National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this Bill is clearly necessary. I welcome the intentions behind it, but I want to focus on some of its weaker provisions, specifically Clauses 13 and 14, Clauses 29 and 30 and Part 3.

In Clause 30, the definition of “foreign power” is extremely broad, covering all foreign states except Ireland, including political parties in government and agencies that are subject to effective control by government. Last week in Westminster Hall, I was talking to some Canadian Liberal MPs, currently in the governing party. On the face of it, under the provisions of Clause 30 and Part 3, I in should have declared that interaction to the Home Office. Do I need to fill in a form every time I go to meetings with like-minded politicians from foreign Liberal parties? We need to find some way of narrowing the definition of “foreign power” to prevent overwhelming the Home Office and confusing the many, many British people who interact with representatives of other foreign states. Should we not amend the Bill to exclude all members of NATO, or all states with which the UK has a security relationship?

How do we tackle foreign powers that are deeply embedded in British life, such as the Gulf states? These are anti-democratic monarchies, with a record which includes kidnapping their nationals on British soil and murdering their critics in third countries, but they are visibly present at Ascot and Newmarket, with houses in Belgravia and estates in Surrey, mixing and conversing with British society at the highest level, including MPs and Members of this House—more difficult to disentangle than the Russian connection of which the ISC report warned.

Clauses 13 and 14 deal with foreign interference in British politics and elections. I find it astonishing that action is now proposed in response to what the Government rightly recognise as a serious threat without their having followed the recommendation of the Intelligence and Security Committee to publish a substantial part of the evidence it had collected on Russian interference. When I asked an Oral Question about this last year, the noble Lord, Lord True, told the House that the Russia report had found no evidence of “successful interference” in UK elections—an admission that they had indeed found evidence of attempts to subvert our democratic processes but were nevertheless refusing to publish it.

This is not a dead issue. Mrs Justice Steyn, giving her judgment in the libel case Arron Banks brought against the journalist Carole Cadwalladr in June this year, stated that Mr Banks had lied about his meeting with the Russians, that at least some of the meetings were covert, and that more investigation was needed into whether the Brexit campaign had accepted any funds from Russia. Earlier this year, Mr Banks reportedly wrote off a further loan of £7 million to Leave.EU when it went into liquidation. The source of the funds for his remarkable generosity over the last seven years remains unclear, except that it came from somewhere foreign. If we are to have an informed debate in Committee, the Government must now publish what the ISC recommended we should be told.

The Minister in the Commons spoke in Committee of the importance of Parliament and the public understanding and the nature of the threat. That would help us understand the nature of the threat that we recognise so far.

I have asked for advice on the interaction between Clause 14 and the Elections Act, which this House considered earlier in the year. That Act extends the right to vote in UK elections to all UK citizens resident in all other states in the world for their lifetimes. There is little provision to check the identity or status of overseas citizens applying for the register; personation will be easy, the origins of donations almost impossible to verify. This Act takes a much tougher approach, against personation, misuse of proxies and acting as a channel for funds from a foreign power. I welcome that, but Tom Tugendhat’s new Defending Democracy Taskforce, which he announced the other week, will need to rewrite parts of the Elections Act.

The Act’s references to undue influence in UK diaspora communities also raise delicate and sensitive issues that we will need to examine. I speak as someone who has done a lot of politics in Bradford. The Israeli embassy and the Indian and Pakistani high commissions, for example, work actively to maintain the links between British diaspora communities and the states they represent. Britain has many diaspora communities, and many dual nationals who have settled here, from hostile authoritarian states as well as from Commonwealth members and democracies—Iran, for example. So far as I am aware, the UK has no coherent policy on the legal rights and obligations of dual nationals, either when in the UK or in their other countries of citizenship. This suggests that greater clarity there is badly needed.

Part 3, which establishes a foreign influence registration scheme, was added in Committee in the Commons. Sir Iain Duncan Smith remarked in Committee:

“The Government seem almost to have cut and pasted some of the US legislation and possibly the Australian legislation.”—[Official Report, Commons, 16/11/22; col. 747.]


The Minister must be aware that the Australian legislation led to an unanticipated surge in reports of “foreign activity arrangements” by Australia’s eight research-intensive universities, which overwhelmed the Government’s capacity to process submissions. The UK has a great many more research-intensive universities than Australia, which are actively involved in research partnerships across the world. We also have world-renowned research institutes in Chatham House, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Royal United Services Institute and others. As it stands, Clause 62 would lead to a flood of reports from all of these to the Home Office, far beyond its limited capacity to cope.

I speak with passion on this subject because it would have hobbled my own career. I was director of research at Chatham House for 12 years from 1978 to 1990, and thereafter taught international relations at Oxford and then the LSE. At Chatham House, among other things, I was the British secretary of the Anglo-Soviet Round Table, a forum for dialogue with the Moscow institute for world affairs—a state-controlled entity close to the Politburo. Our engagement was supported by the Foreign Office but repeatedly attacked as subversive by the Murdoch press throughout that period.

My wife would still be caught by this clause. She keeps in touch with, and visits, several former students who are now in government in several countries across Europe. Some of her visits have no doubt been paid for from state funds in those countries. My son would be caught, too. He is a systems biologist at Edinburgh University, involved in a number of international collaborations with universities in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, and with the government-funded Institut Pasteur in Paris. When attached to an American university, he was working closely with Russian mathematicians. They and thousands more academics and researchers will be filling in forms and sending them off to the Home Office. What do we do about the many foreign nationals working in UK universities? Over 40% of the staff in some of our top universities—the figure is higher in the London School of Economics—and a good deal more of the students in some of our universities are from a wide range of friendly and unfriendly countries.

I have been told that the proposals in Part 3 were floated by the Home Office before and then withdrawn after sustained criticism from other Whitehall departments and outside bodies. I have the strong impression that the Home Office has not considered the overlap and duplication of this provision with clauses in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which the House will consider on Report tomorrow. I understand that there has been very little consultation with universities so far. One academic told me yesterday that the Bill as currently drafted will transform the UK from a science superpower to a scientific bureaucracy superpower.

A concern with real threats must nevertheless consider that Britain’s universities are among its greatest international assets and that Clause 62, as drafted, could severely damage their reputations and future operations. Can the Minister assure the House that Part 3 will not be considered in Committee until the Home Office has ensured that other Whitehall departments are content with what is proposed; that it does not contradict other Bills or Acts; and that our research universities, our leading international institutes, the Royal Society and the other academies have all been properly consulted on its implications?

The Bill focuses on state threats, rather than on non-state threats. It is fuzzy on quasi-state enterprises—companies owned by sovereign wealth funds in Malaysia or Qatar, or companies with a substantial and sometimes controversial presence in the UK, such as DP World—and does not touch on the role of immensely wealthy private persons, whether Russian, American, Arab or Asian, attempting to influence events in the UK by penetrating British society and through money.

Right-wing authoritarians such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary have made much of what they regard as the malign influence of George Soros and his open society foundations. I am concerned about the malign influence of the American Koch family foundations and their attempts to influence British politics through their close links with right-wing think tanks here. I read footnotes to Koch foundation publications in the Policy Exchange papers that shaped the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Policy Exchange does not publish where its funds come from. Nor does the Institute of Economic Affairs or the Adam Smith Institute, which together exerted such strong and malign influence over the Truss Government. We know, however, that they have received funds from American multinational companies and foundations, and we have a right to know more about all their foreign funders.

The Boardman review of the fallout from the Greensill scandal in 2020 recommended to the Government that they

“should consult on whether think tanks, research institutes and lobbying academics should be required to disclose their sources of funding and whether there are circumstances when they ought to be required to register as consultant lobbyists.”

I am surprised that this proposal is not in the Bill, at least as far as foreign funding is concerned. I will attempt to amend the Bill to force political think tanks to declare all overseas sources of funding.

This is an important and necessary Bill but it has been badly drafted and inadequately thought through. It is better to get it right than to rush it on to the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all who have contributed to what has been a very constructive and instructive debate. I welcome the broad support that has been shared across the House. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, for his supportive comments on the foreign influence registration scheme. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, and others in this House who engaged us in such a constructive and supportive manner, in both this debate and the engagement sessions we have run over recent weeks.

I turn to some of the specific points that have been raised. I ought to crave your Lordships’ indulgence because this will not be a short speech; it will be a sincere effort to address all the key points in full, and not a cynical attempt to bore all noble Lords to tears. Starting with interaction between this Bill and the Online Safety Bill, which was referenced by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Ponsonby, the Government are obviously aware that we have overtaken that Bill in its passage, and we will ensure that the links between the Bills have the desired effect.

A central element of a number of offences in the Bill, alongside the foreign power condition, is the test of the safety and interests of the UK. This test is one way that legitimate activity is excluded from the scope of relevant offences. In considering any prosecution in relation to the offences to which the provisions regarding prejudice to the safety and interests of the UK apply, the court will consider the nature of the risk to the safety or interests of the UK. Case law already makes clear that

“the safety or interests of the United Kingdom”

should be interpreted as the objects of state policy determined by the Crown on the advice of Ministers. This is notably different from protecting the particular interests of those in office.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, questioned the scope of the foreign power condition in the Bill. The foreign power condition provides a single and consistent means by which a link to a foreign power can be made for the purposes of the offences of obtaining or disclosing protected information, trade secrets offences, sabotage, foreign interference and the state threats aggravating factor. The foreign power condition can be met in two scenarios: first, where a person is acting for or on behalf of a foreign power and, secondly, where a person intends that their conduct will benefit a foreign power. I reassure the House that this will not capture people who do not know, and could not possibly know, that they were acting for a foreign power. Rather, Clause 29 requires that a person knows, or ought reasonably to know, that their conduct is being carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power, or they must intend to benefit a foreign power. Of course, where our authorities consider a person to be carrying out harmful activity with a state link, this can be drawn to a person’s attention, providing a strong deterrent effect against a person continuing with that activity.

The Bill follows the Law Commission’s recommendation to replace the existing link of an “enemy”, as set out in the Official Secrets Act 1911, with a definition of a “foreign power”. We agree that incidental or tangential links to financial or other assistance from a foreign power will not suffice to meet the foreign power condition in relation to harmful conduct. Those who receive funding from foreign powers to carry out legitimate activities would not meet the foreign power condition if they were entirely separate to that funding to undertake activity covered by one of the offences in the Bill. The other place passed an amendment on Report to put it beyond doubt that any financial or other assistance must be clearly linked to the illegitimate conduct in question.

The noble Lord raised the matter of the Home Secretary. All I will say is that she has provided a detailed account of the steps she took in her letter to the HASC. I will not make further comment as this matter has been dealt with in detail at other times.

Oversight was discussed at length in the other place, as it has been today, and in the helpful engagement sessions I have held with colleagues. Although we already have oversight mechanisms in place for Part 2 of the Bill, the Government have committed to consider whether any additional oversight is required for state threats legislation. We have been considering whether it is possible to extend oversight beyond Part 2 in a way which does not duplicate or unhelpfully interfere with the responsibilities and functions of the existing mechanisms governing both the UK intelligence agencies and the police. Should we decide to extend oversight of the Bill beyond Part 2, it is important that we do not create any confusion or uncertainty. We are currently exploring the different options for appointing an individual to oversee Part 2, along with our work to consider whether there is merit in expanding oversight beyond it. It is crucial that whoever is appointed has relevant experience and skills and can provide an objective assessment of the offences and powers to ensure appropriate and transparent scrutiny.

Many have raised concerns regarding the Serious Crime Act amendment in Clause 28 of the Bill. I know there will be general understanding of why I cannot go into detail on operational issues in this place; however, let me reassure the House that the Government have been working with the UK intelligence community—or UKIC—which has now provided an operational briefing to the Intelligence and Security Committee outlining examples of why this measure is needed. The committee has acknowledged the need for the SCA to be amended and appreciates our reasoning for seeking changes, though it is not yet in full agreement on the way the problem is being addressed. I thank the committee for its engagement on this matter and welcome a collaborative dialogue going forward. I want to be clear that the Government have heard noble Lords’ concerns and will look carefully at what can be done to tackle these issues. I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke on this clause and thank them for their thoughts. I look forward to further discussions to find the right way forward.

Let me turn to why the SCA amendment is necessary. Collaboration with international partners is a vital element of the national security work carried out by the Armed Forces and UKIC. To support this crucial work, a number of safeguards and processes are in place to ensure that this collaboration is necessary, proportionate and prevents potential wrongdoing. For example, the Government remain committed to the Fulford principles and overseas security and justice assistance guidance, which exist to ensure that our officers do not knowingly support unlawful activity. Further, UKIC’s regulatory compliance is monitored by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s office via regular inspections and routinely scrutinised by the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The UK has one of the most rigorous intelligence oversight regimes in world. There are several internal safeguards and processes in place which manage the way that UKIC and the Armed Forces work with and exchange information with international partners to prevent potential wrongdoing. Operational decisions are carefully recorded and made with the benefit of regular advice from specialist legal advisers to ensure compliance with domestic and international law. Intelligence officers receive mandatory training on the legal frameworks and policies which govern UKIC and Armed Forces activity. These policies include the Fulford principles, the compliance with which is assessed by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner annually and reported to the Prime Minister. UKIC’s regulatory compliance is also monitored by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s office via regular inspections and routinely scrutinised by the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The Serious Crime Act offences mean that individuals who have complied with all those safeguards—working under authorisation and in the interests of UK national security—may fear personal criminal liability. It is not right or fair to expect this risk to sit with trusted individuals who are acting in good faith and on behalf of our intelligence services or Armed Forces for authorised purposes. Instead, responsibility should sit with those organisations at an institutional level, where it is subject to executive, judicial and parliamentary oversight.

I want to be absolutely clear: Clause 28 is not a broad, general immunity from criminal offences and not about allowing the Government to carry out torture or commit murder. Rather, the Government are making an amendment to provide a targeted protection which better facilitates co-operation with our key overseas partners. At present, despite being satisfied that all other domestic and international law obligations are met, essential intelligence sharing with partners has been delayed or prevented in order to protect individual officers from potential liability for SCA offences. This is a having a chilling effect across UKIC and the Armed Forces, reducing the confidence of officers who make vital national security decisions every day. As a country, that means that we are less safe, because reciprocal access to intelligence facilitated by joint working is crucial to responding to the threats we face, such as terrorism.

This amendment is not about letting UKIC and the Armed Forces do whatever they want. It is about ensuring that we are protecting those working for us from prosecution and giving them the confidence that the Government have their backs. When things go wrong, it is entirely right that there is scrutiny of and accountability for the organisation’s activities, and I commend the important work of the ISC and IPCO in this space. Meanwhile, any individual found to be working beyond the proper functions of the security and intelligence agencies or the Armed Forces will remain personally liable for those actions. That is right and fair.

I have full confidence, however, in those to whom we are providing protection, including our intelligence agencies. They are expert, professional and highly trained individuals, whose judgment and skill we respect and have faith in. Not taking the opportunity to provide those individuals with assurances that they are protected would be an abdication of our responsibility to support them in keeping our country safe.

The noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, asked why the SCA is necessary, given Section 7 of the Intelligence Services Act, which authorises the “reasonable” defence. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, also raised a point on those matters, so I shall try to deal with them now. While we consider that properly authorised activity to protect national security should be interpreted as being reasonable for the purposes of the existing defence to the Serious Crime Act offences, the application of the reasonable defence to UKIC and Armed Forces activity is untested. The Government believe that UKIC and the Armed Forces should have a targeted protection that provides far greater clarity and certainty to those tasked carrying out important national security work. Section 7 ISA authorisations are not available in all the circumstances in which the SCA risks arise. Those authorisations primarily apply to overseas activities, meaning that Section 7 could not generally be used to protect officers when carrying out activities in the UK. Section 7 authorisations may be sought only by SIS and GCHQ, and not by MI5 or the MoD.

The foreign influence registration scheme, or FIRS, is being created to tackle covert influence in the UK. It will strengthen the integrity of our systems and enhance the transparency of our political processes, delivering a key recommendation of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 Russia report. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, it can be only right that the UK public and our democratic institutions are appropriately protected from political interference from abroad and better informed as to the scale and extent of foreign influence in our affairs. Russia’s recent attempts to undermine European stability has brought the need for action into sharp focus. That is why the scheme will require the registration of all political influence activities where they are to be carried out in the UK at the direction of a foreign power or entity. It is important to note that the scheme will not impose restrictions on the legitimate activities of people or business. Indeed, it is there to encourage openness and transparency. To be clear: we continue to welcome open and transparent engagement with foreign Governments and entities, and we will ensure that the administrative burden of the registration requirement is kept to a minimum.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, raised two key concerns. First, he suggested that the political tier of FIRS would have a disproportionate impact on academia. That would be the case only when those bodies undertook political influence or activity. Further, no countries are now specified on the enhanced tier, so there is no activity to be registered as it now stands. If the Government list a country, we will consider what activity should be registrable, ensuring that any such registration would be proportionate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, before Committee, could we be told how this new proposal will interact with the National Security and Investment Act, which already acts on universities? Universities are concerned that there will be a double effect, increasing the problems they face and the amount of time they will have to spend on them.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I shall get back to the noble Lord on that point.

To conclude on that issue, these decisions will be subject to parliamentary approval.

Secondly, I assure noble Lords that all the policy in the Bill is subject to collective agreement and has the support of the full Government. It is also important to note that the Government undertook a consultation on the Bill, including FIRS, in the summer of 2021, and ran targeted engagement with industry this summer.

With regard to the specified person measure included in the foreign influence registration scheme, it is important to clarify its necessity. It will offer us three key benefits. First, it will provide the Government with a greater understanding of the scale and extent of activity being carried out on behalf of specified foreign powers and entities. Secondly, it will increase the risk to those who seek to engage in covert activities for specified foreign powers, either directly or through entities. By requiring the registration of relevant arrangements and activities, the risk of engaging in state-threats activity against the UK is increased. Finally, the specified person measures provide a potential option for earlier disruption when there is evidence of a covert arrangement between an individual and a specified foreign power or entity but not disclosable evidence of a more serious state- threats offence. Crucially, this provides an opportunity to prevent harmful activities at the earliest possible stage.

On Clause 3, the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, gave the example of an individual working with Mossad in the UK to recover artefacts looted by the Nazis. In his example, we would expect that the UK would have been made aware of such activity and it is possible that the UK would have made an arrangement with Israel. As such, the activity would have a defence in Clause 3(7)(c)(i).

A number of noble Lords raised the Official Secrets Act 1989, including the noble Lord, Lord West, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. As the House knows, the Government are not planning to reform this Act. It is worth noting that the Law Commission, in evidence to the Bill Committee, clearly explained that it did not envisage that any one statute would implement all its recommendations at once, even if the Government were minded to accept them all. It also did not recommend that a public interest defence be created in relation to the espionage offences in the Bill. We continue to consider the Law Commission’s recommendations on the Official Secrets Act 1989.

On the specific issue of a public interest defence, or PID, to overcome a PID, the Government would need not only to show that the disclosure was damaging but that any harm from a disclosure outweighs the public interest in the disclosure. This would likely mean that in a prosecution, even one where a person clearly had malicious intent, the damage of the original disclosure could be severely compounded. This could lead to even egregious breaches of the Act not being prosecuted due to the sensitive nature of the evidence that the Government would have to reveal to defeat the PID. The Government recognise that there may be situations where an individual has a legitimate need to raise a concern—for example, in situations where there may have been wrongdoing and where they think there is a public interest in disclosing that information—but disclosing information protected by the Official Secrets Act 1989 and then relying on a PID is not the safest or most appropriate way for an individual to raise these concerns and have them rectified. Nor would this address the underlying wrongdoing.

The offences in the National Security Bill target harmful activity by states, not leaks or whistleblowing activity. There are safeguards that prevent the Bill capturing whistleblowers and negate the need or utility of PID. For example, to commit an offence of disclosing protected information, the conduct must be done for or on behalf of, or with the intention to benefit, a foreign power and with a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK. A genuine whistleblower would not meet this bar. Including a PID in any of the offences in Part 1 strongly implies that acts of espionage could be in the public interest. Clearly, acts of espionage against the UK can never be in the public interest.

There are also already several existing internal and external routes in government through which individuals, including government subcontractors or contractors, can raise a concern about information relevant to the Official Secrets Act 1989 safely. The number of routes has increased since 1989. The Government consider that these routes provide safe and effective options for disclosure, although the appropriate route would of course depend on the disclosure in question. These routes include, among others, government departments’ internal policies and processes; a staff counsellor for the national security community; organisational ethics counsellors; the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee; the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office; the Attorney-General’s Office; the Director of Public Prosecutions; and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in instances where an individual suspect’s criminal activity is taking place or has taken place. To sum up, the introduction of a PID would carry significant risks to our national security and do nothing to create a safe or effective route to raise a concern, compared to the many legitimate routes the Government are actively maintaining and improving.

Turning to the report published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, the Government are clear that the offences and powers introduced by the Bill are proportionate and necessary. Through the use of appropriate safeguards and conditions, and reflecting on the need to protect national security and public safety, the offences have been crafted to catch only legitimate activity, ensuring that they remain proportionate. The Government disagree with the overall position of the committee and maintain that the measures in the Bill are appropriately drawn. Our ECHR memorandum, updated on the introduction of the Bill into this House, outlines the government assessment of how our measures comply with human rights law. I look forward to engaging with the committee as the Bill progresses through this House and the Government will respond to the JCHR report in due course. I am sure the noble Baroness would not expect me to speculate on the Bill of Rights Bill and its future.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, asked when the Government will publish the Russia report. I am pleased to be able to tell her that the Government did in July 2020. In fact, I can tell the noble Baroness that our response was published on the very same day; the Bill is a direct response to the recommendations in that report.

In conclusion, I will repeat my earlier thanks to all who have participated today. I look forward to further examination and challenge as we move to Committee, but for now I beg to move.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure from these Benches to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. I am always conscious that I was appointed early to this House after the untimely death of her father when my party needed a foreign policy specialist. I have now been here rather longer than I originally expected.

I want my speech to follow closely what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has said and his quoting of the fine but empty words of the Queen’s Speech:

“Her Majesty’s Government will ensure the constitution is defended.”


We have all seen the drift away from the conventions and practices of constitutional government in recent years, which Members of this House and elsewhere need to resist vigorously. The balance between the legislature and the Executive, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, remarked, has been tipped further in favour of the Government and against their effective accountability to Parliament. I recommend to noble Lords the newly published book from the Institute for Government’s deputy director Hannah White, Held in Contempt: What’s Wrong with the House of Commons?, which sets out in detail the deliberate sidelining of the Commons by both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, and the decline in public respect for Parliament that has enabled them to go so far.

I recommend even more strongly the report by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, which was published two weeks ago and has already been quoted, What Next? The Growing Imbalance between Parliament and the Executive. I urge the Government Front Bench to arrange an early debate on it. The report identifies poor-quality legislation, restriction of parliamentary scrutiny, failure to provide impact assessments, inadequate explanatory memoranda and SIs regularly having to be corrected after they have been published.

More broadly, this raises the question of the role of the Lords as a revising second Chamber. We are here to ask the Government to think again. Our usefulness depends on the Government’s willingness to listen to reasoned criticism and to respond with reasoned answers and, where appropriate, concessions. If the Government refuse to listen and respond to the Lords, we no longer have a useful role. Perhaps in this Session, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, suggested, we need to send back an SI or two to demonstrate that there are limits to what Ministers can get away with.

The size of the Government payroll vote in the Commons and their 80-seat majority, reinforced by the strength of their whipping, allows the Government to treat the Commons with contempt. Badly drafted Bills have been passed to the Lords with little examination since their introduction, and with no amendment. That has increased the pressures on the Lords for reasoned and effective legislative scrutiny. In many of the weeks so far this year, this formerly part-time House has met as a Chamber for longer than the Commons. MPs have briefly considered Bills in timetabled debates and hurried back to their constituencies, leaving us to struggle on.

I found the final stages of the last Session dispiriting. Conservative Peers were whipped as ruthlessly as MPs in the Commons, with threats of removal from committees or loss of the Whip if they exercised their consciences. I heard leading Conservatives dismissing the Cross-Benchers as a bunch of left-wing intellectuals rather than the experts and evidence-seekers they represent. Then, half the Labour Peers went home after one or two votes, rather than pressing the Government to concede on important points. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, when Leader of the Opposition was far more determined to defend legislative authority against the Labour Government, pursuing ping-pong two, three or even four times when necessary. I congratulate the example that he set.

If the Lords can make only occasional and marginal changes to minor legislation, perhaps we should all go home and accept that in our current half-broken constitutional framework there is no useful role for a second Chamber. We depend on the Leader of the House to make the case to her colleagues in government that concessions to reasoned amendments in this House are a constitutional practice that Ministers should respect. We depend on Lords Ministers to persuade their colleagues from time to time to listen and to admit that they may have been mistaken. I wish I were more confident that Lords Ministers in this Government will do so in the face of this populist Prime Minister and his advisers.

The UK is now in a constitutional crisis, as the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, remarked in the Times some weeks ago. The union itself is shaky and will become shakier still if the threat to revoke the Northern Ireland protocol is acted on. The longer our current Prime Minister is here, the more likely it becomes that Scotland will in time drift towards independence. Public respect for Westminster and our central government is lower than in almost every other western democracy except the United States.

This is compounded by the political crisis created by our adversarial political system, which entrenches two established parties, both of which are deeply split, and the dangers to political stability of the aggressive rhetoric of the Government’s dominant right wing. Our Prime Minister and the Australian and US Republican influences he follows, mean that No. 10 is superb at campaigning, but dreadful at governing. This is neither a constitutionalist nor a conservative Government.

I hope that all Members of this House will in this Session defend the constitution, as the Queen’s Speech declared, and defend it when necessary against this constitutionally careless Government.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, Amendment 70A is in my name and I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Hamwee, for their support, and to Kalayaan for its briefings and assistance. We debated this amendment in Committee but are bringing it back because the Government’s response seemed a little unclear on the situation as it occurs on the ground, and we might push them a little further to take overdue action. I will be interested to hear if there is any progress tonight.

The situation faced by overseas domestic workers is a historic wrong which has been allowed to continue for a decade, despite consistent evidence from the sector on what is happening. We need to reiterate from the start that this amendment looks only to restore the previous status quo, from before 2012. We know from the data collected by Kalayaan that, since then, reported levels of abuse of domestic workers have increased significantly. We also know that the Government recognised this as a legitimate problem, which is why new measures were introduced in 2016, as referenced by the Minister in Committee. These included allowing domestic workers to change employer but not to extend their visa, except in the cases of those officially recognised as a victim of people trafficking or modern slavery. The fact that these measures were felt necessary in 2016 is evidence that the Government concede that the abuse and exploitation is real and needs confronting.

Sadly, the evidence of the last six years from Kalayaan shows that while the problem is real, the 2016 solution has not really succeeded in helping at all. Indeed, its evidence shows that abuse and exploitation have continued in exactly the same way as before. For many of the workers in question, the inability to extend their visas when they change employer in practice leaves them trapped. If workers have only a relatively short time remaining on their visa—weeks or a few months—their visa status makes them unattractive potential employees and so, in practice, makes leaving their abusive employer the only option on paper.

The Government, including the Minister in Committee, have also urged that exploited workers are best dealt with through referral to the NRM. However, the problem here is that while many of the workers in question may have a case under employment law, they often do not meet the criteria of victims of modern slavery. They are, however, by virtue of their status at risk of falling into slavery or other forms of exploitation and abuse, precisely because it is difficult for them to change job or receive support—and because many are simply unaware of their rights or in possession of their passport or visa.

This amendment is really about prevention rather than cure. By restoring the previous ability of domestic workers to change employer and extend their visa we would empower them to report abuse, confident in their ability to attract alternative employment. Instead of waiting for them to become victims of slavery, we would be providing them with their own productive agency to escape their situation and report their exploiters. In the context of the Bill, this is a very modest amendment which would make little difference to the overall migration picture in the UK, but a vast difference to the lives of those impacted. We now have 10 years of data and evidence built up on this issue and I hope that we might be able to right this historic wrong. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my Amendment 75 is in this group and I wish briefly to speak to it. Things have moved on a little with investor visas since Committee. The Government have at last moved to announce that they intend to suspend, or possibly abolish, the investor visa scheme. They have announced that they will replace it with a new scheme, about which we are not yet very well informed. I hope that, in replying, the Minister will be able to tell us a little more about it.

It is astonishing that the review of the scheme which was promised four years ago has not yet been published. It is difficult not to accept that there must have been some considerable embarrassment within the Government to account for the absence of its publication. I have now been told informally that it is well under way and in the last stages of preparation, and it will indeed be published not just in due course but, possibly, shortly. I would like to have a definite date for its publication if the Minister wishes to persuade us not to divide on this issue.

There are very good reasons for embarrassment here. One of the two chairmen of the Conservative Party at present has made his entire career out of servicing Russian oligarchs, Chinese people and others who have come in on the investor visa scheme. That ought to embarrass the Conservative Party deeply. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report referred to evidence of foreign interference in British politics. The Government’s response was to say that they knew of no evidence of successful interference in British politics, and they have therefore declined to publish what evidence there is. That also seems improper, and I hope the Minister will be able to say something about reconsidering whether the time has now come for the Government to accept the recommendation of the Intelligence and Security Committee to publish that evidence. There is a stain of potential corruption and foreign interference around investor visas, Russian oligarchs and others that affects this Government and the Conservative Party.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

75: After Clause 78, insert the following new Clause—
“Tier 1 (investor) visas: review report
Any replacement, successor or alternative visa scheme to the Tier 1 (investor) visa scheme must not come into operation until the Secretary of State has published and made publicly available the review of Tier 1 (investor) visas granted between June 2008 and April 2015.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would require the Government to publish its review into Tier 1 (investor) visas granted between June 2008 and April 2015 before any replacement scheme can be brought into operation.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I was not satisfied by the answer, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 181 seeks an exemption from the immigration health surcharge for international volunteers who come to the UK to work with vulnerable adults and children. International volunteers make a significant contribution to the work of UK charities across the whole of our country, particularly in the health, social care and education sectors.

The decision of international volunteers to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to help vulnerable people in the UK is a huge decision and commitment. Though they might get a subsistence allowance and board and lodge, they receive no salary. Additionally, the volunteers have to pay for their visa, insurance and flights. The additional impact of the immigration health surcharge simply adds to the financial burden on these volunteers and the charities they support, with the net result that the UK will probably attract fewer international volunteers.

Beyond the role they play in our domestic work, helping our society, these volunteers often become friends for life, not just to the individuals they have helped but as friends of the United Kingdom, in much the same way as international alumni of UK universities become friendship ambassadors of this country. They have formed bonds of friendship that can pay big dividends for us as time passes.

This amendment has the support of 55 charities and voluntary sector bodies across Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. These organisations are feeling the impact of this surcharge and are seeking an exemption for their international volunteers. One of these organisations is Camphill Scotland, which supports more than 600 people with learning difficulties and other support needs. It works in the social care sector and has the support of more than 300 international volunteers. Without them, the charity would have to curtail its work. The Welsh Centre for International Affairs supports international volunteers, many of whom work with young people in disadvantaged areas in the south Wales valleys.

By way of comparison, if the work of international volunteers was undertaken by full-time paid staff, each post would cost the charities more than £17,000 per year. Volunteers cost charities about £600 plus subsistence, board and lodge. But the volunteers have to pay £625 for a visa, plus now another £230 for the immigration health surcharge, plus their air fares, plus their insurance. As an example, this is what international volunteer Constantin Jacobs says of the problem:

“There will be so many people that cannot afford to volunteer abroad any more, it might not sound like a huge difference for everyone but for young people who have just finished their school or their studies, and who do not have a lot of money, this difference can mean the decision to go or not to go to the UK to spend their voluntary year there. The UK would be much less attractive as a host country. I am sure that there would be many people who would actually love to go to the UK, deciding in the end to go to another country because of this change. This would be very bad for the volunteers and even worse for the organisations in health and social care systems that rely on volunteers from abroad!”


International volunteers are unpaid—not because they are worthless but because they are priceless. If they are priceless, I hope the Government will consider removing this charge from this one special group of people to allow us to continue the work being done and to create such good will around the world.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 183, which I hope the Government may be willing to accept before Report.

Investor visas were introduced in 1994. They became tier 1 investor visas in 2008. Conditions were tightened under the coalition Government in 2011 and further in 2014. Successive Governments, from different parties, have allowed them to continue. Theresa May announced a review of the scheme in 2018, after the Salisbury poisonings raised concerns about the numbers of wealthy Russians resident in the UK, but so far that review has not been published.

The majority of investor visas have been given to wealthy people from Russia, China and central Asia—all countries with high levels of corruption and extreme inequality. Given the FCDO’s recognition that the greatest state threats to the UK come from Russia and China, this does not fit easily with the Prime Minister’s aspirations for “global Britain”. It has been reported that more than 6,000 golden visas—half of those ever issued—are now being reviewed for possible national security risks. Many of those who received them will by now have acquired full UK citizenship.

Two Court of Appeal judgments in the past year have thrown up new questions about the regulation of this scheme and the sources of the finance pledged by applicants. Paragraphs 49 to 52 of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report, now published over three years ago and to which the Government have been extremely slow to respond, let alone to implement its recommendations, say that

“the UK has been viewed as a particularly favourable destination for Russian oligarchs and their money. It is widely recognised that the key to London’s appeal was the … UK’s investor visa scheme … The UK welcomed Russian money, and few questions—if any—were asked about the provenance of this considerable wealth … What is now clear is that it … offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’. The money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment … there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene … This level of integration … means that any measures now being taken by the Government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation … It is not just the oligarchs either: the arrival of Russian money resulted in a growth industry of enablers—individuals and organisations who manage and lobby for the Russian elite in the UK. Lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR professionals … To a certain extent, this cannot be untangled and the priority now must be to mitigate the risk”.

After warning about the extent of illicit Russian financial activity in the UK, including extensive donations to political parties, the report states in paragraph 56:

“One key measure would be an overhaul of the Tier 1 (Investor) visa programme—there needs to be a more robust approach to the approval process for these visas.”


So far, the Government’s published response to the ISC report makes no reference to this recommendation. If this has been true for Russians, it has also been true for Kazakhs, Azeris, Malaysians and Chinese. The Government recently made a great fuss about a British citizen with close links to the Chinese state and the funds she had donated to a Labour MP. It is surprising that they have so far made much less fuss about our resident Russian-linked community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope the Home Office has consulted the FCDO on this issue. The Minister will be aware of the report from the Center for American Progress in Washington which argues—and this is the conventional wisdom in Washington as far as I can see—that we are the weak link in the West’s relations with Russia, and the reason why we are the weak link is because of this large colony in London with such close links to Putin.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge all the points that the noble Lord has made and agree that there is more to be done here. I do not think anyone could deny that. The Criminal Finances Act was a start and there is more to be done in this space, most definitely, but I think I will leave it there. I hope, with what I have said, that the noble Baroness will be happy to withdraw her amendment.

Intelligence: Russia

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to introduce legislation “to provide the intelligence agencies with the tools they need to tackle the intelligence challenges posed by Russia”, as called for by the Intelligence and Security Committee in its the Annual Report for 2019-2021 (HC 877).

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

My Lords, I am very pleased to confirm that, as announced in the Queen’s Speech, the Government are committed to bringing forward new legislation to counter state threats and ensure that our world-class security services and law enforcement agencies continue to have the tools that they need to tackle the evolving threat and any challenging or hostile activities by any state.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in that case, where is the Bill? This is a question of priorities. We have a number of badly drafted, long Bills before the House at present, but this is a question of national security. It is two and a half years since the ISC Russia report was published and the Prime Minister has dragged his feet ever since. Can the Minister assure us that the links of the Russian elite to the UK, to which the report refers, and its links to political parties are not part of the cause of the delay, given the amount of Russian-origin money which has flowed into Conservative Party finances?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Lord of two things. The Bill will be state agnostic and linked to the actions of whichever state or actor is trying to perpetrate evil against this country; it will not be country specific. On the delay, this area of law is complex and some of this legislation has not been updated in over a century, so we must make sure that we both bring it up to date and future-proof it.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I noted that in his opening speech the Minister pledged that the Bill is based on fairness, that illegal activities will not be tolerated, that we aim to deprive people of UK citizenship in the event of the most serious crimes and, above all, that access to the UK should be based on need and not on the ability to pay. That is why I want to talk about the visa scheme that enables you to buy access to Britain—the golden visa scheme tier 1 investor visas, which allow wealthy people from dodgy countries to buy the right to live in the UK and, after a period of residence, to qualify for citizenship. It is one law for the rich and another for the poor.

In 2018, after the Salisbury poisonings, Theresa May announced a review of the scheme, which to my awareness has not yet been published. It has been reported that more than 6,000 golden visas, half of those yet issued, are being reviewed for possible national security risks, although those who applied in earlier years will by now have acquired full UK citizenship. Two Court of Appeal judgments in the last year have thrown up questions about the regulation of this scheme and the sources of the finance pledged by applicants. In four of the National Crime Agency’s major cases about illicit finance and unexplained wealth orders in the last two years, those under investigation had originally entered the UK with a golden visa.

Most golden visas have been issued to individuals from countries with a high risk of corruption. Between 2008 and 2020, a third of all golden visas were issued to individuals from mainland China and 20% to people from Russia. Other significant countries of origin included Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Turkey. Between 2008 and 2019, 9% of golden visa applications were refused. By comparison, 42% of asylum applications were refused. The UK has regularly been cited in magazines and other sources that appeal to the wealthy as one of the most popular golden visa regimes in the world, and one of the fastest: applications are turned around within three weeks. For UK asylum applications, the turnaround time is around six months or worse. Whether that is regarded as a fair system is an open question.

Last week, I looked at the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report. I quote paragraph 49:

“the UK has been viewed as a particularly favourable destination for Russian oligarchs and their money. It is widely recognised that the key to London’s appeal was … the UK’s investor visa scheme”.

It goes on to say in paragraph 50:

“What is now clear is that … it offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’. The money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment … Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene”—


and, as we all know, into UK politics, in effect corrupting aspects of British institutions and politics, extending into Parliament and the Conservative Party. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report goes on to say that “one key measure” to limit the damage that is being caused

“would be an overhaul of the Tier 1 (Investor) visa programme—there needs to be a more robust approach to the approval process for these visas.”

I failed to find this touched on when I read through the Bill. I hope the Government will accept that the Bill provides an opportunity to develop a much more robust approach to this rather shameful visa programme.

UK Borders: Surveillance

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they plan to take to improve surveillance of the United Kingdom’s borders, including at smaller ports and harbours, coastal waters and private airstrips.

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

My Lords, the Border Force works closely with other law enforcement agencies, security services and international partners on an intelligence-led approach to identify unlawful maritime and aviation activity. It also uses a combination of cutters, radar, onshore assets and aerial surveillance to detect and stop small craft.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I congratulate the Government on the announcement that they are going to double the number of cutters around our coast from two to four. I think that means that we will have one cutter for every 3,000 miles of coastline if they all operate at the same time—rather fewer than the Dutch have for a far shorter coastline. Has the Minister read the Public Accounts Committee’s report of two weeks ago that points out that there are 21 departments and agencies in Whitehall concerned with the management of borders, not one of which is in overall control? Does she know of the report issued last March by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders, which pointed out that nearly half the small ports on our east coast had not been visited by any member of Border Force in the preceding 15 months? The leave campaign talked about taking back control of Britain’s borders. Is it not the case that we do not have effective control of British borders at present and that perhaps we ought to consider putting more effort into that?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I note what the noble Lord says but, of course, it is not a question simply of the number of cutters and RIBs that we have in the sea. We are heavily reliant on the most effective method of border control: namely, the multiagency, intelligence-led information that we have. We deploy on the back of that intelligence and risk assessment. That is the most effective way of manning certainly our maritime borders.

Security: ID Cards

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we have many numbers that help in assuring our identity. I am not sure that this would add to the mix. I am certainly happy to look at this, but I do not think there is any evidence that a national identity number would improve security in this country. I have already outlined to the noble Lord, Lord Blair, how this country is helping to make us safer.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, under the coalition Government we found ourselves trying to check who was on the electoral register against the national insurance number and discovering that the Government do not have, across their different departments, clear rules on which identity numbers we have. I have different numbers for my passport, the NHS and national insurance. As we move toward more of a database society, is there not an argument for considering how, in the relationship between the citizen and the state, we at least move toward common rules across departments for recording who we are, where we are, where we live and so forth?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government’s Verify system helps in regard to identity. We are certainly looking, for when the UK leaves the EU, at just what that residency document will look like.

Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, for me, the high point of this debate was when the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, remarked that picking strawberries is skilled work. I have spent most of the past three Sundays picking soft fruit, including gooseberries. I have scars all over my lower forearms to demonstrate this. To be told that this is skilled work was very pleasing. I shall go back and tell my wife, who merely did the jam, ice cream-making and other such things, that my work was at least as skilled as hers.

This excellent report emphasises that, fundamentally, movement of people is seen as an issue of sovereignty, on which the whole debate around the EU referendum was extremely confused. As the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, reminds us, the leave campaign was in favour of free trade for companies, for investment and in goods but in no circumstances for people. We are one of the most open economies in the world for foreign investment, so we welcome foreign companies but not foreigners—unless they are really rich, at which point, under the tier 1 investor visas, permanent residence can be bought. Under such visas, a rising number of Chinese and Russians whose wealth came from not entirely clear places were allowed in. Several of us have been involved in trying to change the rules on that and I am happy that the Government have now tightened them.

Given that we are a country which is remarkably open to foreign investment and is therefore dominated by multinational companies, talented young British people who want to rise to the top of those companies need to be able to work abroad and to be able to travel without the complications of getting visas to work in foreign markets. If multinational companies based in Britain, be they European, Japanese, Chinese or whatever, say to themselves: “Well, actually, promoting a Brit and making them work in Frankfurt for this year and Athens the next would be an awful nuisance because of the time it will take them to get visas”, they will promote French people, Germans and others instead. Another part of what has been wrong with our entire debate about leaving the European Union as far as immigration is concerned is that we have not thought about it as a properly two-way relationship.

Robert Goodwill has been quoted as saying to the committee that the UK Government do control their borders, at least in principle, but we have heard in this debate that, in practice, they do not manage that very well. I was struck some months ago when we had a question in this House about how many offshore patrol boats we had around the extensive maritime borders of the United Kingdom, to which the answer was a quarter of those that the Dutch have for their short coastline. I asked the Library to check this morning. I gather that we have fewer offshore patrol boats for our borders than any other EU member state except Belgium. That suggests that we are not really thinking about enforcing the rules. Many of your Lordships will have seen the NAO comment that there are more than 60 small ports within Britain which a member of any public authority, coastguard or police force does not visit for more than 12 months. Again, our borders are entirely open because we have had Governments so concerned with shrinking the state that they have given up on the idea that one must enforce control of our borders and existing immigration controls.

A lot of other noble Lords talked about the problems of statistics. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, remarked that when you do not have the facts, perception becomes reality. I am very concerned by what I see as misperception in the white working-class estates of west Yorkshire and elsewhere which voted heavily for leave. There they believe that foreigners from Romania or elsewhere are taking their social housing and their jobs. There is very little evidence of this. An excellent article in the Financial Times on Portsmouth some months ago pointed out the widespread perception that most social housing there was now occupied by immigrants from the EU. Actually, the total number of people from the EU living in social housing in Portsmouth was three. That level of misinformation and lack of information is a tremendous problem for us all.

I will spend a little more time on the question raised in chapter 4: the pull factor of immigration from the European Union and the extent to which British employers prefer to recruit directly from eastern Europe rather than to train their own or recruit directly from here. I spent some time travelling around Yorkshire over the last four of five years asking small and large employers why they recruit directly from eastern Europe rather than look for people here. The answers are, first, that you cannot get trained people and, secondly, that the sort of people you get from Bradford, Wakefield or wherever it may be are often much less motivated, they tend not to turn up on time and go sick more often. Therefore the employers prefer Slovaks, Poles and the like.

That raises some large questions—whether or not we leave the European Union, or whatever we do about freedom of movement—about the structural weaknesses of our education and training system, in particular how it affects what one must call our underclass. That is, those whose grandparents worked in the mills, factories and mines and whose parents often managed to get only occasional work. These people go to underfunded schools—we had an interesting discussion earlier this afternoon about school funding—without decent careers services and they do not find a way into jobs. It is not that they do not want to find places. I work occasionally with a social housing association in Bradford which now runs its own apprenticeship scheme for training and retaining its own plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, plasterers and the like. It took in 10 people last year. It had 400 applications. A lot of young people in Bradford want training and cannot get it. Around Yorkshire I ask what is happening. They say, “Well, the big building employers do not want to take on apprentices because they are not sure they will want to take them through and retain them for four or five years. It is easier for them to recruit people from Latvia, Lithuania or Poland”. That is a huge problem, one that we must all address. It is not part of what the leave campaign told us about.

What about the Government? Nurses and teachers have been mentioned already, with the Government reducing the level of training for nurses when we need rather more of them. I have seen rather too much of the inside of some hospitals in the last year for various reasons. The Portuguese nurses who looked after me in St Thomas’s were superb. When I went into St George’s outpatients for some post-cardiac physio, the first thing that the Polish physio in charge of our course said to me was, “Do you still want us here or do you want us to go home?”. Of course, that was just after the referendum. The answer is that we need them here. They provide a very good service to our economy. We are not training enough nurses of our own, so they are even more important.

Clare Foges in today’s Times talks about the unfortunate bias of the current debate on immigration: the suggestion that somehow voting leave could solve our immigration problems and that European immigration is the key to that. The spectre of 80 million Turks swarming into Britain successfully blurred the issue between immigration from Europe and from the rest of the world. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Green, that Migration Watch nurtured that popular perception, in alliance with the Daily Mail and others. Yet the Migration Watch website, which I looked at this morning, says:

“In the last decade only around one third of net migration came from the European Union—the rest originated from countries outside the EU”.


The overall population of the EU is falling. The surge of Polish, Romanian, Lithuanian and Latvian migration, which accounts for about half our current stock of EU residents, is finite. There are not that many more to come. Young Poles and Latvians are not having many children. The prospect of Brexit and the falling pound are already leading to a beginning of a return. The long-term immigration challenge we face, alongside other European countries, is from the rest of the world, where population is rising, climate change is making life more difficult and nasty regimes or violent conflict combine to push people north to struggle, if they can, across Turkey or the Mediterranean. For example, the population of Africa doubled in the last 25 years and will double again in the next 25 years. Where are those extra billion people likely to try to go? They will try to get out of their countries into a safer world. That is the immigration issue we should talk about.

So we are struggling with a distorted image. There is also a distorted image popular in the Daily Mail and elsewhere that all our European immigrants are Poles and Romanians living on benefits or taking low-paid jobs from the unskilled British. The Migration Watch figures show that 400,000 of the 3.3 million EU citizens from other countries living in the UK are Irish nationals. They will not go, even if we leave the European Union. It also shows that the third largest group in the UK are 300,000 German citizens, with 200,000 each from Italy and France. Overall, half of the EU arrivals in 2015-16 came from the 14 wealthy states of western Europe, not from Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

The noble Lord, Lord Green, tells me that the reason Migration Watch statistics for Germans in Britain are 150,000 higher than the ONS statistics is that Migration Watch counts children as immigrants where one parent is born outside Britain. That puts me in mind that I am about to become the grandfather of an immigrant because my son’s American wife, currently living with him in Edinburgh where he teaches at the university—

[Lord Green of Deddington]

I think the noble Lord misunderstood what I said outside. I will correct that later with him—it is not of interest to the House generally.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was merely about to say that if that were the case, our current Queen would be the first non-immigrant monarch since Queen Anne. Under that criteria, Prince Charles would also be an immigrant since his father was born in Greece. Again, one must be careful how we handle immigration statistics on one thing or another.

To conclude, we need a broader debate about the whole question of immigration. We live in a world in which we hope that our young people will travel, and study and work abroad. Some of them will marry people from other countries and, we hope, bring them back to live here. That is the nature of the world in which we live and we do not want to make that too much more difficult. We recognise that we also live in a world in which the global population is rising and there are many insecure countries from which people want to flee. That poses huge questions for us which are nothing to do with whether or not we stay in the European Union.

Brexit: Customs and Border Staff

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of additional public employees needed to meet the requirements of Brexit, in particular in customs and border control.

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

My Lords, the White Paper published last week set out the Government’s priorities and the broad strategy for exiting the EU. There is a number of options as to how EU migration and customs checks might work once we have exited the EU. We are considering these options, so it would be wrong to set out a further position at this stage.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, half of Britain’s trade is currently within the single market, so presumably customs checks and the space needed for them will have to be considerably expanded. Two-thirds of visitors come from the EU and the EEA, so I assume that the long queues that we already have at the external border for people going through hard border controls will be immensely lengthened and that we will need to treble the number of border staff. Are the Government already beginning to plan for the extra space and staff they need? If they cannot recruit enough, perhaps we will need to recruit border agency people from eastern Europe.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government will certainly be prepared, if need be, in the way that the noble Lord said. However, the advent of e-passport gates at airports has made it quicker to get through the border, and of course the facial recognition checks at those gates have proved to be very efficient.