Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, there are two questions which I believe we are seeking to answer by this Bill. First, what should it look like to take back control of our borders in a humane and legal way; and, secondly, how can Britain continue to be a place offering sanctuary to the world’s most vulnerable at a time of need?

Whether during the Holocaust or the flight of Ugandan Asians from Idi Amin, Britain has historically been a place of sanctuary. Post-Brexit global Britain should aspire to continue this tradition. While I agree with the objectives of the Bill, I will start with why I am raising concerns that it may not achieve its stated aim, and I will then turn to areas where it could be constructively amended, which it would be good to explore in Committee.

As we have heard, the Bill aims to disincentivise so-called irregular entry through the creation of a two-tiered system, in the hope of producing what the Home Office calls the “pull factor” of the UK asylum system. So let us pause for a moment on what the pull factors are which encourage people to come to the UK. A few of them would be our language, our culture, the rule of law, democracy, historic ties through the Commonwealth, family connections and liberty. In short, the pull factor is not our asylum system. The pull factors which set our nation apart as a desirable place of refuge are characteristics which make Britain what it is today. No one in this House would wish to dismantle them. Britain will always be an attractive place, even with a two-tiered refugee system.

Our Government’s own equality impact assessment recognises this, saying that

“evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach”—

that is, increased deterrence to encourage people to claim asylum elsewhere—

“is limited”.

So can the Minister outline the Government’s reasons for weakening and potentially breaching the refugee convention by discriminating between people based on their arrival, and when there is such limited evidence of efficacy?

I also have concerns that the legislation as currently drafted would create a significantly greater administrative burden, making it even harder for the Home Office to process legitimate asylum claims. This concern leads me to ask for more information from my noble friend the Minister to help this House understand how this might be handled. First, what estimate have Her Majesty’s Government made of the cost of needing to reassess a refugee’s protection needs every two and a half years? Secondly, have Her Majesty’s Government assessed the likely legal costs of judicial review applications and the compatibility of the legislation with the ECHR, the Human Rights Act and the Children Act 1989? Will this legislation’s passage be possible only alongside reforms of our human rights legislation? What steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking to ensure that the legislation does not set back the progress made in the Modern Slavery Act?

There may well be a better way forward. In my view, the only meaningful way to resolve the issue of irregular arrivals from France is through diplomacy. I know this is difficult to achieve ahead of the French election, but are we really not prepared to wait until July to see whether this might not be possible? We could create a safe-returns agreement with the French, alongside a more regular and regulated pathway. This would be in both countries’ long-term interests. What is Her Majesty’s Government’s assessment of this approach post the French elections?

There could be two further areas where the Government could improve this legislation to better protect and support those in need of asylum. The first is designating new and improved safe and legal routes. The Minister will remember that this House was given assurances from the Dispatch Box during the Brexit Bill debates that the Government would institute safe and legal pathways. Because of these assurances, our amendment to that Bill was withdrawn. These promises are yet to be fulfilled. Will the Minister bring forward an amendment to the primary legislation or secondary policies laying out the exact nature of the safe and legal routes?

Secondly, I wholeheartedly support the Migration Advisory Committee’s recent recommendation calling for the Government to institute the right to work for asylum seekers. The arguments for the right to work after six months, ranging from the benefit to the Exchequer to the boon to integration, are compelling. I will be tabling a cross-party amendment on this, and I hope to work with my noble friend the Minister on this matter.

I look forward to working as a House to support the Government to achieve their stated objectives and to ensure that our character as a compassionate nation is fully expressed, while ensuring that people smugglers are put out of business and vulnerable people are no longer exploited.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is me again, I am afraid. I rise to move Amendment 46, and I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Stroud, my noble friend Lord Blunkett—who had to leave—and the British Red Cross and Praxis for their support.

Again, this is a probing amendment. Together with Amendment 54, it would delete reference to the “no recourse to public funds” condition from the listed ways in which group 1 and group 2 refugees and their families could be treated differently under Clause 11. In other words, it would remove one source of potential discrimination from the list of examples of the discriminatory treatment of group 2 refugees. It is a probing amendment because while I am totally opposed to Clause 11 standing part of the Bill, it is important that we have more information about how the “no recourse to public funds” condition will be applied.

In fact, questioning the application of the no recourse condition reinforces the case against Clause 11. UNHCR makes it clear that denying refugees recourse to public funds is a clear violation of Article 23 of the refugee convention, which states in unambiguous terms:

“The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals.”


Given that Ministers constantly claim that the Bill is compatible with our international obligations, does the Minister believe that UNHCR is wrong, and if so, on what grounds?

Similarly, the JCHR points to a violation of Article 24 of the convention, which specifically cites the right to social security. It argues that the differentiation policy, including specifically restrictions on recourse to public funds

“raises serious questions of compatibility with Article 14 ECHR—the prohibition on discrimination in the enjoyment of other Convention rights.”

It concludes that the policy is

“arguably disproportionate to achieving the stated aims.”

In fact, as the committee notes, the aim of dissuading asylum seekers from travelling to the UK other than by safe and legal routes ignores all the research, including that of the Home Office, which indicates that it is rare for asylum seekers to know what support is available.

To repeat something that my noble friend Lord Rosser said, UNHCR warns:

“The adverse consequences of a ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ condition will fall not only the refugees themselves, but also on their families, including on any children who travel with them, are able to join them later, or are born in the UK. These consequences have been documented in numerous studies as well as in the context of litigation. They include difficulty accessing shelters for victims of domestic violence, denial of free school meals where these are linked to the parents’ benefit entitlement”—


—although this is currently suspended, and a very long review is taking place; this policy has been under review for 15 months now—

“and de facto exclusion from the job market for single parents (largely women) who have limited access to government-subsidised childcare, as well as significant risks of food poverty, severe debt, sub-standard accommodation, and homelessness.”

It also notes that public funds include payments specifically for children, such as child benefit, and for those in particularly vulnerable circumstances, such as carers and disabled people. It warns of the adverse consequences for integration and for local authorities which may have to pick up some of the tab for children and those with care needs.

Its conclusions chime with evidence from a range of organisations, including a recent Citizens Advice survey that documents the severe poverty and destitution caused by the rule, with children, women and people of colour disproportionately affected and with what it describes as a “devastating impact” on mental health. Likewise, the BMA has raised concerns that the rule’s effects can compound physical or mental health conditions among those with particular vulnerabilities fleeing violence or trauma.

There are real fears now that the Bill will increase significantly the numbers affected by the “no recourse” rule. There is also a lack of clarity as to whom among group 2 refugees it will be applied, both in the short term and each time their status comes up for renewal. I hope that the Minister will provide some clarity and not fob us off with the response that details will be set out in the guidance and rules that follow, as was said in the Commons.

What was made clear in the Commons was that those already in receipt of Section 95 asylum support will not face restrictions on access to public funds. However, this is not made clear in the Bill itself. Can we be confident that most asylum seekers will have been in receipt of Section 95 asylum support? What about those refugees who face destitution but were not receiving Home Office support, such as those who choose not to enter the asylum support system and rely instead on informal networks of support because of accommodation being allocated on a no-choice basis? What about those who fall into destitution after being granted refugee status, which will be a greater risk as a result of this clause?

It is currently difficult to get the “no recourse” rule lifted on the grounds of destitution because the concession applies only to a minority of those affected and involves a difficult, complicated process. Citizens Advice warns that

“in our experience these limited exemptions for destitution give too little help too late”,

with a decision typically taking more than four weeks, according to the Minister in the Commons. Can the Minister tell us who exactly among group 2 refugees will in practice not be subject to the “no recourse to public funds” rule? What is the Government’s estimate of the proportion of group 2 refugees who will be subject to it? What will happen when their status is up for renewal? Will the destitution exception be open to any group 2 refugee or only to certain groups, as is the case now? Will access to the concession be made easier than it is currently?

In recent oral evidence on the “no recourse” rule to the Work and Pensions Committee, the Minister, Tom Pursglove, refused to answer questions about the Bill’s implications, stating that policy work is ongoing. This elicited the response from the committee chair that, given that the Bill had already completed its passage through the Commons, surely we ought to know what its implications are—indeed. Surely by now the Home Office should be able to answer what are some pretty basic questions about how Clause 11(5)(c) and (6)(d) will work. It is crucial that we have this information should Clause 11 continue to stand part of the Bill, although I fervently hope that it will not, not only because it contravenes the refugee convention but also because it will spell hardship and insecurity for many group 2 refugees—who will be very much class 2 refugees. I beg to move.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I want to take the opportunity afforded by Amendments 46 and 54 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, to which I was pleased to add my name, to probe the Government’s exact intention regarding the outworking of Clause 10 and the application of NRPF.

I have long been concerned about the NRPF policy, but I have profound concerns about its application to group 2 refugees. According to the Home Office’s own guidance, the NRPF condition must not be applied in circumstances where a person is destitute or at risk of becoming so. Can the Minister confirm that this understanding is correct, or would group 2 refugees not be able to receive asylum support and be subject to NRPF? Can the Minister also clarify what would happen should such a person qualify for the destitution test?

There are a number of areas where I would encourage the Minister to consider the impact of applying NRPF to group 2 refugees. I know that Members of this House would be happy to work with her if that is helpful. First, on the impact on local authorities, if the NRPF condition is extended to refugees subject to the new temporary protection status, the increase in the number of individuals subject to NRPF would increase the pressure on already overstretched local authorities. Such increased pressure could lead to more families with NRPF being wrongly refused assistance by local authorities. This would have a devastating impact on the health and development of children in these families and would counter any efforts to develop integration. In addition, it would affect already vulnerable families who have the same characteristics as those who are permitted to access public funds. This is an area of concern to me: they have just arrived here via different routes, but there is no difference in their vulnerability.

Imposing an NRPF condition will cause refugees to live without access to welfare benefits and housing support. When we are considering NRPF, we often think of out-of-work benefits, but this also affects in-work benefits. You could have the extraordinary circumstance of two auxiliaries working in a hospital, one being able to claim in-work support, and the other not. He or she would not be able to survive in those circumstances, even if they were doing everything right. There is also evidence from those already subject to the NRPF condition that this restriction can cause destitution and lead children to experience homelessness, hunger and mental health conditions.

If, as seems to be the case, group 2 refugees would be subject to NRPF, this policy may not achieve its intent. I would value the Minister setting out the exact policy intent of NRPF, as I have found it hard to find what the intent of no recourse to public funds is.

My work as chair of the Social Metrics Commission, a cross-party commission which measures poverty in the UK, finds that no recourse to public funds is a significant cause in driving poverty, homelessness and destitution. NRPF has been shown to have significant mental health consequences, including for children. It makes finding stable work more difficult, accessing education harder, and securing stable housing a challenge. These are all things we want to see for this community of people.

It is important for us to really understand who we are talking about. We are not talking here about asylum seekers or economic migrants. We are talking about people the Government recognise as bona fide refugees—that has already been decided—who have fled conflict, war or famine and arrived in Britain hoping to find a place of refuge. By tabling this probing amendment, I want to ensure that, purely by virtue of the route by which refugees arrive here, they will not be subject to profound insecurity, at a time when we are committed to ending rough sleeping, levelling up the UK and defining the character of the nation we want to be.

As this is a probing amendment, I ask the Minister to clarify whether group 2 refugees would or would not be able to receive asylum support. Would they be subject to NRPF, even when qualifying for a destitution test? If so, what is the exact policy intent of NRPF for this group of people? How would group 2 refugees have been provided for during Covid, when they would not have had access to furlough or universal credit? Finally, in what way is the Government’s commitment to ending rough sleeping, and NRPF for group 2, compatible?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Given that the Government’s position is that they are right about the refugee convention; given that they disagree with the UNHCR but have their own interpretation under which they are honouring the refugee convention; and given that the Government’s position is that it is about parliamentary sovereignty and not the sovereignty of people elsewhere, why should we be forming our interpretation of the refugee convention on the basis of French criticism? If we are worried about pull factors, perhaps we should reinstall “Go Home” vans and a hostile environment for people seeking asylum.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My noble friend said that it would be good to identify what some of these pull factors actually are. At Second Reading, I sought to try to outline what I believed the pull factors were, and they are not things that we would want to destroy or diminish at all. My understanding of the pull factors—why people want to come to this country—is that they include our language, our culture, the rule of law, democracy, historic ties through the Commonwealth, family connections and liberty. These are the sorts of reasons why people want to come here. The small, pitiful amount of money that somebody gets to survive on is not something, when they are leaving Eritrea and thinking of the hellish journey that they are going to take, that is going to make them want to come here. It is much more likely that they experience push factors, which are war, famine and devastating impacts on their lives. We really need to understand the lives that are lived by these men and women who risk all to come here. We know that every system has elements that get exploited, but we have to make laws for the majority of people and the majority of cases, and to be the sort of nation that we actually want to be.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

Well, I agree with every word that my noble friend has just said. What I am seeking to persuade colleagues to focus on is that surely the objective—the policy intent to which she referred—is to focus our efforts on helping people via safe and legal routes. If we can deter people from coming here in small boats and by other illegal means, we can instead focus our efforts on those people who are genuinely in need. Okay, if we are not prepared to countenance NRPF, what is our answer to reducing deterrent factors—or do noble Lords simply think that this is not an issue? If that is the case, what do we say to the French, who really do strongly believe that it is a problem?

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I am not disagreeing with the noble Baroness; I am just trying to get us to focus on what the Government are now putting forward as a policy intent, which is to reduce pull factors, push factors or whatever we call them. Surely, our whole objective in all this must be to help those who are really in need and to encourage them to come by safe and legal routes. That is surely what Clause 11 is all about.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend that the objective should be to encourage people to come by legal and safe routes. However, I think that what we have at the moment is a situation whereby people are coming across in small boats because there is no other way for them to come. We have to accept the fact that the small amount of money is not the pull factor that is bringing them across. We should really consider whether we would put ourselves at risk for that small amount of money coming across the channel.

What other ways are there of doing this? My noble friend the Minister gave this House a good challenge at Second Reading when she said that all she was hearing were problems and asked: where are the solutions? At that time, one of the solutions I put on the table was a negotiated settlement with the French post the French election. Most of us would agree that, prior to the French election, we are unlikely to get a negotiated settlement, but are we really saying that, post the French election, there might not be a possible breakthrough? The diplomatic route is one that I would still be seeking to use. We as a House must be putting creative solutions on the table.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for explaining their Amendments 46 and 54. As I have said elsewhere, I hope I can reassure the Committee that the powers under Clause 11 are both broad and flexible.

To come first to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, there is no obligation to exercise the provisions and, where they are exercised, there is no requirement to do so in any particular way. We will of course produce guidance and rules in this respect in due course, but those products will reflect the flexibility in the clause by providing appropriate discretion to take into account people’s individual circumstances.

The same therefore applies to no recourse to public funds. Details will be set out in due course, but I reassure noble Lords that we will take particular care to take into account relevant factors when considering the imposition of the condition, if it is imposed at all, including the impact on families, children and other vulnerabilities that have been raised elsewhere. In addition, we are mindful of potential impacts on local authorities and wider civil society. The policies in the Bill are of course subject to an impact assessment in any event. I stress that no one will be NRPF if they would otherwise be at risk of destitution. If they are, they can apply for a change of conditions to remove the condition.

I shall pick up on a few points. The first was about the policy intent, which is to disincentivise dangerous journeys. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral is right: we have to disincentivise people from risking their lives.

My noble friend Lady Stroud talked about safe and legal routes. She was probably not in the Chamber when I laid out absolutely all of them. I refer her to the letter I sent to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, setting all of them out, including several routes for family reunion; I hope she will take a look at that. I commend her on coming up with the solution, yet again, of working with the French. I agree that we need to work not only with the French but with other countries because this is a global problem that now requires a global solution from each and every state on the globe.

I turn to push factors versus pull factors. Push factors do not explain secondary movement, there is no doubt about that. If push factors were all, people would stop in the first safe country that they reached—that is an absolute fact. We must keep all options on the table to stop illegal migration. I hope, but doubt, that I have reassured the noble Baroness that I appreciate and understand her concerns, and the requisite levels of discretion and sensitivity will be exercised with respect to—

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. I would like to clarify one point. I think she is saying that the removal or application of, or access to, public funds is discretionary. If that is the case, who has the discretion to apply or withdraw them? It is unusual for the welfare state to be quite so discretionary and, in effect, subject to subjective judgment. It would help to have clarity as to who can say this person will have access to public funds and that person will not.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Before the Minister answers—I am sorry to prolong the debate; I was going to leave this point until group 8 on the right to work—she talked about pull factors being an absolute fact, but the Migration Advisory Committee said in its annual report in December:

“To the extent that the Home Office has robust evidence to support a link between the employment ban and a pull factor, they should of course make this evidence publicly available for scrutiny and review. That is how good policy is made.”

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, in rising to support Amendments 100 and 101, to which I have added my name, I declare my interests in relation to both the RAMP project and Reset, as set out in the register.

When people arrive on our shores seeking protection, we have a responsibility to treat them as we would wish to be treated if we had to flee for our lives. It is right that we have a process to determine who meets the criteria for refugee status, but while we determine this, we are responsible for people’s safety, welfare and care. If we move them to other countries for the processing of their asylum claims, I fear a blind eye will be turned to their treatment. How will we be sure that they are being treated humanely and fairly, and would our Government even give this much concern once they had left our shores? If we look to the experience of Australia and the refugees accommodated in Nauru, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, has just mentioned, we hear deeply shocking accounts of abuse, inhumane treatment and mental and physical ill-health.

As mentioned in relation to an earlier amendment, I visited Napier barracks last week to see improvements that have been made since the exposure of the disgraceful conditions at the beginning of last year. If what we have seen at Napier is permitted to happen in the UK, what can we expect overseas, where accountability and monitoring will be so much harder? The monitoring of asylum accommodation contractors in the UK is poor, which gives us some idea about the level of monitoring we could expect of offshore processing.

What standard will be set for offshore accommodation? Will it be detention? How can UK safeguards be enforced in another country? Will there be a maximum period of stay? Minister Tom Pursglove stated in the Public Bill Committee that

“we intend their claims to be admitted and processed under the third country’s asylum system.”—[Official Report, Commons, Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, 26/10/21; col. 397.]

This is deeply concerning. These asylum seekers are the UK’s responsibility; they came to us to ask for protection, and we cannot simply wash our hands of them. What will be the acceptable standards of a country’s asylum system for us to discharge refugee determination to them? Can the Minister confirm that, if an individual is granted asylum offshore, they will be granted any form of leave in the UK and readmitted?

We had assurance in the other place from Minister Tom Pursglove that unaccompanied children will not be included in offshoring, but will children in families be offshored? If not, can the Minister assure us that families will not be split up in this process? We need to see any such commitments written into the Bill. I also want reassurance from the Minister that offshore agreements will not be linked to international aid agreements. This would be wrong, so can she give us that reassurance?

Offshoring would be a huge cost to the taxpayer. Can the Minister tell us what work has been done on the costs? Have such costs been endorsed by HM Treasury?

The financial cost is not the only one: there would be a significant cost to our international standing. Are we so keen to tarnish our reputation as a country where human rights are upheld for this inhumane policy, rather than one that is rooted in what will actually work to reduce the need for people to have to use criminal gangs? We will discuss these policy proposals in future debates.

People seeking asylum have arrived on our shores, seeking UK protection. We are responsible for them. It is not a responsibility we can pass over to others. The potential for standards and safeguards to drop is a very serious risk, with the challenges of monitoring and accountability at distance. They would far too easily become forgotten people. Offshoring must simply be ruled out of order.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 100, in the name of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, to which I have been pleased to add my name. I refer to my entry in the register of Members’ interests.

The question of offshore detention is undoubtedly one of the most controversial aspects of this Bill, which is designed to stem the flow of small boats from France. The stated objective of this policy is one of deterrence, but opponents of the policy have rightly been asking: at what cost?

Before we look at the issue of offshoring, I will take a moment to look at and think about the sorts of journeys taken by those fleeing violence and war. Asylum seekers are frequently exposed to intolerable levels of risk as they travel. Irregular migrants face dangerous journeys: they are unprotected, they accumulate debt, and they have no legal recourse. The limited opportunities for legal migration force individuals to use people smugglers where there is a risk of being trafficked. Asylum seekers who fall prey to human traffickers can be exploited in both transit and destination countries. During the asylum seeker’s journey, the fine line with human trafficking—the acquisition of people by force, fraud or deception with the aim of exploiting them—can be easily crossed.

Just imagine you go through all that and end up on these shores. It has taken your savings and months of your life to arrive here from, say, Afghanistan, Syria or Iran. On arrival on our shores, we greet you and, before we have even assessed whether or not you are a refugee, put you on a plane and take you back to the continent from which you came. That action alone could kill someone, but my question is also: what does that make us?

Before I set out my reason for asking the Home Secretary to think again about the use of offshore detention and processing, whether in Rwanda, Ghana or Ascension Island, as we have heard, I will return to the point I made last Tuesday. The best hope of a fair, just and affordable solution to the issue of the Calais boats still lies with a diplomatic solution with the French and EU nations. Will my noble friend the Minister comment on the Telegraph story on Wednesday about the French President’s apparent openness to a deal over channel crossings? As I have suggested a number of times, a returns agreement with the French is likely to be the only viable way to stop the crossings. I imagine this taking the form of an agreement that those who have crossed here irregularly are sent back to be assessed in France; in return, we commit to taking a certain number from Calais. This is a win-win solution that would genuinely destroy the economic model of the people smugglers, would cost less and would be far more humane.

Could my noble friend the Minister also provide an estimate of the cost of offshore processing? A cursory glance shows that a room at the Ritz costs between £650 and £700 a night. Extrapolate that and one finds that it costs around £250,000 to stay at the Ritz for a year. The estimates of what the Australians pay for one asylum seeker held in detention vary from that amount to eight times that. How can that be justified?

It is not only the cost that concerns me. Can the Minister provide reassurance that no children will be sent offshore and that women who are vulnerable to sexual violence will receive proper protections? The concerning stories that emerge from processing camps in other countries should give us pause for thought before we embark down this road. When there are other potential diplomatic avenues that the Government are yet to properly consider, offshoring looks like an oversized hammer being used to crack a nut, with the potential for corrupting our character as a nation and our international reputation, and increasing racial tensions domestically and the administrative burden and cost to the state. I urge the Minister to think again and for this House to give the other place an opportunity to think again.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Outside on the streets today are people supporting those of us who are fighting this Bill. They understand the damage it does not only to the refugees and people seeking asylum here but to the Government’s reputation. I do wonder. We have to say these things, because our consciences would not let us not say them, but are the Government listening? I rather think not. Essentially, these clauses are about being able to deport refugees while their asylum claim is being processed. That is not fair on the individuals involved and, I would argue, is inhumane. They are simply being herded like cattle and packed off to be trafficked, essentially.

Clause 28 and Schedule 3 make provision for safe countries, but no provision for safe accommodation. We know that the accommodation we provide here in the UK is pretty substandard and, sometimes, outright revolting, so I have no trust that safe countries will do any better than we have. I have a question that I would like answered today: what steps will the Government take to assess the conditions and that these people are being treated well in those safe countries?

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow on from what the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Kirkhope said. I will say a little bit on the Australian experience, which is the only relevant extant experience that we have at the moment.

What happened in Australia was that, in 2001, the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia, the equivalent of our Conservative Party, introduced offshoring as a policy. I have no knowledge of how it worked at that point—I just do not have any information—but it carried on until 2008, when the Australian Labor Party was elected in a general election and desisted from offshoring. After that, there was a huge increase in the number of boats coming into north Australia, up to about 50,000 a year, and, as a consequence of that, the Labor Government did a U-turn and reintroduced offshoring. Unfortunately, this was too late in terms of political consequences: it lost the general election, and, in 2013, a new Liberal and National Government came in, reintroducing offshoring and beefing it up, with the army and navy playing a role in all of that. That is the history of it.

It was then highly successful: the offshoring completely stopped the human traffickers’ business—they had no more scope to bring people over because people simply did not believe that they would get into Australia—and the whole thing was a success, so much so that the opposition Labor spokesman agreed that, essentially, the boats had been stopped by the offshoring techniques. Thereafter, the Australian Labor Party changed its policy, and the policy now has cross-party support in Australia—both the Liberal Party and the Australian Labor Party support it—and boats no longer go across from Indonesia to Australia. The policy succeeded.

As my noble friend said, it is perfectly true that there are some issues in Nauru and Papua New Guinea—essentially residual issues arising from previous years—which have been difficult to resolve. I am sure that we would all want those to be resolved quickly and properly for humanitarian reasons.

However, clearly the Government are looking at this. Of course, there is no guarantee at all that such a policy, which was successful in Australia, would be successful here—one cannot pretend that that is necessarily likely to happen. The fact is that, although the situation is the same, in that people are crossing by sea to England and the UK as they were to Australia, the geography and the politics are different, and it is quite possible that it would not work in British circumstances. That is the truth of the matter.

None the less, it would be a dereliction of duty if the British Government did not try to look at this and examine whether it can work. The first thing that they have to do is, as the Australians did, pass the relevant legislation that enables them to put this into practice and see whether it does, in fact, work. That is where we are now—we have not done anything about it, and it is not in place. It will not be in place until some time after we have passed this legislation—

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

Could my noble friend outline his thinking on, for instance, the proximity of Nauru to Australia and whether that is not more the equivalent of saying that France or another European nation would be the location of the offshoring, rather than, say, Rwanda, which is on completely the other side of the world? Could my noble friend perhaps acknowledge the differences and unpack that for us a little?

[Lord Horam (Con)]

Yes, I do acknowledge the differences, which is why I said that there is no guarantee at all that, even if this is tried, it will work in British circumstances. All I am saying is that it worked in Australian circumstances, the Government are clearly interested in this and, as I say, it would be a dereliction of duty if they did not put this among their options and pass the legislation that enabled us to try this out. That is where we are now.

I point out that, after the success of this policy in Australia, the Australian Government were enabled to expand the legal routes for asylum seekers to go to that country because it ceased to be controversial: immigration was less controversial as a consequence of the anti-boat policy being successful. The fact is that, as I have said before in these debates, if the public do not buy into the policy, you will have problems in persuading them to have more immigration. If they buy into it because they can see that you are controlling your borders, they have a more relaxed attitude to immigration and accept higher levels of it because they can see that they are in control of both the amount and the type of immigration coming in.

Therefore, there is a prize at the end of this for those who genuinely want to have more immigration, frankly, than we have at the moment, and if you can seem to be in control. What worries people is if you are not in control—if they can see clearly that people are behaving illegally getting here, jumping the queue and all the rest of it. In view of what the Whips on both sides have said, I do not want to go on any longer, but we ought to consider this in a rational and sensible way, as a clear option that any responsible Government of whatever kind should pursue; and I point out that, in Australia, for example, it does have all-party support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I cannot say what countries we are in discussion with, other than confirming to my noble friend Lady Stroud that we are having some very positive discussions with France. On the other question, I cannot acquiesce to going further at this point, because I do not want in any way to make comments that might put children in danger. As I have just said to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, I will write in as much detail as I can following Committee.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. I think I heard that her concern is that saying that children with families would be exempted from being offshored could lead to a fuelling of the trafficking of children to ensure that those families who wanted to travel to the UK would be accepted here. Is that what my noble friend is saying? Some clarity on that would be really helpful, as well as some distinctions in that policy, which obviously she wants to mitigate, and the policy around families who are obviously families—who have proof of it—coming here. Would the Government split them up, let them remain here or be offshored?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that we need to strike that balance between abuse of the system and providing refuge to those genuinely in need, but she will also know that we have several family reunion routes, which I went through the other day in Committee. With all that, and the commitment to write to the right reverend Prelate—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, this is the safe-route group and I associate myself with so much of what I have heard already, although I signed the amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Dubs and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who is absent. We have heard already about the many ways in which the Government try to have it both ways in the Bill. On a previous group, we heard from the Minister how, for example, European precedent is to be hugged if it is deleterious to the refugee but shunned if it means co-operation and burden-sharing. We have understood that the Government, essentially, want to make it harder with the Bill to get here but if you manage to get here, it will be harder to qualify for protection because we are rewriting the convention.

The Government tell us that they do not want people coming via unsafe routes, in little boats and so on, yet they do not provide adequate safe routes—or maybe they do, but if so they do not want it to be in statute because while it is important to fetter judicial discretion in statute, Home Office largesse should not be similarly constrained, structured or put in law. This group deals with the final two contradictions in particular: providing the safe routes and putting them in statute. For those two reasons I really hope that the Minister, who I know to be a compassionate and logical person, will see the need for something in statute to go with sentiment about safe routes.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 116 in the name of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, to which it was a pleasure to add my name. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I was persuaded by his arguments as well on Amendment 119B. I too shall edit along the way, given the speeches already made.

As we debated last week, I have grave concerns about the creation of a two-tiered refugee system but was encouraged to hear my noble friend the Minister agree that creating a two-tiered system can make sense only if there are adequate and consistent safe and legal routes. As my noble friend set out in the debate last Tuesday and circulated in her note, the Government have taken steps in recent years to create some safe and legal routes, as we have heard, through the refugee family reunion scheme, the Afghan resettlement scheme and the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme.

I am encouraged that the New Plan for Immigration charts a road map for resettlement, albeit without setting an annual target. It states:

“The UK’s commitment to resettling refugees will continue to be a multi-year commitment with numbers subject to ongoing review guided by circumstances and capacity at any given time.”


It also confirms the Government’s objectives that

“programmes are responsive to emerging international crises”.

This amendment is not intended to say that there are currently no safe and legal routes; we have heard that there are some. Instead, it pushes for greater consistency in our approach to ensure that there are pathways for the most volatile situations in the world. If we want to be responsive to emerging international crises, we need the infrastructure in place to do so, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out.

One of our greatest challenges for Afghan arrivals has been that we do not have the capacity or infrastructure to take such a big influx so quickly. This is largely because we do not have that infrastructure for welcome and integration in place. The success of the Canadian approach to refugee resettlement lies in its consistency. There is strong integration infrastructure, well-resourced civil society groups and genuine expertise in local authorities. This is why the Government setting a baseline target of the number of refugees who will be resettled by safe and legal routes could help to build and maintain the infrastructure that is required.

If the response to Afghanistan proves one thing, it is that we need to guarantee consistency to both the local authorities and civil society groups which do so much to ensure smooth transitions for asylum seekers. A predictable but flexible global resettlement model in which the Government retain control over how many places are allocated enables the Home Office to react swiftly to international refugee crises in a co-ordinated fashion with local authorities to scale provision in line with demand if required.

My noble friend the Minister will observe that the four named supporters of this amendment sit on the Conservative Benches. This is not because other Members of this House were not supportive, but because the strength of support on the Conservative Benches meant that we got there first. A basic target of 10,000 would ensure that every year we are joining the international community in what needs to be a global response and ensures the Government can say with integrity that it is not only firm, but fair.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, this is another group of positive measures that are intended to provide an antidote to the other measures in this Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, explained, Amendment 115 would be akin to a replacement for the Dubs scheme that provided a safe route for unaccompanied children from countries in Europe to come to the UK.

Amendment 116, as we have heard, sets a minimum target for the number of refugees resettled in the UK of 10,000. There appears to be some logic and reasoning behind that. A number of organisations have suggested that number. We discussed before in Committee how an agreed number of refugees accepted by the UK each year could be arrived at, taking into account such matters as the number of claims per 10,000 population compared with other European countries. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, we are in the middle of the pack as far as Europe is concerned, at the moment.

We agree and, as my noble friend Lady Ludford said, the 10,000 number happens to be Lib Dem policy as well. Of course, that could be flexible on the basis of the capacity of the country to take refugees and the number of refugees being taken by our allies. It is a global problem that requires the UK to play its part, along with other countries both inside and outside Europe, one also addressed by Amendment 119E in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, which seeks to provide a statutory general UK resettlement scheme.

I have spoken before about the Government’s ambition to

“break the business model of the people smugglers”

and how the unintended consequences of the measures in this Bill are reinforcing that business model, making it more and more difficult for genuine asylum seekers to get to the UK without people smugglers’ help. Amendment 118 is a way to seriously damage the people smugglers’ business model. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, the amendment seeks to pre-screen would-be UK asylum claimants and allow those with a realistic prospect of success, and who have serious and compelling reasons for coming to the United Kingdom, to come to make a claim for asylum and remain temporarily while their claim is considered.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

30: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Changes to the Immigration Act 1971
(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended as follows.(2) After section 3(2) (general provisions for regulation and control) insert—“(2A) Regulations under subsection (2) must provide that persons, and adult dependants of persons who are applying for asylum in the United Kingdom are granted permission by the Secretary of State to take up employment if—(a) a decision at first instance has not been taken on the applicant’s asylum application within six months of the date on which the application was made, or(b) a person makes an application or a further application which raises asylum grounds, and a decision on that new application, or a decision on whether to treat such further asylum grounds as a new application, has not been taken within six months of the date on which the further application was made. (2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A), regulations must ensure that permission granted allowing people applying for asylum in the UK, and their adult dependants to take up employment, are on terms no less favourable than the terms granted to a person with recognised refugee status.(2C) This permission is to be valid until the claim is determined and all appeal rights have been exhausted and individuals granted permission to work will be issued with physical proof of the right to work.””

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 30 in my name aims to introduce the right to work for asylum seekers who have been resident in the UK for more than six months. The arguments for the right to work have been well articulated in Committee and earlier, but I will summarise them so that we are clear.

I will begin with the economic arguments. The latest figures show that 125,000 people are waiting for an asylum decision. Every study shows that the net benefit to the state would be tens or hundreds of millions of pounds every year in improved tax-take. The UK economy is recovering after Covid and a lot of jobs have been created, but this has, in turn, created labour shortages. It makes no sense that asylum seekers who can drive HGVs or serve in our NHS are forced to sit around doing nothing for more than a year while they await a decision from the Home Office.

The second argument is one of integration. There is considerable evidence that the right to work has a large, positive impact on the integration of asylum seekers. The Government’s Migration Advisory Committee itself recently underlined that shorter waiting times had a large, positive impact on long-term employment outcomes for asylum seekers. Indeed, discussing refugees’ access to the UK labour market, one leading academic in asylum and refugee policy refers to what she calls the

“inherent contradiction between UK refugee integration strategies that focus on employment, and restrictive government policies that negatively affect access to the labour market.”

There is also the argument of public support for this policy. The policy is overwhelmingly popular with the public: 73% of red wall voters support the right to work, according to recent polling. Business leaders back easing the ban on the right to work, with the Survation poll showing that two-thirds of business leaders back it. It is rare to find a policy that has these three characteristics: economically advantageous, socially advantageous and politically advantageous.

There is one final reason why this is an amendment that the Government should accept. There is also a basic human dignity argument for this policy. We believe that every individual should be able to support themselves and their family. In fact, we would go further and say that, as Conservatives, we believe that every family has a personal responsibility to do so where they can. We have repeatedly, as a party, made the argument that work is the best route out of poverty, so the intention of this amendment is to ensure precisely that. Let people support themselves and create their own pathway from poverty to prosperity while they await a decision. The lack of the right to work makes people vulnerable to exploitation, declining mental health, poverty and modern slavery.

If the human dignity arguments do not convince Ministers, this amendment should also be viewed as purely pragmatic. Reforms to the asylum system proposed through the Nationality and Borders Bill will take time to come fully into effect. In the interim, while asylum cases are being processed, the asylum system continues to be under considerable strain. By offering asylum seekers the right to work, the Government will take pressure off themselves. I anticipate, however, that the Minister and other colleagues might be inclined to dismiss this amendment, using the argument that the right to work could be a so-called pull factor. So, before I finish, I want to address the reasons I believe this is not the case.

First, push factors, such as war and famine, as we are seeing in Ukraine, drive refugee flows far more than pull factors do. Secondly, as I have said before in this House, the real pull factors are our language, our culture, the rule of law, democracy, historical ties through the Commonwealth, family connections and liberty—and we are not about to sacrifice any of these, thank goodness. Thirdly, it is worth noting that the UK is currently an outlier in enforcing a 12-month wait period for work and then placing strong restrictions on which employment can be taken up. No other nation, whether any across Europe, the States, Australia or Canada, has such stringent requirements. It is worth asking why they have not considered the right to work to be a pull factor. Finally, this view is backed up by the experts. The Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee underlined that there is no evidence in academic research that people decide to claim asylum based on these kinds of factors. The Home Office itself commissioned a study that showed little evidence of a link between economic rights and the destination choices of those seeking asylum, and, to my knowledge, it has never produced evidence to the contrary.

All of this is to say that I believe that the Government could quite legitimately, without any nervousness and in line with their own poverty strategy of families working their way out of poverty, adopt this amendment that allows asylum seekers to work after six months of being in the UK. I will be listening carefully to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 30. In Committee, the Minister said that the Government’s opposition to the right to work was based less on the pull factor argument than on the impact on the integrity of the labour market. That is just as well. As the noble Baroness said, we have yet to see convincing evidence of the pull factor any better than the selective and somewhat misleading quote from a study that the Minister offered in Committee. She mentioned an impact assessment on that, which I believe is yet to materialise. When can we expect it?

If we consider the numbers involved, it is difficult to see how labour market integrity will be compromised. Indeed, the combination of the effects of the Bill and the welcome promised speeding up of applications, to which Amendment 53 in the name of my noble friend Lord Coaker should add some teeth, should reduce the numbers affected significantly. I imagine that the Migration Advisory Committee will have considered the integrity of the labour market before recommending the right to work after six months and in any occupation. Yet the Minister did not even mention the MAC report raised by a number of noble Lords in Committee.

Neither did she mention the MAC’s argument, and one central to the case I made, concerning the impact of the ban on working on integration, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, which supposedly remains a government goal. Nor did she acknowledge the statement I read out from MIN Voices, made up of asylum seekers, who said that not being able to work made them feel less than human and corroded their self-respect and dignity—again, echoing what the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, said. As the chair of Surrey Heath Conservatives pointed out on ConservativeHome —my new favourite reading—this very much chimes with Conservative values, so that in his view the ban is “fundamentally un-Conservative”.

I conclude by repeating the plea of MIN Voices’ plea to

“see us as human beings not a number. Let us build our life and future and not waste our time and skills”.

I should also mention the article by Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times, who ended her recent analysis of the labour market implications of the ban by saying that

“if people want to work, we should let them”.

--- Later in debate ---

I am sorry to have given such a long-winded response, but I hope that, with my explanation, noble Lords will feel happy not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has contributed to this cross-party debate for their insightful and well-argued remarks. The comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that ConservativeHome is her new favourite reading, was the revelation of the evening. I felt that the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on social solidarity hit the nail on the head.

I heard the Minister’s response. She used the twin argument of the integrity of our Immigration Service and pull factors to dismiss Amendment 30. Across the House, I thought we were able to pretty much rebut the right to work being a pull factor. The integrity of our Immigration Service is questionable too, when other European nations, Canada, Australia and all the other nations mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, can maintain the integrity of their immigration services and not reject the right to work for asylum seekers.

Like all of us across the House, I believe that if we are to become the nation I know we are meant to be, with well-managed borders but a respectful and compassionate asylum system, this amendment can contribute much to creating such an environment. As we have heard in the contributions this evening, the right to work for asylum seekers after six months is a policy that is economically, socially and politically advantageous. It confers dignity on those who have sought safety here and, as we have heard, there is little to no evidence that it creates pull factors. It would also help the Home Office with pressure on its claims system.

I believe that there is support in the House for the amendment and that, even at this hour of the night, it would be appropriate to test the will of the House.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

35: Clause 28, page 33, line 20, leave out paragraph (a)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is linked to the amendment to leave out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 3.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope due to Covid, I will be moving Amendment 35 in his name.

It is disappointing that the concerns expressed by many noble Lords in Committee have gone unheeded and the practical questions that were posed are yet to be answered. My noble friend Lord Kirkhope is a former immigration Minister, who speaks with authority on this matter. Many years ago, after carefully examining this policy of offshoring, he rejected the proposal to offshore asylum seekers on the basis that it was impractical and ineffective. The reasons that he did so still apply today.

There is still too much that we do not know about this policy, even at this late stage. How would the powers given be used by the Government? Whose legal system would be used to assess asylum seekers that we have offshored—Britain’s or the third country’s? Once assessed, would these asylum seekers be returned to the UK? How would the Government exercise their safeguarding responsibility for families thousands of miles out of UK jurisdiction? How much would each case cost? The numbers from Australia suggest up to £2 million per year just to keep one person who is in need out of this country.

All this fails to fit in with our legal and international obligations, let alone our constitutional principles. Today, we see this clearly, more clearly even than when we were discussing it last time, through the events in Ukraine. This tragic and unnecessary unfolding humanitarian crisis will certainly play out through the European continent. Many refugees fleeing Ukraine may well attempt to come to the UK. Last Saturday evening, the Prime Minister clearly stated that we would welcome refugees from Ukraine here. By Sunday, that commitment had become that we would support refugees in neighbouring countries to Ukraine. Today, we can see that the approach has moved again and that the Government are committed to expanding their family visa scheme and introducing a new community sponsorship scheme for Ukrainians, both of which are significant and welcome steps.

However, are we still saying that every other Ukrainian refugee who reaches these shores would fall into tier-2 status, have no recourse to public funds and be subject to potential offshoring? How would this work practically? How are we going to apply an operation that would be, at the best of times, excruciatingly complex to execute on a potentially huge scale? Of course, there is the irony of people seeking safety only to find themselves in a position of renewed vulnerability, potentially held indefinitely in detention abroad. Instead of designing a structure that draws a proper distinction between economic and humanitarian motivations for migrants trying to reach our shores, it seems that the Government are muddying the water and resorting to this extraordinary measure of offshoring.

As we have learned more about the realities of life in the Australian processing centres, many noble Lords have become increasingly concerned by the reports of what children have been forced to endure. The Nauru files—a cache of more than 2,000 leaked incident reports from the detention centre on Nauru—highlight hundreds of reports of neglect, violence and abuse against children in the detention centre, often by guards. I cannot fathom a situation where the UK would tolerate the mistreatment of children, but in the absence of explicit protections and the rule of our own legal system, we have to assume that any scenario is possible.

In conclusion, this proposal is deeply concerning and unworkable on numerous levels. The powers it would grant our Government are on the one hand ill-defined and on the other far-reaching. They are potentially hugely expensive and yet ineffective, exposing vulnerable people to further trauma rather than offering protection.

As great as these concerns are, I have one further concern: what does this policy make us? This is our moment as an independent nation that can demonstrate western liberal values at a moment when they are under attack—values of democracy, rule of law and freedom of speech, yes, but also the value and dignity of every human being. We all believe in taking back control, but if there is one lesson to learn from Australia’s experience, it is this: any country that chooses to outsource its constitutional responsibilities compromises its control. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, in rising to support Amendment 35 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, to which I have added my name, I declare my interests in relation to both RAMP and Reset and set out in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for the way she introduced this amendment, and I fully support all her points.

I set out my reasons for supporting this amendment in Committee. However, a significant concern for me now is that the Minister was not able to give assurance that children in families would be excluded from offshoring, nor that families would not be split up in the process. This is deeply concerning. I appreciate that the policy document of 25 February sets out that exemptions will depend on the country where people are being offshored and tat publicising exemptions will fuel the movement of the most vulnerable not subject to offshoring.

However, I would set out that, for children, onward movement to any country after an often traumatic journey to the UK, in addition to the trauma in their country of origin, is simply never in their best interests. All the concerns I set out in my Committee speech regarding the monitoring of the practice of offshoring processing centres are especially true for children.

The Home Office has processes to confirm identity and actual family relationships, which it uses for a range of visas as well as in the asylum process. It would seem that, if this is the concern, there are ways to avoid children being used in this way. Given the deep harm that offshoring would do to everyone, particularly children, I fail to see why the Minister cannot give this commitment.

I am deeply concerned that throughout the Bill, where we have highlighted the deep harm of policies on the most vulnerable, we are told that guidance and discretion can be applied on a case-by-case basis. I understand the logic of that, but what worries me is that it does not speak of any standardised process where everyone can be confident that there is equal treatment.

I further ask whether an economic assessment of the costs of offshoring has been properly made, and, if so, what the outcome of that assessment has been—and if it has not, why not? I ask these questions while fully supporting the need to remove this clause of the Bill in its entirety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, it would depend on the circumstances of the case.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, it is clear that a number of very serious outstanding questions about this policy need to be answered before we can give the Government these powers. In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam, I agree that it is right to explore every possible policy, and that some of them will turn out to be impractical—or even, as he stated, impossible. But that process is undertaken before you bring in legislation and take powers like this: you do not bring in the legislation and then work out whether it is impractical or impossible. So I believe it is right to test the will of the House on this policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, again in the absence of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, who still has Covid, I wish to speak to Amendment 49, tabled in his name, which introduces a global resettlement target of 10,000 people each year.

We have just heard from the Home Secretary that the Government have committed to expanding their family visa scheme and introducing a new community sponsorship scheme for Ukrainians, both of which are significant and welcome steps. I thank my noble friend the Minister for the further policy details that she gave us earlier. But it is difficult to know exactly what is being proposed and, more critically, exactly how many Ukrainians will be able to access these routes and the timeframe in which they will be able to do so.

Community sponsorship, while effective, is typically not a rapid response option and requires considerable planning, resource and buy-in from local community advocates and groups. I have long been an advocate for this kind of policy but it is a solution that requires people to be able to plan and build the infrastructure to support it, as exists in, say, Canada. However, as we are all too aware, the moment of crisis is now. This is the second time in a few short months that a major global refugee crisis has emerged, with Ukraine swift on the heels of Afghanistan. The reality is that on both occasions we have simply not had the infrastructure in place to care for people properly in terms of both civil society’s response and local authority capacity.

With that in mind, I turn to Amendment 49, which offers the Government an effective, carefully planned and responsive solution for refugees as regards not only the protracted crisis that we expect to develop in Ukraine but those seeking protection on these shores from other conflict zones. There are two important reasons for that amendment. The first is that we would be playing our part as a nation in responding to global crises and resettling 10,000 of the world’s most vulnerable each year. Secondly, it would mean that we could plan and build a basic level of infrastructure at a local community level to be resilient to crises like the one playing out before us right now.

One of the greatest challenges for Afghan arrivals has been the fact that we have not had the capacity to take in such a big influx so quickly. That is largely because we have not had the stable infrastructure in place for welcome and integration. The success of the Canadian approach to refugee resettlement lies in its consistency. There is strong integration infrastructure there, well-resourced civil society groups and genuine expertise in the local authorities. That is why the Government setting a baseline target for the number of refugees who will be resettled by safe and legal routes could help to build the infrastructure required. If the response to Afghanistan proves one thing, it is that we need to guarantee consistency to both the local authorities and civil society groups that do so much to ensure the smooth transitions for asylum seekers.

A predictable but flexible global resettlement model in which the Government retain control over how places are allocated enables the Home Office to react swiftly to international refugee crises and in a co-ordinated fashion with local authorities, to scale provision in line with demand. Without this amendment, we will continue to lurch from one major crisis to the next. The best way to avoid that outcome is to ensure that we can plan and prepare the infrastructure and manage the flow of refugees. Amendment 49 does not prescribe the exact manner in which the Government should meet their target but simply seeks to address the underlying and fundamental issue—that at the moment we are unprepared and are not playing our part fully in the emerging international crisis.

The success of the Syrian programme in no small part was due to the political commitment and leadership associated with the 20,000-person commitment, which produced voluntary buy-in from local government and, in turn, enabled the build of a well-functioning and properly resourced system. The baseline of 10,000 people is an appropriate number for the future.

I conclude by taking a step back. If we fail to enshrine safe and legal routes, I fear that the two-tier system that the Government are creating with this legislation will come back to haunt us. Does the Minister imagine that the British public will endorse this legislation when its consequences become clear and we criminalise or remove public fund provisions for Ukrainian and Afghan women and children, who will inevitably in their desperation seek other avenues to reach our shores? War clarifies public opinion. The British public are hugely supportive of those fleeing Vladimir Putin’s war. I urge the Minister to consider whether, in the heat of the most major war and potential refugee crisis in a generation, it is the right moment to introduce a two-tiered refugee system. Surely it would be better to pause this legislative process to allow for reflection and see where the land lies.

However, if the Minister cannot consider that, I commend Amendment 49 to the House as a pragmatic way in which to ensure that we have the community infrastructure needed to support people for the long haul. It will send a signal both at home and abroad that we are a compassionate and fair nation.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I support all the amendments in this group but particularly Amendment 48, which has my name on it, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, spoke. It is a great pity that the Government wound up the Dubs scheme for unaccompanied children, which was doing a great deal of good, and that the Government did not want to stay in Dublin III or try to negotiate on that. We are not part of that agreement, and that removed two safe routes for unaccompanied children.

Under the Immigration Rules, as I understand them, it is not possible for a child to come to stay with a grandparent, sibling—a brother or a sister—uncle or aunt. It has to be a parent. Suppose the parents are lost or the situation is such as that unfolding in Ukraine now. Suppose the child has lost the parents en route. Why can he or she not come and stay with their grandparents in this country? The Immigration Rules seem to be too harsh. I therefore support the language of Amendment 48.

The more worrying point for me is the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, when he cited the Safe Passage numbers. It is alarming that the number of unaccompanied children coming in by a safe route has dropped steeply now that we are no longer in Dublin, the Dubs scheme has gone and these Immigration Rules are being applied. Where are these children going? Safe Passage tells us that in more than 50% of the cases that it is trying to follow, the children just give up, drop out and disappear off the books. Where do they disappear to? I fear that they disappear down to the beach and into the hands of the crooks.

Safe and legal routes really matter, so Amendment 48, which opens up the possibility again of having a safe and legal route for unaccompanied children, matters in my book. It was in this Chamber that the Dubs scheme was first approved by large majorities. For exactly the reasons that we approved it then, we should approve Amendment 48 now in a world that is, if anything, more dangerous, with more children in such a plight than then. I give my strong support to that amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

49: After Clause 37, insert the following new Clause—
“Refugee resettlement schemes
(1) The Secretary of State must arrange for the resettlement in the United Kingdom of at least 10,000 refugees each year.(2) The target under this section includes the numbers of people resettled under—(a) dedicated schemes for the evacuation of people from a geographical locality, such as a specific third State,(b) a general UK resettlement scheme,(c) the mandate resettlement scheme or equivalent replacements, and(d) other routes as appropriate. (3) The Secretary of State must be guided by the capacity of local authorities and community sponsorship groups in delivering the target under subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This reflects the Prime Minister’s commitment to make the dedicated Afghan resettlement scheme of 5,000 refugees a year additional to the longer standing Government commitment to resettle 5,000 vulnerable refugees per year from elsewhere in the world.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I beg to test the opinion of the House.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

12: Schedule 4, page 93, line 23, leave out paragraphs 1 and 2
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment leaves out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 4 to the Bill, which would amend section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (no removal while claim for asylum pending). It is consequential to Amendment 35 at Report Stage which was agreed on division.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might offer a slightly different perspective. One of the difficulties that we have had with the Bill throughout is that we are considering things back to front. Normally, when there is policy proposal, you get a White Paper, then a period of consultation, then you come down to the details of the Bill when you can see in law what the proposals are and discuss them in detail. Here it is the opposite way round. We have a Bill, but we do not know what the policy is. Essentially, the Bill has come forward as an enabling Bill to allow the Government to address the issue of illegal crossings of the channel, so we are doing things the wrong way round. It is even worse than that; old hands here will remember the halcyon days when we had Green Papers, which proposed a certain progress of action. We would then have a White Paper setting out a government policy, and then we would have legislation. Here, we are doing it the wrong way round.

The reason is a fairly practical one, as I understand it. In this case, dealing with cross-channel migrants, we must deal with foreign Governments. We must have agreements, certainly with the French and possibly with the Belgians, Dutch and other countries that we want to deal with. That is the problem, and the practical reason why we are doing things the wrong way round.

It leads to a difficulty in that the Opposition rightly have questions which they want answers to, but the Government cannot answer the questions because they do not yet know what the policy will be. There is a package of measures, some of which we can imagine would work and some that would not work, but we do not know what those practical measures are. Equally, the Government have difficulties. They cannot answer some of the questions that are being put by the Opposition because they do not know what the policies are either. Certainly, we Back-Benchers are in darkness. There is a real problem there.

That has a bearing on the arguments which have taken place and which we cannot entirely resolve in this sort of debate. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the point, which I think is the Opposition’s principal position, that the problem would be solved if we could open legal routes to all the refugees who wish to come to this country. The problem would be resolved that way if we had enough proper legal routes.

The Government’s position is clearly that this probably would not work, because even if you had large numbers of legal routes, if traffickers were still able to give the clear message to their victims that they could get into this country and could stay, work and have a life here, they would still be in business. That is a matter of practicality and judgment. Would having enough legal routes solve the problem? Remember that the traffickers deal not just with human beings but with drugs and all sorts of criminality. If they remained in business, doing business across the channel, you would still have this trade in human beings. That is the practical, judgmental issue at the bottom of this, and we do not know the answer because we do not know the package of measures that the Government will come forward with. We are looking only at the enabling legislation.

I fully accept the additional point that we must look at the effect on refugees of international law. I take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, that there is a significant issue here. However, those who make that point must accept that the Government are equally sincere in thinking that there is an issue here on which they remain fully compliant with the 1951 convention. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, gave a very well-organised defence of the Government’s position, setting it out very clearly. I am not a lawyer so cannot comment on that. All I can do is accept the Government’s advice that they are compliant with the convention.

Finally, I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that there is a problem with the House of Commons considering these issues because of timetabling. This is a pervasive issue in the House of Commons. It has been there for years, and they have found no real solution to it. Just as we can go on for as long as we want and for as long as time and patience permit, they are timetabled for six hours or whatever it may be and, therefore, inevitably, immensely important and worthwhile issues such as this as compressed, very often into a few moments, with a ministerial response of a few minutes. This is wholly unacceptable. We have found no way round that, but we must deal with a situation as we have it. For example, in response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, the vote in the House of Commons was a majority of 98 against his proposal that there should be differentiation between group 1 and group 2—that decision to differentiate passed by a majority of 98 in the House of Commons.

That is a massive majority and reflects not just questions of law but the justified concern of the House of Commons about human trafficking across the channel. I am sure that we are all concerned about refugees not only from Ukraine but from other countries —everyone is concerned about that—but how we stop illicit human trafficking across the channel is a separate issue. Everybody is trying to do their best here; in some cases, the procedures that we have to adopt are very unsatisfactory but I hope that people accept that the Government are trying to do something that, in their judgment, is a practical answer. Even those who do not agree with them should understand that this is a matter of judgment. We will not know the full consequences for some time to come, until the Government’s policies are clear—but not to allow them to pursue their policy with the flexibility and elbow room that they need would in my view be a grave misjudgment.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Motion E1 in my name, and refer to my entry in the Members’ register of interests and my connections with RAMP. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the constructive way in which she has engaged with me since we last debated in this House the right of asylum seekers to work after six months. I will not rehearse all the arguments for extending the right to work as we have done that on multiple occasions, but I want to address some of the arguments that have been put forward by the Government. I am grateful to the Minister for sharing some of her concerns with me; I will briefly address three of these.

First, there appears to be a concern that, if we extend the right to work for asylum seekers, we will extend that right to those who are convicted criminals in their home country. Although only a tiny proportion of those who apply for asylum fall into this category, it is a legitimate concern. However, I do not believe that it should stand in the way of right-to-work reforms because all those in this category should be held in immigration detention anyway and would be unable to work by virtue of that status.

Secondly, there is a concern that this may encourage more mendacious claims; again, I believe that this has become an exaggerated argument. The figures as they stand find that 72% of people who apply for asylum get accepted on the initial decision before any appeals process has begun. This is a sign that the vast majority are not applying with mendacious claims but are genuine refugees. There is a danger that, in our current system, we are penalising these people by not allowing them to work and unnecessarily putting significant stumbling blocks in the way of their integration.

Thirdly, there is a concern about incentivising the pull factors; we have heard an awful lot about this. I once again believe that this is exaggerated, based on anecdote rather than raw empirical data. I also think that this adjusted amendment before the House today addresses any possible concern by introducing a four-year trial period with a review three years in to determine whether indeed there is any pull factor. This has the pragmatic benefit of meaning that we will be able to address existing labour shortages in the immediate term while giving the Home Office an opportunity to assess whether concerns that this contributes as a pull factor have any backing in meaningful empirical data. There are no studies that currently back this perspective.

In summary, the Government say that the amendment is not needed because, in the new system, all those coming by legal and safe routes would have an immediate right to work—but this actually supports the amendment. Why are we happy to give an immediate right to work to Ukrainians but not to others who come to this country? The Government say this is not needed because in the new system, even including appeals, the process will take only six months. That is great, but we are not there yet and, to my knowledge, we have never been there. The Government say this is not needed because the new system will be so clear that they will be able to focus on the backlog and on those who come in via alternative routes. Again, this sounds great but, at this moment, all evidence is to the contrary.

Even the new system for Ukrainians cannot flex or adapt quickly enough and already shows signs of significant strain. No one more wants the system to be sorted than me or other noble Lords, but we have waited many years to see it happen. There are between 60,000 and 80,000 people who need to be able to work; they should be experiencing a Britain that enables asylum seekers to rebuild their lives and create their own pathway from poverty to prosperity.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

At end insert “and do propose Amendments 7B and 7C in lieu—

7B: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Changes to the Immigration Act 1971
(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 3(2) (general provisions for regulation and control) insert—
“(2A) Regulations under subsection (2) must provide that persons, and adult dependants of persons who are applying for asylum in the United Kingdom are granted permission by the Secretary of State to take up employment if—
(a) a decision at first instance has not been taken on the applicant’s asylum application within six months of the date on which the application was made, or
(b) a person makes an application or a further application which raises asylum grounds, and a decision on that new application, or a decision on whether to treat such further asylum grounds as a new application, has not been taken within six months of the date on which the further application was made.
(2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A), regulations must ensure that permission granted allowing people applying for asylum in the UK, and their adult dependants to take up employment, are on terms no less favourable than the terms granted to a person with recognised refugee status.
(2C) This permission is to be valid until the claim is determined and all appeal rights have been exhausted and individuals granted permission to work will be issued with physical proof of the right to work.”
(3) The Secretary of State may, by regulations made by statutory instrument, repeal subsection (2) of this section, if the conditions set out in subsections (4) and (5) have been met.
(4) The first condition is that within four years of the coming into force of this section, but no sooner than three years after the coming into force of this section, the Secretary of State has commissioned a review of whether the provisions inserted into the Immigration Act 1971 by subsection (2) have acted in such a way as to encourage persons applying for asylum, and adult dependants of such persons, to travel to the United Kingdom.
(5) The second condition is that the Secretary of State has, within four years of the coming into force of this section, published the outcome of the review under subsection (4).
(6) Regulations under subsection (3) may not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, while supporting all the amendments in this group, I speak to Motion D1 in my name, taking up the baton from the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, whom I thank for her persistent commitment on this issue, which remains undimmed. As previously, the amendment would give asylum seekers the right to work in any occupation after six months, but it introduces a review after three years—rather than four, as previously—to assess whether government fears about such a right creating a pull factor are founded.

The Commons reason for not accepting the previous amendment states that

“the Commons consider that asylum-seekers (save in limited circumstances) and their adult dependants should not be permitted to work while a decision on their claim for asylum is pending”.

This is the equivalent of a parent telling a child that they cannot do something “because”. It is not a reason.

During the debate in the Commons—such as it was—the Minister reiterated concerns about undermining the economic migration scheme, and our old friend the pull factor. But there is no reason why a right to work after six months should undermine the economic migration scheme, and, as Sir Robert Buckland pointed out, he and others

“have said on many occasions that there is simply no evidence to suggest that a limited right to work is a pull factor.”—[Official Report, Commons, 20/4/22; col.240.]

In fact, the academic evidence suggests the opposite, and the Migration Advisory Committee has expressed considerable scepticism.

The other argument put by the Minister in the other place, which was repeated by the Minister here, was that the Government want to see claims settled within six months. However, when he was asked by one of his Back-Benchers to confirm that the Bill and other measures

“will mean that there should be no asylum seekers still in a state of limbo, waiting for their asylum status to be determined, after six months”,—[Official Report, Commons, 20/4/22; col.253.]

thereby making the amendment unnecessary, answer came there none. It would be wonderful if the amendment proved to be redundant, so that there were no longer 62,000 people awaiting a decision for more than six months, but the Government’s resistance to it suggests they are not confident that claims will be settled within that timescale. The Minister this afternoon suggested that the amendment would create significant operational costs for the Home Office. I am not quite clear what those costs are, but presumably there are savings from asylum support, and calculations have been done, which I know are contested but suggest a considerable fiscal saving overall from the amendment.

If we believe in integration, for which, according to MAC, the right to work is a key foundation stone, in preventing poverty and in protecting mental health, we should not give up on this amendment. In the Commons, 11 Conservatives, including a number of former Ministers, supported its previous iteration and 53 abstained. Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, in this House, emphasised that, on basic Conservative principles concerning paid work, current policy fails dismally. Public support has been growing steadily to a point where the latest poll last month showed that at least four in five support the reform, regardless of political affiliation.

Once more, I would like to give the final word to asylum seekers themselves. MIN Voices, which I recently had the pleasure of meeting virtually, in its call for the right to work, asks us to

“remember that we are human beings and we have dignity”.

I fear that, in its refusal to countenance change, the Home Office is failing to remember. Let us, at least, accord to asylum seekers their humanity and dignity by asking the Commons to think again.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment D1, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her eloquent introduction to the amendment. This is a common-sense change. It would be a boost for the Treasury, for recruiters and, not least, for asylum seekers themselves. They often wait years for a decision on their claim while battling poverty, isolation and mental ill-health. However, the Government appear to want to maintain a ban on employment for asylum seekers, even after the introduction of their offshoring policy. They say that giving people the right to work will still encourage more people to come to the UK.

This pull-factor argument, however, is simply not supported by the facts. Evidence for it remains unclear, unshared or—as many suspect—non-existent. A challenge to Ministers from the Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee to show proof of a link between the employment ban and a pull factor has so far gone unanswered. Publicly available and up-to-date figures show no correlation. If such a correlation, or even causation, existed, asylum migration would look very different from how it does today. Certainly, 28,000 refugees would not have risked their lives crossing the channel in boats in 2021 to come to the UK, where they cannot work; they would have headed to Sweden, which received just 10,000 applications for refugee status, even though asylum seekers can work after day one.

The 62,000 people who claimed asylum in Spain last year, where they must wait for six months to work, would have simply crossed the border into Portugal, whose 1,300 asylum applicants can get a job after one week. The people who applied for asylum in France—over 100,000 of them—where they must wait six months to work, could have just stopped in, or headed to, Italy, where they can work after two months. That some countries with stricter labour access laws often receive more asylum seekers, while, in many cases, fewer refugees go to countries with more relaxed rules around work, shows the lack of link between application numbers and employment rules. As we have repeatedly said in these debates, what the overwhelming evidence does point to as pull factors are those things that make almost all of us feel safe: our families, our friends, our communities, our language, a sense of shared history, and a country with a stable Government and respect for human rights.

We have an environment in which Ministers are nervous of appearing soft: I understand that. They are so nervous that even a widely beneficial, evidence-based, common-sense policy such as the right to work has yet to be accepted because it might make Britain a magnet. But I believe that this is wrong, and, while the negative and costly effects of this ban might not seem obvious, they are real. The ban costs the taxpayer an estimated £210 million a year. It leaves asylum seekers in poverty and institutionally dependent; it leaves businesses up and down the country without extra hands at a time of record job vacancies; it takes a terrible toll on people’s mental health; and it damages any attempt at integration and future employment success.

It should not be so hard to reach agreement on a policy that has so much cross-party support and so many benefits. I spent years at the DWP, as a Conservative special adviser, working to support people into work and off welfare, only to be hindered from advancing the same opportunity to those who have sought the protection of this nation.

The instinct to work, to contribute and to provide for one’s family is universal and integral to who we are as human beings. It is what it means to be human, each one according to their talent, gift, capacity and capability. We damage people when we forbid them to contribute. I urge the Government to keep thinking and to think again.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I confess that I thought I had finished with ping-pong when I laid down my bat as table tennis captain of my college at university more than four decades ago. This is my first time at it in this rather different setting.

I rise to speak in support of Motions F1 and H1 in my name. I am extremely grateful to my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham for his excellent previous work on these Motions. He is unable to be in his place today, so we worked on them together. I am also grateful for a letter I received this morning from leaders of many of the main Christian denominations in the United Kingdom, urging me to continue to press on these matters.

Clause 11 continues to be the most challenging part of the Bill in the way it differentiates the treatment of those who seek sanctuary in the UK. Therefore, I continue to support Motions B1 and C1. I also support Motion D1 and pretty well all others in this group.

It is a long-established principle of UK law that, when removing an individual to a third country, the UK has an obligation to ensure that this will not violate the person’s human rights or the UK’s obligations under international law. It is also a long-established principle, affirmed by the Supreme Court, that it is not enough for the third country to have signed international human rights treaties; it must respect them in practice.

Motion F1 would ensure that the UK can transfer an asylum seeker to another country only if that country is genuinely safe, both in law and in practice, for the individual being transferred, and where that individual’s rights under the refugee convention and human rights law will be respected. The Motion would also prevent transfers under agreements such as the recent Rwanda-UK memorandum of understanding, which as I understand it is not legally binding on either party, where the standards of treatment in the receiving country are unspecified and unenforceable in any court. It is essential that clear minimum standards are set to ensure the UK does not send people we consider to be refugees, both legally and morally, to a country where they may be denied protection and put at risk of refoulement.

I listened to the Minister’s assurances earlier and am grateful for them, but the UNHCR is clear:

“Such arrangements simply shift asylum responsibilities, evade international obligations, and are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention”.


In its latest annual report, Amnesty International set out that in Rwanda:

“Violations of the rights to a fair trial, freedom of expression and privacy continued, alongside enforced disappearances, allegations of torture and excessive use of force.”


Moreover, the Home Secretary’s response to understandable concerns about Rwanda’s human rights record that were raised in the other place demonstrates the risk that the designation of a particular country as safe may not be simply because it is safe but may become politicised or be influenced by broader foreign policy concerns. It is right that this country has foreign policy concerns, but they must not bleed into decisions about what is a safe country to which an asylum seeker could be sent. We need a clear, independent and enforceable legal standard.

My right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford set out in a recent letter to the Home Secretary that the current plan to offshore asylum seekers to Rwanda

“treats the most vulnerable in our midst in a cruel and inhumane way”.

My most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury has put it even stronger, in words I will not remind the House of this afternoon.

Without the provisions set out in this amendment, the only bar to relocating an asylum seeker to a country with which they have no connection would be for each individual asylum seeker to demonstrate that removal there would violate their human rights under the European convention. Furthermore, demonstrating a risk of refoulement from a third country requires demonstrating that its asylum provisions are inadequate. This is something that requires expert knowledge. That is not practical for the vast majority of asylum seekers to demonstrate in their individual cases.