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.

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[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.

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[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.

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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.