Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

My inclination, at the moment at least—unless I am reassured by the Minister—is that we are a very long way from being satisfied that Rwanda is a safe country. There is a danger of repeating ourselves. We were treated yesterday to a short lesson and some new regulations on not repeating ourselves, particularly at the later stages of a Bill, but it is impossible not to repeat oneself on this Bill, because basically it all goes back to the principles behind the Bill. We need reassurance from the noble and learned Lord that something is being done so that, if it turns out that Rwanda really is not a safe country and/or that it has not complied with all the requirements of the treaty, people will not be sent there.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, the phrase “the elected House must prevail” is a meme around this place. We have certainly heard it from both the Government and the Opposition, and we heard it again from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, this afternoon. Most of the time, it is completely right that we bow to the will of the House of Commons. But is it always right?

On the basis of the 25 years I have spent here, I would say that this House has three roles. There are two very obvious ones: one is amending Bills, at which we are jolly good; the other is setting up Select Committees, quite a number of which I have served on, and I would say that we are jolly good at that too. There is a third one, which very rarely comes into place, and that is this House as a backstop, challenging the Commons when it goes too far and flirts with breaking international law, usurping the role of the courts or behaving unconstitutionally in general. Does this Bill, without the amendments being put forward this afternoon, pass that threshold? I would say that it comes perilously near it.

There is also a matter of timing, which troubles me. Obviously, this was not in the Government’s election manifesto, so the Salisbury convention does not apply. How can the Government argue that they have a mandate to legislate for this policy now, forced through in the face of huge opposition in this House and elsewhere, when in six months’ time they will face the people of Britain in an election which will decide what their manifesto should be? Let them put the Rwanda Bill in their next manifesto—let them put it before the British people. The British people, who are much gentler and more sympathetic to people in the situation of those who are to be exported, will give their verdict. I may be wrong, and if the Government win the election they can bring back the Bill and it will sail through without any opposition, because it will be a manifesto pledge. To do this now, when there is more than a suspicion that it is just a device by No. 10 in a desperate attempt to pull a lost election out of the fire, cannot possibly be justified.

If the amendments are defeated today then that is the end of the story, but I hope they will not be. I dare to hope that the Commons will think again. If not, it will be for each individual Member of the House—guided, in our case, by the Whips—to decide whether or not to keep blocking the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, what a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, with whom I agree. I felt that the Minister’s opening remarks were so full of mistakes that I shall go through them tomorrow in Hansard with a red pen and pass them back to him, if that is all right, so he can see exactly where I think he went wrong.

It was expected that the other place would take out all our important amendments, but at the same time you have to say that it was not the move of a democratically minded Government but that of an authoritarian, tyrannical one. This Government are choosing tyranny over democracy in this instance. We now have the job of revising the Bill again. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, the British public are actually kinder and more concerned than this Government. The Government do not represent the public any more, and it is time they went.

Immigration: Overseas Students

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I chair Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, which is one of the four great conservatoires in London. Perhaps the proudest moment in my time as chair was in June when Radio 3 broadcast live three of our finest pianists from St John’s Smith Square—three of a very fine crop. Noble Lords should note the names because they will hear them again: Giulio Potenza, Gen Li and Jenna Sung. They should also note that those are not English names. Indeed, they are not English: Giulio is from Italy. Gen is from China and Jenna from South Korea.

Of our students, 111 are international, which is 10% of our student body. Each brings us £15,000 to £20,000 a year, and it is not possible financially simply to replace them with British students because an extra British student would yield only £9,000 to us under the current fee regulations. But they bring something more important than money. They bring talent, which raises standards all round. They bring cultural diversity: music is an international language, but it has many accents. They bring determination: it is not nothing to move halfway around the world in the pursuit of your chosen vocation. They also bring reach to Britain abroad, which may last for many years. Why is the House debating this issue this afternoon? Why is it not a no-brainer? Let us face it and be honest: we are debating it because the Government seem half inclined to chop this flourishing tree off at its roots.

I will concentrate on students from outside Europe if only because I spoke on Brexit and students last week. Three out of every four students come from outside the European Union. The threat to them is real, too. The Government have them in their sights. The Prime Minister has long opposed taking them out of the immigration numbers, as we have heard in this debate, although only a quarter of the public think that they should be regarded as immigrants. Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, singled them out for some remarks in her conference speech although to be fair she has also said a few positive things about international students.

It is not only about what the Government think or even what they say: it is a question of what the world and its most talented individuals hear. The world sees a country that has voted for Brexit, where there have been troubling instances of immigrants being hassled in the streets and now sees a country that is adding a thickening bureaucracy, which makes applying for student visas more problematical and which is toying with adding new barriers. Is this really, as they say, to improve quality or is it just a cheap and easy way to cut the number of immigrants?

There is another obstacle. What happens to students when they finish their courses? Many of the students at Trinity Laban would like to continue their music and dance careers in Britain. Already they face an obstacle in that their earnings are not high, but to stay in a job here beyond a year, a student has to show that he or she will earn £20,800 a year or more, which is not easy for a young jobbing musician. The Government seem to be contemplating making things even harder in terms of getting a job. Ministers have gone around brandishing ludicrous overestimates of overstaying—the Times leak put the true figure at less than 1%. I cannot help noticing that I get pleas from time to time from young ensembles that find their lead violinist or cellist is being denied a visa and so their career and planned engagements are being cut short.

To sum up, if we put off overseas students, my establishment, Trinity Laban, will suffer. If we lost all our international students our revenues would fall by more than £2 million, which is probably by around 10%, and that would be very bad. South-east London, where we are situated, would suffer. Our international students alone bring some £5 million to the local economy, which is not a strong one in a very diverse area, and of course Britain will suffer. In financial terms, according to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, international students contribute some £7 billion to Britain’s economy and they are the second largest net contributor to Britain’s balance of payments. But it is not the financial benefits, important though they are, that make me so nervous about this threat to the future. It is the threat that cultural chauvinism will replace international diversity. Globalisation no doubt has its pros and cons, but one incontestable pro is the vitality it brings to intellectual and cultural endeavour. We put that at risk at our peril.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. She set out extremely clearly what is at stake and we should remember that at the other end of violations of privacy there are people who have their privacy severely intruded upon. The intruders are not the security services or a public authority but privately owned newspapers.

There is a rumour abroad that in some way Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations were a challenge, an affront and an abridgment to freedom of the press. That is a mistaken view of the matter. Freedom of the press is not freedom to intrude in other people’s privacy. On the contrary, it is freedom not just within the law—we are talking about changing the law—but where victims have reasonable redress. At present, that is not the case because the heavy costs and risks fall on victims—even a worthy case may fail in the courts—and because, on the other hand, perpetrators have no incentive to apologise or be accurate. There has been a great deal of concern about the extreme inadequacy of the complaints procedures that IPSO has devised. I say that with hesitation because I suspect that they cannot really count as complaints procedures, given that violations are rarely reported adequately and lead to no consequences.

We need this protection for individuals and private lives, and it fits naturally into this Bill.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. We should remember the agreement signed in 2015 with the full support of Parliament, and its three pillars: there should be a body to regulate complaints against the press that is based on Lord Leveson’s recommendations; it should not be compulsory for the press to sign up to those recommendations, but there should be certain disincentives to not signing up, such as in the treatment of case costs by the courts; and there should be a back-stop in the form of a royal charter for such a body in order to make sure that there was no backsliding.

If we are honest and look at those agreed aims of Parliament, how are we doing? We are doing badly. We have one regulator, Impress, which, as the noble Baroness said, is compliant and marching towards a seal of approval, but has no serious clients. We have another in IPSO, which falls far short—I emphasise “far short”—of the requirements of Leveson. It is dependent on those who regulate it, with its structure, rules, code, membership and funding all controlled by those it seeks to regulate. It does not provide assured redress for members of the public who have been mistreated, because its arbitration scheme is voluntary. It is confined, like its predecessors, to mediation, not regulation, and its procedures make it hard, if not impossible, to envisage that it would ever impose a big fine on a member. I do not want to impose on the patience of the Committee by going into great detail on any of these. However, I do not blame the chair of IPSO, Alan Moses, who has fought vigorously for a compliant IPSO; I blame the clients.

Having said that, there is still hope. The Government’s own Press Recognition Panel has to report to Parliament, perhaps in September, about how things are going, and it is bound to say that they are going nowhere. I invest more hope still in the fact that Sir Joe Pilling, a former head of the Northern Ireland department, has been commissioned by IPSO to look into its workings. We had a good example of the work of former heads of the Northern Ireland department in the report of John Chilcot last week, and I believe that Sir Joe Pilling is another good man who can do a good job.

However, just at this moment when things hang in the balance, the Government have chosen to take their foot off the pedal. It never occurred to Parliament for a single second—I was present during the debates, as were many noble Lords—that the damages sanctions would not be brought into force. To be fair, John Whittingdale has not said that he will not bring them into force, but that he is not currently minded to bring them into force. While that is his position—while it is thought that the organisation will get away without these incentives coming into force—the chances of fundamental change to IPSO that is greatly required are such as to compete adversely with those of a snowball in hell.

The IPSO non-compliant press is basing itself on the argument it has run throughout—that the suggested royal charter is a tool which could lead to parliamentary and political interference with the press. I happen to think that claim is far-fetched, but believes it. However, that is very much a side issue. The central issue is not the royal charter but whether we are to have a Leveson-compliant regulatory body or are we to have IPSO slipping back over time, as its various predecessors did, into complete impotence and ineffectiveness? In the absence of the sanctions envisaged by both Houses and all parties in Parliament, the whole dreadful saga that led to Leveson is destined, in time, to repeat itself, leaving ruined lives in its wake.

[Lord Grabiner (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I should disclose an interest as having been appointed some years ago now as chairman of the management and standards committee established by News Corp, following the revelation of the phone hacking scandal.

I want to say a few words about Amendment 17 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger. I respectfully suggest caution as regards whether such an amendment should be approved by the Committee. In my experience—and I have had quite a lot of it—looking at many of the cases arising out of that scandal, journalists tend to be not very good at distinguishing between the public interest and matters which they believe will be of interest to the public. There is quite a fundamental distinction, but one which, regrettably, in my experience is not really appreciated by journalists, even the best of them. It may not be a very wise manoeuvre to introduce this defence into the Bill, as it would encourage journalists to hope that they might secure the benefit of that defence and would thereby be justified in conducting essentially voicemail hacking activity. In my view—and experience confirms this—these cases are mostly about trying to get hold of a story, often a sleazy one, which is wholly intrusive into private lives and little or nothing to do with the public interest. I would be inclined to oppose that amendment if it is pursued.

Visas: Student Visa Policy

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said it all. I would like to add a couple of minutes-worth from the perspective of my role as chair of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. I understand the dilemmas of trying to curb immigration, but extending control to students has gone too far. It is undermining a highly profitable British export while diminishing the intellectual and cultural vitality of our nation. Nowhere is this truer than in music and dance, which by their nature are international. They are for all human beings.

Just as talented students from India and China want to come here to study music, we are slamming the door in their faces. To add a music point, one of the great attractions of our music conservatoires was the two-year rule whereby students could work in music two years after they graduated. Some 29% of our masters students took advantage of that route to the great benefit of our culture and their careers. That is now vastly more difficult. First, you have to show that you can earn £21,000 a year, and that is not easy for a student. Secondly, you have to be able to cite an employer. If you are a musician, you usually have a portfolio career as a freelancer and you do not have an employer. This route is therefore barred to them. Many of them, as a result, are not going to come.

Even the exception for exceptional talent is a not a very good one. You have to go back to your country of origin to apply. You then have to have the application endorsed by a competent body such as the UK Arts Council. There is, in any case, a limit of 1,000 on places. When you take that into account, the attractions for music students are being reduced so that we will become a second-class power where, in many ways, we have led the world. The sooner we exempt students from these rules, the better.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, we are all grateful for the opportunity given to us by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, to address this subject this afternoon. I am also grateful to the clerks, because the letter from Simon Burton about the next set of amendments to come before us said:

“The bill has only two purposes—individual electoral voter registration and the administration and conduct of elections”.

I find it difficult to see how either rubric fits the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. However, the clerks have assured me that it is in order. I look forward to studying their explanation of why this is so this evening, and I am glad that we are debating this amendment this afternoon. I also hope we shall debate the next amendment. I shall be relatively brief, but some of the arguments that have been put should be answered.

At the moment, expats keep the vote for 15 years and then, except for the military and those enumerated, lose it. The aim of this amendment is to extend that period.

Who are these people? There is a huge range of them: some are abroad because they are working abroad long term; others moved abroad to be with their friends and relations; others for the warm climate, or perhaps in a few cases for the cheap gin and tonics; and a few are tax exiles. However, of those who speak to us, I do not doubt their sincerity in wanting to keep voting. I remember in particular the firm lobbying of members of the Brussels Labour group, who wanted the vote to express their Labour and pro-European sympathies.

There is, however, one less obviously desirable reason why they are lobbying for the vote. There is a very well organised lobby which objects to the fact that, broadly, outside Europe British pensions are frozen. Expats in receipt of pensions reasonably think that, if they had representation in Parliament—if they had a vote for MPs—they would be more likely to get this changed. This is entirely understandable. However, we must understand that conceding this would not be favourable to the British taxpayer. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, when he was the Minister responsible in 2005, estimated the cost at £3 billion, which is more than enough to pay for the total cost of the recommendations of the Dilnot report, which would do so much for elderly people living here.

How much do they want the vote? As I said, there is a very strong lobby, but a fact that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, mentioned makes me a little sceptical. There are estimated to be some 5.5 million Britons of voting age living abroad but in 2011 only 23,388 of those registered to vote—under 0.5%. If the people who have left only quite recently are not bothering to register, how many of the people who have been gone for 15 years or more are clamouring at the door for us to concede it?

This debate is not the first time that Parliament has examined this matter; there was a Question for Short Debate in this House. However, the main document referring to it is a 1998 report from the Commons Home Affairs Committee. That was some time ago, but the argument has not changed much since. Far from recommending an increase, that committee recommended that the period should be reduced to five years. It has not been put into effect but that was its recommendation.

I looked at the evidence put forward to that committee. I want to put the case as it was put to the committee by Professor Robin Blackburn, one of our foremost constitutional experts. He spoke of the absurdity of extending the franchise so that,

“an expatriate living hundreds or thousands of miles away, for the duration of a period exceeding a whole generation, carrying memories of British politics in the past and with little or no personal knowledge of contemporary issues in the constituency where he or she used to live, can influence the election of the government of a country to which he is not subject and to whom he or she may be paying no taxes”.

In a nutshell, you cannot have representation without taxation. I rest my case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords, as I have been mentioned in earlier exchanges, perhaps I might have a word, which will be very brief because I commented at length on this matter in mid-November. Not wishing to be tedious or repetitious, I shall make only a couple of points. If there was any success in the Speakership of the Commons during my period of office, much of it was due to the advice and support that I received from the clerks. I have to admit that there were a couple of occasions when I overruled that advice, one of which was against convention. But I did so because I thought that it was right to provide an opportunity for debate on a contentious issue which was of public interest and of concern. The roof did not fall in.

We have no such arbitrator with authority to make a decision in your Lordships’ House but we are often reminded that we are a self-regulating House. While, of course, we must examine the advice of the Public Bill Office and the clerk, there can be no authority that can in advance rule an amendment out of order. The bottom line is that the admissibility or otherwise of an amendment ultimately can be determined only by the House itself. When I spoke last year, I suggested that the Government allow this House to determine the issue for itself and I am delighted that we have the opportunity of so doing today.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I will be brief but I want to make one point on admissibility before turning to my main points concerning the substance of this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, who we are delighted to see in his place, made a moving appeal to my noble friend Lord Hart to withdraw his amendment. All of us will have felt the force of that even if we cannot go with him.

However, at the end, he put it as if it was down to my noble friend Lord Hart to decide this and that no one else could have stopped the situation that we are in today. After our last debate, when this Bill was withdrawn by the Government, it would have been perfectly easy for Ministers to put down a Motion in another place or in this House saying that they wanted to proceed with the electoral review and that if it was lost they would agree that they would not introduce the orders in November. It would have been perfectly easy, perfectly in order and there would have been no difficulty about it. It would have been a clear decision.

They did not do so and we all suspect their motives for not doing so. As we read in the papers, the Prime Minister was determined to see whether he could get the various minority parties in the other place to back the change and carry it through but it was going to take a little while. That is fine, but we should be careful about getting on too many high horses on this matter without checking that our girths are properly tightened.

My second point concerns the substance. I have heard a lot about fair votes this afternoon and the Chartists and all that. When you draw constituency boundaries you have to weigh off various things against each other. Equal weight for every vote is important but so is community integrity and so is the need to disrupt as little as possible the relationship between a Member of Parliament and his constituents: when you take one lot away and put another lot in it takes time for the relationship to form. These are matters of balance: the balance was entirely wrong for 5%. In a sentence: Gloucester Cathedral now sits in the middle of the Forest of Dean.

Intrinsic to the original Bill were the combination of moving from 650 to 600, the decision that the boundaries were going to be changed after every single election and the dreaded 5%. If it had been 10% we would not have had any difficulties in the first place. I am not saying that this is why some Members of this House may have changed their mind, but the argument has moved on and it has got much worse for the proponents of these boundary changes.

In these debates we have often heard from the leading academics in the field—David Rossiter, Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie. They wrote on the subject in Parliamentary Affairs in 2012 and I need not add to what they said:

“Those recommendations—

that is to say the recommendations of the Boundary Commission which we are about to put into force if we pass the Government’s Bill unamended—

“were much more disruptive to the pre-existing constituency map than many had anticipated, and the outcome—should the proposed constituencies (or some variant of them) be finally adopted—will see much less continuity and reflection of community identities … As it stands, the outcome suggests that the underpinning theory of British representative democracy—that Members of Parliament represent places with clear identities—is being undermined”.

That is the constitutional case against this Bill and it is a case that has only come to light since we passed the previous Bill in those long winter nights two years ago. They also have something to say on the subject of individual electoral registration—the subject of this Bill—and tie individual registration closely with it. They say:

“If the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration is successful and the electoral rolls are more complete, the allocation of seats could change considerably”.

That is to say that the brand new registers we are getting under this are going to be another wholesale upheaval. As we get to grips with electoral registration and the electoral rolls are changed again and again and again as a result, there will be more upheavals to come. If we pass the Bill into law we will set a fire to the electoral map of Great Britain, to all the constituency and personal loyalties that have been incorporated within it and pledge ourselves to do the same thing again at every single election for all eternity. That is why I hope the amendment will be carried.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords—