Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

Sadly, for those and many other reasons, Clause 11 will inflict greater harm and injustice. I look forward to clarification from the Minister.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer very strong Green group support for this amendment, although I acknowledge the questions about whether it might be easier just to throw the whole thing out. It is a great honour to follow three such powerful speeches from such distinguished campaigners.

I want to pick up one point in the proposed new paragraph (c) on the experience of LBGTQIA+ people. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, I am drawing on the very important briefing from Rainbow Migration. In that is the story of Samir, a gay man from Kosovo. We are obviously talking about someone who sought asylum some years ago. He knew that there was no way that he could live openly as a gay man in Kosovo at that time and, even now, it is recognised as an incredibly dangerous place for LBGTQIA+ people. Samir said:

“I felt like every day I had to look over my shoulder because you never knew what could happen.”


Samir was attacked. He came here under a different visa category. He did not know that he could apply for asylum, but he eventually found his way through the system. Then he spoke about the experience of talking. He said:

“It was the first time talking about my sexuality ... just saying aloud the word gay in Albanian, it was very surreal. I knew that although I was scared, this was my only chance”.


I ran through that story because in the previous group the Minister said that there will be guidance that “without delay” might allow for circumstances such as this. I want to point the Minister—and if she has not seen it, I would be very happy to share it with her—to another report from Rainbow Migration, Still Falling Short, that talks about how difficult it still is for LGBTQIA+ people to prove their sexual orientation or gender identity to the Home Office. If people are finding it very difficult to “prove”, how difficult is it going to be to get this consideration the Minister referred to before?

I want to make one other brief point that draws on a briefing from the Law Society. It would perhaps be an additional clause to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. The Law Society points out that often people will not talk about what has happened to them because they fear what might happen to family or associates back in the country that they have fled. That is something we really have to consider. If you have been subject to persecution, you almost invariably will know people still who will be in grave danger if you tell the story and the story gets out. There really should also be consideration of that in the guidance.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I support this as a probing amendment and support everything that has been said. If I was to add anything, I would say that this could apply equally to some people who are facing religious persecution: so Sikhs, Hindus and Christians in Afghanistan would say that they are under serious threat at the moment, for example. I wonder whether I can put some words in the Minister’s mouth. Without delay, can she undertake that the guidance that is to come states categorically that it will be from a trauma-informed basis rather than simply circumstantial?

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I think that my noble friend might be speaking to the next group of amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak on behalf of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who signed both Amendments 46 and 54, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and others, about no recourse to public funds. The question has been clearly set out by the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, added a great deal to this debate, which has been very rich thus far.

I must admit to a certain sense of déjà vu, in that we have had much the same cast as in debates on the Domestic Abuse Act, discussing much the same issues around the absolute horror of no recourse to public funds. We are talking about a particular group of people in that situation now, but I state loudly and clearly: no one who is here as part of UK society should have no recourse to public funds. That is inhumane, unjust and damaging to our society for some of the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, just set out.

It is interesting that it is almost two years since Boris Johnson claimed not to know that this status existed—that he did not know that there was such a thing as no recourse to public funds. At that time, he promised to review the policy, but I understand that there has been no overall review of no recourse to public funds, although I would be very pleased if the Minister could tell me that I am wrong about that.

But I want to add one point, which goes back to the group that we discussed before the dinner break. The Minister tried to clearly draw a line between differentiation and discrimination. I think that no recourse to public funds is very clear cut and obvious: you either have access to money, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, said, if you are in work and need extra support to survive and feed yourself, or you do not. How can it be anything but discrimination if you do not have access to that money, despite being in exactly the same situation as the person beside you, doing the same job?

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I will respond to my noble friend Lady Stroud’s request to know the policy intent. Declaring my interests as set out in the register, as noble Lords may know, I have a lot of interest in what happens in our neighbouring country of France. I have been following the debates there reasonably closely over the last few weeks. In recent months, we have received more than our fair share of criticism from our French friends, who say that our asylum system is so much easier to navigate because there are so many pull factors—I recall my noble friend talking about these in her speech at Second Reading. This means that, in effect, we are a more attractive country to apply for asylum in than France, and this generates a huge amount of criticism.

My question to my noble friend the Minister is: when you look at no recourse to public funds, is that not one of the pull factors that is causing so much of this problem? I think that Clause 11 is designed to reduce those very pull factors that the French suggest are in fact causing the problem, so those of us who are for open borders should try to work this out. I always have been for open borders; I rejoice that we probably have one of the finest global multiracial societies in the world. Sadly, we do not appear to be proud of it. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, knows, I was brought up in Toxteth and went to school in Penny Lane. I love Toxteth and I am so proud of the community there, which he will know very well, because it is a viable, strong, multiracial society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

Well, I agree with every word that my noble friend has just said. What I am seeking to persuade colleagues to focus on is that surely the objective—the policy intent to which she referred—is to focus our efforts on helping people via safe and legal routes. If we can deter people from coming here in small boats and by other illegal means, we can instead focus our efforts on those people who are genuinely in need. Okay, if we are not prepared to countenance NRPF, what is our answer to reducing deterrent factors—or do noble Lords simply think that this is not an issue? If that is the case, what do we say to the French, who really do strongly believe that it is a problem?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Lord talked about focusing on people genuinely in need and compared them with people coming by irregular routes, such as across the channel. Does the noble Lord acknowledge that more than 70% of people coming across the channel have been granted refugee status, therefore they clearly are in genuine need?

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I am not disagreeing with the noble Baroness; I am just trying to get us to focus on what the Government are now putting forward as a policy intent, which is to reduce pull factors, push factors or whatever we call them. Surely, our whole objective in all this must be to help those who are really in need and to encourage them to come by safe and legal routes. That is surely what Clause 11 is all about.