lesotho who were seeking to come to stay with an order in Humberside. They were being looked after by the same order to which they belonged, of course, and they were going to come and spend time with it. I do not reckon that that was a religious occupation; I reckon that they were building religious certainty and confidence, and were being helped. However, they failed at the border not because they did not have the appropriate visas but because of money: they could not determine how much money they would need to look after themselves in the United Kingdom. The answer, of course, is that holy orders and religious communities, including this particular religious community, have communal funds—that is, worldwide funds, not funds that are communal in the area they are in. So being “treated”—in inverted commas—to a break and a stay with another community of nuns in Merseyside was denied to them because they did not have the money in their pocket.
These two nuns come from Lesotho, which is, as anyone who has been there will know, one of the poorest countries in Africa. I declare my interest as the honorary consul for the Kingdom of Lesotho in Wales. So it is a matter of some importance to me that, when we deal with issues that are related to the Immigration Rules, we see people for what they are: individual people. They need to have their cases looked after properly, and we need to ensure that we do that.
In conclusion, we need—I suspect that everybody in this Room wants this—a fair system in a world where people’s decisions to come to this country for protection are matters of life and death for them. We need to ensure that they are protected properly. I hope that the Minister will take all of these points on board and make sure that the Home Office behaves, as this document says, in the appropriate manner for what I regard as a major change.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, this is the first proper opportunity I have had to welcome the Minister to his new role. I very much look forward to working with him in future. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for this opportunity to debate the changes to the Immigration Rules, and I am equally grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its careful consideration.
As always, although I respect the concerns that have been expressed, I believe that it is important that we keep sight of the central issue. These changes do not alter the substantive legal tests for refugee status, humanitarian protection or human rights protection—rather, they are a procedural reform designed to make the asylum system operate more efficiently in a small and tightly defined category of cases.
The key change relates to what the Home Office describes as the “merged registration process”. Instead of requiring both a screening interview and a later, more substantive interview, certain claims considered suitable for accelerated handling will be dealt with through a single interview process. The objective is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and allow scarce case-working resources to be focused on more complex claims.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has highlighted the concerns raised by external organisations that this represents a significant change to asylum procedures and may reduce fairness for applicants. Yet the Home Office has been equally clear that claimants will continue to have the opportunity to explain the basis of their claim, provide evidence, seek legal advice and submit further representations before decisions are taken. It said that where indicators of vulnerability, trafficking, safeguarding concerns or indeed complexity emerge
“the case will be removed from the Merged Registration process and routed into the standard asylum process”.