"My Lords, I will be brief, because I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, particularly about the position of domestic migrant workers. This is something we will come back to at later stages of the Bill, but as the noble Baroness has raised it now, I just put …..." Lord Alton of Liverpool - View Speech
"My Lords, whether or not President Macron is tuned into our debate today and supportive of what noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, has just said, she will be glad to know, as I was, that the British Red Cross says:
"I agree with the general thrust of the argument the noble Lord, Lord Harper, is putting to the Committee. He talked about getting the balance right, and that is really what I was arguing. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that these are children or young people, …..." Lord Alton of Liverpool - View Speech
"I am grateful to the Minister. He will recall the example I gave of a two year-old boy in Sudan wanting to be reunited with his grandmother. It took 11 months to do that, and it required the transportation of information half-way across Africa in order to achieve it.
"The noble Baroness is quite right. This issue was specifically raised by Mr Alex Sobel, Member of Parliament for Leeds, who encouraged us to include those words about hygiene. It was based on exactly what the noble Baroness has just said about our concern for human dignity. We talk a …..." Lord Alton of Liverpool - View Speech
"I do not wish to detain the Committee now, but will the noble Lord, at some point between now and Report, at least have a conversation with me about what he thinks is draconian in these international conventions to which we are already a signatory, and which these amendments will …..." Lord Alton of Liverpool - View Speech
"I recall that I was keen to tell the noble Lord, Lord German, that in fact paragraphs 1 to 52 had been agreed unanimously. There were Divisions in the report—I mentioned that—but the Minister will be pleased to know that the Labour members of the committee voted in favour of …..." Lord Alton of Liverpool - View Speech
"My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response to this long list of amendments. I apologised earlier to the Committee that, inevitably, it was going to take time to get through them all.
"My Lords, the first part of day 2 in Committee deals with organised immigration crime offences. We will hear later about safeguards and modern slavery, and will return to the question of what might constitute a reasonable explanation on the part of an irregular migrant, but we begin with Amendments …..." Lord Alton of Liverpool - View Speech