Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Sandhurst and Lord Murray of Blidworth

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Perhaps I may add one brief point in support of my noble friend’s amendment. The statistics clearly show that the abuse of student visas by people who come here, have a period as a student or as a purported student, and then choose to try to extend their time here by claiming asylum is a significant problem. The amendment would force a genuine asylum seeker to lodge their claim once they reached the safe country of Britain, and two days is plenty of time to do that. On their arrival, they can make that claim for asylum. Having this rule in place would provide a significant deterrent for those who seek to abuse our asylum system in an attempt to extend their stay in the United Kingdom. For that reason, I certainly support this amendment.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak broadly in favour of Amendment 203L, tabled by my noble friend Lady Lawlor. At its core, this amendment seeks to prevent the abuse of the student visa route by using it as a back door to asylum. This recognises an important principle. Those who enter the United Kingdom in one set of circumstances should not then be permitted to rewrite those circumstances once they have got here.

A student visa is granted on trust. It is granted to those who come here to study, not to those who claim asylum. When someone applies for such a visa, they do so on the clear understanding that they are entering this country for educational purposes. If, once here, they make an asylum claim that was not mentioned at the point of entry and, indeed, do so days, weeks or months later, they are by definition acting under false pretences unless there is a good reason for it—and I will come to that in a moment. The asylum system exists to protect those who are genuinely fleeing persecution, not to reward those who seek to manipulate our visa system for other ends. Where individuals apply dishonestly, where they misrepresent their reasons for coming to the United Kingdom, we cannot simply turn a blind eye and reward that deception with the right to remain.

On this side, we on the Front Bench have a qualification: we cannot be blind to the fact that circumstances in someone’s home country may change after arrival. A student in the United Kingdom on a student visa may find that, in their absence, their home country becomes unsafe for them personally to return. They may therefore become eligible for asylum during the time they are in the United Kingdom on a student visa.

The amendment as drafted prevents any asylum claim being made if someone has entered on a student visa. That is a strong prohibition. If this were clarified in some way, with a carve-out for those who can establish that the situation has genuinely changed in their home country while they are here, we would commend consideration of an amendment to address that situation. So I ask my noble friend Lady Lawlor to consider whether the amendment should be redrafted.

For their part, the Government must stop the abuse of student visas under the current system. They should equally ensure that, in the appropriate but, I hope, reasonably exceptional circumstances where there has been a genuine change, such people are protected.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord Sandhurst and Lord Murray of Blidworth

Committee stage
Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lord Moynihan. I wish to ask the Minister two questions that arise on this topic that I have found in the impact assessment.

At paragraph 68, there is a description of the enforcement regime in relation to the provisions in the Bill:

“Enforcement will be delivered via a mainly civil sanctions regime”.


In respect of a standard duty premises, we can see that there is a fixed penalty and an ability for the regulator to impose a fixed penalty of £500 per day from the date on which the

“penalty is due until the date the contravention is rectified or the notice is withdrawn by the Regulator”.

There is furthermore a power, in the most “egregious cases” according to the impact assessment, of a criminal prosecution of the relevant person. My first question picks up on a theme in an earlier group. To what extent does the Minister think this will have an impact on volunteering and the willingness of people to take on roles where they would be responsible for facing such enforcement?

My second question is in relation to the funding estimates in the impact assessment. One can see, in paragraph 98 on page 23 of the impact assessment, there is a description of how it is that the civil servants have reached their valuation of what the Bill is going to cost. In the previous paragraph, they discuss the impact of outdoor festivals, but in paragraph 98 they say that outdoor events other than festivals

“have not been included in the analysis. These events are not included due to the absence of specific and accurate data about the number of events and their respective capacities. This lack of a comprehensive list of these events means that a reliable estimate of the number of events could not be made. Therefore, outdoor events other than festivals have been excluded from the appraisal analysis”.

I suggest to the Committee that this is simply not good enough. This is an impact assessment which tells us on its first page that the possible financial impact of these measures is somewhere between £1.8 billion, which is the best case, and £4.9 billion. To simply exclude the valuation from outdoor events because no attempt can be made to assess how many people may attend is simply not good enough. We can see this is a policy that has been developed without the needs of the kinds of small sports grounds that my noble friend has identified. Would the Minister agree that the common-sense position would be to consider excluding completely these kinds of small sporting venues from the operation of the Bill?

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I will try to be as short as possible at this time of night. Schedule 2 excludes from the scope of the Bill sports grounds that are not designated sports grounds. So far, so good—but it is not straightforward. The exclusion for recreation and leisure in part 1 of Schedule 2 applies only where those attending are not members or customers who paid. If it is a members’ club, you are not excluded.

Furthermore, a sports ground is defined as being a sports ground within Section 17 of the sports grounds Act, or whatever it is called. The definition in that Act says that it means

“any place where sports or other competitive activities take place in the open air and where accommodation has been provided for spectators consisting of artificial structures or of natural structures artificially modified for the purpose”.

The reference to accommodation for spectators could well include a pavilion or some other fairly relaxed accommodation, with perhaps a bar attached and changing facilities, and so on. It does not have to be a pavilion as I understand it, which would include accommodation for 800 people. It is just a sports ground which has accommodation, because you are looking at the sports grounds Act.

So a question arises where there are quite large playing fields, a pavilion and a members’ club, and 200 people come from time to time to watch the match on Saturday against other clubs. It is not a lot of people, and children come, and everyone else. From time to time—because that is the wording in the Bill—there is a match against their local rivals, and they bring 400 friends along, and the home team have got 600, so you have 1,000. Are they going to have to search everyone who comes, and every car, and so on?

I am not saying that this is entirely wrong, but I do suggest that thought has to be given to how it will bite. What is the definition of an outdoor event or a sporting event of the sort I have in mind, such as football matches between local villages and towns? Cricket matches sometimes attract quite a lot of people. I am not talking about county grounds but just matches between two clubs that are old rivals on a bank holiday or something like that. This is all in the open air, in a completely unconfined space and, one hesitates to say, not on the highest level of the risk register. I am not going to tempt fate by saying anything else. I ask the Minister to consider this, certainly before Report.