Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Katie Lam Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I was not going to speak to the new clause; I was just going to let the hon. Gentleman drone on, in the hope that we could possibly get away on Thursday morning, but I have been irked to my feet. I am not sure whether I prefer the new loquacious hon. Member for Stockton West. I do not know what he has done about his speechwriting, but I preferred the version that we had last week. That was probably more in keeping with the Conservatives’ contributions to this Committee.
This is a horrible new clause, which penalises lower-income workers, deters skilled immigration and harms vulnerable groups. The retrospective nature of some of the provisions is simply absurd, and would lead only to legal challenges and all sorts of administrative complications. The new clause would introduce retrospective punishments, taking ILR away from individuals who had received it under the previous rules simply because a future Government—thank goodness this will never be so—had later decided to raise the bar. People make long-term decisions to buy homes, raise families and contribute to communities based on the stability of ILR. Changing the rules after the fact destroys trust in the whole system.
The proposal sets an arbitrary income threshold of £38,700, meaning that a nurse, teacher or social worker—people the UK depends on—could lose their ILR. Many industries, including healthcare, hospitality and retail have workers earning below that level. Are we really saying that under no circumstances would they be welcome? The proposal also ignores economic realities. People face job losses, illness or temporary hardships. Should losing a job also mean losing the right to live in the UK?
New clause 32 states that ILR should be revoked if a person has received any sort of “social protection”, including housing support. This would punish people who have worked hard and contributed but who need temporary support due to circumstances often beyond their control. It targets families, disabled people and those facing financial hardship, effectively saying, “If you need help, you don’t belong here.” Skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs want certainty. If they fear that a downturn in income or a short period of hardship could see them lose their right to remain, they will choose other countries over the UK.
As we have also heard, how can this be enforced? Constantly monitoring ILR-holders’ income, benefits and job status would be an administrative disaster; it would be costly, error prone and unfairly target individuals. This new clause is simply cruel. It is unnecessary and unworkable, and I hope that it is rejected out of hand.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
We have spoken already about indefinite leave to remain, which is also referred to as settlement. We have discussed the most basic requirement for eligibility, which is time, and our suggestion that the timeframe be extended from five years to 10. The new clause covers revocation, or the circumstances in which we believe that indefinite leave to remain status should be removed from an individual to whom it has been granted.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, the first of these conditions is whether a person has engaged in criminality. Our definition for criminality is based on that used in section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, under which a person is a “foreign criminal” if they are neither a British nor an Irish citizen; if they have been convicted of an offence, where that conviction takes place in the United Kingdom; and if the period of imprisonment to which they are sentenced is at least 12 months. It also applies to a person who is a “serious criminal”, as defined in section 72(4)(a) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.
It is already the case that individuals with settled status can be deported from the UK by having ILR status revoked at the discretion of the Home Secretary. This new clause makes that process automatic. We can see no reason why a person who has committed a crime—particularly based on the current legislation—that is so serious that they are sentenced to a year in prison should be able to continue to be in this country at all, let alone to retain ILR status and with it all the generosity and safety net of the British welfare state, including social housing, benefits and free healthcare.
Secondly, we have included in this new clause a condition that is effectively a knock-on effect from our earlier new clause 25, which would revoke ILR status conferred after this Act comes into force, where that status would not have been conferred under these new conditions.
Thirdly, the new clause applies to those who have been in receipt of social protection, as defined by the Treasury’s “Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses”, which includes personal social services in various different categories, as well as incapacity, disability and injury benefits, pensions, family benefits, income support and tax credits, unemployment benefits, universal credit and social housing. Social protection is a fundamental part of modern British society, but we should be honest that it is also incredibly expensive. Such generous provision should be available only to citizens. It must be a fundamental principle of our system that those who come to this country contribute fiscally more than they cost. What they pay in tax should more than cover the cost of the public services that they use. That is the opposite of the situation that we have now; only a small proportion of those who have come to this country over the past few years are likely to be net lifetime contributors. That is unaffordable.
That reality also underpins our final condition of income falling below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate. That figure of £38,700 was chosen to sit alongside the general skilled worker threshold, the minimum earnings threshold for skilled worker visas, and the minimum income requirement for a family visa sponsor proposed by the last Government. It was chosen as it represents the 50th percentile, or the median, of earnings for jobs at the skill level of RQF3—level 3 of the regulated qualifications framework—which is perhaps more easily recognisable as the equivalent of A-levels and BTECs.
We believe that the new clause will go some way to addressing the problems that we have set out of very high volumes of people coming to this country in recent years who are not set to be net fiscal contributors to the public purse over the course of their lifetimes. We hope that the Government will consider adding it to the Bill.
We also welcome the comments from the Minister on the fact that she is looking at this issue. Could she tell us specifically whether she is looking at any of these conditions, and, if so, which? How are her discussions coming along, and when does she hope to report back to the House on her plans?
Seema Malhotra
I am pleased to speak about new clause 32, which would mean that people who are settled in the UK had that status automatically revoked in a wide range of circumstances. Irrespective of any other relevant factors, such as how long a person has lived here, settlement could be automatically revoked when a person earns less than £38,700, has received benefits or would not meet requirements for settlement that have subsequently changed.
We have heard important contributions from hon. Members across the Committee about why that is unworkable, for a range of reasons. I understand why the Government are seeking to bring this forward—[Interruption.] Sorry, the Opposition—it was a slip of the tongue. I also understand that the shadow Minister is seeking to continue his run of speeches—with his new tie today—in this Committee sitting, but let me lay out a couple of circumstances that clearly show that the new clause would be unworkable.
The proposals would create injustice in certain cases. People who are settled and have been paying tax and national insurance contributions for decades could have their settlement revoked because they temporarily fall on hard times. Let us imagine, for example, a couple—a British man with his American partner—who have been living together in this country for many years. He gets badly sick and he cannot work. She ends up having to look after him in local authority housing. I guess that under the Opposition’s rules, when he dies, she would be banned from settling in the UK. That is the sort of circumstance that would logically follow.
It is important to note as well that most migrants become eligible to access public funds only at the point at which they gain settlement—mainly ILR. The expectation is that temporary migrants coming to the UK should be able to maintain and to accommodate themselves without recourse to public funds. That approach reflects the need to maintain the general public’s confidence that immigration brings benefits to our country, rather than costs to the public purse. I can understand that as an underlying driver for some of today’s debate, but it is important that we keep this in the context of an immigration system that is fair, controlled and managed. The no recourse to public funds policy is a long-standing principle adopted by successive Governments. There is also an ability to apply for the no recourse to public funds condition to be lifted in certain circumstances, so there are safeguards for the most vulnerable.
Let me turn to the new clause’s other core condition, on revoking the ILR of a “foreign criminal”—the shadow Minister referred specifically to that. As we have said before, and throughout this Committee, settlement in the UK is a privilege, not an automatic entitlement. Settlement conveys significant benefits and provides a pathway to British citizenship. Settlement can be revoked for criminality, deception or fraud in obtaining settlement, or other significant non-conducive reasons. A person’s settlement is also invalidated if they are deported. The Government have been clear—in fact, we could not have been clearer—that foreign criminals should be deported from the UK whenever it is legal to do so. Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity.
I want to emphasise another point—Government Members, in particular, have mentioned this—about the figures from the Centre for Policy Studies. It is worth repeating that figures in that report refer to a period of historically high levels of net migration under the previous Government. For that and many other reasons, they are not a sound basis for an evidence-based discussion.
Seema Malhotra
I will—I expect the hon. Lady to make the point she made earlier.
Seema Malhotra
I just mention that we have the upcoming immigration White Paper, in which we will set out our approach to the immigration system and how to support it to be better controlled and managed for the future. We are clear that net migration must come down. She will know that under the previous Government—to which she was a special adviser—between 2019 and 2024, net migration almost quadrupled. That was heavily driven by a big increase in overseas recruitment. A properly controlled and managed immigration system, alongside strong border security, is one of the foundations of the Government’s plan for change. It is extremely important to have a debate based on tackling those root causes and issues, rather than tinkering around the edges and having a scenario in which the partner of a British citizen, who subsequently falls ill and dies, has her ILR revoked. It is important to understand what the Opposition tabling such amendments means for people’s lives and fairness in our society.
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend highlights a crucial point about the importance of evidence-based policy and of good data, which was sorely lacking across the whole immigration system when we came into office. The utter chaos, with backlogs in every part of the system, put huge pressure on it and made it much harder to get information about where the backlogs were and who was in them in order to try to exert some control over the system and get that important data to inform future policy.
My hon. Friend is right to point to the Migration Advisory Committee, which continues to do important work to engage with stakeholders and to work across Government. That is an important part of the work that we are doing to use evidence in a much better way to inform how we link skills policy and visa policy. The work to restore order to our immigration system has been under way since we came into office. We will set out our approach, as he has intimated, in our upcoming immigration White Paper. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to explain why we will not support the amendment, and I respectfully suggest that the hon. Member for Stockton West may wish to withdraw it.
Katie Lam
I welcome the Minister’s response, particularly her words about the importance of settlement and citizenship being earned. The Opposition are excited to see the immigration White Paper, and particularly any data and fiscal impact analyses that it may contain. I apologise if this information is already publicly available and I am not aware of it, but can the Minister tell us when the White Paper is due to be published? Can she also set out a scenario in which it would be preferable for a foreign criminal to remain in this country after having been convicted of a crime, and why she considers the new clause to be unworkable?
Seema Malhotra
We have said that we hope to publish the immigration White Paper later in the spring. I have made some remarks in relation to foreign criminals; the Government are clear that they should be deported from the UK whenever it is legal to do so. Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the hon. Member for that point. I have laid out the argument about needing an immigration system that is subject to rules and that can recognise different circumstances. I have also laid out the point about foreign criminals and where it is legal to deport them. Anyone who is convicted of a crime is considered for that.
The hon. Member will also understand that there can be complexity in people’s arrangements. Anything that becomes automatic in the way that she describes needs to be subject to much more debate than a new clause in this Bill Committee. We are not debating immigration; we are debating a system to stop the gangs and improve our border security. It is important that we see the purpose for which this legislation has been designed.
Katie Lam
In November 2024, a Congolese paedophile who sexually assaulted his own stepdaughter was allowed to remain in the UK despite the Government’s attempts to deport him, out of concern that forcing him to leave the country would interfere with his right to a family life. In December 2024, a Turkish heroin peddler was allowed to stay in the UK because it was ruled that deporting him would interfere unduly with his family life, despite the fact that he had returned to Turkey eight times since coming to Britain.
In February of this year, a Nigerian woman who was refused asylum eight times was allowed to remain in the UK because it was decided that her membership of a terrorist organisation might make her subject to persecution in her home country. Earlier this month, a Nigerian drug dealer escaped deportation because he believed that he was suffering from “demonic forces”. Meanwhile, Samuel Frimpong, a Ghanaian fraudster, has been allowed to return to the UK, having being deported 12 years ago, after claiming that he is depressed in his home country.
The list goes on and on. Absurd asylum rulings from our tribunal system seem to emerge on an almost daily basis. What do these cases have in common? In each one, a potentially dangerous person was spared deportation because of our membership of the European convention on human rights, and, crucially, the domestic legislation that enshrines the convention in British law—the Human Rights Act. This legislation is clearly not fit for purpose when it comes to managing and securing the border. It is enabling dangerous foreign criminals to remain in the UK, and putting the British public at risk.
It is time we recognised that decisions about asylum and immigration should be made by politically accountable Ministers, rather than by unaccountable judges and tribunals. That is the purpose of our new clause, which seeks to disapply the Human Rights Act and interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to the Bill and other legislation about borders, asylum and immigration.
Pete Wishart
Just to clarify, I think the hon. Lady is saying clearly that what she intends to do is to take decisions about immigration out of the hands of judges, and leave them in the hands of politicians. Is that her intention?
Katie Lam
I will make a little progress.
The concept of universal rights is clearly a good one. It is one of the great gifts to humanity of the Judeo-Christian tradition to recognise that every human life has inherent worth, and every human being should be treated with the dignity that that inherent worth confers. But any set of rules that people might write over time can be distorted or abused, or exploited to take advantage of our society, our kindness and the British impulse and instinct towards trust, tolerance and generosity. Our rules and laws on human rights, and the organisations to which we belong that were created in the name of human rights, should be subject to scrutiny and debate no less than any other rules and laws. Lord Jonathan Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge, said that the United Kingdom’s adherence to the European convention on human rights
“raises a major constitutional issue which ought to concern people all across the political spectrum.”
It is right for us to interrogate our rules. Indeed, that is arguably our main job and the fundamental reason we have been sent here by our constituents. None of our laws should be above repeal, replacement or disapplication, and that must include the Human Rights Act. We are among the luckiest people in the world in that we live in a democracy, and one that I believe has the world’s greatest people as its voters. When the British people see repeated activity that contravenes our national common sense, politicians in Westminster must acknowledge that and do something about it.
If the Government do not wish to disapply the Human Rights Act and interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights in matters of asylum and immigration in order to control the border and put a stop to the perverse cases and decisions we are seeing relentlessly arise in the courts, what is their solution? How will they restore common sense, fairness and the primacy of public safety to the security of the border?
The Chair
Before I call the Minister, I will just point out that Erskine May urges us not to be critical of judges in UK superior courts. I am sure hon. and right hon. Members will wish to be circumspect in their remarks.
Dame Angela Eagle
I would respectfully say that the hon. Gentleman’s party had many, many years to think of a solution, and most of the cases that Opposition Members have raised today had their genesis in the years that they were in power. Close to the very end, as they became more and more frustrated, they started coming up with more and more outlandish approaches.
Obviously, one wants the entire judicial process to be used, as speedily as possible, and if the Home Office wishes to appeal a particular case, it will do so. We keep a constant eye on the issues and we think about reforms that we could make. Obviously the hon. Gentleman will be the first to hear if we decide to make changes, but we do not wish to abrogate from the Human Rights Act, the ECHR and the human rights framework. That is where we and other Opposition parties differ from him and his party. That is why I do not accept new clause 33 and I hope that the Committee will vote against it if it is pressed to a vote.
Katie Lam
I hope it was clear in my remarks, but for the avoidance of doubt or ambiguity I want to say that the Opposition do not criticise our judges. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West said, they are doing the best they can with the rules and precedents under which they operate. That is why the new clause seeks to change those rules—
Tom Hayes
With the greatest respect, a reading of the Hansard report of what the hon. Member for Stockton West said would be contrary to what the hon. Lady has just asserted. What the hon. Gentleman said could in no way, shape or form be described as complimentary to or supportive of judges. In fact, it was very undermining of judges.
Matt Vickers
The public are appalled by these cases. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire does not want us to change legal frameworks over chicken nuggets: if the Human Rights Act creates a situation in which criminals, rapists and paedophiles are able to stay against domestic law and the intentions of the people charged with making that law, it is unacceptable. We feel strongly about this and wish to divide on the matter.
Matt Vickers
We have just had a lengthy discussion about the Human Rights Act and the impact it has on deportations. However, if she agrees so wholeheartedly on the principle, I am sure she might consider backing our amendment.
There are a number of countries where the UK has a significant number of foreign national offenders currently serving in British prisons. However, we deport only a small number of those foreign national offenders each quarter. Our new clause 42 would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not co-operating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status. We have done this by amending the Nationality and Borders Act, so that the ability to impose visa sanctions is not discretionary but mandatory. We know that there are countries that are hard to secure returns to. We believe strongly that that should not be without consequences for those countries.
New clause 34 shifts the lens to where it belongs—on the victims left in the wake of foreign offenders, not the perpetrators gaming the system. In 2024, theft offences alone averaged just 8.1 months—a shopkeeper’s livelihood dented, a pensioner’s purse snatched, or a family’s peace of mind and sense of security destroyed. Public order crimes averaged just 9.6 months, with more huge consequences for the wellbeing of victims who are left with a fear of entering public spaces or unable to go about their ordinary lives. Yet the one year deportation bar enables those culprits to linger, post-sentence, free to reoffend while victims wait for justice that never comes.
This clause says, “Enough.” Any conviction, for shoplifting or worse, triggers removal—no Human Rights Act excuses—because every day a foreign offender is allowed to stay is another day a British victim’s trust in the system erodes. Why are the Government okay with that shadow hanging over our streets? New clause 42 would force nations to play ball uphill. We see too many countries dither and delay in refusing to take back offenders. Mandatory visa sanctions flip that script. No co-operation, no UK visas for their elite. Watch fast how passports materialise when there are real consequences. Why is Labour soft-pedalling when we could wield this stick, clear the backlog and reduce pressure on prison places?
Katie Lam
New clause 34 prevents any foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that immigration never makes the British public any less safe. Unfortunately, however, many of those who have come to the UK in recent years have broken our laws. According to Ministry of Justice figures, a staggering 23% of sexual crimes in the UK—almost one in four—are committed by foreign nationals.
The overall imprisonment rate for foreign nationals is 20% higher than that for British citizens. Of course, the trend is not uniform: some nationalities are more heavily represented than others. Albanian migrants are nearly 17 times more likely to be imprisoned than average; those from Algeria are nearly nine times more likely and those from Jamaica nearly eight times more likely to be imprisoned than average.
Those who seek to harm this country, to break its laws and to undermine what we hold to be fair and right should not be allowed to remain here. As the Government are well aware, our prisons are already overcrowded. We must not allow foreign criminals to continue exacerbating this problem and we must not endanger the British public by allowing foreign criminals to stay in this country.
Under our current system, too many of those who break our laws are being allowed to remain in the UK. Often, Home Office attempts to deport foreign criminals are blocked because of absurd and ever expanding human rights rules. In the interests of public safety, we must not allow foreign criminals to remain in Britain; that includes by making sure that the Human Rights Act cannot be used to prevent us from deporting those who break our laws.
How, specifically, does new clause 34 do that? It amends section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, which we have already mentioned today. Section 32 would be amended from its current form, which defines a foreign criminal as a person who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen, who is convicted of an offence that takes place in the United Kingdom and who is sentenced to a period of imprisonment of least 12 months, or is a serious criminal as defined in section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. What would replace section 32 would be much simpler; it would instead say that a foreign criminal was anyone who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen who is convicted of any offence in the United Kingdom, and explicitly include within that anybody who has been charged with or convicted of an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, which sets out the situations in which a person can be considered to have entered this country illegally. That includes if they do so in breach of a deportation order; if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly came here without that leave; or if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly stayed here beyond the time conferred by that leave, among other specific conditions.
New clause 34 also seeks to ensure that the rules will be upheld in all circumstances and asserts therefore that the principle of removing criminals from this country is of utmost importance and must be prioritised above other legislation. That includes human rights legislation, for the reasons we have already set out.
I turn to new clause 42, which requires the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country proves to be unco-operative in the process of removing any of its nationals or citizens from the UK. Such a lack of co-operation may arise in verifying their identity or status or it may pertain to the process of removing people whose identity and status has not been established. New clause 42 seeks to do that by amending section 70 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. That Act set out the idea of a visa penalty provision, effectively allowing the Home Secretary to suspend visa applications from countries that do not co-operate with the activity that the Government are trying to take to secure and protect the border. The new clause would strengthen that Act by changing that from an option for the Home Secretary to a duty and by adding explicitly the point about countries that are not co-operating with the process of verifying the identity or status of individuals whom we consider likely to be nationals or citizens of the countries in question.
Pete Wishart
I am struggling to understand this new clause. There are a number of reasons why other countries may not be able co-operate with the UK on immigration and visa cases—it could be political instability, or there could be a right-wing despot in charge—but that impacts on ordinary asylum seekers. Does the hon. Lady not accept that there are a number of political or even administrative reasons why they are not always able to co-operate?
Tom Hayes
A volume of information seems to be coming at us now, and it feels as though every 20 words, something absolutely absurd is said. It is a marked contrast with what has gone before. I see the hon. Member for Weald of Kent and the hon. Member for Stockton West standing there, but I hear the voices of other people in their party. It feels very peculiar.
I have a specific question. Quite apart from the fact that the Conservatives effectively decriminalised shoplifting, if an Albanian national is convicted of shoplifting but cannot be deported to Albania, is the hon. Lady saying that she would impose a visa penalty on Albania if it did not accept that shoplifting Albanian national, regardless of what that might do for the wider relationship between Albania and the UK in terms of deportations?
Katie Lam
In that case, I am happy to reassure him that I wrote every word.
The short answer to the question about Albania is yes. We think that would be completely appropriate. Why would Albania refuse to accept one of its own citizens that should, by our rules and our laws, be returned to that country? If it refuses to do so, we would absolutely consider that to an appropriate trigger for that response.
To continue what I was saying, new clause 40 amends section 70 of the Nationality and Borders Act, and it expands the Act to cover both nationals as well as citizens. We consider that it should be a basic and fundamental principle that we should be able to remove from this country those who break our rules. That is harder than it might sound, particularly when individuals are determined to lose their documents and obfuscate their identity and origin in every way they can. What we propose here will align other countries’ incentives with our own. It will create substantial pressure on other nations to co-operate with us to secure our border, and we strongly hope that the Government will consider adding it to the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
New clauses 34 and 42 reprise some of our debate on the last group of new clauses, but they also introduce the idea of the visa penalty that, as the hon. Member for Weald of Kent has just explained, is encompassed in new clause 42. New clause 34 seeks to extend automatic deportation to any foreign national convicted of an offence in the UK, or charged with an immigration offence, without consideration of their human rights. We dealt with some of that in the last debate. It would remove protections for under-18s and victims of human trafficking, and it seeks to extend the automatic deportation provisions to certain Commonwealth and Irish citizens who are currently afforded exemption from deportation.
I do not believe these new clauses would be workable. They are unrealistic and would undermine our international obligations. We already have the power to deport any foreign national on the grounds that doing so would be conducive to the public good, regardless of whether they have had to serve the 12-month prison sentence that the UK Borders Act 2007 requires. If they are subject to a 12-month prison sentence, it is a duty to deport them.
The hon. Member for Weald of Kent was a special adviser in the Home Office, so she knows about these things, and the hon. Member for Stockton West is a spokesperson in the shadow Home Office team. The Conservatives talk a lot about deportation, but they did not do a lot about it when they had the power to do so.
Matt Vickers
New clause 35 would require the Secretary of State to specify a cap on the number of spouses or civil partners who may enter the UK and on the number who may enter from any one country. It would also amend the immigration rules to set a salary threshold. We know that there is abuse of the current provisions that allow spouses or civil partners to come to the UK. Our amendment is designed to tighten up the rules so as to make abuse less likely.
We believe that it is important for the Secretary of State to set a cap for the number of people who can enter the UK as a spouse or civil partner, and that the number of persons from any one country who enter as a spouse or civil partner of a sponsor should not exceed 7% of the maximum number specified. We seek to tighten up that route to entering the UK by ensuring that the applicant provides evidence that the parties under subsection (9)(a) were married or formed a civil partnership at least two years prior to the application; that each of the parties intends to live permanently with the other as spouse or civil partner, and the marriage or civil partnership is subsisting; that the salary of the person who has a right to abode in the UK, or indefinite leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, equals or exceeds £38,700 per year; and that people cannot sponsor their first cousins under this route.
We believe those changes are necessary to ensure that the relationship is genuine and subsisting, and that the sponsor is able to support their partner once they arrive in the UK. That is part of ensuring that we treat living in this country as a privilege, not a right, and that those coming to the UK to live will contribute to our country.
New clause 39 would place restrictions on the granting of visas and indefinite leave to remain. That is another change to achieve our objective that those who come to the UK are able to contribute. The new clause would ensure that visas were granted only where an applicant or their dependants will not apply for any form of social protection, including housing from the UK Government or a local authority, and where the applicant’s annual income will not fall below £38,700 during the relevant qualification period. If either of those conditions fails to be met, the visa will be revoked.
The new clause also specifies that a person cannot qualify for indefinite leave to remain if they are a “foreign criminal” under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007; if they or any of their dependants have been in receipt of any form of social protection from the UK Government or local authority; or if their annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period. The new clause would not apply to those who have come to the UK through the Ukraine, Afghan or British national overseas schemes.
New clause 40 would introduce some accountability for this place in the overall numbers of migrants coming to the UK per year. It would establish a mechanism whereby Parliament would approve a binding cap on all non-visitor visa routes set out by the Secretary of State. We believe it is important that the House seriously considers the benefits and trade-offs to this country. The new clause is designed to give the House greater accountability for that decision.
New clauses 35 and 39 would build a wall against the quiet epidemic of immigration fraud that has been seeping through our spousal and visa routes—think of sham marriages brokered for £10,000 a pop, or visa overstayers masked by flimsy claims of support. The two-year marriage rule, the £38,700 threshold and the “no first cousin” clause are not just hurdles; they are detectors rooting out paper partnerships before they drain us dry.
The new clauses would anchor immigration to a bedrock of self-reliance, because a Britain that thrives does not prop up newcomers who cannot stand alone. In new clause 35, the £38,700 sponsor salary, which matches that for the skilled worker route, would ensure that thousands of spousal entrants yearly would not tip the welfare scales further. New clause 39 would double down, barring visas and indefinite leave to remain for anyone who dips below that level or taps social housing, for which 1.2 million people are already waiting. This is not exclusion; it is economics, tilting the balance towards those who lift us, not those who lean on us.
New clause 40 is not just a cap; it hands the House the reins of our migration system. The new clause would make Parliament the arbiter, through a binding cap debated here, voted on here, owned here and on which we are fully held to account by the electorate.
Katie Lam
There are few things in life and in human nature more powerful than the desire to be with those we love. To be separated from a husband or wife by a national border is no small thing. Indeed, for those it is happening to, it can feel like everything. But the role of Government is to determine what is right for the country, not for any one person, couple or family. We must place this discussion in its national context. For too long immigration has been too high, and the spousal visa route is increasingly being used by those who would otherwise not be able to come to Britain.
Over the past few years we have seen the number of dependent visas balloon. As of December 2024, 51,000 migrants, bringing 130,000 dependants with them, had come to Britain via the health and social care route over the previous year. That is over 2.5 dependants per health and social care worker—dependants who will access public services in their own right, including our already overstretched NHS. The dependant route for health and social care visa holders has since been restricted, but I mention it because it indicates the huge level of demand and desire there is for family members to come to Britain.
Katie Lam
I think and hope that it has been clear from everything I have said that I make no defence of the previous Government’s activity. It is incredibly important that Conservative Members are able—as is our duty and our responsibility to the public—to talk about the many things that went wrong and, I hope, to help this Government to avoid making the same mistakes.
Katie Lam
As I have set out already, there was never what we are talking about here, which is a formal cap set by Parliament in legislation. However, a number of aims and promises were given to the electorate over the years, and those promises were not kept.
Selective, limited and tailored to our needs—that is the immigration system that the British public have voted for time and again. If we are serious about delivering it, we must take steps to ensure that future Governments do not renege on their promises as previous Governments have. But this is not just about delivering the immigration system that the British people have voted for repeatedly; fundamentally, it is about public trust and accountability.
Put simply, a hard numerical cap on the number of visas issued each year would force Government and Parliament to have accountability for their immigration decisions. If we believe that the overall level of immigration is too high, we should set the cap accordingly, to ensure that technical mistakes do not produce the kind of migration wave that we have seen over the past few years. If we believe that the overall level of immigration is too low, we should be willing to say that publicly, to explain our reasons and to defend our record. Either way, we must be transparent. That will not rebuild public trust in our political system overnight, but it will represent a significant step in the right direction.
Tom Hayes
In a previous sitting, the hon. Lady talked to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire about humanitarian, and safe and legal routes. She highlighted the difficulty that humanitarian events often happen without warning or anticipation. Our country and others will respond as quickly as possible, and one response might be to open a safe and legal route. Do the Opposition new clauses take account of any possible scenarios, recognising that it is hard to anticipate them? Is there any flexibility in the numbers that she provides for the visa category that would support people coming in who are refugees and people in genuine need?
Katie Lam
As the hon. Gentleman can read in the new clause, the wording does not state that the caps have to be set and cannot be revised; it is more than possible to come back to Parliament to change them. If such a situation arises—he is totally right to say that many of them are emergencies and may have been unforeseeable—there is no reason why that case should not be made to the British public and the cap changed. We are talking here about the need for that case to be made to the British public and for there to be transparency.
Some Labour Members have mentioned my time at the Home Office, where I was a special adviser. I worked primarily on national security, not on legal migration, but it was very clear to me from what I could see of the problems that all my colleagues were facing that most of Government—most Departments, and the Minister may be experiencing this now—are geared for higher levels of migration. For example, it is helpful for the Department of Health and Social Care to have high volumes of health and social care visas issued, or for the Treasury, which issues gilts based on our overall GDP, to have as many people here as possible.
The purpose of the cap would be to bring those conversations out into the open. If those Departments and Ministers wished to justify to the public, to the British people, why those numbers needed to be higher, that conversation should be had where the British people can hear it.
Tom Hayes
New clause 40 mentions the Secretary of State making
“regulations specifying the total maximum number of persons who may enter the United Kingdom annually”
within six months of the passing of this Bill. I assume that the hon. Lady is saying that a statement may be made providing for the annual cap per visa category, over, say, four or five years, and not that the Secretary of State would have to come back each year. Am I right or wrong in thinking that? Could she clarify that?
Katie Lam
The hon. Member asks a good question. I am not sure whether that would be explicitly decided on the face of the Bill; that could be something that the Home Office decided subsequently—whether it wished to set out future years or just the following one. In my initial response to the hon. Member, the point that I was trying to clarify was that that cap can, of course, be changed. Once it is set, it does not need to be set in stone for ever, but it is important that it exists and that the conversation about what it should be is had in front of the British public.
Chris Murray
It was interesting to hear the hon. Member for Weald of Kent setting out her argument articulately, and it was good to hear her say that she recognises that the last Government made a lot of mistakes on immigration, and that the evidence shows that. Sadly, although it is good to have that recognition, it does not seem as though very much has been learned from the Conservatives’ experience in office, based on each of the new clauses that they have set out.
First, on the spousal visas, quite a lot of what is in new clause 35 actually exists already. There are already salary thresholds and things like that. It is unlike me to praise the previous Conservative Government on immigration, but, actually, across previous Administrations, both Labour and Conservative, very good work has been done on issues such as sham and forced marriages. What is new in new clause 35, which is a very strange and horrible power to give Ministers, is the ability to either restrict the nationalities that British people can marry or set thresholds on them. I have huge respect for my ministerial colleagues in the Home Office, but I do not think that they should be able to choose what nationalities I am allowed to marry. We got rid of anti-miscegenation laws in the 20th century; we do not want returning through the back door, through measures such as this. Most of all, this arbitrary figure of 7% is very strange; if I were to marry, say, an Australian or an American, I would have to hope that I was not in the 8th percentile of people to do that. That would be a very strange way for us to ask British citizens to live their lives and fall in love with people.
Opposition Members also made the point about how the legislation needs to look backwards and make sure that migrants are net fiscal contributors over their lifetimes. I would say, again, that that is not a realistic thing to ask Governments to do. We will only know whether we have been net fiscal contributors when we die, so we cannot really ask people to make those projections.
Finally, there is the numerical visa cap in new clause 40. Again, that is a gimmick that is not addressing the actual structural problems in the immigration system. First, it treats all migrants the same, as one big monolithic whole, yet we know that the impact of migrants on communities is different, whether they are spouses, students, doctors, lorry drivers or refugees.
If we are going to have this kind of cap, how do we prioritise? Will it apply throughout the whole of the year? How will businesses plan if they want to recruit from overseas? As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said, what if emergencies mean that there are more people coming in? The last Conservative Government set a cap for tier 2 visas, then, of course, ended up hitting it and just exempting doctors and nurses from it anyway. Is it not inevitable that we will just be condemned to repeat history if we do that here? We have talked a lot about public trust in the immigration system and how that has been so deeply sapped by failures on immigration policy. The Conservatives had a net migration target of 100,000 a year, which they consistently failed to meet and had to revise. This proposal is just advocating that we repeat that exact mistake, but hoping for a different outcome, which seems bonkers to me.
Pete Wishart
I do not want to detain the Committee for long with this amendment, but this is just another abhorrent amendment from the warped imagination of the Conservative party. I do not know where they come up with things like this. They would have to be very creative and very cruel to propose something quite like this. The amendment would allow immigration enforcement officers to visit accommodation centres at any time without prior notice. Asylum seekers and other residents at these centres are often fleeing persecution, war and violence and will have suffered severe trauma. The constant threat of unannounced visits from immigration enforcement will create an atmosphere of fear, making it even more difficult for individuals to feel safe.
Allowing immigration enforcement to visit any resident at any time is a clear violation of privacy. It undermines their dignity and wellbeing and could lead to harassment or increased surveillance, further marginalising already vulnerable populations. Vulnerable individuals should not be made to feel constantly watched or threatened by authorities, especially when they are seeking safety and stability. The presence of immigration enforcement officers may discourage asylum seekers and migrants from seeking support or reporting issues of abuse, exploitation or trafficking. All this could do is undermine the very support structures designed to help individuals rebuild their lives in the UK.
The amendment lacks any clear safeguards or accountability mechanisms for how immigration enforcement would operate, and I urge the Committee to reject it. I hope it rejects the rest of the Conservative party’s amendments, too.
Katie Lam
New clause 36 would give access to asylum accommodation centres to our immigration enforcement officers. Members of the public may be surprised to learn that this power does not already exist. It seems to me common sense that when a person has come here illegally and is being housed by the state, immigration enforcement—an arm of that state—should be able to enter that accommodation to carry out their work.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West rightly set out, these accommodation centres exist because the volume of those coming here illegally is such that it is not possible to hold everyone in immigration detention. There are therefore substantial numbers of people on immigration bail, and a reasonable number of those are held in accommodation centres. Immigration decisions are made elsewhere, but this is the criterion set out in current legislation. In our view, this is a quirk of the current system, and not how one would design it if starting from a blank page. These sorts of accommodation centres did not exist when our rules were written, and we think that this corrects that quirk.
I echo the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West: does the Minister think that this would be of operational benefit to immigration enforcement officers? If so, will she include it, and if not, why not?
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 36 seeks to provide a right of access upon request for Home Office teams working within immigration enforcement to asylum accommodation centres in order to visit those centres and residents at any time.
Matt Vickers
To the hon. Gentleman’s electors and mine, these things come at huge cost. As we have set out, that money could be used by the people who pay in to the system, and have done for a very long time. We have drawn an analogy with student tuition fees and I think it is very relevant. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s well-hidden admiration in recent times, but I think this is the right thing to do, and I am well on board with it. State support is not a right, and if a person is able to contribute later by paying some of that back, we believe it is right for them to do so.
Katie Lam
We have spoken many times today, and over the course of this Bill Committee’s proceedings, about the fundamental principles of fairness upon which we believe that our immigration system should be built. We have also spoken extensively about the generosity of the British state, and how much it costs to support those who, according to our rules, cannot support themselves. But that generosity, while admirable in what it says about our approach to our fellow man, costs the British taxpayer dearly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, it costs many billions of pounds a year. It also causes additional pressure on infrastructure and public services, which is not covered by what we suggest here.
We consider that new clause 37, which would introduce the asylum support repayment scheme, is a totally fair way of proposing that people who come to this country are responsible for contributing for the services that they receive. That includes the accommodation that they live in. We do not see any reason why that should be viewed as a negative change, and we really hope that the Government include it in their Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 37 would give the Secretary of State regulation-making powers to set out arrangements for asylum seekers to receive loans towards their maintenance and accommodation—but, as we have discussed in this Committee during scrutiny of the Bill, the costs of accommodating and supporting asylum seekers has grown significantly. The reason for that increase is that the Government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain, with tens of thousands of cases previously at a complete standstill—the perma-backlog, which we have referred to on many occasions during our proceedings in the past few weeks—claims not being processed, and a record number of people having arrived on small boats in the first half of the year.
While immediate action was taken to restart asylum processing, we cannot resolve the situation overnight. It nevertheless remains our commitment to reduce the cost of asylum accommodation, including by ending the use of asylum hotels. The size of the existing backlog, particularly in appeals, means that we are forced to use hotels in the meantime. That is not a permanent solution, but it is a necessary and temporary step to ensure that the system does not buckle under exceptional strain.
Increasing the speed at which asylum claims can be processed and dealt with is the best way of dealing with this issue of cost, in my view. I think on all sides we want to see the costs come down. We want to see a properly functioning immigration system that delivers fair, timely decisions and manages public funds. Hotel costs have actually dropped from over £9 million a day to under £6 million a day. Overall the Department is planning to deliver £200 million of additional in-year savings in 2024-25, and £700 million of savings against 2024-25 levels during the following financial year, on asylum costs. These measures, taken together, would represent a saving of over £4 billion across 2024-25 and 2025-26 when compared with the previous trajectory of spending.
The Home Office has a legal obligation, as set out in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, to support asylum seekers—including any dependants—who would otherwise be destitute: “destitute” is the word that people need to remember there. Asylum seekers can apply for accommodation, subsistence, or both accommodation and subsistence support when they are destitute. Once official refugee status has been given, the individual is able to work in the UK.
Although asylum seekers generally do not have the right to work in the UK while they are waiting on a decision about their asylum claim, there are some instances in which they can apply for permission to work. They are eligible to do so if they have waited over 12 months for an initial decision on their asylum claim, or for a response to a further submission for asylum, and they are not considered responsible for the delay in decision making.
In that context, the new clause proposed by the hon. Member for Stockton West is an interesting one. I would welcome clarification on how such a loan scheme would operate alongside or instead of the current system, and the details of any assessment of the practical or economic benefit of such a scheme. Further scoping would be necessary in order to establish whether it is a feasible option. As such, its inclusion in this Bill is premature.
Katie Lam
I welcome the Minister’s response. Might she please commit today to a date by which the Home Office at least aims for all migrant hotels to be closed, as per her party’s manifesto commitments? I also welcome what she had to say about bringing down costs. She is right to say that the best way to minimise the Home Office’s bill for asylum accommodation is to process applications as quickly as possible. Where asylum applications are approved, though, most of those costs transfer to the welfare system, so I would be interested to hear her response on who in Government is currently responsible for tracking and understanding that cost.
Dame Angela Eagle
We inherited a system that was very siloed, where work was not really cross-departmental at all. One example that occurs to me is that the system dealing with all the legacy applications, which the previous Government embarked on dealing with at first-tier tribunal in 2023 and then boasted about having achieved. However, that was only the initial decision in the system; if it was granted, I suppose people felt lucky, but those who were not granted appealed the decision. While the Home Office, under the previous Government, congratulated itself publicly on dealing with that legacy system, many people were actually still in the system.
One important thing we have done since coming into government has been to begin working cross-departmentally to develop metrics on how to deal with an end-to-end system. We are not there yet, and we understand that costs can sometimes be transferred to other areas; that is why I am working closely with the Local Government Association, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the MOJ to try to get the system working more effectively end to end.
I cannot give the hon. Member for Weald of Kent a date on when hotels will close, but I can say that we are doing our best. Given the huge cost and the fact that the contracts for providing them that we inherited from the Conservative party are so expensive, it will certainly be in the interests of saving a lot of money to close them as soon as we can, and we certainly aim to do so.
Katie Lam
Again, rightly and reasonably, the Minister talks about lowering costs, but might she say a few words about fairness and the principle that this new clause seeks to speak to: should those who have lived in that accommodation, who have benefited from that provision by the state, ultimately pay it back, if they can afford to?
Dame Angela Eagle
The hon. Lady will have noticed that I have not dismissed the idea completely, but I do not think the idea is anywhere near a position where one could talk about how it might be practicable, and certainly it is not at a stage where one could consider putting it into primary legislation.
Matt Vickers
This is a valuable and important debate because many people felt strongly about this issue. The decision in that case flew in the face of the values of the Ukraine scheme. It could undermine commitments to future such schemes, so it is of great consequence.
Katie Lam
I am a little confused by the Minister’s stating that several of our amendments should not be debated with this Bill. I fully concede that she is more experienced than I am, but my understanding is that any amendment considered in scope can be tabled, debated and voted on. Given the fact that these amendments were considered in scope, I am interested in why she thinks it is not appropriate for us to discuss them today.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the shadow Minister for her comments. I am not disputing that there can be a debate on them. What I am saying is that the Bill has a clear and defined purpose, and it would not be appropriate to extend it to be more than what it is designed to be when there are other mechanisms by which immigration rules are debated in the House.
Seema Malhotra
The hon. Gentleman is right, and the Prime Minister laid out the view that it was the wrong decision. We do need to find a way to tighten up how Parliament understands the rules and how they are interpreted, but as I say, that scheme is not a matter for this Bill. We are at the very end of debating the Bill and now I am being asked what it is for. I am sure that the shadow Ministers do not want to go all the way through the line-by-line debate again. Suffice it to say that the matters they are seeking to extend the legislation to cover stray into broader aspects of immigration that in our view are not appropriate for inclusion in this Bill. There are other mechanisms for us to seek to debate and change immigration rules.
Katie Lam
I thank the Minister for responding to me earlier. The Opposition’s view is that the various ways by which people come here illegally and stay is fundamentally important to smashing the gangs, and that leave outside the rules and the ways it may be abused are a big part of that. That seems to us to be part of the fundamental point that we are discussing. Will the Minister comment on that?
Seema Malhotra
The hon. Lady is right. I have raised a number of times during the debate we have had the ways in which we see routes abused; indeed, the way that routes have been designed has left them open to more abuse. We are now reaping the results of that, in terms of some of the measures and the tightening up that we are doing. She will be aware that we have raised this as a matter that it is important for us to bring under greater control as part of an immigration system that is fit for the future and more controlled, more managed and fairer, and the aspects that we believe can and should be considered for a future immigration system will be the subject of the immigration White Paper. I look forward to debating that with her.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Katie Lam
Throughout our long history, Britain has been an unusually compassionate place. From time to time, people have come to this country to seek sanctuary from tyranny and authoritarianism elsewhere in the world. My county of Kent became home to many of the Huguenots who fled religious persecution in France in the 16th century. Indeed, Canterbury cathedral still hosts a French-language service every Sunday, in honour of those who came to this country in search of tolerance and religious freedom.
My grandmother came to Britain in 1937 at the age of 13, as a refugee from Germany. Her grandfather was a state senator and a fierce critic of the Nazis. When Hitler came to power, the whole family were stripped of their citizenship and several were arrested. After years imprisoned and various daring prison escapes, the family first made it over the border to Czechoslovakia, where they set up a resistance radio station broadcasting back into Germany. One night, that was raided by the SS and one of the operators was shot dead. They then fled to England and to freedom.
We should be proud of our history. There are so many Brits like me who would not be here and would never have been born without the past generosity of this great country. But as I said earlier, we must also be realistic about the very many ways in which our system can be exploited by the cynical and the sinister. There are, of course, people who come to these shores legitimately seeking asylum, but we must also be honest about the fact that not everyone who comes to this country and applies for asylum has a legitimate case for doing so. We can see that evidenced in the fact that not all claims are approved.
Too often, asylum is used as an immigration route for those who otherwise would not be able to come here. Our compassion is therefore exploited by those who are in no real danger at all, a sad truth made clear by the fact that many would-be asylum seekers regularly return home without issue. The bar to claiming asylum should rightly be high. People should be in serious danger in their home country to qualify. Government Members are right to say that the new clause might cause difficult and, in some instances, heartrending situations, but that in and of itself does not make it the wrong thing to do.
Last December, as I mentioned earlier when discussing our human rights legislation, a Turkish heroin dealer was allowed to stay in the UK after first seeking asylum here in 1988. Despite claiming that he would be persecuted in his home country, the man had returned to Turkey at least eight times since arriving in Britain. On one of those trips, he even got married to a woman with whom he had been having an affair, despite already being married with children in the UK. Nevertheless, he escaped deportation, as it was ruled that deporting him would interfere with his right to a family life. That kind of scenario is clearly wrong and contributes to the persistent feeling that so many ordinary British people have that our asylum system is broken and unfair.
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 41 would require the revocation of protection status or leave, or discontinuation of asylum claims, where an applicant returns to their country of origin. The Government are in absolute agreement on the principle behind the new clause. Although we are committed to providing protection to those who genuinely need it for as long as it is needed, in accordance with our obligations under the refugee convention and the European convention on human rights, such protection status must be granted only when it is required. As such, I want to reassure Opposition Members that, under our existing policy, where an individual returns to their country of origin, we consider whether they have re-availed themselves of the protection of that country. Where that is the case, we seek to revoke their protection status under the appropriate provision set out in the immigration rules.
We are also clear that asylum claims may be discontinued and withdrawn where the applicant fails to comply with the asylum process, which includes leaving the UK before a decision is made on their claim. I hope Opposition Members are therefore assured that the immigration rules enable protection status to be revoked already and applications to be discontinued where an applicant has returned to their country of origin. As such, new clause 41 is not required.
Katie Lam
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This is a probing amendment tabled by the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), to tease out what he feels are important issues to discuss in the context of the Bill. I would like to make it very clear that the Opposition are neither supporting nor opposing this new clause. Ideally, my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire would have spoken to this new clause, but she has Parliament-related business elsewhere today, so I am standing in.
The background to the new clause is that various international treaties impose, or have been interpreted as imposing, an obligation on states not to send people back to a country where they would face harm. This is known as non-refoulement. However, not all non-refoulement obligations are the same, and there are important differences. The new clause seeks to tease out the differences between the ECHR on the one hand, and the refugee convention and torture convention on the other. One key difference is whether there are any exceptions to the principle of non-refoulement, which is to say: are there any circumstances in which someone can be sent back to a country where they would face a real risk of relevant harm?
Under the refugee convention, the obligation not to refoul is not absolute; it is subject broadly to two exceptions. The first of those is the article 1F exclusion from protection of the refugee convention. That exclusion applies to those who have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, serious non-political crimes abroad and acts contrary to the purposes of the United Nations. The second exception is provided for in article 33(2), which concerns those who pose serious risk to the security of the host country and those who have been convicted of particularly serious crimes, and therefore pose a danger to the community of the host country.
As the UNHCR said in respect of article 1F exclusions, the rationale is that certain acts are so grave as to render their perpetrators undeserving of international protection as refugees. The Court of Justice of the European Union has said that its purpose is to maintain the credibility of the protection system, and as Professors Hathaway and Foster have noted, the realpolitik reason was that the drafters of the refugee convention were persuaded that if states parties were expected to admit serious criminals as refugees, they would simply not be willing to be bound by the convention.
The same is presumably true of the article 33(2) exceptions. It would be surprising if states would have been willing to sign up to a duty not to refoul if there were not that exception for those who were a threat to their countries. In 1987, the UN convention against torture came into force. It now has 173 states parties. Article 3 of the torture convention provided for an absolute non-refoulement rule in cases of torture.
Although the convention also dealt with cruel, inhumane and degrading treatments, states were careful to limit the absolute non-refoulement rule to torture. The result is that even if an individual falls in the scope of article 1F or article 33(2) of the refugee convention but would face a real danger of torture, they cannot be removed. It was felt by states that torture was such an absolute evil that the credibility of the international protection system would be undermined by preventing the removal of such individuals if they faced torture.
While the refugee convention and the torture convention both explicitly addressed non-refoulement, the ECHR did not. It prohibits states from engaging in torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, but it says nothing about refoulement. That is not surprising, as the ECHR was drafted at the same time as the refugee convention, and arguably it was felt that those issues were best addressed by the refugee convention. None the less, in the late 1980s, the Strasbourg court interpreted article 3 as prohibiting refoulement. It did so not just for torture, but for all forms of treatment contrary to article 3, and it held that the rule was absolute. As the court put it:
“The conduct of the person concerned, however undesirable or dangerous, cannot be taken into account.”
The consequence is that the protection afforded by article 3 is broader than that provided for in articles 32 and 33 of the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees. That interpretation by the Strasbourg court completely negated the careful balance struck by the international community with the refugee convention and torture convention.
The new clause posits that that interpretation threatens the legitimacy of international human rights law and that the conclusion by Strasbourg is the means by which that happens. The KM case provides a good illustration. KM was a police officer in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He entered the UK illegally in 2012 and applied for asylum. His application was refused by the Home Secretary on the grounds that he had been involved in torture. The upper tribunal upheld that finding and held that he should be excluded from protection under article 1F of the refugee convention. However, because of article 3 of the ECHR, as interpreted by the Strasbourg court, he could not be removed.
There are many more cases of serious criminals and terrorists—people who are a threat to those who live in the UK—who could be deported under article 33(2) of the refugee convention but cannot due to article 3 of the ECHR. In Saadi v. Italy, two Strasbourg judges wrote that they would not be surprised if some citizens of Europe
“find it difficult to understand that the Court by emphasising the absolute nature of Article 3 seems to afford more protection to the non-national applicant who has been found guilty of terrorist-related crimes than to the protection of the community as a whole from terrorist violence.”
Indeed, the Father of the House, were he here, would say that he suspects that the vast majority of Britons and Europeans would be baffled by that conclusion. That is also precisely the reason why the drafters of the refugee convention saw fit to include exceptions for criminals and terrorists: they knew that with rights come responsibilities, and that those who act in this way completely violate the social contract and cannot properly claim its protection. The interpretation that Strasbourg has given has, in the view of the Father of the House—at least, he would like us to debate this—weakened the legitimacy of the international humanitarian protection system.
The new clause, tabled by the Father of the House, seeks to find a solution to the problem—one that he says will restore common sense. The first step of the new clause would put a duty on the Secretary of State through careful litigation before our courts to identify cases of individuals who could be deported under the refugee convention and torture convention but would be blocked under the ECHR. He sees cases such as KM, which I discussed, as exemplars of that. The new clause would disapply the duty on the Secretary of State to comply with the Human Rights Act in such cases. That is to ensure that the Secretary of State can proceed to deport such people, and if they want to challenge their deportation, their recourse will be to bring a case to Strasbourg.
I know that the Father of the House would be comfortable with putting a duty on Ministers to still deport such individuals even the face of a Strasbourg judgment or rule 39, but he knows that the firm commitment that the Government have to international law mean that they will refuse to do so—although he also said that we should ask why they would privilege the ECHR over the refugee convention. Instead, the new clause would allow the Government to comply with Strasbourg, while requiring them to argue with Strasbourg that it is wrong to interpret article 3 in a way that negates the provisions of articles 1F and 33(2) of the refugee convention.
Were Strasbourg to apply the principle of lex specialis properly, it should conclude that it cannot be unlawful for states to rely on articles 1F and 33(2) of the refugee convention in order to deport criminals. The Father of the House would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the Government would be interested in running such an argument before the Strasbourg court. Even were we to lose in such efforts to be reasonable, he feels that the new clause would allow the Government still to decide to comply with the flawed jurisprudence from the Strasbourg court; however, it would require that, were they to do so, they must be transparent with the British public and publish a report telling us who the criminals are whom we could have deported under the refugee convention, had the Strasbourg court’s flawed interpretation of the ECHR not prevented us from so doing.
I will not press the new clause to a vote, and I repeat that I did not table it, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Dame Angela Eagle
I compliment the Father of the House on his ingenious approach to the slightly different signals, as the hon. Lady set out, that the international conventions, with their judge-made law, have left us with over the years. The new clause would create a duty to remove people who are not protected by the refugee convention, irrespective of our obligations under the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights as it has developed. The hon. Lady set out that issue extremely well.
We will always seek to deport or remove foreign nationals who pose a threat to the UK or whose behaviour is such that they are not entitled to international protection. Where the UK’s obligations under the European convention on human rights prevent us from doing that, we will consider granting restricted leave, sending a clear message that the person is not welcome in the UK and will be removed as soon as possible. As the hon. Lady will remember, we amended the Bill to allow us to closely monitor people who pose a threat to the public but cannot be deported because of our obligations under domestic and international law. She will remember that that involves such things as curfews, and inclusion and exclusion zones.
The Government are clear: Britain will unequivocally remain a member of the ECHR, and work with international partners to uphold human rights and international law. Leaving would undermine protections for UK citizens and isolate Britain from its closest allies. The new clause would provide a mechanism to disregard a ruling of a court or tribunal that removal from the UK will breach a migrant’s human rights. That would place the UK in direct conflict with the European Court of Human Rights. The law does not permit us to operate with one foot in and one foot out; we are either in, as signatories to the ECHR, or we join Russia and Belarus as countries that do not accept its jurisdiction.
The law does not permit us to operate in that way; nor can it be said that the ECHR takes precedence over the refugee convention. They are distinct treaties of international law that deal with different issues. The new clause would therefore create a situation that would be wholly unworkable. I know that the Father of the House will look at this in due course. He has had a good go. We do not think that the proposal is workable. I therefore hope that it will not be pressed to a vote.
Dame Angela Eagle
It is at this occasion, traditionally, that those who have shouldered the burdens under your expert guidance of the Committee, Dr Murrison, thank all the officials—both the House officials and my own—for their sterling work.
I thank all members of the Committee for their contributions, all of which have come from positions of principle and concern. We have had some robust debates during our time in Committee; we have even had a bit of fashion commentary. I think we will all be pleased to get out of Committee today, because the room is getting colder as the week goes on—goodness knows where we would be if we had to come back on Thursday to finish our deliberations. I hope that members of the Committee have enjoyed scrutinising the Bill and having these debates as much as I have.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsTuesday 18th March 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 March 2025 - (18 Mar 2025)
Mike Tapp
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The hon. Member for Stockton West has made a creative argument, and I will try to bring some sense to it. First, we have to look at what the new clause would actually do for the country and our judicial system. Public hearings could expose vulnerable individuals, including victims of persecution or trafficking, to undue public scrutiny, which could deter genuine applicants from seeking justice. There are also security risks. Sensitive information about applicants’ backgrounds, including details that could endanger their families in their home countries, could be exposed.
There is also the risk of the legal system being overloaded further, given what we have inherited. Increased public interest in the hearings could lead to more appeals and challenges, which would cause more delays and inefficiencies in the system. Finally, the new clause is simply unnecessary as courts already have the discretion to allow public access when appropriate. It would remove vital judicial flexibility.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. After years of broken promises, it should come as no surprise that the public do not trust politicians in Westminster on immigration. The distrust is compounded by regular reports of individual cases in the immigration system, the most shocking and nonsensical of which are often those of foreign criminals allowed to remain in this country due to human rights laws.
The system is broken. It has been broken for many decades, and that is now plain to see. Our basic decency—our desire to do the right thing—is exploited by paedophiles, rapists, terrorists and hardened criminals, who threaten not just individual members of the public, which is terrifying enough, but the broader social fabric of our country. The news reports that we read are possible only because upper tribunal judgments on asylum and immigration are published at regular intervals. The publication of those judgments allows everyone in the country to see what tribunal judges have decided in asylum, immigration and deportation cases. Crucially, it allows us to scrutinise both their decisions and their reasoning. We can see why the judgments were made and what that says about our laws, and decide for ourselves whether we think that is right. Judges are not accountable to the public, but transparency allows everyone to see our laws in action and to form a view about whether they are the right ones.
However, upper tribunal judgments do not tell the full story. All immigration and asylum cases are first heard by a lower-tier tribunal, the judgments of which are not made available to the public. Unless the initial decision of the lower-tier tribunal is appealed, the public do not ever get access to the details of any given case. Given the absurdity of the cases that we do hear about, many members of the public will rightly be wondering what is happening in the cases that we do not see.
If we want to restore public trust in the immigration system, we must restore transparency. Publishing the decisions of lower-tier tribunals is not the biggest or most consequential change in the grand scheme of our broken immigration system, but it is a meaningful one. The public have a right to know about the way our tribunal system works, to know about the rules judges use to make fundamental decisions about immigration and asylum—about who can be in this country and why—and to see how those rules are applied in practice so they can decide for themselves whether that is right or wrong and whether it serves Britain’s interests. That is why we tabled this new clause, and we sincerely hope that the Government will consider making it part of the Bill.
Margaret Mullane (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve on your Committee, Dr Murrison. I do not see how turning border security into public discourse on a case-by-case basis is beneficial to the process, either for those administering or presiding over the hearings, or for those subject to the tribunal process. I accept that there is an argument for greater transparency, but given the circumstances of people’s arrival at our borders—they are fleeing trauma, in a vulnerable state—I feel it is inappropriate to parade the lives of asylum seekers in the public domain.
I have every faith that the Bill will create a robust system that is effective and accountable. The new clause would add nothing to its overall strength. The hon. Member for Stockton West says that trust has been lost in the asylum system. I think it will take this Bill and this Government to bring that trust back.
Katie Lam
How can I begin my remarks without repaying the Minister’s kind words about my clothing? This is one of my favourite jackets and I am delighted to see that it might also be one of hers.
It is no secret, as the hon. Member for Bassetlaw has just set out, that previous Governments of different parties have failed the British public on immigration. The level of immigration to this country has been too high for decades and remains so. Every election-winning manifesto since 1974 has promised to reduce migration. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) has said, the last Government, like the Governments before them, promised to do exactly that, but again like the Governments before them, they did not deliver. Because of that failure to deliver, the British public may face a bill of more than £200 billion in the years ahead, unless we change the rules on settlement.
Under current rules, after just five years in the UK, migrants on work or family visas will become eligible for indefinite leave to remain. If they are successful, and 95% of ILR applicants are, they are entitled to welfare, social housing, surcharge-free access to the NHS and more. According to the Centre for Policy Studies, some 800,000 migrants could claim ILR over the course of this Parliament. Given the profile of those who are likely to qualify, that could come at a lifetime cost of £234 billion.
Tom Hayes
Sorry, I coughed and laughed at the same time, partly because I think the hon. Member anticipated the point I was about to make. I will put this on the record again, as I have consistently. She may have more information to come back to me with and I will come back to her. The Centre for Policy Studies report is flawed. It has skewed information; it uses assumptions that are unreasonable and the financial modelling that ensues is therefore unreasonable. As a consequence, it feels like the Centre for Policy Studies and the hon. Member are reaching for a very large number to create the impression that there will be a very significant financial burden.
I make two additional points. First, even if that report relied on reasonable assumptions and therefore the modelling was correct, the Boris wave was caused by her party’s Government. She is nodding her head; she affirms that. I welcome that, in her speech, she has so far acknowledged the failings of that Government. Secondly, the report makes some very big assumptions about the future behaviour of the people currently in the migration system in our country. That is not a wise move, particularly when she is extrapolating £235 billion to £240 billion across a very long timeline. In fact, if we were to break it down on an annualised basis, even using the report’s flawed assumptions and flawed modelling, the figure would be far smaller. We need to have some integrity in the data that we use. Does she agree?
Katie Lam
As Professor Brian Bell said in evidence to this Committee—in a session to which the hon. Member for Bournemouth East has referred a couple of times—
“It is actually extremely difficult to work out the fiscal impact of migration.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 59, Q92.]
That is clearly true: forecasting the lives of millions of people over decades will obviously have a substantial margin for error.
The only way to avoid that error would be not to try to forecast in the first place. I have repeatedly asked the Home Office, over several months, whether anyone in that Department or any other—indeed, anyone in Government—is attempting to forecast the cost to the public purse of the ILR grants that will come in this Parliament. I am yet to receive an answer. To me, that clearly says that nobody in Government is thinking about the impact the issue will have and how much it will cost. When they do, I will happily use those numbers. Until and unless that happens, the modelling from the CPS is the best we have—in fact, it is all that we have.
Tom Hayes
This is my last intervention on this matter. I take the hon. Lady’s point entirely, but will she not acknowledge that the modelling has deep, fundamental flaws? Although it may be the only modelling and therefore the best, on the strength of what is in that report it is still not worth considering or using in parliamentary debate.
Katie Lam
I have already acknowledged that the margin for error is massive—that is clearly true. If everything that the hon. Member is saying is correct, I would like to see Government figures to replace the CPS figures. I think that is a reasonable request.
The £234 billion cost is equivalent to £8,200 per household, or around six times our annual defence budget, and this about not just money but capacity. Our public services are clearly already overstretched and this could push them to breaking point. If we accept, as we should, that previous Governments have failed on migration, then we should do everything in our power to limit the long-term impacts of that failure. That is why the Conservatives propose to extend the qualifying period for ILR and reform settlement rules to ensure that only those genuinely likely to contribute will be eligible for long-term settlement. That would give us an opportunity to review visas issued over the last few years. Those who have come to this country legally on time-limited visas and have subsequently not contributed enough, or have damaged our society by committing crime, should be expected to leave.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that the levels of immigration under the last Government were wrong and that it was a mistake to allow so many people to come to the UK. This amendment would allow the Government to limit the long-term consequences of that mistake, so why would they oppose it? It is not too late to change our rules around settlement. By refusing to extend the eligibility period for indefinite leave to remain, the Government are actively choosing to saddle the British taxpayer with a likely bill of hundreds of billions of pounds. We must make difficult decisions on this reform and the many others required in our migration system. Those decisions may be painful, especially in the short term, for individual people, families or businesses but they are the only way for any Government’s actions to match their words. The public have had enough and rightly so.
The hon. Member for Bournemouth East talked about LLR, which must be applied for every two and a half years on the existing 10-year route. That is the case only because, as it stands, the 10-year route, by design, is for those not on eligible visas. The five-year route that we here propose to change is exclusively for those on eligible visas. I therefore cannot see why, within the existing rules, there would be any requirement for LLR applications. I hope that reassures the hon. Member.
Margaret Mullane
The new clause is not in keeping with the provisions outlined in the Bill, which primarily focus on border security through new and strengthened law enforcement powers, providing intelligence to address organised immigration crime.
I fundamentally disagree with the context of the new clause. Subsection (2) relates to existing legislation whereby the qualification of indefinite leave to remain applies to people on skilled work visas, scale-up worker visas, entrepreneurial or investor visas, innovation founder visas, or UK ancestry visas, and people with a partner who holds citizenship. Those people are, for the most part, contributing to our society through work. If somebody has been living and working here in a skilled role, or innovating in our country—and possibly even supporting job creation—for five years, that is long enough for them to identify Britain as their home. They will have friends and community networks. In most instances, they are boosting our economic productivity. The increased qualification period set out in the proposed new clause would move the goalposts for skilled workers after years of contribution.
I will bring the conversation back to the purpose of the Bill: the Committee’s focus should be on those entering the UK illegally and those engaged in organised immigration crime, not the construction workers, nurses, doctors, investors and business owners in Britain on work visas.
Tom Hayes
I will speak briefly. I welcome the hon. Member for Weald of Kent’s clarification of the Conservative party’s position on the amendment, but that clarification also raises further questions; I wonder whether the hon. Lady could respond on the spot. If there is no requirement every 30 months in the 10-year period for an individual to pay fees of £2,608—or, for a child, £2,223—to the Home Office, how will the Home Office fund much of its work? The fees paid by adults and children contribute significantly to the Home Office’s budget. The point is particularly important because the Home Office has had to borrow from the official development assistance budget in order to fund asylum hotels. I worry that there is going to be a significant financial gap here, and I wonder if the hon. Lady could clarify what her costings are?
Katie Lam
I think the hon. Gentleman is eliding two different routes. At the moment there is a five-year route, which is for people on eligible visas, and a 10-year route. The 10-year route has LLR requirements that have to be applied for every two and a half years, and is the route that generates the fees that he is talking about. Under the amendment, that would not change; we are proposing changes only to the five-year route. The five-year route at the moment does not have LLR requirements because it is for people on eligible visas. The income for the Home Office from the same people should be no different under the amendment that we are proposing. I hope that that is clear.
Tom Hayes
I am happy to accept that clarification. If that is correct, I look forward to seeing more information about the particular policy, what financial costs would be involved and what the financial benefits would be.
Finally, I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh about the importance of settling. We talk here about the financial costs: it is going to be more costly to our country and public services if somebody is having to go through many years of unsettled status. It is going to be harder for them to have all the infrastructure and anchors that they need within society. As a consequence, I would love to know whether the Conservatives have done any modelling of the impact of increasing the period of limbo, including—as mentioned in the IPPR report that I referenced earlier—the cost to public services when people find themselves homeless, with difficult mental health conditions or unable to take their child to the school that they want and have to travel significant mileage.
The hon. Lady and I share a desire for the integrity of data and its greater availability. In proposing the amendment, does she have access to any of that information?
Katie Lam
He is nodding.
Part of what we are trying to say by extending the time is that we feel that a person’s commitment to the UK before they apply for settlement should be longer than five years. If application numbers go down because people feel that they do not want to commit for 10 years before getting settlement, that is something that we are happy to accept as part of the amendment.
It seems from the numbers that we have at the moment that the number of people who would apply over an extended period would go down because fewer people would qualify under the rules that we are stipulating. The reason why they would not qualify is that they would not be making a sufficiently significant contribution to the public purse over that period. Our calculations are that all of those lost applications would be net fiscally positive.
Tom Hayes
In which case, I will close by saying that the Home Office data shows there is not that drop-off of people—people do not leave the country because they have to wait longer for their status. In fact, those people try to get that status by serving within our country and economy. The Home Office data, which is publicly available on gov.uk, records what the stay and departure rates are each year. I am not sure that the amendment and the policy within it are going to achieve the goal that the hon. Lady is seeking.
Katie Lam
I totally take the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I think he is answering a slightly different point. What we are saying is that the combination of the extension of time and the change in criteria would lead to lower applications. It is not so much about a choice on the part of the individual migrant, but a structural change within the system.
Tom Hayes
The very last point I will make is that I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, but that is not what my point was about. This would not be a deterrent or an incentive for people to leave the country. People would still remain in the country. The health impacts and the limbo that people would experience through their inability to settle would still create a fiscal drag.
Katie Lam
On 23 January 2023, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai was sentenced to life imprisonment at Salisbury Crown court. Nearly a year earlier, Abdulrahimzai had murdered 21-year-old Thomas Roberts in Bournemouth town centre by stabbing him to death in the street following a dispute over an e-scooter.
Abdulrahimzai was an Afghan asylum seeker who came to this country in December 2019. He entered the UK illegally, claiming to be an unaccompanied 14-year-old. He was placed in school and in foster care, but he was in fact already an adult when he came here. Not only was he an adult, but he was also a murderer, having killed two men in Serbia before coming to the UK. He should never have been allowed to come to this country and he should certainly not have been allowed to masquerade as a child.
Assessing a person’s age is surprisingly difficult, but we have a range of tools to do so—the Home Office is just not using them. If we had acted sooner, using the full suite of tools at our disposal to assess Abdulrahimzai’s age, Thomas Roberts might still be alive today. The case of Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai is particularly shocking, but it is unfortunately far from unique.
Chris Murray
I wonder whether there have been any new scientific discoveries in the last seven months for identifying someone’s age that the Home Office would not have been aware of over the last 14 years. Is it not the case that the methodologies used are very imprecise and do not often actually lead us, in the liminal cases, to draw the distinction that the hon. Lady is advocating for?
Katie Lam
I will come on to precision and the ways of determining age slightly later in my remarks.
Ahmed Hassan, an Iraqi asylum seeker, claimed to be a 16-year-old when he arrived in the UK. In 2017, he set off a bomb at Parsons Green tube station, injuring 23 people. His real age is still not a matter of public record. In 2018, a Home Office probe found that Siavash Shah, an Iranian asylum seeker, spent six weeks as a year 11 pupil in Ipswich despite being 25—the list goes on. In fact, between 2020 and 2023, the Home Office identified almost 4,000 cases of adult migrants claiming to be children—45% of those who originally claimed to be children when they arrived here—and every other person of that cohort was in fact an adult. Some were at least 30 years old. That puts British children at risk, puts genuine child asylum seekers at risk and takes valuable school and care places away from the young people who genuinely need them.
I feel this particularly keenly as a Member of Parliament for Kent, the county into which all small boats arrive. Our laws mandate that the people who come to this country illegally and claim to be under 18 must be prioritised for care equally with Kentish children. That puts enormous pressure on the system and makes it harder for our children to be cared for. That is madness when we know that half of those arrivals are in fact adults, and we must put a stop to it.
It is completely rational, albeit morally wrong, for adult migrants to claim to be children. Under-18s who come here have a greater entitlement to care and support, do not have to live in accommodation with adults, and are not subject to the same rules as adults—or the rules are applied less strictly. Of course, there are people who cross the channel without their parents who are under 18; most, though not all, are male 17 and 16-year-olds, and some are younger children. No one disputes that, and children should be treated as children, but we must be realistic about the scandalous degree to which our system is exploited by the cynical and the sinister.
We have to protect actual children, and we should use every tool in the box to do so, including scientific testing. Where people refuse such tests, the Government should be able to override that refusal. We are acting in the interests of public safety and to protect the security of our children. Labour Members have asked for exact details of the scientific methods. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, there are many methods and several different ways of doing it. The ones that can be implemented in short order are the dental and skeletal tests.
Other methods are currently at an earlier stage of development, such as facial age estimation and DNA methylation, which is a process by which people much cleverer than me can assess how a person’s genes are read by their body, which changes with age. In 2022, the interim Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee stated that the
“teeth, clavicle, and hand/wrist or knee… have been shown to have a significant research and publication credibility and provide a consistent age range over which changes occur.”
Later, the same report states:
“The committee has relied on areas and methods that have been repeatedly tried and tested and shown to have consistency.”
As the report makes clear, and as Government Members have said, scientific age assessment is not perfectly precise and is not magic, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West also correctly says, our proposal is that scientific age assessments should be used not to replace other methods and judgments, but to supplement them.
The situations that my hon. Friend and I have set out are horrifying. We can see no reason why the Government would not want to have the widest possible set of tools available to them to stop such things happening, including the option in future to bring in scientific methods that are currently at a nascent stage.
Tom Hayes
I thank the hon. Member for Weald of Kent for raising the absolutely horrific and awful circumstances involving Thomas Roberts, who would have been my constituent and whose mother, Dolores, is my constituent. She is racked by grief and unable to sleep at night. Her health has worsened because, as she said to the Minister and me last night in the Minister’s office, with her son being murdered, she feels that half of her whole life has completely disappeared.
I do not want to name the murderer in this debate; I name Thomas Roberts, the victim. I want to talk briefly, with your permission, Dr Murrison, about Thomas Roberts, because it is important for the Committee to know who he was. It is important for Dolores, so racked with grief, to know that her MP and the Committee are focused on what happened.
Thomas was 21 years of age when he died on 12 March 2022 in Bournemouth town centre, the victim of a stabbing by an asylum seeker. His mum has told me several times, and she told me again with the Minister last night, that Thomas was known by everyone and, when his mother wanted to go into town, to Littledown or to other parts of the constituency, he would say no, because he was so well known and he did not want to be seen by his friends out with his mum.
Thomas was an aspiring Royal Marine and, in order to become one, he was in the Sea Scouts. He was physically fit—so fit, in fact, that he would actually bench press his mum and his brother. Dolores told me that the passing of his driving test on the first go was one of her proudest moments. It is one of the things that she remembers so fondly and so closely now, as she comes to terms with her grief.
Thomas was also an aspiring drum and bass DJ, and by all accounts a very good one, who was up and coming on the south coast. If he had not made it as a Royal Marine—there was every certainty that he would—he could easily have taken up a drum and bass DJ career. He was a member of the Christchurch boxing club. He was active in his community, and deeply loving and caring about his family.
Thomas lost his life—or rather, his life was taken from him—because an asylum seeker was in our country. That begs the question: why was that person in our country? Why were they able to wield the knife that cut short Thomas Roberts’s life, and that took away all the hopes and ambitions that his mother had for him? It is because we did not have access to the necessary database to track criminality and find out more about who the asylum seeker actually was. I am deeply sad that Thomas is not with his mum, in his community, or with his friends who loved him so much, because the last Government broke our asylum and immigration system, and created the conditions for that tragic killing and other tragic killings that have happened in our country.
Scientific age assessment, as the hon. Member for Weald of Kent said, is not a magic wand; it is imprecise, as we heard from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. We know what works, and that having a functioning asylum and immigration system will make all the difference. I just wish we had had that on 12 March 2022 when Thomas was denied his life opportunities because of the breakages in that system.
I thank the Minister for meeting Dolores yesterday—I know that that provided her with much-needed comfort and clarity. I am absolutely confident that the Bill and its measures will make the difference that is so needed to protect our society. I also note the contribution of Councillor Joe Salmon of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, who has been such a support to Dolores and her wider community, because she will be grieving for a very long time. It is incumbent on all of us in public service to speak the truth, look at the facts and bring forward the measures that will make the biggest difference.
If I may, I will return to the question of scientific age assessments. I referred to the concerns of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and of experts, but I now refer to the House of Lords debate on 27 November 2023, which is worth a read if Opposition Members have not had a chance. It goes into significant detail and depth about the concerns that I had about that as a possible policy at that stage of its development.
The Minister has been clear that scientific age assessments are not off the table; there just needs to be certainty that they are an effective tool. To avoid any further deaths and injustices, we need to have the right tools to protect the people of this country, secure and protect our borders, and make sure that we are truly able to restore confidence and trust in this system and in our ability to manage who comes into our country and who stays here.
Katie Lam
It was a privilege to hear about Thomas Roberts’s life. The hon. Member for Bournemouth East did himself great credit in telling us about him so movingly. Thomas’s mother, Dolores, whose pain is impossible for us to imagine, has also done his memory great credit by finding a way in her grief to talk about her son to her Member of Parliament and to the Minister.
Securing the border is a genuinely difficult job, and the Opposition are genuine in our desire to support the Government in doing that. We really believe that the new clause would help the Government to expand their ability to do that job. We deeply hope that they will consider it. I also thank the hon. Member for Clwyd East for her generous words.
Dame Angela Eagle
I start by endorsing what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said about Dolores, Thomas Roberts’s mum, whom I met last night. She has gone through a searingly awful life experience. It is difficult even to think about that, let alone to offer any comfort. Unfortunately, I do not think that her experience would have changed much had scientific age assessment been in place, although the person in question had been assessed by his local authority as a child and was therefore in a separate environment from that which he would have been in had he not been assessed.
I am determined to see whether we can connect up our information about people coming from Europe, following Brexit and the disintegration of our access to Eurodac and various other pieces of information collected in Europe on asylum seekers and those arriving illegally—not all of them are asylum seekers. Reconnecting, if possible, to those databases would give us more comfort than we have at the moment. However, I emphasise that when people come to this country, we do check them against all our biometric records and the terrorism lists and watch lists that we have. It may be possible for us to do more in future.
We have had a debate about new clause 26 from the Opposition and new clause 43 from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire on behalf of the Scottish National party. That has again demonstrated the wide range of opinion that there is at both ends of the argument whenever we consider such issues. I will deal with both arguments in my response, and I hope to find a middle way.
First, repealing section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which the Bill seeks to do, does not stop our capacity to do age assessments. Listening to some of the contributions from members of the official Opposition, one would have thought that repealing section 58 will take off the table—completely and utterly—all age assessment. That is simply not true. The age assessments in section 58 were about the duty to remove somebody to Rwanda; they were not connected to anything else. As I understand it, the issue with that legislation was that the then Government’s intention was not to remove children to Rwanda, so it became more important to have a way of assessing whether somebody was a child. The Safety of Rwanda Act and the IMA—the previous Government’s approach to this issue—would have created even bigger incentives for people to claim that that they were children, because they would have avoided being sent to Rwanda, not that anyone ever actually ended up there. The previous Government’s approach of deportation permanently to Rwanda actually created even more incentives for people to lie about their age.
The fact is that there are people who are genuine asylum seekers who are children, people who are not genuine asylum seekers who are adults who claim to be children, and children who sometimes claim that they are adults. When that happens, one has to look at modern slavery issues and coercive control. There are safeguarding issues on both sides of the age assessment argument. Children pretend to be adults for reasons that we can imagine, but we will not go into those, because they are not very pleasant. There are also incentives created by the way in which the Children Act 1989 deals with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. As a Kent MP, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent knows exactly what happens with the Kent intake unit and the pressure that her own local authority has been put under. However, she also knows about the Government support that her local authority has been given to disperse unaccompanied asylum-seeking children around the rest of the country so that some of the burden can be shared.
We are dealing with people who arrive without papers. Some of them wish to lie about their age, and some have been told to lie because the people-smuggling gangs perceive it as a way for people to access more resources than they could if they were seen as adults. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire pointed out, the system can get it wrong on both sides. People who are children have been judged to be adults and put in inappropriate places, and people who are adults have been judged to be children and put in appropriate places. There is no guaranteed scientific way of making a judgment. We can make judgments about people who are much older, but we are dealing with that uncertain four to five-year range on either side, which is the difference between 18 and 24 or 17 and 23; you will know about that, Dr Murrison, from your work as a medical doctor.
On new clause 26, I want to reassure Opposition Members that there is already provision in law for the use of age assessment, and our repealing of section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act does not remove that provision. That is because the Immigration (Age Assessments) Regulations 2024, which followed scientific advice from the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee in the Home Office, specify for the purposes of section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 the scientific methods currently recommended for age assessment. We have retained those bits of legislation; neither the 2024 regulations nor section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act have been repealed by the Bill, so the capacity to use scientific age assessments remains on the statute book.
The hon. Member for Stockton West did not seem to know which age assessment methods we were talking about. The 2024 regulations specify the power to use X-rays and MRIs, and that it is possible to take a negative view of the credibility of a person who refuses to consent, where there are no reasonable grounds for refusing that consent.
With those measures on the statute book, the Government continue to explore methods to improve the robustness of age assessment processes by increasing the reliability of the scientific methods being used. At the moment, we do not have enough certainty about the gap that exists in the current assessments, which are still being assessed. The hon. Member for Stockton West and the Conservative party put these things on to the statute book but then did not operationalise them. At the moment, we are doing as much work as we can to see how reliable they are, with a view to operationalising them. But as I wrote in a response to shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South, when he wrote to me about this issue, we are in the middle of that process. I hope that we will soon be in a situation to make announcements one way or the other, and those announcements will be made in the usual way.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsTuesday 11th March 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 March 2025 - (11 Mar 2025)
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
It is a great pleasure to see you, the fourth Chair of our Committee, Dame Siobhain. I welcome you to the Chair. It is a pleasure to serve with you directing us.
The clause is a simple consequential one: it removes references to and amendments made by the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 when they no longer serve a purpose. During the passage of those two pieces of legislation it was necessary to amend existing Acts of Parliament, to cross-reference them and to enable enactment of the provisions within them. Few, if any, of those provisions were ever properly commenced or enacted but, since this Government intend to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act and large parts of the Illegal Migration Act, which we spent most of this morning discussing, those references no longer serve any practical purpose. They should therefore be removed from the four existing Acts of Parliament.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Dame Siobhain, as it was yesterday afternoon. It is good to see you two days in a row.
The clause, as the Minister said, makes consequential amendments necessary as a result of the two clauses that we discussed this morning: clause 37, which repeals the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024, and clause 38, which repeals provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. As we do not support either of those repeals, we do not support these revisions or agree that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
We have had our debates about the contents of those Acts. The clause concerns truly miscellaneous aspects, although I understand the logic of the hon. Lady’s argument. I certainly hope that we will press on and agree clause 39.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
The clause introduces schedule 1, which will allow the governance arrangements for the Immigration Services Commissioner and deputy commissioner to be made more flexible. That will bring them in line with other public appointments by allowing for interim or shorter appointment lengths.
Schedule 1 sets out that the commissioner and deputy commissioner are to hold office for a term not exceeding five years. That allows the appointments to be for less than five years; currently, there is a fixed five-year term. Schedule 1 will make it discretionary to appoint a deputy commissioner, allowing for the governance arrangements to remain flexible to meet the demands of the organisation. It will enable the Home Secretary to appoint a senior, experienced member of staff to act in the commissioner’s place in certain circumstances. It is to be used, for example, to ensure that cover is in place during a public appointment process where there is a vacancy in the commissioner and deputy commissioner posts. It does not replace the provision to appoint a deputy commissioner and will ensure continued regulatory oversight of immigration advisers, which is the point of this organisation.
The schedule will mean that the work of the Immigration Services Commissioner will continue and will operate more flexibly to ensure that good immigration advice is readily available. That is critical to the effective running of a coherent, efficient and fair immigration system.
Katie Lam
As the Minister has outlined, clause 40 inserts schedule 1 into the Bill. That provides that the Immigration Services Commissioner is not to hold office for a term exceeding five years. The current regime is based on there being a commissioner and deputy, so schedule 1 sets out that the commissioner may appoint a deputy. There is also a provision to enable a member of the commissioner’s staff to act in the commissioner’s place in certain circumstances, such as the roles of commissioner and deputy both being vacant. That effectively allows for the appointment of an interim commissioner.
As was said in evidence to the Committee, these amendments do not seem to us to have operational consequence. We will not oppose them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 40 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 41
Detention and exercise of functions pending deportation
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 7, clause 41, page 35, line 32, leave out subsection (17).
This amendment would leave out the subsection of this clause that applies subsections (1) to (13) (relating to detention and exercise of functions pending deportation) retrospectively, i.e. as if they have always had effect.
Dame Angela Eagle
The clause seeks to put beyond any doubt that the Home Office has the power to detain, in conducive deportation cases, at the earliest point. It has been doing that for many years. The clarification in the clause applies retrospectively to ensure that those who have been detained in the past have not been detained unlawfully. We do not believe they have, but this puts it beyond doubt. To clarify, this is not an extension of deportation powers; it is putting beyond doubt in the Bill the understanding of how and when these powers can be used—at the earliest opportunity, if it is a conducive deportation. The powers, including to detain at the earliest opportunity, have always existed.
If the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire were agreed to, it would cast doubt on many of the arrests and detentions ahead of deportations that have happened in the past, which I do not think the hon. Gentleman would want to do. To reassure the hon. Gentleman one final time, this is not an extension of deportation powers; it is a clarification of the way that they have always been understood to work. The clause puts beyond legal doubt that if somebody is being detained pending deportation, they can be detained lawfully at the earliest opportunity. That understanding has always been the case, but the clause puts it beyond any legal doubt.
Katie Lam
Clause 41 confirms that the Home Office may detain someone subject to deportation from the point at which the Home Office serves the notification that deportation is being considered, when that deportation is conducive to the public good. We support this provision to allow for detention before a deportation order is signed, but that only applies if the Secretary of State has notified the person in writing. Can I seek reassurance from the Minister that the requirement for a written notice will not build any delay into the process? We also support the provision in clause 42 to allow the Home Office to capture biometrics at the new, earlier point of detention.
Pete Wishart
I will not detain the Committee for long. I do not like clause 41 anyway—I think the extension of deportation powers is overwhelming and I do not believe they are required—but I do not like this retrospection one bit. I have not secured an adequate explanation from the Minister about why that is necessary. I would therefore like to put my amendment to a vote, Dame Siobhain.
The Chair
Thank you for clarifying, as that was going to be my next question. Does anybody else wish to contribute?
Dame Angela Eagle
I am happy to give the hon. Lady the assurance that she sought. If somebody is going to be detained, it will always be done with written notice, and that should not delay anything—it has not in the past.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Dame Angela Eagle
You are getting a lot of practice with locking and unlocking the doors and having Divisions, Dame Siobhain—it is quite exciting this afternoon.
Clause 42 modernises our powers to capture biometric information, so that we have greater flexibility over who can take that information. It will enable a wider range of appropriately trained people to take biometric information, strengthening processing resilience following instances of small boat crossings or unexpected arrivals. In a situation where it is essential to capture biometrics at the earliest opportunity and through streamlined processes, we will be able to utilise our resources more effectively. For example, the measure will enable contractors working at a short-term holding facility to capture biometrics in the same way as other contractors based in detention centres currently do. The clause also includes a power to make secondary legislation where there is a need for others to be able to capture biometric information. That is a future proofing of the legislation.
These are sensible and necessary measures to ensure that we can identify people quickly and establish whether they pose a threat to public safety if they have arrived in an irregular or illegal way.
Katie Lam
We are essentially supportive of clause 42, which among other things allows a person employed by a contractor in a short-term holding facility to be an authorised person to take fingerprints. The clause also includes a regulation-making power to allow other types of people to be authorised for this purpose.
May I ask the Minister how the regulation-making power is intended to be used? Are there currently other categories of people whom the Secretary of State or others in the Department would like to authorise to take fingerprints, or is this essentially a future-proofing measure, as the Minister mentioned?
Dame Angela Eagle
This is essentially future proofing. If another category or range of people became available, we may future proof this power and use the regulation-making power to ensure that they are taking biometrics lawfully.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 42 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 43
Articles for use in serious crime
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
Clauses 43 and 44 cover the creation of two new offences concerning articles for use in serious crime. Law enforcement agencies are increasingly encountering individuals in possession of, or supplying, articles suspected to be intended for serious crime. However, proving intent or knowledge for a prosecution is often difficult, as the connection to a specific crime may not be immediately clear and facilitators frequently go undetected.
To address that challenge, clause 43 introduces two new criminal offences. The first criminalises the possession of specified articles; the second targets the importation, manufacture, adaptation, supply or offer to supply of those articles where there is a reasonable suspicion that they will be used in a serious offence. The specified articles include templates for 3D-printed firearms components, pill presses and vehicle concealments. Those concealments are particularly concerning in relation to smuggling operations, as they are often used to hide individuals for irregular immigration purposes.
The accused will need to prove that they did not intend for the article to be used in a serious offence, or that they could not have reasonably suspected it—given the few, if any, legitimate uses for the articles I have just mentioned. Those offences will be triable either way, with a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, a fine or both.
Clause 43 defines “serious offences” broadly, to include drug trafficking, firearms offences and assisting unlawful migration, as outlined in schedule 1 to the Serious Crime Act 2007. The clause strengthens the ability of law enforcement agencies to target those facilitating serious crime. It does that by closing legal gaps and addressing emerging criminal tools.
Clause 44 defines the specific articles to be included in the new criminal offences in clause 43. As I said, the articles are templates of 3D-printed firearms or their components, pill presses and encapsulators, and vehicle concealments. Law enforcement agencies have been clear that those articles are being increasingly used by organised crime gangs, and they will continue to be used unless we take action now. 3D-printed firearms templates are increasingly being used by organised criminals, and they are at present not illegal to possess. Pill presses are being used to manufacture illicit drugs, particularly benzodiazepines. Similarly, vehicle concealments have become a significant concern for law enforcement agencies, and they are used as aids in people smuggling and irregular migration.
Clause 44 also provides the Secretary of State with the power to amend the list of specified articles, allowing the law to adapt to emerging threats. Any changes will be subject to the affirmative procedure. The Home Office will continue to work closely with law enforcement agencies and other partners to monitor and update that list, ensuring that it remains relevant as criminal tactics evolve. By capturing those articles, the aim is to disrupt the enablers and facilitators who profit from supplying tools for organised crime.
Katie Lam
The clauses seem broadly reasonable, but we have a few questions on which I would appreciate some clarification from the Minister. Clause 43 creates two new offences: the possession of articles for use in serious immigration crime, and the importation, manufacture, and supply or offer to supply of articles for use in serious immigration crime. Could the Minister explain whether she feels that UK Border Force currently has the right capabilities to identify and intercept the harmful materials captured by the clause?
Clause 43 reverses the evidential burden of proof, in that a person charged with offences under it can successfully prove their defence if they provide enough evidence in court to raise a question about the issue, and the prosecution cannot prove the opposite beyond reasonable doubt. Could the Minister please explain why the decision has been taken to do that? The maximum penalty for the offences created under the clause is imprisonment for five years, a fine or both. Could the Minister please explain how and why those penalties were decided on?
Clause 44 defines “relevant article” for the purposes of the offences created in clause 43. Could the Minister please explain whether clauses 43 and 44 provide any operational benefit in terms of tackling smugglers operating abroad, and if so, how?
Dame Angela Eagle
Clause 45 amends the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to include offences related to the possession and supply of articles intended for serious crime, as outlined in clause 43. It will enable law enforcement agencies to seize the assets of individuals convicted under clause 43.
Specifically, the clause adds:
“Offences relating to things for use in serious crime”
to the criminal lifestyle schedules for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A defendant convicted of an offence listed in those schedules will automatically be deemed to have led a criminal lifestyle and to have benefited from criminal conduct over a period of time. That means that assets obtained or spent in the six years prior to conviction are presumed to be derived from criminal conduct and are subject to confiscation unless the defendant can prove otherwise. However, the court is not required to make that assumption if it would result in injustice or is shown to be incorrect.
Confiscation orders are calculated based on the defendant’s monetary gains from crime—known as the benefit—and the assets they have available to them when the order is made. Orders are made to reflect the amount gained from crime and can be increased if the defendant’s finances improve. Non-payment of orders can lead to the defendant returning to prison.
By including these offences in the Proceeds of Crime Act, we can target financially criminals who profit from facilitating crime, disrupting both the crime and the financial gains that support it.
Katie Lam
Clause 45 allows the relevant articles listed under clause 44 to be confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act. We support this measure.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 45 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 46
Electronic monitoring requirements
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
The purpose of clause 46 is to remove any ambiguity about the court’s power to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of a serious crime prevention order or interim serious crime prevention order.
As currently drafted, the clause applies in England and Wales for any serious crime prevention order or interim serious crime prevention order, and in Scotland and Northern Ireland in terrorism-related cases only. However, since the Bill’s introduction, further legal complexities have come to light regarding the devolved Governments’ powers to impose an electronic monitoring condition. Pending agreement from the Scottish Cabinet Secretary, an amendment will be tabled to remove that express provision for Scotland. Northern Ireland’s position is still to be determined. I point that devolution complication out to Committee members and will keep them informed as those discussions develop.
Electronic monitoring serves as a deterrent, but it also improves the detection of any breaches. If the subject violates the conditions, it enables quicker intervention by law enforcement agencies. The clause outlines specific requirements for both the courts and the individual, including the obligation for the subject to consent to the installation and maintenance of monitoring equipment and to avoid tampering with it.
Additional safeguards are included. For instance, electronic monitoring can be imposed only for up to 12 months at a time, with the possibility of extension. A further safeguard requires the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice on handling monitoring data, ensuring consistency and clarity for law enforcement.
This clause on electronic monitoring for those subject to serious crime prevention orders will enhance the effectiveness of such orders and interim SCPOs, supporting efforts to disrupt serious and organised crime, reduce harm and protect the public. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Katie Lam
Clause 46 allows the courts to impose an electronic monitoring requirement as part of a serious crime prevention order. The clause is helpful for investigating suspects who are already in the UK, and we broadly support it. Will the Minister confirm that the requirement for electronic monitoring will apply to those who are on immigration bail? What value does the Minister feel serious crime prevention orders might have as a deterrent for those operating abroad?
Clause 46 specifies that there will be a code of practice to outline the expectations, safeguards and broad responsibilities for the data gathered, retention and sharing of information on these orders. When will that code of practice be issued, and can the Minister please outline what the Government expect to be included?
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I would like the Minister to define electronic monitoring for us, if she can. I do not believe that there is such a definition in the Bill or in other Acts of Parliament. As a result, I worry that there is confusion, so I would welcome her thoughts.
Katie Lam
Clause 47 introduces a new provision for interim serious crime prevention orders. These allow the High Court to impose immediate restrictions, pending the determination of a full serious crime prevention order application. The Court can do that if it considers that it is just to do so. Can the Minister explain a little more by what process the Court will decide whether it is just? Is the criterion that it is necessary for public protection?
Proposed new section 5F of the Serious Crime Act makes provision for without notice applications. That is where the application for an interim serious crime prevention order, or the variation of an interim serious crime prevention order, is made without notice being given to the person against whom the order is made, in circumstances where notice of that application is likely to prejudice the outcome. Subsection (2) of proposed new section 5F makes provision for the Court to allow the relevant person to make representations about the order as soon as is reasonably practicable. Can the Minister explain whether that will always happen after the order is granted?
Dame Angela Eagle
The High Court will be empowered to impose an interim serious crime prevention order if it considers it just to do so. In other words, it is not an evidential test, because the Court does not apply a standard of proof. Rather, it invites the Court to impose an order before it has heard and tested all the evidence in instances that require fast-paced action to prevent and disrupt serious and organised crime. It is therefore an exercise of judgment or evaluation. There is a precedent for this approach in interim sexual risk orders and interim slavery and trafficking risk orders, which are currently a feature of the system and work reasonably well.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 47 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 48
Applicants for making of orders and interim orders
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
Currently, the High Court can make a serious crime prevention order only upon application from the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the police in terrorism-related cases. However, High Court serious crime prevention orders have not been fully utilised; between 2011 and 2021, only two applications were made, and only one resulted in a successful order. Clause 48 extends the list of agencies that can apply directly to the High Court for a serious crime prevention order, or an interim serious crime order, to the National Crime Agency, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the police in all cases, including the British Transport Police and the Ministry of Defence Police. The clause also specifies who within each agency is authorised to apply for these orders.
This extension will simplify and expedite the application processes for serious crime prevention orders, making it easier for agencies that are directly involved in tackling serious crime to make an application where appropriate. It gets rid of a gateway process that has proven to be so tight that it has not allowed very many of these orders to go forward at all. Those agencies are often best placed to apply for a serious crime prevention order as they already have an in-depth knowledge of the case.
The clause also requires the CPS to be consulted by the applicant authority, as it will continue to have responsibility for ensuring that the order is not used as a substitute for prosecution. That is a very important part of ensuring that these orders work appropriately. In practice, this clause will make serious crime prevention orders more readily available to the agencies that are most likely to use them, to ensure that this powerful tool is used to best effect to protect the public by preventing and disrupting serious and organised crime.
Katie Lam
Clause 48 details who can apply to make orders and interim orders, and it replaces and extends the previous list in section 8 of the Serious Crime Act 2007. Can the Minister please explain how long an application for an interim serious crime prevention order might take when made to either the High Court or the Crown court?
Tom Hayes
I want to reflect on where we have got up to. We have moved through the clauses at quite a pace, and that is very pleasing to see. The Bill responds to the requests of operationally and frontline-focused people in law enforcement and border security, and it is an attempt to give them the tools and powers that they need. I particularly wanted to mention that in the context of interim serious crime prevention orders, which we have spoken about in clauses 47 and 48.
That cuts such a sharp contrast with what has happened over recent years. In 2022, one Home Secretary introduced the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. At the time, the Government said that that would deter people from crossing in small boats, but it did not. In 2023, another Home Secretary brought in the Illegal Migration Act 2023. At the time, the Government said that that would turn people away from crossing the channel in small boats, but it did not. In 2024, another Home Secretary brought in the Safety of Rwanda Act, which happily we have just repealed today. At the time, the Government talked about the prospect of sending people to Rwanda, and they said that alone would be sufficient to deter people from crossing the channel in small boats. It is no wonder that that failed, too.
I wanted to set out how in 2022, 2023 and 2024 we had three separate Acts, which all aimed to do something and failed to do so. They have not delivered what operationally focused people have requested. We really need to look at how, just eight months into this new Government, we are turning the page on our asylum system and giving enforcement powers to the people who need them. We are also tidying up the statute book and ensuring greater co-ordination across the key agencies that can secure our border. I commend clause 48 to the Committee, as I do the series of clauses before it and the Bill overall.
Dame Angela Eagle
Clause 49 amends the Serious Crime Act 2007 to introduce a standardised list of notification requirements for individuals and bodies corporate that are subject to serious crime prevention orders. This is a process of standardisation. Currently, notification requirements are added at the court’s discretion on a case-by-case basis. The clause will standardise those requirements for all serious crime prevention orders, improving the consistency and monitoring of the orders across police forces.
We have worked closely with law enforcement partners to identify appropriate requirements. The standard list will include monitoring legitimate income, checking addresses or communication methods for signs that criminal activities are being re-established, and monitoring foreign travel to assess potential indications of a return to crime. The courts can then impose additional requirements and conditions as part of the serious crime prevention order.
For bodies corporate, a designated individual must be named to liaise with the police and provide the notifiable information—including personal details, employment, financial data and contact information—which is essential for law enforcement to ensure compliance and assess risk to public safety.
The clause includes a delegated power to add to the list of notification requirements, ensuring flexibility to meet operational needs as technology evolves. The statutory instrument will be subject to the draft affirmative procedure. Individuals who are subject to a serious crime prevention order must provide the notifiable information within three days of the order coming into force. Failure to provide information, or providing false information, will be a criminal offence punishable by a fine or up to five years’ imprisonment. The standardisation of notifications will improve consistency in managing serious criminals and improve law enforcement agencies’ ability to assess risk and therefore more effectively protect the public.
Katie Lam
Clause 49 sets out a prescribed set of notification requirements, so that a person who is subject to a serious crime prevention order is required to provide the police or the applicant authorities with certain information. We support the clause, although can the Minister explain why three days has been given as the deadline to respond with the notifiable information requested?
Dame Angela Eagle
Three days seems a reasonable amount of time to allow the individual or body corporate concerned to gather the information, but also to ensure that the authorities get it in a timely way, so as to prevent any potential harm that might come from delay.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 49 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 50
Orders by Crown Court on acquittal or when allowing an appeal
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
Currently, the High Court has the authority to impose a serious crime prevention order without a conviction, provided that the Court is satisfied that the person has been involved in serious crime and that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the order will protect the public by preventing, restricting or disrupting their involvement in serious crime.
Clause 50 amends the Serious Crime Act 2007 to grant the Crown court the power to impose a serious crime prevention order on individuals who have been acquitted of an offence, or in circumstances where the appeal has been allowed, if the same two-limb test is met. There may be cases where a person is acquitted but a serious crime prevention order is still needed. This can happen if the threshold for a criminal conviction is not met but there is still enough evidence to show that the person is involved in serious crime, and that the order would protect the public.
The Crown court would have just heard the evidence of the case and would be in the best position to assess whether an order is necessary to protect the public. Again, this approach is not new; similar provisions are found in other laws, such as domestic abuse protection orders under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and restraining orders under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, where orders can still be issued even after an individual has been acquitted. The effect of this clause is to streamline the process, enabling serious crime prevention orders to be applied more regularly and effectively in appropriate cases.
Katie Lam
Clause 50 allows the Crown court the power to impose a serious crime prevention order on acquittal or when allowing an appeal. Subsection (2) provides that in order to impose a serious crime prevention order in these circumstances, the court has to be satisfied both that the person has been involved in serious crime and that the court has reasonable grounds to believe that the order would protect the public by preventing, restricting or disrupting involvement by that person in serious crime in England or Wales. Why do both tests need to be satisfied for a serious crime prevention order to be imposed? Where these cases involve acquittal, as the Minister outlined, it might be hard to satisfy the first test. It seems to us that the second test of protecting the public is sufficient grounds to impose a serious crime prevention order.
Dame Angela Eagle
It is a two-limb test. Obviously, the evidential test for criminal proceedings is beyond reasonable doubt. There is a lower evidential test in other court instances, and it may very well be that someone who did not pass the “beyond reasonable doubt” test in a criminal trial would still be considered by the court to be involved in criminal activity, and therefore they would pass the first limb of the test. They would pass the second limb as they would still be likely to be involved in criminal activity in the future. We think that the two-limb test is an appropriate response to protect civil liberties, while protecting the public from the behaviour of those who are involved in serious and organised crime. We think that that balance is about right.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 50 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Martin McCluskey.)
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsTuesday 11th March 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 March 2025 - (11 Mar 2025)
Mike Tapp
I thank the hon. Member for Stockton West for his creative statement. The chaos in our asylum system and the dangerous rise in illegal small boat crossings is, of course, one of the greatest challenges facing our country, and for years the British public have been promised solutions. They were told that the previous Government’s Rwanda policy would fix the problem, but instead it proved a costly failure. It got stuck in legal battles, was riddled with operational flaws and was utterly ineffective. I will go into detail about that soon.
In 2018, 299 people crossed the channel on small boats. By 2022, the number had surged to 30,000—a hundredfold increase on the Conservatives’ watch. Despite their grand claims that the Rwanda scheme would act as a deterrent, more than 80,000 people crossed the channel after the scheme was announced, and not a single asylum seeker has been successfully removed under it—not one. It is clear that this policy failed.
Let us start with the legal reality. The Rwanda asylum scheme was not just controversial but unlawful. In November 2023, the UK Supreme Court struck it down, ruling that Rwanda was not a safe country to send asylum seekers. The reason for that was systematic defects in Rwanda’s asylum system: almost no claims from Afghans, Syrians or Yemenis were ever approved. The Court found a serious risk that genuine refugees could be sent back to danger, in direct breach of international law. Let us not forget that Rwanda has a track record here: a previous deal with Israel, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, led to refugees being secretly deported back to their home countries, in clear violation of human rights protections. This policy depends on breaking the law, and that is no policy at all. It is a legal and moral dead end.
That is why the Bill repeals the Rwanda scheme and replaces it with a system that upholds the rule of law. It will focus toughness where it belongs: not on desperate people, but on the criminal gangs who exploit them. Instead of wasting years in court, we will implement a legally sound system that actually works.
Further, the Rwanda scheme was not just unlawful; it was an economic disaster. As of mid-2024, at least £318 million had already been spent on this failing policy. What did taxpayers get in return? Nothing—no removals or deterrent effect, just an ever-growing backlog of cases and ever-rising hotel bills, which we have inherited. Even if the scheme had gone ahead, it would have been staggeringly expensive. The National Audit Office estimated that removing just a few hundred people could cost up to £2 million per person, yet we are expected to believe that this was a serious solution to the problem of tens of thousands arriving each year on the Conservatives’ watch.
This Government are putting an end to that waste. Instead of throwing money at a scheme that does not work, we are investing in practical measures. This approach is already delivering results: since taking office, the new Government have increased enforced removals by 24%. That shows that when we have a working system, we do not need gimmicks like the Rwanda plan; we just need competence.
This is not just about law or economics. It is also about how we treat people. A core British value is strength, but another is decency. Strength without decency is weakness, as the previous Government demonstrated. The Rwanda scheme was not just ineffective; it was cruel. It was based on the idea that people fleeing war and persecution should be someone else’s problem, no matter the risk to their safety.
Let us be clear that many of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees—they include people fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan, dictatorship in Iran and war in Syria—but the Rwanda policy, and, it would seem, the Conservatives, did not care. The policy made no distinction, lumped everyone together and treated them as a problem to be shipped off 4,000 miles away, out of sight and out of mind—although of course it did not work.
That is not the British way. This country has a proud history of offering sanctuary to those in need, and we do not abandon our humanitarian duties for the sake of a headline and a gimmick. Of course, those who should not be here will be deported, as we are already seeing, and those who genuinely need help will receive it under this Government. A true deterrent is taking out the smuggling gangs and deporting those who should not be here. The truth is that we do not stop the boats by shouting slogans; we stop the boats by giving people an alternative.
Finally—I thank hon. Members for their patience—the Rwanda plan was never operationally viable. Even if it had survived the legal challenges, the logistics were impossible. To make it work, the Government would have had to detain nearly every small boat arrival indefinitely—a task for which we simply do not have the detention space, the staff or the legal authority. Rwanda itself had agreed to take only a few hundred people a year, which is a drop in the ocean—excuse the pun—compared with the scale of the problem. Meanwhile the real criminals—the smuggling gangs—continued to operate freely. The Rwanda plan did nothing to target them. It was an illusion of control, rather than a real solution.
This Government take a serious, workable approach. That is how we secure the border: not through wishful thinking, but through real enforcement. The Conservatives have tried gimmicks. They tried grandstanding; they tried expensive, legally dubious, headline-chasing policies, and they failed. It is time to move forward. We will uphold the rule of law, protect those in genuine need and take real action against the criminals exploiting them.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
These are difficult problems and challenging questions. Practically every country in the western world is struggling with this and, with the notable exception of Australia, effectively none has solved it. The basic logic of the situation is that, if someone comes here illegally from a place to which it would be dangerous to return them, there are only four options.
First, they could be sent back to the country they came from. That is not legal in our current framework—even before getting to the morality of doing such a thing. Secondly, they could be put in immigration detention indefinitely. That is also not legal; a person can be held in immigration detention only if there is a realistic prospect of removal, which there would not be in this case. Thirdly, they could stay here indefinitely. That is not fair, and it is not what the public want. Finally, they could go somewhere else—a safe third country. Such an agreement was very difficult to broker; indeed, until the Rwandans agreed, many considered it to be impossible.
Clearly, the Government have little time for the Rwanda scheme and destroying it was one of the first things they did in office, but the basic logic problem remains. The last Conservative Government did not get everything right—that is for sure—but the Rwanda scheme was a genuine attempt to solve this truly hard problem, and it remains the only solution that we can see.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady accept that there is a fifth option? Just because someone does not have the right to be in the UK, it does not mean that they do not have the right to go to any other country in the world. The programme of voluntary returns, which massively went down under the Conservatives but has gone up massively under this Government, is part of the solution to that.
Katie Lam
But they do not. There will always be people who come to this country illegally from dangerous places. They are human beings responding to obvious incentives. Could the Minister please tell us which of the four options she thinks is the right one? Is it sending someone back to a dangerous country, which will entail a change in the law and probably leaving the European convention on human rights? Is it holding someone in immigration detention indefinitely, which has the same conditions? Is it allowing people to stay here, or is it sending them to a third country?
Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, once again, to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stuart. I was disappointed but not surprised to hear that the official Opposition want to keep the Safety of Rwanda Act on the statue books. I was disappointed for a number of reasons, which I will set out shortly, but I was not surprised. I have seen the way in which the Tories continue to position and conduct themselves on immigration policy. It is clear to me that they simply refuse to learn the lessons of the last 12 months. The public saw right through their Rwanda plan. They could see it for exactly what it was: a gimmick that was both unworkable and unaffordable.
Before today, I thought I would familiarise myself with the Report stage and the Third Reading of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. At the time, a good number of Committee members, including me, had yet to be elected, but reading the debates really brings home the sense of chaos that had engulfed the Conservative party at the time. The then shadow Home Secretary, now Home Secretary, summed it up:
“What a farce…We have a Prime Minister with no grip, while the British taxpayer is continually forced to pay the price. Former Tory Cabinet Ministers and deputy chairs from all sides have been queueing up to tell us it is a bad Bill. They say it will not work, it will not protect our borders, it will not comply with international law and it is fatally flawed.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 966.]
A previous Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), stated that
“to arrogate to oneself the right to declare one’s own compliance with international law runs the risk of, first, other states finding comfort in our example and, secondly, undermining our own messages in other situations. That makes this not just bad law, but bad foreign policy.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 855.]
This is an example of utter chaos. The Law Society, in welcoming the repeal of the Rwanda Act, said in its evidence to this Committee that the Act
“set a dangerous legal and constitutional precedent by legislating to overturn an evidence-based finding of fact by UK courts that Rwanda is an unsafe country to send asylum seekers to.”
However, the measure made it on to the statute book. The Rwanda plan ran for two years and, as we know and have heard several times this morning, a grand total of four volunteers were sent to Rwanda at the not insubstantial cost of £700 million to the UK taxpayer—quite a remarkable feat.
While hundreds of millions of taxpayer pounds were sent to Rwanda, the legislation’s effect was felt in the UK. As a result of the fantastical Rwanda plan, huge backlogs of asylum claims were building, with tens of thousands of people in hotels unable to leave because of the design of the Illegal Migration Act. We know that the use of hotels does not represent value for money and we are moving away from it. When it comes to the idea of the Rwanda policy being a deterrent, from its inception to the announcement it was to be scrapped, 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats. It is always difficult to measure a deterrent’s effectiveness, but that is a pretty clear indicator that a deterrent it was not.
Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension
Katie Lam Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Dame Siobhain. I am grateful to the Petitions Committee and the well over 200,000 members of the public who have requested that we debate this topic today.
Some may be uncomfortable with the petition before us, which calls on us to suspend all immigration for five years. That would represent a radical departure from the status quo. Some may even be tempted to be dismissive of it, but that reaction would be wrong. I commend the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for taking this so seriously.
This petition is an expression of the deep and entirely legitimate frustration that the British public feel with the way that successive Governments of different political parties have handled immigration. I say that that frustration is entirely legitimate because the level of migration to this country has been too high for decades and remains so. Every election-winning manifesto since 1974 has promised to reduce migration. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) has said, the last Government, like the Governments before them, also promised to do exactly that—but again, like the Governments before them, did not deliver. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) summarised it well in a speech he gave here in Westminster Hall a few months ago:
“Immigration is the biggest broken promise in British politics, and probably the biggest single reason that British politics is so broken.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2024; Vol. 759, c. 163WH.]
This is not only about the betrayal of the public’s trust, terrible though that is. People can increasingly see the tangible downsides of high immigration in their own lives. They can see it in their wages, which are stagnating because they are being undercut; they can see it in their soaring rents, in how hard it is for their children to get on the housing ladder, in the cohesion of their communities and in the pressure on their GPs, their dentists and our infrastructure.
Several Members today have mentioned the public’s fears about that, including the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury). Those of us in Westminster should not be surprised to see members of the public demand a radical change of course. Elected representatives must respond to these material concerns, not with platitudes, but with actual change. If we fail to do so we will see demands for a total shutdown on immigration grow louder and louder.
I do not believe that we should suspend all immigration. Like the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), I believe that a small number of highly skilled people can make a valuable contribution to this country, bringing their talents, experiences and ideas with them—but our current system does not select for such individuals.
In part, this issue is about quantity. Over the last few years, this country has seen unprecedented levels of immigration: over a million people per year from 2022 onwards, and net migration at or expected to be at least 820,000 people, as we have already heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). That means adding as many people to Britain’s population as live in Leeds, this country’s third largest city, every single year. Even if they are highly skilled and keen to assimilate, every person who comes to Britain needs infrastructure, housing and healthcare. Assimilation itself, bringing new migrants into the fabric of our communities, becomes much more difficult with people arriving here at anything like this kind of scale.
This issue is about not just quantity, but about the people we welcome to Britain. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that people who come to this country do not cost more than they contribute. What they pay in tax should at least cover the costs of the public services that they use. That is the opposite of the situation we have now. Only a small proportion of those who have come to this country over the last few years are likely to be net lifetime contributors.
After just five years here, many migrants will become eligible for indefinite leave to remain. With ILR status, they gain access to universal credit and social housing, surcharge-free access to the NHS and much more. According to analysis from the Centre for Policy Studies, over 800,000 migrants from the past five years could soon claim ILR, at an estimated lifetime cost of £234 billion —equivalent to £8,200 per household, or nearly six years of defence spending.
If we accept that the immigration policy of the past few years was a mistake, we should make every effort to reverse its long-term consequences. That is why the Conservative party is advocating that the qualifying period for ILR should be extended, giving us an opportunity to review time-limited visas issued over the last five years. ILR conditions should be tightened to ensure that future applicants are genuinely likely to be net contributors. Those who have come here legally on time-limited visas and who have not contributed enough should be expected to leave.
But it is not enough to correct past mistakes. Moving forward, we must also design a sustainable immigration system that addresses concerns about immigration volumes and the people we allow to come here. Those who come to Britain should be genuinely high skilled, with the capacity to support themselves and their families without relying on public funds. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex has previously argued, culture also matters. We must recognise that fact and design our system with assimilation in mind. It is both fair and sensible to prefer immigration from societies that are more like our own.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend is giving a compelling summation of both the debate and the problem. She will know that Trevor Phillips, the Labour politician and columnist, first deconstructed the idea of multiculturalism. His argument was that it perpetuated the notion that cultures could co-exist without anything that bound them together, but that those cultures would in the end segregate and, in his words, create ghettos. It is important that we challenge that and build a society based on what we share, the things we have in common, and the links and bonds that tie a civil society together.
Katie Lam
It is important to say, as my right hon. Friend’s intervention reflects, that we absolutely can have a multi-ethnic society, but that it is fundamental that we are one country and one people with one perspective.
The kind of immigration system that I have discussed is one that the British people have voted for time and again: limited, selective and tailored to our needs. Unfortunately, I have seen no indication that the Government are willing to implement such a system. Will the Minister confirm that the Government are not planning to extend the qualifying period for ILR? Can he outline what discussions he and others in his Department are having with ministerial colleagues about the impact that new ILR grants will have on public services? Have the Government made any estimation of the number of people who will receive ILR over this Parliament? Finally, will the Minister outline in detail, and most importantly with a specific timeframe, the substantive plans the Government have to address the volumes and impact of immigration, both legal and illegal?
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsThursday 6th March 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 March 2025 - (6 Mar 2025)
Dame Angela Eagle
Again, I will reserve my comments on the new clause until after I have heard what Members on the Opposition Front Bench have to say about it.
The group entails clauses 27 to 29, which cover the arrangements for HMRC to supply information that it holds in connection with its customs functions. The group also covers new clause 23, which I will try and separate out so that I can try to answer the questions from the hon. Member for Stockton West, once he has put them.
Government Departments like the Home Office and law enforcement partners rely on information sharing for a range of purposes, including law enforcement and border security-related purposes. Key datasets are held by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, many of which are held in connection with HMRC’s customs functions. Existing statutory provisions to share this information are complex, fragmented and restrictive in ways that prevent the Government from taking full advantage of technology such as modern big data analytic tools.
Clause 27 will create a new power for HMRC to supply information that it holds in connection with its customs functions to a range of recipients, including UK Ministers, Government Departments, police, and certain international partners. HMRC will be able to supply information for use for the purposes of any of the functions of the recipient.
The sharing of entire datasets and the use of customs information for more than just customs purposes will enable the Home Office and other partners to analyse the information to identify suspicious activity that would not be apparent if each dataset were considered in isolation. This will support key Government objectives, such as disrupting and dismantling organised crime groups, preventing the unlawful movement of people and goods into the country, prosecuting offenders and protecting vulnerable people, as well as the Government’s safer streets mission.
Clause 28 regulates how the information supplied under clause 27 may be used and disclosed by its recipients. The aim is to ensure that the information is fully safeguarded while also enabling Government Departments to use information received for any of their functions. That will ensure that maximum benefit can be derived from the information received.
Information shared under clause 27 is subject to a general rule: the person who receives it must only use it for the purposes for which it was supplied. They may not further disclose it to anyone without HMRC’s consent. However, there are a number of exceptions to this general rule that will enable certain recipients to use and disclose information more flexibly. UK Ministers, Government Departments and the police will be able to reuse customs information for any of their functions and further share it between themselves for specified border security and law enforcement-related purposes. Additionally, there will be extra onward disclosure permissions for the Home Secretary so that she may disclose the information to any person for use for certain immigration and customs-related purposes.
Clause 29 regulates how the information supplied onwards in accordance with clause 28 may be used and disclosed by its recipients. The aim is to ensure that the information is fully safeguarded. The clause focuses on making clear the restrictions surrounding the reuse and onward disclosure of information supplied under clause 28. Any person supplying information in reliance on clause 28 or 29 must notify the recipients of these restrictions, as they apply to the reuse and onward disclosure of the information. In recognition of the particular importance of protecting HMRC information, which can include a great deal of personal information, clause 29 extends the existing criminal offence of wrongful disclosure under section 19 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 to apply to any person who discloses information in contravention of these restrictions.
The intent of clause 29 is a continuation of the safeguards laid out in clause 28, while ensuring that none of the restrictions go against the spirit of the overall information-sharing provision. Clause 29 protects information from being shared beyond the provision’s intent. I will not deal with new clause 23, tabled by the hon. Member for Stockton West until he has spoken to it.
Katie Lam
We welcome the powers in these clauses to share HMRC data. Border Force is responsible for clearing both people and goods at the UK border. There is international precedent for moving towards joint targeting centres for people and goods. From a law enforcement perspective and from ours, the more customs information that can be shared with UK and other Government agencies, the better. HMRC has a range of customs functions, including the collection and management of customs duty, monitoring and controlling the movement of goods, and control of cash entering or leaving the UK. HMRC is bound by a statutory framework of confidentiality and needs a lawful basis to disclose information.
Clause 27 will allow HMRC to share customs information in support of defending the security of the UK borders. The clause allows UK Ministers, Government Departments and the police to reuse customs information for any of their functions, as the Minister laid out. The clause also allows data to be shared with international organisations that have functions relating to the movement of goods or cash across international borders, or if an international arrangement makes provision for co-operation between that organisation and HRMC. We welcome the powers in clause 27. I would like to ask the Minister how often she expects these data-sharing powers to be used for law enforcement and her assessment of what practical effects the powers will have on making it easier to disrupt organised crime networks.
Clause 28, which we support, specifies the circumstances in which UK Government Departments, Ministers and the police can further share customs data. We also support clause 29 on the safeguards included in this clause. We have tabled new clause 23 to disapply data protection laws from data on those who have entered the UK illegally or are foreign national offenders. The purpose of the new clause is exactly the same as the purpose of clauses 27 to 29, which is to minimise barriers to data sharing between agencies for immigration and law enforcement purposes. We table it in the spirit of the support I have already mentioned for the Government’s aims regarding data access.
If someone has entered the UK illegally or is a foreign national offender, law enforcement for their removal is vital and GDPR legislation should not stand in the way of being able to gather and establish any necessary evidence for use in immigration appeals or law enforcement. We wish to remove the barriers to data sharing in these cases, and we know the Government want that too. We hope that they will find the suggested new clause useful.
Dame Angela Eagle
I thank the hon. Lady for speaking to new clause 23. As she said, it seeks to disapply the protections afforded by the UK GDPR regulations to people who have entered illegally or who are foreign criminals. I think that would massively complicate data protection legislation, given that we would always have to keep an eye on who is a foreign national criminal or an immigration offender, over time as well as in the moment. That could make it harder to apply some of the data-sharing rules.
We believe that with the protections in clauses 27 to 29, we can get and share the information that we need to share, to its greatest effect, while protecting people from unlawful disclosure, without complicating things further by trying to check whether somebody is a foreign national offender or has entered the country illegally.
We have a strong history of maintaining high data protection standards. The legislation permits the use of personal data for legitimate purposes, such as immigration control, while giving the public the reassurance that such use will be subject to proportionate safeguards. Our approach will be to rely on the proportionate safeguards, rather than to disapply the entirety of data protection laws to certain groups of people who happen to be in our society at the moment. The proportionality test, with the focus on organised immigration crime, is important.
Dame Angela Eagle
It is certainly a good idea to create legislation that can actually be commenced. Otherwise, we are just all having a fun time in Committee— I can see everyone agreeing with me—and not affecting the statute book, making it easier to do what must be done or enabling the law to help with that rather than having a gigantic problem. As a Minister, I am certainly in favour of enacting laws that we can commence, and I hope that we will be able to commence large parts of the Bill as soon as it has made its proper progress through both Houses.
The UK has a long history of maintaining high data protection standards. Complicating them by trying to disapply them for certain individuals who are in our society whether we want them to be or not implies that we would have to keep very up-to-date, regular records of every single person in the country to check their status. That sounds like ongoing identity checks across the whole population, and that is easier said than done. It is not Government policy, and I did not think it was Opposition policy either. Although the new clause is well meaning, it is a complication rather than an assistance.
Where the exercise of data subject rights, such as the right to seek access to personal data, could undermine the tasks, appropriate exemptions can be applied on a case-by-case basis. Disapplying data protection rules in a blanket fashion for certain groups is unnecessary and could disadvantage some of the most vulnerable people in society, such as victims of trafficking. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for Weald of Kent will not press new clause 23, with the reassurance that we think that these clauses give us the power to use big data and big data analytics in a way that is in keeping with data protection laws, the GDPR and the ECHR.
Katie Lam
I take the Minister’s points about practicality, but in situations where new clause 23 created additional complexity, the Home Office would retain the option to adhere to the GDPR if it wished to; it would just not be forced to do so. We really think that the provision would be a useful addition and we hope the Government will consider it further. However, we do not intend to press it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 27 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 28 and 29 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 30
Supply of trailer registration information
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. That is at the higher end of the harms that one would hope could be prevented by more timely access to this kind of information. These clauses will ensure that those charged with securing the border and beyond can use the information in line with the range of threat types enabled by cross-border lorry movements such as the one my hon. Friend just mentioned, to ensure that the law enforcement community engaged in tackling organised immigration crime, and wider serious and organised crime, are able to tackle it at pace.
Clause 31 complements clause 30 by setting out how information received by the Home Office and the police may be disclosed onwards, with whom and for what purposes. Robust inter-agency and international co-operation is crucial to smashing the criminal gangs. Border Force routinely works with the National Crime Agency and the police for the purposes of criminal investigations connected with the smuggling of people and illicit goods, and with HMRC for customs purposes.
The police, in turn, need to be able to alert law enforcement partners to identify specific trailers of interest. Border Force and the police also need to be able to alert European law enforcement partners to intercept trailers where there might be a threat to life and in support of cross-border co-operation against illicit goods. This clause, subject to safeguards contained in clause 32, enables just such an outcome to be achieved.
Katie Lam
Clause 30 provides a power for the Secretary of State for Transport to supply trailer registration information to the Secretary of State for the Home Department for immigration purposes, law enforcement purposes, human welfare purposes, purposes connected with functions under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, protecting national security, and responding to an emergency. The information can also be shared with the National Crime Agency and HMRC.
We support the powers in the clause. As with the previous group of clauses, this is about being able to bring together the information held by different arms of the state to defend the border, and we wholeheartedly agree with that. I must confess that this is going to be a fairly friendly section of the afternoon, for which I can only apologise to all involved.
Clause 31 provides powers for the onward sharing of information in clause 30. It is important that that information can be shared with those exercising public functions, including those outside the United Kingdom. We also support the new powers in the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 30 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 32
Sections 27 to 31: general provision about disclosure
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
This group includes clauses 32 and 33, which provide for safeguards with respect to the customers and trailer registration information-sharing provisions, which we have just agreed will stand part of the Bill, as well as providing clarity about the meanings of terms within those clauses.
Clause 32 makes general provision about the disclosure of information with respect to clauses 27 to 31. That is information held by HMRC in connection with its customs functions, as set out in clauses 27 to 29, and the DVLA’s trailer registration information in clauses 30 to 31. The clause does two things. First, it clarifies that clauses 27 to 31 do not limit how information may be disclosed outside of the scope of this legislation. It does not tie the hands of a named party to disclosing information subject only to the regime established here if another information gateway exists. Secondly, it clarifies that nothing in clauses 27 to 31 authorises disclosure where it would contravene UK data protection or investigatory powers legislation. In deciding on that, the clauses are to be taken into account. Clause 32 neither treads upon other legal regimes to disclose information outside of the scope of this legislation nor permits anything that would fall foul of existing statutory safeguards—a perfect, balanced approach.
Clause 33 makes provision for the interpretation of clauses 27 to 31—the terms used, their scope and limits. First, it defines the meanings of certain terms through direct definition and in reference to other legislation. Secondly, it seeks to capture all UK police forces and bodies that might be the end users of the information, referring to a “UK authorised person” and a “UK authorising officer” for the purposes of clause 30, and defining what it means in this clause.
The use of the terms “UK authorising officer” and
“the person under whose direction and control the constable…is”
avoids reliance on references to chief constable, commissioner and chief officer, because those terms have prescribed legal meanings that exclude the commanders of the very important ports police and the even more important Mersey Tunnels police, which rely on other ranks to command. That ensures that the definitions apply to everybody, whatever the force. The ports forces and the Mersey Tunnels police are an extremely important part of defending the border, for obvious reasons.
For “UK authorised person”, the term constable, which includes special constable, is used. The clause also refers to
“other person who is under the direction and control of a person who has the direction and control of a body of constables”.
Such is the poetry of legislative diction, but lawyers know exactly what that means. Instead of police civilian staff, or similar terms with prescribed meanings, we have that rather long and convoluted explanation, which includes everybody. That is because not all forces employ police staff subject to employment contracts. Some also use police volunteers. The MOD police uses civil servants in such roles, while the Police Service of Northern Ireland has powers to use civil servants separately from employed police staff. Use of “other person” accommodates all these cases, so it is all-encompassing, and I hope we have not missed anybody out.
Thirdly—this applies only to the trailer data—we have worked with the Crown dependencies and Gibraltar to identify persons undertaking statutory functions equivalent to their UK border security and law enforcement counterparts. We have defined them as a non-UK authorised person and specified them in a table along with the authorising officers.
Finally, the clause establishes a regulation-making power for the Secretary of State to define the meaning of specified purposes related to policing to ensure that the data requirements are met today and can be updated from time to time as operational requirements evolve. Such an extension would be subject to consultation with policing bodies across the UK, Scottish Ministers and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, and it would require the affirmative resolution of both Houses. With those reassurances, I hope members of the Committee will be happy to support clauses 32 and 33.
Katie Lam
Clause 32 makes general provision about the powers of disclosure in clauses 30 and 31. Subsection (2), as the Minister laid out, clarifies that nothing in clauses 27 to 31 authorises disclosure where it would otherwise contravene data protection or investigatory powers legislation. How much difficulty does the Minister envisage these provisions causing for the sharing of information? I seek reassurance—she has offered some already—that the safeguard will not frustrate legitimate data-sharing activities. Clause 33 defines key terms included in clauses 27 to 31, and we have no problems with it.
Dame Angela Eagle
I reassure the hon. Lady that we do not envisage the definitions causing any practical problems with data sharing and the powers defined in clauses 27 to 31.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 34
Provision of biometric information by evacuees etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Katie Lam
Clause 34 provides a power for an authorised person to take biometric information when the Government are in the process of facilitating their exit from a state or territory. The purpose of the power is to ensure that only those who qualify under particular evacuation schemes are able to come to the UK. The power to take biometric information should help to verify identity and conduct screening checks, as individuals in these circumstances are often undocumented. We fully support the provision.
We would be interested to hear more about whether the Government intend to take further action on biometrics, which could be brought about through the Bill. Countries such as Dubai and Singapore are investing in biometric entry and exit systems, as is the EU. The UK does not routinely capture biometrics at the border, although with the new UK electronic travel authorisation, we will collect digital photographs of all non-visa nationals, with the option of retaining fingerprint scans.
We are aware that there are logistical and financial challenges to enabling Border Force to collect biometrics routinely from all passengers on arrival and departure, but there are also substantial benefits, including helping to match illegal migrants and asylum seekers leaving the country, thereby giving a clearer picture of those who are overstaying through more accurate migration figures. We would be interested in hearing how the Government are thinking about biometrics more broadly in the context of their not extending the power to capture biometrics more widely in the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
Working out the potential for electronic borders and a more sophisticated approach to the hundreds of millions of journeys that cross our borders every year is an important part of the day job of my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston. This is a more limited clause, but we are certainly investigating the potential, costs and benefits of a much more digitalised border. We are not about to introduce that through this Bill, but there will be more to be said when that work has been done in due course.
We understand the potential for making border crossings much more convenient for everybody while having more robust information about who has crossed borders, and when and where they were crossed. Some of this is about goods, trailers and a range of other things crossing borders, and ensuring that we have information on when people smugglers and clandestines cross borders, too.
Dame Angela Eagle
Clause 36 will enable the biometrics of persons detained in Scotland under schedule 8 to the Terrorism Act 2000 and schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 to be taken at ports, thereby bringing the position in Scotland into line with that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Those schedules allow an examining officer—a constable, or a designated immigration or customs officer—to stop, question, search and detain a person at a port, or at the border area in Northern Ireland, for the purposes of determining whether the person appears to be a person who is, or has been, engaged in terrorism or hostile activity. An examining officer may stop and question a person whether or not there are grounds for suspecting that the person is, or has been, engaged in terrorism or hostile activity. Those are important powers that allow counter-terrorism police officers to detect, disrupt and deter terrorism and hostile activity at the border.
The powers for taking biometrics in Scotland are contained in paragraph 20 of schedule 8 to the 2000 Act and paragraph 42 to schedule 3 of the 2019 Act. Clause 36 amends those paragraphs, removing the unnecessary restriction unique to Scotland that requires that those detained under those powers are taken to a police station to have their biometrics taken. The clause will allow biometrics to be taken much more easily and quickly in situ, rather than the person having to be transported to a police station.
Katie Lam
Clause 36, as the Minister has laid out, extends biometrics powers to ports in Scotland. As we understand it, immigration enforcement already has the power to take biometrics from people arrested in the UK, including at ports, if they are suspected of having entered or remained in the UK illegally. How does the Minister think that the clause will add to existing operational powers?
Dame Angela Eagle
It is a lacuna in Scotland rather than a problem elsewhere. It is simply that, in Scotland, biometrics cannot be taken except in a police station. In his 2020 report on the operation of the Terrorism Acts 2000 and 2006, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation recommended that we address the issue. We saw the Bill as an opportunity to deal with what is obviously an unintended kink, so we are ironing it out.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsThursday 6th March 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 March 2025 - (6 Mar 2025)
Tom Hayes
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham, who made a very persuasive case. She has stolen much of what I was going to say, which is actually quite helpful. I want to start by reflecting on the international situation, following up on the equally persuasive points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal about the relationship between the UK and France. It is worth reflecting on where we are. The current Home Secretary was the first to visit northern France in almost five years. Using a parallel Conservative political time continuum, that was six Home Secretaries ago.
In December, we had the meeting of the Calais Group in London, which was able to agree a plan to tackle people smuggling gangs. We have seen the Home Secretary and Interior Ministers from G7 countries, Germany included, meeting in Italy to agree a new joint action plan. We have seen the French Government appoint a new special representative on migration, Patrick Stefanini. He will work closely with our new role of Border Security Commander so that we have the closest, strongest, deepest engagement and interaction.
It is worth reflecting on that, because we are not going to solve the problem of small boat crossings on our own. We have to repair the damage done by the previous Conservative Government to our relationships with our major EU allies and partners. One of the consequences of the botched Conservative Brexit deal is that the UK no longer participates in the EU’s Dublin system, which determines which countries should take responsibility for processing an asylum claim where a person has links with more than one country, and provides a mechanism to return the person to the responsible country. That is underpinned by a shared database of asylum seekers’ fingerprints. It is chaotic that we had a deal that robbed us of the opportunity to take part in that system.
Tom Hayes
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I have another compelling statistic for her. Implicit in much of what the Conservatives say is the idea that the UK alone is carrying the burden of asylum seeker hosting, but the UK is actually fifth, behind Germany, France, Italy and Spain, in our receipt of the number of asylum seekers in the year ending September. The point I am making is that actually, contrary to much of the rhetoric that we hear in the Chamber and may be hearing in this debate that the United Kingdom is somehow on its own, shouldering all the responsibility for providing a safe place to asylum seekers, we are not. That is worth mentioning, because as a country we are trying to repair our relationships—
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsTuesday 4th March 2025
(1 year ago)
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Mike Tapp
His speech—my apologies; I will not make that mistake again. It is really important that we look at what is covered in the Bill, and how it enables our Border Security Command, the National Crime Agency, the police, the border forces and the security services to act. We said before the election, in our manifesto, that we were going to take this on in a counter-terror style, so that we can get to those who are looking to launch the boats before they launch them. These clauses go some way to achieving that; I will not quote the NCA director general again, but he was very enthusiastic about that. The further clauses include acts taking place abroad and not just in the United Kingdom.
On the specific amendments, we must be clear. We do not know who is a genuine asylum seeker at the point that they seek to cross; we will not know for some time. The elephant in the room is that, even if they are genuine asylum seekers, they are in France. They are not in danger, as they would be in Sudan, and putting others at risk by preparing these crossings, facilitating them or being involved is not acceptable. Asylum seekers are not above the law, and these clauses ensure that they will be held to account.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
As hon. Members will have read, clause 13 creates a new offence of
“Supplying articles for use in immigration crime”.
The offence has two limbs. First, that the person supplies or offers to supply those articles to another person, and secondly that, when they do so, they know or suspect that the item will be used in connection with any offence under sections 24 or 25 of the Immigration Act 1971—illegal entry and assisting unlawful immigration, respectively. I have a question for the Minister on the reasonable excuse elements of the clause. It is a defence for a person charged with this offence to show that they had a reasonable excuse. Subsection (3) defines a reasonable excuse as explicitly including that,
“(a) their action was for the purposes of carrying out a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”,
which seems reasonable, or,
“(b) they were acting on behalf of an organisation which—
(i) aims to assist asylum-seekers, and
(ii) does not charge for its services.”
That second defence seems to the Opposition to create a large loophole in the law. Does the Minister accept that these defences will have the effect of exempting non-governmental organisations from criminal charges for helping asylum seekers to cross the channel? Why would the Government seek to do that?
The defence categorises organisations that aim to assist asylum seekers into those that do not charge for their services and those that do. Surely this criminal offence is a criminal offence regardless of who is responsible; why would it be any less criminal if someone does it voluntarily? Why is making money from something the determinant of whether it is a crime? As we heard in evidence, charities can be “mischievous”—I think that was the word used—in their activities and in how close they come to facilitating illegal crossings to the UK. Does the Minister accept that the activities of some charities can veer close to the line of facilitating illegal entry? If so, what do the Government intend to do about it?
The threshold for the defence is low. The accused simply needs to provide sufficient evidence to raise an issue, and the contrary must not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Might that be why the Home Office impact assessment considers that between four and six prison places—I believe the central estimate is five—will be required per year once this steady state is reached? The Home Office has lauded the new powers and offences in the Bill as being key to smashing the criminal smuggling gangs, but it does not appear to consider that many people will be convicted under the new offences. How can both those things be the case?
Clause 14 creates the new criminal offence of handling articles for use in immigration crime. The person has to receive or arrange to receive a relevant article, remove or dispose of an article for the benefit of another person, or assist another person to remove or dispose of a relevant article. Again, the clause provides the same defence to the offence as clause 13 does—namely, that the action of the accused was
“for the purposes of carrying out a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”,
or that they were acting
“on behalf of an organisation which—
(i) aims to assist asylum-seekers, and
(ii) does not charge for its services.”
I therefore have the same questions for the Minister about this defence as I did for the defence in clause 13.
Clause 15 provides a definition of “relevant article” for the purposes of the new offences in clauses 13 and 14. There are exemptions for food and drink, medicines, clothing, bedding, tents or other temporary shelters, and anything to preserve the life of a person in distress at sea or to enable such a person to signal for help. Will the Minister set out the kinds of articles that she therefore expects to be captured by the offences in clauses 13 and 14? It would be useful to know what items the Home Office, Border Force and the police specifically wish to disrupt. There is also a power in clause 15 for the Secretary of State to amend the list of relevant articles. Will the Minister explain what purpose that power serves? The list of what counts as a relevant article is almost limitless, so does she envisage that the power will be used primarily to create exemptions?
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire has tabled amendment 3 to specify that if a person is an asylum seeker, they cannot commit the offence in clause 13: supplying articles for use in immigration crime. It would be good to understand why the Scottish National party does not think it is possible for asylum seekers to commit that offence. How are law enforcement officers supposed to know that a person is genuinely an asylum seeker—and even if they are, what happens if their application is subsequently rejected?
The hon. Gentleman also tabled an amendment to require the commander to include in their annual report information about how they have paid due regard to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on action against trafficking. My views are the same as those set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West on amendment 1.
Chris Murray
I apologise for my longer interventions, Mr Stuart; I will try to bundle them all into this speech.
One of the most important things that we heard during evidence was from Dr Walsh from the Migration Observatory. He said that demand for cross-channel crossings is essentially inelastic. Even if the price of a crossing doubles, there will still be demand for it; people rise to meet that price. That tells us that deterrence and disruption of the demand alone will never be enough to tackle the horrors that we are seeing in the channel at the moment. We must also disrupt the supply of ability to cross the channel. That is an important part of the Bill, and these clauses go right to the heart of it.
On the point about criminalising all asylum seekers, ahead of oral evidence, I read carefully the submissions we have had from organisations I have worked with in the past. I found the testimony of the Crown Prosecution Service very convincing. It stated clearly that in addition to the primary legislation, the CPS will produce guidance that will set out both the public interest threshold and evidential test that it would seek in order for a case to go to prosecution. It was very clear that the kind of hypothetical examples set out by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire would not meet that threshold.
On the point about decriminalising all asylum seekers, to clarify the point I was trying to make in my interventions, during a crossing anyone can declare themselves an asylum seeker. That then breaks down into different categories: someone who is genuinely eligible for asylum in the UK and will, when they go through the process, get refugee status; someone who is genuinely seeking asylum, but will not meet the threshold when they go through the process and will not get such status; and someone who knows that they are ineligible, or might be eligible on some counts, but is engaged in the criminal act of facilitating illegal entry into the UK and putting those other people’s lives in danger. At that moment, it is not possible to distinguish between those people; the asylum process is there to do that.
Were we to accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, it would be a wrecking amendment. I know it is not intended that way, but it would in reality be a wrecking amendment to any kind of intervention on a crossing at sea.
Chris Murray
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, but I do not accept that the proposal is creating new criminal offences for all asylum seekers or for all people; it is creating new criminal offences for those engaged in the exploitation of people and the trafficking or smuggling of them across the channel in great danger. We cannot allow that to continue if we care about those people’s lives at all.
In the constituency of every single MP in this room, there will be a cannabis factory where a probably under-age Vietnamese child is working at cultivating cannabis. If they arrived in the past two years, they came across in one of those boats. Significant, serious organised crime networks are exploiting the vulnerability of those people in order to facilitate such crossings. This proposal is how we stop them doing it, and that affects every one of our communities.
I am aware that I am testing people’s patience, but I want to make two final points. The first is about the criminalisation of organisations that help asylum seekers. That is an important point, and the distinction has to be clear. I did have concerns about this measure being in the Bill, but the evidence sessions completely reassured me. The testimony of the CPS was that asking about the weather in Dover when in Calais, and those kinds of things, would not be facilitating immigration crime. The testimony that the National Crime Agency is using these measures to tackle serious and organised crime makes it clear what the purpose of the clauses is.
The hon. Member for Kent—
Chris Murray
Weald of Kent, sorry—that is quite far south for me. The hon. Lady made a point about the sector and charging for services. Some organisations out there are charitable and provide services for free, and some organisations charge enormous fees and are extremely exploitative. That is where that distinction comes from. That would be my interpretation of the legislation.
Chris Murray
That is absolutely right—but, in my experience of the channel coast and of working in the refugee sector, those do not exist. Anyone who was to do that would probably be giving immigration advice, which is a regulated component under UK legislation. That would be structured differently from someone on the coast or on a boat or vessel, in the way that this legislation sets out. I am happy to be corrected, but that would be my interpretation.
Finally, I come to the point about mobile phones and the different things listed that can be seized when a vessel is disrupted. Last week, we heard so much evidence—there is so much evidence out there—that the crossing of the channel is the final stage in a very long process involving criminal gang networks, organised crime networks and just immigration networks that stretch through Europe, including allied countries and countries very difficult for us to have relationships with. We know that those smuggling networks are all orchestrated by mobile phone, so it is important that the Bill incorporates that.
On the concerns that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire about criminalising the most wretched people in the world, the exemptions in the Bill are clearly humanitarian. They are clearly the kinds of things that people need to survive on a dangerous sea crossing or on their arrival. The only exception is their phone. It is because we know that the data taken from those phones is critical in the fight that phones are excluded. That is why it is important that that component remains in the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
The provisions in clause 16 create an additional tool to act earlier to disrupt criminal gangs smuggling people into the UK. The new offence targets specified preparatory activities associated with people smuggling. These activities relate to the collection, recording and possession, viewing or accessing of information that is likely to be useful to a person organising or preparing for a journey of more than one person into the UK, where their entry or arrival constitutes an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. These specified activities must also be conducted in circumstances giving rise to reasonable suspicion that the information being collected, recorded, possessed, viewed or accessed will be used in organising or preparing for such a journey.
This clause is levelled strongly against people-smuggling gangs and their associates. It includes a defence for someone of undertaking these specified activities for their own journey only. Also included as a defence is a non-exhaustive list of reasonable excuses, where one express excuse is conducting these activities to carry out or to prepare to carry out the rescue of a person from danger or serious harm. The maximum sentence for this offence is five years’ imprisonment.
Katie Lam
Clause 16, as the Minister has just set out, creates a new offence of collecting information for use in immigration crime. A person commits such an offence if a person:
“collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person organising or preparing for a relevant journey or part of such a journey…possesses a document or record containing information of that kind, or…views, or otherwise accesses, by means of the internet a document or record containing information of that kind.”
This is an extremely wide set of information that is being criminalised. We understand the desire to keep these offences broad in order to capture as many offenders as possible, and we support that aim. However, if the definition is too wide, there is a risk that it becomes meaningless and therefore self-defeating. So, it is important to understand how the Minister believes law enforcement will assess whether the information is of a kind likely to be useful to a person organising or preparing for a relevant journey. Could she please explain how this test will be met in practice? It would also be helpful, for similar reasons, to know when the CPS will publish its guidance on what might meet the threshold for an offence to be committed under this clause. Finally, it is again a defence for an organisation that aims to assist asylum seekers if it does not charge for its services. So, we have the same questions and concerns about this defence as we did in relation to the preceding clauses.
Mike Tapp
I will quickly talk about this clause, because it is one of my favourite clauses in the Bill. Having worked in a counter-terror role in the past, I know that one of the most effective ways of preventing terror attacks on the streets of the United Kingdom is by identifying hostile reconnaissance, whether it is physical or online. That is why I am so happy to see this clause in the Bill, because it gives our authorities the opportunity to get to these vile criminals before they take to the seas.
Dame Angela Eagle
Clause 17 provides for the offences set out in clauses 13 and 14—the supply and handling of articles for immigration crime—and clause 16—the collecting of information for immigration crime—to apply to activities committed both inside and outside the UK, regardless of the nationality of the person by whom they are done. The activities criminalised by these offences are often carried out overseas, as well as in the UK, by perpetrators of various nationalities to facilitate people smuggling to the UK. This clause will strengthen the offences, enhancing the ability to disrupt those involved in this trade, indiscriminate of their nationality and the location of their crime.
Clause 17 also makes provisions for, where an offence under clauses 13, 14 or 16 is committed outside the UK, proceedings to be taken in the UK. For application in Scotland, this clause provides that those proceedings are to be made in accordance with the relevant processes and bodies of the devolved Administration. Finally, this clause provides that section 3 of the Territorial Waters Jurisdiction Act 1878, which requires consent from the Secretary of State for certain prosecutions of non-UK nationals on territorial waters, does not apply. In doing so, the impacts of these offences are not narrowed and law enforcement is able to pursue perpetrators of these offences when committed on territorial waters.
Katie Lam
Clause 17 sets out that the offences of supplying articles for use in immigration crime, handling articles for use in immigration crime and collecting information for use in immigration—so the clauses that we have just discussed—apply to things done both inside and outside the United Kingdom, regardless of the nationality of the person by whom they are done. In essence, clause 17 makes these three new offences extraterritorial. Subsection (2) provides that where the offence is taken outside the United Kingdom, proceedings may be taken in the United Kingdom.
When we heard evidence from Sarah Dineley, the head of international at the Crown Prosecution Service and the national CPS lead, she said that this provision and subsection (7) of clause 18, which extends the offence of endangering lives at sea to acts committed outside the UK, create challenges. She said,
“we can obtain intelligence and evidence from our overseas counterparts at both judicial and law enforcement level…the Crown Prosecution Service has a network of liaison prosecutors based across the world…we can issue what are called international letters of request. They require the recipient country to execute the action, or to provide the information that we have asked for.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 31-33, Q30.]
However, she also said that, for these new offences to work, there has to be “dual criminality”; that is to say,
“there has to be the equivalent offence in the country that we are making the request to, and there are some gaps across Europe in establishing dual criminality for all the immigration offences that we currently have on our books.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 33, Q33.]
Can the Minister reassure the Committee that offences equivalent to those in clauses 13, 14 and 16 exist internationally in relevant partner countries so that we can be assured that the extraterritorial scope of the offences will be effective in tackling organised immigration crime? Can she name those offences or share a list? We fully support the aims of the Government but are keen to establish the efficacy of these measures in disrupting the vile work of people-smuggling gangs.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Third sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsTuesday 4th March 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 4 March 2025 - (4 Mar 2025)
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
We on the Opposition Benches struggle to understand why the law must set out that the Border Security Commander must be a civil servant. The Minister said that amendment 10 implies the commander should not be a civil servant, but all it seeks to do is remove the requirement that they should be. If the Home Secretary and, presumably, the Home Office permanent secretary believe that the role is best filled by a civil servant, perhaps for the reasons of co-ordination that the Minister set out, so be it—they can still be appointed as a civil servant—but the legislation will mandate that they have to be, and we struggle to understand why that requirement is necessary.
Dame Angela Eagle
I made it clear in my response to the hon. Member for Stockton West that the recruitment could be done externally. Were somebody to be appointed who was not a civil servant when they applied, they would then come into the Home Office on civil service terms, bringing with them whatever experience they had and that the recruitment process had determined would be suitable for the role. I am not sure there is much between us, unless the hon. Lady is implying that, by the act of becoming a civil servant, the commander would somehow be less effective. I do not believe that is the case, especially as the idea is to ensure that the Border Security Commander can convene the entire system across Government Departments. Having a base in the Home Office, albeit designated as a civil servant, will make that more effective rather than less effective. To be clear, if the legislation gets on the statute book, any future office holder would not have to come from the civil service. I hope that reassures the hon. Lady.
Katie Lam
I thank the Minister for that response, which is reassuring, but it does not quite address the concern. These issues are very difficult, and I presume the Minister accepts that it is possible that it might be better, either in due course or in relatively short order, for the commander to be operationally independent. If that is the Home Secretary’s judgment as time goes on, the Government will have to come back to Parliament to change the law. Would it not be better for them to give themselves the flexibility?
Dame Angela Eagle
The hon. Lady implies that total independence from the machinery of government would somehow assist in the job that we wish the Border Security Commander to do. I do not agree with her in that analysis. The job of the Border Security Commander is to convene and cohere and to strategically focus, across Government Departments, with a focus on checking that our border security is as effective as it can be. I do not think that total independence is going to add to effectiveness in that context. In fact, we believe that having the commander operating out of the Home Office at a director general level, but appointed by the Prime Minister with a special place in primary legislation, is a more effective way to ensure that the commander’s basic role has the biggest-percentage likelihood of being effective.
Dame Angela Eagle
I do not want to read out the job description, which was put out there ahead of Martin Hewitt being appointed last year. It is there for all to see, it is a public document. The role is very much about being able to operationally cohere the system and to make certain by the operation of the Border Security Commander’s board, upon which sit many of the other parts of Government that need to have regard to the strategy, that we decide how to take forward and deal with threats to our border security. It is not really rocket science, and I do not think that there would be much to be gained from putting the details of all of that into primary legislation.
It is important that as the threats to our border security evolve, which they certainly will do over time, that we do not find ourselves with a very rigid set of requirements in primary legislation, which is hard to change. The idea is to have convening powers to give flexibility to the commander to ensure that he can bring together all of the forces across Government that are charged with security in this area and ensure that the focus on organised immigration, crime and border security is always at the forefront of the work that they do.
Katie Lam
I am a little confused by some of the contributions from Labour Members. They seem to be advocating for the commander to be a civil servant, and that is fine, but that is not actually what we are discussing. The question here is whether there could be any benefit in having some flexibility for the Home Secretary to do something different, and we do not feel that that point has been answered.
Dame Angela Eagle
Could the hon. Lady go into more detail about what she means with respect to that? I have given her an assurance that the Border Security Commander could come from outside of the civil service and be appointed from outside of the civil service, but would then take up a civil service role of convening within Government and with the support of Government. That means that we do not have to set up an entirely new independent structure and fund it separately, which would be more likely to disintegrate rather than integrate the strategic approach to this multifaceted problem. I am beginning to wonder what the hon Lady has got against civil servants?
Katie Lam
Nothing whatever. There are lots of parts of the Home Office where the principle is accepted, that sometimes, particularly for difficult things and things that the Department has struggled to achieve, independence can be valuable. It sounds like the Minister is saying that she does not feel that that is the case. We must accept that, but we do not have to agree with it.
Dame Angela Eagle
It is true that independence has a very valuable part to play, particularly in holding Government structures to account. For example, the independent inspectors of our detention or prison estates who are allowed to go in and publish without fear or favour regarding what they find there. That is obviously a very important role where independence matters. But in this context, the Border Security Commander is cohering the effect and the work across Government that is trying to keep our borders properly protected. That is operational. It ties into the diplomatic and political as well, although obviously Ministers have an important part to play in that too.
The hon. Lady has nothing to worry about when it comes to the Border Security Commander sitting in a civil service context given that nothing in this Bill means that anyone who was not a civil servant when they applied to the post of Border Security Commander would be excluded from consideration. Being in the civil service to begin with is not a requirement.
Dame Angela Eagle
It is quite revealing that the hon. Gentleman seems to think that the natural order of things is for Ministers to be at loggerheads with civil servants and the people who are operationally charged with delivering on objectives. That may say more about Opposition Members than about the way we are seeking to achieve operational effectiveness and objectives in what we are doing.
Finally, new clause 21 focuses on the Border Security Commander’s functions in relation to tackling small boat crossings to the UK. This is an all-encompassing new clause, which goes far beyond the commander’s functions as set out in the Bill. The new clause seems to want the commander to be all things to all people.
The immediate priority is organised immigration crime-enabled small boat crossings. The Border Security Commander will, and necessarily must, evolve over time to provide the systems leadership across all threats as they emerge. Such crossings did not really emerge until 2018, but they have become embedded and more of a threat over time. Had we been discussing something like this in 2017, small boat crossings would not have featured at all. It is therefore important that our legislation allows the Border Security Commander to change approach or focus as new threats emerge. Threats evolve and change over time. Our approach accounts for that by stipulating in legislation that the Border Security Commander has particular objectives that might be important now but less important in the future. The new clause seems to me to present an overly difficult and inflexible way of moving forward.
Dame Angela Eagle
Yes.
I was going to talk about what new clause 21 suggests we should do. For example, the subsection on asylum processing seems to say that the Border Security Commander should somehow take over the duty to ensure that those who arrive illegally are processed within six months—something that the Conservatives did not achieve at all during their time in Government. I am not certain why the Border Security Commander should be empowered to take over the entirety of the asylum system.
Next, the new clause states that the commander should also be in charge of immigration enforcement, and that they should do removals as well as asylum processing and defending the border. The authors of the new clause seem to think that the Border Security Commander should be not only independent, but virtually all-seeing, all-singing and all-dancing, and that they should do absolutely everything with which the entire immigration and asylum system is currently charged. That is overreach, to say the least.
The new clause also suggests that the commander should remove people to a safe third place within six months for processing. In all their years in office, the Conservatives never managed to achieve any of those things. To put them into a new clause for a Government that has been in office for seven months—a Government who were left with the most appalling mess, with an asylum system that had crashed and had massive backlogs, and with a structure in the Illegal Migration Act that made it illegal for us to process any new arrivals who claimed asylum after March 2023—and to complain that we have not sent small boat arrivals home fast enough takes the biscuit.
Dame Angela Eagle
Not for the first time today, I agree with my hon. Friend. When the time comes, we will be voting against this new clause.
Katie Lam
The Minister perhaps slightly mischaracterises new clause 21. It states that the Border Security Commander should “have regard to”, not manage, the wider aims of the Home Office in securing the border. Why would the Minister not want the Border Security Commander to have regard to that?
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 21(1)(c) talks about:
“making arrangements with a safe third country for the removal of a person who enters the United Kingdom without leave, or with leave that was obtained by deception”
and new clause 21(1)(b) mentions:
“ensuring that a decision is taken on a claim by a person under subsection (1)(a) within six months of the person’s arrival in the United Kingdom”.
If that is not asking the Border Security Commander to take over the workings of the asylum system, I am not sure I understand what the new clause is trying to do.
Katie Lam
The new clause clearly does not do that. The two points that the Minister just mentioned are part of a broader sentence that states that the Border Security Commander
“must have regard to the objectives”
in subsection (1). The new clause does not state that the Border Security Commander should do those things themselves.
Dame Angela Eagle
But how on earth could asking the Border Security Commander to have regard to those things lead him or her to deal with border security? The new clause would take away the focus in the current Home Office arrangements on immigration enforcement and the asylum system. The new clause says that the Border Security Commander must have regard to all the processes in areas of the Department they have nothing to do with. It would upend working relationships. It would make it impossible and incoherent to deliver any kind of—
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)
Katie Lam ExcerptsThursday 27th February 2025
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 February 2025 - (27 Feb 2025)
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Q
Alp Mehmet: Tony, you start, and then I will catch up with the question, because I did not quite hear.
Tony Smith: We may well say the same thing. The question was about the fact that the Rwanda plan did not deter anybody because we still had 84,000 people arrive. I think the reason for that was that it was never, in fact, implemented. The intelligence coming across from Calais was that the smugglers and migrants never believed that it was going to happen. Once it became clearer that the Safety of Rwanda Act had passed, and that it might well become a reality, there was intelligence to suggest that some people were thinking twice about getting into dinghies, and there was some displacement into Ireland as a result. Of course, we will never know now, because we never actually implemented it.
We had a change of Government, and the new Government made it very clear that they were going to abolish the Rwanda plan, so we are where we are, but I would have liked an opportunity to see what would happen if we had started at least some removals. We had flights ready to go. I would have liked to see the impact that starting some removals would have had on the incoming population. We will never know now, I am afraid. Clearly, we hardly removed anybody to Rwanda in the end—I accept that—but I would have liked us to at least try, to see if it had an impact.
Alp Mehmet: It was never going to be the solution. It was not going to be the way to stop those people jumping into boats and coming across, but it was going to help. There needed to be other changes. I appreciate that we are not going to resile from the European convention on human rights any time soon, but while it is there, it is very difficult to be certain that people will be dissuaded. Some will be, some would have been, and we know that some were already being deterred. It was a pity, I am afraid, that the Rwanda deal went.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
Q
Karl Williams: If we are talking about what deterrence we might need or what pull factors there are, having charities that in some circumstances are facilitating people crossing the channel is clearly an extra pull factor—probably a small one in the grand scheme of things, but it is there. I am thinking about organisations such as Care4Calais, which provide, for example, phone-charging services to migrants who are waiting in the sand dunes and the camps around the beaches where the crossings are made. They can recharge their phones; they are therefore in contact with the smuggling gangs. I think that there is a hole in the system that needs to be closed, and I do not think that this Bill does it.
Tony Smith: There are charities and charities. Some charities are not in any way involved in facilitation; it is a pure “care in the community” exercise or function in Calais. But I think other charities are a little bit more mischievous: they might be helping people with what to say when you are near the border, how to present your asylum claim, and how to get to a beach that might not be patrolled. I would like to see more work done on that.
Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)
Q
Given that the Bill clearly provides a deterrent to smugglers, to the people-smuggling business and to the criminal gangs in the channel by disrupting their activity, and by making it a greater expense, why do you still think it is a mistake—I think two or three of you said it outright, but you all seem broadly supportive of the Rwanda scheme—to be repealing those Acts with the Bill?
Tony Smith: There is the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and there is the Illegal Migration Act 2023. I said earlier that I was not a great fan of the IMA, for the very reasons that you have stated: it brought in the ban too early, and people were being banned from re-entering this country before we had even removed them. That was impacting on port cases. It was a hugely difficult time, because that law put all of the eggs in the Rwanda basket. As you say, that left increasing numbers of boat people being served with a notice that they were going to Rwanda, when they were never going to go to Rwanda; they were going into the system that you described. I do not think that that was a very good idea. If we had put the IMA to one side, with the duty to remove, we could have stuck with NABA.
Then we had SORA, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act, which would have turbocharged NABA. It would have given you a triage option: either to accept people into the asylum system quickly and process them, as you are doing now, or—for others, where you wanted to make a point that it is not okay to come across in a small boat and get to stay in the UK—to send some of them to Rwanda. That is what we could have done under NABA and SORA, and my view is that the IMA disrupted that.
Karl Williams: I suppose the asylum backlog of inadmissible people is a function of the disjunction whereby different parts of the legislation are being implemented at different speeds. Obviously the intention at the beginning was that we would have the flights going off in January or February 2023. When the ECHR injunction stopped the first flight, that derailed it. You could conceivably have had a situation in which a combination of some offshoring and the deterrent effect of that meant that the backlog of inadmissible cases did not grow. The fact that Rwanda was stalled in the courts for a couple of years, and then just did not happen at all, meant that that amount was inevitably going to increase. That was then locked in.
Jo White
Q
Professor Brian Bell: It is probably not a very strong deterrent. To repeat myself, all the evidence is that when asylum claimants think of where to claim asylum they do not have detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of the procedures of different countries. They almost certainly do not know what might happen in five to 10 years, which is the length of residence that they would need to apply for citizenship, so I am not sure it will be a significant deterrent. However, it is important to recognise that citizenship is not a right; it should be viewed as a privilege that people earn. It is reasonable for the Government to take the view that citizenship should not be given to certain people. I do not think there is anything wrong with that—it seems a legitimate observation.
Katie Lam
Q
Professor Brian Bell: You would not want to disrupt some of the incentives. For example, the unemployment rate is 7.8% in France and 4.4% in the UK. The gap is slightly larger for young people than for the population as a whole. I am sure the Government would not want to change that incentive, although the French probably would. If you have a buoyant economy relative to your neighbour, at least in the labour market, that is an incentive. There is an incentive in terms of things that you would not necessarily want to change. The English language is really important as a pull factor, and the fact that there are diasporas already in the country.
There tends to be some evidence that the UK has been somewhat more successful than France at integrating immigrants into society, particularly second-generation immigrants: there is some evidence that whereas employment rates are always very poor for first-generation immigrants relative to natives, that gap narrows quite a bit in the UK when you look at second-generation immigrants. That is less true in France, so people may think the opportunities are better here.
The area where the Government could take action—and they are with the Employment Rights Bill—is that we have lots of employment rights in this country, but do not bother enforcing any of them, because we do not spend money on HMRC minimum wage enforcement teams and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority does not have enough money to employ people to do all the work it needs to do. If the Fair Work Agency can take over and actually be beefed up, then we can enforce labour standards a bit more and that may discourage people, because one of the attractions of coming to the UK is that our looser enforcement of rules in labour market makes it easier to employ people who are here irregularly.