Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

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.

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[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.