Illegal Migration Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I hope I will be allowed a moment when referring to my Motion B1 and Amendment 22R on page 5 of the Marshalled List to pay a very short tribute to the staff of the Public Bill Office. I was treated very kindly by a very tolerant member of staff there when I was being completely dysfunctional late last night and early this morning. They have been put under enormous pressure, and I think we should appreciate that. It may have felt to them like bullying, I am afraid.

I do not know why we have been forced to consider these amendments today, or indeed before the Summer Recess. The very earliest this Bill could ever be used would be after the Supreme Court decision in October, or whenever that is given; we do not know the exact date. Indeed, that may not be the end of the litigation in any event. I do not understand why we were not left to consider this in the sittings in September. I hope we will not be put in this position again.

I now turn to my Motion. This is where I express my genuine gratitude to the Government—to the Minister and others, including the Chief Whip—because they have made, in my view, a correct and noble concession to the objections that this House voted for in an amendment I moved on retrospectivity, pointing out as I did at the time that retrospectivity, though not a “never”, is frowned on in our law.

My Motion on page 5 of the Marshalled List—which I will not test the opinion of the House on tonight—mitigates the rigour of the exception that has been created in the Government’s amendments. They say they have abandoned retrospectivity, to put it crudely, but they have retained a regulatory power to abandon retrospectivity. I am not going to force the issue tonight, but I ask the Government to reflect on the constitutionality of that approach, because it makes me feel decidedly uncomfortable. I do not want to dilute my thanks for the acceptance in principle of what I moved a few days ago.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as laid out in the register. These Benches are supportive of the discomfiture, which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, just referred to, to find that eventual clarification. We also support Motion G1 in this group.

My Motion F1 would mean that if an individual has been made inadmissible under this legislation and has not been removed to a safe country after six months, their claim will be processed within the UK system. The Ministers in both Chambers, in response to my amendment at an earlier stage, said—it has been repeated here—that people might game the system or that it would incentivise people to make spurious claims so as to extend their time in the United Kingdom in order to reach the magic six months.

In response to this concern, the current form of Motion F1 would pause the calculation of six months during any suspensive claim as set out in the Bill. It is also important to be mindful that the Bill in itself is claimed by Ministers to prevent people from making last-minute legal challenges to stop removals. My Motion totally disincentivises people from making spurious claims.

The Minister in the other place said that my earlier amendment would undermine the Bill. It does not. It would simply provide a backstop that protects the taxpayers of this country from indefinitely supporting people existing in the UK in limbo.

The Government’s own impact assessment on the Bill assumes that people will be detained for 40 days before removal. In this Chamber, we have heard constantly from the Minister that it will be not months but weeks or days when people are removed. On that basis, the ability to make a claim after six months should not be a problem, because it is totally in line with the Government’s expectations of their very own Bill.

Without this amendment, the Home Secretary is setting herself up for an extremely challenging time. There will be no way of resolving the foreseeable challenge of not having anywhere to remove people who arrive in the United Kingdom on irregular routes. Whether that is resolved in the future, the Government express the desire that they will be able to make this happen. If you believe, in the Government’s own words, that the Bill can be “workable”, then it is entirely financially prudent for us in this Chamber to try and insist that, in the current climate, the Government should be prudent with their spending of the public purse in using taxpayers’ money to support people indefinitely and without a returns agreement—because six months will have passed.

In addition to the financial considerations, it does not seem to me to be particularly in line with a Conservative mindset to enforce that people remain in the United Kingdom without being able to contribute, use their skills or participate in society. If these people cannot be removed after a reasonable amount of time, their claim should be processed, so that they either get on with their lives in the United Kingdom or be removed to their country of origin.

[Lord Etherton (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to Motion G and my Amendment 23B in lieu. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, in particular, who has been a stalwart supporter of me in relation to this clause from the very beginning.

The clause identifies countries currently specified in Schedule 1 which, the evidence and the law show—by virtue of decisions made by UK courts—are not safe places. I explained to the House on Report what the evidence briefly was in relation to each of them. The House and I have not received any refutation of the point that I made—that all these countries are unsafe places for LGBT people. The only answer that is given by the Government and repeated by the Minister is that this will all come out in the wash when a removal notice is served, and a serious harm suspensive claim can be made.

I am afraid that simply is not good enough. The Bill contains a schedule: Schedule 1. Schedule 1 identifies itself as listing places to which persons can be removed. Schedule 1 is related back to the provisions of Clauses 5 and 4, which provide that people can be moved only to those countries in Schedule 1.

If the approach of the Minister were correct, we would not have a schedule at all. But we have a schedule, and it rightly makes a distinction between those countries which are safe—so it says—and those which are not. There is also a division between those which are safe for women and those which are not. I have put forward the amendment for another group of disadvantaged people, who, as the Minister referred to, are long recognised in our own law: LGBT people.

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Moved by

[Lord German]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 9B in lieu—

9B: Clause 4, page 6, line 13, leave out “cannot be considered under the immigration rules” and insert “must be considered under the immigration rules if the person who made the claim has not been removed from the United Kingdom within six months of the day the claim is deemed inadmissible, subject to subsection (3B).
(3A) From the point at which the provisions of subsection (3) apply to a person, no other provision made by or by virtue of this Act applies to that person.
(3B) For the purpose of calculating the period of six months under subsection (3), any period during which the person cannot be removed by virtue of section 46 (suspensive claims: duty to remove) is to be disregarded.””

[Lord German (LD)]

I beg to move Motion F1 and wish to test the opinion of the House.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord German Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this is a bad Bill. We have done our best in your Lordships’ House to improve it. However, it is quite obvious that the Government, when we talk about kindness, compassion and humanity, seem to think that these are weaknesses. I argue that they are actually strengths. It is part of our British psyche to give that sort of kindness, so the Bill does not work for anybody in Britain. It certainly will not work for the Government to stop the boats. I just wish the Government had more common sense.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, while echoing all the sentiments that have been expressed, I will address the remarks of the Minister in introducing new material at the very beginning of his statement about the legislative consent Motion of the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd. The impression given by the Minister was that these were matters reserved to the British Government, and that therefore any legislative consent Motion from the Welsh Senedd was not appropriate and certainly not allowed. But the matter on which it passed the legislative consent Motion was a very narrow issue indeed about how children in Wales are to be looked after, and the responsibilities of local authorities towards those children, no matter where those children came from.

The piece of legislation that the Government are now putting a red line through is an Act of the Welsh Parliament that has been signed by the Head of State. It is one of which the Welsh people are truly proud, because it projects certain obligations on local authorities to commit to those children who find themselves in Wales, no matter where they come from. I wonder whether the Minister, in reminding us why the Government have overturned that piece of legislation, knows that they are actually overturning a piece of primary legislation that was passed five years ago and has universal support from all parties in Wales. It is that narrow point that the Government seek to overturn, not the Bill as a whole, even though the Welsh Parliament has of course expressed widespread concerns about the Bill as a whole. But that is what the legislative consent Motion was denied for: the overriding of a piece of primary legislation in that respect.

Missing Asylum Seeking Unaccompanied Children

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that we take the welfare of children in our care very seriously. The point is that those children are held at the Kent intake unit for only as short a time as possible. Of course, the age of the children held at that unit can be anything up to 18 years old and, as this House knows from repeated answers, the majority of those passing through that unit are in the upper end of the available age bracket.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in response to my noble friend’s question earlier, the Minister said that local authorities could carry out their responsibilities under Section 17 of the 1989 Act—but how on earth can they do that if the Home Office does not tell them where these children are located?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The Home Office does of course notify local authorities of the arrival of children. We have something called the national transfer scheme, of which the noble Lord is no doubt aware, which has seen 4,875 children transferred to local authorities with children’s services between 1 July 2021 and 31 March this year. That is over six times the number of transfers as in the same timeframe in previous years.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, most of what I wished to say has been said by others. I pay tribute to my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Viscount and my noble and learned friend Lord Hope for what they have said, and I support the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham.

I will simply say this: it is a matter of fairness. In its scrutiny of the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights remained unconvinced by this approach and believes that any penalisation for refusing to undergo some form of age assessment should be challengeable in the courts, which remains not the case at the moment. Removing a young person’s right of appeal against an age assessment which may have been carried out on appearance only, or by any other means, is, as my noble and learned Friend, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, cruel and demeaning.

It is all the more disgraceful if that young person has been tortured or abused and is terrified of being touched by strangers when there is a scientific assessment. It is all the more disturbing given that the so-called scientific methods for age assessment are widely questioned by the scientific community, especially those who have particular expertise, such as the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. I chair two hospitals, as noted in my interests set out in the register. I have never met a doctor or any other health professional who supports these so-called scientific age assessment methods, yet I have met several asylum-seeking young people who have been tortured and abused and are terrified of being touched. If they refuse, they can be penalised and treated as adults. This is a matter of fact. Any young person should have the right of appeal.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I note my interests in the register. I shall speak to the amendments in this group proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, because I think they are a package, and we see them as being important together. I believe that age assessment is an art rather than a science, because it is absolutely the case that mistakes can be made and there is no absolutely right way of assessing the age of a person.

I recently had an experience like that of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. As part of the Learn with the Lords programme, I was talking to group of sixth-formers in a school in England, and one of them had a beard. It was quite surprising but natural. We must not jump to the assumption that if someone has a beard, they are an adult. The rules of this sixth form are that they are allowed to grow their hair longer if they wish to.

I want to look at one area of this work which has not yet been probed by those who have spoken, which is the relationship with other European countries. The Minister repeatedly prays in aid the practice in some European countries, but the European Asylum Support Office, which provides formal guidance for member states of the European Union, has a different view from that which has been expressed by the Minister. Importantly, the safeguards in its guidance contrast with what is in this Bill and what we discovered last night in the child’s rights impact assessment.

Once again I say that the child’s rights impact assessment arrived at virtually the last moment when we are able to discuss anything which impacts unaccompanied children or children in general. It states that,

“until the Home Secretary determines the science and analysis is sufficient to support providing for an automatic assumption of adulthood, which would bring the UK closer to several European countries like Luxembourg and the Netherlands”.

However, the European guidance to all member states says on age assessment:

“In applying benefit of the doubt”—


that is the important phase—

“the applicant shall be considered to be below 18 years and, if unaccompanied, a guardian/representative shall be immediately appointed … The BIC—

best interests of the child—

“shall be observed from this point onwards until conclusive results point out that the applicant is an adult”.

It is evident from this Bill’s Explanatory Notes and the child’s rights impact assessment, which was just received, that this Government do not plan to do either.

The child’s rights impact assessment appeared only in the middle of last night, so it would have been difficult for people to have read it. I shall therefore quote the relevant paragraph. On page 13, it says that:

“The bill includes a regulation making power to make an automatic assumption that a person is an adult if they refuse to undergo scientific methods”—


I repeat, “scientific methods”—

“of age assessment without good reason.”

How does that equate with the guidance to European member states that the benefit of the doubt should be given and the best interests of the child should be provided? It does not. By contrast, the European guidance says on page 42:

“The refusal to undergo the assessment should not imply an automatic consideration of age of majority”.

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[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, the will of the people often gets quoted—for instance, by the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell and Lady Lawlor. Many of us work on the ground with refugees and people who support refugees. The will of the people is to be a compassionate, welcoming nation to refugees and asylum seekers, as we have seen demonstrated by the welcome to Ukrainians and Afghans, and as I see demonstrated regularly. The will of the people is also that we find ways of stopping the boats—I agree. That is exactly why we need to get on with doing a 10-year strategy. It is about trying to bring all those people together, who can be compassionate and want to stop the boats at the same time. This is the right and proper time to do that, off the back of the Bill, so that we move forward with a 10-year strategy. I think that what the people want is for us to get the refugee thing out of party-political toing and froing and find a way forward together.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate, because this amendment gives us an opportunity to look beyond the Bill. It is clear from the days and days that we have been debating the Bill that there are severe doubts about whether it will achieve its aims and severe doubts about the way that it is doing it. But we need to look beyond that if we are trying to find something that will beat the situation that we are all going to face in the years and decades to come.

We support this amendment because it sets out a different approach in responding to the global challenges of refugees and trafficking. Global challenges—that is what they are—require global solutions. We just cannot be isolationists. We need to recognise and take responsibility for the impact of our responses in an interconnected global community. We have to work with our European neighbours and global partners, building on frameworks and building new partnerships that should be broad and inclusive, with the active engagement of refugees and victims of trafficking, who can contribute from their lived experience.

In the UK, there needs to be a cross-departmental approach involving real consultation with a range of stakeholders, including local government, our devolved Governments, civil society organisations and international partners, which deliver some of the resettlement and humanitarian responses we have to deal with in this country. Any strategy should include a diversity of routes to safety and a harmonised approach to entitlements and protection once in the United Kingdom, particularly access to integration support. Partnerships with faith groups and their diasporas should be forged to secure good integration outcomes, and refugee family reunion should underpin all the offers of protection that the strategy outlines.

This amendment speaks to a sensible conversation because that is what it is intended to do: to start us on that route of a journey of thinking. There are great people in this House and great wisdom is expressed in a multitude of views, but in the end we are a humane and compassionate country and I would like to see us start on that journey. I recommend the amendment put forward by the most reverend Primate as a way to begin that sensible conversation .

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to open by addressing the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell. To summarise what she said, one can have a strategy only when one has people’s trust, and this Bill is about stopping the boats; I think that was the gist of her argument. My argument, and the other argument I have heard in this debate, is that even if this Bill achieves its end completely, the most reverend Primate’s amendment would still be appropriate because we still need a strategy as the situation develops over the next 10 years. I think that addresses the point the noble Baroness made.

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Moved by

[Lord German]

168AB: Clause 67, page 68, line 6, leave out “(3) and” and insert “(2A) to”

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in the name of my noble friend Lord Paddick, I shall say a few words about Amendment 168BA and the consequential amendment that is at the rear end of this debate. Essentially, these amendments represent a protection for the Government. The purpose of the Bill is to use removal as a deterrent to people arriving on irregular routes. Without a place to remove people who claim asylum, the intended deterrent is absent, and that applies to a third country to which people can be removed. Therefore, by the Government’s logic, without a third country to remove people to, this legislation will, for the greater part, not work.

Once the Government’s plans come into force, they will be unable to process asylum claims. All that they will be doing is detaining people. After 28 days, once the individual is able to apply for immigration bail, they will remain in limbo until such time as there is a removal agreement. That may well all be solved by the Supreme Court making its judgment, but in the meantime—and I hope that somebody who has a legal background can explain roughly how long the Supreme Court will take in dealing with the matter—if we have more and more people coming here, all of whom will first be detained and then will be in some form of detention, that will spell disaster.

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[Lord German (LD)]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 168AB withdrawn.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I support the cross-party amendments in this group. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his engagement, which I have truly appreciated, but I regret to say that I have yet to hear an argument as to why this amendment should not be accepted.

This is a very narrow and focused amendment that simply maintains the current protection on the detention of pregnant women. There is a clear medical case, which is why it is supported by the royal colleges, medical professionals and over 140 groups representing women. It will not create loopholes. It will not incentivise pregnant women to make a dangerous crossing across the channel. It does not exempt women from the rest of the provisions of the Bill, such as removal. It will not create a pull factor, and there is really no way it can be exploited by the criminal gangs who arrange crossings. There cannot be false claims of pregnancy, as the time limit starts only once the Home Office is satisfied that a woman is pregnant.

Some have said that pregnant women are unlikely to be removed, given fitness to fly, but that is not the case, as NHS guidelines say that women can travel safely well into their pregnancy. That argument also misses the point, as this narrow amendment is not about removal; it is about detention. If it is the Government’s case that pregnant women may not be removed, it is even more important that this amendment be accepted, so that pregnant women are not detained for lengthy periods of time.

The amendment does not undermine the Bill. It is not a wrecking amendment; I have been very careful to try to avoid those. It impacts just a small number of women, but it will have a big impact on those women’s health and futures.

My noble friend the Minister is sincere when he says that the Government do not wish to detain pregnant women for any longer than is strictly necessary. Sadly, however, before this protection was in place and in legislation, women were kept in detention for weeks and sometimes months. We should not return to that. This narrow amendment is designed to ensure that that does not happen and that no women can slip through the cracks. Even at this last minute, I sincerely hope that my noble friend will accept the amendment. If he does not, however, and the amendment is pressed, I will, with regret, vote against the Government and in support of the amendment.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches are pleased to support both amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I recommend that the Minister take note of the request she has made time and time again in this House for some form of impact assessment in respect of pregnant women.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be even briefer. I listened with great interest to our two lawyers. They spoke with the fluency and knowledge that one simply has to respect. However, I point out that we face a very difficult policy problem, with serious effects on public opinion towards immigrants and arrivals in Britain. We face a situation in which, so far, what the Government have done has had no or very little effect. If this continues for some months or longer, there will be a serious impact on the authority of this Government and, possibly, the successor Government. I ask the lawyers and other Members of the House to bear those aspects in mind.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Ludford, who cannot be in her place today, I will speak to Amendments 77, 78 and 79, which are in her name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. Those three amendments are intended to tackle the same issues as those tackled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, albeit with a different approach. If the noble Lord wishes to press his Amendment 66 to a vote, we will support him.

It is critical that the decision about the reasonableness—we have just heard that word from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham—of the length of immigration detention remains a matter for judges, not for the Secretary of State. Incidentally, those who read the judgment of the Appeal Court last week will have noted subsection (5) of paragraph 264, in which the Appeal Court questions

“whether the culture of the Rwandan judiciary will mean that judges are reluctant to reverse the decisions of the Minister”.

This very much puts the separation of powers between the courts and the Executive in Rwanda under question. Here we have virtually the same process, in which the courts of this country are being denied the principles on which they have operated. Set against that is a decision that is down to the reasonableness of the Secretary of State.

It is critical to preserve the Hardial Singh principles to ensure that the most vulnerable people do not have their freedoms curtailed unjustifiably. When the Secretary of State deprives someone of their liberty, there must be a clear avenue for the person to seek independent review of the legality and necessity of their detention. Detention should be for only a short period pending removal. We know now from the judgment that that will be much more unlikely. With no viable agreements in place, save with individual countries for individual persons who belong to those countries, it is highly likely that the 28 days that people will be detained on arrival in the UK will not be pending removal but will be purposely and purely to deter others.

We will be building up more and more people in detention or in some form of curtailed liberties. That is wrong, and it is why the judiciary needs to maintain oversight. This is critical, given that the Bill intends to detain everyone, regardless of age, ill health, disability and trauma. I am pleased to speak to these amendments and, as I say, these Benches will support the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, if he wishes to press his amendment.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, we will support the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, when he presses Amendment 66, and we would expect the subsequent amendments he mentioned to be consequential to that. He clearly and helpfully set out the four Hardial Singh principles and gave their legal basis and history, and I thank him for doing so. As he pointed out, the Government themselves recently cited those principles in a High Court case. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who succinctly summed up the Opposition’s view on the Bill. He said that there is little prospect of unilateral action succeeding, and we agree. He deplored the Secretary of State’s using the power of detention to reinforce the message of deterrence, rather than speaking of the need to implement the Bill, and we agree with that as well. He said that the power should not go to the Secretary of State rather than the courts, and he cited the Explanatory Memorandum. We agree with that too, so I thank the noble Viscount for summarising our view of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Green, said that what the Government have done so far has not had much had effect. The Government are asking us again to support them to do more, yet they have been unsuccessful in the various Bills they have introduced in recent years to try to address this problem. It is a real problem, and there needs to be a different approach to reduce the numbers. Of course, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord German, as well. For all those reasons, we will be happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Carlile.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord German]

49: Clause 10, page 14, line 21, leave out “and (3)” and insert “, (3) and (3A)”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on Lord German’s amendment to page 15, line 37.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, there are two sets of amendments in this group. I am speaking to Amendments 49, 53, 56 and 61, which all concern standards in places of detention. The other amendments have been tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik. From these Benches, we support all the amendments in her name and would be pleased to have been able to add our name to them.

We discussed this matter of standards very briefly in Committee, but the rules on where people can be held for detention are being altered by the Bill. Rather than following the Immigration Act 1971, which lays out clearly where people could be detained, this says that people can be detained anywhere the Minister feels appropriate. I have been thinking about a number of questions which arise from that, but clearly the issue that I am particularly concerned about is the boundary-line between where people are going to be detained—because, of course, that is part of the Bill—and where they might be placed when that detention ends and what offering they might get.

I regret to say that today we heard about the government costs for the barge in Portland: a contract has been let, without tendering, for £1.6 billion for the first two years of that contract. I have in front of me a copy of the floor-plan of that barge, and it is quite clear that the only way that the numbers the Government say will be accommodated will be achieved is by putting in bunk beds in each of the single bedrooms on the “Bibby Stockholm”. We are also led to understand, apart from the huge cost involved, that there will be curfews and that people will only be allowed on to the dockside in a compound—that is the only space they will occupy. To me, that seems to be detention. The only thing that I need to understand is whether the standards of a place of detention are going to be the same as where people are accommodated when they are not in detention. It seems that what the Government are proposing in this £1.6 billion contract is very clearly a place of security and secure boundaries. If there is a curfew when people are not allowed to leave, clearly that means that there are very strict rules that people will have to follow.

Consequently, if the Minister would ensure that the standards of the Detention Centre Rules, which have been in place since 2001, and the Short-term Holding Facility Rules, which were put in place in 2018, are going to be followed, we can expect to have at least some boundary-lines about what sort of accommodation it will be like. However, I fear that the worst aspect is that we are going to see a dehumanisation of people by being put into places which will not suit the current legislation and certainly will not suit what most people would think of as somewhere decent for people to be detained or to live.

I ask these questions to seek some clarity. Are there any rules at all which the Government are going to follow in relation to the detention of the people they now propose to detain, with everybody being put in detention when they arrive?

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 51, 57, 59 and 63 in my name, which retain existing time limits for the detention of children, both unaccompanied and those with families.

Under a Conservative-led Government over a decade ago, Parliament rectified what David Cameron called the scandal of routinely detaining innocent children, so it is regrettable that we are conducting this debate again. The evidence is unequivocal, the debate long since settled: detention does immense and long-lasting harm to children.

I made my points at Second Reading and in Committee, so I shall not repeat the arguments other than to remind my noble friend the Minister of warnings of leading medical organisations in a letter to the Home Secretary outlining the serious harm and risks that refugee children will face if the detention powers in the Bill become law.

There is no policy rationale for why the Government should detain vulnerable young people. The argument is that not detaining children would lead to adults pretending to be children or smugglers exploiting loopholes. But preventing presumed future actions of an unknown number of adults is not a justification.

My noble friend the Minister has recognised the particular vulnerability of unaccompanied children, and for that I thank him. He told us in Committee that, for the most part, unaccompanied children will not be detained. Yet any such exceptionality of a lone child’s detention is nowhere in the Bill. Indeed, the proposed legislation expressly does away with the existing statutory provisions that limit an unaccompanied child’s detention.

In fact, the new powers to detain them are unrestricted. Under the Bill, unaccompanied children may be detained under the new powers only in circumstances prescribed in regulations. We do not know what will be in these regulations or when we will see them. While I thank my noble friend the Minister for the positive step in making the unaccompanied children regulations subject to the affirmative procedure, there is still no knowing what circumstances will be specified in them.

The law governing something as extreme as the power of the state to detain an individual without charge or trial must be much more firmly established. In Committee, my noble friend the Minister said that

“the Bill will also allow the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying time limits to be placed on the detention of unaccompanied children for the purpose of removal, if required”.—[Official Report, 7/6/23; col. 1491.]

I remind noble Lords that the Bill does away with precise time limits, as established by a Conservative Government, that keep unaccompanied children’s detention to no more than 24 hours and only in short-term holding facilities. The Bill will replace existing limits with a power, if required, to make regulations with any as yet unknown time limits on detention and of unaccompanied children only. To my mind, this is wholly insufficient.

I turn from the Government’s possible future time limits in regulations for unaccompanied children to the promised government timescale for child detention. This, we are led to believe, is a timescale for detention of all children—those who are unaccompanied and alone as well as those with their families. The timescale was to be set out during the passage of the Bill through this House, but as yet we do not have it. However, following a very positive engagement with the Immigration Minister earlier today, I am hopeful that we will have clarity and that my amendments will receive consideration on return to the Commons. For that reason, I am minded to test the opinion of the House on Monday.

In October 2020, a Kurdish-Iranian family from Sardasht near the Iraqi border died after the boat they were travelling in capsized in the channel. They were Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, nine, Armin, six, and Artin, 15 months, whose tiny body washed up on the coast of Norway months later. I am sure that noble Lords will join me in continuing to mourn the loss of these lives. If these three children, Anita, Armin and Artin, had survived, under the Bill they would be detained indefinitely upon arrival in the UK. Surely that cannot be right. I urge the Government to think again about undoing the progress made when we ended the cruel practice of detaining babies, toddlers and children.

We can and must do better by these vulnerable young people whom the world has already put through so much. Trafficked and refugee children need recovery and protection in line with their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, trafficking conventions and the refugee convention. Let us not take away the existing time limits for the detention of migrant children as laid out by a previous Conservative Government. The ending of lengthy child detention was a humanitarian response to what had been an unacceptable practice with grave impacts. This is a proud legacy that we must protect.

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[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I have listened very carefully to what the noble Lord has said and I will certainly take it back to the department.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting but short debate. It is interesting that once again we focus on evidence. I often find it strange in this House when people are asked to make judgments about very important matters, particularly affecting young people, and we are not provided with the evidence.

It is not just four times that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has asked. It is probably four on top of four and many times beforehand. She always asks for this in a very decent manner. It is so important that we have that information in order to make judgments about legislation we are being asked to approve or to change. It is not good enough for the Government to say, “Take our word for it”. They should provide that evidence as we would normally expect, at the right time and in the right place. We are now moving rapidly beyond the place where it will be in demand. I dread to think about the devices that one uses in the legislative process that allow us to keep coming back to this matter until such time as we can deal with that evidence.

On the amendments I was talking to, I think I have had a partial answer in that the Detention Centre Rules 2001 are to be followed, so that is something about standards. The bit that I did not have answered was what the difference would be between detention and the places where people will be held or provided with accommodation. In the case of the barge that I told the House about earlier, the only difference was that there would be no curfew and the gate would be closed. That seems the only difference in the standards between the two.

It is a matter that I will keep coming back to, but I am minded to withdraw. Before I do, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, that on these Benches we are certain that if she were to move these to a vote we would support her. The issues she has raised are crucial, especially as we lack the evidence for anybody to say that the case being made has been dealt with appropriately. If I could encourage that, I would be very grateful. In the meantime, I withdraw Amendment 49.

Amendment 49 withdrawn.

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. The answer is that there are no other options. The option before the House tomorrow and on succeeding days is the Bill; the alternative is the present scenario, which is not tolerable, in the Government’s view. On the questions about the timing and context of the impact assessment, it was drafted, obviously, in the context of the need urgently to address the dangerous and illegal crossings of the channel. Accordingly, the legislation and the IA were prepared in order to address that problem at speed. It is also the case that the Rwanda scheme was the subject of a legal challenge in the courts, and clearly it was appropriate to take that into account in preparing the impact assessment.

On the question about whether the impact assessment complies with government guidance, I suggest that, in the context of the Bill, it does. It sets out, so far as can be ascertained, the likely impact. But this Bill, like others, is predicated on a strong theory of deterrence, and it is therefore important to note that it is hard empirically to provide detailed statistics, because the purpose of the Bill is to deter the illegal crossings, as the noble Lord acknowledges.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, it is no wonder that we have had to wait so long for this impact assessment, because it makes very uncomfortable reading for the Government. It tries to justify the unjustifiable by leaving out the costs of so many pieces of the project. It is certainly not rigorous: uncertainty is mentioned 24 times and the Government have looked at only one option. As the House heard in Committee, the Government could have made other choices. This IA cements in uncertainty because it fails to provide a sensible view of the cost consequences, given the outcome of a policy that does not distinguish between those fleeing for their lives and safety, and others.

The impact assessment does not measure the impact on local authorities. It does not measure the impact on the budget of not having the third countries to remove people to, with people having to remain in limbo. It also does not measure the impact on children and the victims of modern slavery, who are not able to obtain protection and support. In essence, this impact assessment has more holes than a Gruyère cheese.

Are the Government diverting resources from reducing the backlog in order to resource the implementation of the illegal migration legislation? That comment has been made in the media throughout the last week: people are being diverted from reducing the backlog in order to make sure that the Bill is resourced.

The impact assessment is clear that, if the deterrent does not work and the numbers arriving do not change, costs will be higher, so why has the range of costs left out the development costs to implement the project? Where is the cost in this assessment of containing more—

[Noble Lords]

Too long!

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that there are 10 minutes for a UQ. Therefore, if noble Lords kept their comments to a minimum, we could get through more questions.

[Lord German (LD)]

The Government say that this is an “illustrative analysis”—it certainly provides more illustrations than proper analysis of the costs.

Stop and Search

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House that I sit as a youth and adult magistrate in London and that I regularly deal with knife-crime cases. In concluding her Statement in the other place, the Home Secretary said:

“It is always heartbreaking and distressing to read reports about stabbings and shootings. I am struck by how often mothers of murdered young black men say that stop and search could have saved their sons’ lives. We owe it to them to heed their call”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/6/23; col. 570.]


I too have spoken to the mothers of murdered young black men, and I have heard some of them say that stop and search could have saved their son’s life. But what I have also heard mothers say, much more forcefully, is that their sons were routinely and repeatedly stopped by the police, and that this led to a breakdown in trust of the police, so their sons felt that they had nowhere to turn when they felt threatened.

Very often in court, when I have a young man in front of me for a knife-crime incident, he says that he was carrying it for his own protection. This is a deadly cycle of mistrust and escalation, which has led to a 70% increase in knife crime over the last seven years. Knife-enabled rapes and knife-enabled threats to kill are at record highs, with some of the steepest increases in the suburbs, smaller cities, towns and counties.

The Statement says:

“Black people account for about 3% of our population, yet almost a third of under-25s killed by knives are black. Ninety-nine young people lost their lives to knife crime in England and Wales in the year to March 2022: 31 of them were black; 49 were white; 16 were from other ethnic minority groups; and three victims did not have their ethnicity recorded”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/6/23; col. 569.]


This is a profound problem, which calls for an integrated and sustained response.

I welcome the references to the introduction of stronger community scrutiny and better data collection. These were first recommended many years ago. Can the Minister explain what is meant by “stronger community scrutiny”? There are different models of community scrutiny in different parts of the country. Indeed, there are different models within London. What do the Government mean by “community scrutiny” in the context of knife crime?

What about other repeated recommendations such as police training on the use of force, training on de-escalation and communication skills and proper data collection on traffic stops? None of these was referred to in the Statement. How many of the 18 recommendations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct last year have been fully implemented? The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, called for “a fundamental reset” of the Met’s use of stop and search powers. Is this Statement part of that reset?

Body-worn video cameras should have been a game-changer in the effectiveness of stop and search. They should have been, but have they been? Can the Minister say how many stop and search operations are carried out without body-worn video and why that may be?

I agree that stop and search is a necessary tool as part of a proper strategy, but we need that wider strategy too. Why is the violence reduction unit approach being used by the Home Secretary in only 18 areas, when knife crime is rising in communities across the country? Why has there been no new serious violence strategy for five years? Why is there no comprehensive action on youth mentors and support for early intervention?

Stop and search must be applied judiciously, proportionately and legitimately. It can save lives. At present it comes with the cost of distrust and alienation. It must be applied as part of a wider strategy to rebuild trust and re-energise policing by consent.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches look at this Statement in respect of whether it will produce the outcome the Government are seeking, which is, of course, a reduction in knife crime. Regrettably, I believe this Statement is one which ramps up the rhetoric that strong-arm actions will put an end to knife crime. That rhetoric needs to be tested against the evidence to see whether it works.

Police stop and search is an intrusive power that is used disproportionately against visible minorities. You are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if you are black than if you are white, if suspicion is required; and 14 more times more likely to be stopped and searched if no suspicion is required. The proposal in the Statement from the Home Secretary is based on suspects of violent crime and talks about the implications for the black community, but there is a danger that these figures can be easily misinterpreted. There is a difference between a few people committing a large number of offences and a large number of black people being involved in violent crime. I suspect that the reality is the former. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that when referring to the figures in the Statement.

More than that, the Government’s own research suggests that stop and search is not an effective deterrent in reducing offending. Operation Blunt 2, from 2008 to 2011, demonstrated that ramping up stop and search in order to reduce knife crime has little or no effect, but Operation Trident in the early 2000s demonstrated that where police and the black communities worked together to reduce black-on-black shootings, there was a significant increase in prosecutions and a reduction in the number of offences. Also, the Government’s own evidence, which they chose to look at in respect of the use of stop and search, produces at most a static response, but often, it shows that simply increasing the use of that power is unlikely to reduce crime. That was the Government’s own evidence in the research they commissioned.

On the one hand, we have the noble Baroness, Lady Casey of Blackstock, pulling in one direction, as mentioned by the noble Lord Ponsonby, in wanting stop and search to be based on collaboration, listening and engagement; and on the other we have this Government pulling in the opposite direction, by increasing the number without that necessary collaboration. So, do the Government believe, against their own evidence, that if stop and search goes up, crime will come down? Have the Government considered the lessons learned from Operation Blunt 2? Secondly, do the Government agree that if a community views police activity as unfair, public trust and police legitimacy are weakened?

Finally, how do the Government intend to ensure, as the Statement says, that “every community” is

“able to trust in stop and search”.—[Official Report, Commons 19/6/23; col. 570.]?

How is that going to be brought about? How can it be brought about without the necessary collaboration which was part of the Casey report? I would be grateful if the Minister addressed those issues, because without that certainty, it is more likely that the rhetoric will fail and we will not enable the desired outcome which all of us want, which is to achieve a reduction in knife crime.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord German, for their remarks. I defer to the extensive front-line knowledge of this subject of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby; I know he does a great deal of work on this. I shall make a few general remarks and then address some of the questions that have been posed.

It is not just my view but the view of the police that stop and search is fundamentally about saving lives and keeping the public safe, and that, where used proportionately and judiciously, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said, it works, and I will attempt to provide the statistics that prove that. For example, since 2019 more than 40,000 weapons have been seized through stop and search and 220,000 arrests have been made. The 2021 inspectorate report concluded that the vast majority of stop and search decisions are based on reasonable grounds. That is potentially thousands of lives saved and countless violent incidents prevented.

The noble Lord, Lord German, referred to Operation Blunt 2, which I think he said took place between 2008 and 2011. In 2010, this was written, and I agree with it:

“If serious violence can be prevented, then police officers must be empowered to conduct blanket stop-and search-operations which target the most likely individuals. Yes, it is a draconian power; yes, its use should be limited. But there are circumstances where such powers are absolutely necessary”.


That was the noble Lord’s colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, writing in the Daily Mail in 2010, and I agree with him.

To those who claim that it is a disproportionate or racist tool, I say that we must be honest about what this means for victims. Black people are four times more likely to be murdered than white people, and they are more likely to be victims of knife crime than young white men—that is the disproportionality that we are focused on stopping. It is important that we look at the matter with a cool head and on the basis of the evidence.

The emerging picture based on London suggests that, when we adjust the data to consider the proportion of suspects in an area and its demographics, rather than considering the data for the country as a whole, the disproportionality of stop and search falls away hugely. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary referred to this as

“a more sophisticated approach to calculating disparity”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/6/23; col. 570.]

I urge noble Lords to consider and reflect on those facts, while acknowledging that more work needs to be done on the methodology.

Of course, it is right that the powers are used in a responsible and measured way, which is why engagement with communities has to be respectful, as both noble Lords noted. It is right that the powers are subject to the highest levels of scrutiny. We now see very few complaints about individual stop and searches. Training on legal and procedural justice has improved, and we have seen confidence levels increase.

As outlined in the Statement, the Home Secretary wrote to all chief constables, and one of the things she asked of them was to be “proactive” in publishing body-worn video footage. That will obviously protect officers who conduct themselves properly, but it is also designed to instil greater public confidence, which is the linchpin of our model of policing by consent. The Government are looking carefully at strengthening local community scrutiny.

Transparency is of course vital, as is community engagement. We want every community to be able to trust stop and search, and we want to present a clear picture of the stop and search landscape that shows the good work being done on the front line. The Government will amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Code A to make clear when the police should communicate when suspicionless powers are used in a public order and Section 60 context. Suspicionless stop and search must be used responsibly, but we cannot do without it.

We are also mandating data collection on stop and search, to which I referred, as part of the annual data requirement for the government statistics bulletin that is published every year. We collect more data on stop and search than ever before, and this is posted online, enabling police and crime commissioners and others to hold forces to account for their use. Disparities in the use of stop and search remain, but they have continued to decrease for the last three years.

I said that there will be a more sophisticated approach to calculating disparity in the Metropolitan Police Service, which is where about 40% of stop and searches take place—I note the noble Lord’s point about various regional disparities in methods. I do not know the precise answers to his questions about regional engagement, but I will endeavour to find out and report back as soon as I am able.

I do not have the statistics to hand on body-worn video, and in fact I do not know whether the data is collected—I certainly hope it is. I would like to look into that further and report back to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. The fact is that there is broad cross-community support for this in principle, especially for searches for weapons, but we acknowledge and stress that this is contingent and fragile. So, to that end, this transparency is absolutely necessary.

I was asked about the serious violence strategy and the various programmes and what have you that the Government have put in place. The Government made £110 million available this financial year, 2023-24, to tackle serious violence, including murder and knife crime. This includes funding for a network of 20 violence reduction units, delivering early intervention and prevention programmes to divert young people away from a life of crime, and bringing together local partners to tackle the drivers of violence in their areas. VRUs follow a public health approach and have reached over 215,000 vulnerable young people in their third year of funding alone.

There is further investment in our Grip hotspot policing programme, to which I have referred from the Dispatch Box before. It operates in the same 20 areas as VRUs and is helping to drive down serious violence by using data processes to identify the top serious violence hotspots. Those two programmes alone have prevented an estimated 136,000 violent offences in their first three years of operation.

We invested £200 million over 10 years in the Youth Endowment Fund, which provides funding for over 230 organisations that have reached over 117,000 young people since it was set up in 2019.

Finally, we have introduced the serious violence duty, which requires public bodies to work collaboratively, to share data and information, and to put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities based on a public health approach to tackling the scourge of knife crime. Objectively, it is not right to say that the Government have not updated their serious violence strategies and processes.

I remind the House that serious violence reduction orders are being trialled; they have been since April. For the edification of the House, six SVROs have been issued—five in Merseyside and one in the West Midlands. Four of those are live in the community and two will become live when the offenders are released from prison. Officers will now proactively stop and search those with an order, deterring them from carrying weapons and making it more likely that they will be caught if they persist in doing so. It is obviously too early to assess the success or otherwise of this program but anecdotal evidence so far from the Merseyside Police would suggest that it is proving a very useful tool.

I am proud of this Government’s achievements on policing: we have a record number of police officers, more than ever before; 100,000 weapons have been seized since 2019; and crime is falling—in fact, serious violent crime has fallen by 40% since 2010.

As I have said before from the Dispatch Box, percentages are a very dry way of looking at this. We all have to bear in mind the points I made in my opening paragraph of remarks that this is really about individuals. The fact is that the disproportionality around stop and search should be borne very carefully in mind when we look at the proportion of those who are most badly affected and most likely to become victims.

I hope that I have answered the main questions. If I have not, I will come back to them.

British Nationality (Regularisation of Past Practice) Bill

Lord German Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to say that the Liberal Democrats support the Bill and wish it a speedy progress. It may be somewhat illusory, of course, that a Home Office Bill should get the support of the House so speedily, but I am sure that this one is on the right path. It redresses the effect whereby people’s applications for citizenship, and those of their descendants, have fallen into limbo, an issue I will come back to shortly. I thank the Minister for making time for his officials to talk to me, and for answering all my various questions. The responses I got answered all the interesting issues which might come up.

There is the interesting case of the Crown dependencies, and the different dates is one of the issues we discussed. Of course, we know that, having different legal systems, they are obviously going to have different dates in the Bill in respect of when they completed that legislation.

The question of communicating with those affected by the Bill is one of great interest. Those who are making an application for the first time will have no knowledge that this has been a problem. There will be those who may be related to—perhaps descendants of—those who have been caught, from among the small number of people the Government know about, and who have made applications and had them held in limbo. There may also be others who have heard the information from relatives or friends, and who may be deterred from making an application for a passport because they think there is still a problem.

This is an issue for the Government, who need to make sure that this message is sent out and to ask those whom they know about to pass it on to their descendants and others. The information the Government provide online and through passport offices needs to be quite clear that there is no problem in this matter, should people think that there still is. The Bill will clear the pathway for the descendants—grandchildren in particular—where it is putting that right.

The Bill has retrospective effect because it is trying to be corrective and permissive. For those of us with an interest in whether a Bill should be made retrospective, it is very clear that these circumstances are different from those of another Bill that we will debate in a week or so which has retrospective measures for other purposes. Where the retrospection in this Bill is permissive and corrective, it is absolutely correct that it should be taken.

The Liberal Democrats will not table any amendments to the Bill. I wish it a very speedy progress through this House.

School Trips to the United Kingdom

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Clearly, there has been a reduction in the number of organised school groups coming to the UK since 2019. However, it is likely that socioeconomic factors such as the cost of living and the ongoing Covid recovery are having an impact on school groups coming to the UK. As I said, on 10 March, at the summit between the Prime Minister and the French President, the UK committed to easing the travel of school groups to the UK. That includes consideration of changes that would permit the use of national identity cards for French schoolchildren travelling on organised trips, and potentially waiving UK visa requirements for their classmates who may be visa nationals.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, although the French arrangement is welcome, the Government support the transfer of pupils from the UK to the EU through the collective passports regime—obviously not for all countries, but for a large number. Is it the UK Government’s ambition to replace that system for students coming to the UK from countries throughout the EU? If so, do they intend to put forward a replacement at the earliest opportunity, so that the lost income, support and knowledge of the United Kingdom among young people can be replaced by a workable system?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Although collective passports remain government policy, it is perhaps of note that a number of signatories to the 1961 Council of Europe treaty that underpins their use have already indicated their intention to move away from accepting collective passports. These include Bulgaria, Estonia, Portugal, Luxembourg, Romania and Slovakia. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that collective passports seem to be out of step with advanced passenger information requirements, as required by the EU’s ETIAS scheme and our electronic travel authorisation. Continuing to use collective travel documents is unlikely to be compatible, and therefore agreements of the type that the Prime Minister agreed with France would seem to be a satisfactory way forward.