Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

It is not that unfair to say that he may not carry on being the Minister for ever; indeed, he may not want to be the Minister for ever. He has another piece of legislation on borders coming very soon. He may say that he is going to publish it but it would be better, I think, if it were in statute so that, whichever Minister or Home Secretary is there, we could be sure that this information was going to be published.

There is a reason for that. As my noble friend said, we had quite a debate about two different aspects of this on Report. The first was about specific data on criminality, while the second—I raised this issue—was about what information Ministers collected to make decisions on student visas. I recollected that, when I was an immigration Minister serving in the Home Office under the leadership of the then Home Secretary—my noble friend Lady May, who is sitting in front of me—it was absolutely the case that the Home Office collected data about the propensity of different nationalities to overstay and the risks that were presented. That information was used in both the information that was sought and the judgments that were made on accepting people to come to the United Kingdom—quite rightly—to make sure that we had robust borders.

As my noble friend suggested, I got a letter from the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, after that debate. I had asked two questions. One was about the information collected on the propensity of visa applicants to commit crimes. The second was about risk assessment in student visa decisions; the second one is most pertinent to this debate, of course, but they are linked.

On the first one, the Minister answered the question, but it was not a very good answer, which is why I am a little sceptical about whatever assurances we may hear from the Dispatch Box. He said:

“In accordance with the public sector equality duty, the Government’s policies do not unduly discriminate against people based on their protected characteristics, which includes on the basis of nationality”.


He specifically said:

“The Home Office does not collect data about the propensity of different nationalities to commit crimes”.


So there seems a bit of a gap in the information that is collected. It may be that Ministers will publish information about the numbers of specific individuals, but my question was about whether that information is used to make judgments about whether particular nationalities are more of a risk. That does not mean that you have a blanket ban against people, but it might mean that you ask some more searching questions if particular nationalities are a risk. It sounds as if the Government do not intend to do that at all.

The most worrying thing was the question I asked about whether the Government about what information was collected to do those risk assessments for student visa decisions. Answer came there none in this letter, which was purportedly an answer to my question. The only conclusion one can come to is that the Minister did not want to put down the answer because it would be that no information is collected and there is no risk assessment. There definitely used to be a risk assessment so, if there is not one now, I do not know when it stopped, but that is very much a step backwards. So, for both those reasons, it makes no sense.

What the Minister said in his reply to me—that the Government do not make decisions about people based on their nationality—does not seem to accord with what the Home Secretary announced just last week. She said that the UK would stop granting visas to people from Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—that is a blanket ban on every individual from those countries—if their Governments did not start rapidly co-operating on removals. On that issue, I happen to agree with the Home Secretary—I think that is a sensible policy—but it is not consistent with what the Minister said in his letter about not unduly discriminating against people based on their nationality, unless, of course, “unduly” is doing quite a lot of work—perhaps more than it bears—so I am a bit sceptical.

If the Minister stands up and says that he will publish the data, as my noble friend says, I would be much happier if that commitment were put into statute. We need not delay the Bill. We broadly do not think it will make as much positive difference as the Government do, but there is lots in it to be welcomed. I do not want to hold it up, but we need not hold it up at all because the Minister could just accept my noble friend’s amendment and then we would be done. However, if he is not prepared to accept it, I fear we must test the opinion of the House. That will ultimately be up to my noble friend, but, based on the letter that I have had from the Minister, I am certainly not—at this stage, at least—persuaded that we do not need to go a little further.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I do not imagine that I am the only Member of this House who is very often irritated by a Commons reason in this sort of situation that says, “We don’t agree because we don’t agree”. On this occasion, we have a reasoned reason with which I, for one, certainly do agree: that it is not,

“appropriate for there to be a statutory requirement to publish the data”.

There is a place for something other than statutory requirements, and I think this is one of them.

I agree with a couple of things that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said. I do not know that anybody ever envies a Minister in the Home Office. More seriously, we have largely been overtaken by the announcements that have come from the Home Office in quite a stream since we started work on this Bill. It has made it very difficult to deal with the Bill.

I also want to talk about the amendment itself. It does not give a context. It could, for instance, have added that there must be the collation and publication of the number of overseas students who—I summarise—have remained in the UK and succeeded in their contribution to the success of the UK. The data referred to suggests no comparator with British citizens, and my real objection to this amendment is that I do not want to appear to assume that criminals are overrepresented in the overseas student cohort or, bluntly, that immigrants include a particularly large number of criminals. The starting point for this amendment makes me deeply uneasy.