Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D'Souza (CB)]

I will briefly underline some of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and also, once again, point to the technical anomalies in the laying of this instrument, which we should not ride roughshod over. These unprecedented increases in fees introduced on 4 October put, for example, fees for a skilled worker’s three-year permit 540% above other leading science nations. This has enormous economic implications for any would-be immigrant skilled worker, as well as for employers. It seems to me that at the very least the Home Office must introduce policies to minimise the regulatory and economic burdens on businesses, especially SMEs. We all recognise that this is a difficult area, but, if we are to increase UK productivity, we need more skilled workers, who are currently threatened with impoverishment or indeed so demotivated that they do not attempt to come to this country at all.

As, again, the noble Baroness has said, the real hardship and heartache disproportionately affect children. Quite simply, the new fees now demanded for children to have indefinite leave to remain have become extortionate. The fee waivers scheme for parents is so impenetrable and expensive that we risk exposing a whole generation of entirely blameless and extremely vulnerable children to an insecure and uncertain future. Is this really what the Government want to do?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of at least one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. It is a point I have made before.

Nobody is entitled under any form of international law to succeed in an application for naturalisation as a British subject. In fact, we as a country are not obliged to grant naturalisation, but Parliament chooses that we should do so. In doing so, it understandably sets conditions; these conditions might relate to good character, how long one has lived here and things like that. Of course, part of those conditions will include the setting of the fee that needs to be paid. There are other immigration processes that people who are not British subjects may wish to apply for, which again may rightly and properly involve a fee. Nobody disputes that; the noble Baroness does not dispute that as a matter of principle at all. There are practical considerations, some of which the noble Baroness has explored in quite considerable detail in her remarks, about what the effects of those fees might be, and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, raised the question of the effects, particularly in relation to people coming here with scientific qualifications and in the scope of education. All of those are matters which are very properly the subject of public policy.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Ludford is unable to be in her place today. I am introducing her Amendments 114 and 116 in this group, which remove children from the effects of the loss of citizenship pathways under the Bill. On these Benches we welcome the government amendments removing the original Clause 30(4) from the Bill, which would have barred British citizenship children born in the UK after 7 March 2023 if a parent had entered the UK illegally. We also welcome the amendment that removes bars to citizenship under the British Nationality Act 1981—the settled route and the 10-year route. I thank the Minister for the helpful meeting regarding British national (overseas) citizens. I look forward to hearing from him, perhaps on Wednesday, that BNO passport holders will get clearer and correct information from immigration officials in the future.

However, despite the Government’s amendments, there are still key risks for children who the Government admit will rarely qualify for citizenship under Clause 2. That is why Amendments 114 and 116 remove children from the loss of routes to UK citizenship. The fundamental problem that needs to be resolved here is that, as we discussed in the debate on the previous group, as children arrive in the UK they are put under the responsibility of a local authority. As minors, our state decrees that these children cannot make decisions for themselves, so the logic must also be that when they were brought into the UK they were not deemed to have the capacity to make that decision. We noted that the Minister said that there is a potential safeguard under Clause 35 if a decision were to breach the UK’s obligation under the ECHR, but it was just reported again, on Saturday in the i newspaper, that the Government want to remove the UK from the ECHR.

The Government’s intention to prevent these children obtaining British citizenship would close off all the major routes to citizenship if their parents were irregular entrants: the discretionary route, the settled route and the 10-year route. On these Benches we believe that children who are deemed by the state not to be able to make decisions about themselves should not be penalised by the Bill, particularly because they are in the care of the state. On these grounds, I beg to move Amendment 114.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 115 and 117 to 125 in this group, all standing in my name. They have a similar approach to that set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, but the focus is rather different, as I shall explain.

I support the general thrust of the Bill; the argument for the Bill is that it creates a number of deterrents to people arriving in this country illegally. The principal deterrent is of course that of immediate, or at least rapid, removal to another country. But the Bill goes further than that and also seeks to deprive those who have fallen foul of the tests in Clause 2 of their subsequent right to apply for naturalisation as a British subject or, more crucially and to the point of my amendments, their right to apply for registration as a British subject at any point in the future.

Noble Lords are well aware that there is a great distinction between naturalisation and registration. Naturalisation is a concession by the state to those who are not British, to allow them to become British. It is perfectly natural that there should be conditions attached to that, and those conditions very often can and do include good behaviour conditions—such as, perhaps, if the Bill passes, not having previously arrived illegally in a small boat.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I am going to do two things that the Government Chief Whip does not like. First, I am going to take a little time over my remarks in moving this amendment. Secondly, I am going to read my speech, because these are very complicated matters in Clauses 29 to 36 and I want to be sure that I am covering what are quite dense political points. What we are doing at the moment is not just a question of opining on an issue of the day; we are actually analysing crucial legal provisions in a piece of legislation so I do not apologise.

I shall speak once in a single contribution covering my clause stand part on every clause in this section of the Bill and my Amendments 98ZA and 98EA to Clauses 29 and 35 respectively. The clauses are extremely important and, in my view, regrettable provisions. They are pernicious in depriving refugees who ever met the four conditions in Clause 2 of any chance, long term, of integrating into and contributing to our society by denying them any prospect of settlement or citizenship, with few exceptions. British citizenship enables a person to live and work in the UK permanently, vote, hold public office and participate fully in British life in a way that no other type of status allows.

The amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, focus specifically on those entitled to various kinds of British citizenship who need to register to secure recognition of that, and I pay tribute to their work on this, which I know has a particular focus on children.

I am taking a global view of the operation of this section of the Bill, whether on entry, leave to remain or any kind of citizenship, whether by registration or naturalisation, because the issues are interrelated. The clauses impose lifelong prohibitions on lawful re-entry or gaining leave to remain in the UK and on grants of citizenship, as opposed to the maximum 10-year re-entry ban under the current Immigration Rules. They are an extension of the whole deterrence agenda and are in conflict with several international obligations. The clauses breach Article 8 of the ECHR and the right to private and family life because they are axiomatically disproportionate. A blanket ban allows for no individual consideration whatever, such as in no possible circumstances could you ever be granted status. The UK has, for instance, certain positive obligations under Article 8 to allow family reunification, such that failure to allow a relevant individual to reunite with their family members by entering or settling in the UK could breach those obligations. The breach of Article 8 ECHR could even escalate to a breach of Article 3, which bans torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. It is also unclear, as a practical matter, where the Home Secretary has determined that a human rights claim or asylum claim is inadmissible by virtue of Clause 4, how an individual could apply to the Secretary of State for an exception to be made in their case. Perhaps the Minister could put me right on that point.

The Bill is in a multitude of ways incompatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects the right of children to a nationality, prohibits discrimination and requires that the child’s best interests are counted as a primary consideration in actions concerning them. The Bill is also incompatible with current UK law, such as the Children Act 1989.

The JCHR, which I thank for its excellent report published yesterday—in which, as I am no longer on the committee, I had no part—highlights the legal problems with the Home Secretary’s discretionary exception-making powers. Giving her discretion to act in accordance with the UK’s international obligations also means giving her power to act in breach of them, and a refusal to exercise discretion may not be capable of an effective challenge. The UNHCR says:

“In order to bring this section of the Bill into line with the UK’s obligations under international law, the exceptions to the ineligibility for all forms of leave and for citizenship should be based on compliance … with European Convention on Human Rights and other international agreements and those decisions should not be left to the discretion of the Secretary of State”.


Where a breach of the UK’s international obligations would otherwise occur, the Home Secretary should surely be under a duty to make an exception, rather than have a discretion to do so. If a person entered the UK by irregular means but could not, for whatever reason, be removed, Clause 29 in conjunction with Clause 4 would prevent them from regularising their stay in the UK, leaving them in perpetual immigration limbo and would of course be the prelude to their having no chance of access to citizenship. Depending on the length of the delay and the private and family ties they have generated during that delay, this could violate the UK’s positive obligations under Article 8 of the ECHR, the refugee convention, the convention against statelessness and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to name but the most obvious ones.

UNHCR comments that, as at present the UK is effectively unable to remove asylum seekers to third countries:

“It is entirely foreseeable—and in Clause 29-36, expressly foreseen—that many refugees and stateless people who will be ineligible for any form of leave to remain will nonetheless remain in the UK for extended periods of time, if not indefinitely, trapped ‘on the margins’ of society”.


Throughout proceedings on the Bill, beginning with Second Reading, many of us have raised this worry about people being left in limbo. Because we lack the impact assessment from the Government, we all have to go on the one from the refugee commissioner, which estimates that there could be 200,000 people within three years, marginalised, in limbo, destitute—really healthy for our society.

Even if the Home Secretary exercised her discretion to grant some form of leave eventually, anyone who had ever been subject to the removal duty would be permanently ineligible from becoming a British citizen through several of the main routes available under the British Nationality Act 1981. However, Article 34 of the refugee convention requires contracting states as far as possible to

“facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees”.

The impact on children of a lifelong prohibition on re-entry or gaining leave to remain could be particularly severe and is difficult to reconcile with the UK’s international and domestic obligations. Consideration of the best interests of an individual child is absent from Clause 29, but how can a blanket ban be in the best interests of a child for the purposes of either Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or, domestically, the Children Act 1989 or Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009?

The Government have acknowledged that children affected by this Bill

“will rarely qualify for citizenship”

if they or a relevant family member are subject to Clause 2. The JCHR considers that this seems to contravene Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the discrimination or punishment of a child on the basis of the status of or activities of their parents or guardians. Where the child, as will of course be the case, will have had no control over their parents or the decisions which led to them arriving in the UK irregularly, the automatic imposition of a lifelong ban which they then have to convince the Home Secretary to reverse seems to fall within the definition of a punishment. Can the Minister tell me how Clause 29 is compliant with the Supreme Court case of Zoumbas and subsequent case law on the issues concerning children’s best interests in an immigration context? How can routine application to children of a blanket ban on entry and leave to remain without consideration of their particular circumstances possibly be lawful?

I am on my last page. The Home Secretary’s discretion under Clause 29 when deciding whether to lift a ban on limited leave to remain has to be exercised so as to avoid a breach of the ECHR or any other international agreement to which the UK is a party but, in a similar situation with regard to a grant of indefinite leave, only conformity with the ECHR is said to be relevant. Perhaps the Minister can explain the contrast between those two situations in Clause 29, because I have not managed to pin down the rationale. My Amendment 98ZA in any case adds in other international agreements so as to align the two legs of Clause 29 on leave to remain.

Many children, either because they arrived unaccompanied as a small child or because removal has not been possible in practice, may be born or spend their entire childhood here and have a solely British identity. The Bill would mean previously acceptable routes to citizenship, such as the discretionary route or the settled route, being either blocked or fundamentally altered. The 10-year route would be possible in theory but, for children whose parents were irregular entrants, those parents could be prohibited from obtaining leave to remain, citizenship and employment, thus creating instability and poverty in the child’s life.

The Bill would also put stateless children at significant risk. If a relevant family member was an irregular entrant subject to Clause 2, they and the stateless child would be subject to mandatory removal, jeopardising the child’s years of residency and potentially condemning the child to a lifetime without citizenship. Clause 35 as originally introduced would in fact have allowed the Home Secretary to make an exception and grant nationality if there were compelling circumstances or it was necessary to comply with the UK’s obligations under not just the ECHR but any other international agreement to which the UK is a party. However, unaccountably, that latter part has been removed, risking the UK being in breach of its legal obligations under those other international agreements.

Even if ECHR grounds are not established, the UK’s legal obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child may be breached under the prohibition of discrimination or punishment of a child on the basis of the activities of their parents; I have referred to this. This backwards redrafting appears to have eliminated an avenue for stateless people, refugees and others to obtain British nationality in reliance on the refugee convention, the statelessness conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Can the Minister explain, therefore, why the Government have narrowed the available exceptions between the original draft of the Bill, as considered in the other place, and the Bill as it came to this House? I hope that, unless a convincing answer can be given, this House will see fit at a later stage to seek to restore the grounds for making exceptions under Clause 35 to the version introduced in the other place; namely, on the grounds of both the ECHR and any other international agreement.

I hope that I have explained sufficiently why these Benches have tabled amendments and clause stand part notices, which would remove all the clauses in this part of the Bill and at least bring the Home Secretary’s exercise of discretion in line with international law. I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to a number of amendments in this group in my name; namely, Amendments 98A to 98H. I also oppose Clauses 33 and 34 standing part; those notices stand in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and I have added my name to them. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for each of my amendments and the clause stand part notices. This is a coherent suite of amendments: they do one thing but are necessary to do that thing throughout a whole section of the Bill that, in essence, covers Clauses 30 to 36, which stand together as a form of deprivation. I am grateful to Amnesty for its assistance in drafting these amendments; I should also say right at the outset that I am grateful to the Minister, my noble friend Lord Murray, for the time he gave to a meeting in advance for us to discuss them.

The essence of what is happening is that the Bill has a two-step deterrence mechanism. It is frankly and openly deterrent, designed to deter people from setting off on a certain course. The first step in that deterrence, and to my mind a very powerful one, is the prospect of rapid removal from the United Kingdom to another country. Coming on top of the money that people have paid, as they have in many cases, to cross the channel or for whatever their mode of arrival, I would have thought that the prospect of immediate removal is a very significant deterrent indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Before my noble friend turns to that amendment, I am of course not a lawyer but really quite a simple soul, who is struggling to catch up in some ways with the things he has explained to us. But it seems—forgive me if I have grasped this entirely wrongly—that we are now talking about two quite separate Bills. In one Bill, if your pestilential foot is set upon English soil the Home Secretary, as the Secretary of State, has a duty to remove you forthwith. That duty having been satisfied, the question might arise in your mind: are you in fact entitled to registration as a British national on the facts of your case? I fully accept that a degree of discretion is always involved in judging these facts, because they will rarely be compelling either way. You would be doing this, presumably, from your new home in Rwanda or whatever country it is to which you have been safely deported.

On the other hand, the Bill my noble friend is describing is one through which these people will, having landed illegally, already have acquired some sort of settlement here—the Home Secretary, presumably, having failed entirely in the duty that we are imposing on her to remove them. They will be exploiting the advantages of that settlement and clocking up hours on the clock, qualifying increasingly for British nationality, which my noble friend thinks—I rather agree with him—is a little unfair because you are getting ahead of the queue by getting in illegally. Then the clock is running and you would be accumulating all the benefits. Which Bill are we discussing here? The Bill I thought I was discussing was one through which the vast majority of the people who would be making a claim for registration of British nationality, with very few exceptions, would already have been subject to the duty to remove. How many does my noble friend think will not have been subject to it?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that contribution. The position, as he outlined in his speech, is that the deterrence effect takes its force from a number of sections in the Bill: the first, obviously, being the detention and removal, as he rightly identified; the second being the bans on the ability to settle or stay here, the idea being that that disincentivises people from entering illegally using dangerous routes. I do not accept that there are two Bills in the way that my noble friend identifies. The reality is that the question of registration of citizenship, which he raises, is unlikely to arise in as many cases as the naturalisation circumstance—I think we can agree on that—so it is natural that what we are talking about is probably an exceptional state of affairs, in any event. That is potentially why my noble friend perceives a dissonance between the deterrent effect and the two factors, but in fact there is no such distinction.

Amendments 98ZA and 98EA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, seek to expand the circumstances in which the bans on settlement and citizenship are to be disapplied. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also touched on this issue. We consider that the circumstances in which a grant of settlement or citizenship would be an appropriate remedy are wholly covered by the ECHR, so our view is that the addition of other international agreements is unnecessary, hence the amendment, as we have already canvassed.

I turn now to Amendment 98I tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. This seeks to provide a broader protection for those holding British national (overseas) status. We do not believe this is necessary. The clauses which prevent people from obtaining various forms of British nationality already do not mention British national (overseas) status. This is for the simple reason that no one has been able to obtain that status since 1997 and, consequently, there is no need to ban people from obtaining it should they arrive illegally.

We already have in place a dedicated migration route for people from Hong Kong and, as the noble Baroness knows, it has been a significant priority for the Government and the department to offer this route to British national (overseas) people from Hong Kong in response to the situation there. We have done a great deal for the citizens of Hong Kong and hope to continue to do so. As cited in my response to my noble friend, Lord Moylan, a route to citizenship exists under Section 4(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981. There should therefore be no reason for a person holding British national (overseas) status to arrive illegally in the manner which would mean they fall under this Bill’s provisions.

Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code A) Order 2022

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I spend my life being furious at the Government, as I am sure some noble Lords will recognise. However, I want to spare a moment of sympathy for the Minister, who has had to bring this to your Lordships’ House. Clearly, this is going back on a promise; the Government are cheating. They are choosing not to honour a promise. That is really rather disgusting, as it shows a complete lack of respect for your Lordships’ House. I really hope that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who has made a brilliant opening speech, will take this to a vote, because clearly we would have voted on these issues before if we had had the chance. We trusted the Government, but this shows that we cannot. That is very depressing because, if you cannot trust your Government, the whole of democracy falls apart.

I am also worried about the fact that the Government are putting the police at a disadvantage. Trust in the police is at an all-time low, and I think these measures will make it much worse. We worry all the time about the police being distrusted. They cannot do their job if they do not have the support of communities. Of course, with this sort of measure, there will be social and racial barriers to implementing it, and there will be disparities about who the police target. The Government are actually making life much harder for the police. There should not be a power to search without reasonable suspicion.

While I am talking about not trusting the Government, I should say that they are also treating peaceful protest like gang and knife crime. I just do not understand why the Government cannot see the difference between those things. Dissent is healthy; it is part of our democracy. In measure after measure and legislation after legislation, it seems to me that this Government are saying, “We don’t like society the way it is. We are going to radically change it”—and make it much worse for the majority of people.

On the issue of knife crime, my Green Party colleague Caroline Russell, who is a member of the London Assembly, has repeatedly asked the police to stop posting pictures of knives on social media, because it makes things worse. The evidence says that young people feel more at risk and that it encourages them to carry knives. There are other measures that the police can use to reduce knife crime. We have to show young people that it is safer for them not to carry a knife.

All in all, I have two questions for the Minister. First, do this Government have absolutely no respect for this House and for democracy? My second and much smaller point is: why on earth are the Government doing this before the pilots are finished? Surely the pilots should show us the way forward. The Government seem very confused about what pilots are for. Why promise a pilot and then go ahead and introduce these measures anyway? I am disgusted with Lambeth.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, since the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, spent much of last year calling the Prime Minister of the day a liar on the Floor of your Lordships’ House, I am surprised that she has only just now lost her trust in the Government. That was not my principal point in rising to speak; my point was to express a degree of support for the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. As he at least might recall, when we debated the insertion of serious violence reduction orders in the Sentencing Code during the passage of the then Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill last year, I expressed considerable concern about those orders. Indeed, I recall that in Committee I added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, which raised these issues, principally on the grounds that I am extremely concerned by the increasing use of preventive justice, so to speak, by the Home Office and by police forces empowered by the Home Office, rather than taking coercive action on the basis of proven criminality or wrongdoing.

I have considerable sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but since we lost that point and the serious violence reduction orders were inserted in the Bill, it is right that the Government should carry out trials before they are extended throughout the whole country. I understand his point, but what is striking to me is that my noble friend the Minister has so far given no indication of what the tests are by which these trials are going to be assessed once they have been completed. What is success going to look like? What would persuade the Government to make amendments or changes or to drop the whole approach if we saw those results emerging from the trials? I hope my noble friend will be able to say something about that when he rises to respond to this short debate.

While I am on my feet, I say that Sections 60 and 61 of the same measure—the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of last year—empowered the Home Secretary to issue statutory guidance to police forces on the enforcement of what are referred to as “non-crime hate incidents”. This has so far not appeared, despite the fact that my noble friend the Minister very kindly wrote to me last October saying that the Government hoped to table the new statutory guidance before Christmas, or at least before the end of 2022.

When the Minister responds, would he be able to give us a date by which he expects the Home Secretary to put the draft statutory instrument before Parliament, so that we can debate it and get some parliamentary grip on this contentious but very important area of criminal justice?

Extradition Act 2003

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moylan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend the Extradition Act 2003 to remove the list of Part 1 countries which can demand extraditions showing no evidence of any prima facie case to answer.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to make extradition requests from EU countries subject to the prima facie case requirement. Under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, we have robust and streamlined extradition arrangements with part 1 countries. These safeguard the individual and the process, and they enshrine key domestic legislative protections not previously contained in the European arrest warrant framework decision.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that those arrangements with EU countries, otherwise known as part 1 countries, are no longer fully reciprocated? For example, Germany no longer offers the same facilities in return. Will she confirm that our arrangement with the United States is wholly unbalanced: it does not treat us in the same way that we treat it? Why do we hold justice so cheap that we are willing to send our people abroad without prima facie evidence of a case, when other civilised countries sensibly and properly refuse to do the same in reverse?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend asks a number of questions. On his last, it is not the case that we send people abroad without prima facie evidence; the countries that we do not require prima facie evidence from are EU countries that have signed up to the convention on extradition. Part 2 countries include the US and the Five Eyes trusted partners.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. I agree with much of what she said about the state of the courts and the justice system, and I particularly wish to echo her call for the Lord Chancellor to be restored to his former status.

I support the Motion for an humble Address. On the whole, I welcome the Government’s programme and look forward to taking part in Bills as diverse as those on procurement, transport and HS2. However, I have serious concerns about some measures, particularly the Online Safety Bill, where I thought the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and seconded, if you like, by my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, was completely compelling. I have very serious concerns about that.

I am anxious to ensure that the conversion therapy Bill protects young people from irreversible surgical and chemical interventions. I also want to be clear that any measure to tighten the parole system, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, does not delay the resolution of the continuing scandal of prisoners serving historic indefinite sentences for public protection.

However, I want to give the bulk of my remarks today to the question of Northern Ireland, on this day in which we are discussing our constitution. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said that she regretted a number of measures that did not appear in the gracious Speech. I deeply regretted the absence of a clear commitment to repeal the legislation putting the Northern Ireland protocol into effect. We have subsequently heard more about a Bill that did not appear in the gracious Speech than we have about any of the measures that did appear in it, but we still have no idea what that Bill might contain. It needs not to tinker with the protocol but to remove it.

Let me deal with two objections. The first is the “You signed it” argument, quintessentially ad hominem in character. Implicit in that is the idea that, if the Northern Ireland protocol is not working, the Brexit deal as a whole was a bad deal. That is far from the case. Any major project that might be undertaken, such as building yourself a house, may go perfectly well in a large number of respects but none the less have a flaw—you find the garage block roof is leaking. Of course, you can spend a very long time arguing about who was responsible for that, and you can even spend time litigating about it, but none of that actually fixes the problem. The focus of government has to be on fixing the problem—that is what the Government have to do. I hope we hear no more of that argument, which, as I say, is almost childish—a political point-scoring.

The second argument is that we may breach an international agreement. This was an argument advanced frequently and with vigour during your Lordships’ debate of Part 5 of the Internal Market Bill, but I noted then that a number of noble Lords, not least those with judicial experience, said that there might be a case for doing so if a harm could be pointed to. With more than a year’s experience, we can now point to the harms done by the Northern Ireland protocol. I shall not, because I do not have the direct experience, dwell on the harms done to the economy—perfectly predictable harms, as the European Union insisted on an almost overnight transition from the sourcing of the inputs of that economy from one market to another. I shall not expand on the split between the communities that has been sharpened and which now threatens the institutions of the Good Friday agreement and the peace process, because I do not have the intimate knowledge of Northern Irish politics that others bring to your Lordships’ House.

I end by pointing only to the damage that the Northern Ireland protocol is doing to us and to our union—to our United Kingdom. We have discussed human rights a great deal today. How can we consider ourselves a United Kingdom when tax rates such as VAT are set in part of our United Kingdom by a foreign power with no representation by the people who suffer the incidence of that tax? How can the Government be said to be discharging their obligations to the welfare of all the people within their territory if some of those people are dependent for the supply of medicines on legislation passed unilaterally in a foreign Parliament? If the present situation continues, we will in effect have given up on the union.

We have not seen the Bill. As I said, I hope it is comprehensive. I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench that we will not get a third chance to put this right. A measure that goes off at half cock will simply not do.

Emergency Services: Ministers of Religion

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moylan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to put in place a multi-professional strategy for the emergency services concerning the attendance of ministers of religion at the scene of situations involving serious injury.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, a working group bringing together representatives from policing and the Catholic Church has now concluded its exploration on the issue of access to crime scenes for religious ministers. Decisions regarding access in such situations remain an operational matter. However, the College of Policing has now published revised guidance on managing investigations, reflecting those discussions and wider input. As a result of those changes, we do not have any plans to pursue a multiprofessional strategy.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend and the Government on taking action on this delicate matter, which came to prominent attention at the time of the tragic murder of Sir David Amess. I welcome the new guidance. It recognises explicitly the convention rights of both the dying and their families in these emergency crime scenes. But it remains, as my noble friend says, entirely an operational decision for the police. What mechanism is my noble friend going to put in place to ensure that the revised guidance leads to a change in practice?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his congratulations. At the moment I am not subject to much congratulation, so I take it where I can get it. I totally agree with him. It might seem like a small step, but it is a huge step for many families who might have found themselves in the same position as Sir David Amess. Guidance is being distributed to forces, and I know that forces were keen to have clarity on what to do in such situations. Coming back to my first point, it is of course an operational matter.

Ukrainian Nationals: Visitor Visas

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moylan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements they have made for Ukrainian nationals who lawfully arrived in the United Kingdom on visitor visas before the war broke out and now cannot safely return to Ukraine.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Home Office (Lord Harrington of Watford) (Con)]

Ukrainians on visitor visas can now have them extended automatically—since the war broke out, obviously, they cannot safely return to Ukraine. They will be extended for six months. Alongside this, we have made it easier for Ukrainians on work, study or seasonal work visas to remain in the UK by extending leave or allowing individuals to switch routes fee-free. I assure my noble friend that people will be treated kindly and sympathetically by Border Force officers.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend give an assurance that the Government will consider extending the right to stay to three years, to put these people on the same footing as Ukrainian nationals arriving in the United Kingdom as refugees?

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I can confirm to my noble friend that we are looking into this at the moment, and it would seem sensible to extend the scheme to 36 months and allow those people the same benefits of living in this country that are extended to people on the other schemes.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will very briefly give support from these Benches to all three of these amendments. They all demonstrate the practical consequences of Brexit. I declare a bit of an interest on Amendment 175—not that I am neither British nor Irish but that I am both British and Irish. In fact, I have been Irish from birth without for a long time realising it, but I have now just got my passport, so I am a dual national.

But it makes no sense—and the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, gave very graphic examples of how silly it is to try to stop people crossing the border. It is not just about tourism; it is about work and business. Surely it is not in the spirit of the good relationship that we have with the Republic of Ireland, or of the Belfast agreement, or of everything that we want to work, Brexit or no Brexit—or despite Brexit. We want to have very good relations on the island of Ireland. I am not sure how it would actually work, but trying to stop people would be a nuisance, to put it at its mildest, and harmful from every direction.

On the point about the ETA system having to rely on the clunky Interpol system, my noble friend reminded me that we are going to be debating the report from the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, in a couple of weeks. We do not have access to SEIS or ECRIS, or other EU instruments, and this is not good for operating an ETA system. So it would be very good to hear from the Minister whether he has anything positive to say about how to remedy the practical consequences, to use a neutral word, of Brexit, both for internal travel on the island of Ireland and for how the ETA system can work optimally.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Perhaps I, too, should declare that I am both British and Irish since birth. I understand the difficulties locally that potentially arise and have been so well illustrated by the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, but I wanted to ask the Minister whether he could put this in the context of the common travel area. Does it really exist in practice as a reciprocal arrangement? I specifically ask because I have never been able to land at Shannon Airport, even on a direct flight from Heathrow, without standing in a queue and presenting a passport—yet when I return and land at Heathrow, I walk straight through and am guided past the passport gates. To what extent is this common travel area being operated by the Irish Republic on a genuinely reciprocal basis? Could it not in a sense be tied up with this issue?

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

I understand and support many aspects of the Bill that have regard to the rule of law and where the rights of the citizen are to be respected. What I find unacceptable about those parts of Clause 9 that I am seeking to remove is that, through no fault of their own, a citizen could be deprived of their citizenship without having been given prior notice and without their right to consult a legal representative to act on their behalf. With those few remarks, I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 27 in my name. I declare at the outset that I was born both a British citizen and a citizen of the Irish Republic.

I am sympathetic to the remarks made by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. She described them as radical but in my view they could be more radical, because they address what is essentially a symptom rather than the underlying disease. To understand that disease, it perhaps helps to go back a little in history. As the First World War went on, there were fantasies in this country about German spies who were everywhere. The belief grew up that the Kaiser had for many years been planting German agents here who had a remarkable ability to look like us, talk like us and infiltrate the highest levels of society. The late Lord Tweedsmuir’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps may read to us today as a Boy’s Own story but it tapped into and encouraged a widespread national anxiety.

In 1917 the MP Noel Pemberton Billing claimed to be in possession of the Kaiser’s “black book” containing the names of 47,000 prominent figures in government and society at large who were German agents or had been blackmailed into becoming so. It was the subject of a sensational libel trial and made headlines throughout the land. This was the background to the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1918, which introduced for the first time the power to deprive naturalised British citizens, and only naturalised British citizens, of their nationality.

At Second Reading, noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, stated that the power of deprivation was introduced in 1914, but the 1914 Act merely allowed deprivation in the case of naturalised citizens who had obtained that status by fraud, making statutory a power that was always implicit. It was the 1918 Act that made the radical change. Until that point, the bond of British nationality had been indissoluble. Now it could be removed, from naturalised subjects only, in the event of disloyalty or disaffection to the monarch, for trading with the enemy in time of war, for being subject to a prison sentence of over a year in His Majesty’s dominions, and on some other essentially similar grounds.

The British Nationality Act 1948 maintained substantially the same deprivation provisions but introduced a new right for British citizens whose nationality was not wholly clear to register the British nationality that they were entitled to. I shall come to the relevance of that in a moment. The great consolidating and modernising statute that still governs our nationality law, though much amended subsequently, is the British Nationality Act 1981. It is essentially the original language of that Act that Amendment 27 in my name seeks to reinstate. Noble Lords have already recognised the historical roots of the grounds on which the Act allowed the Government to deprive a British subject of their nationality: fraud, of course, but also disaffection towards Her Majesty, trading with the enemy and serving a one-year prison sentence within five years of naturalisation, though now anywhere in the world, not merely in Her Majesty’s somewhat shrunken dominions.

Regarding deprivation, the Act made one change of capital importance. It extended the Government’s power to deprive from naturalised citizens to those registered as having a right to British citizenship. If the 1918 Act made naturalisation a sort of provisional business, the 1981 Act extended that for the first time to the small number of British citizens by right—not by birth or descent, admittedly, but those who had vindicated their nationality through registration.

We move on rapidly to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, and I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in his place. This Act radically altered the position, extending the Government’s power to deprive to all British citizens by birth, descent, registration or naturalisation. The flowery language about disaffection and trading with the enemy was diluted to any conduct

“seriously prejudicial to the … interests”

of the United Kingdom. In a subsequent Act in 2006, it was further diluted to allow deprivation if it were merely

“conducive to the public good.”

These measures were introduced by a Labour Government but no party in your Lordships’ House has wholly clean hands in this regard, because the Immigration Act 2014, introduced by the coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, went even further, diluting the one constraint that the Government faced in exercising this power, namely that it could not be used if it rendered a person stateless. Under the 2014 Act, being rendered stateless is no protection if the Home Secretary reasonably believes that the person could acquire another nationality.

--- Later in debate ---

I will leave the last words to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who talked about his history of the wider power and challenged this House to remove the fear. After what I have said today and some of the further discussions that I will have with noble Lords before Report, I hope that we are on our way to removing that fear.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I think my noble friend has been misadvised in characterising Amendment 27 as imposing any new or further restriction on the power to deprive in the event of obtaining nationality by fraud. That simply is not so; they have misconstrued that clause. Can I ask her a very narrow question? She referred in her speech to the use of deprivation in cases of serious organised crime. Did she mean serious organised crime apart from terrorism?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

It could encompass both, but in the context of what I am talking about, some serious organised crime is outside of terrorism.