Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Paddick

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I think that the way this matter has been handled reflects extremely well on the flexibility and the detailed application of the minds of Members of your Lordships’ House in dealing with very great problems, especially when these problems are new and have recently arisen.

I was struck by the words of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, when he referred to the fact that when the 2011 Act was passed, he could not have imagined the need for these arrangements. Let us be aware that the thing that is new is the creation of a new political body, which has nothing do with religion, the Islamic State. It claims the ability to grant citizenship and demands loyalty but also—by definition, because it believes in theocracy rather than democracy, and the theocracy itself is an aberration with little to do with the noble aspects of Islam—believes in something that puts its members in permanent enmity with this country. They deny the right of other states to exist, which is why, of course, we should be taking steps to defend the realm against the possibility of such people using citizenship for the destruction of this country.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, although at first glance it would seem reasonable for the Home Office not to have to give notice to a terrorist overseas that they were being deprived of their British citizenship, it of course means that there is no effective right to appeal, as the subject would be unaware of the decision. We have also seen cases where the Home Office could have given notice, even to the last known address or by email, and chose not to. The increase in the use of this power needs to be reversed.

The amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, seek to introduce a range of judicial oversights, would remove the subjective element of the decision and tighten the grounds on which a deprivation of citizenship order may be made without notice to the person concerned. Others would strengthen the test for making such a decision; ensure, if the person concerned contacts the Home Office, that he is told what has happened and that he has a right of appeal; and allow the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal to oversee such decisions. Any time limit on appeal would start when the subject is notified.

I understand that a government Minister would have signed these amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, had they not been out of time—the deadline for tabling government amendments being several days before that for other amendments. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, for the time, effort and ingenuity he has brought to bear in bringing forward such a comprehensive suite of amendments that could arguably halt, if not throw into reverse, the current practice by the Home Office increasingly to use this power to deprive citizenship without notice. We wholeheartedly support these amendments.

However, were the House to divide on taking Clause 9 out of the Bill, we would, along with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, support that Division. At the end of the day, the Government should be taking ownership of the actions of British citizens, including terrorists overseas, ensuring, wherever possible, that they are extradited to the UK to stand trial, rather than depriving them of British citizenship, preventing them returning to the UK, and making them some other country’s problem, whether with notice or not. However, while therefore agreeing with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has said, we are unable to go so far as to support her amendment, as there could be exceptional cases where, as a last resort, citizenship should be removed.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Paddick

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that this debate reflects what we said yesterday in our debate and what some of us tried to say on Second Reading. There is an irreconcilable conflict and quandary between our desire to receive people in the way in which we would wish them to be received and treated and the number of people who have been coming—and are likely to continue to come—and our capacity to handle them. The Home Office’s proposals attempt to increase the capacity and the quality. I totally understand the criticism of the proposals, but it seems to me that we are in no way in sight of a practical solution to this problem.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for so comprehensively and clearly setting out the issues addressed in this group. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for her detailed exposition of the negative impact that accommodation has on the health and well-being of asylum seekers.

We have Amendments 58, 62 and 63 in this group, which are about accommodation centres, which are—if the Government were honest about this—immigration detention centres, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said. I say that because Section 30 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 allows the Secretary of State to make regulations about conditions to be observed by residents of an accommodation centre—including, in subsection (3)(a), the power to

“require a person not to be absent from the centre during specified hours without the permission of the Secretary of State or the manager”.

Hence my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s Amendment 62, which we strongly support, to remove such a condition.

If these are not intended to be detention centres, the Government will have no objection to this amendment—but I am not optimistic. The noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, will be heartened by the news in the Telegraph today that the Secretary of State

“is in talks with the Attorney-General about potential restrictions that could be placed on their movements”—

that is, the movements of asylum seekers housed in accommodation centres. The noble Lord will be heartened; we will be horrified.

We have already seen from the Government’s attempts to warehouse large numbers of asylum seekers in former military camps how such an approach is not “conducive to the public good”, to adopt a phrase from another part of the Bill. Noble Lords have talked about Napier barracks. In the same article in the Telegraph today, apparently the Home Office confirmed that it has acquired military barracks at Manston, in order to accommodate further asylum seekers.

The noble Lord, Lord Horam, suggested that there was no objection in practice to accommodation centres. To some extent, that is true, but having large numbers of asylum seekers in one place creates tensions with local communities and hampers asylum seekers’ attempts to integrate into their adopted country. While I am on the subject of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, can we nail the illegal immigrant issue? The noble Lord said that a lot of these asylum seekers had yet to have their claim determined. We have a principle in British law called being innocent until you are proved guilty. These people are not illegal immigrants unless and until their claim for asylum has been rejected.

So many objections to immigration generally are on the basis that immigrants do not integrate into society; that they do not attempt to learn the language, for example, or mix with those already established in the UK. Accommodation centres would prevent asylum seekers integrating and force them to isolate themselves from local communities. It is the very opposite of what we should be doing to ensure the integration that is so important to foster good community and race relations.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, said, we have seen the appalling conditions that asylum seekers have been forced to live in at Napier barracks, which drew universal condemnation. Amendments 56, 57 and 61 seek to provide some safeguards and protections for the most vulnerable asylum seekers. Amendment 60 would enable children housed in accommodation centres to attend local state schools, and Amendments 58 and 59 try to restrict the length of time that asylum seekers can be held in accommodation centres.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Paddick

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am grateful for the question. All I can say is that it is a hypothetical question and I did not hold a Front-Bench position during the coalition.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, this Bill was intended to do everything necessary at present to counter terrorism and protect our borders. It does not. I have made repeated attempts to persuade the Government to evaluate—just evaluate—the need for a secure personal identity number system, with biometrics held on a secure central database with which the biometrics of any UK citizen could be compared online by those authorised to do so. The Home Office has refused point blank to even consider this suggestion. This is inexcusable. I recognise that the default position of the Home Office has long been to ignore, reject or oppose external suggestions for changing its procedures, practices or policies, but that is not a satisfactory situation. That it may get away with such behaviour can of course be a reflection on the effectiveness of Ministers, some of whom are coaxed into being mere parrots of Home Office views. I suspect that a rule of the department is, whenever necessary, to remind Ministers “Theirs not to reason why”.

On border control, I will make three points. First, the list published in Hansard, in response to Written Questions I have put down periodically since 2012, of Home Office immigration officials who have been sentenced to often long periods of imprisonment, up to eight or nine years, for misconduct in public office—that is what Hansard describes their offence as being, in most cases—now includes over 50 such cases. This is a disgrace which should have been tackled long ago. All that has happened is that the Home Office has now decided to withhold the names of those who, in open court, have been so convicted, apparently on the grounds that it infringes their privacy or human rights. Secondly, there is still no record, for online access at entry and departure points, of other passports held by UK passport holders. Thirdly, the Home Office seems to have been caught by surprise, with the Home Secretary having had to hurry back from holiday, by the sudden increase in the number of illegal immigrants who have sought to travel to the UK across the Channel in small boats. This was both predictable and predicted, and it can be expected to increase greatly next summer unless effective action is taken to halt it.

Perhaps I could end by quoting Sherlock Holmes:

“From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of … a Niagara”.


I am afraid there is a shortage of logicians in the Home Office.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Paddick

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 182 on anonymity before charge, I refer to an earlier amendment which I moved in Committee on 2 November. It proposed substituting “lack of evidence” for “insufficient evidence” when police communicate a decision not to charge. Eight noble Lords spoke in support and I have now had the Minister’s letter of 1 December saying that the Government agree to replace the phrase “insufficient evidence” with revised wording which will be incorporated in fresh guidance, to take effect by next spring. However I am afraid that their suggestion of the words,

“the case failed to reach the evidential test”,

does not quite hit the spot. Frankly, “no case to answer”, would be better but that is probably a discussion for another day.

I am glad that the Government listened to the Committee. I am grateful to the Minister for using her influence on the Home Office. I hope she will do so again, after this debate. The matter is really very simple. There have, particularly in recent years, been a number of instances when the police have released the names of suspects or publicly identified them at a very early stage in their investigations into allegations and complaints, particularly of sexual impropriety. A most notorious example was on 14 August 2014 when the Yorkshire police arranged for the BBC to film and broadcast their entry into the house of the pop star Sir Cliff Richard. Sir Cliff must have gone through hell before it was eventually accepted that he had no case to answer.

There are many other examples. We may remember the wholly inappropriate way in which, on 3 August 2015, a superintendent of the Wiltshire police posed for television cameras in front of Sir Edward Heath’s final residence in Salisbury, encouraging people to claim that the former Prime Minister had misbehaved with children. The superintendent was launching an investigation on which the Wiltshire police have now spent over £700,000 of taxpayers’ money, with the chief constable of Wiltshire apparently determined to continue his fishing expedition indefinitely.

The method of fishing adopted by Wiltshire police seems to vary between the utterly naive and the patently absurd. I have been told by a former member of the Downing Street staff that they were contacted by one of the investigating officers, who asked, first, whether they had noticed any untoward incidents at any time in the behaviour of the then Prime Minister and secondly, whether they had noticed any young men slipping in and out of No. 10 Downing Street. Surely the Wiltshire police and crime commissioner has a role in pointing out the opportunity-cost of this farce and guiding the chief constable on priorities in the use of limited police resources.

In Committee a number of noble Lords raised this issue of the police being free to name suspects and the Minister is on record as saying that,

“it is absolutely right and proper for the police to have operational independence in deciding whether to name a suspect”.—[Official Report, 16/11/16; col. 1466.]

My response to that is simple. Searching a house is an operational matter, on which the police must make a judgment. However, to search a house they have to obtain a magistrate’s warrant before they do so. Indeed, the centuries-old requirement for a search warrant forms part of the fundamental protection of our liberties, under both statute and convention, which has its roots in Magna Carta.

The impact of modern social media means that naming suspects is a powerful weapon; indeed, sometimes even a lethal one. I am not saying that it is never sensible for suspects to be named, sometimes even at a very early stage in an investigation. In sexual cases, or cases of fraud, for example, it may be necessary for there to be publicity that will encourage other victims of the alleged offenders to come forward. Indeed, the media have always had an important role in exposing allegations in the pursuit of justice. However, the media have to follow court directions restricting reporting—and they do so.

Hitherto it has been left to the police to make a judgment on whether to name a suspect. However, it has now been shown that all too often the police cannot be relied on to make the right judgment. In their recent decisions on naming suspects they have aroused much public resentment and indignation. This has resulted not only in often irreparable damage to the reputation of innocent persons but undermined confidence in, and therefore support for, the police.

History teaches us the need for vigilance in the defence of liberty. In September 1793, at the height of the reign of terror during the French Revolution, the so-called Committee of Public Safety passed the Law of Suspects, which meant that suspects, once named, could be put under the guillotine without any trial. This continued until July 1794, when Robespierre himself was guillotined. We are a million miles from that. But the road is the same and we must not take a single step along it. It is to halt and, indeed, remedy an unacceptable situation that I am advocating the urgent need for a check on the exercise of unsupervised police powers to publish the names of suspects. That is why in Amendment 182 I propose that the police should be required to obtain a magistrates’ warrant before publishing the name of a suspect who has not been charged. I realise that my amendment as drafted may not be the full answer, but I am anxious that the Government should address what has become a serious problem. I look forward to hearing the views of other noble Lords and, of course, of the Minister. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, we have Amendment 187 in this group but, before I address that amendment, I would like to speak briefly to Amendment 182. In Committee, some noble Lords asked why sexual offences should be a special case when it comes to pre-charge anonymity. Amendment 182 addresses that question by including all offences. However, there are three reasons why we cannot support this amendment. As I will set out shortly, not only do we believe that sexual offences are a special case, but the law acknowledges that they are a special case in which the normal principles of free speech and open justice are restricted. We believe that these are important principles that should be restricted only in those cases where there are specific reasons for doing so. In sexual offences cases alone, the identity of the complainant or victim is protected. For similar reasons, we believe that the identity of the accused should be protected up until the point of charge.

Secondly, in Committee, we also heard compelling reasons why the accused should be able to lift the ban on publicising his identity, if he wishes. The accused may wish to complain at the injustice of his case or appeal for alibi witnesses to come forward, for example. Amendment 182, as drafted, would not allow that.

The third reason is that we do not believe the magistrates’ court is the right place for such a decision to be made. We believe that such an important decision should be considered by a judge of a higher court.

Amendment 187 is substantially different from the amendment we moved in Committee in a number of respects. First, it is as close as possible to the wording of the legislation that currently protects complainants or victims in sexual offences cases. Secondly, it allows the accused to lift pre-charge anonymity at any stage if he wishes to do so. Thirdly, as well as specifying the minimum rank of police officer who can make an application, and the Crown Court as the appropriate court for hearing an initial application from the police for the ban to be lifted, it would specifically require the judge to have particular regard to the possibility that further witnesses might volunteer evidence relating to sexual offences committed by the accused. We believe that such cases will be rare and such applications will be exceptional, as I will explain.

We had a long debate on this issue in Committee, and I do not want to make my case again as it is a matter of record. However, I want to address the remarks made by other noble Lords in that debate, having had an opportunity to reflect on what they said. I will address head on, and at an early stage, the shocking picture that is emerging of allegations of historic child abuse at football clubs. Most of the initial allegations that attracted so much publicity, and gave rise to the unprecedented number of further allegations being made across the length and breadth of the country, involved the former football coach Barry Bennell. Bennell was convicted of sexual abuse offences in the United States in 1994, and convicted of further sexual offences in the United Kingdom in 1998, and again in 2015, for which he served terms of imprisonment. These are not cases where pre-charge anonymity would have had any adverse effect. Indeed, I suggest that these cases point to a change in culture where victims of sexual abuse are more willing to come forward. Therefore, they undermine to some extent an argument against pre-charge anonymity on the grounds that victims need to be given confidence to name people who have been accused but not yet charged.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made this point in Committee—that publicity can lead others to come forward with supporting evidence that helps to make the case against a person who is rightly accused. But what if somebody is not rightly accused? What if somebody like Nick comes forward and makes highly damaging and groundless allegations against individuals? Is it right that these allegations and the identity of the accused are put into the public domain? How do we safeguard against others coming forward with similarly damaging and groundless allegations, particularly when the details of the allegations are made public? There is a view that the law on similar fact evidence has gone too far and that this can result in convictions based on multiple uncorroborated allegations, all of which could be false. I am not legally qualified to comment, but surely a balance needs to be struck between shoring up uncorroborated allegations by trawling for others and protecting the reputation of the accused.