European Union: Schengen Agreement

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Of course, my noble friend is absolutely right, and we have control of those borders because, in the Maastricht treaty, as he and I know, Sir John Major managed to negotiate an opt-out from the Schengen area. We retain strong control over our borders, which is quite essential. We look at the situation happening in Europe at present and we are not dispassionate, because the issues and security concerns that we have about Europe ultimately come towards us—so we need to work with our EU partners. We believe that the type of discussion that they are now having about strengthening the external border to the EU is absolutely right and timely.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that any crowing over Schengen difficulties is misplaced and shooting ourselves in the foot, given the huge benefits to UK citizens and businesses that Schengen confers in the ease of travel and trade? What are the Government doing to help to maintain the integrity and security of Schengen through full participation in the Schengen Information System and helping to reinforce its external borders?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right, and there is absolutely no crowing whatever. What we want is the security of those internal and external borders. We are joining the Schengen Information System II, which is very important for sharing information. We are providing support to FRONTEX and also providing support to the European asylum support officers, who operate in hotspots around Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. So we are not passive or crowing—we are actively working with our EU partners to ensure that this problem is addressed.

Channel Tunnel: Migrants

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: that is why the Prime Minister announced in July that the Organised Crime Task Force will concentrate specifically on immigration crime. At the Valletta summit in November he announced an expansion of the task force. Through new legislation in the Serious Crime Act, that work has already led to the disruption of 174 organised immigration crime groups. But we are very conscious that more needs to be done and are working very closely on that with our French counterparts.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that a twin-track approach is needed? First, refugees and asylum seekers need to be offered safe and legal routes through humanitarian visas and, secondly, all EU states need to participate fully in European police co-operation, including through a strengthened Europol, which the UK is not opting in to. Does he not therefore have to acknowledge the truth, which is that the present Government are failing on both those tracks?

[Lord Bates]

No. On Friday there will be a Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting, which the Home Secretary will be at. At the emergency meeting on 20 November following the Paris attacks, a whole new raft of initiatives was set out on which we are going to co-operate. These include the Schengen information systems, which exchange information on people who represent a potential threat across Europe. The noble Baroness was absolutely right in her first point, which is why we set up the Syrian vulnerable persons programme. We have said that checks on the 20,000 additional refugees who will come in over the lifetime of this Parliament will take place in the camps so that they do not have to make dangerous journeys and can be verified by the UNHCR and by us.

Draft Investigatory Powers Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is right, but that might not be necessary. I appreciate that the Bill has only just been published and is 300 pages long, but it has been worded as far as possible to allow for future proofing of the legislation. My noble friend Lady Shields plays an important role as a Minister looking at this area with her immense technical knowledge. I personally have benefitted from that knowledge in preparing for the Statement. A final point is that we have a plethora of different powers spread across different bits of legislation and a key driver of the Bill is that it is a great opportunity to bring them into one place so that they can be subject to that kind of scrutiny. I think that that is another element that we will strengthen along the lines of what my noble friend proposed.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the continuity and the expertise that the Minister brings, as well as his charity fundraising. Perhaps I may just pick up on a point that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, touched on: what exactly will the judicial powers be, and what evidence will the judges have? It was suggested today that the judge will be able to reject only on judicial review principles—that is, to ensure that the procedure was correct—but will not be able to look at the substantive evidence available to the Home Secretary. Will the Minister please clarify that? Secondly, and continuing a point that my noble friend Lord Paddick made, what confidence do the Government have that all ISPs can maintain the security of data?

[Lord Bates]

In terms of the judicial role, the judge will have sight of the same information as the Secretary of State currently has—which is the justification. Of course, the judge will be able to subject that justification to testing and review in terms of the process and content and ask them to go back and get more if required. That is certainly what the Secretary of State does at present. Those elements will be important in strengthening that part of the process. Again, however, that can be fleshed out in the pre-legislative scrutiny.

Asylum

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, the EU directives, like the refugee convention and UK national policy, are based on individual need rather than nationality. That need may, as the noble Lord said, arise from indiscriminate violence, but that is again based on an assessment of the risks to the individual claimant. Briefly, on his other points, as noble Lords are aware, this Government have already introduced a series of tough domestic measures to restrict access to benefits for EU jobseekers, to punish the abuse of free movement rights on which we are leading the way in Europe. The Government maintain that free movement is an important principle of the EU, but that it is not an unqualified right and must be grounded in freedom to take up work.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the question was about the secondary movement of people claiming asylum in another EU member state, so I do not understand the answer, which was about EU nationals and free movement of people who have EU citizenship. Can the Minister confirm that the only possibility for secondary movement of asylum seekers is a small one if, under the Dublin rules, they have a family connection to someone who is already a refugee here? Otherwise, someone can move only if they have become fully settled in another member state and some years later acquire EU citizenship. There is little evidence of substantial such movement. Is this not just an example of how Eurosceptics are trying to confuse the issue by conflating EU free movement of EU nationals with the unfree movement of non-EU asylum seekers, with which the Government, unfortunately, seem to be colluding?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The Government adopt responsible measures and have taken a responsible attitude in addressing the issue of the migration crisis across Europe. On the noble Baroness’s assessment of the Dublin convention, she is correct: that does stand.

UK Opt-in to the Proposed Council Decision on the Relocation of Migrants within the EU (EUC Report)

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I also welcome the debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, on her speech and on the report. I congratulate the sub-committee—of which I am, in fact, not a member—on the speed of its report. We learn from the United Nations that there are 60 million refugees and displaced persons in the world and, since the beginning of 2014, getting on for 400,000 people have arrived in the EU. I share the view expressed by previous speakers in wanting a more positive response to the whole European agenda on migration from the Government of a country that is still a leading EU member state and a permanent member of the Security Council and which has, while by no means a perfect record on handling migration, at least a lot of experience, and a better tale to tell than many others. I would like a greater sense of how the Government think that the UK can contribute to EU solidarity on this matter, as well as enhancing the responsibility, which is the other side of the coin, of all member states to implement the asylum acquis. We know that there was not a good record in countries such as Italy and Greece even before this crisis; across the whole EU, apparently only two in five return decisions are implemented, which does not help the situation, although some ideas include much greater use of detention, which is worrying.

Sadly, the UK’s moral authority on matters of the asylum acquis is not increased by the fact that we have not opted into two of the five measures—the procedures directive and the reception conditions directive—in the common asylum system. Of course, we are not in the Schengen information system for immigration purposes, so the return decisions and entry bans are of no help to us. But even if the Government are not persuaded by this report and this debate—and I hope that they might be—I hope that they can tell us, in the words of the Explanatory Memorandum to this proposal, how they think,

“an effective and sustainable response to the situation in the Mediterranean”,

can best be implemented, and the extent to which the UK can contribute to an effective response to migratory pressures on some member states, even if it does not opt into the relocation proposal.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, updated us, there was an agreement at the JHA Council on Monday to clarify the legal nature of the scheme—that it is voluntary—by consensus, because it must be admitted that that lack of clarity was not conducive to making decisions. I would like to hear what the Government think about the implications of the scheme for the future of the EU asylum system. Now that the legal nature of being voluntary has been ascertained, could the Minister elaborate on what other factors and criteria will influence the Government’s decision now that that is clear?

The Commission has presented the present proposal as temporary, but as the precursor to a permanent and mandatory scheme which, presumably, would drive a coach and horses through the Dublin arrangement of responsibility on state of first arrival. The June European Council referred to a “temporary and exceptional relocation” of 40,000 over two years but, once this has been done, how could Dublin be re-established, even if it were desirable to do so? Perhaps the Government could answer both those questions. I note that Austria has already stopped processing asylum requests, and Hungary has refused to take back Dublin transferees, so what is the future of the EU asylum system? How will the Government contribute positively to make the overall system work? One puzzle is why the temporary protection directive has never been used and invoked in these circumstances. It is designed for a mass influx, which can be counted cumulatively. One would have thought that it was tailor-made for this situation.

While we are on the asylum acquis, the Commission guidelines on fingerprinting have elicited considerable concern on human rights grounds, since they introduce notions of coercion and detention for failing to give fingerprints. What is the Government’s reaction to those guidelines? It has been much commented on, so are they aware that many arrivals are not being fingerprinted? Can the Government give us an idea of what really is the extent and scale of the problem of non-fingerprinting?

Even if the Government are hesitant on relocation, they need to do much more to help promote safe and legal routes into the EU, whether for refugees, displaced people or legal migrants. It should be much more positive and proactive on the resettlement side of the equation for permanent resettlement, humanitarian admission, enhanced family reunions, study visas and so on, by which I mean direct from the region, specifically for Syrian refugees, of whom 4 million are registered by UNHCR and hosted in neighbouring countries. We must applaud the generosity of countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, while being very aware of the strain that this is placing on their capacity, resources and local communities. Indeed, they are starting to close their borders, because the degree of pressure is leading to unregulated shanty camps, which are rife with disease and distress and act as a hotbed for radicalisation. UNHCR is running out of money because promised donations, particularly from the Gulf states, have not materialised. Are the Government pressing those states to come up with the money?

There was an excellent article recently on resettling Syrian refugees by Dr Neil Quilliam, acting head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House. I have not got time to quote a lot of it but he feels that our failure to resettle or provide humanitarian admission to more than a few hundred Syrian refugees is harming the UK’s reputation in the Middle East and squandering an opportunity to influence a new generation of Syrians who will likely lead the reconstruction of their war-torn homeland. He draws an analogy with Iraqi Kurds and Kosovars and he proposes that the UK should admit 10,000 Syrian refugees as opposed to this couple of hundred. This would have various beneficial results. It seems to me that if we were to set such an example we ought to be aiming for something upwards of 200,000 resettlement places across the whole of the EU. Then we could challenge other regions and countries in the world to take on a similar burden. The advantage of resettlement is that it cuts out the middleman or criminal smuggling gangs. I believe there would be public support for such a programme. It does not have the same resonances as the relocation scheme.

On the return of irregular migrants, the Commission plans to revise the legislation on migrant smuggling by 2016. Will the UK take part? It is regrettable that the UK is not a party to the return directive or the framework decision on strengthening criminal penalties against smuggling. Will the Government turn over a new leaf and decide to actually lead in this area for the EU? Perhaps the Minister can update us on other measures that have been taken to tackle criminal smuggling, even though that is not the focus of today.

Also, can the Government give us, either now or perhaps in September, more information about the third leg of the European agenda for migration, which is co-operation with countries of origin and transit? There is much rather airy-fairy talk of a global package to support a dialogue with third countries. What does it really consist of? Are we ready to make serious offers to countries, including Morocco and Tunisia, with which the EU is trying to negotiate readmission agreements, on trade and possibilities for legal migration which would actually make it a real partnership? Even if the main focus today is the relocation proposal, perhaps the Minister can add some comments that will put some concrete flesh on the bones of those proposals, if I can mix my metaphors.

EU: Asylum Seekers

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dykes for this debate. A commentator at Carnegie Europe recently said:

“The refugee crisis is just a part of a complex and massive public policy failure by the EU and its member states in the field of migration”.

It is hard to disagree. The symptoms are highly visible. The most obvious are the tragic deaths at sea, Hungary’s plan to erect a barbed-wire fence on its border with Serbia and migrants breaking into lorries at Calais. On that point, will the Minister say why those lorries are still not in secure lorry parks? We also see that the so-called European common asylum system is dysfunctional. It is not working. Can the record be improved in the short term through ideas such as the hot-spot approach of having EASO—the European Asylum Support Office—FRONTEX and Europol working on the ground with front-line states, or any other ideas for increasing reception-processing capacity?

In any case, the problem needs to be tackled much farther back in the chain. I am glad that efforts, not least in this House, to keep the UK a participant in Europol, Eurojust and a range of policing and criminal justice measures, succeeded. Will the Minister tell us what EU action is being taken, and what law enforcement action the UK is involved in against criminal gangs and smuggling networks? I think we all agree that action needs to be taken at source on the root causes. In the long term, tackling the sources of conflict, poverty and war will bear fruit. The UNHCR has today said that 60 million people are currently displaced by war. I am very glad that Parliament committed to a 0.7% target for international aid. That is not only altruistic, it is also self-interest. But this is a longer-term strategy and does not deal with the immediate crisis.

I believe that we cannot see trapping people in Libya as a viable plan. They would be subject to all sorts of human rights abuses. We need safe and legal alternative routes for displaced and vulnerable people in need of protection to reach Europe. The UNHCR target is to ask the EU to have 20,000 people a year settled through resettlement by 2020. The alternative is to issue humanitarian or asylum visas in the home country. The UK is resettling only 750 refugees a year through the gateway protection programme and has resettled only 187 Syrian refugees. I cannot believe that the public would object to these people being directly resettled. Will the Government give more support to an EU resettlement scheme than they are able or willing to give to an EU relocation scheme for people who have already arrived in the EU? Will they at least give intellectual support, even as a non-participant, to the development of a rational, coherent EU policy on legal migration, given that the EU as a whole—if not this country—is in demographic decline?

Clandestine Migrants

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that the work of FRONTEX in securing the borders of Europe is vital. We believe that it could be doing a better job, but we are co-operating with the agency at the present time—I believe that members of the police, the National Crime Agency and Border Force are working very closely with FRONTEX. One of the areas in which we would like to see it perform better is in taking fingerprint data as soon as people come into the European Union area. That would help in tracking them down.

The noble Lord is correct to say that this is a growing European problem. We are seeing a significant increase in the numbers of migrants coming into the EU—around 600,000. It is a European problem, but it goes beyond Europe’s borders. We are sure that our partnership in working together with other European countries—as we have done in this case with the Dutch, and as we are doing with the juxtaposed controls with the French—is an integral element of being able to tackle this going forward.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

The Minister referred to European instruments and my noble friend took up that theme, but I want to ask about carriers’ liability, which is also the subject of an EU legal instrument. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I heard John Vine, a former borders inspector at the weekend saying that there had been no sanctions on hauliers or confiscation of vehicles where they were found to have been carrying irregular migrants—he implied that there had been none at all. Is that the case, and, if so, why? Why have there not been any sanctions for breach of carrier liability legislation?

[Lord Bates]

We have to work closely with the hauliers. In March, my honourable friend the Immigration Minister met with the hauliers to discuss what part they can play in this, because that is certainly in their interests. I can say that the four vehicles found to be carrying these illegal migrants through Harwich have been seized, and there will be ongoing legal discussions because the case has to be proved in the courts, as the noble Baroness would expect. Of course, there are many other areas where I can point to seizures which have taken place, and I will certainly write to her on the specific number. I should say that a major part of the Serious Crime Act is about strengthening the powers of the courts so that they are able to seize the assets of those engaged in people trafficking—if that is the case in this particular instance—whether the assets be lorries or boats in the Mediterranean, so that they cannot actually continue with their evil trade.