Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown. We are told that this Bill is unethical, which puzzles me, because, like my noble friend and roommate Lord Forsyth, I cannot quite get my mind round the ethical nature of this bizarre proposition that unelected parliamentarians should, without any real discussion, destroy a Bill that has been passed by our elected House of Commons and for which there is very considerable public support—but heigh-ho.

I find the Bill distasteful in many ways. I wish we did not have to do it. But the issues it tries to resolve are supremely distasteful—actually, they are barbaric. We need action. We are told the Bill is full of weeds. Well, if there are weeds in the garden—knowing modern legislation, there are probably a good few—you pull them out: you replace them. You do not call in a cement truck to cover the entire thing in concrete and bury it, as this fatal amendment demands.

At its heart, the Bill aims to find a better means of fighting the modern slavers and people smugglers—saving innocent lives. That seems a most moral objective. It aims to stop the evil trade in human beings by the smugglers and slavers. It is only by beating them—crushing them, if we can—that we will put an end to the miseries and deaths we have seen all too often on the seas. If we do not act, and lose control of our borders, we will play straight into the hands of the racists and bigots who will stir up hatred on our streets and in our communities. There are terrible consequences to be paid if we fail in this.

How do we stop those who arrive here claiming to be children, with stubble on their chins, who have deliberately destroyed all their documentation and paid thousands of pounds to people traffickers, enabling them to continue their awful trade? These people—these pretenders, if you will—are the enemies of genuine refugees, because they help to create and sustain an evil system that is run by criminals of the cruellest kind, who think nothing of throwing children overboard to drown in order to save their own miserable lives. They trade in lies and in lives. It is our moral obligation to stop them—to bring an end to the unimaginable pain of mothers and fathers watching their children drowning off our shores in the channel. No amount of hand-wringing or bell-ringing will do that.

I know that at Second Reading in the other place, the Labour Party said that it wants to boost international policing to try to catch the smugglers. Let us hope they can catch the drug traffickers too while they are at it. They know that that is not a solution. This quixotic and deeply unconstitutional proposal to kill the Bill is a moral cop-out. There are no simple solutions. It is about not just small boats but jumbo jets, too, and a modern world in huge flux.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

Can the noble Lord—and his noble friend Lord Forsyth—explain what the Members of this House thinking when they designed a system that allows for a fatal amendment when legislation is bad enough? If, in 1946, the Salisbury convention was considered absolutely adequate, that is what we would have, with no provision for a fatal amendment.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I will try to answer the noble Baroness’s question like this: I wish the Liberal Democrats would listen to the arguments that will come in Committee and contribute to them, rather than trying to kill off all discussion. That is unprincipled and unconstitutional.

This is a world in which there is no one moral solution any more than there is one legislative solution. Of course, we will have to do much more, but this Bill is part of that effort. I ask the doubters: what are your plans? Apparently, you do not want to discuss them, but how will you stop the slavers and smugglers? What will you say to the people of this country, who have human rights too? If not this Bill, then what Bill? What would the doubters do? That is what we need to hear—in legislative detail, not just in passing debate. We wait to hear whether the moral outrage is matched by solid proposals for action, but I suspect we might be waiting for that from the opposition for a very long time.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and I look forward to hearing many more of his contributions to this House.

I want to talk about Parts 3 and 4 of the Bill. On Part 4, it is my experience, some years ago as a councillor in Somerset, providing and maintaining sites for Gypsies and Travellers, that leads me to realise what an utter disgrace this part is. The Minister said in opening that this was in the Conservative manifesto, and so it was. It was a dog whistle that really builds on social anxieties to garner votes, and that is about as low as it gets. It also demands the impossible. It reminds me of the ill-guided bedroom tax legislation, because that demanded that people move to smaller houses when there were no smaller houses for them to move to. This is the same: it demands that people solve a situation where there are no sites available for them. It is just inadequate provision. Really, the Government need to rethink this entire part and get rid of this part entirely.

I was interested in the well-meant speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on Part 3, which I now turn to. It put me in mind of a quote from the author John Grisham, who said:

“Privileged people don’t march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.”


Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, reminded us about the suffragettes. Women would not have the vote had they not been marching, protesting and disrupting life around Parliament tremendously. I believe that street protest is a fundamental protection that people have when those in power get it wrong, at not only a national but a local level. We have barely mentioned the local level this afternoon, but that is equally important. Feet on the street is a way of protecting your local playing field or library when they are threatened with closure. This country has rightly deplored regimes that criminalise dissent and discourage protest with threats of jail. Yet here we are, in this part, looking at doing just those things. To be noticed, dissent cannot be silent; it is likely to be disruptive and upsetting. I remember protesting once with the charity Baby Milk Action. We had a small white coffin on the high street in Yeovil, and it did upset passers-by but they were really interested in why we had a coffin there. If this Bill had been in place, I expect we would have been charged with upsetting the local population.

Part 3 of the Bill as it stands would have a very chilling effect on protest, because the proposed crime of serious annoyance carries a big sentence. As others have eloquently said, it is just not adequate to leave the Home Secretary to define that part. When looking at Part 3, I ask myself why it is in the Bill at all. I think it is there because the Government have realised, and Boris Johnson in particular has realised, just how many howls of protest there will be when the current Conservative proposals come into being, in communities in towns and villages that will be excluded from planning decisions under the planning Bill, and from thousands of people as the Government fail on climate change measures, such as the appalling collapse of the Green Homes policy. The Minister condemned some of the Extinction Rebellion actions yesterday. The name of their campaign was Insulate Britain, and that is a direct result of the Government ratting on the Green Homes policy.

In conclusion, do the Government really believe that those who voice their concerns loudly should suffer for life? That is exactly what will happen if they have a criminal record. Algorithms check whether you have a criminal record. It will be impossible for you to get a job interview, to rent a house or to get a visa for the United States. Life will be a series of no, no, no. As this Bill stands, if you care about your future, you cannot afford to go on marches or attend protests. But if you care about the future, you really cannot afford not to do those things. You have to try to protect the things you see as under threat, whether it is the whole planet or your local sports field. Our job is to make sure that that is still possible.