Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, and I certainly support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Cameron. The first of my amendments, Amendment 22, is very straightforward in saying that the commander should publish financial accounts. Clause 4 refers to the financial year but not the publication of financial accounts. It is very important that we have discipline around what the purpose of the organisation is and what will be the return on the investment the public are making in it. When the Minister comes to respond on this group, perhaps he will guide the Committee as to whether the £150 million that has been mentioned is, in effect, new money being put into this organisation or whether it represents a reallocation of existing budgets. Perhaps it is a blend of the two.

That brings me on to Amendment 24, which could almost be thought of as post-legislative scrutiny on an ongoing basis for the new structure that is envisaged. It is a new layer—I will not use the word bureaucracy, but it is a new agency essentially—designed to co-ordinate other agencies, rather than necessarily operationally deliver outcomes itself. There is, therefore, undoubtedly a danger, which I am sure the Government recognise, that having another cook in this kitchen could destroy value rather than add value. We need to be clear about what the real outcome is, over a period of years, of the initiatives that the Government have brought forward. We certainly give them credit for doing so for all the right reasons.

Perhaps my drafting was rather inelegant, but this is not about the performance of the individual commander; I am talking about the commander’s organisation—the BSC. It is about asking whether the partner agencies continue to believe that the new agency is adding value and doing things that could not otherwise be done. If it does not work as we all hope it will, there must be an argument that it should be stood down and the co-ordination function perhaps be taken up by another agency or indeed by the Home Office itself.

These are two very straightforward amendments. The first point is that the Government need to be accountable for the money spent, and the second is that the partner agencies that will be the beneficiaries—or otherwise—of this co-ordination should be able to express their views about the efficacy of the structure. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to attend Second Reading. I have put my name to a number of later amendments, but I wanted to say how much I support the spirit of this group. On the issue of boat crossings, there is a feeling in relation to smashing the gangs that there is a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and not enough transparency and understanding. I fear that there is a climate of public distrust in which politicians are just not believed.

These amendments would therefore be really helpful to the Government, because they give assurances that this will be fully accounted for and not just a slogan, as has been indicated. The area around these crossings is a territory for rumour and potential misinformation. All sorts of figures are bandied around and people, because they no longer believe in the official figures, are open to all sorts of untrue figures. These amendments would help pin down exactly what this Bill will have achieved, which is very important.

There was an interesting incident recently where journalists—Patrick Christys and a team from GB News—helped to smash the gangs themselves. They did this by going on Instagram and pretending to be trying to get a crossing; they organised one and had WhatsApp communications, voice messages and so on, partly as a sting operation to show how easy it is to infiltrate the gangs and get this information. They passed on the information to the appropriate authorities. They have chased it up, and nothing has happened. Even though they had the names and phone numbers—because they were WhatsApp messages—of two gang leaders, nothing has happened to those people. Those journalists understandably used this to say, “For all the rhetoric about the gangs and this new piece of legislation saying that it will smash them, will it really?”

The first two amendments in this group will tell the public what they want to know about this Bill—how many gang leaders have been arrested and what exactly has happened. I urge the Government to look at these amendments favourably, as helpful to their cause and to the general atmosphere, so that we do not have public cynicism about political rhetoric without action.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am intrigued by Amendment 20 requiring a statement of

“the number of … gangs that have ceased to operate as a result of enforcement action”.

As I understand it, that is very difficult to know. The characteristic of these gangs is that individual smugglers group and regroup. You have smaller fish who may be better known than the bigger ones. Obviously, the objective that is the subject of this amendment is exactly the right one, but I do not know that there could be any useful or meaningful reporting in quite the way that the amendment suggests. I am sorry not to be supporting it.

On Amendment 21, I note how important it is to have good data, whether or not the six headings here are precisely what the commander should be producing. The more general point—I will go on repeating it—is that the responsibility lies with the Secretary of State, not the commander. It is important to have full and accessible data much more frequently, and more up to date, than in an annual report published some time after the financial year to which the information relates.

I agree with the noble Lord to the extent that this is about accountability, but I do not agree—as he will have gathered rather tediously from me, and I am sorry about that—that the accountability is that of the director. It is that of the Secretary of State.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps it is possible to bring both sides together on this issue. I have a long history of being attacked for my views on this. I was the Member for Lewisham West when we brought in the east African Asians, and I remember the appalling attacks that one had for supporting Ted Heath and the Conservative Government at the time. I want to underline the long history of Conservatives being supportive of proper attitudes towards human rights and asylum. But it does not help us in this discussion if we miss out two different things.

The first is that we need to support international agreements, because this is not going to get any easier. I will not bore the Committee on the question of climate change, but if anybody thinks we have real problems of immigration now, the kind of weather changes we are going to have will mean that there will be a lot more people moving not for economic reasons but because they can no longer live where they are born. We have to realise how serious the issue of immigration right across the board is going to be. One has to take this very seriously, but that means we should be very careful about protecting the rights of asylum seekers. We did not just do this because of the Holocaust, although that was the proximate pressure. There are people who are treated in a way that makes life in their countries absolutely impossible, and they cannot leave by some accepted rule or open system. They have to hide and escape, and we need to take them very seriously.

The other thing we have to remember is that there is widespread concern about the number of immigrants who have come into this country and who are likely to do so. This Committee must not ignore that fact. But if we are to accept both those things, we have to be very careful that the legislation we pass is truly consonant with the international agreements we have. We also have to be extremely careful that we do not say, every time there is an amendment, that somehow there is something unsuitable behind it.

These amendments are technical. I do not agree with them all, but the Committee has to accept that they are important. To dismiss them as if they were merely the product of people who always oppose any kind of restraint on immigration seems unfair and unworthy. I also happen to think that many of us opposed the Rwanda proposal because it was a load of old rubbish—because it was not going to work. That is why we opposed it, not because we did not understand the importance of the issue but because it was not the right answer. Frankly, to suggest that because we did not agree with the Rwanda concept we are somehow wet on this subject seems untrue and very unfair.

We in this House are surely in the business of discussing these matters in detail and carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have rightly brought to our notice some important issues that we have to get right. They may not be the right amendments, but we have to discuss them without automatically believing what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has a long history of defending those who are not otherwise defended, has brought to our notice. I am pleased that we have been discussing it. I think we will find that he withdraws or does not move the amendments and thinks again about which ones he wishes to press.

I hope we will treat this with the seriousness it deserves, which means, first, recognising the national concern about numbers and, secondly, trying to make a proper distinction that protects people who flee from terrible regimes. I would like everybody in this Committee to think once again how blessed we are that we are not in that position. If we are blessed in that way, we should think carefully about those who are not.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, every time I speak after the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I feel as though I have taken on the headmaster. Having been admonished, I tread carefully. I have wanted to comment on this group of amendments from the beginning. The fact that the debate has become quite fractious and animated in some ways indicates what my original concerns are and why I wanted to ask the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in particular, to clarify something.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I am very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. He always makes a very pertinent point, but this is surely wrong in common sense. I do not speak as a lawyer, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, did, but this is common sense. Surely, as my noble friend Lord Murray said, the refugee convention as it stands would want someone from Afghanistan to be accepted in a country near Afghanistan, and they would probably prefer that. But that person is given four or five alternatives. He need not stop in one country or another country. Surely it is designed to discourage “asylum tourism”, whereby you decide which countries suit your purpose.

That is surely something we shall consider. It is not necessarily the case that someone coming from Afghanistan will be sent back to Afghanistan. They may come from France, in which case they may stay in France, where they are in no danger. If they go via Italy, they are in no danger there, either. Surely this is the logic of the situation, which ordinary people cannot understand. Why do we have to accept these people who come through multiple countries when there is a refugee convention which accepts that they need not be accepted if they have come through more than one country?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is not just ordinary people who do not understand it. I do not understand it at all, logically. Mind you, I am an ordinary person.

The discussion so far has been very helpful in raising some key issues that the country is preoccupied with. The sensible way to approach this, which people have started to do, is to say that there should be a proper, open debate on it. We need to have a proper discussion about whether the 1951 refugee convention is appropriate for 2025 and very different circumstances. Some of the amendments have allowed us to reflect on that.

Every word of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was on the money—absolutely hear, hear. We sometimes have discussions in this Chamber that bear little relationship to the political, social and cultural context of what everybody else in the country is talking about. There have been times during this debate in which the discussion about what constitutes safety and fleeing unsafe countries gives us a hint as to how we have got into a very serious political crisis in this country. The definition of what constitutes unsafe, the definition of what constitutes asylum and the definition of what constitutes refugee have become so expansive that it is a miracle or a mystery to me that anyone has been deported. If anyone was listening, you would just think, “Oh well, we can’t do anything”.

To give an example of some of the things that were argued, I was involved in a debate on the radio some months ago about whether Albania was a safe country. The example given was one that has been cited here today about the levels of domestic violence in Albania. I pointed out that most of the people that I had seen in the small boats who were Albanian did not look like they were the victims of domestic violence. Given the historic split, sex-wise, in terms of domestic violence, they might well have been the abusers.

I point this out only because, every time you say, “Surely, there is no reason why they should be in this country; they are from a safe country”, people will say, “No they’re not”, and you get left in a situation where you cannot remove them.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I will make the point, before the noble Baroness moves on, that that is exactly the point that many of us are making—you cannot generalise. I will just put it that way.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I was about to go on to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who said that a country may be safe generally but not for a particular section of the population. The noble Baroness more or less made the point there that she has just made now about not generalising. I agree that it is difficult to say, “This is a safe country” or “This is not”. The problem I have is that we have a situation where we either say, “These countries are not safe” or “Every country can be safe, but not to some groups of people”. We end up, therefore, saying that the whole world, and sections of the whole world, are likely to be unsafe and the people there can come to the UK. We cannot be in a situation where we open up to everybody from around the world who is in an unsafe situation.

By the way, that would also be true of this country, when it comes to the threat of violence against women and girls. You could say that the UK is a safe country. Let me tell you that it has not been a safe country in hundreds of towns for thousands and thousands of young women, girls and children who were sexually abused and raped in their thousands, in an industrial fashion, in the “safe” country of the United Kingdom. I am not prepared to generalise, but we cannot simply say that, because of the lived experience of those individuals who have suffered at the hands of others in other countries, it should be automatically assumed that they can move to the United Kingdom.

Finally, therefore, I want to ask for some guidance from the Minister on the status of the Bill. I read through a lot of the sections and notes in preparation for what I was going to say today and for other forthcoming days in Committee, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this Bill is completely out of date”. I do not mean it is out of date as far as I am concerned but rather as far as the Government are concerned. Looking at a number of the amendments I have put my name to, I now look like a lily-livered liberal type in comparison with some of the comments made by Labour Government Ministers on the Front Benches. I suddenly thought, “Oh, I was being rather tentative there on the European Court of Human Rights and so on”. But it is full throttle—the Home Secretary covering herself in Union Jacks and flags, as she has told us. I thought, “I don’t know where to go now”.

In all seriousness, the Government have said, perfectly reasonably, that parliamentary time is short in general, and we all know that the Bill is under a lot of scrutiny. There are an awful lot of amendments to the Bill. Would it be possible for the Government Front Bench to assess all the amendments from across the House in different directions and tick off all those that the Government might now agree with, so that we do not waste parliamentary time on things on which there is general unanimity on the Government Front Bench, if not on their Back Benches?

As we continue to discuss the Bill, we should constantly bear in mind that the reason why there is concern about international conventions, the European Court of Human Rights and so on, is that this Parliament—the whole point of us being here—has to pass legislation it considers to be in the best interests of the people who live in this country and are of this country, the national interest being important. If the will of the people, as expressed in Parliament, cannot happen because of international conventions and human rights laws, as liberally interpreted by a plethora of lawyers, then it means that democracy is threatened. I therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, when he said we should look at some of this again. I hope the Government will look at it again and that we do not have to waste time on amendments that they will, broadly speaking, agree with.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the amendment is legally coherent and that is very much in its favour. It contains a tacit acknowledgment of the dualist system that we have in this country. That means that we are bound by domestic law and bound by international law only in so far as it has it has been incorporated in domestic law. The noble Baroness is right that there are references to the refugee convention in domestic law—for example, Section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993.

The main provision of the refugee convention that attracts attention is Article 33, the non-refoulement provision. Does membership of the refugee convention require a particular response from the courts of this country? There is reference to it in the Supreme Court decision on the Rwanda policy, although it was not entirely clear, to me at least, what effect it had on the outcome of the case. The much greater part of the judgment was taken up with the review of the relevant articles of the ECHR, which are incorporated into our law by the Human Rights Act.

What is quite clear is that it is always open to Parliament to exclude references to international law from domestic legislation. In which case, any obligations that this country has under the refugee convention exist only as a matter of international law. I say that without meaning to diminish the importance of international law; we should comply with international obligations as far as possible. However, there is an increasingly recognised view that the 1951 convention was of its time and that it is necessary to look again at its application in the light of the challenges that immigration now presents not just to this country but to other European countries and to countries such as Australia that have signed up to the convention.

If the leaked memo reported in Saturday’s Times is correct, the Attorney-General himself acknowledges that the time may have come to look again at the convention and its application to the immigration and asylum system. It is important to stress that no body or institution is empowered to determine authoritatively what the convention means. This distinguishes it from the ECHR, where the European Court of Human Rights performs that task.

My view is that it would be best to remain a member of the refugee convention but to remove any references to it from domestic legislation, so that Parliament can determine the proper policy in relation to immigration and asylum without fearing interpretation of that legislation by reference to the convention. This amendment does precisely the opposite of that, which is the reason that I oppose it, despite its legal coherence. I anticipate that the Government may not altogether be inclined to accept the amendment either, because to do so would hard-wire the convention, with all its imprecision, into our domestic law. This would create just the sort of difficulties that we have had with the European Convention on Human Rights and the obligation, under Section 2 of the Human Rights Act, to take it into account.

It should be possible to remain signed up to the refugee convention without unduly or unnecessarily hampering our obligations. Australia has managed this, as I said. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in his 188-page analysis of the various issues that are thrown up by the convention. He is right that we may have to think again, even without this amendment, if our courts interpret domestic law in a way that appears to incorporate international law. Important though it is, it confuses the issue. Parliament ought to be sovereign in these matters and to decide the correct policy.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I really support the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who very articulately and with legal adeptness explained some of my reservations. I will raise just a few other points.

I am particularly opposed to Amendment 184, because it would further institutionalise—this is even its title—the primacy of the refugee convention. I think that emphasising that primacy undermines democracy.

I listened carefully to the expansive debate on refugee family reunion in the first group. One of the most insightful comments came in the very moving contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, about her family’s experience of refugees fleeing Nazi antisemitism. It was a reminder of that historic period, but also of the importance of historic specificity. This matters today—which is such a joyous day, by the way, with the return home of the hostages; I spent most of the morning crying, but with joy in this instance. Jew hatred is alive today—it is still happening—but it is not the Nazis or the Second World War. This is a completely different version; something else is happening.

That issue of history is one of the reasons why I wanted to speak on this group. I have long argued that the refugee convention is long past its historic sell-by date and that it is time for us to consider leaving it or maybe amending it in some way, as has been discussed. So I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has given us a chance to consider the issue.

Of course, when the refugee convention was established in 1951, it had noble aims. It was designed for a world coming to terms with the aftermath of a world war and mass displacement. But if you think about the way that the term “refugee” is used today, you will find that it has become so expansive and flexible that it has been used recently to describe a trans-identifying burglar from Algeria and a Zimbabwean paedophile, both of whom say that they are entitled to the same protection as women and children fleeing a war zone.

Earlier today the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said that language and words matter, and I agree. In this instance, “refugee” has become completely corrupted and confused. So we urgently need to review terms such as “refugee”, as interpreted by today’s reading of the refugee convention, because these stoke resentment among the public and actually harm the interests of those who might legitimately be refugees in need of protection. It bundles up a whole lot of things.

The history of the convention means that it is not the rule of law—an act of God that cannot be challenged at any time—because it has an interesting history. Established in 1951, as I say, it was a practical solution to the existence of hundreds of thousands of people in Europe who had still not been resettled after the Second World War. It is interesting that, when it was introduced, the convention applied only to refugees in Europe, and only in respect of those who had acquired that status due to the events that happened before 1951. The convention has therefore changed because it did not assist with refugees who fled Hungary in 1956. That did not mean that people were not humane in 1956; the convention was not something that could be used—as is regularly done—just to say, “Where’s your humanity? Don’t you care about refugees?” It was very specific.

It was only in 1967 that the regional and temporal limits of the refugee convention were lifted to give rights to refugees around the world. That was motivated, as many historians have noted, by the Cold War. It was used to say that all refugees are welcome in the West and to show the superiority of democracy over communism. Actually, rather a small number of refugees came on that basis.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the refugee convention seemed to lose its raison d’être. It is interesting that, in 2004, Tony Blair, no less, noted how the convention,

“first introduced in 1951, at a time when the cold war and lack of cheap air travel made long-range migration far more difficult than it has become today, has started to show its age”.

Following Blair’s lead, in the 2005 general election the Conservative Party had a manifesto commitment to withdraw from the convention. There have been discussions about whether it is showing its age. I would say that the refugee convention is not just showing its age but has outlived its usefulness and shackles democracy.

My concern about this amendment is that it tries to do something that is already a problem. We spend all our time in this Chamber scrutinising pieces of law. If we are then told, “No, you can’t do that because of the refugee convention”—or if we pass laws and they are usurped by the refugee convention through the courts—what is the point of democracy and the decision-making here if they are so undermined by international treaties? The refugee convention therefore betrays democracy and the public.

If we in this place get frustrated that laws are made and conventions are then used to undermine those laws, can noble Lords imagine what it is like to be a voter? I know it has been a while for a lot of us, but it is worth remembering that voters’ frustration is even more palpable. This does not help refugees; it is a way of bypassing democratic accountability and is a hindrance, rather than a help, to refugees and the British public.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate, and I support the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Jackson. This is the type of debate that we need to have in this Chamber. These are wide moral issues that go to the heart of what we do with our justice system.

Something that has been forgotten in the debate is that the purpose of some measures—which have been described by some as extreme and, somehow, a little too far reaching—is to have a deterrent effect. We sometimes forget that that is the purpose of some law. It is not about having something in place so that, after an event has happened, we can do something that is proportionate to the person who did it; it should be about the knowledge of the wider public, whether that is our standing population or those who are living among us and seeking refugee status, that there are normalities and reasonable behaviours expected of us all. If we have what some describe as extreme measures on our statute book, they could perhaps facilitate better behaviour. I do not think we should be frightened of this.

We need to have a wider debate and for the Government to open up more countries to be deemed acceptable and safe. We hear that our European neighbour countries are taking a rather different view of what is deemed a safe country, including Afghanistan, from ours in this country. I do not think that their human rights industry has quite got to the advanced state that we have in the UK. We have an opportunity here for the British public to realise that these Houses of Parliament are listening to them and their concerns, so I welcome this wider debate. If we do not adopt these amendments today, the Government should take on board how they can move towards the position of the wider public.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is entirely positive that we can say, “Let’s look at the wording of this”; we might have some qualms about whether we need to reword it to avoid unintended consequences—that is fine. The noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay, made a good point: this is a very important moral debate. It is one that more and more people in the country are frustrated that Parliament is not having, so it is positive that we are doing so today.

I will emphasise three things. First, we often consider what will happen to the safety of people if we deport them to countries that we deem unsafe. But the key question is actually: what about the safety of British citizens? They get forgotten in that whole discussion. We end up with this ridiculous situation where we say, “Oh, I’m really worried about this person who has committed a serious sex crime. If they are returned to their country, they might be thrown into some terribly unsafe prison. They might be beaten up or killed for the fact that they’re a sex criminal. We’ve got to save them”. We say that rather than emphasise the victims of that person. That is why people get frustrated about the topsy-turvy nature of this.

Secondly, until we legislate on this, the British public could rightly say that the Government have no control over a decision, which they want to make, to deport foreign nationals who commit crimes in this country. That is entirely appropriate for legislation, even if we need to work out the wording so that it is proportionate.

Finally, we are about to start the Sentencing Bill, which I am very interested in. The state of prisons is incredibly depressing at the moment. In fact, while we are talking about unsafe places, I do not know that going to prison here is safe for anyone. They are overcrowded and there are serious problems with our prison system. It is unexplainable that we would have people in that prison system, taking spaces that we just do not have, when we should, by right, be able to say that they do not deserve to be in this country. They broke the social contract after they were given an opportunity to be here. Sometimes they are illegal—that is different—but if they are given the right to remain, and then they murder, rape or steal from their fellow citizens, they have broken the basis on which we trusted them to stay. That is reasonable to say.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, made a good point: this is not an extreme position but a normal, commonsensical position. Based on everything I have heard from the Government, I think they agree with that. If they do, they need to legislate accordingly, which is what these amendments are trying to do.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I think it will be no surprise to Members of the Conservative Party that we oppose Amendments 34 and 72. It is quite interesting that, once the rat had been let out of the sack that the amendment was not capable of being put to the House, of course, this debate turned into a Second Reading debate about other issues on the way we should be talking about this matter. I will turn to that in a moment, but let us just take these amendments at face value as they are written, because that is what the Report stage of a Bill is about: reporting about amendments which we are discussing, not about raising other issues which should have been raised at Second Reading way back in the beginning.

These amendments embody an approach of absolute and mandatory deportation that sacrifices judicial discretion and proportionality in favour of unworkable rigidity, thereby undermining fundamental legal safeguards and international obligations. Amendment 34 proposes a sweeping new deportation regime. The explanatory material states:

“This new clause would require the deportation of any foreign national who is convicted of any offence in the United Kingdom”.


Further, it seeks to amend the Immigration Act 1971 by requiring a court to sentence a non-British citizen over the age of 17 convicted of “an offence” to deportation from the United Kingdom. You might call this the “Mars bar” scheme, whereby anybody who steals a Mars bar will be deported, or, perhaps, if that was not serious enough, you may have to steal a multi-pack of Mars bars rather than a single one.

We must oppose this proposal on multiple grounds. First, there is a lack of proportionality and balance. The amendment would introduce an obligation to make a deportation order with no exceptions and no discretion. Such an absolute provision ignores the circumstances of the offence, mitigating factors or the length of time a person may have lawfully been in this country. It comes to something when a noble Lord prays in aid the ECHR to support us against an amendment from the Conservative Party. That is an extremely interesting way forward.

Secondly, on risk of torture and human rights breach, this obligation to deport would apply even if removal would send the person concerned to a country where they would face torture or even, in some countries, where they have capital punishment. The proposal is unworkable and contrary to our international obligations.

Thirdly, on vulnerability in modern slavery, Amendment 34 would remove protections for under-18s and victims of human trafficking. For example, a small child who arrived in the UK, committed a crime, was sentenced to prison and was subsequently found to be a victim of modern slavery for the purposes of forced criminality would be subject to automatic removal without any court or tribunal mechanism to consider the circumstances of their case.

Fourthly, on eroding criminal safeguards, Amendment 34 seeks to amend Section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 by omitting instances of “knowingly” from certain immigration offences. Removing this element of mens rea—a lack of knowledge as a defence—will likely result in consequential deportation decisions being subject to more challenges under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Amendment 72 would place a duty to remove foreign offenders on the Secretary of State. It mandates that a deportation order must be made against any non-British citizen who

“has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment”—

this is different in this amendment—and “has completed their term”. Crucially, it dictates that:

“The Secretary of State must make the deportation order … within the period of seven days”.


This amendment falls foul of some of the critical flaws in Amendment 34—first, in terms of an unworkable timeline and mandatory duty. Placing a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to execute a deportation order within a rigid seven-day period against any person sentenced to imprisonment disregards the complex process required for removal, particularly when a human rights for protection claim is lodged.

Secondly, there is an absence of scrutiny and due process. Such an absolute obligation removes necessary judicial oversight and requires deportation without considering the individual’s human rights. The objective of mandating deportation in this manner risks encouraging offending behaviour and would not necessarily increase removals from the UK.

Thirdly, the amendment conflicts with legal principles. In mandating deportation for any offence, conviction without exception, it ignores the fact that deportation orders can be made against those who are victims of coercion or human trafficking. To support these kinds of absolutist amendments, especially in the context of deportation, is incredibly difficult for anyone who believes in the rule of law and due process.

We must remain resolute in our commitment to deport those who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK, but the paths produced and proposed by Amendments 34 and 72 substitute effective, balanced legislation with measures of legal absolutism. We must empower the Government to act decisively, but we must do so in a way that respects fundamental rights, due process and proportionality. These amendments fail all those critical tests.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 35. We really need the data to understand the problem and how efficacious our measures to control it are. My noble friend asked a number of different questions in a number of different ways, and he has not been given the information the House requires. We need to understand why that is. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, is not in his place, because I was about to pay him a compliment. I managed to extract a truly startling statistic from him when I asked what proportion of people in these circumstances—those who have arrived through what is now termed irregular routes—are removed from the country against their will. The answer was 4%, so there is a 96% chance of success in remaining.

In order to understand the reasons why people typically want to come to the UK, one needs to understand the strength of the regime that deals with those applications, and the chances of staying versus being deported or removed from the country through one means or another. Unless the Government can really come forward and answer my noble friend’s question, or agree to his amendment, it is very difficult to take seriously the actions the Government are taking. We know that the Government do not know who is in the country at any one time; our systems do not record exits from the country as they do people coming in. It will probably lead us to a much wider discussion about how we can get the data and know who is here and who has overstayed the terms of their visa. It is entirely reasonable for my noble friend to ask those questions, and it is the Government’s duty to respond in detail.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am particularly interested in the student visa amendments, which are both very helpful. There is now an informal assumption that there is a problem with some overseas students playing the system and potentially using their student visas as a mechanism for seeking asylum. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, presented a balanced and sensitive case so that all of us can understand, first, the importance of overseas students to the UK and, secondly, the legitimate use of asylum seeking if circumstances change, while at the same time understanding that there is potential abuse of the system. The problem is that while there is a focus on, for example, small boats, maybe a focus on universities does not feel quite as newsworthy and headlines will not be generated, or it seems somehow more legitimate if they have come to do even a media studies course—they cannot be criminals. None the less, there is a problem if the system is abused.

There are two additional points that have not been referred to. I fear that UK universities themselves have mis-sold universities to overseas students, treating university courses as cash cows. One of my first more militant acts at university, many decades ago, was a week-long sit-in to defend overseas students from increased fees, and I have always thought that it was an important part of our education system to defend them. However, universities simply sell inappropriate courses for money to students who often cannot to speak adequate English for a degree. That is not to criticise them; I am criticising the university managements who sell their courses in that way. That kind of cynicism is likely to rub off on students, who will not necessarily come here and think, “I must take seriously my duties and responsibilities to higher education and the pursuit of knowledge”, because the universities have, in an entirely instrumental, business-like fashion, sold them a course that is maybe not very good and not taken any notice of their facility for education. Why would you not become cynical in those circumstances?

Finally, I hope that the Government will take the opportunity provided by both these amendments to think about universities and overseas students, because this is very much in the news in the context of Sheffield Hallam University. We now know that Sheffield Hallam’s management betrayed one of its own academics and compromised academic freedom to guarantee a continued flow of Chinese overseas students, stopping that academic’s research because the Chinese state found it inconvenient. It is not in any of our interests to allow universities to become politicised instruments of overseas students, be it the state, using them in a particular way, or those who recommend that, if you study in the UK on one of these courses, you will easily get asylum. I know that this happens. It is a form of people trafficking that is just not hitting the headlines, but I can assure you, it is happening. I therefore support both amendments and I was very pleased to see them.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, as the House knows, I have sat in a lot of these debates and never stood up to speak, but I feel compelled to speak today. I declare my interest as having been chancellor of two universities, York St John University and the University of Cumbria, for well over 12 years. We had a lot of overseas students. I am not persuaded by what I am hearing today. It is very easy to cast aspersions when you are not within the university itself. Most of our universities do a fantastic job in registering people who really want to study here. Both York St John and Cumbria had training centres in China, so the students had a good command of English before they got here. All the students in those years actually went back, unless they remained to do some research, which was also allowed. Please let us not have these generalised statements about universities all being the same.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to clarify, in case there was any confusion, that I have worked with and have great admiration for many Chinese students in this country. My contribution was not an attempt, in any way, at smearing them. That is not to say that there is not an abuse of the system in some instances. I was querying whether we should be attentive to that, because the students are betrayed when they are not given proper education in this country and are used in a particular way for political ends. That does not mean, at all, that all Chinese students are doing that.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My experience is quite different. I have been a chancellor of two universities that have actually recruited students from all over the world—for education, not for any other purpose. They were also wonderful universities for students within our own country. Before the founding of the University of Cumbria, students used to leave Carlisle to go to different universities in our country and they never went back. The creation of the University of Cumbria benefited local businesses —we have talked about manufacturing in places such as Barrow—so it has been wonderful seeing our own local students rising up to the possibility of being very good engineers, manufacturers, nurses and doctors, or being trained in other ways. I stood at the podium giving out degrees to students from all over the place. At York St John, there were always four ceremonies, each with about 400 students at a time. That is what I know from what I experienced—it is therefore possible for me to say that.

I must declare a second interest: I came here on a student visa in 1974, which was renewed every 12 months until I was ordained in 1979. Later, when I became Bishop of Stepney, I was given indefinite leave to remain but I never applied for naturalisation in this country, which was a possibility, until 2001. I was a faithful student who came here on a student visa. It is no good anybody telling me that if some Ugandans come here—let us say there are four of them—and involved themselves in criminal acts, we can then use those four as a test case to say that people from that country should not get visas. From all that I know, most of the students from Uganda went back—my circumstances were part of something different. Please can we not express guilt by association, where we say, for example, that if some people from Nigeria do something, all of them must be the same, so we must always gather the figures and numbers?

This has always been a free country for me, and it has helped quite a lot of people who have been in great difficulty. I came here because of Amin’s trouble; I had to give up my law job. My staying here has to do with me continuing to study and then being invited to become a chaplain of a prison in Richmond, which I did for four years. Indefinite leave was quite a different thing. I always resisted naturalisation to become a British citizen; at the time I thought that I was natural and that there was no need to be naturalised. Still, occasionally, whenever I hold my British passport, I say, “To get this, I had to be naturalised”. That term is pretty offensive, because there is nothing unnatural about me that needed to be naturalised.

My dear friends, yes, there is now concern about people, who either are on student visas or came here on asylum, having committed offences, but these amendments make it seem that Britain’s history has nothing to teach us. For that reason, should the amendments be voted on, I will move in the direction of the Not-Content Lobby.