Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

These amendments would not solve everything, but they would be something. I give the example of a husband who was accepted as a refugee from Afghanistan but found that the only way he could help his wife achieve a visa was for him to go to Iran, so that he could take his wife to a visa centre. Another example is that of a two year-old child living with his grandmother who was displaced from Sudan to Chad. With the nearest visa centre being in Cameroon, he and his grandmother could not get there. Happily, he was helped by the UNHCR, which took his passport backwards and forwards, taking over 11 months to do it. It is very sad to think that that is a positive position. The amendments would give some practical meaning to the right to family reunion. I beg to move.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I support these two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for the very reasons she gives. Clause 34 is very welcome and I am very glad that the Government have put it in, but it is very narrow. There is a considerable overlap between family reunion cases and evacuees, and this is about evacuees. I would like to bring the two together, as the noble Baroness said. The top five countries from which family reunion cases come are Syria, Sudan, Iran, Eritrea and Afghanistan, so we are in exactly the same territory of facilitating evacuation. It does not work very well at the moment, for the reasons that the noble Baroness spelled out.

The double journeys point is really worrying. To collect the visa, you have to go to a visa centre. In the top five countries I have listed, there are no visa centres, for obvious reasons—in most of them, there is no embassy—so you have to cross a frontier. When we are talking family reunions, more than 50% of those involved are children. Are we asking them to cross a frontier and go somewhere that could be a very long way away to get their visa? No, we are not; it is worse than that. We are asking them to go twice: once to give their biometric details and, secondly, to collect the visa—they cannot get it the first time. Could they not have the biometric details taken when they pick up the visa, when the family reunion case has been established and they are going to be let in? They would then need to make only one journey. It seems to me that this simple improvement to the process would save a lot of heartache and probably a lot of lives, in cases where it has been decided by the system that family reunion is appropriate and should be facilitated.

I support the two amendments ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but I hope that the Government will go a little further and think hard about changing the procedure for the collection of the visa so that the biometric details could be given at the time the visa is picked up and thus the double journeys could be avoided.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support. I, too, am supported by RAMP, and that is in the register—that is done for Committee now. I warmly welcome Clause 34 as well, but the amendment being proposed is a very modest one, which would not be difficult for the Government to accept. The case has already been well made and I will not reiterate it, but I will give an example from the British Red Cross, which I think has made a very persuasive case to Members of the Committee. It gives the current example of Iran:

“The visa centre in Tehran has been temporarily closed since 15 July 2025. This visa centre was the base for many Afghans and Iranians to submit their family reunion applications. Now families are unable to access the centre and will need to take a dangerous journey to a neighbouring country just to submit their biometrics and have their application processed … This amendment would allow biometrics to be taken at different locations within Iran where people could travel to safely rather than crossing borders”.


Safety must be one of the criteria that we use in thinking about displaced people. It is a very modest amendment and I hope that my noble friend will be able to look kindly on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In response to both the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, I will repeat what I said in my preamble today: the Home Office is continuing to assess whether broader policy changes are needed to balance that humanitarian concern. The noble Lord made a very strong point about a child aged two and the length of time for a reunion—that will fall within our assessment of the broader humanitarian concern. We need to balance that with security requirements; however, in the case he put to us, a two-year old child would self-evidently not pose that type of threat.

This is important. I say to the noble Lords who tabled the amendments that the purpose of the clause is to provide the assurances that we have. I accept that noble Lords are testing that; however, while we will examine the points that have been made, I believe that there are alternative ways to achieve that objective. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, not to press her amendments. I also hope that I have satisfied the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

We are all on the same side here, and I appreciate the spirit of the Minister’s remarks. I appreciate that he stated that he will reflect on what we have said from all sides of the House.

It is true that there are alternative ways and that the UNHCR and the IOM can help. However, if you are in Afghanistan, there is no way that those organisations can help you until you have reached Pakistan. Getting across the Khyber these days is not easy, particularly if you are a child—and children make up more than 50% of the family reunion cases. While I appreciate the spirit of the Minister’s answer, I do not believe that it is a complete answer. I therefore press him to go on thinking about the points that have been made today.

I will cheat very slightly by saying that there is also a very direct way in which one could make on-site, in-country visa centres available—to reopen embassies. I am talking about Syria. I do not know why we do not have an embassy in Damascus now for all sorts of political reasons. Given its significance to the whole of the Arab world, we should have an embassy in Damascus. If we had an embassy, we would of course have a visa centre there. I hope that a wish to avoid paying for a visa centre in Syria is not causing the Foreign Office not to reopen the embassy in Damascus.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome Clause 37 very warmly. For some of us it is the best bit of the Bill. I am really pleased, for once, to be able to unequivocally support my Front Bench and my noble friend the Minister.

My noble friend the Minister did not have the pleasure of sitting through the debates about the Rwanda Bill in this House; I do not really want to put him through it all again, because it is like a nightmare in my mind and it is quite difficult to recall everything that was said at the time. But I remind the Committee that, on a number of occasions, your Lordships’ House rejected key bits of the Bill, and it went through only because of the majority in the Commons. We had ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong, and eventually we had to give in. To now try to resurrect it through this clause stand part device seems a bit perverse.

I will just remind noble Lords why we were so opposed to the Rwanda Bill. First of all—I have to see whether I can read my notes here—there was the failure to meet the concerns of the Supreme Court. Saying Rwanda is safe then and for always does not make it safe. I can remember noble and learned Lords and others on the Cross Benches—one of whom may well want to speak today—saying, “We’re being asked to say that night is day and put that into legal form”. It was ridiculous. So, for the lawyers among us, it was really quite distressing that we were having to put our name to that.

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees had concerns, at the heart of which was the belief that the Act was not compatible with international refugee law—the refugee convention. There was the disapplication of the Human Rights Act, highlighted by the Joint Committee on Human Rights—the current chair is no longer in his place, but I am sure he would agree with what the previous committee said. That committee emphasised the universality of human rights, which this piece of legislation rode a cart and of horses through.

There were particular concerns around the treatment of LGBTI+ people, who would potentially not be treated well, as well as concerns about children, which was one of the main issues that I took up during the passage of the Bill. On the treatment of age-disputed children, there were fears that they would be removed to Rwanda because they had wrongly been assessed as adults, and then there was a difficult provision, if they could prove that they were children, for them to be sent back to the UK, in effect as parcels. Many of us thought that was dehumanising of children and went against children’s rights.

I am sure my noble friend the Minister will be terribly pleased to hear that we will be debating age assessment later in Committee. But it is worth pointing out at this point that just yesterday, the i newspaper published the latest analysis by the Helen Bamber Foundation of FoI data. That found that in 2024, at least 678 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were initially classed as adults but then found to be children by local authorities, and that was over half of those who were so referred. Had the Rwanda Act been in operation now, how many of those children might have been sent to Rwanda and got stuck there? That is the question that I would put. In addition, there was never a proper child rights impact assessment or anything like that.

Finally, the noble Lord talked about a deterrent. I seem to remember that, in all the paperwork we were given—it was probably an impact assessment or something—that there was a very clear reference to academic work which suggested that there was no evidence of a deterrent effect in this kind of legislation. The noble Lord also talked about us being a soft touch for illegal migrants. Please can we remember that most of those who come across on the boats, putting their lives at risk, are seeking asylum? They have an international right to do so. Please do not let us write them off as “illegal migrants”.

That is all I wanted to say. I warmly welcome that the Government have taken this step, because it is a very positive step in the name of human rights and international refugee law.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness was a little unkind to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, who made an admirable speech: gallantry in a hopeless cause is always extremely impressive. I thought Owain Glyndŵr was speaking to us. I was reminded of the gallant knight in “Monty Python”, who has all his limbs struck off, but bravely says, “No, no, it’s only a flesh wound”, and fights on. It was tremendous.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also slightly abbreviated the history of the Rwanda Act in this House. It began with the Rwanda treaty, which this House recommended, on the advice of its International Agreements Committee, could not and should not be ratified until the various supervisory and legal constructs needed—and set out in the treaty itself—existed. Because they did not exist; they were to be set up. Various judges were to be appointed, courts were to be formed and supervisory monitoring procedures were to be put in place—none of that existed. This House recommended that the treaty should not be ratified.

The Bill itself had three fundamental problems for this House. First, as the noble Baroness said, there was the fundamental “Alice in Wonderland” absurdity that we can, by so voting, change facts: we can make Rwanda safe by declaring Rwanda safe. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, spoke powerfully on that subject.

Secondly, there was the problem of our international commitments. It was impossible—in the view of this House, which voted several times on it—to reconcile the Bill and the treaty with our international commitments. We were telling people, “You may never have your claim for asylum heard in this country. You may claim asylum in Rwanda. You may claim from the Rwanda Government the right to become a citizen of Rwanda. But you may never claim the right to become a citizen of the United Kingdom. We are going to send you to Rwanda, we are never going to let you come here and we are never going to hear your case”. To make that fit with the refugee convention is impossible—that is what this House determined. Keeping the Rwanda Act on the statute book would be absurd. If we mean what we say about a rules-based, legal global order, we really need to pay attention when what we are doing ourselves is clearly in breach of a central plank of the rules-based order.

That is completely different from what this Government are, as I understand it, seeking to do with offshoring the exercise. Although I do not like that—it is a very bad idea that people’s claims should be considered abroad, because it will be harder to ensure that they get appropriate legal advice and age assessment, if their asylum case heard in a foreign country—it is completely different from what we were going to do with Rwanda. With the Rwanda Act, we were not just offshoring but offloading; we were putting on the Rwanda Government the responsibility of considering the future of these people. We were saying, “It’s absolutely nothing to do with us and we refuse to touch it”. That simply will not do.

We have to applaud the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I note that his Scottish colleague was cunning enough to disappear before we came to the question of whether Clause 37 should stand part. I am a Scotsman and know that there are some battles that it is best not to fight. It is very gallant of the noble Lord to be here to make his case, but it would be absurd if he were to succeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Horam (Con)]

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I am a veteran of those dreadful, seemingly endless debates and I too recall them with some horror, including the ping-pong. But let us put this in perspective. That policy was chosen because it replicated the only purely successful means of stopping illegal immigrants coming on boats to a country—the Australian example. Instead of Rwanda, it used Nauru, near the Solomon Islands, and established over 10 years or so a successful arrangement whereby people coming on boats across the Timor Sea to Darwin and so forth were immediately detained and sent within 24 hours to Nauru to be treated. Not only did that immediately stop the boats but it has led to a cross-party arrangement in Australia that is, frankly, to die for here. The Liberal Party brought in those arrangements, the Labor Party then eventually won a general election and abolished them—

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

If I may correct the noble Lord, the Australian arrangement was offshoring, not offloading.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

That is not true; it was offloading as well, because the decisions were taken by the Government in Nauru at the behest of the Australian Government, although they obviously had a back-up situation and did not entirely hand it over. However, if the noble Lord will look at it, he will see that it was very similar to the arrangements with Rwanda. As he will recall, we had not only arrangements with the Rwandan Government but a back-up arrangement—a monitoring committee—which he acknowledged during those debates was composed of the most distinguished international lawyers and so forth, who would check whether anything was going wrong.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

Exactly. It is such a pity. We made the point on ID cards just recently that one of the worst aspects of our system of government is new Governments coming in and instantly reversing policies carried through by the preceding Government. ID cards were an example where my noble friend Lord Jackson admitted that we might have been wrong. In some cases, we were right, by the way—we should have cancelled HS2. My noble friend Lord Harper might not necessarily agree with me there. None the less, sometimes new Governments can get it right as well as get it wrong, but the constant changing of policies of this kind between Governments is a real issue. Australia got it right: the Liberal Government brought it in; the Labor Government then rejected it and realised they were wrong. The Liberal Government brought it back, the Labor Government accepted it, and they now have a bipartisan approach which, in effect, means there is very little illegal immigration into Australia. It is the only extant example of this problem being dealt with.

Not only that, but the success of the bipartisan approach in Australia enabled them to go on to deal with legal immigration very transparently. There is a debate every year with a proposal from the Government on how many legal immigrants should be accepted into the country, broken down by different categories— students, families, workers in various categories, asylum seekers and so forth. That is then is debated in parliament and a view is taken. That is a model of what we are all trying to achieve here. If we could get to that position here with a bipartisan approach and an open debate every year in Parliament, that would be wonderful. This may seem like “Monty Python” land in some ways in its fantasy, but it is a reality in Australia.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I see the point that the noble Lord is making, but it is important that he recognise that what the Australian Government did, and did again, was to arrange for Australian asylum hearings to take place offshore. What we were arranging was for people to be told that they could never have a United Kingdom asylum hearing; we were going to forcibly send them to Rwanda where, if they wished, they could have a Rwandan asylum hearing. That is completely different.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

With respect, it is not completely different. The fact is that the Australians arranged a successful deterrent, which is what all Governments are trying to achieve. What the last Conservative Government were trying to achieve was obviously not entirely the same as the Nauru/Australian example, but it was broadly the same, and, as the noble Lord must agree, with many checks and balances to ensure that people were properly treated.

That is what the present Government are throwing away. All that effort, finance, agreement, and legislation—three Bills, I think—are being chucked aside for, in effect, nothing, because this Bill gives no deterrent factor. It is completely absent. We all agree that the gangs should be smashed, and that work can carry on side by side with any other work on a deterrent, but there is no work on a deterrent going on of the kind that the previous Government had. We need a deterrent.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

If I were to set our annual borders Bill debates to music, I would pick Stravinsky. It has become a rite of spring, with clashing discords from the Conservative Front Bench and ritual incantations that there can be a sacrifice of international law because we are a dualist system.

We had the Nationality and Borders Bill three years ago and the Illegal Migration Bill two years ago. Then there was the ultimate absurdity of the Rwanda Bill, where we were invited to close our eyes and, by magical thinking and Westminster decree, make Rwanda safe and make ineligible all those whom we sent to Rwanda ever to seek asylum here. The House liked none of those Bills, amended them all and was overruled every time. So it is a great pleasure to welcome the 2025 Bill, because I can find nothing in it which is in clear breach of international law—and this is the first in recent memory. Moreover, I particularly welcome Clause 37, which wipes away the stain on the statute book that was the Rwanda Act.

That is the good news—and it is very good—but the Bill is not all good news. Getting rid of the 2024 Act but only parts of the 2023 Act means that we are still left with some bits of the 2023 Act that some of us opposed, including its removal of modern slavery protections for trafficking victims coerced into criminality. We are also left with the default provisions of the 2022 Act, which many believe were, in some respects, contrary to what we like to think of as a national tradition of fairness; some of them are inhumane and others are illogical.

It is not humane that we should still be so reluctant to see families reunited, yet the May White Paper threatens to make reunions harder by imposing new language and financial tests. It is not right that Clause 31 of this Bill would deny legal redress to those unlawfully detained or that the broad powers that Clause 43 gives the Secretary of State on tagging and curfews are not tempered by legal safeguards of any kind. It is neither humane nor logical—as the noble Lord, Lord German, pointed out—that those waiting in the asylum queue should still be denied the right to find a job. Changing that would be a win-win: it would be good for them, the economy and the public purse; it would be bad only for the criminals preying on them in the black economy.

I will make two further general points. Changing the rules of the game mid-match is usually not right. I find the retroactivity in Clause 31 particularly worrying. My inbox and Friday’s Financial Times remind me that a much larger community is worried about the potential retrospective application of the proposed change tucked away in paragraphs 264 and 266 of the White Paper.

People here on work visas, which they obtained under the points-based system, have had the right to apply after five years for indefinite leave to remain, but the White Paper suggests that in future this will be 10 years. Is that just for new arrivals, or does it mean that those already here will have to stay in limbo for another five years? The uncertainty about whether their uncertainty is to be extended is worrying many, as my inbox shows.

Retrospection would be unfair—it usually is. If retrospection is not the intention, it would be very good if the Minister could reassure the many who are worried. The FT tells us that 1.5 million people are worried about the Government’s intention. I very much hope he can reassure them and will do so.

Finally, back on asylum, it bears repeating that the best way of stopping the boats and putting the criminals out of business is to provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary. But for many with a justifiable, “well-founded fear of persecution”, in the words of the convention, in practice we provide no such route. Take Sudan, the world’s biggest current humanitarian catastrophe, worse even than Gaza. Sudan used to be our responsibility and should be on our conscience. There is a large Sudanese diaspora in this country, but for those now fleeing the civil war, carnage and starvation there, there is realistically no official or safe way they can apply to join Sudanese people here. Virtually 100% of those who do get here, coming by unofficial routes and seeking asylum, are granted asylum, such is the obvious horror they have left behind. It is our fault that they have to come as they do, with many dying en route. It does not need a Bill to put that right, but it really should be put right soon.

UK Resettlement Scheme 2025

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We are guided by the requests that come to the United Kingdom from the UNHCR, and we will consider whatever requests it wishes to bring forward for the United Kingdom. My noble friend will appreciate that, at the moment, I do not think we have had any requests from the UNHCR in relation to India but, again, it is a matter for the agency, in discussion with us, to look at which countries it believes are generating refugees who need help and support. When it does that, the assessment is passed on to countries such as the United Kingdom to see where, how and if we can help; we stand ready to do so if, when and however we can.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

It is obviously a bit early to say, but it is possible that positive developments in Syria, and possibly even in Sudan, may lead some who are here as asylum seekers to want to go home. Will the Government assist them?

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

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.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I regret that I was not here for Second Reading, but my Green Party colleague, my noble friend Lady Bennett, was.

I absolutely oppose all these amendments. I have been at debates on a couple of Bills in this Session where the Conservative Peers have been, I would say, playing games. That does not show respect to your Lordships’ House.

Asylum Support (Prescribed Period) Bill [HL]

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

Come on, my Lords, it is the season of good will, and here we have Wenceslas, down from the snowy wastes of Croydon—I think he deserves a welcome. He has already given us the key point in the Bill: that it is on a temporary basis. “Rien ne dure comme le provisoire”, as the French say—nothing lasts longer than the temporary. I sincerely hope so, because 28 days was absurd, particularly when it took at least seven days for the biometric passport document to turn up and five weeks for access to universal credit to be possible. Of course 56 days rather than 28 days is required, and I strongly support the Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

But we should acknowledge that the reason why there has been such a surge in homelessness, recourse to food banks and rough sleeping—a reason for it—is that the Government have made a determined attempt to cut down the asylum backlog queue, and that to me deserves a very warm welcome from this House. I am not sure we have said it often enough already. So that is two cheers from me: one for 56 days and one for the attack on the queue—only two cheers, though.

My third cheer will come when the Minister can tell us that he has looked at and had changed the absurd rule that those waiting for an asylum decision may not take a job and may not work. It is degrading to the individual; it is economically absurd for the country. It is costly in financial terms; it is costly in economic terms. We really need people who are willing to work. It also leaves the individual exposed to the temptations of the black market and the black economy. It seems to me that what we really need—I very much hope the Minister will look at this sympathetically—is a relaxation of that rule.

Of course, when people like me made that point, under the last Government we heard that the dreaded “pull factor” would come in. Anybody who has been watching the slaughterhouses of Syria open knows that the asylum process has been absolutely correct when it awards asylum status to 99.9% of those coming from Syria and applying. It was not a pull factor: they did not want to work here; they were running away from slaughter in their homeland. The same is true of Sudanese, Eritreans and Iranians, as it is of Syrians. I do hope this Government will drop the “pull factor” as an argument against allowing those here to earn their way. It was always a myth.

In any case, the asylum process itself will test whether there is a well-justified fear of persecution that drove the person to come here. You cannot say these people are economic migrants; that will be tested in the simultaneous asylum process, and if some are found to be economic migrants, they will not be allowed to stay. It seems to me that there is no argument, intellectually or economically, for maintaining the rule that prevents them working, so socially disruptive as it is. I hope the Minister will be able to look at that, and then I will give him my third cheer.

Small Boat Crossings

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I find myself in agreement with the noble Lord. The factors that drive movement are war, poverty and climate change. He will know that the Prime Minister and other Labour Government Ministers have been in Baku this week to try to get further action on climate change. One commitment that this Government have is to ensure that, in our term of office, we deal with this issue because, as the noble Lord rightly says, it will drive movement of people, poverty and potentially even war still further if it is not solved.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

Can the Minister look again and think about the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord German? Since the majority of small boat arrivals are from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Sudan, and since a huge majority of these applications are allowed in the end—the case for asylum is proved—would it not make sense to allow for initial vetting of applications by our diplomatic premises in the region? Would that not be a good additional way of cutting down the queue here and putting the smugglers out of business?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord might be interested in the fact that the top five countries for migration are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Eritrea, and individuals come for a range of different reasons. I will bring that suggestion to the attention of my colleagues in the department who have direct responsibility for this area, who are Members of the House of Commons.

Istanbul Convention: Article 59

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I think this is important. On the firewall between police and immigration not being implemented, I put it to the right reverend Prelate that an external firewall would not necessarily prevent the perpetrator or any anonymous third party informing immigration enforcement about the victim’s immigration status. However, it would impact law enforcement agencies’ ability to investigate crimes. I hear what she says, and that issue will be reviewed by my honourable friend in the House of Commons as part of this general review.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, was about our reservation on the Istanbul convention, and the Minister’s answer was that the reservation still stands. As long as it stands, we are telling the world that women fleeing domestic abuse have to be turned away at refuges unless they can prove that they have a right of access to public funds. That is shocking. I am glad to hear that the Minister is conducting a review or evaluating the review set up at the urging of the International Agreements Committee of this House under the previous Government. Will he bring that review to a speedy conclusion so that we can remove this slur of our reservation on the Istanbul convention?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I hear what the noble Lord has powerfully mentioned. As I have indicated, a review is being undertaken by my honourable friend the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips, in the House of Commons. That review will be completed in short order, I hope, and I will be able to report its outcome back to this House in due course. I fully understand the passion with which the noble Lord speaks.