Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard

Committee stage
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I oppose the amendments in this group introduced by their three proposers. I do so for five reasons.

The first is that I believe in putting the traffickers out of business, and studies show that about half of those in the camps in Calais are family reunion cases: they are people wishing to join members of their family here.

The second is that the principal virtue, in my book, of the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is that it deals with the anomaly where we, with the Swiss and Liechtenstein, are the only countries in Europe that do not allow a resident refugee child granted asylum status to sponsor family members to come into the country. Our position is an anomaly, which, in my view, is quite unworthy of us and quite unfitting with our pride in being a sanctuary country.

Thirdly, I oppose the amendments because they are unworkable. I think the intention is probably to make them unworkable, but in practice, they would be unworkable. A good example is Amendment 7, from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, which would require the Secretary of State to publish in the initial statement and every six months how many people would be expected to come in under the Act and the approximate cost per person. We know the answer, actually. The Refugee Council study established that the numbers would be somewhere in the range of 240 to 750 a year, if we, as every other European country, except Liechtenstein and Switzerland, does, allowed a resident child granted asylum status to bring in family members. The range would be no more than 750—it might be as little as 240—and the cost would be about £1,000 a head.

So we are talking de minimis here on money but constructing extremely elaborate bureaucracy and laying requirements on local government—and central government, because we are talking about the accommodation requirements—to do an immense amount of reporting. This, for Members of this House who oppose overregulation and bureaucracy, is a rather surprising structure. I, of course, was a bureaucrat—a proud bureaucrat. I should be delighted to see many more bureaucrats given entertainment and occupation, but actually I think it is a very bad idea.

My fourth reason is that overspecifying, going into all the detail that this does, is itself a bad thing. I think it is correct that the Immigration Rules lay down the details and primary legislation should not. That is the right way of doing it, and all this heavy detail in here is making this a very peculiar piece of primary legislation and is overlapping with the existing Immigration Rules.

My fifth and last point, which relates to that one, is to ask the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth—because he is a distinguished lawyer and I am neither distinguished nor a lawyer—to think hard a contrario. If we set out such extraordinarily detailed specifications in primary legislation, what about the other Immigration Rules that do not simply copy primary legislation? Will it not be open to individuals to argue in the courts, against the authorities, that, because the specification in the Immigration Rules was not set out in primary legislation, it is in some way defective? I think it is very dangerous to get into a contrario territory, but I bow to the lawyers in this Committee who know more about it than I do.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for his kindness in giving way. Do I understand his main point to be that real-time, empirical data is inimical to the formulation of good public policy? Is he actually saying that we should not collect data in order to make policy, for the future of our country, in respect of the provision of health services, housing and all the rest? That is a very odd argument to make, if I am perfectly honest.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

Of course not.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard

Committee stage
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am listening carefully to the noble Lord. In all sincerity, what is the difference between a foreign, unaccountable and anonymous single judge in a court over which the British people have no control, accountability or democratic sanction, and some of the more unappetising and less benign regimes and legal procedures to which he refers?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

The noble Lord is well aware that the Strasbourg court has decided to pass various reforms and the anonymity of the judge is a thing of the past. I am not an expert on the Strasbourg court. However, I am a believer that if we maintain that we believe in the rule of law, we cannot pick and choose which bits of international law we comply with. That is a point I put forward at Second Reading and one I feel very strongly about. I do not see how we can, in good conscience, pass Clauses 5(2) and 5(3), which is why I added my name to Amendments 57 and 59 as moved by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven.