Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I signed Amendments 54 and 55. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Neuberger, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for introducing them. I will not repeat their important comments and scene-setting.

I will also pick up on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, about deterrence. To say that a trafficker or smuggler of a 14 year-old child in north Africa wanting to come across the Mediterranean will be deterred by the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is extraordinary. However, I will not focus on that.

Amendment 54 seeks to safeguard and promote the welfare of children within families who may go to Rwanda. I asked at Second Reading about special educational arrangements for children being sent with family groups to Rwanda, because it is not evident from what we have seen of the accommodation in Rwanda under the treaty that appropriate education is provided. I commented that, while Rwanda thankfully now has a good and fairly widespread primary system, it does not have a secondary system at all. As I have no idea, can the Minister tell us what arrangements will be made for this very small number of children—given that the number of people going to Rwanda will itself be very small—to continue their education, which, I remind your Lordships’ Committee, is their right under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Will they be living in an environment that is right for family groups and not in the sort of detention arrangements we have in the United Kingdom? Does he know what the living arrangements will be for this small number of family groups?

I will spend the rest of my time talking about Amendment 55 and all the issues, which have been laid out, around a child deemed to have been an adult in the UK. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and I tabled regret amendments in November to an SI that arose from the Illegal Migration Act on the use of age assessment techniques, and I continue to have great concerns about the medical use of those assessments. But it is not just that—it is also visual assessments and, frankly, guesswork by the people assessing them.

The report she referred to, Forced Adulthood, spoke very clearly about the fact that some age assessments that happen as young people arrive in our country may take 10 minutes, which also includes discussions about how old they say they are. Forced Adulthood says that, quite often, the wrong interpreters have been provided for the young people; we do not even know if they are getting a proper and effective translation that would support them.

A couple of references have been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, and possibly the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, to support for young people going through the process. It was not at all clear from the SIs or the debates on the Illegal Migration Act that the sort of protection you would expect for somebody who is, or claims to be, a child—which we see in many other European countries that carry out this age assessment—would be provided for by the Bill or the SIs we covered on 27 November last year. I am very happy to see the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, in his place, as we frequently had this debate.

Can the Minister say what age assessments are being used now, given that the SIs have come into force? Do they include the medical assessments that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to? If so, are they happening under the terms the noble Lord, Lord Murray, outlined at the Dispatch Box? These included that the Home Office would ensure that the individual has the capacity to fully understand the process and is communicated with in a child-friendly and clear way, and that interpreters would be available to assist with understanding information. I could go on. The key phrase was that it would be Merton-compliant.

Young people who say that they are children are now arriving in this country; the Government may disagree with them. Therefore, can the Minister confirm that those processes are now under way? Do the children have—as we fought for but did not win—independent representatives to support them in the process to help them with appeals? For all the other reasons that all noble Lords have spoken about in the debate, once a child arrives in Rwanda, they will find it extremely hard to appeal as—given the process—they are deemed to be an adult upon arrival. This amendment in particular is important because there may be a few who are able to articulate that and are finally believed, but who fell through the net.

There are consequences of getting it wrong. The Forced Adulthood report, which was published in January and refers to figures for last year but builds on figures from previous years, talks about local authorities’ concerns when they have received those deemed to be adults into hotels, but it quickly becomes clear that they are actually children. The consequences of them perhaps being abused and trafficking themselves from those hotels are unconscionable. We must do everything we can to make sure that everyone who is, or believes they are, aged 18 or under gets the support they require—including the transitional support the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was looking for in his Amendment 46.

I hope the Minister will be able to give us some detail that might provide reassurance on that. Even with that, however, we need a clear pathway back for anyone who has been misdiagnosed as an adult and gets to Rwanda, where it becomes apparent that they are a child. Perhaps the Minister can outline exactly how that will happen.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be brief but I will widen my remarks beyond just children. The Committee has made a very thorough examination of the Bill. I admire the quality of contributions from our legal colleagues. The debate has, however, been rather one-sided. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, is the only person who has touched on the wider issues, which is what the debate is about.

We are not dealing with saints. We are dealing with people entering our country illegally and on a considerable scale. This raises policy issues which are not part of this debate but are very important. Just the backlog of claimants, as I have mentioned, is enough to fill Wembley Stadium. Roughly 80% of the claimants are males aged between 18 and 40. I accept, of course, that children need special treatment, but most of them are young men and virtually all have destroyed their documents, and all have come from a country where they were already safe, mainly France or Belgium.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I apologise for not being able to rise to intervene. I am grateful to the noble Lord.

The Government have claimed that in almost half the age-disputed cases, the people in question were found to be adults. This figure, however, fails to include the many hundreds of children deemed to be adults by the Home Office who were subsequently referred to local authorities and then found to be children. It is children we are talking about in this group of amendments.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I understand that but I said at the beginning of my speech that I was going to range more widely. There are difficulties concerning children, but the point of the Bill is deterrence. If the Government can deter people from coming here, they are saving themselves a lot of difficulties. If the Government can deter people from sending their children here, often alone, they can avoid the difficulties the noble Baroness and her colleagues have so rightly described.

I have just one other point to make. The British public are very angry indeed. Some 68% want to see effective action; I sympathise with them and would like to find a way to deal with the problem. The Bill clearly has some serious difficulties and it has been strongly attacked in this House without much attention given to the real issue facing the Government—and the next Government—of how to deal with the inflow and the state of public opinion.

In reviewing where we have got to, I have looked at the amendments being discussed. There are at least nine that would render the Government’s policy completely ineffective; they would torpedo it and, therefore, later in this process, will have to be addressed. I am referring to Amendments 1C, 8, 20, 36, 39, 48, 57, 81 and 90. Most of those would pretty much destroy the Government’s policy.

I conclude with a quotation from the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who wrote in connection with a paper produced by the CPS:

“The British public are fair-minded, tolerant and generous in spirit. But we are fed up with the continued flouting of our laws and immigration rules to game our asylum system. And we’ve had enough of the persistent abuse of human rights laws to thwart the removal of those with no right to be in the UK. This must end. Saying so is not xenophobic or anti-immigration”.


I recognise that that is a different note and I am quoting the former Home Secretary, but a lot of people outside this Chamber would agree with that.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Green. For my part, I agree with his assessment. However, it is one of the unfortunate features of the area that our more generous arrangements for handling unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are open to abuse and are abused. We needed to take steps to stop that. That is why, in the Illegal Migration Act, we put into force Sections 57 and 58. In the Nationality and Borders Act, authorisation was given for the utilisation of scientific methods of age assessment, all of which aim to prevent adults abusing our special arrangements for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

All these amendments, in particular Amendment 55, will not have the objective that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, sought to persuade the Committee. She says in her Member’s explanatory statement that the amendment

“avoids a situation in which an unaccompanied child is erroneously relocated to the Republic of Rwanda”.

That is simply not the case. If one looks at the Illegal Migration Act, one will see that Section 57(1) makes it clear that it applies only if the

“relevant authority decides the age of a person … who meets the four conditions in section 2”—

ie, that they are an illegal entrant—and determines their age in accordance with Sections 50 and 51 of the Nationality and Borders Act, using scientific methods. The effect of the provision is to avoid the hazard that there will be repeated challenges which would be suspensive of removal. It does not take away someone’s opportunity to challenge completely the finding that they are, in fact, an adult. It simply says that they have to do that from Rwanda, and there is nothing wrong with that. For those reasons, I oppose these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has spoken. I hope those who spoke in support of the amendment will forgive me if I do not spell out what they said, but they strengthened the case remarkably, helping to make a very strong case. I am conscious that other noble Lords want to get on with the dinner-break business so I will be as quick as possible.

I wanted to say something in response to the noble Lords who spoke against the amendment, particularly around the point about deterrence, which a number of noble Lords raised, including the Minister. I just remind them about the impact assessment on the Illegal Migration Act, which said:

“The academic consensus”—


I speak as an academic—

“is that there is little to no evidence suggesting changes in a destination country’s policies have an impact on deterring people from … travelling without valid permission, whether in search of refuge or for other reasons”.

I am sorry, but I do not think that all those arguments about deterrence are very compelling.

The noble Lord, Lord Green, seemed to use what was supposed to be our opportunity to focus on the best interests of children to make a much more general point about a whole list of amendments that are not in this group at all—and I am not sure that that is valid in Committee procedure. He did not make convincing points about children as such. However, he made the point about the British public being very angry. Has anyone asked the British public what they think about children being wrongly assessed as adults and then being put in adult accommodation? I suspect they would not be very happy about that. So I do not see the relevance of the more general point—the noble Lord is trying to get up; perhaps he has some evidence about that.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

The noble Baroness is probably right that the public are not focused on children, still less on the precise means by which they are assessed. However, they are concerned about large-scale, illegal immigration into Britain, which is what I was referring to.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I remind noble Lords that it is illegal only because we made it illegal in the legislation that previously went through this House. There is nothing illegal about seeking asylum; there is an international right to do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray, questioned the explanatory statement. This has been drafted by a lawyer for me; I will not go into all the legal stuff now. The Minister rattled through section this and section that, and I am afraid I could not even keep up with it, so I will not try to address that; obviously, I will read what he said afterwards. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, said that there is nothing wrong with sending children to Rwanda and expecting them to challenge a decision from there. There is everything wrong with it. Think about it.