Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare the support I receive from RAMP and start by warmly welcoming the repeal of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act and partial repeal of the Illegal Migration Act.

However, I share the disappointment expressed by many organisations—I am grateful for their briefings—that the Bill does not go further in repealing the whole of the latter and parts of the Nationality and Borders Act. The Law Society, for instance, describes the latter as

“a detrimental piece of legislation”

that will become

“the default directive in many places”.

Could my noble friend the Minister explain why the Bill leaves in place a number of provisions in both those Acts that we roundly condemned at the time?

In particular, why are we retaining Section 12 of the IMA? To quote the UN High Commissioner for Refugees it

“leaves in place a risk of arbitrary detention of asylum-seekers, refugees and stateless persons”.

Why are we retaining Section 59 which, in denying claims from countries deemed safe, ignores—again to quote the UNHCR—

“the requirement for an individualised assessment of an asylum claim”

thereby giving

“rise to a risk of refoulement”?

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium warns that

“children and young people are particularly at risk”

because Section 59 denies them

“proper consideration of their vulnerabilities”.

The RMCC, with support from the British Association of Social Workers, is also critical of the retention of the age assessment provisions of the NBA and calls for their repeal. The RMCC points out that neither the National Age Assessment Board nor the development of so-called scientific age assessment methods—which, as already noted, have been widely criticised—has tackled the key problem of children being wrongly treated as adults on arrival.

I was therefore alarmed to read in the parallel immigration White Paper of plans to explore

“scientific and technological methods to ensure adults are not wrongly identified as children”.

It is worthy of Alice in “Through the Looking-Glass”. I am nevertheless grateful to my noble friend for the constructive meeting we had with members of the RMCC recently to discuss age assessment. He will not be surprised to hear that I plan to table amendments on this issue.

Some of those children wrongly identified as adults could be prosecuted under the new criminal offences contained in the Bill and end up spending months in adult prisons. Concerns have been raised more widely by a number of organisations, including the Law Society and the UNHCR, about these provisions, which in their breadth and vagueness, risk criminalising both vulnerable adults and children who are risking their lives in search of safety. This exposes the gaping hole in the Bill which, as already noted, is the absence of any provision to expand safe routes. The safe routes coalition, while recognising the need to tackle the exploitation of unsafe routes by smuggling gangs, which is the Bill’s main focus, argues that it is missing a golden opportunity to address why people are taking these dangerous journeys.

I cannot understand why the Government appear to be so deaf to the widespread calls to improve safe routes for children and others, including from the APPG for refugees, of which I am a member. Instead, the immigration White Paper includes plans that will weaken the family reunion route. The White Paper also includes proposals to double the length of time most people will need to wait before they can apply for settlement. This is not the place to argue against this damaging proposal, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it, given the large number of emails I am receiving from those already on the five-year route to remain.

In the absence of any clarification about whether the new rule will apply to those already here, the emails express acute distress, a sense of betrayal and a loss of trust in the UK’s integrity and consistency. As already asked for, can my noble friend at the very least clarify whether those people will indeed now have to work here for 10 years before being able to apply for settlement, having come here in good faith on the assumption of five years?

The welcome repeal in the Bill of Sections 31 to 35 of the IMA, which rendered refugees who enter the country by irregular means ineligible for British citizenship, has now been undermined by the administrative sleight of hand that achieves the same outcome through changes to the Nationality: Good Character Requirement guidance. Having welcomed the repeal as

“a positive step that recognises the importance of naturalisation, both for the individuals concerned and for social cohesion”,

the UNHCR expresses concern that the new guidance

“may result in breaches of Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention”,

which, it argues, is central to the convention’s “object and purpose”. It recommends that the guidance be revisited

“to ensure that it is applied in a manner consistent with the UK’s international obligations”.

The Law Society echoed the Article 31 point and noted that

“this is a significant change in policy which has been made with no consultation and therefore no scrutiny”.

In conclusion, although I repeat my welcome for the repeal of many of the damaging provisions made by the previous Government, I wish I could welcome this Bill unequivocally. As the daughter of a refugee immigrant, I welcome the fact that I live on an island not of strangers but of diverse groups who have enriched our lives. We have a responsibility to them, and to those who seek to come to our country in future, to ensure that we build a fair and inclusive immigration and asylum/refugee system.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I support these two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for the very reasons she gives. Clause 34 is very welcome and I am very glad that the Government have put it in, but it is very narrow. There is a considerable overlap between family reunion cases and evacuees, and this is about evacuees. I would like to bring the two together, as the noble Baroness said. The top five countries from which family reunion cases come are Syria, Sudan, Iran, Eritrea and Afghanistan, so we are in exactly the same territory of facilitating evacuation. It does not work very well at the moment, for the reasons that the noble Baroness spelled out.

The double journeys point is really worrying. To collect the visa, you have to go to a visa centre. In the top five countries I have listed, there are no visa centres, for obvious reasons—in most of them, there is no embassy—so you have to cross a frontier. When we are talking family reunions, more than 50% of those involved are children. Are we asking them to cross a frontier and go somewhere that could be a very long way away to get their visa? No, we are not; it is worse than that. We are asking them to go twice: once to give their biometric details and, secondly, to collect the visa—they cannot get it the first time. Could they not have the biometric details taken when they pick up the visa, when the family reunion case has been established and they are going to be let in? They would then need to make only one journey. It seems to me that this simple improvement to the process would save a lot of heartache and probably a lot of lives, in cases where it has been decided by the system that family reunion is appropriate and should be facilitated.

I support the two amendments ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but I hope that the Government will go a little further and think hard about changing the procedure for the collection of the visa so that the biometric details could be given at the time the visa is picked up and thus the double journeys could be avoided.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support. I, too, am supported by RAMP, and that is in the register—that is done for Committee now. I warmly welcome Clause 34 as well, but the amendment being proposed is a very modest one, which would not be difficult for the Government to accept. The case has already been well made and I will not reiterate it, but I will give an example from the British Red Cross, which I think has made a very persuasive case to Members of the Committee. It gives the current example of Iran:

“The visa centre in Tehran has been temporarily closed since 15 July 2025. This visa centre was the base for many Afghans and Iranians to submit their family reunion applications. Now families are unable to access the centre and will need to take a dangerous journey to a neighbouring country just to submit their biometrics and have their application processed … This amendment would allow biometrics to be taken at different locations within Iran where people could travel to safely rather than crossing borders”.


Safety must be one of the criteria that we use in thinking about displaced people. It is a very modest amendment and I hope that my noble friend will be able to look kindly on it.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a couple of words in support of these amendments from my noble friend. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, just remarked, it is not as if these changes would be difficult to make: the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to them as simple improvements to the process. My noble friend referred to the current summit: to be honest, I have not seen the results, as I was in meetings all morning. Are there any yet? It has obviously been widely trailed that President Macron will talk about improving the reception by this country of applicants for family reunion. It would be perhaps a little ironic—well, there would be a nice coincidence of efforts—if, from this side, we are proposing simple improvements in process and we also have an ally in President Macron, who is saying, “Please simplify and streamline your family reunion efforts”. That would be a nice entente amicale.

I will make a point that I am not sure any of the other speakers have, which is made in our briefings. Families often become separated, so not only does a family together have to make possible multiple journeys but dispersed members of a family, including children, might have to make multiple trips from different locations. So you are multiplying the risks and the possibility of violence and distress. I think my noble friend referred to one in five families saying they had to resort to using smugglers to reach the visa centre. Well, surely one of the major purposes of the Bill, which we all support, is to try to put the smugglers and people traffickers out of business. Here is a government policy that is helping to give people smugglers more business—we regret it, but it is the reality—which you could avoid by the simple shortcut of making biometrics collectable other than at visa centres and not requiring at least two journeys. The thought of a lone woman or a family with children having to expose themselves to all the threats to safety that we can imagine and are told about is really unconscionable, when it really would not take a great deal of effort by the Home Office to keep people safer, streamline the process and satisfy President Macron, as well as us, all at the same time.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

The numbers speak for themselves: the removal of the deterrent has encouraged a massive increase in the number of crossings and the Government are instead proposing to legislate themselves out of the situation, while welcoming greater and greater numbers of migrants at the taxpayer’s expense. On this side of the Committee, we oppose the question that this clause should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome Clause 37 very warmly. For some of us it is the best bit of the Bill. I am really pleased, for once, to be able to unequivocally support my Front Bench and my noble friend the Minister.

My noble friend the Minister did not have the pleasure of sitting through the debates about the Rwanda Bill in this House; I do not really want to put him through it all again, because it is like a nightmare in my mind and it is quite difficult to recall everything that was said at the time. But I remind the Committee that, on a number of occasions, your Lordships’ House rejected key bits of the Bill, and it went through only because of the majority in the Commons. We had ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong, and eventually we had to give in. To now try to resurrect it through this clause stand part device seems a bit perverse.

I will just remind noble Lords why we were so opposed to the Rwanda Bill. First of all—I have to see whether I can read my notes here—there was the failure to meet the concerns of the Supreme Court. Saying Rwanda is safe then and for always does not make it safe. I can remember noble and learned Lords and others on the Cross Benches—one of whom may well want to speak today—saying, “We’re being asked to say that night is day and put that into legal form”. It was ridiculous. So, for the lawyers among us, it was really quite distressing that we were having to put our name to that.

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees had concerns, at the heart of which was the belief that the Act was not compatible with international refugee law—the refugee convention. There was the disapplication of the Human Rights Act, highlighted by the Joint Committee on Human Rights—the current chair is no longer in his place, but I am sure he would agree with what the previous committee said. That committee emphasised the universality of human rights, which this piece of legislation rode a cart and of horses through.

There were particular concerns around the treatment of LGBTI+ people, who would potentially not be treated well, as well as concerns about children, which was one of the main issues that I took up during the passage of the Bill. On the treatment of age-disputed children, there were fears that they would be removed to Rwanda because they had wrongly been assessed as adults, and then there was a difficult provision, if they could prove that they were children, for them to be sent back to the UK, in effect as parcels. Many of us thought that was dehumanising of children and went against children’s rights.

I am sure my noble friend the Minister will be terribly pleased to hear that we will be debating age assessment later in Committee. But it is worth pointing out at this point that just yesterday, the i newspaper published the latest analysis by the Helen Bamber Foundation of FoI data. That found that in 2024, at least 678 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were initially classed as adults but then found to be children by local authorities, and that was over half of those who were so referred. Had the Rwanda Act been in operation now, how many of those children might have been sent to Rwanda and got stuck there? That is the question that I would put. In addition, there was never a proper child rights impact assessment or anything like that.

Finally, the noble Lord talked about a deterrent. I seem to remember that, in all the paperwork we were given—it was probably an impact assessment or something—that there was a very clear reference to academic work which suggested that there was no evidence of a deterrent effect in this kind of legislation. The noble Lord also talked about us being a soft touch for illegal migrants. Please can we remember that most of those who come across on the boats, putting their lives at risk, are seeking asylum? They have an international right to do so. Please do not let us write them off as “illegal migrants”.

That is all I wanted to say. I warmly welcome that the Government have taken this step, because it is a very positive step in the name of human rights and international refugee law.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness was a little unkind to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, who made an admirable speech: gallantry in a hopeless cause is always extremely impressive. I thought Owain Glyndŵr was speaking to us. I was reminded of the gallant knight in “Monty Python”, who has all his limbs struck off, but bravely says, “No, no, it’s only a flesh wound”, and fights on. It was tremendous.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also slightly abbreviated the history of the Rwanda Act in this House. It began with the Rwanda treaty, which this House recommended, on the advice of its International Agreements Committee, could not and should not be ratified until the various supervisory and legal constructs needed—and set out in the treaty itself—existed. Because they did not exist; they were to be set up. Various judges were to be appointed, courts were to be formed and supervisory monitoring procedures were to be put in place—none of that existed. This House recommended that the treaty should not be ratified.

The Bill itself had three fundamental problems for this House. First, as the noble Baroness said, there was the fundamental “Alice in Wonderland” absurdity that we can, by so voting, change facts: we can make Rwanda safe by declaring Rwanda safe. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, spoke powerfully on that subject.

Secondly, there was the problem of our international commitments. It was impossible—in the view of this House, which voted several times on it—to reconcile the Bill and the treaty with our international commitments. We were telling people, “You may never have your claim for asylum heard in this country. You may claim asylum in Rwanda. You may claim from the Rwanda Government the right to become a citizen of Rwanda. But you may never claim the right to become a citizen of the United Kingdom. We are going to send you to Rwanda, we are never going to let you come here and we are never going to hear your case”. To make that fit with the refugee convention is impossible—that is what this House determined. Keeping the Rwanda Act on the statute book would be absurd. If we mean what we say about a rules-based, legal global order, we really need to pay attention when what we are doing ourselves is clearly in breach of a central plank of the rules-based order.

That is completely different from what this Government are, as I understand it, seeking to do with offshoring the exercise. Although I do not like that—it is a very bad idea that people’s claims should be considered abroad, because it will be harder to ensure that they get appropriate legal advice and age assessment, if their asylum case heard in a foreign country—it is completely different from what we were going to do with Rwanda. With the Rwanda Act, we were not just offshoring but offloading; we were putting on the Rwanda Government the responsibility of considering the future of these people. We were saying, “It’s absolutely nothing to do with us and we refuse to touch it”. That simply will not do.

We have to applaud the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I note that his Scottish colleague was cunning enough to disappear before we came to the question of whether Clause 37 should stand part. I am a Scotsman and know that there are some battles that it is best not to fight. It is very gallant of the noble Lord to be here to make his case, but it would be absurd if he were to succeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. Unlike a number of noble Lords here, I was unable to take part in the earlier iterations of debate on the Bill. I was a very strong supporter of it, but, as a member of the Government, it was not within my area of responsibility, and I was, sadly, excluded. Therefore, unlike others, I relish the opportunity to volunteer my support for it this afternoon.

Fundamentally, this argument is about whether or not you believe in the deterrent effect. As was mentioned in Tuesday’s debate, and on previous occasions, the challenge we face—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, highlighted this in the Joint Committee’s report when he was introducing his amendments earlier in the week—is the enormous number of displaced people around the world who, under the refugee convention, would potentially have a claim for asylum. The fact is that those volumes cannot all be accommodated here. The extra challenge we get from the issue of small boats crossing the channel goes directly to one’s interpretation of that convention; this was the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised when she talked about people coming across the channel from France.

It is the Joint Committee’s view, but it is not a universal view and it is not my view, that the refugee convention protects people fleeing persecution who come directly to the United Kingdom. Most of these people enter the European Union on the southern borders, so they have crossed—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I will finish the point and then of course I will take the noble Baroness’s intervention. They cross a number of safe European countries before they get to their final safe EU country of France. I absolutely accept that a number of them—not all of them; some of them are economic migrants—are absolutely fleeing persecution, but they have not come directly to the UK, and therefore I do not feel that they benefit from the protection of the convention. On that point, I will take the noble Baroness’s intervention, and then I will make some progress.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. It is not simply what I say or the Joint Committee on Human Rights says; it is the UN High Commission on Refugees, which is given the responsibility of overseeing the refugee convention. It is very clear that the Rwanda Act went against that convention, and it does not accept this interpretation of what coming immediately from a safe country means.

While I am up, the noble Lord talked about all these people coming here, but what proportion of asylum seekers do we in this country take in, as opposed to other European countries? My understanding is that we are not a country that is taking more than our share.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I shall deal with those points briefly. First, I do not accept that the UN is the arbiter of what the convention means. It is our job in this House and the House of Commons to make laws and set out our immigration policies. We should not subcontract that to outside organisations that sometimes have a very eccentric view of the world, and it is not one that is supported by the British people.

This comes down to the point about numbers. I am a strong supporter of our long tradition of taking genuine asylum seekers and refugees in the United Kingdom, but we can do that only if we retain public support for it. I say to those who oppose stronger and tougher controls on who can come here and make it clear that it is only people who follow our laws that they are in danger of forfeiting that public support and confidence. If we do not deal with this issue, at some point—and I think we are getting very close to it—the public will say, “We just don’t want anybody. We’re not interested in their circumstances. We’re not interested in what’s happened. We want to control the number of people that are coming here”. I think that would be a tragedy. I say to those who oppose tougher border controls that they are running a real risk of altering public opinion so that it does not support it.

When we get these schemes right—I referenced earlier in the week the scheme that we set up for those fleeing the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine—they have huge public support. In my part of the world, I had no complaints about the Ukraine scheme. But when people think people are taking the mickey out of us, as they do with these small boat crossings, public support is not there and is not supportive. In a democracy, we should be mindful that we have to carry the public with us.

On this issue of deterrence, I think you have to have a deterrent. My noble friend demonstrated earlier the success in Australia. It was very telling that one political party in Australia opposed the scheme, and then when it came back into government it recognised that it was necessary. Although it would be politically convenient if that happened to this Government—if, in the end, what they are proposing was a failure and they suffered some political damage from it—the bit of me that wants my country to be successful, having had some responsibility for our borders in the past, does not want that to happen. I want to get this right. If we had won the election and been able to implement the Rwanda scheme, it would have been a deterrent. It would have sent a very clear message to people that paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers to cross the channel was a fruitless endeavour. The one thing we know about the people who pay people smugglers is that they expect to get what they pay for and, if they were not able to get to the United Kingdom and stay here, they absolutely would not have carried on paying people smugglers and that business model would have collapsed.

I completely accept that it was perfectly reasonable for people to disagree with the Rwanda scheme in the way that it was set up, whether it was Rwanda or a different country, but the problem the Government have is that Clause 37 repeals our scheme and, as my noble friend said, replaces it with no alternative deterrent at all. We have just seen this afternoon what the Prime Minister has announced. Obviously, we have not seen all the detail—we have just seen the headlines—but a one-in, one-out scheme has now been announced. The problem with that is twofold.

First, as my noble friend said, I am not sure what the legal underpinning of that is. It would be helpful if the Minister could set out whether the scheme that has been announced today, in both its pilot and its full form, will require any further primary legislation to make sure it can be implemented, and if it does need primary legislation, whether it is going to be inserted into this Bill before it leaves the House. Also, I fear it will be subject to enormous legal challenge and the Government will have exactly the same problems as we had with the Rwanda scheme. It will take them ages to be able to scale it up. The final flaw is that the public want to stop the volume of people coming here and, although a one-in, one-out scheme might alter the composition of the people coming, by definition a one-in, one-out scheme will not reduce the numbers. If we can only send somebody back to France and get another person, we might change who they are, but we are not going to deal with the numbers problem at all, so for a lot of the public the scheme will be a failure by its very definition.

As I said, I strongly support what my noble friend said. I think the Government are making a terrible mistake with this clause—not from my perspective, but from their own perspective. They are going to find that, welcome though some of the measures in this Bill are that support the powers the Government have—I have already referred to some of the later clauses that strengthen the controls on those working illegally, and where the Bill has measures in it that are strengthening the system, I support them—completely removing a deterrent without putting anything in its place, not amending it but completely scrapping it, is a mistake, and I fear that the Government will come to regret it. That will not be a good thing. It might be a short-term political advantage for us, but it will not be a good thing for the country. I would rather, if they had some disagreements with the detail of the scheme, that they had reflected on that and altered it.

If there was a clause here that was making changes to the Rwanda scheme—for example, the way it was dealing with the processing, or maybe even picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about who did the processing—that would have at least been an argument that we could have entered into, and it would have been a better argument than scrapping it overnight without anything at all to replace it. I fear the Government will come to regret having done so. We will know from the robust remarks of my noble friend that we did our best to stop them making that terrible mistake. I only hope that we are not proved to be correct.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

102A: Clause 38, page 31, line 9, leave out “11” and insert “12”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would add section 12 (period for which may be detained) to the list of sections of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 to be repealed.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is not in her place, I will move Amendment 102A and will speak to the consequential amendments, because I was planning to speak in support of this amendment.

I had assumed that the noble Baroness would be here to explain it, so I will briefly quote from briefings that some of us have received from ILPA, BID and Detention Action. The briefing says:

“Section 12 IMA, since 28 September 2023, has sought to enable the Executive to (a) decide the reasonableness of the length of all forms of immigration detention, intending to overturn an established common law principle which provides for judicial oversight over the length of detention as an important safeguard against arbitrary detention, and (b) continue to detain persons after the reason for their detention (pending examination, removal, or deportation order/decision being made within a reasonable period of time) falls away”.


I probably will not be quite as helpful to my noble friend the Minister as I was on the previous group, but I will start by welcoming the repeal of most of the Illegal Migration Act; needless to say, I do not support the other amendments in this group. However, the omission of Section 12—one of the very few sections to survive—is worrying, because I fear it may reflect an attitude towards detention that I had hoped we had seen the back of with a change in government.

We will be returning to the question of detention and the case for a time limit at a later date but, as I will probably be away then, I hope the Committee will bear with me for raising some more general points about detention. In justification, I cite the UNHCR’s observations on the Bill. It emphasises:

“Detention of asylum-seekers and refugees should be a measure of last resort and both necessary and proportionate in each individual case”.


It therefore recommends the repeal of Section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act, which it fears could mean in some cases detention for periods inconsistent with standards in international refugee and human rights law. Previously, it had pointed to the policy of indefinite detention as a key point of concern. This concern has to be the greater so long as Section 12 remains on the statute book.

It has been a full decade since the inquiry into the use of immigration detention on which I served, established by the APPGs on refugees and migration, called for a 28-day time limit on detention. It argued that detention should be an absolute last resort, with a presumption in favour of community-based solutions. It is depressing that, despite countless reports, including that of the official Brook House inquiry, making the same case in the intervening 10 years, here we are again.

One of those reports was by the Home Affairs Committee in 2019, chaired by the now Home Secretary. It pointed out that the UK is the only country in Europe without a limit on the length of time someone can be held in immigration detention. Having reviewed the evidence, it concluded:

“There is a rapidly growing consensus among medical professionals, independent inspectorate bodies, people with lived experience and other key stakeholders on the urgent need for a maximum time limit”.


The committee called on the then Government to

“bring an end to indefinite immigration detention and to implement a maximum 28-day time limit with immediate effect”.

That was in 2019. Of course, nothing happened. One has to ask: what has changed the Home Secretary’s mind?

The consensus is still very much there. Indeed, the evidence of the harmful effects on health, particularly mental health, has mounted, including last year from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Moreover, as Refugee Tales, which met with some of us the other day, found during its walking inquiry into immigration detention, the damaging impacts last long after release. It notes that:

“For those with lived experience, ‘detention never leaves you’”.


A series of reports by Women for Refugee Women over the past decade have underlined the particularly damaging impact of detention generally on women, the majority of whom are survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence. Their most recent report warns:

“Locking up women who have already survived serious violence and abuse retraumatises them, causing profound and longlasting damage to their mental health”.


Shockingly, its latest research found that despite the Home Office banning such practices, male detention centre staff still subjected women in intimate situations to constant supervision.

For a brief period, the previous Government flirted with alternatives to detention with two pilot schemes. In an assessment of these pilots, the UNHCR wrote that:

“Alternatives to Detention provide a people centered approach to supporting asylum seekers whilst waiting for case resolution without any evidence of a reduction in compliance with UK Home Office directives”.


The evidence from the pilot shows significant improvement in the mental health and well-being of participants and that alternatives to detention are cheaper and offer better value for money compared with the cost of detaining asylum seekers. One would have thought that would appeal to Governments of any persuasion.

It was thus disappointing that, when we debated the guidance on the detention of vulnerable persons last October, my noble friend the Minister told us it was the new Government’s policy to “expand the detention estate”. Apropos of that, I understand that the review of that guidance is still ongoing. Can my noble friend the Minister give me an assurance that any changes it proposes will strengthen, and not weaken further, the safeguards for vulnerable people in detention?

Just about finally, returning to the question of indefinite detention, whenever I raised the issue with Ministers in the previous Government, I was met with the semantic response that detention is not indefinite because it comes to an end. We all know that, in this context, “indefinite” means without a specified end or time limit. I hope this semantic distinction did not lie behind Minister Eagle’s recent response to an Oral Question, when she stated:

“Immigration centres are not used for indefinite detention”,—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/25; col. 18.]


because, if there is no reasonable prospect of removal, the person has to be released. Yet in the year ending 31 March 2025, just over a third of those leaving detention had been held for 29 days or more, and as many as 533 for six months or more.

I trust that my noble friend will accept that we do apply indefinite detention, with important, limited exceptions, in this country. I hope he will acknowledge the harm that this does to those affected. Will Members of your Lordships’ House still have to be making the case for a time limit and minimal use of detention a decade on from now?

In conclusion, repeal of Section 12 of the IMA is the absolute minimum needed to even begin to meet the UNHCR’s concerns, echoed by the JCHR, which, like the UNHCR, also called for its repeal:

“to restore certainty and ensure compliance with Article 5”

of the ECHR. This point is underlined by the Bar Council, which, along with numerous other bodies, argues for repeal with reference to the rule of law and access to justice.

I hope that my noble friend will give serious thought to this, and also to the case that will be made in later amendments for a clear time limit and the development of alternatives to detention. I beg to move.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose this amendment. I am afraid—and she will not be surprised, I suspect—that I broadly disagree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has just said. Let me set out the reason why.

First, she mentioned that the Home Secretary changed her mind and wondered why that might have been. I obviously cannot get inside the Home Secretary’s mind. I suspect what has changed, between chairing the Home Affairs Committee and now, is that she is now the Home Secretary and responsible for protecting the borders and the security of the United Kingdom. Whoever holds that responsibility is sometimes confronted with reality; despite things that they might have liked to have done, they are confronted with the reality of keeping the country safe. What the Home Secretary, I suspect, will have realised is that there is a cohort of people here who she thinks should be removed, as they have no legal right to be here, and she has realised that unless you detain them, you are not able to carry out your functions of keep the country safe.

Now, I do not know whether that is the reason why—the Minister may or may not confirm it—but I suspect that the realities of office have changed her mind, for this reason. We do not detain people indefinitely. The power to detain people is in order to facilitate their removal from the country and to protect the public. The Home Secretary has to have reasonable grounds to believe that, and people are able to challenge that through the judicial process.

The noble Baroness quoted some statistics; I will quote the same statistics but the other way around. Two-thirds of people are detained for 28 days or fewer. It is true that some people are detained for a long period of time. In most of those cases, the reason for the lengthy detention is the responsibility of the individual themselves: it is because they are trying to avoid being removed from the country that they have no legal right to be in, throwing up legal challenge after legal challenge. That is the reason why they are detained. If they wish to cease being detained, they could comply with the deportation order that they have been issued by the Home Secretary, get on a plane and leave the country. It is the fact that they do not wish to comply with the law that means they are held in detention.

The Home Secretary must have a reasonable belief that she can ultimately remove them—otherwise, she would not have the legal power to detain them. If we were to have what the noble Baroness suggests, which is a fixed statutory time period of 28 days, all that would do would give a bigger incentive to people with no right to be in this country to legally challenge decisions. Unless you could get all those legal challenges heard and decided within 28 days, all those people would have to be let out of detention, and we would cease to be able to remove any of them from the country. That would include some people who are not just here illegally but a present danger to people in this country. I strongly support the ability of the Home Secretary to detain people and not to have a fixed time limit, which would simply be an incentive for those people to delay.

If the noble Baroness looks into the details of who stays here in detention for a long period of time, it is people trying to avoid having to leave the country when they have no right to be here, throwing up legal challenge after legal challenge. The alternative way of dealing with it, if you really want not to detain people, is to reduce the opportunities for them to challenge the decision, and for deportation orders to be able to be carried out swiftly. Then we would not need to detain people. I am afraid that I suspect the Home Secretary has realised that detention is necessary to protect the public and to make sure that we can enforce the necessary deportation decisions.

I understand why people do not like it, but I am afraid it is a bit naive to think that everyone who comes to this country, or who overstays their welcome and is in this country without legal authority, goes when they are asked to. You sometimes have to use the power of the state and detention, and you sometimes have to enforce their removal, because otherwise they do not go. If you do not demonstrate that you have a robust system, you will have even more people coming here because they think that, once they get here, they are never going to be removed.

One of the important reasons for having a deterrent is that, if you look at the total number of people we remove, you want to get to a position where the balance between enforced removals and those who go voluntarily is much more in favour of those who go on a voluntary basis, because it is quicker and cheaper for everybody, but that happens only if people realise they are going to have to go at some point. If people think they can get away with staying when they have no right to be here, we have to use the powers that we have at our disposal. I accept that it is not ideal, but I am afraid there are limited choices for Ministers if they want to enforce a robust immigration system. Detaining and removing people where necessary ensures you command the confidence of the public that you have a robust system. If that confidence disappears, the public will not support anybody coming here, whether legally or not. As I have said in debates on earlier clauses, that would be a tragedy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lords who spoke. As I said, we will come back to the issue of detention later, and it is helpful to have heard the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Harper, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, because I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord German, in particular will take them on board when he comes to move his amendment later.

I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, that no one is talking about people just roaming around, free to go where they like. I made the point that, in the pilots, there was no evidence of a reduction in compliance with UK Home Office directives. They are not just a holiday camp or something.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I am sorry, but what I meant was the community frameworks about which the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, spoke.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

That is what I was talking about: the pilots showed that there was a very effective way, alternative to detention, that still kept people where they were supposed to be. The noble Baroness might like to read the UNHCR report about the pilots.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for his support. He probably explained what Section 12 is about rather more clearly than I did, so I thank him for that. My noble friend the Minister dealt with Amendments 112 and 113, so I will not refer to them.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked what would happen next if this amendment were successful and we removed Section 12. It would be the status quo ante—not some kind of strange situation that we have never seen before. I will not go on much longer, because I am conscious of time moving on.

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister. I apologise for doubling up by asking a Written Question and then saying it, but when I wrote the Written Question this amendment had not been tabled. The Written Question was an alternative, and I am sorry that he has had to put up with it twice.

I will leave it to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, to read what my noble friend said. It is helpful to have it spelled out exactly why the Government are not repealing Section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act. I suspect I still do not agree with him, but it is helpful to have those reasons. I absolutely understand, and I will not push him to deal with the points I made about indefinite detention, alternative detention and so forth, because that debate will be had at a later date; it is just that I probably will not be able to be there for it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 102A withdrawn.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and I was delighted to add my name to Amendment 177. I have very little to add to his introduction of the amendment, but it is important that the Minister makes it clear to the Committee what the present position on refugee family reunion is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, we saw the announcement on 1 September that the refugee family reunion process had been paused temporarily. As I understand it, applications submitted before 1 September are being handled—perhaps the Minister will confirm that—but no more applications are being looked at until a review has taken place.

On 1 September the Home Secretary was very clear that this was a temporary pause, but on 2 October, No. 10 announced:

“In her forthcoming asylum policy reform, the Home Secretary will introduce a fundamental change to the rights provided to those granted asylum in the UK, looking to end automatic family reunion rights”.


That seems to indicate not a temporary pause but something a bit permanent and, to my mind, on the face of it, shocking.

I do not know exactly what is meant by “automatic” in the No. 10 statement, but I guess, charitably, one could assume it simply means “free”—that one should no longer have the right to apply to bring in the lost child without an application fee, attaching a cheque for jolly nearly £2,000 under present rules. For RFR cases there is no cost attached: there is no health surcharge or application fee. You could construe—this is the good interpretation—that the “automatic” in the No. 10 statement actually meant “free”. But people are going to have to pay to bring in the lost child, which is the opposite of what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has so eloquently argued for.

I do not want to say that I hope that is the explanation and the correct interpretation. But the alternative seems to me to be worse: that we are going to end people’s ability to bring in the lost child. What kind of country do we think we are? That is what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is saying in his amendment. The lost relative who turns up in the transit camp in Libya or Turkey is not entitled to come to this country, and the bona fide refugee here—the member of the family who got here, whose case for asylum was established and who was granted protection status—is not allowed to bring in the child, wife or cousin who got lost on route. That is a shocking idea. Surely that cannot be what the No. 10 announcement on 2 October meant. I strongly support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and I would be with him in saying that, if it is not accepted now, it should be debated on Report.

But I do not know on what playing field this match is taking place. What happened on 2 October? All these amendments were drafted before the summer: before the Home Secretary paused the policy at the beginning of September and No. 10 apparently killed the policy—or at least announced its massive modification, depending on what “automatic” means—on 2 October. We need to know before Report what the present position and policy are. I of course support Amendments 165, 166 and 178.

I might surprise the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, by saying that I think Amendment 168 is a rather good idea. I expect that the Minister will say that it is not necessary because thorough and satisfactory checks are carried out in any case. But, if I am wrong about that, I would be happy to support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson.

However, before we go much further in Committee, we need to hear from the Minister what the real situation as of today is. Have the Government decided to abolish the RFR route?

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 203K in my name, which is supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, who is sorry she cannot be in her place. I thank the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium for its assistance. The amendment would introduce a statutory requirement for the Government to publish and implement guidance on the resettlement of children and families of children. It would ensure that such guidance is subject to parliamentary scrutiny and reflects our domestic and international legal obligations to protect children affected by forced displacement. It would complement other amendments, in particular from my noble friend Lord Dubs and from the Lib Dem Benches, which I support.

Children are disproportionately affected by conflict and persecution: they face heightened risks of exploitation, trafficking, abuse and long-term psychological harm. They are fleeing crises in countries such as Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and Eritrea. Most have no access to safe or regular routes for protection. While the UK resettlement scheme prioritises children and adolescents at risk, there is no statutory guidance to ensure that their specific needs are met consistently across the country. Implementation varies widely, and local authorities are left without a clear framework to deliver trauma-informed care, education access and safeguarding support.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

186: After Clause 48, insert the following Clause—
“Good character requirement for citizenship(1) Part 5 of the British Nationality Act 1981 is amended as follows.(2) After section 41A, insert—“41B Good character requirement(1) The good character requirement must not be applied in a manner contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law relating to immigration and asylum.(2) When considering whether a person (P) meets the good character requirement, the Secretary of State may not take into account P’s illegal entry to or arrival in the United Kingdom—(a) if P was under the age of 18 at the time of such entry or arrival, and(b) except to the extent specified in guidance on the good character requirement published at the time of such entry or arrival.(3) In this section "the good character requirement" refers to the provision regarding a person being of good character in section 41A (Registration: requirement to be of good character), section 4L (Acquisition by registration: special circumstances), and paragraphs 1 and 5 of Schedule 1 to the British Nationality Act 1981.””Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would ensure the good character requirement is not applied contrary to the UK’s international legal obligations. It also ensures that an assessment of good character may not take into account a person’s irregular entry or arrival to the UK if they were a child, and it may only be taken into account to the extent specified in guidance published at the time of an adult’s irregular entry or arrival.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will introduce Amendment 186 on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, who very much regrets that she cannot be in her place as she feels strongly about this issue.

The amendment concerns a change in official guidance for immigration staff assessing good character in nationality applications. Refugees claiming citizenship after 10 February who entered the UK “illegally” will now normally be refused regardless of when they entered the country. The policy change, in effect, reintroduces sections of the Illegal Migration Act, which this Bill repeals. That repeal was described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as

“a positive step that recognises the importance of naturalisation, both for the individuals concerned and for social cohesion”.

Without this amendment, this Bill is one step forward only for guidance to take us one step backwards.

Following a Private Notice Question tabled by my noble friend Lord Blunkett, there was considerable criticism of the new guidance. The noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, commented that

“this is a major change that deserves much more substantial consideration and scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament before it comes into force”.—[Official Report, 12/2/25; col. 1256.]

There was no such scrutiny, but this amendment provides such an opportunity now. It would do three simple things. First, it would ensure that the good character requirement is not applied in a manner contrary to the UK’s international obligations. Secondly, it would uphold the best interests of children by prohibiting consideration of a child’s irregular entry to the country. Thirdly, it would remove retrospectivity further to uphold the rule of law. I will consider each in turn.

First, in a letter to ILPA, to which I am grateful for its assistance with the amendment, the then Minister Dame Angela Eagle said that

“the Secretary of State may choose to apply discretion to grant citizenship … where necessary to comply with our international obligations”.

I will return to the discretion question later. Here I simply note that the amendment seeks to turn “may” into “must”. In the PNQ debate, my noble friend Lord Boateng warned that the policy contravenes Article 34 of the refugee convention, which calls on states to facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees as far as possible. The UNHCR makes the same point, citing a similar provision in the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. It also expresses concern that the policy may result in breaches of Article 31 of the refugee convention, discussed in the previous group, which clearly states that countries

“shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees”.

According to the UNHCR, Article 31 is central to the object and purpose of the refugee convention because it ensures that refugees can gain access to international protection and the rights associated with it without being penalised for breaches of immigration and other laws.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

We can wait, but the people who fear that they will be affected are becoming increasingly anxious.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

That is an important point. I was going to say we have been asking this question for many months and are still waiting for an answer to it.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for his very strong support for the amendment and particularly for his really helpful research in the Council of Europe. It is still not clear to me why we are out of step and are the only ones doing this.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response. There was one particular thing I asked—which I will not ask him to pursue now because it is late, but perhaps he could write to me—on the guidance, which does not make clear the position of children. Perhaps he could look at Hansard and write to me and to the right reverend Prelate about that.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will not speak for very long on this, I hope. I also hope that the Minister does not feel that this is becoming a pattern—I am largely on the same side as him on this issue—and that I can bring a little bit of balance to the debate. Both noble Baronesses have mentioned the chief inspector. I looked carefully at his very balanced report. There are points on both sides. It is worth putting some of them on the record that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, did not.

The chief inspector made the point that accurately assessing the age of young people is undoubtedly difficult. It has always been very difficult. It was difficult when I was the Immigration Minister between 2012 and 2014. The same debates that take place now took place then. It remains difficult. One of the reasons it is difficult is because there is an incentive in the system because, rightly, we treat children differently from and more generously than we treat adults. If you are not careful, adults game the system and say that they are children when they are not. That is a problem: first, because you are putting adults in an environment with children, which does present a child protection risk; and, secondly, it enables adults who have entered the country illegally and inappropriately to try to avoid the consequences of their actions. That brings the system into disrepute, which is not good for anyone.

The inspector makes the point that the Home Office gets some of its initial age decisions wrong and that it would be helpful if both sides accepted that. That is a point for the Minister to recognise: it is difficult and the Home Office does not always get it right. Importantly, he also said that the debate would be better if the Home Office and its critics could agree that some migrants lie about their age and that not to attempt to make some form of initial age assessment—which both noble Baronesses have criticised—risks incentivising more to do so. There is a balance to strike here.

I am pleased that these two amendments will not be pressed to a vote because I would not be able to support them. Amendment 27 seeks to put a bright-line rule in place which will strengthen the incentive for anybody to claim that they are a child because it would mean that they went automatically into the process and were treated as a child until it had been shown that they were not a child. That would make the Home Office’s job, on behalf of us all, to have a functioning immigration system even more difficult.

My concern about Amendment 57, given today’s fourth Oral Question and the pace of technology, is that subsection (3) of the proposed new clause does not specify how we should use technological methods of age estimation, including facial age estimation, saying that they must not

“be used as the sole or primary basis for determining age, or … override the presumption”

that someone is a child.

My problem is that the pace of that technology is such that I do not think we should be ruling out its use as the determining fact in statute. My understanding—I am sure there are AI experts in the House who can correct me if I am wrong—is that this technology can get somebody’s age within a few years of the true age. I accept that that is quite important when a person is on the boundary between being a child or an adult, but the point is that that is pretty accurate and who knows where that technology will have gone in a few years? If we had a very accurate method, perhaps with other things, of determining somebody’s age, I would not want there to be something in primary legislation which ruled that out, given all the complexities around that.

--- Later in debate ---

In summary, I am grateful to all noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have contributed to the debate, who have all made extremely valid points probing the Government’s position. But, ultimately, age assessment is a difficult issue. We have safeguarding challenges in getting that wrong and, therefore, we think that the proposals as currently outlined are satisfactory and that both Amendments 57 and 27 would water down the legislation and create certain further difficulties on these issues. But I say to all Members who have spoken in the debate that the Government keep this matter under review; we will look at facial recognition and will report back, and we will have further statistics on these issues in due course—and the Government’s intention is to try to ensure that the information we get is as accurate as possible to ensure that we place individuals in the appropriate category for safeguarding and other issues.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I asked a specific question about how the Government propose to respond to the chief inspector’s recommendation about involving stakeholders. At the meeting that the Minister has forgotten I was at, I asked about a task and finish group that would involve particularly NGOs, because they bring such understanding to the issues. I said I would be very disappointed if my noble friend refused that, but I am even more disappointed that he has not even addressed it.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I think I did address that. I said at the very beginning of my statement that the Government have accepted all eight recommendations from the inspectorate, including plans to proactively engage with local authorities, social workers and key stakeholders to advance progress on the recommendations. I have met my noble friend, I think, three times in various meetings in the last couple of weeks; in that meeting I gave her an assurance, and I give her that assurance again, which I hope will satisfy her.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am really sorry to push this, but I was asking how that recommendation is going to be implemented. If the Minister is giving me an assurance that NGOs will be included in the discussions as to how all the recommendations of the chief inspectors should be implemented, I am very happy—but I am not sure that is exactly what he said.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. What I have to say is almost redundant, but I will still emphasise a couple of points. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, admirably highlighted why the current system needs fixing and the rationale for it. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has given some practical advice on how we could speed up the process. If the amendment were accepted, it would improve the efficacy of the system and access to justice and, in the long run, as we have heard, save money.

It is worth emphasising that this amendment does not seek to extend the scope of the current provision of legal aid; it merely seeks to improve its effectiveness and access. As we have heard, in the light of the UK-France deal, the shortcomings of the scheme are even more evident, because those detained under this deal are facing greater risk of not having legal representation before they are removed. Experience shows that in substantial cases there have been delays of more than seven days in accessing DDAS, thus depriving people of opportunities to receive legal aid. We are very grateful to charities working in this area for providing examples; they have shown the inadequacies of the current system and drawn attention to the delays and the inability of individuals to get timely and proper assistance.

The failures of the scheme are not new; they were evident well before the UK-France deal and were highlighted by the Chief Inspector of Prisons in 2022, during his inspection of the Brook House immigration removal centre. The benefits of this amendment are self-evident, and I strongly urge the Government to accept the amendment and some very critical advice given by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on how to improve the process and organisation of the scheme.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of my noble friend’s amendment. In July I visited Harmondsworth IRC as a member of the APPG on detention. One lesson I learned from that was about the poor quality of legal advice and access to it. I heard from talking to some of the men who were detained and NGOs working there that the failure to provide decent legal advice for the detainees is a systemic issue that needs addressing urgently.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, at the beginning of his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said that this was Pro Bono Week. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that he has fulfilled his job for this House. I am sure that the Minister will be very grateful for the advice that he has given pro bono and I hope that, if he asks for more, the noble Lord will be willing to give it.

I have learned two things from what has been said so far in this debate. First, we have a crisis of legal aid. No one who has spoken has said that it is all fine and dandy. Secondly, what is available is not working well.

On the first of those, a survey by Bail for Immigration Detainees found that only 42% of people held in IRCs had a lawyer in their immigration case in 2025. That is a steep decline, down from 75% in 2012—some years ago. For those detained in prison, 71% of respondents had not received legal advice under the scheme. The second concern raised is of course about what is provided; that is the 30 minutes, often considered to be of doubtful quality and insufficient. As professionals have argued, immigration law is highly complex: those of us who are working on the Bill will understand that this is a very highly complex area of work. It is unrealistic to believe that a detained person, who may be traumatised, speak little English or have just arrived, can navigate this complex labyrinth of law on their own and without professional assistance.

The amendment is necessary not merely on humanitarian grounds but to protect the integrity of the rule of law itself—first, access to justice, and secondly, practical effectiveness. I do not want to repeat the points about cost, which are obviously going to come up in the response, but it would save taxpayers’ money: invest to save early. That is quite clear from everything that has been said so far. We must be clear also that a failure to provide legal aid can amount to a breach of fundamental rights, particularly under Article 6 of the European convention, so this amendment offers a practical and necessary solution to a systemic failure. It mirrors existing successful arrangements, such as the immigration police station advice scheme, which is used when detained persons are found to have no criminal element in their case. It would simply ensure that an immigration lawyer is allocated to an individual upon entering detention, providing a necessary check against unlawful incarceration and ensuring fair process.

I end with a quote that was given by one of the organisations working in this field:

“Ensuring prompt legal counsel for detained persons is not merely a gesture of goodwill; it is the necessary foundation for a fair judicial process. A system that incarcerates first and allows access to justice later is like starting a race 48 hours behind the starting gun—the individual is severely disadvantaged before they even begin to fight for their rights”.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

37: After Clause 42, insert the following new Clause—
“Prescribed period for newly recognised refugees(1) In regulation 2(2) (interpretation) of the Asylum Support Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000/704), for “28” substitute “56”.(2) The Secretary of State may exercise the powers conferred by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 to prescribe by regulations a different period for the purposes of section 94(3) (day on which a claim for asylum is determined) of that Act, but the Secretary of State may not prescribe a period less than 56 days where regulation 2(2A) of the Asylum Support Regulations 2000 applies.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause would amend the Asylum Support Regulations to increase the period following a positive asylum decision during which a newly recognised refugee is eligible for financial and accommodation support from the Home Office from 28 to 56 days. It allows the Secretary of State to set a different period, as long as it is more than 56 days.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 37. I am grateful to noble Lords who have added their names and to the Refugee Council. I also declare, and am grateful for, help received from RAMP as an associate.

The proposed new clause would ensure that newly recognised refugees have at least 56 days to move from asylum support to mainstream accommodation and financial support—commonly called the move-on period. I have tabled the amendment because, having introduced a pilot in December last year to extend the move-on period from 28 to 56 days to great acclaim, the Government, with minimal warning, reverted to 28 days in September for most childless adults of working age. Yet the pilot, together with the independent evaluation of it, had only recently been extended from its original end date in June. The Home Affairs Select Committee spoke for many when it recently said that it found the decision “extremely disappointing”.

I and other noble Lords made the case for the extension to 56 days in the debates on my Private Member’s Bill on the subject, because 28 days is simply not long enough to sort out the practicalities involved in the move from asylum support. The result is all too often homelessness and destitution, with devastating psychological effects. What should be a time of joy turns into a nightmare. Young people in particular, according to Young Roots,

“are thrown into crisis in which they may be unsafe and at risk of harm”,

just when they hope

“to get on with rebuilding their lives”.

We are talking not just about those officially considered vulnerable groups who will continue with the 56-day period, because all those affected are potentially vulnerable, as the Boaz Trust has shown.

In Committee on the PMB, I presented evidence from a range of NGOs on how well the pilot was working. In the words of NACCOM, the UK-wide No Accommodation Network, the extension to 56 days had

“proven overwhelmingly beneficial for new refugees and the organisations that support them”.

Similarly, London Councils called it a “vital support” and pointed to a number of positive effects. In a recent letter to the Minister, it states that

“extensive evidence shared by partners … shows that this was a successful policy initiative in reducing risks of rough sleeping and leading to better and more joined up responses across the system”.

British Red Cross reports similar findings from a range of local authorities. This is not surprising, given that an earlier LGA survey found that the extension to 56 days, in line with the Homelessness Reduction Act, was seen by its members as the single most effective change that could be made to the move-on period.

It is also not surprising, therefore, that the response to the reversion to 28 days for most refugees has been overwhelmingly negative. London Councils warns that it

“will put the progress that we have made so far at risk”,

and that it is particularly concerning as we approach the winter period. In a letter to the relevant Secretaries of State on behalf of more than 60 organisations, Homeless Link and NACCOM made it clear that they believed the change to be harmful, fearing that it would

“increase homelessness and rough sleeping, cause individual harm, put pressure on local statutory and voluntary sector organisations, and undermine the government’s commitment to ending homelessness through a cross-departmental strategy”.

The letter continued:

“The emerging evidence we have, including testimony from our respective member organisations and from a survey NACCOM conducted of its members, indicates that the 56-day pilot has helped reduce rates of homelessness and enabled more people to successfully move on from Home Office accommodation and begin to integrate and participate in their communities”.


Surely, this is exactly what the Government want to happen. Young Roots, which very kindly sent me evidence about the impact of the change, reports that:

“56 days works. It was very clear during the 56-day pilot that the longer move-on period was beneficial for everyone”.


Its front-line staff report that it helped with claiming universal credit, opening a bank account and finding accommodation. Importantly, its safeguarding data showed a 50% reduction in safeguarding incidents during the six months of the pilot. Previously, the most common reason for a safeguarding incident raised was homelessness.

Young refugees themselves are clear that they cannot manage the transition in 28 days. One said:

“28 days are not enough to apply for universal credit and open a bank account, so we need at least 56 days”.


Caseworkers have commented how the young people have been calmer, as

“there isn’t such a sense of desperation”,

and that a longer move-on period has helped them to

“begin planning their futures with greater stability and dignity”.

The longer move-on period may not be a silver bullet, but it has clearly had an overwhelmingly positive effect. I appreciate the pressure to reduce the use of asylum hotels, but it should not be vulnerable refugees who have to pay the price.

When questioned on “Panorama” about why the unexpected change, Minister Norris answered that

“artificially inflating the period that someone stays in a hotel is not doing them a favour”,

and that it is in a refugee’s interest for the period to be as short as possible. Is it in their interest to be turfed out on to the streets and made destitute? I think not. There is nothing artificial about increasing the period to that already operative in homelessness legislation. If anything, it was the original 28 days that was artificial, or “arbitrary”, to use the word used by the Home Secretary, who said something very similar earlier in answer to an Oral Question. This is worrying, as it suggests that the new team in the Home Office is simply out of touch with the evidence, yet surely this Government believe in evidence-based policy-making.

Young Roots tells us that,

“since the pilot was suddenly ended, we are already seeing the devastating impact on young refugees”,

with a

“50 per cent increase in the number of young people experiencing street homelessness”.

Referrals to supported accommodation are being rejected because they do not yet have the necessary universal credit documentation. The organisation is really worried about the health and well-being of young refugees as winter approaches. Similarly, Islington Council reports that

“far more people have been referred to our local Crisis homeless shelter”

and more are sleeping rough. It argues that,

“this is a clear indication that the shortening of the move-on period has shunted costs from central on to local government and the voluntary sector”,

as well as, as I have already said, on to refugees themselves.

In response to a topical Oral Question from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, my noble friend the Minister repeatedly talked about “tweaking” rather than ending the pilot, but I hope he will accept that what he calls tweaking is causing real harm. My noble friend also responded more than once that “the vast majority” of newly recognised refugees are not affected, but given that we are constantly being told that most are single young men, and that in a Written Answer the Home Office was not able to provide data on the proportion of newly recognised refugees who are exempt, I cannot see how he can say that.

In conclusion, in a helpful letter to me, my noble friend the Minister said that the outcomes of the evaluation of the pilot

“will be used to inform longer term policy proposals”.

With winter approaching, I make a plea on behalf of organisations on the ground and the refugees they work with, as well as local authorities, to revert to 56 days immediately. At the very least, will the Minister give us an assurance that, if the evaluation reflects the positive evidence I have received of the pilot’s impact, the Government will, in the name of evidence-based policy-making, make the pilot permanent for all newly recognised refugees? I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that my noble friend Lady Lister can give us the breathing space to try to deal with this issue. She may be unhappy, and I accept that, but I hope she can give us breathing space. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord German, is helpful, but we are trying to deal with this, and I would not wish to start a rush to Nightingale centres when we can continue our good work to reduce that backlog. For both those reasons, I urge my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken.

The formal position of the Opposition was on the grounds of disincentivising. How many of those who are willing to risk their lives coming over the channel even know about such a thing as a move-on period, and how many are aware how many days they get? I am sorry but it is just a ridiculous argument, and I do not accept it. Anyway, it does not really matter.

I am very grateful to the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Kerr, for their support. I note that the noble Lord, Lord German, asked a question that was not answered about what consultation there was with local authorities prior to reverting to 28 days. I am pretty sure that the answer was none, so perhaps I can answer that on behalf of my noble friend. They were taken by surprise; they were given very little warning. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, rightly emphasised the question of integration and how we are undermining the integration of newly recognised refugees.

I appreciate my noble friend the Minister’s response. In some ways, I would just like to quote back to him. He said, “The pilot needs to run its course”. Yes, exactly—that is our case. The pilot should have run its course before reverting to 28 days for some of those who are part of the pilot. I understand the pressures that are being placed on the Government in terms of accommodation, but there is a pilot and an evaluation, and in the name of evidence-based policy-making that should have been allowed to, as he said, run its course. I will also quote back at him the concept of breathing space. To be honest, I am a bit more concerned about the breathing space we give to newly recognised refugees to be able to get their lives in order—which needs 56 days at least, not 28—than about the breathing space the Government have. But the Government have their breathing space.

I did not expect the Government to accept this amendment. I tabled it only because of the reversion. If the pilot was running its course, I would have been very happy to wait and see what the outcome was. My Private Member’s Bill is currently suspended, waiting for that.

I asked for, and realise I probably will not get, an assurance about the independent evaluation, which is a very good one, as my noble friend said, including voices of lived experience and so forth. I have a lot of faith in the evaluation but find it difficult to believe it is not going to show what all the various organisations have said to me: that the 56-day period, as I said, is not a silver bullet and does not solve all the problems but eases a lot of the problems faced by refugees, local authorities and voluntary organisations. I hope that underlying what my noble friend said is an acceptance that, if the evaluation shows that, the Government will accept 56 days in future. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 37 withdrawn.

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[Lord Barber of Ainsdale (Lab)]

My Lords, I also support these amendments on the right of asylum seekers to work, and in particular Amendment 45, which makes the eminently reasonable proposal for there to be opportunities to review the evidence, if necessary year on year, on the impact of the current policy and the case for an alternative approach. As we have heard from the right reverend Prelate, there is enormously wide support for this proposal from employers, trade unions and local authorities, which have to deal with the consequences of the current policy.

Asylum seekers, who wait many months and sometimes years for their application to be determined, want the dignity of work and the opportunity to provide for their families and to visibly make their contribution to their communities—and, yes, to use their skills in the health service and in so many other areas too—rather than being stigmatised as a drain on public resources. It would be good for them and for their integration in the community—and it would be good for the Exchequer too, given the tax revenues they would contribute in place of the benefits they would otherwise be reliant on. It would also be bad for the informal, exploitative part of the labour market to which they might otherwise feel the need to turn.

My noble friend the Minister may, I suspect, make reference to the argument about a pull factor, but there is deeply contested evidence on whether the opportunity to work is really a key motivating factor for those making the desperate decision to cross illegally into our country. Let us have a real opportunity to look at that evidence—and I hope that my noble friend the Minister can indicate a recognition of the value that that might be able to contribute in determining our future policy.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 44, which would simply reinstate the rights that the last Labour Government introduced, and I cannot understand what the case is against doing so now. If it is not possible to do that, my noble friend Lady O’Grady has made the very helpful suggestion of a summit to discuss how to take this forward.

I have long argued and voted for the principle of the right of asylum seekers to work, and that should include, once asylum seekers can work, the right to work in any job, not just those on the immigration salary list, such as a ballet dancer or a geophysicist—hardly critical to our economy or our health service. That is something that the Migration Advisory Committee has recommended on a number of occasions. However, when we in this House have voted in support of this principle in the past, it has been on the basis of a right to work after six months, not three months. That is what is being proposed by a lot of organisations, including Lift the Ban, so I think it is unfortunate that the amendments refer to three months, not six months, but the principle is an important one, for all the reasons that have already been given.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. It has been a very stimulating debate on one of the most difficult areas in the Bill, in my view. This group of amendments concerns the right to work and, of course, no one can dispute the vital role that work can play. We encourage people to contribute to society and support themselves, where appropriate. However, our position is that while a claim is pending, asylum seekers should not be working; nor should anyone who has entered the country illegally have the right to work. That is a clear and fair principle and one that we believe must underpin our immigration system.

Specifically on the amendments, Amendment 42, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German, proposes granting asylum seekers the right to work after three months. Reducing the current 12-month waiting period to three months risks making the United Kingdom a more attractive destination for those who enter illegally; quite frankly, I think it is a pull factor. We do not believe this is sensible or appropriate, as such a change would incentivise further illegal entry. Here, with the greatest respect, I flatly disagree with the noble Lord, Lord German.

Amendment 44 seeks to restore wider rights for migrant domestic workers, including the ability to change employers freely and apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years. Again, we encourage all domestic workers to enjoy the flexibility of the job market, but while these workers remain on domestic worker visas, we do not think that the proposed changes are appropriate. Granting such rights prematurely would undermine the integrity of the Immigration Rules and create gaps that risk exploitation and misuse of the system.

Finally, on Amendment 45, we made our position clear: we do not believe the amendment is necessary as it risks diverting focus away from the effective administration and integrity of the asylum system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

I rise with great diffidence—and apologise to noble Lords—because I have not spoken on this Bill, and I did not speak at Second Reading. This issue seems to me to be relatively simple. We in the Conservative Party had a rather odd ambition during the previous Government to stop the boats. It was an odd ambition because we had no method of doing it. However, this is something—and I pay such tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—that would help reduce the number of children coming across on those boats. It is something we really ought to do. Let us do it.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to express briefly my support for my noble friend Lord Dubs. He talked about this being a question of morality. He talked about the importance of hope. At a time when among the wider public there is distrust of politics, to do something that is right would chime with them. They would look to this House to do the right thing. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, talked about the children she saw in Calais. This is a safeguarding issue. We are constantly being told about the importance of safeguarding children in the context of other amendments, so surely we can support this amendment in the best interests of children following the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. So, for the first time, I will be voting against my Government and in support of my noble friend.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I too, like my noble colleague, have not intervened on this Bill until now, but I feel compelled to, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. If anybody has a right to speak on this issue, he has. If we have a duty to listen to anyone on this issue, our duty is to listen to him. A Labour Party activist, a trade unionist in my village, used to have a saying that anything that is morally right cannot be politically wrong. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is morally right, and we should support it.