Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I support the purpose of this Bill, which is important. It relates to three key responsibilities of any Government: the protection and defence of the nation, the maintenance and enhancement of the standard of living of their citizens, and their national obligation to world peace and prosperity.

First, I turn to national security. The greatest terrorist threat to the UK remains Islamist jihadists. In the 20 years since 9/11, those who keep a tally suggest that there have been more than 40,000 fatal attacks worldwide. The Times of 11 September 2021 concluded that

“America’s wars helped to radicalise a generation of Islamists, whose poisonous ideology has spread across the Middle East to Africa, from where new terrorist franchises plot fresh attacks on the West.”

The Economist of 20 November reported on how

“jihadists aligned to al-Qaeda and Islamic State”

in the Sahel

“have taken aim at Western countries, bombing their embassies and kidnapping or killing their citizens.”

It concluded:

“If the jihadists are given havens and time, they will surely launch attacks on European or American soil, too.”


The UK has already given haven to jihadists who have been involved in several attacks, the most recent being the Liverpool bomber, who went as far as masking himself as a Christian in an attempt to obtain asylum.

So, however much we may wish to, and should, give hospitality to many of those who seek to come here—whether as refugees, asylum seekers or, indeed, migrants —we must be far more vigilant in the screening process. The unmet challenge of screening 28,000 people who arrived in England by small boats during 2021 must not recur in 2022.

I was puzzled when my noble friend Lady Williams— I thank her for that useful letter today—said in a Written Answer on 16 December that identity checks, including fingerprints and other biometrics, taken from migrants on arrival cannot be compared against the EU system which the UK has access to because

“use of those systems is only permitted for law enforcement, not immigration purposes.”

I can think of few more obvious law enforcement purposes than the detection of possible terrorists. I hope my noble friend will be able to assure us that the Bill will be changed to overrule that absurdity.

Secondly, on the responsibility of maintaining and enhancing our domestic living standards, there are now, as we have heard, several million individuals who need or would like to live in the UK; the great majority are economic migrants. The hard fact is that incentives to migrate will diminish only when the standard of living in the country they want to reach is no longer sufficiently greater than that from which they seek to depart to make the costs and risks of the journey worth while.

Three crucial components in quality of life are healthcare, education and housing. In the case of the UK, as everyone is all too aware, spare capacity in both medical and educational services hardly exists, and there are long lines of people waiting to buy or rent houses. The political constraint on any moral imperative to share these scarce resources with migrants is the consequent reduction in the standards available in the UK, and it is set by what the population—which in a democracy means the electorate—will accept. That is why most of our help must continue to be made through international aid programmes, where there is no direct dilution of UK living standards.

The third responsibility is to have an ordered travel system to replace the present chaos. We are already making special provision for economic migrants who can fill crucial shortages in the supply of certain skills; for example, in the medical and care sectors. Would it be possible to open these opportunities more widely? In my view, there is nothing wrong with discriminating in favour of particular groups, such as those suffering religious persecution in their own land. I am thinking of Christians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and—

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, may I remind the noble Lord that there is a Back-Bench speaking limit of five minutes? Thank you.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

I will conclude—

[Noble Lords]

Order! Lord Blunkett.