Rwanda Treaty

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what additional costs they expect to be incurred as a result of this week’s signing of a treaty to facilitate the removal of migrants to Rwanda.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government of Rwanda did not ask for money to sign the treaty, nor did we offer any. Costs and payment will depend on the numbers of people relocated, timing of when it occurs and outcomes of individual cases. Spending on the migration and economic development partnership will be disclosed in the annual Home Office accounts.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, yesterday, my noble friend Lord Liddle asked what is the present capacity of Rwanda to take asylum seekers. The Minister said that the Government do know that number but that he did not. Please will he tell us today what the Government know? In April 2022, when the economic transformation and integration fund was established, it was clearly part of the refugee scheme. The announce-ment then also said that the United Kingdom is funding the processing costs for each person relocated, saying that we anticipated the amount would be comparable to processing costs incurred in the United Kingdom. So what are the anticipated costs now, in the light of the provisions of the treaty, which changes fundamentally the original scheme? Why, for three financial years, under three Home Secretaries, have the Government been committing money to a scheme that has not seen a single asylum seeker sent to Rwanda, and which will see the United Kingdom accepting people in return? This Parliament deserves very clear answers from the Minister.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right: I was unable to answer that question yesterday, for which I apologise. To answer the noble Lord, Liddle, the Court of Appeal said there was evidence of only 100 places in the initial accommodation. Its assessment was based on evidence up to the summer of 2022. Since then, additional capacity has been added, but the exact number is immaterial because the scheme is uncapped, as I did say yesterday. Capacity will continue to be added as required. When claims are settled, people will move out of the accommodation. Finally, when the scheme works, and deters people from making illegal and dangerous channel crossings, we will need fewer places.

Yesterday, as noble Lords will be aware, the Permanent Secretary sent a letter to the Home Affairs Select Committee to disclose a further payment made to the Government of Rwanda through the migration and economic development partnership. This disclosed that a further £100 million had been paid in April as part of the ETIF. The letter also set out that, in the year 2024-25, we anticipate another payment of £50 million, in April 2024, again as part of the ETIF, as agreed with the Government of Rwanda when the migration and economic development partnership was signed. This brings the total spend so far to £240 million. The split is as follows: the initial investment of £120 million into the ETIF, a further £100 million into the ETIF, which was disclosed yesterday, and a separate payment of £20 million to the Government of Rwanda in advance of flights to support initial set-up costs of the asylum processing arrangements under the MEDP.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the International Agreements Committee will be scrutinising the new treaty. Will the Minister make sure that it has all the information it needs when it does that, including whether the treaty allows for any clawback of either unspent or unused money?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have already committed to appropriate scrutiny of the treaty. I will take back the noble Baroness’s points about clawback as I do not know the answer.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, there has been a great deal of focus on the cost of the partnership. Can the Minister please tell me how much money has been spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels and what the overall cost to the taxpayer is of the immigration system?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. Those focusing solely on the costs of the partnership are somewhat missing the point. The simple fact of the matter is that the daily cost of hotels for migrants is now £8 million. The cost of the UK’s asylum system has roughly doubled in the past year and now stands at nearly £4 billion. So the payments so far made to Rwanda represent about 30 days’ hotel costs. The criminal smuggling gangs are continuing to turn a profit using small boats. We have to bring an end to this. When this plan succeeds, as I think it will, I think British taxpayers will acknowledge that it represents good value for money.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, will the monitoring committee, as outlined in the economic development partnership and now the treaty, review how funds have been allocated by the Rwandan authorities towards meeting the needs of refugees?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The treaty enhances the role of the independent monitoring committee. It will ensure that obligations under the treaty are adhered to in practice and will be able to take steps to prevent errors at an early stage. It will have the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring and will have unfettered access for the purposes of completing assessments and reports that will monitor the entire relocation process from the beginning, including screening, to relocation and settlement in Rwanda. It will be responsible for developing a system to enable relocated individuals and legal representatives to lodge confidential complaints direct to the committee and it will undertake real-time monitoring of the partnership for at least the first three months. There is plenty of scope in there for it to get involved in everything.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

Will the Minister acknowledge and confirm that Home Office officials insisted on a letter of direction on this matter because they did not consider that this would be value for money? Can the Minister also tell the House why the Government are not devoting resources of this size to tackling the criminal gangs that are so cruel in bringing people in in such a dangerous way?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

On the noble Baroness’s second point, the Government are devoting considerable resources to tackling the criminal gangs, as has been well established from the Dispatch Box in many previous debates. As regards the letter that was sent yesterday, I am sure the noble Baroness will recall that the Permanent Secretary appeared before HASC and the Public Accounts Committee on 29 November and 4 December. They asked about payments that the UK had made and he explained at that point that payments in the 2023-24 financial year would be announced in our annual report and accounts next summer, for reasons of balancing the public interest. Since then, Ministers have agreed that Sir Matthew can now disclose the payments for this financial year. That is what happened.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, we all completely condemn these terrible criminals, but how many have been apprehended?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I do not know the answer to that. Part of the reason that I do not know the answer is that so much of this activity takes place on foreign shores.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, on costs and criminal gangs, may I ask for clarity following my question yesterday and the Minister’s response? Have the Government fulfilled all extradition requests by the Government of Rwanda on matters relating to genocide and war crimes—and if not, why not? Or is there a reticence by HMG to do so, and if so, why?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I will have to write to the noble Viscount about extradition requests. I do not know the answer.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said the funding of this ill-considered and, I think we will find, ill-fated scheme is coming from the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund. It is not clear who or what will be economically transformed or who or what will be integrated. Can he say how much of that funding will be taken from the overseas development aid fund?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The money is actually going to the ETIF, which is responsible for the economic growth and development of Rwanda. Investment so far has been focused on areas such as education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and job creation. I am pleased to be able to reassure the noble Lord that none of it came from ODA.

[Baroness Henig (Lab)]

My Lords, can I just ask about the deterrent aspect of this issue? By my calculations, more than 30,000 refugees are coming per year and so far we have heard today that something like 100 will be going back. Now, my maths is not wonderful, but that to me is less than 1%. Why does the Minister believe that will be a deterrent for anybody fleeing war or imprisonment? Following on from that, does the Minister not agree that in terms of value for money—I know that he is very much in favour of value for money—it would be a far more effective use of that money to help the poorest through the coming winter?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

In answer to the noble Baroness’s first question, I say that the deterrent effect is already working; arrivals this year are down by around 30%, as my right honourable friend the Home Secretary noted the other day. As regards value for money, the point of this is to stop the boats. As I said in answer to my noble friend, hotel accommodation is costing the taxpayer £8 million a day. How is that value for money?

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister will reflect on what he has just said. The Prime Minister said that the reduction in the numbers crossing by boat was mainly because of the deal with Albania, not the other countries that we are now dealing with. Will he return to my noble friend’s question about numbers? The Rwandan Government have said that the total they can cope with is 200. Put that against the 30,000 to 40,000 who are coming in boats: it is a very small percentage, and will not therefore reduce the amount of money spent here to address the issue. It really is disingenuous to try to tell us and others that it will be all right, and we will not have that expense here because people will go to Rwanda, and we have covered that. It simply is not going to happen that way.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, in answer to the first part of the question, of course the Albanian returns agreement is a factor in this. No one is denying that or trying to claim otherwise. I think the number of Albanians we have sent back to Albania is 5,000 so far this year—I cannot remember the precise detail. As I keep saying from the Dispatch Box, and will have to keep repeating as it is the true answer, the numbers in this scheme are uncapped.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, if I can just come back again on the issue of money, I have a figure in front of me of £240 million and then £60 million, and that is the Rwanda policy. The Minister rightly draws attention to the daily cost of those kept in various facilities, including hotels—I think he said it was £8 million per day—but the execution of the Rwanda policy will not remove that. There will still be indigenous costs of looking after the migrants who remain here. One has to be worried that so much money is being spent in the direction of the Rwanda policy; there is so much need for money to be used elsewhere—in the National Health Service, in schools and so forth. Therefore, it must be a great worry to all of us that so much money is going in the direction of the Rwanda policy.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

What is a great worry to the Government is that the costs of the migration system, as I mentioned earlier in answer to my noble friend, have doubled to £4 billion this year. As the noble Lord has just rightly referenced, we are spending £8 million a day on hotels. That is clearly unsustainable and I do not think it represents value for money.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Taylor asked the Minister a simple question: have Ministers been required to issue letters of direction to instruct civil servants to proceed with this, because of the issues with this scheme? The answer is either that, yes, they have, or no, they have not. Which is it?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The answer is that I do not know. I will have to write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, for those who are a bit slow with their arithmetic, £8 million a day is £3 billion a year, added to the cost of the policy itself. Is it not clear that it would be better to spend that money on clearing the backlog and dealing promptly with arrivals? That would be a real deterrent. This leads to the suspicion, which the Minister can confirm or deny as he wishes, that the Government do not want these cases assessed because so many of them would be accepted.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

That is an interesting conclusion to draw. The simple fact is that we are also clearing the backlog; as noble Lords know, the commitment is to clear it by the end of this year. If we stopped spending the £8 million a day on hotel costs, what would the noble Lord suggest we do with those who are seeking asylum?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, how many British Government officials will be sent to Rwanda to process these people, and what is the cost of that? And if the asylum seekers are granted asylum, are they paid a fare to come back or are they told to get back on their own?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the point of the scheme is that if they are granted asylum then they stay in Rwanda. As for the precise costs of the officials who will be based in Rwanda, I do not have those figures yet, but as soon as I do I will make sure the House is aware of them.

House adjourned at 2.06 pm.

UK-Rwanda Partnership

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, there is no doubt that this is a mess. It is a mess in which the Government have written themselves a project so bad that we are ending up with an ineffective, expensive and unworkable policy which lacks in human decency. What we should be receiving is a Government that give us a workable solution which is speedy, effective and humane. Adding to that, and worse, it is now pitting the Government against our courts. This is a dangerous path to follow. It risks our freedoms and liberties under the law against excessive overreach from Government.

Disapplying legal protections to a specific group is a threat to anyone who may need the protection of a judge in future. Human Rights are universal: either you have them or you do not. If you take them away from one group of people, they are no longer human rights; they are rights for some humans. It is a dangerous, slippery slope when the Government seek to disapply them to asylum seekers. Which group of people out of favour with the Government will be next?

In effect, we are being asked to believe that the facts established by the Supreme Court are now wrong—in essence, that black is white. When the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Rwanda was unsafe, based on a whole range of facts, but said that at some stage in future things might be different, there was no expectation that this could be achieved by last Monday. One simple line taken from the Government’s Statement proves just that:

“Rwanda will introduce a strengthened end-to-end asylum system”.


It does not say “has introduced” but “will introduce”. The fact will be demonstrated by seeing a new system in place, not simply by producing a statement of expectation. The Statement is simply incorrect in stating that these Supreme Court matters are “concerns”. They are not; they are facts. That is what our highest court ruled on: the facts. Will the Minister acknowledge that the Supreme Court ruled on the basis of facts?

Let us have some facts. By when, exactly, will Rwanda have introduced a strengthened end-to-end asylum system that meets all the international treaties, laws and rules to which the United Kingdom has signed up? What will be the cost of the creation of a new, specialist asylum appeals tribunal in Rwanda and who will meet it? What will be the ongoing annual costs of the running of the tribunal, including the salaries of judges from across the Commonwealth?

How much are the UK Government setting aside for paying for the provision of legal services to asylum seekers in Rwanda? How will the judges be selected? How can we be assured that the judges will be mindful and live to the protection rights of people with protected characteristics—for example, sexual orientation, women who have experienced gender-based violence, religion or race?

There is an alternative to this unworkable, expensive and inhumane policy. We need an effective asylum system where decisions are made swiftly and accurately. We need effective, humane removals of those whose asylum claim is refused. We need a range of workable safe routes so that people who need protection can get to the United Kingdom safely, including an enhanced resettlement scheme, a humanitarian visa and a more effective family reunion route. There is an alternative.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, if there is an alternative, I did not hear one.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked whether I was invited on to the “Today” programme. I am sorry to disappoint him, but I was not. And I was not necessarily as disappointed as the noble Lord was.

The partnership with Rwanda is now set out in a new treaty, which is binding in international law. It has been agreed by the UK and the Government of Rwanda and was worked on by both parties with close care and attention. It was laid in Parliament yesterday. The treaty, crucially, addresses the conclusion from the Supreme Court on the risk of refoulement to those relocated to Rwanda. I will come back to the Supreme Court decision soon.

The treaty is binding in international law, and it makes it clear that Rwanda will not remove any individuals relocated there to a third country, ensuring that there is no risk of onward refoulement. Relocated individuals will be given safety and support in Rwanda. Those not granted refugee status or humanitarian protection will instead be granted permanent residence so that they are able to stay and integrate into Rwandan society. Once individuals are relocated to Rwanda, they will have their needs looked after while their claims are being considered, including having safe and clean accommodation, food, healthcare and amenities. People are free to leave if they wish and will not be detained.

Far from pitting us against the courts—as the noble Lord, Lord German, alleged—we are responding to them. The treaty does not override the Supreme Court’s judgment; rather, it responds and adapts its key findings to ensure that the policy can go ahead.

The court recognised that changes might be delivered in future which would address the issues that it raised. These are those changes. We believe they address the Supreme Court’s concerns and now aim to move forward with the policy and help put an end to illegal migration. I remind noble Lords that the Supreme Court’s judgment was based on a very specific time in the past; a lot has been done since.

The new treaty—again, this goes to some of the facts that the noble Lord, Lord German, was asking for—also sets out how the independent monitoring committee has been enhanced and will play an important role. It will ensure that obligations under the treaty are adhered to. It will also, in practice, prove that the monitoring committee has the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring and will have unfettered access for the purposes of completing assessments and reports. It will monitor the entire relocation process from the beginning, including initial screening, to relocation and settlement in Rwanda.

The monitoring committee will be responsible for developing a system to enable relocated individuals and legal representatives to lodge confidential complaints directly to the committee. These can be regarding any concerns about the treatment of individuals or alleged failure to comply with the obligations in the treaty. This will provide an additional layer of assurance and ensure that the asylum decision-making process is robust and identifies any issues at an early stage. The monitoring committee will undertake real-time monitoring of the partnership for at least the first three months.

The treaty will also strengthen Rwanda’s asylum system through a new appeal body under its courts system—the noble Lord, Lord German, asked me about that. That will have Rwandan and UK Commonwealth co-presidents, all decisions will be reviewed by the co-presidents and they will be responsible for selecting and appointing the ordinary judges, who can be a mix of nationalities. There will be an independent expert on asylum and humanitarian protection law, providing advice to the panel before any appeal is determined for the first 12 months.

Our aim must be to deter the dangerous and illegal journeys to the UK and disrupt the business models of the criminal gangs. I think we can all agree on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked me about costs. I remind the House that the costs here are massive—and they are not just in money but also in lives. We saw an example of that in French waters only a couple of weeks ago. So far, however, the UK has provided Rwanda with an initial £140 million to assist in the economic development of Rwanda and with upfront operational costs. We will not be providing a running commentary on other costs. Those focusing solely on the costs of this partnership are missing the point. It is incredibly frustrating for British people and the taxpayer to spend billions of pounds to house illegal migrants in hotels. Criminal smuggling gangs are continuing to turn a profit using small boats, and we must bring an end to that.

The Prime Minister, far from pleading, was explaining this morning, and he explained that there is a narrow exception

“if you can prove with credible and compelling evidence that you specifically have a real and imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm”.

We have to recognise that as a matter of law, and if we did not we would undermine the treaty we have just signed with Rwanda—as the Rwandans themselves made clear.

To conclude, the numbers to this scheme are uncapped, so I cannot give any estimation of how many may end up in Rwanda. To reassure the noble Lord, Coaker, I am on the side of the Government. I drink my coffee black and do not like milk very much. He will also be very reassured to hear that my happiness is abundant.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, the seventh paragraph of the Statement that was delivered in another place yesterday says that the Government will introduce legislation next week

“to give effect to the judgment of Parliament that Rwanda is a safe country, notwithstanding UK law or any interpretation of international law”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/12/23; col. 433.]

Can my noble friend explain precisely what that means? Will he also share with the House how we will measure success, and whether we expect to have 100 people sent to Rwanda next year, or 200, or 1,000? Could he give us a rough idea of what figure the Government expect to reach to be able to achieve success?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I point my noble friend to Clause 1(6) of the Bill, which actually outlines what international law means; it is a non-exhaustive list. Regarding how we will judge success, I think we are already seeing some. As the Prime Minister mentioned this morning, a number of crossings have been deterred, and the numbers are down on last year. Success in its entirety will involve putting the criminal gangs out of business once and for all.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I apologise for being slightly delayed for the consideration of this Statement. My understanding is that the Bill disapplies certain sections of the Human Rights Act 1998 to allow public authorities to operate in a way that is incompatible with international obligations. If that is the case, surely that means disregarding the human rights of people seeking asylum, and I struggle to see what human rights can mean if they are not conferred on all human beings. I will be grateful if the Minister can comment on that. I will also be grateful—as would all of us on these Benches—for some clarification of the status of tier 2 ministry religion visas, in light of the new financial threshold. Perhaps it would be possible to have a meeting about that.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Regarding the second point, that question was asked the other day in a different context, and I suggested to the right reverend Prelate who asked me that perhaps the Church should look at paying its vicars more. After all, it is one of the more sizeable landowners in this country and can probably afford it. The Human Rights Act is disapplied in a couple of very specific circumstances, which are outlined in Clause 3 of the Bill.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I will follow up on the question from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. Setting aside the arguments about the law and human rights and all that, the basic justification for this policy is that the Rwanda scheme would offer a deterrent which is necessary to stop channel crossings. It is therefore of fundamental importance to the argument to know how many people can be sent to Rwanda under the scheme. The Court of Appeal said that 100 were allowed. Will the Minister therefore contradict the Court of Appeal and tell us the real number, and will he tell Conservative Central Office to stop putting out propaganda that thousands of people can be sent to Rwanda, which is just ridiculous?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

From the noble Lord’s last remark, it sounds like he has answered his own question. However, as I said in my opening remarks, the numbers are uncapped. I do not know the context of the Court of Appeal judgment in this regard, so I cannot comment on that.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I have two questions for the Minister. First, Article 19 of the treaty says that we are under an obligation to take a “portion”—an odd word—of Rwanda’s “most vulnerable refugees”. A two-way flow of people is envisaged, some going from here to Rwanda, some going from Rwanda to here. Can the Minister give us a forecast ballpark figure of how many Rwandans are coming? Secondly, he will remember that last year the State Department found the Government of Rwanda guilty of arbitrary murder, torture, cruel and inhuman and degrading punishments, arbitrary detention in harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, carrying out murders and kidnappings abroad and harassing domestic and international human rights groups. Our Bill requires us to deem Rwanda a safe country. Will he tell us why the State Department is wrong?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

In answer to the first part of the noble Lord’s question, Section 19 of the treaty indeed says that the UK will resettle refugees from Rwanda to the UK. This is not new; it was also set out in the MoU. As I have mentioned before from this Dispatch Box, Rwanda currently hosts and provides for around 130,000 refugees from across the region, and as part of our joint commitment to the principles of the refugee convention, and through the partnership, we have offered to settle particularly vulnerable refugees hosted in Rwanda, whom we could better support. Rwanda is leading in supporting the UNHCR and neighbouring regions with those in need of resettlement, and the UK will support these best efforts as its partner. We expect the number to be small. However, the UK resettles many refugees each year, through safe and legal paths from those first safe countries which accommodate many people who seek their sanctuary. As the MEDP has not yet been operationalised, there have not yet been any refugees from Rwanda resettled in the UK as part of it.

The second part of the noble Lord’s question was on the State Department. We have also just published a new treaty, which contains many legally binding elements. In the light of that, I imagine the State Department will reconsider.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm for the House that this country has a dualist regime? We do not just cut and paste international treaties but pass legislation in our domestic legislature. Does he further agree with me that the Prime Minister is right that we do not subjugate that to a foreign legal entity—the European Court of Human Rights? My concern, which the Minister might want to address, is that we have had four general election manifestos by our party that committed to reducing immigration, including the last one, on which we won a strong mandate. Is it not a concern that our horizons for how we shape our legislation are shifting from that—the mandate of the people—to the ECHR and now, potentially, the political vagaries of politicians in Rwanda?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

In response to the first part of my noble friend’s question, I again repeat the Prime Minister’s words. He said this morning, and I agree, that:

“If the Strasbourg court chooses to intervene against the express wishes of our sovereign parliament … today’s new law … makes clear that the decision on whether to comply with interim measures issued by the European court is a decision for British government Ministers and British government Ministers alone”.


The good news is that it is the Government, and not criminal gangs or foreign courts, who decide who should come and who should stay in our country. It is very unreasonable to disagree with the Prime Minister’s remarks. In response to the second part of my noble friend’s question, I say that this is clearly a subject of considerable importance, which has been politically dominant in recent years. I therefore commend the Government’s efforts to try to solve it.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, I will add a point of detail to the question posed by my noble friend Lord Kerr. The Government are aware that, until recently, some individuals were not being deported to Rwanda from the UK in relation to genocide of old. What is the current status of any individuals who remain in the UK and why is that? If they have not been deported, why has this taken so long?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot comment on specific numbers of refugees from that particular incident. However, I can reassure the noble Viscount about the safety of the Republic of Rwanda. Clause 4 of the Bill allows that

“Decisions based on particular individual circumstances”


can be specifically exempted from some other aspects of the Bill. I will not read them, as he can read them himself.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, many of the problems that we have discussed over the months and years come from the backlog of applications to the Home Office. What does having two Ministers—one for legal migration and one for what the Government badge as illegal migration—do to address this? Also, the previous Home Secretary made it very clear that the Government’s proposals “will not work”, in her words. Is that because of her views about the European convention or does it come from some other inspiration about how to make the system work? If so, has she shared that with colleagues in the Home Office?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

She is not a colleague so, no, she has not shared it. I am not going to second-guess what she was trying to say this morning; that would be foolish. As regards having two Ministers for Immigration, this is a big subject so, clearly, it deserves two. I suppose I could give a flippant answer: at least they will be able to process these claims twice as fast.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I absolutely support the Government’s attempts to outlaw and stop the work of these criminal gangs, but we must proceed on a safe legal basis. My noble friend has accepted that the Government are proposing to set aside part of the ECHR. Can he confirm that we are still bound by the provisions of the international convention on refugees? Does he share my concern that, if reports are correct, the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation issued a statement yesterday saying the following:

“Without lawful behaviour by the UK, Rwanda would not be able to continue with the Migration and Economic Development Partnership”?


Can my noble friend give me a reassurance today that that will not be the case and we will proceed by legal means?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

As I said in answer to an earlier question, Clause 1(6) details international law. It includes the human rights convention; the refugee convention; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966; and the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984. I could go on. I suggest that we read Clause 1(6); it is very clear.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, will the refugees from Rwanda be put up in hotels?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I really do not know how to answer that.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this legislation, not least because no alternative has been put forward by any of the critics in this House. Will the Government take advice from the French Government on how to announce these matters? On 31 October, when the French Interior Minister announced that France would ignore rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, there was no outrage from anyone in this House, nor from Foreign Office mandarins, the Bishops’ Benches or the opposition parties. On 14 November, France put it into practice and deported an Uzbek refugee, despite a ruling from the European court that it should not do so and ignoring its own domestic legal procedures. There was no outcry; there was not even a BBC report of this event. In America, Biden, who originally criticised the behaviours of his predecessor, has refouled 1 million refugees across the border with Mexico in the past 18 months. If human rights are international and universal, why do they not apply in France and America?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point, as he did earlier this week when asking his Question. I must say, since answering it I have pored over the various publications one would normally expect to make remarks about such a potential outrage, and I have found that they are few, so my noble friend is quite right to make that observation. Obviously, it is not for a Minister to comment from the Dispatch Box on what other countries are doing, but I would observe that plenty of other countries in Europe and around the world are investigating similar schemes to the one we propose. We have those conversations on a regular basis, including with countries such as Germany and Denmark.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, may I rephrase—or re-present—the question put by the right reverend Prelate in respect of clergymen coming to this country, which was rebuffed on the grounds that the Church of England is rather wealthy, given its endowments, and should pay its vicars more? As a Methodist—we have no land or money to back us up, and our salaries are much lower than those of vicars—may I ask whether Methodist ministers will be allowed to benefit from whatever can be benefited from in this legislation?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. I would certainly make a personal observation: he has a much better case.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the British people place great emphasis on the concept of fairness? A system that rewards people for undermining the existing system by trying to jump the queue cannot be appropriate and actually, it serves to bring the whole system into disrepute. Surely, we have to find a way—the British people expect us to do so—to make sure that those who work with the system and work fairly are treated properly.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend makes an extremely good point and directs me, in many ways, back to what the Prime Minister said this morning:

“illegal immigration undermines not just our border controls … it undermines the very fairness that is so central to our national character. We play by the rules. We put in our fair share. We wait our turn. Now if some people can just cut all that out … you’ve not just lost control of your borders … you’ve fatally undermined the very fairness upon which trust in our system is based.”

I agree.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, if this legislation is as effective as the Minister implies, can he tell the House why he thinks the Immigration Minister was wrong to resign?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

No, I cannot. I have not spoken to him.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, it is no secret that I am not very happy with my own party at the moment. Is the Minister aware that I strongly support the policy he has outlined? The fact is that, for instance, every female asylum seeker from Afghanistan is genuine: they have a very good case. But, in answer to my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, once the first 50 or so asylum seekers have been sent to Rwanda, is it not the case that there will be no further people risking their lives coming across the channel on small boats, because it will be pointless?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I certainly hope so. This gives me an opportunity to remind the House that part of the reason we are discussing migration on such a regular basis is that this country has been generous, as we have discussed before. There are BNO passport holders, Ukrainian visas, and ARAP in Afghanistan, as my noble friend has alluded to. I think it is well worth restating that for the record.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister give the House an assurance that the Government will not the disapply the rights of others and other minorities should judgments come from the European Court of Human Rights, or indeed the Supreme Court, that they do not agree with?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I think I have already answered that question in terms of decisions based on individual and particular circumstances. I will leave it at that for now.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, are the Government minded to consider the approach of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who spoke of a knee-jerk reaction without the long-term solutions that are absolutely required for migratory issues? Will the Government give some consideration to implementing such a solution, so that we can resolve this whole problem worldwide?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

As I said when the most reverent Primate asked me the question, global circumstances would clearly suggest that that is a very good approach. Clearly, also, those conversations are ongoing in high-level diplomatic circles. But the fact is, as I said earlier in answer to my noble friend Lord Lilley, that the world is also looking for solutions to this problem on a bilateral basis.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I return to the Minister’s reply to my question about numbers, because they are important in the question of whether this will be an effective deterrent. His answer was that the scheme is uncapped, but what is the present capacity of Rwanda to take asylum seekers from the UK? The Government must know that: they have given Rwanda £140 million and are in the process of giving it more, although they will not declare that number to Parliament. What is the capacity? Is the Court of Appeal right that it is 100? Is he saying that the Court of Appeal is wrong?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The Government do know that number but unfortunately, I do not, because I forgot to ask the question this morning. I will have to write to the noble Lord; I apologise.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is being asked a lot about numbers. I know that many people here are concerned about this policy and think about the effect it will have on people when they want to come here, because we want to dissuade those who are being trafficked and hurt. Really, the numbers we should be considering are of those who drown on the route here. I do not want to see any more women, children or men drowning in the English Channel. If this policy helps to reduce those numbers, does my noble friend not agree that we should be pushing that and ensuring that those numbers go down?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I could not agree more with my noble friend. I tried to make the point earlier that one of the principal reasons for doing this is to deter illegal boat crossings, which are dangerous not just to the asylum seekers themselves but to those who are sent to rescue them.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Border Security) Regulations 2023

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 7 November be approved.

Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, maintaining services at our borders is essential to our security and prosperity as a nation. We depend on skilled professionals to ensure that, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, our borders are strong and effective. The Government assess that, in the event of strike action by those charged with securing our borders, there are significant risks to the safety of our communities. Criminals may seek to take advantage of strike action to enter our country or to move illicit commodities through our ports and airports. People smugglers may seek to exploit gaps in our patrol activity to land illegal migrants on our shores.

We are focused on making the hard but necessary long-term decisions to deliver the change the country needs to put the United Kingdom on the right path for the future. It is for this reason that the Government have decided to include border security within the scope of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. These new regulations have two purposes: to make provision for minimum service levels in relation to strikes as respect to relevant border security services and to define those relevant border security services.

The regulations set out that border security should be provided at a level that means they are no less effective than if a strike were not taking place. The regulations also set out that passport services as are necessary in the interests of national security are provided as they would be if the strike were not taking place on that day. The relevant border services that must be provided are now defined as

“the examination of persons arriving in or leaving the UK; the examination of goods imported to or exported from the UK; the examination of goods entered for exportation or brought to any place in the UK for exportation; the patrol of … ports … the sea and other waters within the seaward limits of the territorial sea adjacent to the UK; the collection and dissemination of intelligence for these purposes; the direction and control of”

those engaged in providing those services; and such passport services as may be necessary for national security reasons.

As the employer for Border Force and HM Passport Office, it will be the Home Office that issues work notices to trade unions during strike action. A work notice is, to recap, a notice given in writing that identifies the members of the workforce who are required to work on a strike day and the work they are required to do to deliver the levels of service as set out in the minimum service regulations. It is important to note that the Act forbids an employer, when setting a work notice, from having regard to whether an employee is a member of a trade union or has taken part in trade union activities or used their services in the past. The trade union must then take reasonable steps to ensure that members of theirs who have been identified in a work notice do not take strike action. If the union fails to take reasonable steps, it may lose its legal protection from damages, claims and injunctions. I will return to that at the end of my speech.

The regulations stipulate that border security services can be provided only by employees of the Home Office, which will mean those who already provide border security services or the relevant passport services required in the interests of national security. This means that we will no longer need to rely on outside resource to provide cover. In the past, we have used other civil servants working elsewhere and members of the Armed Forces. We acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of those who have provided cover previously, but this cannot be a long-term solution.

We recognise that restricting the ability to strike, even in the way we are proposing, means that we need to ensure that compensatory measures are in place. The Government are therefore committing that they will agree to engage in conciliation for national disputes in relation to border security, where the relevant unions agree that this would be helpful. This is a significant and appropriate commitment that balances the ability of workers to strike with the safeguarding of our borders.

I note the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I respectfully say that we have responded to the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Its 27th Report of Session 2022-23, which was published on 2 March 2023, made two recommendations on what became the Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Act. The first was that

“the House may wish to press the Minister to provide an explanation of how the power to set minimum service levels … is likely to be exercised”.

The second was that

“the House may wish to press the Minister to provide an explanation of how the power to define ‘relevant services’ … is likely to be exercised”.

I respectfully submit that both recommendations have now been addressed through the regulations and in this debate.

I also respectfully disagree that the regulations are too prohibitive. This brings me to the Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and to the findings of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its 3rd Report of the Session 2023-24, published on 23 November 2023. As I have set out, we are bringing forward these regulations to establish a fair balance between the ability to strike and enabling people to go about their daily life in the confidence that on a strike day our borders will still be secure.

Our recent experience of industrial action saw staffing levels of around 70% to 75% being delivered by Border Force. This enabled Border Force to carry out the essential functions listed in the regulations. Our estimate of the impact on HM Passport Office is that around a dozen or so personnel may be required to work. We none the less recognise that these new measures may mean that members of staff may not be able to strike. It is for that reason that we have made a commitment regarding conciliation, and I think this commitment is significant.

Turning to the question of trade unions’ liabilities, I would simply say that unions that continue to comply with trade union law are completely unaffected by this change, and therefore the issue of liability will not arise.

I call on Members of your Lordships’ House to reject the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I beg to move.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction, although I disagree with much of it. We have heard in earlier debates from my noble friends Lady Merron and Lord Collins the general view that we have about these regulations. The law is not a substitute for proper negotiation. It is the failure of the Government to negotiate properly and reasonably with so many groups of workers that has led to this. Instead of addressing this failure of public policy, the Government have sought to undermine the right of people to take industrial action to protect their interests. Indeed, on the contrary, following the Act, regulations are put in place with huge consequences for unions and their members and workers if they fall foul of often ill-defined and ambiguous legislation. We will repeal them if we win the next election and will have no hesitation in doing so. The legislation that was outlined by the Minister to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee should properly have been in primary legislation, which is one of the points that the committee made and which the Minister did not answer or point out in his remarks.

I turn briefly to the regulations with respect to border security and the reasons we regret them. Can the Minister confirm that because the regulations involve employment law, they do not apply to Northern Ireland? It is important to understand what assessment the Government have made of a situation in which there was to be industrial action in Britain under these regulations but not in Northern Ireland, where, presumably, existing law applies.

Can the Minister also explain why the Explanatory Memorandum spoke—as the Minister did here—of the impacts on UK immigration, UK territorial waters and UK border security staff? He will know that the UK includes Northern Ireland but these regulations are about Britain and so do not include Northern Ireland. Can he explain why the Home Office cannot distinguish between the terminology of the UK and the terminology of Britain with respect to these regulations?

Can the Minister explain why the measures have been extended to cover HM Passport Office? This appears, whatever the Minister says, to be a last-minute addition to the legislation, going beyond the earlier indications and debates that were had with respect to the Act—hence the amendment that I have put. The impact assessment says that a small number of HM Passport Office staff—the Minister talked of 12—will be affected. Can he outline what roles that will be and whether the passport staff in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, will be affected? Presumably they will not, so what will happen? When was the decision made to extend the regulations to HM Passport Office? Why were the trade unions not consulted about that change?

The border security regulations allow an employer to serve a work notice that requires border services to be

“no less effective than they would be if the strike were not taking place on that day”.

—see Regulation 3(1). The very real question that results, as trade unions point out, is to what extent there is any reason for anyone to strike if it is not supposed to have any impact at all. How is that proportionate? That is why we regret these regulations before us.

The TUC points out how strict this short but powerful set of regulations with respect to border security is. The Government say that, to ensure the minimum service levels that they have outlined, this SI necessitates 70% to 75% of border staff working. How on earth is it proportionate to effectively deny three-quarters of the workforce the right to strike? How on earth is it reasonable or proportionate that, in many cases, only one in four workers in border security will have the right to strike? Hence, I tabled the regret amendment.

In many small ports, because of the minimum service levels, there will effectively be no right to strike at all. Can the Minister also explain, notwithstanding the points he has made about conciliation, what the conciliation process will involve? How will it actually work? Will there be frank and open discussions with the trade unions about it to ensure that a system is put in place that works?

The Government make considerable play of doing this in the interests of the public, but millions of trade union members are members of the public. Is the noble Lord sure that these regulations, interfering with the right to strike to such an extent, are consistent with our legal duties? Of course, we rightly praise our border staff and others for the important and crucial work that they do. However, in wage negotiations and conditions-of-service talks, they have been disappointed that this praise is not turned into acceptable offers when it comes to their pay and conditions. In those circumstances, and subject to a ballot, trade unions should have the right to strike. The proposed restrictions are not proportionate and can never replace fair and open negotiations based on mutual respect, even when that is difficult. It is for those reasons that I have tabled my amendment to the Motion.

Amendment to the Motion

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, further to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, I understand that the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 applies to England, Scotland and Wales. However, it is interesting that, while labour relations are devolved, Border Force, HM Passport Office and so on are not; they are reserved.

In light of this legislation, if it is important to the Government, how does the Minister intend to provide similar measures in Northern Ireland? How does he maintain the integrity of the single reserved agencies? How does he ensure similar terms and conditions for staff across the United Kingdom, given the restricted extent of these regulations? As he said, this is important legislation. I will be interested to hear how he can say that, on the one hand, it is a devolved matter but, on the other, Border Force, His Majesty’s Passport Office and so on are not because they are reserved matters. How does the Minister deal with that?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for all the contributions and will address the points that have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has tabled a Motion to regret this statutory instrument because

“the draft Regulations contain policy detail that was not included in primary legislation contrary to the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; and … given that the impact assessment acknowledges that some workers’ right to take industrial action will be affected or denied… they are too prohibitive”.

I do not agree. The 27th Report of Session 2022-23 of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published on 2 March 2023, made two recommendations regarding what became the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act. The first was that

“the House may wish to press the Minister to provide an explanation of how the power to set minimum service levels … is likely to be exercised”,

and the second, as I have already said, is that

“the House may wish to press the Minister to provide an explanation of how the power to define ‘relevant services’ … is likely to be exercised”.

I respectfully submit that both those recommendations have now been addressed through the regulations themselves and in this debate.

I also respectfully disagree that the regulations are too prohibitive. The Government committed to introducing statutory minimum service levels on strike days in a range of sectors, including border security. That was to establish a fair balance between the ability to strike and enabling people to go about their daily lives. The ability for staff to take strike action is an integral part of industrial relations. However, the security of our borders is something that we cannot compromise on; that is why this measure is proportionate. We must also consider the disruption caused to, and the costs incurred by, passengers and businesses that expect the essential services they pay for to be there when needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked me about the consultation. We are grateful to all those who responded to it. As noted in our formal response, we received 69 online questionnaires and a further nine written responses, but we consider that those who responded have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality, which is why we have not identified them.

In the consultation we ran in the summer, we made it clear that we were considering applying these regulations to Border Force and other organisations. We invited respondents to identify any organisations they thought should be in scope. Following the consultation, we considered it important to include critical passport services in the regulations. Passport services required for the purposes of national security could include, for example, identifying stolen passports and forged documents. In practice, as I said in opening, we think that we would require around a dozen employees from the Passport Office to work on a strike day, if necessary.

Our commitment on conciliation is clear. To partially answer both noble Lords’ questions on Northern Ireland, there are issues in the background with Northern Ireland that we are working through. I will return to those subjects in writing.

The public rightly expect us to maintain a secure border—as I said, that is why this is proportionate— in balance with the ability of workers to strike. The Government believe that these new border security minimum service levels will do that. I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting these regulations, which I commend to the House.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I note that the Minister did not address my admittedly unanswerable question about the next Government. The news from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, might make us wonder when the next Government, or at least the next Prime Minister, might arrive. In light of the hour, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Legal Migration

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday’s Statement to the other House was one where figures were plucked from the air; one must draw the conclusion that they are arbitrary, in the sense that they do not have any background in what one might call a forward workforce planning regime for the country as a whole. One would have expected that, if you were to do a workforce planning regime for the future, it would be timed, looking forward as to the requirements on our workforce in this country.

It is certainly the case that the Government are well aware of the length of time that it takes to train individuals and get people moving along that pipeline. It is also certainly the case that the issue of medium-salaried people has come out as one of the major concerns of the document put before us yesterday.

The Statement, when examined for the sorts of people that the country needs who are going to be excluded by the regime, includes such people as butchers, chefs, welders and joiners. It is quite clear to anyone who has been around this country looking at the hospitality and tourism sectors that there are significant shortages of people to fill those places. It is not infrequent that you see a sign for a chef outside a restaurant where they are short of staff. The question to which we need to address ourselves is: where is the forward planning behind the figures that have been put before us?

Equally, the regional pay disparities around the United Kingdom mean that the wage levels in London and the south-east of England are very different from those that you find in other parts of the country. The wage levels that we are being told about have a bit of a sniff for the London and the south-east but are damaging to other parts of the economy where wage levels are different. The correct form of workforce planning would have had all these issues under review.

The issue of social care visas is obviously one of a lack of investment in the past. The Migration Advisory Committee has previously said that the Government’s persistent underfunding of local authorities, which of course fund adult social care, is the most important factor in the staffing crisis. The Government now say in the Statement that care workers without families will ensure that we have enough people to meet the demands of our caring services.

Equally, we are assured that the CQC will now oversee all this information, but there are problems for the CQC because its inspections do not actively address the working conditions and well-being of care workers. In that sense, the independent regulation of health and adult social care contains significant oversight gaps. How is the CQC going to ensure that those are fulfilled for those filling these vital posts from our immigration system?

I have questions about the impact upon companies in the sectors that are most impacted by the Statement. This comes on the back of last night’s discussion in this House. The Minister at that time did not recognise where I got my figures from: it was paragraph 12.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum for the regulations on fees that we were talking about last night. It says, and the words are quite clear, that there will be a significant impact on companies—these are the Government’s words—of

“tens of millions of pounds”.

On top of that, companies are now having to think whether they can afford to pay these amounts of money in order to recruit. A failure to recruit sufficiently for a company to operate means that the UK company itself might be in danger of not being able to continue to operate, and so UK workers might be affected by that decision. It is worth understanding what training and workforce plan is behind the migration strategy.

I have what might be thought of as a cheeky question, but it is one that worries me considerably, regarding the ability of British citizens to bring their partner to the United Kingdom to live with them, and with their children if they have any. I had a think about this and it was clear to me that a significant number of current government Ministers have partners from another country —we can all think of examples of that. My question is: what number of our population have partners from another country, given that £38,700 is a large figure for someone to be able to bring their partner to this country to live with them?

The danger here is that, in that development of a partnership between two people, the British citizen could think, “I can’t bring my partner to this country, so I will go to their country instead”. If they decide that, we might lose some of the vital people whom we need for our country, especially remembering that we are heading towards a time in our society where, for every elderly person, we will have only two people of working age. There is a big change coming, and we need to be prepared for it.

Have the Government assessed how these restrictions to legal migration will impact the numbers on overstaying visit visas? How many British citizens will be driven out of the country to live with their partners and children elsewhere in the world, as in the question I just addressed? Will the restrictions apply to workers who are already sponsored? Sometimes people have to renew and, when they do, will the restrictions that apply in this new Statement apply to them when they renew their work permissions in this country? Will an existing migrant worker’s salary have to rise in order to extend their visa? Finally, have the Government considered the disproportionate impact that the increase in family visa requirements will have on British citizens who live outside the south of England and London, because of the wage disparities around the rest of the United Kingdom?

That is a range of questions which we need to have answered, but the context of it all is: what is the plan? Is it merely a decision to have an arbitrary number which looks good to the public—or looks good in an election manifesto—rather than one which faces the problems which our economy, and our future as a country, will be needing?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their comments and say to them that the level of legal migration remains too high. As a result, we have announced the five-point plan—my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Home Office announced it yesterday, as the House knows—and this package of measures, taken in addition to the measures on student dependants that we announced in May, means that around 300,00 people who were eligible to come to the UK last year would not be able to in future.

As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has noted, the UK has experienced unprecedented levels of immigration since the pandemic. The figures are widely understood, and this is partly because of our generosity towards people fleeing conflict and persecution in Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Over 80,000 people have immigrated to the UK on our Ukraine, BNO and resettlement schemes in the last year. However, it is also because of the rising numbers of overseas students and care workers that the Government have taken action to address the rise in legal migration.

The new package involves a number of measures—five, which have been noted. We will reduce the numbers on health and social care visas and end the abuse of that route by stopping overseas care workers from bringing in family dependants and requiring social care firms in England to be CQC registered before they can sponsor migrant visas—I will come back to the CQC in a moment. We will remove the right for care workers and senior care workers to bring dependants from spring 2024. Care workers and senior care workers arriving through the health and care visa also bring a large number of dependants per main applicant, with approximately 120,000 dependants accompanying 100,000 care workers and senior care workers in the year ending September 2023. As has been noted, we will increase the earnings thresholds for those arriving on the skilled worker route, with the minimum threshold rising by 48%, from £26,200 to £38,700 from spring of 2024. Those coming on the health and social care visa route will be exempted, so we can continue to bring the healthcare workers that our care sector and NHS need.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, specifically mentioned the shortage occupation list and scrapping the 20% going-rate salary discount for shortage occupations, as recommended by the independent Migration Advisory Committee, which, I note, has not called for any more powers. We will establish a new immigration salary list, which will retain the 20% discount on the general salary threshold. This means that migrants working in lower-paid salary occupations on the immigration salary list will still benefit from the minimum salary floor of 80% of the new general salary threshold of £38,700, but migrants in occupations where going rates are higher than the general salary threshold would not be sub to further salary discounts.

We will ensure that people can bring only dependants whom they can support financially by raising the minimum income for family visas to the same threshold as the minimum salary threshold for a skilled worker. We have also asked the Migration Advisory Committee to review the graduate route to ensure it is fit for purpose, to prevent abuse and to protect the integrity and quality of our UK higher education.

On graduate migrants, I am very happy to reaffirm our commitment to attracting the best and brightest global talent to support growth. We are committed to ensuring that happens and have taken a number of steps to do it, including by introducing an elite route to attract the best and brightest, maintaining the UK’s status as a leading international hub for emerging technologies. We have created a scale-up visa, allowing those with a job offer from a recognised UK scale-up to qualify for a fast-track visa. We have reformed our global talent route by expanding the criteria so that global prize winners automatically qualify, launched a global business mobility visa, and established the high-potential individual visa route to allow graduates from the world’s best universities to come to the UK.

The changes we are introducing—in answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby—apply only to those who come here on new visas. That means that workers with dependants already in the UK will be able to stay.

The noble Lord, Lord German, asked about the salary threshold affecting hospitality, accommodation and food services. Employers will still be able to recruit workers from overseas to those industries, but it is right that we increase the salary threshold to the level of median earnings to ensure that we do not undercut UK workers by using cheaper overseas labour, and to prevent downward pressure on wages.

As my right honourable friend said in answer to Yvette Cooper in the other place—there was no reference in either of the noble Lords’ comments to this—the £7 billion employment package announced in the Spring Budget will help 1.1 million get back to work and “stay in work”.

We do not believe that these measures will discourage carers who contribute to the UK economy. It is still an extremely competitive offer. We launched the health and care worker visa on 4 August 2020. This has delivered on the Government’s commitment to introduce a route which makes it quicker, easier and cheaper for eligible people working in health and social care to come to the UK. Those affected by this package are, as I said earlier, predominantly people with dependants who make a more limited contribution to the economy than those coming under other work routes, minimising the impact on UK growth. Care workers and senior care workers arriving through the health and care visa bring a large number of dependants per main applicant, with approximately 120,000 dependants accompanying 100,000 care workers and senior care workers in the year ending September 2023.

I said I would come back to the CQC. What we mean by regulated activity in the context of social care is that this relates to personal care. Personal care is defined as providing physical assistance to a person where they are unable to perform activities in connection with eating or drinking, toileting, washing or bathing, dressing, oral care or the care of skin, hair and nails. The regulated activities are further detailed in Schedule 1 to the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

There will be a regulatory impact assessment, which will be developed in due course, as well as an equalities impact assessment. I think that answers two of the questions from the noble Lord, Lord German.

I will answer the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, about withdrawal from asylum processing. I do not know why we do not record that information. I will endeavour to find out and I will certainly come back to the noble Lord. I can confirm that in the year ending September, 41,858 initial decisions were made in terms of immigration processing. That is twice the number that were made in the previous year. I am reassured that the clearance of the backlog is on track.

These measures are very sensible. They are clearly carefully thought through, and I commend them to the House.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answers to the earlier questions. I shall avoid the temptation to discuss the proposals in general—I just wanted to focus on the significant impact that they are going to have on our higher education system. Perhaps I should mention that members of my family are employed in higher education. I am sure that the Minister understands that higher education is one of our success stories in generating public good and also, as an export, generating income for the country. Unfortunately, we have developed a system of funding higher education that depends on legal migrants; the education of UK citizens and residents depends on generating a flow of overseas participants in higher education who count as legal migrants. If the number of foreign students declines, that will have a direct and immediate impact on the education that we provide for UK residents.

My question was in a sense forestalled by the question from my noble friend, but the Government have to do more to indicate that they really stand by the policy of encouraging people to come to this country to benefit from the higher education that we can provide, because otherwise it will harm them and harm us. The policy is already having an impact; even the Statement itself will have deterred some foreign students from coming to this country, and the proposal to limit the number of family members who can come will have an impact on the students coming to this country, and hence on the education that we can provide for UK residents. Will the Minister assure us that he is seized of the point and that it is an issue that the Government will consider carefully in the light of the impact statements to which he has referred?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. Obviously, the universities and the education sector provide an enormous amount of good to the country in many ways, including, of course, in terms of soft power. As the noble Lord indicated, it is an export industry. We have reconfirmed our intention to attract the best and brightest. Our manifesto committed to establishing the graduate route. More than 100,000 people last year to September 2023 were issued visas for the graduate route. We have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to review this route to ensure that it is fit for purpose and prevent abuse, protecting the quality and integrity of UK higher education. However, as I said earlier, I note the noble Lord’s points and broadly agree.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, following on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, on the Government’s own figures they expect there to be 140,000 fewer people coming in through student routes. How much income is expected to be lost to UK universities overall from that? Have the Government made any assessment of the regional impacts of this? There are northern and Midlands cities for whom the universities are a very significant part of their economy, and students and their dependants coming in are a significant contributor to the life and economy of those cities. Have the Government got an idea of the total cost of the 140,000 cut in students and how that cost will be distributed regionally?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the figures that I have are in terms of sponsored study to the year ending June 2022. There were actually more than 400,000 main applicants granted and 152,000 dependants were granted—so it is the dependants who will not be coming. In terms of dependants, about half of them are adults and only half of them actually work, so I suspect that the economic impact of their non-arrival will be very minimal.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I have three brief comments and questions. We know that there are 152,000 vacancies in social care in England, as reported by Skills for Care. This is of course a concern for the well-being of vulnerable people. The National Farmers’ Union reports a national shortage of 80,000 vacancies in the horticultural and agricultural sectors, but His Majesty’s Government estimate 40,000. This of course leads to a massive reduction in production and has an economic impact. As we know, this is further exacerbated in our rural communities. What conversations has the Minister had with these sectors about the risks inherent in their new policy?

My second point is that families come in all shapes and sizes, but when they are together they are stronger and more resilient. Families help individuals, communities and our society to flourish. Only recently, I met a Nepalese care worker in a rural church in Norfolk, off any bus route and not having her own transport. The church community has embraced her as one of their own and learned much in the process. Each week, she sends home a significant proportion of her earnings to support her very young family, but this is costly to that family’s bonds of relationship and she longs to see them. Will the Minister reassure the House that the department has applied the family test to these policies, and will he publish that assessment?

Finally, many faith communities greatly benefit from the presence of religious workers from overseas. The Church of England benefits from the ministry of clergy from all around the Anglican Communion, enriching our communities and resourcing individuals’ ministry for life, often equipping them for when they return to their country of origin to minister in places of conflict and abject poverty. Many UK clergy, me included, have benefited from overseas experiences. Will the Minister consult faith communities about exemptions for religious workers, many of whom earn below the published threshold?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his questions. Of course, there is no barrier to recruiting people to the Church, as long as £38,700 is paid to them. I do not think that unreasonable, I am afraid. I appreciate that salaries may not be as high in the Church as he might like, never mind the rest of his colleagues, but that is the median salary, as I said earlier, and it is not unfair. As for recruiting to the health and care sectors, I think I answered that question earlier. Again, there are exemptions in place for those people and we obviously value their work and their service here. I do not know whether the family test has been applied. However, we also regard families as very important. If the lady whom the right reverend Prelate referenced is sending the bulk of her money home, one wonders exactly what the economic benefit is to this country as well. That is obviously an unfortunate state of affairs, but it is worth mentioning.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, just to follow up on a previous question, I am currently looking at reports of Home Office modelling that suggests that there are 140,000 fewer students arriving. Perhaps he will write to me about that figure, because it appears to be a Home Office figure.

I want to pick up on the point from the noble Lord, Lord German, about British people bringing foreign spouses and children into the UK. The Minister may be aware that in 2015, the Children’s Commissioner for England produced a report identifying up to 15,000 children who belonged to what were then called Skype families: children whom the Children’s Commissioner said were suffering from stress and anxiety by being separated from a parent by the rules brought in in 2012 that demanded a salary for the sponsoring partner of £18,600 for a partner and even more for children. There have long been complaints that there is no allowance made for the potential income of an incoming spouse, who may well be able to find a job and be a high earner; only the British resident can be counted to sponsor their spouse in.

We are now in a situation where the salaries of 60% to 70% of British workers would not be enough to sponsor a foreign spouse to come into the UK. I have been speaking to people affected by this, many of whom have found that even their MP does not understand the situation. Many people say, “You’re a Briton—of course you must be able to live in your own country with your spouse and your children must be able to come here”, yet 60% to 70% of British people will now be unable to live in their own country with a foreign spouse and will be separated from their children. Do the Government really think that is an acceptable state of affairs?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, as I have indicated, we estimate that only around 25% of dependants work when they come to the UK—half of the adult dependants; the other half are children.

I now have a marginally better answer for the right reverend Prelate on the family test. I can confirm that the policy is compliant under the Human Rights Act, which includes respect for family life.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for following up on yesterday’s Statement today. I have three questions.

First, on student visas and the granting of permission to dependants to come to this country, which I understand will be restricted to those on designated research programme courses, does this apply primarily to PhD students in laboratories or in both science and humanities subjects?

Secondly, we have 680,000 international students in this country at the moment. The Statement mentioned the daily life strains that can be put on housing, our health services and education for our children. Will my noble friend consider extending the review that he mentioned to the educational strain on the hard-pressed resources of our universities—with teaching and lecturing commitments and additional administration—of having just less than 700,000 additional students?

My third question is a more constructive one on opportunities for the future. At the moment, a number of our universities have campuses abroad; there is a network of such universities in the UK university overseas campuses network. By the end of 2021, it had on its books 17 universities with 27 campuses abroad. Is there more to be said for putting the undoubted energies of the Government into promoting such campuses abroad? Perhaps, later on in his or her course, a student could come to this country for a special additional course, having gone through the undergraduate system in his or her own country. Will my noble friend consider or pass on those questions?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am happy to confirm that PhD students will still be able to bring dependants. I do not believe that there is any differentiation between science and humanities subjects. I absolutely take my noble friend’s point about hard-pressed universities, particularly in accommodation and the schooling system more generally, which, as we are all well aware, is under significant pressure. My noble friend makes some very good points about campuses abroad and the efforts the Government ought to make to promote them. I will certainly take her comments back and perhaps share them with the Department for Education.

House adjourned at 9.04 pm.

National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendments of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2023

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 16 October be approved.

Motion agreed.

Asylum Seekers: Deportation from France

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what representations they have received about the remarks by Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, that his government is prepared to deport asylum seekers deemed dangerous, in breach of rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, French policy on asylum is a matter for the French Government. His Majesty’s Government continue to co-operate closely with France to tackle illegal migration and to keep our borders and citizens safe.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his Answer. Does he recall warnings from human rights lawyers and Foreign Office mandarins that if we were to set aside a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights we would become pariahs, along with Russia and Belarus? Is it not passing strange that, when France announced its intention to do so, there was no outcry? Since 14 November, when it refouled an Uzbek refugee to his homeland despite the court ruling it illegal, risking torture and death, the whole liberal establishment, from the BBC to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

—and the SDP—has been as silent as mice. Is there one rule for our friends in Europe and another for Britain?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I think it would be wise for me to restate what the Prime Minister has said, which is that he is taking

“the extraordinary step of introducing emergency legislation”.

He made that point on 15 November. He went on to say that he does not believe that

“anyone thinks the founding aim of the European Convention on Human Rights was to stop a sovereign Parliament removing illegal migrants to a country deemed to be safe in Parliamentary statute and binding international law. I do not believe we are alone in that interpretation”.

So I say to my noble friend that I look forward to informed discussion on the recent French decision.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a simple question for the Minister: have either the new Home Secretary or the new Foreign Secretary met the French Interior Minister?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid I do not know.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

You should.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Really? I will find out and come back to the noble Lord.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, in the event that the Government decide to derogate from any part of the convention, would Ministers agree to publish in advance, before doing so, a paper identifying which of our international obligations might be impacted by such a decision?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot anticipate what may or may not be in the Bill. Obviously, the Bill will be presented to Parliament in the usual way.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, what consideration has the Minister given to the views of the same Interior Minister from France that consideration will be given to giving legal status to undocumented people working in sectors with labour shortages? If the Minister were to give consideration effectively to that matter, surely that would help our relationships with the French Government and everything in the immigration system beyond.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I refer the noble Lord to my earlier Answer. I am not going to speculate on or discuss what the French legal system and the French Interior Minister decide about their own domestic policy.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, deciding whether an asylum seeker is dangerous is subjective. Does the Minister agree that our system is less discriminatory in treating all asylum seekers as a lesser form of life?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid not.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister give the House an absolute assurance that the Government will never consider making a decision that would be in breach of a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

As I said earlier, I am not going to speculate as to what will be in future legislation. That will be presented to Parliament in the fullness of time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that we on this side are the establishment while the anti-establishment are the poor people who are stuck in government with only the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, GB News and a few others to help them, battling against a profoundly demoralising liberal consensus that somehow they do not seem able to break?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I rather agree with Michel Barnier, with whom I imagine the noble Lord sympathises quite a lot, who said:

“You can find nothing in the French constitution about migration, and there is almost nothing in the European treaties. For 30 or 40 years, there’s a kind of interpretation that is always in favour of the migrants … We have to rewrite something in the … treaties or in”


the European Convention on Human Rights. Is he wrong?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, has my noble friend seen the reports in the newspapers that civil servants in the Home Office are deciding that they cannot comply with Ministers’ policy declarations because they are in breach of the Civil Service Code? Is this not a rather alarming development, if true, and can my noble friend tell us exactly what is going on in the Home Office?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I have seen those reports, and I certainly have seen nothing of the sort from any civil servants.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the recent decision of the Supreme Court is a decision of a domestic court, not a foreign one? Does he also agree that its rationale was predominantly based on not the European convention but the refugee convention and various domestic statutes?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Yes, I agree with both those comments.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, would it not make much more sense if we talked to the French a little more about processing applicants in France, rather than all this rubbish talk about Rwanda?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend raises this subject fairly frequently. In March, the Prime Minister and President Macron agreed the largest-ever deal with France to tackle small boat crossings, building on our existing co-operation. As a result of this deal, we have seen a significant uplift of personnel deployed to tackle small boats across northern France and the procurement of new, cutting-edge surveillance technologies and equipment to detect and respond to crossing attempts. So far, over the last calendar year, those efforts—as I have said many times from the Dispatch Box—have stopped, I think, 22,000 attempted crossings. It is probably more by now.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister perhaps used the wrong word when he told the House that Monsieur Darmanin had made a decision. He expressed a view; there is in fact a Bill going through the French Parliament at the moment on immigration, and presumably a great deal will depend on what that says.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the information I have, which comes from a newspaper report in Le Monde, is that on 14 November the French deported a 39 year-old Uzbek international, even though the ECHR had ruled against it. They did so without waiting for the administrative courts to rule on the case.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister assist me? I heard on the “Today” programme this morning that one thing being considered by government—I am not asking him to guess what might be in forthcoming legislation—is that the UK would send to Rwanda people to process the applications and consider their legality, and that if the decision was not to grant asylum, the individuals concerned would be returned to the UK. Why would we waste all that money on airfares if we are simply saying that we will process people but in another country?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Lord said that he is not asking me to guess what is in the legislation, but he just has.

Violence Against Women and Girls

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how they propose to prioritise reducing violence against women and girls both domestically and internationally.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, we are absolutely committed to tackling violence against women and girls at home and abroad. We passed our landmark Domestic Abuse Act and are delivering the Tackling Violence against Women & Girls strategy and the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan to help keep women and girls safe. Internationally, we are making progress through our flagship “What works to prevent violence” programme and pioneering work to end child marriage and female genital mutilation.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister. He will recognise that this Question was tabled in recognition of White Ribbon Day, which was just over a week ago. What additional resources have the Government deployed since last year’s White Ribbon Day to give greater support to victims of sexualised violence in our domestic criminal justice and asylum systems? What support have they given to international mechanisms charged with investigating and prosecuting sexualised violence as a weapon of war?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

On noble Baroness’s second question, the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative is a key focus for the UK. We are a global leader on this. We have committed £60 million since the launch of this programme in 2012. In November 2022, the UK hosted an international PSVI conference with over 1,000 attendees. A political declaration came out of that, which was endorsed by 53 countries. It sends a clear message that these types of crimes must end and sets out steps on how to achieve that. We have also launched the PSVI strategy, which sets out how the UK will work to drive global action to prevent and respond to CRSV—conflict-related sexual violence—and that includes sanctions. I refer noble Lords to my noble friend Lord Ahmad’s comments on that in June. Regarding the domestic picture, significant amounts of money and resource have been committed. I am sure I will be answering more questions on that shortly.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister share the widespread outrage at the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence by Hamas in Israel on 7 October? Does he also share the widespread outrage that so many individuals and groups who do such excellent work in combating sexual violence have remained silent until now—almost two months since those outrages? Can he think of any reason why in this respect Jewish women do not matter?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, this is a very sensitive subject. I found Christina Lamb’s article in the Sunday Times very distressing and upsetting, but very powerful. Why did it take the UN so long to condemn those actions? The words of Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who was quoted in the article, deserve mentioning:

“It’s mindblowing. We were there for our sisters when terrible things happened across the ocean, when they took away abortion rights in US, the killing of women in Iran, the abduction of Yazidis … but with us they looked away and I can’t think of a reasonable answer”.


Unfortunately, I can think of an unreasonable answer, and it disgusts me. From a personal point of view, I hope the perpetrators get what is coming to them—and believe me, I do not mean sanctions.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I say to the Minister and all noble Lords who have raised concerns that I can never look away from rape as a weapon of war, whoever commits that violence. It is really important that we stand together with those who were victims of rape on 7 October, just as I do with all those still being raped all over the world in the name of war and conflicts. I am deeply unhappy about what is happening to women seeking services in this country. Also, we cannot look away from such detrimental violence perpetrated on the children, girls and women of Palestine, from which they may never recover.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that was a question.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will have seen the reports of unaccompanied migrant children being placed in hotels. Many of them have disappeared and the fear is that they are being sexually exploited. Why does the Children Act 1989 not apply to these children once they are in this country?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, this is an entirely separate subject, as noble Lords know. I accept the premise of the question, but I am going to come back to the noble Lord. There is another Question on this tomorrow where we can go into much more detail.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

I want to say how powerful I thought the Minister’s reply a couple of questions ago was and commend the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, on pointing out the role that men can play in raising the issue of domestic violence against women and girls by calling it out. We know that the root cause of violence against women and girls all over the world is inequality, which is getting worse, with previous strides forward being reversed while our budget—particularly for overseas aid—is diminished. What thinking outside the box have the Government done to reduce inequalities and do more with less?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, it is about how you do things. I have already referred to a few of the things the Government have done, and a significant amount of money is being invested into this area to improve outcomes for victims. Since 2010, we have criminalised forced marriage; criminalised revenge porn; criminalised failing to protect a girl from FGM; introduced Clare’s law, which is a domestic violence disclosure scheme; introduced two new stalking offences; introduced the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour; introduced legislation that recognises as victims children who see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse and are related to the perpetrator or victim; and criminalised virginity testing and hymenoplasty. There is so much more that the Government have done; it is not all about money.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

The Minister mounted a stout defence about the issues of 7 October, which he was right to do. I was proud to be at the conference organised by the noble Lord, Lord Hague, on sexual violence in conflict. It was an important moment for the UK. I am proud of our leadership in tackling violence against women and girls across the world. How will the Minister and his colleagues ensure that the perpetrators are held to account by putting pressure on the United Nations? How could the UK support the victims of these appalling crimes?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises two interesting points. I hope that we will support the victims by providing forensic expertise and other skills, as we have in other conflicts around the world. Obviously, the perpetrators have to be caught, and I believe that extensive efforts are under way to catch them. On the longer-term approach, I do not know, but if she would like to chat about it I will happily take her suggestions back to the department.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

What are His Majesty’s Government doing to ensure that girls are not taken out of the country to undergo FGM? Is preventing FGM still a priority in our international development policy?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to tell my noble friend that, yes, it is. Child abuse is a crime, and we will not tolerate this practice, which causes extreme and lifelong physical and psychological suffering to women and girls. Our focus remains on preventing these crimes from happening, supporting and protecting survivors and those at risk, and bringing perpetrators to justice. As my noble friend will be aware, in 2015 we strengthened the law on FGM, which is now an offence. We also extended the reach of extraterritorial offences, introduced lifelong anonymity for victims, introduced civil FGM protection orders and introduced a mandatory reporting duty for known cases. I am pleased to say that there have been two prosecutions for this, one as recently as October, and I believe that sentencing is still awaited—a lot is being done.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lord Pannick on his question, and I commend the Minister’s answer. I will bring us back to the domestic: Christmas is a time when many of us look forward to being with our families, but unfortunately that is not the case for those who suffer from domestic abuse and violence. Given that, will the Minister acknowledge the operation, and the work behind it, by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Translink and Retail NI, coming up to Christmas, so that they recognise violence against women and girls in a proactive way?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to do that and to announce that the pilot sites for domestic abuse protection notices and prevention orders have been chosen. This will extend the police’s operations across the country when they commence in the spring of 2024. There is a lot more to anticipate on this subject—I hope that we will see things progress in the right direction.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 (Port Examination Code of Practice) Regulations 2023

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 16 October be approved.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, in moving that the House approves this statutory instrument, I will also speak to the National Security Act 2023 (Video Recording with Sound of Interviews and Associated Code of Practice) Regulations 2023 and the National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendments of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2023. All three of these instruments, which were laid on 16 October and debated in the other place on 29 November, relate to measures in the National Security Act.

The National Security Act, which received Royal Assent this July, is the most significant piece of legislation to tackle the increase of state-based threats to our nation in a century. It brings together vital new measures to protect the British public, modernise counterespionage laws and address the evolving threat to our national security. In essence, it provides our world-class law enforcement and intelligence agencies with new and updated tools to do their critical work. We should bring the powers in the Act into force as soon as possible to protect this country. These instruments are an important part of making that happen. Once they are approved and come into force, we can also bring into force Parts 1 to 3 of the Act.

To be clear, these regulations do not create new powers or make changes to primary legislation which has already been approved by Parliament. They are merely supportive of the powers in primary legislation and ensure that the legislation can be implemented effectively and proportionately.

The National Security Act 2023 (Video Recording with Sound of Interviews and Associated Code of Practice) Regulations 2023 create a new code of practice to govern the videorecording of individuals arrested under the Act. Schedule 6 to the Act requires that any interview by a constable of a person detained using the arrest powers in Section 27 must be videorecorded with sound and that the videorecording must be carried out in accordance with the code of practice. This mirrors the requirement for anyone interviewed following an arrest under equivalent terrorism legislation. The code of practice has been based closely on the terrorism equivalent and provides guidance on how interviews should be conducted—for example, with guidance on sealing the recordings of videos, taking breaks during interviews and conducting interviews with deaf people or those who do not understand English.

The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 (Port Examination Code of Practice) Regulations 2023 make an update to the existing code of practice governing the exercise of the port examination power in Schedule 3 to that Act. This power allows accredited counterterrorism police officers to stop and examine individuals to determine whether a person at a port or border area is or has been involved in malign activity on behalf of a state. The amendment to the code of practice simply reflects a change made by the National Security Act. It requires a counterterrorism police officer of at least the rank of superintendent to authorise the retention of copies of confidential business material instead of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. This change brings the process into line with the equivalent power in terrorism legislation, where it has proven effective and avoided undue burdens on the system.

It is worth noting that the Government carried out a statutory public consultation on the changes to this code and the creation of the videorecording code from 20 July to 31 August. Consultees generally acknowledged that these codes were key to ensuring that police officers have clear guidance on the powers and that the powers are used fairly and proportionately. However, where appropriate, we made further minor changes to meet the concerns of some consultees. For example, following feedback from Scottish policing on the videorecording code, we made minor amendments to ensure that it is consistent with Scottish policing practice and procedure. The full response to this consultation can be found on GOV.UK.

The final instrument in the package is the National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendments of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2023. This makes consequential amendments to primary legislation using the power in Section 95 of the National Security Act. Although some consequential amendments are made in Schedule 18 to the Act, the power in Section 95 allows any further amendments to be made as a consequence of the provisions in the National Security Act.

Consequential amendments are a standard part of new legislation. They are required to ensure existing legislation is up to date to reflect changes brought about by the National Security Act. They are not substantive amendments but simply consequential on the creation of the National Security Act.

Several of the amendments concern the Official Secrets Acts 1911, 1920 and 1939, which the National Security Act replaces and repeals. References to those Acts in other legislation are updated to reference the relevant provisions in the National Security Act or, where appropriate, repealed entirely. This includes references to the prohibited places regime in the Official Secrets Act 1911 or the preparatory conduct offence under Section 7 of the Official Secrets Act 1920, both of which have been updated and replaced in the National Security Act.

Other amendments made through this instrument account for other powers and offences created in the National Security Act. For example, amendments to the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 account for search and seizure powers created by Schedule 2 to the National Security Act.

To sum up, these instruments simply support primary legislation which has already been agreed by Parliament. Passing them is an important step to bringing this primary legislation into force. I commend them to the House. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

We support these SIs, but some clarity would be helpful, if the Minister can respond to those questions as fully as he can.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions. I will do my best to answer the detailed questions and, if inadvertently I miss any, I will definitely write. This subject matter is technical, but the debate, as ever, has been interesting.

The powers under Schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 help to protect the public, as I have explained. They allow an officer to stop, question and, when necessary, detain and search individuals and goods travelling through UK ports and the border area, for the purpose of determining whether the person appears to be somebody who is or has been engaged in malign activity on behalf of a state. As has been noted, only officers who have been accredited as having successfully completed relevant training can use these Schedule 3 powers. The changes to authorisation for copies of confidential business material come into force at midnight on 20 December this year. After that point, examining officers will seek authorisation from an officer of at least the rank of superintendent to copy and retain business material of this type. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and the police have been consulted on the date and they are very well prepared for the changes.

I have outlined the timeframe, scope and response of the public consultation on these codes in my opening remarks. The full details of the consultation and the Government’s response can be found on GOV.UK. The Government’s approach to consultation was in accordance with the requirements of the primary legislation. We considered that the six-week consultation was appropriate, given the changes to Schedule 3 on the port stop code were relatively minor and followed changes to primary legislation and the National Security Act video recording code closely followed existing precedent.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked when the hour started. As far as I am aware—and I will correct this if I am wrong—it starts from the moment of examination, but no one can be detained for more than six hours anyway. On the question about recruitment, that is still under way, as far as I know, but announcements will be forthcoming as soon as possible. Counterterrorism officers are carefully trained in the use of their powers. There are safeguards in place relating to children which are set out in the code. Careful safeguards are also in place for strip-searches in the code. Individuals can also have an interpreter as necessary.

I think that I have answered the questions so, in closing, I reiterate that these instruments provide essential supporting materials and updates to allow the National Security Act to come into force. They do not provide substantive changes to the primary legislation that has already been agreed in Parliament. They will help the police to use the powers in a proportionate and consistent manner in accordance with the primary legislation. These consequential amendments will ensure that existing primary legislation continues to function properly after the commencement of the National Security Act. I commend these regulations to the House.

Motion agreed.

National Security Act 2023 (Video Recording with Sound of Interviews and Associated Code of Practice) Regulations 2023

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 16 October be approved.

Motion agreed.

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

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for her regret Motion, the moving and articulate way in which she put her case and the very serious questions that she raised and points that she made. We owe her a debt of gratitude for bringing it forward.

As many noble Lords have pointed out, we have before us a very important SI of many pages, which raises many significant issues for us to think about and discuss. It is only with a regret Motion that this Chamber gets this opportunity to do that—and there is a wider question for us about how secondary legislation has huge impacts on our country and the people in it.

Many noble Lords have made significant and important points. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, logically and methodically pointed out the distinction between the naturalisation process and the process of citizenship. I know that the Labour Government to whom he referred tried to address that in the British Nationality Act 1948, which became law in 1949. It was in reference to that that I was nodding. He made the important point that the Minister will have to look at how the Government are distinguishing between those two things—or are they just ignoring it?

My noble friend Lady Primarolo logically and movingly put the case for what citizenship means, the rights of someone born here, and how that generates citizenship rights that we should respect. She talked about the difference between that and somebody going through the other process, which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, mentioned. That is a very important matter, which we look forward to the Minister explaining to us. I congratulate my noble friend on that—and, to be fair, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who brought it up as well.

As has been pointed out, this policy of immigration fees has been used for many years, but that does not mean that the proportionality and fairness of, or the rationale for, these significant rises in fees payable for most immigration services cannot be questioned or debated. The fee increases that we are looking at have been very significant, with a 15% or 20% increase for most fees and many facing a much bigger increase. For example, there is a 35% increase for student visa fees, for applications made outside the UK. There are also arrangements for a new electronic travel authorisation for all non-British or Irish passengers visiting or transiting through the UK who do not need a visa, who have to obtain permission first and pay a fee of £10. It is important for the Government to say whether they will assess the impact of that new ETA arrangement. Although the immigration health charge increase of 66% is not included in this instrument, can the Minister update us on any progress with it?

The Home Office tells us that the rationale for changes is to

“significantly increase the income generated through immigration and nationality fees for the purpose of meeting costs within the wider migration and borders system”.

Can the Minister explain that in more detail? Can he also say why the overall increase is well above the rate of inflation? The Home Office justification is to say “Well, we haven’t raised them significantly since 2018”. Why have a policy of small increases for a number of years followed by a huge increase in another year? Why not increase them proportionately, rather than have the massive increase that we see this year?

What assessment have the Government made of the various groups affected by these changes? A number of noble Lords made that point. In other words, what is the human cost of the changes that the Government are bringing forward? Can the Minister clarify, for the avoidance of doubt, another question that has been asked: how much do fees currently raise? What is the unit cost for the processing of an individual application compared with the fee charged? How much additional income will the rise in fees actually raise? What is the total cost of the system this year and the predicted cost next year? It is very difficult to find, in any of the information I have looked at, the exact figures the Government are using to justify the fees and the overall cost of the system.

Given the impact of fees on various migrants, how many applicants are currently covered by the fee waiver scheme and what numbers are predicted in future? This was another point made by a number of noble Lords.

As the noble Lord, Lord German, and others pointed out, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee makes considerable criticism of the Home Office for breaking the 21-day rule by bringing the SI into force on 4 October—19 days after the laying of the instrument rather than 21 days. I think your Lordships can understand why a proper process is so important, given the interest in this debate. I point out to the Minister that 21 days is not a maximum but a minimum, so that noble Lords can discuss this. Can he explain why this happened, given that it is, I think, the third time it has happened? Which Minister signed it off, and have they been told that it is unacceptable? The Minister will get up and say, “We’re very sorry and we need to do something about it”, but it is a process that seems to be happening time and again. It is simply not good enough.

Alongside that, can the Minister explain why the Explanatory Memorandum and the equalities impact assessment were not published in time to go alongside this SI? They have now been published but they were not published at the appropriate times. These failings of process are happening time and again. I think the Minister will agree, because I know he understands the importance of process and frankly, to be fair to him, does his best to ensure that the proper process is followed, that this is extremely important given the various points made in this debate.

As we discuss this important SI, there has been yet another statement on migration. Are the Government sure that their assessment of the impacts on vulnerable migrants is accurate? Are they sure that these fee changes will not have an adverse impact on skills shortages for UK businesses, including in the NHS and in care sectors, for example? As I said, fees have long played a part in the overall immigration systems, but they need to do so in a fair, principled and proportionate way, which means that many of today’s questions need full and frank answers from the Government.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, who tabled this debate and has given us the opportunity to discuss these important issues. Before I address the points raised, I will summarise how fees are set and the role of Parliament in setting fees for immigration and nationality applications.

It is important to emphasise that the Home Office cannot set or amend fee levels without obtaining the approval of Parliament. This ensures that there are checks and balances in place and full parliamentary oversight of the fees regime. Immigration and nationality fees can be set only within the limits specified by the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order, which include the maximum fee levels that can be charged on each application type or service. This is laid in Parliament and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

Individual fee levels are calculated in line with Managing Public Money principles and the powers provided by the Immigration Act 2014. Specific fees are set out in regulations, which are then presented to Parliament and subject to the negative procedure. The regulations laid by the Government in September increased fees across a number of immigration and nationality routes, including those for people seeking to visit the UK as a visitor and the majority of fees for entry clearance and for certain applications for leave to remain in the UK, including those for work and study.

Noble Lords are aware of the Government’s intention that those who use and benefit from the migration and borders system should contribute to its funding. In that, I agree with my noble friend Lady Altmann. The burden of operating the system should not unduly fall on the UK taxpayer. To answer directly the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, that is not profiteering—it is protecting the interests of the British taxpayer.

The increases that came into effect in October were, in the majority of cases, the first substantial increases made since 2018. They are proportionate when considered against wider price trends in the intervening period, to answer the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. At a time of high inflation and record migration, it is important to ensure that the system is sustainably funded. The recent increases have led to the raising of some concerns in the House around the impact on the UK economy and the potential for people to be deterred from visiting, working in and studying in the UK. As I have already set out, the Government’s policy is that the cost of operating the migration and borders system is to be funded by those who use it. This policy is at the heart of the decision to increase fees.

The Government have published an economic impact assessment—I will come back to this—alongside the regulations, setting out their potential impacts. The Government keep fees under review and will continue to monitor the position, but there is limited evidence to date that fee increases have impacted on the number of people coming to visit, work in and study in the UK. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the best interests of the child were considered in the economic impact assessment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also raised concerns about the potential for people to fall out of lawful immigration status and face significant debt and precarity. Those who are in the UK on family and human rights routes can be assured that these regulations made no changes to the provision of existing waivers and exceptions from the need to pay application fees in a number of specific circumstances. That includes affordability-based waivers for entry clearance and leave to remain on family and human rights grounds, which ensures that families unable to afford the fee are not prevented from making an application to enter or remain in the UK. Additionally, for children seeking to register as a British citizen, an affordability waiver was introduced in 2022 and has improved access to British citizenship for children who may face issues in paying the application fee. I say to my noble friend Lord Moylan that I will come back to this subject in a second.

These provisions ensure that the Home Office’s immigration and nationality fee structure complies with international obligations and wider government policy. We believe it represents the right balance between protecting the integrity of the department’s funding model and helping to facilitate access to immigration and nationality products and services, including for the most vulnerable. I note the concerns raised about the potential for these fee increases to increase the operational burden on the Home Office. We acknowledge that the recent increase may see more people seeking a fee waiver, but the Home Office has an obligation to ensure that the integrity of the migration and borders system’s funding model is maintained. I hope that provides at least some reassurance that those who cannot afford the fee will not be prevented from making an application to enter or remain in the UK on human and family rights grounds.

As I said earlier, in recent years the Government have taken steps to ensure that the fee for children seeking to register as British citizens is not a barrier to them making an application, through the provision of the waiver on the basis of affordability and the fee exception for children who are looked after by local authorities. Adult registration applications do not have a waiver available, but most of the applications for registration are made by children.

On the breach of the 21-day rule, I say to the noble Lord, Lord German, that—in comparing this with discussions about the treaty—there is a significant difference between primary and secondary legislation. On this particular rule, I regret that it was late. The scheduled date of commencement of fee increases was 4 October, in view of a planned laying date of 13 September, with the commencement date used as the basis for wider communications and delivery planning activity. However, late amendment to the regulations meant that this was not possible. Given that delaying the commencement date would have cost the department an estimated loss of additional revenue of about £2 million—a significant amount, which would have impacted priority functions—and that further changes to updated front-end systems would be needed at some additional cost and delay, it was determined that the original commencement date should be maintained.