Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in his intention to oppose Clauses 57 and 58 standing part of the Bill. I have a speech but I am not going to deliver it, because the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in particular, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and many others have been so powerfully put that they are simply irrefutable. I have been in the House now for 15 years or so and have heard thousands of good arguments as to why a Government should not do this, that or the other, but I have never heard such powerful arguments for a part of a Bill to be removed.

I am going to ask something that I have never asked before. Will the Minister invite the Home Secretary to come to a meeting with representatives from all sides of this House to hear the arguments first-hand from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and others? It is not good enough for our poor Minister, if I may refer to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in that way, to hear all these arguments, to go back and say whatever he is going to say—I do not know what it will be—and then to have to come back here and say, “Sorry, guys, it’s all going to stay there”. That is not good enough. The case is so incredibly powerful. The wickedness of Part 5 should not be allowed to go by without the Home Secretary facing noble Lords directly.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I notice that my noble friend Lady Hollins cannot be in her place today, but I urge the Minister to consider her wealth of medical, psychological and therapeutic experience, as she has her name to Amendment 154. That will strengthen the case for him taking back this group.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton, wrote to the Home Secretary about this Bill on 7 September last year. I should declare an interest: I know Sara Thornton very well. We were police officers together and spent six months together on a residential course. She is extremely able and fiercely independent, and, in my opinion, the best commissioner the Metropolitan Police never had.

In relation to trafficking information notices, Sara said in her letter that trauma suffered by victims of modern slavery can result in delayed disclosure, difficulty recalling facts or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. She went on to say that evidence from the Salvation Army pointed to the fact that many victims initially recall their experiences with contradictions and inconsistencies, and it can often take a considerable time before they feel comfortable to disclose fully what has happened to them, as many other noble Lords have said. Her conclusion was that to place a deadline on when they can submit evidence and to interpret late compliance as damaging to credibility fails to take account of the severe trauma suffered by victims. For those reasons alone, Clauses 57 and 58 should not stand part of the Bill.

Northern Ireland: Executive and Assembly

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness is right to raise such an important issue but, of course, this is a fully devolved matter. It should not be the Government of the United Kingdom who seek to impose such changes on the school structure in Northern Ireland. None the less, Northern Ireland’s Executive must grapple with these issues when they resume their role.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, political parties and Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly have failed to agree on devolution and power-sharing. Will the Government now consult the elected Northern Ireland MPs to see whether they can find a way forward?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The Government are speaking to one and all in an attempt to reach that magical moment of bringing the key parties back to the table. No party can be left out. We shall listen to all who have something to say.

Northern Ireland: Political Developments

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dunlop]

Certainly, the sentiments of this House will be heard loud and clear. I hope that it is clear from the Statement that I have repeated today the gravity and seriousness that the Government attach to these matters and therefore the priority that we will give to them. In the discussions that the Secretary of State will have, he will obviously explore all avenues to see what might be helpful in resolving the current situation. We must not rule anything out in trying to seek that resolution.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, for more than 20 years I was a very regular visitor to Northern Ireland and I currently have an exemplary Northern Ireland son-in-law. Why does the Statement assume that an election will change nothing? We all know that power sharing is a very difficult concept to work out in practice, no doubt because of the lack of trust in a still deeply divided society. But, if the electorate wants to persevere with power sharing, they should penalise those who fail to deliver it. In theory, there could be a new coalition between official Unionists and the SDLP, but long-term thinking is also required beyond the present situation. A county council or GLC model might be more appropriate than what we have. At any rate, less emphasis is needed on legacies from the past and far more on positive and co-operative work for the future, based on civil society and local community relations.

[Lord Dunlop]

I thank the noble Lord for his contribution. One can never predict the implications of elections. The Statement simply sets out the widely held view that an election may deepen divisions and threaten the continuity of devolved institutions. Clearly, we need to work and redouble our efforts to find a resolution, as I have already said.

Immigration Bill

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, for a long time I have been concerned about immigration detention and I have therefore visited two, if not three, of the detention centres. It is very important for us to take full note of the fact that the Shaw review was not available to the other place when considering the Bill. I emphasise that that review said that the length of detention should be reduced, whether by better screening, more effective reviews or a formal time limit. We also have to recall that this country makes more use of immigration detention than other, comparable western European countries, almost all of which have time limits for it. I also emphasise the extreme vulnerability of some of the people who get detained. I notice that my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham will speak to a specific amendment on this point later.

However, to reinforce that approach, I shall quote from a case detailed by the Detention Forum, which is a large consortium of voluntary organisations. A man whom the consortium code-named Jacques was, it said,

“detained for the purposes of removal to Denmark where he had previously claimed asylum. He had a traumatic history as a child soldier and was severely”,

affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. The forum said:

“Despite being visibly unwell, and despite anecdotal evidence of staff feeling unable to manage the situation, he was detained for over two months before being removed to Denmark. During detention, Jacques suffered periodic blackouts and dizziness, which at least once led to injury. He was unable to communicate with staff or other detainees and exhibited erratic behaviour, at times running naked out of his room or speaking what was understood by staff as gibberish. In response, Jacques was regularly placed in isolation, which appeared to exacerbate his confusion and paranoia. The local visitors’ group made efforts to raise concerns with the detention centre staff, but got no response from the healthcare centre. Attempts to support Jacques were made by a fellow detainee who spoke the same language as well as a solicitor who was willing to represent him for a temporary admission application and for unlawful detention. Jacques’ paranoia made him unwilling to enter the room with the solicitor, and so it was impossible to represent him. Communication was so difficult that his fellow detainee was unable to do much to support him either”.

That surely is the kind of situation which we should do our level best to avoid.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friends have been tempted to move into the next group of amendments. I can see why, as bail and detention are so inextricably intertwined, but I will try to resist that temptation. I would say that the question of bail has been raised on successive immigration Bills, and many of us remember that historic repeal by Labour of the clause that would have brought in automatic bail. This issue has a direct bearing on the next group of amendments and the old problem of the inadequacy of initial decisions.

I will simply quote here the words of the highly regarded Detention Forum, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hylton. It said:

“Given the lack of automatic bail hearings for individuals who have been detained, and without the initial decision to detain being sanctioned by any kind of legal proceeding, the lack of effective case-working has serious and damaging consequences”.

I have had some experience of visiting detention centres where there are a lot of patient and courageous visitors who, just like the inmates themselves, have become frustrated with the system. There are some who have committed serious offences but there are genuine migrants and asylum seekers in their hundreds, anxiously awaiting either sentences or appeals for crimes that they have not committed. I understand that in 2014, more than 30,000 individuals were detained but only 12,000 removed. I support the later amendments on the need for a time limit to detention but I will not mention that now. We have already heard the example of Yarl’s Wood and of the work of the Shaw report, so I will leave that for later.

Immigration Bill

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of these amendments. I shall refer to two or three specific points. Amendment 216 is very moderate and the Government ought to have no difficulty in accepting it. The sort of review envisaged would give us more information; I think it would help to make the arguments clearer and might well come out more in favour of the tougher amendments that are also part of the group. It is up to the Government to say why they do not want this information to come to light and why they are against such a moderate amendment.

I turn to the question of time limits. I agree very much with the points that have been made. To detain vulnerable people and to give no sense of how long they are to be detained is not something that we as a country should be proud of doing. In a debate today on earlier amendments, it was put to us by the Minister that if people were in detention, they had other ways of getting out and processes they could go through—I think one example was judicial review and another was habeas corpus. It would be very difficult to achieve these safeguards, costly without legal aid to pay for them and indeed costly for the Government to defend such cases if people had the power to bring them. I do not think that that is a positive way forward.

Apart from supporting time limits, I also support the point made so clearly by my noble friend Lady Lister: to detain pregnant women must be entirely unacceptable. They are not going to run away, they can be of no danger to society, and I cannot understand what benefit there is to the country or to anybody else in detaining people who are so vulnerable by definition of their pregnancy. That also goes for some of the other categories listed in Amendment 216ZC, such as victims of torture. How can we contemplate detaining victims of torture, who surely have already suffered enough? For some of these people Britain is a country of hope, with high standards, and when they find that the way they are treated does not meet those high standards, as the noble Lord said, hope is gone.

So I very much hope that the Government will come forward with some positive responses to these amendments. We cannot as a country allow our reputation to be blemished and besmirched by the practices we adopt in detaining some of these people, who surely have more rights than we give them at the moment.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, at Second Reading I said that indefinite detention without charge was completely repugnant to public opinion in this country. Therefore I welcome Amendment 216 and other amendments in this group. It is hard to imagine a subject which calls out more loudly for review than this one. My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, with his long experience of inspecting official institutions, pointed out very strongly that for years now we have been subject to drift on this very subject. We have excuses, palliatives and promises, which have fairly seldom been fulfilled.

It may help if I give some figures on the length of time that people have been held. During the full year 2014, 857 people were held for longer than six months, and by the time that those people had been released, 26 had been detained for between for between two and four years and one person had been held for over four years. Of course, these figures do not include those held in prisons under immigration powers. Of the 161 people who were released after more than 12 months, only 70 were actually removed from this country, while 86 were granted temporary admission, temporary release or bail. That throws some light on the seriousness of how things have been running lately.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly intervene to support the speeches that have been made thus far in favour of these amendments. In doing so, I will return to something my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham said earlier on about the inappropriateness of our procedures. It seems that the cart and the horse have been confused here. Why did we bother asking Stephen Shaw to carry out his review and examine these procedures while we were steamrollering through legislation? Surely we should have waited for that review in the first place.

The terms of reference for the Shaw review were interesting in themselves. They were to “review the appropriateness” of the Government’s,

“policies and practices concerning the welfare of those who have been placed in detention, whether in an immigration removal centre or a short-term holding facility, and those being escorted in the UK”.

That goes to the very heart of this legislation. Surely it would have been wise to await the findings of that review before the other place considered this legislation, and before we in Committee were asked to look at 64 recommendations and consider which of those could be incorporated in amendments, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said before.

Stephen Shaw called for a complete overhaul of the Rule 35 process, a supposed safeguard against the detention of victims of torture which—as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, implied in his remarks earlier on—he said is not working. That something as serious as people who have been subject to torture is now being addressed in amendments to legislation at this stage shows again the inappropriateness of the procedures we are using.

Northern Ireland: Political Developments

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dunlop]

I agree very much with what the noble Lord said about criminal paramilitary activity. As I have said previously, I do not think it would be helpful to provide a running commentary as talks proceed. The Secretary of State said in the other place that she will hold further talks tomorrow. We must see what transpires from those.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness speaking from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench raised the question of whether some Ministers might be in breach of their oath of office. The Minister may not be able to answer today, right now, but could he at least ensure that legal advice is taken on that point?

[Lord Dunlop]

It is for the Ministers who have taken those actions to answer for them. We remain absolutely focused on getting the parties round the table and seeking a resolution to these difficult issues.