Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate]

100: Clause 28, page 33, line 20, leave out paragraph (a)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is linked to the amendment to leave out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 3.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that I will not bore you for long. I shall take careful note of the Chief Whip’s remarks but I am very pleased to introduce Amendments 100, 101 and 102. I thank those Lords spiritual and temporal who have added their names to these amendments and who are supportive of the contents.

These amendments seek to remove amendments to Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 from Schedule 3. The intention is to erase the proposal contained in the Bill to introduce powers to export offshore any person in the UK who is seeking asylum without first considering their claim. Few would disagree that protection and control of our borders, primary responsibilities of any Government, are noble and necessary objectives. A Home Secretary must be able to discharge her duties in this respect, which include expediting deportation swiftly and without delay where illegality has been determined under the rules. This was certainly my approach when I served as Immigration Minister in the 1990s.

Most would agree that the process by which we pursue these objectives matters no less than the solutions on the table. Indeed, solutions need to be effective, but they must also be pragmatic and practical, and enforceable under domestic and international law. They need to be imaginative but also financially viable. They must be firm but also fair. I am afraid that Clause 28 and Schedule 3 fail on these counts. In very literal terms, Clause 28 amends the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which states that a person seeking asylum cannot be removed from the UK while their asylum claim is being processed—in other words, before a final decision is given on their refugee status, including access to an appeal. However, paragraph 1 of Schedule 3 to the Bill withdraws those rights by allowing the transfer of any asylum seeker to any country which will be listed in Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 as amended by Schedule 3.

Before Brexit, under the Dublin regulations, the UK Government could remove an asylum seeker from the UK while their claim was still pending but only to return them to the EU country of first entry and only after having issued a certificate under Schedule 3 to the Asylum and Immigration Act that permitted them a legal right to do so. With the end of the UK’s involvement in the Dublin regulations this option became inaccessible. However, Clause 28 would provide the Home Secretary with the legal power to forcibly remove any asylum seeker from the UK while their claim is still pending to another country which the Government have deemed safe. Clause 28 would allow them to do this without seeking and issuing a certificate under Schedule 3 to the 2004 Act. This goes against our legal and constitutional principles and surely should be repudiated.

All credible immigration systems must first acknowledge the distinction between immigration and asylum. A person who comes here for economic reasons is definitely not the same as a person who comes here to seek safety. The Bill’s failure to disentangle these definitions is significant because in the Government’s bid to control overall immigration, it will be vulnerable people—those fleeing conflict and persecution—who would be disproportionately and adversely affected.

Many years ago, I oversaw an inquiry that included the viability of offshoring. At the time, the proposal was to create processing centres off the mainland but within British territorial jurisdiction. We quickly judged that to be deeply flawed as an idea, but the problems we identified around domestic offshoring are almost trivial compared with the problems we would face by offshoring asylum seekers to foreign territory. For one thing, it would be a clear breach of our principles in the 1951 convention on refugees. We may be abrogating our responsibilities for dealing with applications, as well as those to the asylum seekers themselves, who, by international law, should be able to retain control over where and when they submit those requests. Indeed, a person’s physical removal from the UK would effectively terminate their claim for asylum in the UK, transferring it instead to a third country.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have the answers before me, so I will write on the questions that I have not answered, if that is okay with the noble Baroness.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her responses and all noble Lords for their very important contributions on a really significant part of the Bill. I stand by what I said in my remarks, and I think that others will do so too, despite assurances that we may have received. I would be very grateful if the Government would perhaps be prepared to discuss this matter further between now and Report. On that basis, without further ado, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 100 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment is also about children, but it is about children who are in Europe and do not have family anywhere. It is similar to an amendment that was passed by this House and became Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. There is a long story to that; I will not waste noble Lords’ time on it now except to say that there was quite a lot of resistance then on the part of the Government but, eventually, the amendment was passed and Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, accepted it.

However, as I understand it, Mrs May did so under the pressure of public opinion because, at the time, people were horrified when they saw dinghies and people drowning in the Mediterranean. They saw a little Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, drowned on a Mediterranean beach. I think that woke up public opinion. The public then came onside and decided that we as a country can do this for unaccompanied child refugees. That is a summary of the history there. Theresa May then summoned me again to see her and said that the Government were prepared to accept the amendment.

The Government then decided that they would cap the number; it was capped at 480, I think. The Government’s argument was that they could not find more local authorities to provide foster families and foster parents to take in more children—a point that was disproved by Safe Passage, which contacted a number of local authorities and found around 1,500 places. Whether they are there today, I do not know, but they were certainly there at the time. There is a problem, of course: there is increasing financial pressure on local authorities, so local authorities are willing to do it but probably cannot afford to do it. There are difficulties; I can see that. Nevertheless, Amendment 115 says:

“The number of children to be resettled … must be determined by the Government in consultation with local authorities.”


That is close to the wording of the earlier amendment some years ago.

The argument here is that, in principle, the Government should accept that we will take a few—only a few—unaccompanied child refugees in Europe, and they should settle on how many and the speed in conjunction with local authorities and with regard to local authorities’ ability to provide foster places. It is a simple proposition. I believe that public opinion is still supportive of it. We have sought support across the political spectrum on this because that is, I am sure, the best way to be successful. Faith groups have been very supportive; altogether, we have a good coalition of people supporting the principle in this amendment and the earlier amendment on Dublin III that I spoke about.

This amendment makes a simple proposition. It would not be difficult for the Government to say that, where there are unaccompanied children who have nowhere else to go and are stuck, we could take at least some of them—not all of them, but some of them—in this country and repeat the small successes of a few years ago. I beg to move.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 116 is in my name. I thank my noble friends Lord Shinkwin, Lady Stroud and Lady Helic for their support. We propose a workable, sensible and impactful solution for the Government to meet their stated objective, as set out in Explanatory Notes,

“to enhance resettlement routes to continue to provide pathways for refugees to be granted protection in the UK.”

Introducing a carefully designed, long-term global resettlement scheme with a numerical target will have the effect of meaningfully expanding safe routes for the world’s most vulnerable refugees.