UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the most reverend Primate the Archbishop on introducing this debate and the powerful way he did so. It is good to hear from the Bishops’ Benches a statement of Christian principles applied to the issues of the day, rather than the normal aspects of political debate.

This issue raises very difficult dilemmas for Christians. Being a very inadequate Christian myself, I take up the challenge from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop with trepidation: to try to formulate principles for governing our policy on asylum and migration. Not having direct access to the mind of God like the most reverend Primate the Archbishop, I seek those principles in the Bible.

I recall that our Lord said that the essence of Christianity is to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. When asked who our neighbour is, he gave the parable of the good Samaritan, when a Samaritan helps a Jew—from which I deduce that our neighbour is not just the person next door to us and not necessarily a member of our own nation; it can be anyone. The first principle I therefore deduce is that, although charity begins at home, as a lot of my constituents used to tell me, it does not necessarily end at home. I am at one with the most reverend Primate the Archbishop on that.

Secondly, the Samaritan did what he practically could. We may be called on to help anyone we practically can, but we cannot help everyone. Again, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop recognised that and it is important that we recognise that our responsibilities are finite, in this respect.

Thirdly, when the Levite and the Jewish priest reached their destination, I have no doubt that they deplored how, owing to years of austerity, there had been insufficient spending on police and the health service to prevent the problem arising in the first place or to treat the person, instead of leaving it to the passing Samaritan. Therefore, my third principle is that, to be a good Samaritan, you have to give care, help and so on at your expense. We, as politicians, may have to take decisions on behalf of others but, in doing so, we should have consideration for the impact we are having on others and not imagine we are being virtuous when we do good at their expense.

The first principle is that charity begins at home, in how we treat people who have come to settle here. When I was a child, mass immigration into this country was just beginning. The parish in which I lived asked each family to link up with a migrant family, many of whom were lonely, isolated and, at worst, facing hostility. My family was linked up to a delightful Mauritian couple, whom we would invite to supper every few weeks. We became good friends. That was done by parishes across south London. I would love to hear from Bishops who have not yet spoken about what the churches are doing today to help integrate those who are here in our society and to be the good Samaritans to our neighbours from abroad.

But charity does not end at home. I pay tribute to those tens of thousands of people who opened their homes to families fleeing the bombing in Ukraine, while their menfolk remained to fight for their country. We should not imagine we are sharing in being good Samaritans if we throw open the doors of our country to everybody because, if we do that, we are doing good at others’ expense. We are, in effect, saying that migrants, be they legal or illegal, asylum seekers or otherwise, through housing benefit and social housing, will have access to rented and social homes. We all have our own homes, so we will not be affected. Therefore, more young people will have to wait at home or live in cramp bed-sitters for longer, because of what we, as legislators, think we are doing generously, without taking the impact on others into account.

The second principle is that our neighbour can be anyone, but it cannot be everyone. Millions of people want to come here. Look at the impact of the green card system the Americans operate, when they make 30,000 visas to the US available to certain countries and say, “Anyone can apply; there is a ballot.” Some 9% of the population of Albania applied when they heard about that being offered to them, as did 11% of the Armenian and 14% of the Liberian populations. These were only the people who heard about it and responded. The potential number who would like to come to America or Europe, if we open these so-called direct routes, would be enormous. Will we say to those who apply, at an embassy or some place abroad, that they would have the same legal rights, and opportunities to appeal or for judicial review if things are turned down? If so, potentially millions of people would join the queue. It would not shorten but lengthen it, so we have to restrict and to prioritise.

I submit to noble Lords that the priority should not be the boat people. They are not coming by boat from Basra, Somalia or Eritrea; they are coming from France, Belgium and Germany. Why are they coming here rather than staying in those safe countries? They are three or four times as likely to be rejected there. France, in the last year before the pandemic, forcibly repatriated 34,000 people. I find some strange double standards being applied here. There are no criticisms of France for being much stricter than us or of us for being much laxer than them, but one or the other must be the case.

[Noble Lords]

Time!

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I am coming to an end. If it is morally and legally right for the French to try to prevent people leaving their shores, and for us to pay and support the French in so doing, it should be morally and legally right for us to return them. If they cannot be returned, it is reasonable to try to deter them by saying, “If you come here, you will go to Rwanda. You always have the opportunity to stay in France.” I submit that we do not always consider these opportunities.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, we have been particularly generous with the timings. I remind noble Lords that it is an advisory Back-Bench speaking time of six minutes.

X-Rays: Child Refugees

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

At the moment, the answer is both.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, the British Dental Association has written to all of us saying that X-rays carry a small risk of possible long-term physical harm and that the risk is cumulative and successive exposures increase the risk, which means that each exposure over a lifetime must be clinically justified. Over my lifetime I have had more than 20 X-rays from dentists and have never been warned of this cumulative risk. Can my noble friend explain why the BDA is so worried about a single X-ray of someone claiming asylum who looks 22, especially when the BDA says that it can tell the age to within four years with 95% accuracy? So it might well show that someone was younger than they looked and be to their benefit.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I entirely agree with my noble friend that it is an unusual position for the BDA to adopt.

Net Migration

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I note what the noble Lord says.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind that, over the last decade, total immigration —which ran at half the level of the last 12 months—was equal to the combined populations of Southampton, Portsmouth, Oxford, Nottingham, Middlesbrough, Leicester, Exeter, Derby and Carlisle? We wonder why we have a housing shortage. Has my noble friend the Minister ever heard those who oppose any tightening of immigration restrictions recognise that they are condemning a whole generation of British-born young people to living at home or in cramped bed-sits until they are middle-aged?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

It may assist my noble friend if I remind the Chamber that work visas are 82% higher than they were in 2019 and that this is in part driven by an increase in health and care visas, which make up 50% of all skilled worker visas issued. Family-related visas are 31% lower than in 2019. It is clear that there is a need for more people in the health and care sector, and visas are awarded in relation to that. That is the reason for these exceptional figures. Again, I point to the fact that the figures this year reflect the problems of coming out of the pandemic and the international conflict that we have had to deal with.

Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, this debate should really start with a health warning. I say that not because of the time of day but because the official list of changes in the Immigration Rules since 1994 covers more than one large page of closely typed A4. There have been some four to seven changes every year since then. The good news is that the Secretary of State will review the changes made since 2017, produce a report and publish it. We may get some insights into the various zig-zags of policies over the years.

I turn now to the statement of changes of 11 May, referred to in my Motion. The statement implements Section 12 of the principal Act. I regret that it is equally discriminatory, giving successful asylum applicants different rights depending on how they arrived here. Group 1 will be a very small group who arrived here direct from the country they fled or who entered under another visa and then applied for protection—for example, following a change of regime. Group 2 applies to successful asylum applicants who arrived via other countries. They will be the great majority of recognised refugees in future.

Group 1 will get status and leave to stay for five years, after which they can apply to remain permanently. They can sponsor a partner and any children under 18. By contrast, group 2 will gain status and leave to stay for 18 months only. In the last of those 18 months they may apply for an extension, but they will have no automatic right to settlement here. Reunion will be possible only for a spouse or child who cannot safely live elsewhere. Your Lordships will see that there is a huge difference in the treatment of the two groups, although both will have been accepted as bona fide refugees.

The British Red Cross, which I thank for its information, points out that refugees should have support based on their need for protection, not their method of arrival. Short periods of leave to enter will harm integration, making it difficult to learn new skills and gain employment. The Home Office will have to decide on applications to extend the leave to remain. This resource could be better used in reducing the backlog and giving better and quicker first decisions. I note that on 30 June the backlog was more than 99,000 cases.

The restrictions on family sponsorships will harm women and children by removing, for many, an existing safe method of arriving. This in turn may lead to more dependants attempting dangerous journeys to reach their next of kin. Lasting family separation and uncertainty will make it harder for recognised refugees to integrate.

The new regulations on family reunion may be slightly clearer than the old ones. There can be little doubt that they are more restrictive, but the complexities are such that free legal aid would be extremely helpful. At present it is not available. Therefore, much will depend on guidance that we have yet to see and on training for caseworkers and sympathetic implementation.

I come now to the special case of El Salvador, from which in 2017 there were only 38 asylum applications. Then, because of that Government’s harsh repression, the figures rose by stages to reach 658 in the first six months of 2022. Over the last two years, more than half of these applicants received refugee status or humanitarian protection. Why has this safe and legal route now been closed?

The May regulations had no impact assessment. I therefore ask: will one be published, in particular on group 2 refugees? Shorter periods of leave, no automatic route to settlement and restrictions on family reunion are the most important points to be considered.

The success of the two schemes for Ukrainians shows what can be done when there is good will and good co-operation all round. Over 133,000 entry clearance visas were granted for Ukrainians in the year ending last June. I have met a number of those who have benefited, and simply ask that every effort be made to enable people with good qualifications and good English to move into suitable work.

The media have enjoyed a field day over cross-Channel arrivals, but there can be no doubt about the desperation on the part of those facing the risks. We can gain a sense of proportion by comparing the numbers of cross-Channel arrivals with the much greater volume of visas provided for students and workers, and indeed for Ukrainians and British overseas nationals.

I have, I hope, outlined the weaknesses and omissions in these changes to the rules. They provide serious grounds for regret. I trust that subsequent speakers will touch on positive steps that this country could take to prevent loss of life in the channel by closer co-operation with France. If speakers can offer new ways of making the asylum process more humane, I will be delighted. I beg to move the Motion in my name.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by saying how sad I am to see the Home Secretary depart from her job today. I had very high regard for her; she brought great legal expertise and determination together. At the same time, I wish Grant Shapps well in his new job as Home Secretary. He was my neighbour in Hertfordshire and is a long-standing friend of mine. I hope that he will pursue with equal diligence the obligations we have and the commitments that we had in our manifesto.

However, there is little point in tidying up the law in the way that we are doing today if the law itself can be turned inside out by the courts. It is pretty clear that that is what has happened time and again in recent years. As a result, we have some 250,000 rejected—failed—asylum seekers in this country who, since 2005, have not been returned to their countries or removed from this country. That is in addition to the 125,000 who have been granted asylum.

The rate of acceptance on first application in this country suddenly doubled after the Windrush scandal, although it is hard to see what the logic of that doubling was. The effect is that we now accept twice as high a proportion of asylum seekers on first application as does France, on the other side of the channel—which is doubtless one reason why people choose to leave France and come here, even by dangerous routes.

Can I just deal with three or four delusions, illusions or mistakes that are very prevalent? The first is that we have no safe routes into this country. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, made some very sensible points, particularly about the constant change in the regulations we face. We have some 13 different routes and they have exploded in numbers over the last year. We have seen the best part of 300,000 people arrive in this country and be accepted by safe migration routes, including 150,000 from Ukraine. That is a wonderful way we are responding to the problems in Ukraine and almost all of them want to return if and when peace returns to Ukraine. Sadly, that may not be immediate and many of them will put down roots in this country, so will add to our population. They are wonderful people, but we have to take into account the fact that we have a massive increase in our population. There were 120,000 from Hong Kong—again, one understands why—and 20,000 from Afghanistan. All arrived by safe routes. So when President Macron says that the problem with Britain is that is has no safe routes, he is simply out of touch with what is happening in this country.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said that there can be no doubt about the desperation of people who cross the channel in small boats to come to this country. Let us be quite clear: they are coming from France, Germany and Belgium. If they are desperate, what is it about those countries that makes them desperate? They are not coming here from Afghanistan or Iran by boat; they are coming from France and Germany. One of the reasons can be that they have applied or could apply in those countries but know they would be rejected, whereas here our system—having been degraded by constant legal undermining of the rules—makes it much more likely that they will be accepted, even if other countries would not consider them legitimate asylum seekers.

The third point I want to make is that it is an illusion to say we have taken back control of immigration. Over the last year we have given over 1 million visas to people to come and settle in this country. Where are the houses going to be?

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

Great.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

“Great” says the Liberal Democrat noble Lord.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I was agreeing with him about the numbers who have been given visas—a tiny fraction of whom are asylum seekers. I am not applauding the millions of people who are being given visas; I was agreeing with him that that was happening.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I misinterpreted his “Great”; he was saying that I am great rather than that the number is great. That is good.

It is an extraordinary thing: 1 million people. The problem with immigration is not that immigrants are different from us, but that they are exactly the same. They need homes to live in, medical facilities, schools and everything else. We have not got enough for the existing population, so we ought to be thinking very clearly: is it wise to issue 1 million visas for people to come and live in this country?

Finally, it is constantly asserted that migration is good for economic growth. In the last decade and a half, we have had the highest rate of immigration to this country in our history and the slowest growth in productivity. I rest my case.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I want to briefly make some observations about the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and ask the Minister one or two questions of clarification. Before I do, I point to my interests in the register and make it clear that I am speaking in a personal capacity.

--- Later in debate ---

The bottom line is that his party and the Liberal Democrats—although I must confess that I probably voted with the latter at the time—vetoed the now Opposition’s attempts in 2006 to bring in ID cards. The fact that we do not have any form of identification in this country to identify whether people are legal, other than using landlords as a means of keeping people out of rented accommodation, is problematic. Perhaps if we addressed the overstays of visas, all the other things—the population, housing and education pressures that the noble Lord talked about—could be dealt with. In France, I was checked numerous times going about my normal business—I did not particularly like it—to see whether I was legal in France or not. Had I not been found to be legal, there would have been a different way of dealing with me, but at least they knew who was there through that system, which we do not have here.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

First, we do have a system of numbers in this country. Does the noble Baroness not know about the national insurance number? You cannot get a job without it. Secondly, I was strongly against identity cards—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I would be grateful if my noble friend addressed the House rather than turned behind when speaking.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I apologise; I am still a new boy, really.

In addition, I was not including overstayers in any of the numbers that I mentioned, so they are in addition to all those numbers.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

The noble Lord is quite right, but they add to all the pressures he was talking about. Perhaps if we had a more rigorous method of knowing who was actually here, and by what route they came, we would be able to ascertain more clearly—and certainly more fairly—whether they should stay or not.

My final point to the Minister is related to but, I admit, slightly removed from this debate. The Home Office has announced that it is to do away with the golden visa route into the country, which is how kleptocrats arrive here. When we think of people coming here—documented or undocumented, but particularly those who have legal documentation—it is not particularly fair that there are people who buy themselves a route into the country by having millions, whereas those who are genuinely in distress and concerned for their lives must go through hurdles such as those identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on securing this debate; I very much agree with what he says about the Immigration Rules.

Before going too deeply into the details, I want to say that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, about the complexity of the Immigration Rules. They are so difficult. I chanced upon a document produced by the Law Commission—I do not know how long it has been out; it does not have a date. It says at the beginning that the Law Commission was asked to review the Immigration Rules to identify ways in which they could be redrafted to make them simpler and more accessible. The one thing I can say about the rules we are debating today is that they are certainly not simple or accessible. I have read them about three times, and I have read the explanation of the rules about three times, and I am still not very much the wiser. I commend to the Home Office the Law Commission’s report. If it was written some time ago, it is still very much up to date. The idea is that the rules should always be drafted in such a way that they are meaningful and comprehensible.

I will comment very briefly on one or two things that have been said. I am personally very much in sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said about identification. I do not think that I can bring my own Labour Party with me on this, but I believe that, in terms of the rights of individuals, it would be an improvement. If any noble Lords have tried to open a building society savings account, they will know of the number of documents that one has to produce as evidence that one is who one is—sometimes, I just take my passport with me, as it is a lot simpler than anything else. I also have a little advice: when one is moving house, make sure that your wife or partner is also named on the utility bills, because there comes a point when you have to produce evidence for her as well—or the other way round. I have gone through this in getting a blue badge for my wife; it is complicated, because one has to get all this evidence. ID cards might well be helpful, and we should debate that more fully another day.

I was a little surprised by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, when he said that more people claim asylum in the UK than in France. I was not aware of that. It was my understanding—and the Minister may be able to give us the figures—that of the people arriving in France, far more claim asylum in France than seek to come to this country to claim asylum here.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I am sorry if I was unclear. I said that of those who make a claim in France, only half as many are granted asylum on first application as in the UK.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I think that is an argument on my side rather than on his, though, is it not? If more people who get to this country are given refugee status because of the claim they have made, surely that is an argument to say that we should look differently at groups 1 and 2, which would lessen their chances, if I have understood it correctly. At any rate, my proposition is that the majority of people reaching France claim asylum in France; only a minority seek to come here. It is surely the lack of safe and legal routes from France to this country that has given the traffickers a field day. The answer must be to have a better relationship with France and to do this on a more co-operative basis. Rather than simply criticising the French, I think we have to co-operate with them as the only way to move forward.

Rwanda Asylum Partnership: Removal of Unaccompanied Children

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing this debate and on highlighting the intractable problem of how we cope with people whose age we cannot be certain about. We can all agree that we should open our arms to children who arrive in a safe country alone, unaccompanied because their parents or guardian may have been killed or died en route, while they were fleeing persecution in their homeland. Likewise, a young teenager, who has fled his or her homeland because their parents have been killed or jailed, and they were destitute and had no alternative but to flee their country, are worthy and deserving of our support and refuge. However, such circumstances are comparatively rare and the numbers involved would not be a serious problem, I would have thought, for our social services or immigration system. After all, in those circumstance, very few children would be able to obtain the finances to pay people smugglers to bring them illegally to this country.

Can the Minister tell us more about the reasons unaccompanied children give for arriving here without parent, relative or guardian? I am told that, pretty frequently, they are sent here by their family in the perfectly understandable, and in many ways laudable, hope that their child will find a better and safer life here. Parents may not be able to obtain the money to pay for more than one passage, so they send a teenager in the hope that he or she will at least have a better life than they have back in their homeland.

However, there are probably innumerable families in poor and troubled countries who would willingly send a child here if they could; they are essentially economic migrants, not political refugees. Can my noble friend confirm that that is why we do not provide an unlimited safe and legal route for children in these circumstances, if they have no relatives here already and that, if we did, it would impose a considerable burden on our local authority children’s services? Still less should we create a loophole for anyone who can pass themselves off as under 18 to enter this country and obtain costly support.

The problem is, of course, deciding on the age of a young person—a person claiming to be under 18—if they have no evidence of their age or year of birth. Adults are invariably told by the traffickers to destroy their papers en route, but young people who are genuinely under 18 would be better advised to bring and retain evidence of their age. Can my noble friend tell me whether such evidence tends to be available for young children in the sort of countries from which many of them come? If so, for those countries where it might be reasonable to expect a person to have some proof of age, should not the absence of that proof count in the decision as to whether their age is what they claim to be or what they appear to be?

As I said at the beginning, it is an intractable dilemma that we face because there is no scientific way of proving beyond peradventure the age of someone claiming to be a child. I have spoken to a former Minister for Education who said that in his experience, from having seen many of those purporting to be children, he was convinced that many were not. But we are talking, of course, of people coming here illegally from Europe. If they are worried about the fairness of the system here, they can of course put themselves in the hands of the authorities in Europe. It is always odd to me that so many people who want us to remain in Europe are so keen that everybody else gets out from that terrible place.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, few of us would risk crossing the channel in a flimsy, inflatable dinghy, so we assume that anyone who does so must be fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution by an evil tyranny. But these boats do not set off from Basra, Iran or Africa; they come from Europe carrying people who have been in France, Belgium or Germany—none of which is a tyranny threatening them with persecution. They take this risk because, for whatever reason, they would prefer to be in one safe country—the UK—rather than other safe countries they have passed through. For some, that reason is that they have been refused asylum or fear refusal in France, Germany or wherever, and they believe the UK is more likely to grant them asylum and, even if they are refused, they stand little risk of being deported. They are right. In France, only 25% of asylum applications are granted on first request, whereas the figure in the UK is 64%, plus 59% of those who appeal. Moreover, pre-Covid France forcibly deported 34,000 migrants a year—10 times as many as we did.

One reason for this difference is that the British standard of proof for granting asylum is unusually low. Home Office guidance requires only a “reasonable degree of likelihood” that the asylum seeker is telling the truth. That is far below the criminal standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” and below even the civil standard of “the balance of probabilities”. Home Office rules say that

“keeping the relatively low standard of proof in mind, the claimant’s statements and other evidence about the facts being established can be accepted if they are”

detailed, coherent, consistent with local circumstances and plausible. Any well-coached economic migrant should have little difficulty providing a story meeting those criteria. The genuine victims of persecution may have no concrete evidence of their suffering and, if they lack coaching, may be rejected.

The truth is that we allocate the right to asylum by lottery, albeit with odds stacked heavily in favour of claimants. The price of a lottery ticket is over £10,000 to pay the people smugglers, which rules out the poorest people, plus willingness to risk the channel crossing. A lottery with such good odds of winning has been possible only because there is such a high cost and risk of entry. No one who signed the Geneva convention intended to create such a cruel and absurd system.

Some noble Lords propose that we reduce the price of a lottery ticket by letting people apply from their homeland or a third country. But advocates of safe routes do not say whether claimants abroad would have the same rights as at present to legal aid, appeal and judicial review, and low levels of proof. If those advantages are to be curtailed for distant applicants, why retain them for applicants within the UK?

We know what happens when you offer free tickets to a lottery for visas. The US allocates by lot 50,000 visas to people in a different list of countries each year. The response is huge; 20 million people applied for those 50,000 visas last time, including 13% of the population of Albania, 15% of Liberians and 9% of Armenians. I could go on. As noble Lords observed in a previous debate, these are not the main countries from which migrants currently come—precisely. Does anyone imagine that fewer Iraqis, Afghans or Syrians would apply if we offered them a costless, riskless possibility of asylum in the UK? They would be joined by a huge number of economic migrants from other poor and troubled lands. Safe routes would overwhelm our already unsustainable system. Rather than letting anyone in the world chance their luck on our system, what is needed is a radical pruning of the unintended forest of Kafkaesque legal processes which have grown up since 1951. This Bill makes a timid start, but I fear something more radical may be needed.

Small Boats Incident in the Channel

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that, if it is morally and legally right for the French authorities to turn back immigrants seeking to leave their shores, it would likewise be morally right for us to return immigrants who had evaded attempts to keep them in France? It is possibly right legally and certainly is if we do so safely and with the approval of the French authorities. It would be odd of them to refuse that approval, given that they took our money to help them do it, in the first place.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right, and of course he caveats that by saying that the methods by which people are turned back have to be safe. That is essential.

Migrants

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, this debate takes place under the sombre cloud of the tragic death of 27 migrants off the French coast yesterday. I join noble Lords in offering my sympathy, prayers and condolences to them and all their friends and relatives.

But, if our sorrow is sincere, we must redouble our determination to find ways to stop and discourage people attempting these dangerous crossings. The approach of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is to provide a safe and legal way to apply for asylum from abroad—for example, by applying to an embassy or some specific tribunal abroad.

But this simply would not work. Anyone who was refused or knew they would be refused asylum if they made such a claim would still have exactly the same incentive as now to enter the UK illegally by boat or on the back of a lorry, so it will not stop the boats attempting this perilous journey. If anything, it will add to the problem, since many more people will apply for asylum if such a simple route is established, with plausible claims that cannot be disproved, especially if we accord such claimants the same rights to legal aid, appeal and judicial review, and in the refugee convention, immigration Acts, human rights Acts, modern slavery Acts and so on. If we can dispense with these for claims made abroad, it is not clear to me why we need to retain such rights for claims made within the UK, and vice versa.

Those rights for claimants and the concomitant responsibilities that fall upon British taxpayers have grown up as the courts have explicated the 1951 Geneva convention and the 1969 protocol using subsequent human rights legislation. But those conventions were negotiated before cheap mass transit, mass communications and rising living standards in developing countries. Remember, it is the better off who migrate from developing countries; the very poor cannot afford to and cannot pay the smugglers. My first career was working in developing countries on development projects, and it was always the middle classes who were able to escape, not the poorest. All those things have made mass migration possible in a way that was not envisaged when those conventions were negotiated.

If anyone doubts the potential scale of those who would seek asylum if they could, without running any risk to themselves, look at the response to the United States diversity visa lottery. Every year, the US offers 50,000 visas to a different selection of countries that have no tradition of migration to the United States. In the last year for which I have the figures, 13% of the Albanian population, 7% of the Uzbek population, 8% of the population of Ghana, 14% of the population of Sierra Leone and 15% of the population of Liberia applied for those visas—in all, 20 million people from this small selection of countries to which they were made available. Similar numbers would undoubtedly want to live in Europe and the United Kingdom, if we gave people the chance to enter, at no costs to themselves, the lottery of our asylum seekers—and it is essentially a lottery.

I sincerely hope that the Nationality and Borders Bill will provide a way of removing the chief magnet that draws migrants across the channel at great risk, which is the virtual certainty that, once here, they will never be deported. But I fear it will not. This will be possible only if we, together with other like-minded countries, insist on renegotiating and, if need be, resiling from the Geneva convention and replacing it with something relevant to an age of mass movement. If we are not prepared to take this or whatever action is necessary to remove the magnet of certainty once you get here, yesterday’s tragedy will be just the first of a never-ending series of disasters, and we will be to blame.

UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement: Foreign Workers

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I could tell the noble Baroness what is going right. We will have a system that is fair for the whole world, as people who have the skills and can contribute to our economy will be able to make their life and work in the UK. I accept her point about certain sectors facing shortages at the moment and the Government have remedied this.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I greatly respect the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and do not want to comment on the legality of this, but could my noble friend confirm that the effect of reversing the Government’s policy would be to make it easier and cheaper to import cheap labour from abroad? Would the Opposition Benches not be more likely to make the Labour Party electable again if they were to seek to implement Gordon Brown’s cry to train people, so that we have British workers doing British jobs, rather than simply making it easier to import cheap labour from Europe?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I totally agree with my noble friend and have said on many occasions that the days when we could import cheap labour from the EU or anywhere else are gone. Our immigration system will be based on the skills that people bring to bear and there will be certain thresholds on incomes.

Immigration Rules: Au Pairs

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, successive Governments since 2008 have decided that the UK’s immigration system will not offer a dedicated visa route for au pairs, and I do not see that situation changing. I described in my initial Answer the YMS route, on which there are around 20,000 people from participating countries or territories coming to experience life in the UK.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that we are moving away from the deplorable British habit of paying British workers too little and not training them enough, and instead relying on cheap labour from abroad. I understand the reasons my noble friend gives for wanting an exception in the case of au pairs, but I counsel the House that it will open us to ridicule if the only exception we are prepared to make is to help us deal with the servant problem.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. Debates have been had over the last few months and years, but the whole point is to offer competitive wages here for workers from either here or abroad. Au pairs certainly are labour on the cheap.