Borders and Asylum

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

That is a very valid question, and I am grateful for the broad support that the noble Lord has given to the proposals before us. We have said in the immigration Bill, and we have said publicly, that we want to look at how Article 8 of the ECHR, the right to family life, is interpreted. We have seen wide interpretation of Article 8 to ensure that individuals can protect themselves against deportation when asylum claims have failed. In the next few months—and I hope the noble Lord will bear with me on this—we intend to issue a further consultation on what we need to do on that. It does not involve us, as some political parties and others would want, leaving the ECHR; I hope it will revise the guidance so judges can examine it and make different judgments accordingly, based on the information that we will ultimately supply.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware of the detailed and carefully worked-out proposal put forward at the end of last month by the Refugee Council. Its plan could close asylum hotels by the end of next year by putting in place a one-off scheme to give permission to stay for a limited period, subject to rigorous security checks, to people who are almost certain to be recognised as refugees. The proposal applies to people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria who were in the system on 30 June. That would represent four in 10 of the people in asylum hotels from those countries—more than 33,000 people in total in Home Office accommodation. To take some examples, 98% of Sudanese who apply for refugee status receive it, and yesterday in your Lordships’ House there was a great deal of discussion of how terrible things are in Sudan; and 86% of Eritreans receive it. Have the Government considered this carefully thought-out proposal, put forward by the Refugee Council, or anything like it?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We are open to a range of discussions on any issue because it is a manifesto commitment for us to end hotel use by the end of this Parliament. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, myself and others in government want to do that as quickly as possible, but—and I say this, I hope, helpfully to the noble Baroness—we have to do this in an ordered, managed fashion. We are trying to do that in an ordered, managed fashion now by reducing the level of hotel use as a whole, filling up the remaining hotels so that we maximise their use and looking at how we can exit those hotels over time. In the past 12 months, we have saved around £1 billion of taxpayers’ money by the measures that we have taken. We have had limited success to date in reducing the number of hotels, but we intend to speed that up. The suggestions that have been made will always be examined, but the ultimate objective for the noble Baroness, the Refugee Council and for us is to make sure that we exit hotels, speed up asylum claims and make sure that those who have asylum claims are dealt with and allowed to remain in the United Kingdom with a properly adjudicated, speedy asylum claim.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I think we will have to have an honest disagreement with the noble Viscount. That is not my view of how this works. My view is that we are all party to a European court and convention. That is not a European Union issue; it is a Council of Europe issue. There are countries not in the EU and in the EU which have abided, since 1950, in the aftermath of a world war that split Europe apart, by a convention that gives basic rights to individuals. I support those basic rights, but that does not mean we cannot examine how they are interpreted. That is where the Government are coming from. Different parties are asking different things, and that will be a debate we will have, but I am trying to show the noble Viscount that there are, in my view, benefits to the ECHR as well as areas of potential challenge.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, expressed concern about the level of first-tier decision-making in the Home Office. I agree with the noble Lord that there is reason for concern about that, but concern about ill-founded refusals of asylum applications—the evidence for which is in the high number of successful appeals. On that subject, I have two specific questions for the Minister, and I will understand if he needs to write to me. First, Home Office checks in 2023-24 showed that only 52% of initial decisions passed the Home Office’s own quality standards. The figures for 2024-25 were supposed to have been published in August but have not been. Can the Minister say when those now overdue figures will be published? Secondly, Home Office data on appeals has not been updated since the start of 2023. There is data on appeals from the tribunals, but Home Office data historically has been more detailed. Are the Government planning to publish that data on appeals?