Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction earlier and the many organisations who have sent us briefings. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harper, on his maiden speech. I say from the Lib Dem Benches that, despite the fact we are here, we still would like to see reform of your Lordships’ House.

I support everything said by my noble friend Lord German earlier, and will try not to cover those areas too much. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who spoke with her customary clarity and power.

In some ways, the Bill is disappointing, but the Government are right to repeal the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. We always said in opposition that Rwanda was not safe. The cost—with not one person deported—must still be an embarrassment to those on the Conservative Benches. Some think that perhaps the whole Illegal Migration Act should go the same way; that was yet more unworkable migration legislation designed for newspaper headlines—much of it not commenced.

Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, cited More in Common’s research on migration as a whole, but he failed to mention that, in questions further down most of those polls, when people are asked whether they would like to see more vacancies remaining in social care or for nurses in hospitals, they tend to say no. That is partly because people get confused between the migration that we describe as “regular” and asylum seekers and that which is irregular. We need clarity about migration, in particular the distinction that those seeking asylum are not coming here for economic needs. We know that the vast majority of migrants arrive here legally, yet the public spin has muddled the irregular with it and continues to do so.

I do not think anyone other than the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has spoken about student migration numbers yet. We know that they form part of the OECD data, which is why we always have to have them there, but there is nothing to stop the Government making sure people understand that international students are good for universities, good for economies locally and nationally, and good for the future of ground-breaking science, research and technology.

Over the last 10 years, a number of noble Lords have spoken regularly about the status and plight of children in the many migration Bills. This Bill, sadly, does not remove the concerns that some of us still have. The last Government set up the National Age Assessment Board, NAAB, using so-called visual assessment methods and scientific biological methods—which, by the way, qualified doctors refused to use. During the passage of what is now the Illegal Migration Act, the then Government cited that other European countries were using scientific age-assessment techniques, ignoring the fact that someone being assessed was also given legal support to protect them, which was not available in this country. Since last year, a number of European countries have stopped using this technique because it is unreliable and has resulted in children being put into adult accommodation with no facilities for them. That is a breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as a breach of the UN convention on the rights of refugees. I hope the Minister will reassure the House that that will be reviewed. Some of us may even lay amendments to that effect.

We need change because of those errors, but there is a further issue around how to safeguard children who are assumed to be adults and are then charged under the Bill with an offence of illegally entering the country or any of the other offences cited in the Bill. At present, a child refugee mistaken as an adult is automatically treated as an adult under criminal proceedings. We do not do that for children in our domestic criminal justice system for a very good reason. Can the Minister say how these age-disputed children facing criminal proceedings will be protected?

Along with other noble Lords, I am concerned that this Government’s proposals, especially the new financial burdens on asylum seekers, will limit and reduce the number of refugee families travelling safely to the UK to reunite with a family member. For children, this is particularly traumatic.

Clauses 34 and 35 have sensible provisions on flexibility in taking biometric information. We remember the success of Op Pitting during the emergency evacuation of Afghanistan and how the British Government were able to make change happen very quickly. However, there are concerns about the proposed extensions to use these biometrics, which can, in practice, be impossible for asylum seekers, especially women and children, to achieve. Taking the example of Afghanistan, they might have to travel over a border into Iran to try to get to a British consulate to get the biometric data sorted, and then get back to Afghanistan, which they want to leave. We will raise this in Committee because we are concerned that it is a problem. The Government’s intention is a good one, but how will it work in practice?

My noble friend Lord German, and in another place my honourable friend Lisa Smart MP, raised the important issue of those seeking asylum being allowed to work after more than three months and, importantly, to pay their way in this country. On the plus side, for asylum seekers, the right to work would give them the chance to use their skills and restore their confidence and morale as they build their new lives. These people will also help our economy, especially in skills shortage areas. Earning wages would mean contributing to taxes and national insurance, and paying for their own food and accommodation, thus reducing bills. I look forward to Committee, where many different issues will be raised.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I will address Amendment 203J. I declare my interest as a barrister practising in public law and in the immigration space.

As noble Lords will have noticed, Amendment 203J does not sit happily with the other amendments in this group. It is not directly about the inadmissibility of an asylum claim, but it is on a very important point. The refugee convention of 1951 says that, if an asylum seeker has entered the country illegally, he is not to be punished or penalised for doing so, provided he came directly from a territory where his life or freedom was threatened by persecution. Specifically, it says:

“The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, in the sense of Article 1”—


the persecution provision in the convention—

“enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence”.

As Professor John Finnis, professor emeritus of law and legal philosophy at Oxford, and I pointed out in our paper published in 2021 by Policy Exchange entitled Immigration, Strasbourg, and Judicial Overreach, the drafting and proper meaning of Article 31(1) of the refugee convention were compellingly expanded by Lord Rodger of Earlsferry and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, dissenting in the case of the Crown v Asfaw 2008, UK House of Lords 31. In doing so, they demonstrated the error of the living instrument interpretation advanced by the majority in that case and by the Divisional Court in the case of the Crown v Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court, ex parte Adimi, 2001 Queen’s Bench 667. The erroneous but reigning interpretation in Adimi is predicated on the notion, plainly rejected by the draftsmen of Article 31 of the refugee convention, that refugees passing through safe country A en route to safe country B and/or C and/or D and/or E should have the option to choose to seek asylum in B, C, D or E.

This is plainly wrong and not what was intended by the state parties when they signed the refugee convention in 1951. It is time that we corrected the law in this regard. Amendment 203J, together with Amendment 203I in my name, which is to be debated in a later group, restores the proper meaning of “coming directly”. In doing so, it provides a solution to the nightmare of the dangerous channel crossings and uncontrolled entry. I suggest that the refugee convention purposefully distinguishes between those who enter directly from a country where they are in danger and those who do not. There is no immunity from immigration law for those not coming directly; this was entirely intentional.

This amendment aims to vindicate the distinction and seeks to bring an end to the practice of widening the refugee convention beyond the terms that the United Kingdom and the other states agreed. Let us look at the terms of Amendment 203J. The Secretary of State would have a duty to refuse a claim for asylum if a person meets the conditions set out. The first condition, in proposed new subsection (2), is that they require leave to enter the United Kingdom and they have done so without such leave, whether illegally or otherwise. The second condition, in proposed new subsection (3), is that

“in entering or arriving as mentioned in subsection (2), the person did not come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which the person’s life and liberty were threatened by reason of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.

Those words are taken from the convention. Proposed new subsection (4), for clarity, specifies:

“For the purposes of subsection (3) a person is not to be taken to have come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which their life and liberty were threatened as mentioned in that subsection if, in coming from such a country, they passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom where their life and liberty were not so threatened”.


To make it absolutely crystal clear, proposed new subsection (5) says:

“For the removal of doubt but without limitation, for the purposes of subsection (3), a person has passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom if they depart in a boat, vessel or aircraft from France or any other European coastal state”.


If this provision were enforced, would you risk your life in the channel in a small boat if you knew that your asylum claim would be bound to be refused? You would not.

This amendment—to use the slogan so favoured by the Prime Minister—would smash the gangs by destroying the business model, and do so while we remain a member of the refugee convention. Unlike the timid tinkering around the edges we see in almost all of this rather performative Bill as presently proposed, this amendment proposes a real, beneficial solution and the Home Office should grab it with both hands.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 203E tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and declare my interests as vice-president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and chair of human rights at Liberal International.

I want to mention briefly something that happened in Georgia this afternoon. Nika Katsia, who was imprisoned by Georgian Dream on trumped-up drug charges, has finally been freed after the regime, astonishingly, admitted in court to planting drugs on him at a protest. This is the third such case in recent weeks. Many thousands of others remain in prison. Over the last four months, leaders and senior activists have been told by the regime they had to go into the Parliament and kowtow to the new regime. They were immediately imprisoned; it became a contempt of Parliament and some have sentences of seven to 15 years. These are the high-profile people, but some of the hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets every night are finding that, like Nika Katsia, they are ending up in prison for absolutely no reason. Georgia is not a safe place; I support my noble friend’s amendment for this reason.

During the passage of the safety of Rwanda Act, we on these Benches repeatedly said that Rwanda was not safe, and that continues to this day. The Rwandan Government have again imprisoned Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, leader of the Development and Liberty for All Party. She has been nominated for the Sakharov prize and was the winner of the Liberal International prize for freedom last year. She has spent most of the last 20 years in prison, as have members of her party. Many have tried to escape and seek asylum elsewhere for their safety.

Rwanda was not safe then and it is not safe now, so I am really pleased to see that we are at least now discussing that. These amendments are important, and when we come on to another group later today, I will raise the issue of how appropriate it is to have a list in a Bill or a regulation when things can move as fast as they have happened in Georgia recently. That is worth exploring, but I will leave that until we get to that group.

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[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for making that point. I think my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth’s argument is that genuine asylum seekers have to claim asylum when they reach a safe country. The amendment is aimed at stopping travelling through multiple safe countries and then attempting to cross the channel to claim asylum.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

An Afghan soldier who served alongside our troops, to whom we have a duty, has no safe route to the UK now. Is the noble Lord suggesting that we should not support an asylum application if they arrived illegally—illegal only because the noble Lord’s Government made it so?

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

I am supporting the premise that a genuine asylum seeker should claim asylum when they get to a safe country.

Amendment 193, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Davies, seeks to incorporate what I believe should be an entirely uncontroversial principle: if someone arrives in this country and needs sanctuary, they should say so, and without delay. This demand is the bare minimum of what a functioning immigration and asylum system should expect. I would argue that this amendment brings clarity and discipline to that expectation. It establishes a one-year window in which claims must be made and it ensures that claims brought beyond that point, without compelling reason, are not entertained.

I want to be very clear: that is a defence of genuine refugees. When our system is flooded with last-minute, opportunistic or tactical claims, it is those with genuine protection needs who suffer. Delays grow longer, the backlogs increase, and the resources stretch thinner. We owe it to those in real danger to ensure that the system works for them and not for those seeking to game it. The amendment is drawn from the new Canadian asylum and immigration rules, which also impose a one-year time limit for claiming asylum. The Home Secretary herself has acknowledged that this is an acute problem. As my noble friend Lord Davies said from this Dispatch Box yesterday, the Government have stated that they want to clamp down on students who come to the UK on a student visa and then claim asylum once they are in the UK, often at the end of their visa. The amendment would prevent that happening, since if a person came to the UK, studied for three years at university and then attempted to make an asylum claim, they would not be able to do so. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in response.

Finally, Amendment 203E in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would remove Albania, Georgia and India from the list of safe states in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. I urge the House to consider very carefully the implications of such a move, not only for the integrity of our asylum system but for our bilateral relations, our immigration enforcement systems and the principle of credible, evidence-based policy. Let us begin with Albania—

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[Lord German (LD)]

I thank the Minister for taking the intervention. He has referred to derogation from the ECHR. I wonder what consideration the Government are now giving to Georgia, which is in clear breach of the ECHR and has taken itself out of the Council of Europe, because it knows it has to do so. This is clearly a country that has derogated. Is that something that the Government are looking at? We can do it by regulation, as we are going to talk about, but since this is the only power that the Government are holding on to, this is a country that needs to be looked at very seriously indeed.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

To add to that, that is a country in which our Foreign Secretary has sanctioned a number of individual Ministers. Is there any correlation between what the Foreign Office does and what the Home Office considers?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We will take a whole-government approach to this issue. I would like to reflect on this with colleagues who are directly dealing with the matter and will respond. We are in Committee, but there will be opportunities later, on Report, to examine this further. I will take away the comments that have been made and contact both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord accordingly.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who I think of as my noble friend, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, although the list has been commenced, the provisions necessary for it to have any effect have not been. If this Government decide that it is right to change the list for inadmissibility decisions, we will at that time, based on up-to-date information, consider whether any countries should be removed. That goes to the point that has been made about Georgia. We will consider those issues and reflect upon them using the appropriate parliamentary procedures, according to the criteria set out in Section 80AA.

In summary, the Government have a solid approach to try to tackle this issue. Some of the measures are still in the pipeline because of the legislation, but there is a strong series of measures to try to make an impact on what is a genuinely serious issue facing this country—one that needs resolution and which has built up over a number of years. However, I do not believe that the series of amendments in this group would assist in that process. For the moment at least, I ask my noble friend Lord Browne, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, to withdraw his amendment, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Murray, from the Official Opposition, and Members from the Liberal Democrats not to press their amendments. There will be an opportunity to reflect on what has been said, with an examination of Hansard tomorrow. There will be opportunities on Report, if need be. For the moment, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I find it rather odd to read these two amendments. I am not party political. I sat through a large amount of legislation by the last Government: the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda Act. There was a great deal of legislation but there were remarkably few people actually deported. There appeared to be, within the last year of the last Government, even fewer people being deported. There seemed to be—if I might put it like this—almost a degree of lethargy. So listening to the way in which the noble Lord has put forward these two amendments makes me feel, to some extent, astonished. What they are asking of this Government, as far as I can see, is what in legislation they achieved but in deportation they did not achieve. They are expecting this Government to do what the last Government did not do. Sitting as I do on the sidelines, listening to what parliamentarians say and to what the Opposition say to the Government, I find it difficult to see why the Government should have to respond to this. It really seems quite extraordinary.

Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has just said, in subsection (3) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 109, there are four ways in which somebody could be returned. One is to

“a country of which P is a national”.

I understand—and they understand, and have said so quite properly—that they would not send the person back to a genuinely unsafe country. So an Afghan would not go back to Afghanistan, I assume, and probably a Syrian might not, even now, go back to Syria. That is where we start.

Then we have

“a country or territory in which P has obtained a passport or other document”.

Is that country automatically going to receive this particular person?

Number three, at paragraph (c), is

“a country or territory in which P embarked for the United Kingdom”.

Again, is that country—mainly France, or Belgium or Holland, I would expect, which are the nearest countries—going to be expected to take back every person who comes over? At the moment, the Government are negotiating a pilot scheme for a few to be taken back. I would have thought that the French would simply say certainly not.

The fourth one is

“a country or territory to which there is reason to believe P will be admitted”.

That is a sensible proposal, but where is that country? At the moment, from what we have heard, there are not likely to be many countries which would want to take the majority of people who have come to this country illegally. As I said earlier, I find these two amendments astonishing.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who eloquently set out some of the history of the most recent slew of immigration Acts.

I have a slightly more practical question for both the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and the Minister, which relates to the various lists of safe countries. The Opposition will discuss their Amendment 120 later. In Amendment 109, proposed new subsection (5) states:

“P may be removed to a country or territory … only if it is listed in”


their proposed new schedule. That schedule is in Amendment 120, where, for many of the countries listed, it states “in respect of men”—in other words, men will be regarded as safe to go back to that country. However, many of those countries already have severe discrimination against LGBT people, including men. In some countries, it is punishable by death and, in others, by imprisonment—but, much more importantly, society feels at liberty to attack and kill gay men. I ask both the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson: what happens to an individual in that position, where the country is regarded to be safe in general but for one group of people it is clearly not?

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will answer that question in due course.

The noble and learned Baroness suggested that the Government should not even be asked to respond to these amendments. With very great respect, I do not agree. The previous Government’s Bill that eventually fell away—the Rwanda Bill—was intended to provide a deterrent. I think it is common ground that a deterrent is necessary. The nature of that deterrent may be very much in dispute. Government thinking is still forming on the best way to deal with this very real problem.

The Government need to come up with a response. They had quite a lot of time in opposition in which to generate what they thought was an appropriate deterrent. They have now been in power for a year, and it appears that there is more thinking going on in recognition of the very real problem that they face. In my respectful view, the Government have a case to answer as to what precisely the deterrent will be. What will prevent what we see in our papers and on our screens every day?

My second point is about Amendment 107 and the interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights. I think it was during the Minister’s interregnum that there was a great deal of debate about the interim order made by the European Court of Human Rights. Even the most fervent defender of the European Court of Human Rights would be hard pushed to defend the order it made, which rejected a decision by our courts. It was made by an unnamed judge, it did not give the Government an opportunity to make representations and it did not have a return date by which, in accordance with normal practice, a Government or any other party would have a chance to answer the original order. This was a flagrant breach of natural justice, as was more or less accepted.

Whatever form the Government’s policy finally takes, they would be well advised to bear in mind what is in Amendment 107. It would give the Government the chance to consider the appropriateness of the interim measure—it is a very carefully drawn amendment because it gives that responsibility to a Minister of the Crown. There were many debates about whether the European Court of Human Rights even had the jurisdiction to make these interim measures. I respectfully suggest that, whatever else the Government think about these amendments, Amendment 107 ought to be very carefully considered.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I return to something I said in the earlier groups of amendments. The country that is at the heart of so much of this debate and previous debates is Rwanda. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has introduced his amendments with customary coherence but, ultimately, I do not think he has thought through some of the countries he is talking about. He certainly has not responded to the points that were made earlier about Rwanda.

It is not just about Rwanda. The problem is that this is about generalities, and we are required by the obligations that we have entered into to get down to specifics. I shall give one illustration of what I mean by that from another example in this long list in Amendment 120—that is, the country of Nigeria. The Joint Committee on Human Rights report, referred to in earlier proceedings on this Bill, quotes the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as saying that,

“while designation of safe countries may be used as a procedural tool to prioritise or accelerate the examination of applications in carefully circumscribed situations”,

which is really what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was saying to us, and I do not think that there is conflict about that,

“it does not displace the requirement for an individualised assessment of an asylum claim”.

The UNHCR notes that the risk of refoulement in the absence of individualised assessments is unacceptable. I refer the noble Lord, if I may, as well as the Minister when he comes to respond, to paragraph 122 of the Joint Committee on Human Rights report that deals with that.

The JCHR concluded that it shared the concerns of its predecessor committee—because this is not a new issue; it has been around for predecessor committees. I look at the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, because she and I seem to have gone around this course many times over the past few years. It said:

“We share the concerns of our predecessor Committee that, whilst the states listed may be considered safe in general, this does not guarantee the safety of all individuals from these states, especially those who are members of particular social groups facing persecution. It must be possible for such individuals who face a real risk of persecution upon return to make a protection or human rights claim which must be considered on its merits in order to guard against the risk of refoulement. If the Government chooses to bring section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act into force, it should, at the very least, periodically review the list of safe states, with a particular consideration of the rights of minority groups”.


Again, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, accepted that there would be regular review, but I would like him to respond further, when he comes to reply to the group of amendments, on how he looks at the position of minority groups in some of these countries. These are not just groups that are defined by issues such as ethnicity, religion, gender or orientation: it is also about what happens inside particular countries. A country such as Nigeria may be safe, and that is the example that I shall turn to in a moment, if you are in Lagos or Abuja, but it is not necessarily safe in Benue state or northern Nigeria—depending, again, on aspects of your background. How will that be dealt with in a list of this kind?

I have a dislike of these kinds of lists anyway, as a principle. I do not know that they help matters. We should look at every single case and country on the merits of the arguments. These are things that we should keep abreast of without having to draw up lists. I shall give a specific example of the dangers of this one-size-fits-all approach in what can be variable conditions, depending on many issues—everything from minority ethnicity or religion to gender or orientation. It is an issue that I raised in the debates on the Nationality and Borders Bill, when we were debating it on 8 February 2022, and again on Report on the Illegal Migration Bill, and I refer to Hansard of 5 July 2023.

I cited the case of Mubarak Bala, president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for so-called blasphemy committed on Facebook. Nigeria is one of 71 countries that criminalise blasphemy, and as long as those laws exist people will face persecution, prosecution and imprisonment. As I have said, some will even face the possibility of death and be pushed to find safe haven abroad. During those debates, I also raised the case of Usman Buda, a Muslim, who was murdered in Sokoto state in north-west Nigeria because it was alleged that he had blasphemed. I raised the case of the lynching of Deborah Emmanuel, a Christian, at Shehu Shagari College of Education, again following an unsubstantiated accusation of blasphemy.

Last year, I raised the plight in your Lordships’ House of Nigerian Christians in the northern and middle belt states and pointed out that some 82% of Christians killed for their faith in the previous year were in Nigeria—4,998 Christians were slaughtered, with 200 murdered during the Christmas services in 2023. The highly respected voluntary organisation and charity Open Doors reports that

“Christians in Nigeria continue to be terrorised with devastating impunity”

with

“abductions for ransom, sexual violence and death … leaving a trail of grief and trauma”.

I met Dominic and Margaret Attah, who were survivors of the Boko Haram Pentecost attack at St Francis Xavier Church in Owo, where 30 were murdered. Margaret’s legs had been blown off. She wanted to know why nobody had been brought to justice. I asked the then Minister, who told me in reply:

“We continue to call for those who committed this attack to be brought to justice and held to account”.


Needless to say, they have not been brought to account. Nor have the abductors of Leah Sharibu, who was abducted on 19 February 2018 by ISIS West Africa from the Government Girls Science and Technology College in Dapchi, Yobe State. Leah was told to convert; she refused, and was raped, impregnated and enslaved. She is still held captive. I promised her mother, Rebecca, who I showed around your Lordships’ House, that I would lose no opportunity to raise her case. I have done so on a number of occasions with Ministers.

When I see that this country is safe, according to the amendment, to send men back to, I wonder what will happen to these men if they come from a particular religious group or one that holds a set of views that are unacceptable, or a group that is defined by their sexual orientation. The Government’s travel advice contradicts the presumption that it is safe, particularly for gay men:

“Same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Nigeria with penalties of up to 14 years in prison. Some northern states observe Sharia Law which can prescribe the death penalty for same-sex sexual activity … Same-sex relationships are generally viewed as socially unacceptable in Nigerian society. There is an increased risk of violence, attacks and threats, such as blackmail and intimidation against anyone being thought to be part of the LGBT+ community or supporting their rights”.


This advice is based on facts, not wishful thinking that adding Nigeria to this list will somehow make it a safe country. We have got to follow facts and evidence. Similarly, atheists face significant risks, including discrimination, marginalisation, ostracism, violence and, as I said, potentially death, particularly in the northern states. No differentiation is made in this list between different parts of the country. No distinction is made according to people’s minority status. It demonstrates the dangers of drawing up lists of this kind. I plead with the Official Opposition to give this further thought before we are perhaps asked to vote on this on Report, which I hope we will not be.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his detailed introduction to Amendment 120. I will start there and then very briefly go back to Amendment 110. I will not repeat what I said earlier or what he has just said.

I have checked every single country on the list where it says, in brackets, “in respect of men”. All of them have similar approaches to gay men in particular, as the noble Lord described. There are a number of European countries that are now doing that, including Hungary and Slovakia. When I was last in Bratislava, we went to place some flowers where a friend of a local had witnessed her two colleagues being shot as they went into a bar. It includes Moldova and a number of other countries which are becoming extremely intolerant.

Going back to Amendment 110, the detailed descriptions in proposed new subsection (3) which start with sex, language and race are helpful, but they are exclusive. They exclude key protected characteristics which we and our courts recognise in this country. Can the Official Opposition say whether there is a particular reason for doing that? For example, the protected characteristic is “religion or belief”, not just religion. There is gender reassignment, sexual orientation and pregnancy and maternity, which is extremely important for not just adult women but young girls, who may be returning to a place where young girls are traded for marriage and pregnancy. The last remaining two are age and—I am sorry to say I do not find this here—disability.

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That provision restores the law to where it was prior to A v Croydon, and it appropriately reflects the level of deference to the expert decision-makers in this field. As a result, I strongly commend Amendment 203H to the Government.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to both noble Lords, Lord Murray and Lord Jackson, for thinking that they absolutely know where I am coming from, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, at least, might be relieved to find that we are on slightly more common ground than he believes. I am going to start backwards; I am going to start with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I happen to have with me the SI on age assessment of asylum-seeking minors, because a number of us did regret Motions for that on 27 November 2023. Initially, the Home Office, of which I think he was a Minister at that point, said that, as per the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee report from October 2022,

“the Home Office will not use the scientific methods to determine an age or age range, but rather use the science to establish whether the claimed age of the age-disputed person is possible”.

Possible is not scientific fact.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Forgive me for intervening. I should clarify that the National Age Assessment Board is not using scientific methods, so my amendment has nothing whatever to do with scientific methods. The National Age Assessment Board is using conventional social work methods to identify age.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s intervention. One of the problems is that social workers are using exactly those techniques—perhaps not in full, but they are. What is more, the NNAB social workers are paid through the NNAB by the Home Office. They are not independent, which is the other key point we wanted to make. I am very grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said at the start. He said that the public had moved on. But, as a former trustee of UNICEF, I say that my priority has to be the protection of young people who are under 18, and an arrangement for those where it may not be possible to decide that exactly—and we have had many debates about all that.

The issue is not just one of public satisfaction. The public may be very irritated by the young men who are clearly over 18 who are doing this, and that is fine for the system. Those of us who are bringing back amendments, probably on Monday, want to make sure that it is not happening the other way round: that people under 18 are being deemed to be adult. We know that this has happened and I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that we might finally see some data on this. Every time I have asked over the last three or four years, there has been no data about those who are deemed to be 18 and over who were under, and, indeed, the other way around. That is important for the Home Office, because it needs to understand about provision for those who are in this very small group, who need to be looked after in a slightly more special way.

By the way, not every young person who is under 18 who goes to a school is going to have special needs. They may need some language support, but not necessarily special needs. They may need emotional support if they have come from a war zone such as Sudan but, if we are saying that they are awaiting assessment as asylum seekers, that is something that this country really ought to be prepared to look at. So I am much more cynical about the NNAB being as truly independent and clear as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, was making out. Those of us who have amendments will go over this in detail next week.

I want to go back to Amendments 114 and 115. Young people having no right of appeal contravenes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child. They absolutely must have support in complex issues, particularly in a country where they may not speak the language. When the official Opposition were in power, they also refused to let young people who were having age assessments carried over have any access to legal or advisory support during that process. They said it was not necessary. But I have to say that those European countries that use age assessments all have independent support for these young people from that Government’s own process. I particularly pray in aid the Netherlands, because it was cited by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, when he was at the Dispatch Box in the past.

These protections are built in because we have a formal duty to look after those under 18 and, yes, it may be difficult to work out if some are, but we will know about most of them. I really think that the first two amendments need to be reviewed, and I do not think we can support them. I can remember when I read the first full report: it is not as clear as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, said. There is always talk about ranges. I do not know about noble Lords, but I have a son of six foot four and he was certainly sprouting a beard by 16 or 17 and was already over six foot. We make mistakes, and I absolutely support what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was saying. You cannot just assume that that is right and, if we get it wrong, you have a young man—they usually are young men—who is put into an adult centre. They then are at risk, and that is on us as a country.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I absolutely applaud the laudable work of UNICEF. The point that I was attempting to make was that we must focus our efforts on weeding out those who are clearly, as she concedes, not reaching the age criteria, so that we can focus on those in most need, who have suffered terror, despotism, trauma et cetera.

Taking the noble Baroness back to the appeals, what is the alternative? If you have an open-ended, liberal, permissive appeals system, it will be gamed by many people. She might want to think about this before she tables an amendment: can you have an appeals system that pays due regard to the universal human rights of children but does not allow the system to be gamed by endless appeals that take months and years?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The problem is that Amendment 114 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, says there is no appeal—full stop, end. None. Therefore, that young person, who probably has English as a second language, whichever side they are and who will be arguing that they are under 18, does not even have the right that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, was talking about, and that worries me. I have argued this for some time, as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, knows, to his cost. I agree that the public are concerned. I have no doubt about that. However, are we only concerned with what the public are concerned about? Do we not need to focus on children who are seeking asylum in this country and can get some help? If we go by, “Well, actually the public don’t want it”, it will all start going the wrong way.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am sure the noble Baroness will agree that she is balancing two things here. First, a problem arises if a young person is put into adult accommodation, as she identifies. However, a bigger problem arises if you put an adult who is fraudulently claiming to be a child into facilities for young people. At that point, there is a very significant risk to those young people.

As a House, we have a significant responsibility in this area to ensure that we do not gullibly take people’s claims to be young people, which can put other young people in those homes and facilities at risk. It is very important that the Home Office has a coherent system, which it does, and that the system is capable of review, which of course it is by judicial review. The noble Baroness will agree that there is a balancing act to be performed here.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. I have argued before to him, and I say it again, that there is a very straightforward answer. You have smaller group homes for those who are around the borderline, because the protection we need is for the younger ones. The noble Lord is absolutely right that, if we put a load of people in who are over 18, those younger children are at risk. But we do not have to, given the number of children that there are.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Does the noble Baroness have any figures for the number of young people whose ages are in dispute, because I suspect that there are not that many? We may be worrying about a relatively small number of people compared with the huge number who are seeking asylum.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness and say again to the Minister, who will probably curse me for it, that there is no data and we need that data to understand the size of the problem. It must be not just pure data about age. It must also be about the response when children or young people are placed in the wrong one, and what support they need. I will leave it there.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments of my noble friends Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Murray. They are interesting amendments because they seek to tackle the same problem by different means. The aim is to have accurate information about age and to require that it be secured.

--- Later in debate ---

On the data point of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we are trying to keep data separate between the Home Office asylum side of the business and the Home Office NAAB side of the business. There is a sort of wall between them, and that data is not shared. I will reflect on her points and examine them in detail, but that is where I am coming from at the moment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Is there a plan to publish this in annual form at some point in the future? We need that data.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I have heard what the noble Baroness said. I will reflect on that point. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

27: After Clause 36, insert the following new Clause—
“Mandatory referral for age assessment in criminal proceedingsWhere an individual who claims to be under 18 is charged with an offence of illegal entry or facilitating illegal entry under immigration law, the Home Office must—(a) make an immediate mandatory referral to the relevant local authority for a comprehensive Merton-compliant age assessment, and(b) ensure that no prosecution proceeds until an assessment has been completed and the individual’s age is confirmed.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that individuals who may be children are required to have a comprehensive age assessment before any criminal proceedings for immigration offences can proceed, ensuring they are properly assessed and safeguarded in line with child protection principles.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for not being able to take part on this Bill at an earlier stage. The second amendment in this group, Amendment 57, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, addresses the issue of age assessment of young asylum seekers who may or may not be under 18, and we continue to support these amendments. My Amendment 27 deals with a more specific part of the age-assessment process. It seeks to introduce an immediate mandatory referral for a Merton-compliant, social work-led age assessment before any criminal proceedings can be taken against the individual. I thank the Home Office for issuing its paper on abbreviated age assessments earlier in the year, which clarifies its position on this sensitive issue of issuing criminal proceedings against an asylum seeker who says they are under 18, but who officials believe to be over 18. From these Benches, while it is a helpful clarification, it does not change the core position that this amendment wishes to remedy.

At the heart of the government note is an abbreviated and expedited process now led by National Age Assessment Board—NAAB—social workers. We still argue that this process needs to be carried out by local authorities and not by NAAB, because NAAB is answerable to the Home Office and, of course, to its Ministers. Any age-assessment process must be independent of the Government and their staff, who have often already decided that the individual is probably over 18. I therefore have some questions for the Minister.

The considerably shorter abbreviated age-assessment process has turned the premise of how old an individual is into trying to determine that somebody could be under 18, as opposed to establishing their actual age under the Merton-compliant system; whereas the full assessment uses age ranges in much more depth. In January 2022, the Kent intake unit tried an abbreviated process with an investigation half way between a full age assessment and a brief inquiry, which was found to be unlawful in the courts. Can the Minister say how the abbreviated system will be different from the previous Kent intake unit case? Can the Minister also confirm that, if someone is in a hotel saying that they are a child, then they are potentially a child in need in that area, and therefore the local authority needs to respond, given that the case law makes it abundantly clear that it has to take a view that is independent from the Home Office? It would be a miscarriage of justice if the Home Office tells local authorities, who think they are children, that they are not children. That must remain the role of local authorities. Can the Minister confirm that local authorities will still play this key independent role?

This amendment is laid because concerns continue that the National Age Assessment Board uses a hostile approach to the age-assessment process. The Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit has investigated the experiences of children who have been assessed by the NAAB and found that it:

“Operates according to the Home Office’s political agenda, which is felt by the children being assessed … Carries out assessments that do not follow established age assessment guidance, and therefore make it difficult for children to engage meaningfully in the process … Causes distress, retraumatisation, mental health crisis, and ongoing trust issues for children”.


One young person said to the Greater Manchester Immigration Unit:

“From the first time, you feel that they are against you. This is their intention, to end with the report that you are an adult”.


This is not a safe human rights approach to making a decision about whether a young person and child could be deemed to be over 18, then treating them as such, without the safeguarding protections afforded to under-18s in our court system. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 57, in my name and those of other noble Lords, to whom I am grateful for their support. I am also grateful to the Refugee Migrant Children’s Consortium for all its help and to my noble friend Lady Longfield, who cannot be in her place but who has written to my noble friend the Minister in support of the amendment, drawing on her experience as a former Children’s Commissioner for England. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for finding the time the other week to discuss some of this with some of us. I should make clear my support for Amendment 27 and everything that has been said so far.

This amendment is focused on the age of assessment of children at the border. It would create safeguards for asylum-seeking children whose age is in dispute and would set limits on the use of scientific or technological age-estimation methods, which I believe the noble Baronesses, Lady Neuberger and Lady Hamwee, will cover. It would also provide for an annual report to Parliament.

To recap the case very briefly, as we have heard, the Home Office continues to assess incorrectly as adults a significant number of asylum-seeking children arriving in the UK based on a quick visual assessment of their appearance and demeanour. This has serious consequences—some have already been outlined—which include significant safeguarding risks when children are placed in accommodation with adults without appropriate safeguards, including the oversight of child protection professionals.

Concern has been expressed about this by the Children’s Commissioner, Ofsted, the British Association of Social Workers and, just last week, the Home Affairs Select Committee, which called it a “serious safeguarding issue”. Yet the Home Office appears to be more concerned about the potential risk of an adult masquerading as a child being housed with children even though child protection professionals will be present in those circumstances.

The Select Committee made it clear that it did not share the Home Office director-general of customer services’ confidence in the current system. In his recent inspection report, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration highlighted that over a decade of concerns around the Home Office’s “perfunctory” visual age assessments remain unaddressed, and that questions about policy and practice “remain unanswered”. He noted that

“inspectors were surprised at the lack of curiosity from individual officers and corporately about decisions that were subsequently disputed and overturned, and at the view that there was no learning to take from the later assessments”

made by local authority social workers, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referred. I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted all the chief inspector’s recommendations and that they are working to improve the data, which have been woefully poor hitherto.

I simply draw attention now to what the chief inspector described as his “overall message”, namely that the Home Office

“should look to work more closely and collaboratively with external stakeholders”,

among which he included NGOs,

“as much as possible in designing and delivering its processes”.

Thus, his first recommendation was that the Home Office should:

“Produce a stakeholder map and engagement plan that takes full account of the practical and presentational value of involving external stakeholders”,


including non-governmental organisations,

“in the development and delivery of relevant policies and best practice, including but not limited to input into and implementation of each of”

each of his other recommendations.

How does my noble friend plan to respond in practice to this recommendation? Will he agree to the establishment of a task and finish group that includes NGOs, notably members of the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, to work with officials on taking forward the chief inspector’s recommendations? I understand that such collaboration has existed in the past but was ended about 10 years ago, so it would not be setting a precedent. I know it would be warmly welcomed by stakeholders, especially if provision were made to hear from those with direct experience of age disputes. The proposal was also supported by my noble friend Lady Longfield in her letter to the Minister.

I have made it clear to my noble friend the Minister that I do not plan to push the amendment to a vote. However, I will be very disappointed if he is not able to agree to this very modest proposal, which does no more than embody the spirit of what the chief inspector has recommended.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let me say it again and see whether I can help my noble friend: the Government have accepted all eight recommendations. That is clear. We have accepted all the recommendations from the borders inspectorate, including plans to proactively engage with local authorities, social workers and key stakeholders—voluntary agencies are key stakeholders, and I met them again last week to discuss this very matter—to progress the recommendations. How that pans out will be for my honourable friend the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris, to take forward, but I give this House the assurance that that is the level of engagement that we are trying to have. On that basis, I hope that I have satisfied my noble friend and that she will not press her amendment, and that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will withdraw hers.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken during the debate on age assessment, and particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her amendment, which, as the Minister recognised, sets a wider framework for concerns about age assessment, whereas my amendment was highly specific about one area of concern. I say to the Minister and to the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord Cameron, that nobody is saying in either of these amendments that there should not be any age assessments. We are arguing for age assessments that are appropriate and safe for the particular circumstances that the two amendments address.

I am very grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Harper, said that this is not an exact science. We understand that, and it is exactly where part of our concerns come from. I think that full assessment is the only way, particularly when young people who say they are children might end up being treated as adults in a criminal case. That is a very particular concern, which is why I tabled the amendment, because during cases those under 18 are afforded particular support that is not available if they are over 18. Therefore, age assessment is extremely important, which is why my amendment asks for a full age assessment, not the abbreviated age assessment that the Minister says is now taking place.

To summarise as best I can, without taking anything away from the intervention just now from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, we hear the Minister saying that there have been changes and that he is watching development as time progresses. From this side of the argument, we say that we do not see enough evidence that these systems are safe. I hope that the Minister will continue to discuss this with us outside the passage of the Bill, because some of us have been arguing for this for three years or more. We still have concerns, which we are seeing in the current system right now, when a child has been treated as an adult and then found to be a child. That should not be happening. But on the basis that this is a progression and that I hope the Minister will meet us in the future, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 27 withdrawn.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have signed both Amendment 58 and Amendment 80, which is consequential to Amendment 58. We have just heard very eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about why it is important. I will just highlight a couple of very brief points.

First, I lived in Hong Kong until 1960 and my family knew Anthony Grey, the Reuters journalist who was imprisoned by Mao Tse-Tung in 1967. As a young teenager, I wrote to him at his home in Peking where he had been imprisoned. Anthony died last week. His family have said that what China did to him, keeping him in solitary confinement with no charges or anything else for over two years, affected him for the rest of his life. We see an echo of that today in the treatment of people such as Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong in prison. Hong Kong is not a safe place for some people to be.

I just want to add that, two years ago, there were a number of incidents with border staff not understanding the British national overseas route and treating Hong Konger arrivals as if they were asylum seekers. They were not. I was grateful that, after our intervention in your Lordships’ House, Ministers ensured that this error was corrected.

Last week in your Lordships’ House we discussed the changes to the extradition arrangements for Hong Kong; again, I am very grateful to the Minister for those discussions. The reason that both these issues were important to the Hong Kongers who have come here to safety as British nationals, holding British national visas, is that their life here is very unsettled. Threats to their personal safety in the UK are bad enough, but their families are also threatened in Hong Kong as well.

The whole point of the BNO visa was to keep our word to fellow British nationals after 1984. We made that real in 2021. The tiny things that have been going wrong also add to the unease that many Hong Kongers feel in this country. Making sure that no decisions are changed on the BNO visa route other than by Parliament is exactly what needs to happen to give them the confidence that the UK still stands by them.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 70 and 85 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who is not with us today for reasons I explained earlier. We listened to what was said in Committee and this amendment mirrors what was placed on the agenda then. But, in tabling this amendment, we have made some changes, one of which is the need for biometrics to be taken prior to travel, and the amendment also proposes a capped scheme to control numbers and an initial pilot of 12 months minimum in order to have the opportunity to evaluate it.

To try to explain this scheme, which is basically about a legal route into the United Kingdom, I will just refer to the United States. A similar scheme to the one we are proposing—not exactly the same, but similar—was instituted there, and the US Government were able to reduce illegal border crossings from Mexico across the US border by 77% between December 2023 and August 2024: that is, in nine months.

It was achieved through a three-pronged approach, one of which was, of course, diplomatic efforts to make sure that there was a strong ability to manage the system in the countries where people started, and also then taking a tough approach to the irregular border crossings, significantly reducing the chance of successfully claiming asylum for those arriving without permission, and a substantial official scheme through which people could apply to come to the country. That is the bit that, of course, the humanitarian travel permit relates to.

The result in the United States was that it simply was not worth the expense of paying the smugglers any more and it undermined their business entirely. That is because you cannot look at just one side of the demand-supply equation. The demand is being met by the smugglers, and we have to touch both sides. Without a form of legal route, you will not get that demand reduced.

I will try to explain it very straightforwardly. In the United Kingdom, we put up with queues. We may not like them, but we follow, if there is a queue, in a proper and orderly manner—mostly. If somebody pushes in, either they do not get served when they get to the front, or they get sent to the back of the queue. This scheme means to do exactly that—to provide a scheme where there is a queue in which people can come to the United Kingdom. If you decide to jump the queue by taking the smugglers route, you get put to the back of the queue again.

That means, of course, that you have to have a quota attached to the scheme, and because the law in this country says that you cannot make a claim for asylum unless you are here, you have to have a travel permit in order to come here. But that would be controlled right back at the beginning of the journey. If you have paid a slab of money to a smuggler back in Egypt or Libya, you are certainly not going to be put off when you get to the end of the route. It is certainly the case that you need to tackle this right back at the beginning. This whole scheme is about trying to create a legal route and being tough on anyone who tries to jump the queue by coming in irregularly and moving them to the back of the queue.

It does not matter if the queue is not moving very quickly; what matters is that it is moving. It is surprising that people will be prepared to wait, as they did in the United States, where, in the case of Haiti, instead of 10,000 people turning up at the US border, it was just a handful every month. That is because people said, “It’s not worth my while doing that”. They saw that joining the queue meant that at some stage they would get to the front of that queue.

It works much better, of course, if you are doing it with other countries as well, because you can collectively create these routes, which can be dealt with in a very efficient way. That way, we control the borders. That is what this is about. It is a different sort of approach from what is suggested by putting your hands up and saying, “You can’t get in”, and “We’ll stop you in every way possible”, and all that stuff. That did not work.

It may be that, in time, the pressures to try to deal with this across the channel may well work in reducing the numbers. But we are looking at changing the whole model so that the smugglers’ model does not work. It has been tried and tested. That is why, if we are going to use this in a European context, it is important that it is done with a capped model, with one particular country perhaps, and certainly for 12 months, so that we can find out whether we can make this work here in Europe as well.

This system, this scheme, is one that is designed to provide safe routes and to take away the business of the smugglers. It will not solve it all, but if it reduces it by 77%, as was the case in the United States of America, it is certainly worth doing.

That is what this amendment is about. The other amendment, with which it is associated, is simply to create a pilot scheme with a capped number of people in it. I hope that we will consider this when we come back to it later in this debate.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I very much deprecate people who come to this country and commit crimes. The sooner they are deported, the better. However, I do not really understand why we need these amendments. I am hoping that the Minister is going to tell us, as he previously said he would, how the Government are going to move forward in identifying the age of people. Again, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that those who are not children—and pretend to be—should be found out.

However, as I said at an earlier stage of discussion on the Bill, when I went to a drop-in centre with Safe Passage some years ago, I met two 16 year-old Afghans: one with a beard and the other with a bushy moustache. We need to recognise that boys in other parts of the world mature, particularly facially, at a much earlier age than they do in this country and in western Europe. That is an issue which raises real problems for identification.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that, over the last four to five years, we have been round the Houses on this issue, not just in this Bill but in a large number of Bills. It keeps returning because there are concerns.

I want to start by trying to find some common ground on this issue, as we did last week, with the noble Lord, Lord Harper, in particular. Age verification—determining whether someone is 18 or not—is extremely difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, it is completely inappropriate for people who are well over 18 to come into a school system where they are treated as much younger, and even these Benches would not support that.

The difficulty—and the reason why we keep raising this—is that it is clear that no doctor will apply any of the scientific methods. We have had this debate since 2023, when the BMA made it clear that they were unreliable. On that occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, spoke in your Lordships’ House about how hormonal change because of poor diet, and the possibility of hormonal change because of minor and benign tumours, are impossible to tell just from looking at an MRI.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling these amendments. We have indeed been around the Houses, but in trying to reach some common ground, I agree with every noble Lord who has spoken that we need to have some method of assessing age. Children who are placed in settings with adults are at risk, and adults who are placed in settings with children potentially pose a risk. I think there is common ground across the House today on the need to find some mechanism to establish age verification.

Amendments 63 and 64 refer to scientific methods of age assessment, and Amendment 63 places a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to lay regulations under Section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act within six months of the passing of the Bill. This is one of the reasons, in addition to those that I have given, that I support the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Regulations have already been made under this power that specify X-ray and MRI methods of age assessment.

Amendment 64 would, in effect, reintroduce Section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which the Bill looks to repeal. Under the powers given to the Secretary of State in Section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act, the Secretary of State would not make regulations to the effect that this amendment seeks to achieve unless and until the specific scientific methods in question were sufficiently accurate to mean that applying the automatic assumption in cases of refusal to consent would be compatible with the ECHR. The specified methods—that is, X-ray and MRI images of certain body areas—do not currently meet this threshold. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, also emphasised that point, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harper, to some extent.

That does not mean that the Government do not wish to have age verification measures in place. I can assure the House that, in the context of the Government’s wider work to reform age assessment systems, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harper, the then Minister for Security and Asylum set out in a Written Ministerial Statement in the House of Commons, which I repeated in this House in July, that this Government have commissioned work to determine the most promising new and emerging methods of age assessment to pursue them further. As a result of that, currently the work to operationalise X-ray and MRI methods of age assessment have been stood down, because facial age estimation methods—this goes to the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—are less intrusive, cheaper and faster, and there is no requirement for a physical medical procedure. As I mentioned in Committee, we are not there yet, but facial age estimation technology is currently being explored by the Home Office. It is a potential assistive tool in the age assessment process, and we have commissioned further testing and trialling with the intention of implementing the technology during 2026 if it proves a worthwhile addition to our armoury.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The last Government produced an expert report in the run-up to our 23 debates on various amendments. Will the Government undertake to have an expert report from doctors and scientists, which would then be published in full, so that Parliament and the wider community can actually see the detail? The Minister is absolutely right to say that AI age assessment is not there yet, and I always worry about passing something that might mean that we do not see the detail when doctors are unhappy.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that it is in the interests of the Government to get technology in place that is less intrusive and more accurate and does not rely on X-rays and MRIs, as we have now, for that physical contact. The question of what that development will be is something that we are working through at the moment, and I am expecting that in the latter part of 2026 I will be able to come to this House—if still in post—to argue the case for the implementation of a better facial age estimation technology. I will, on the basis of what the noble Baroness has said, make sure that I can put into the public domain whatever information I think does not compromise the operation. That is the best I can give her today, but I will reflect on what she said and look at whether I can agree to her request. I do not want to give her an immediate response, because there may be reasons why it is not in our interest to put some of that information into the public domain, because people will always try to subsume facial recognition technology or any other method. I will just reflect on that, if I may.

The key point is that these emerging new methods and the regulations applying the automatic assumption of adult provision for refusal to consent to methods of scientific age assessment as set out in the IMA cannot be laid until the specific methods are sufficiently accurate. Because we do not believe that they are going to be, these amendments are not necessary. For those reasons, I hope that we can share common ground with the noble Lord: his objective, my objective, and I think that of every noble Lord who has spoken, is to ensure that we have accurate age assessment. The methodology he has brought forward in these amendments is not the way forward, but I give an assurance to the House that the exploration of other methods is under way and I will report back when those tests are complete. I urge him, therefore, to withdraw his amendment.