Immigration Bill

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, who made a very powerful speech. I welcome the fact that there has been movement on the part of the Government in these amendments, and I very much welcome the helpful questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who has played such a role in getting us to where we are now. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, acknowledged, some people may still be made stateless as a result of the clause. Therefore, I am not as happy as some other noble Lords appear to be—or perhaps content is the word—and I support Motion B1.

In the Commons, some of the most pertinent questioning came from the Government’s own Back Benches. Sir Richard Shepherd asked,

“how the people of Britain will know that the action has been taken in a rational and reasonable way, when it is obscured from public view”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 194.]

Dr Julian Huppert asked:

“What will happen if somebody in the UK goes through the process, the Home Secretary believes that they are able to get citizenship from another country and they make a bona fide application for that citizenship, but it is turned down?”.

In effect, this was also the question posed today by my noble friend. When pressed—and he had to be pressed—the Minister, James Brokenshire, responded that they could be given,

“limited restricted leave to remain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 196.]

But that is not a satisfactory substitute for citizenship and the rights that go with it.

My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and others have expressed very grave concerns that the Government may well be waiting for someone to be out of the country to deprive them of citizenship. One concern of the Joint Committee on Human Rights was how often that has happened under the current powers. I very much welcome the fact that the Minister said he has responded to the Joint Committee’s latest letter about that and that he will make that information available to whoever is given responsibility for the review. I thank him for that.

In the Commons, James Brokenshire prayed in aid the fact that the matter had been considered by the Joint Committee on Human Rights as well as in another place—that is, here—to argue that,

“it is not correct to say that it has not been subject to careful consideration”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 213.]

Indeed, the Minister made the same point earlier. But the Joint Committee on Human Rights was very critical of the speed with which this measure was introduced and we—I am a member of the committee—made it very clear that we believed that a public consultation,

“would have made for better informed parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s proposal”,

and that the Joint Committee that was proposed would allow for just that kind of proper scrutiny.

Your Lordships’ House made it very clear that it did not consider that there had been sufficient scrutiny by passing the amendment with such a significant majority. The only thing that has happened since then is that the House of Commons has debated for only 90 minutes something of such grave constitutional and moral importance. I really think that the case for a Joint Committee still stands. Indeed, the Home Affairs Select Committee, which published its report on counterterrorism after the debate in the Commons, has supported Lords Amendment 18, which underlines the point made by a number of organisations outside this House that the measure does not guarantee security against terrorism in any way.

I, too, have read the legal debate between the Government and Professor Goodwin-Gill. As a non-lawyer, I am not in a position to be able to judge that debate. Surely, however, the fact that there is such disagreement reinforces the case for a Joint Committee to tease out these very serious legal matters. The Floor of the House is not the place to do that. As the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, has already made clear, so much is at stake. I quoted earlier the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is now in his place, because what he said was so important. He said:

“Statelessness is one of the most terrible things that can befall anyone”.—[Official Report, 19/3/14; col. 212.]

The Minister spoke of the evil of statelessness. Another expert in this area said that statelessness was a recipe for exclusion, precariousness and dispossession.

We have not completely averted the danger that we will make somebody stateless as a result of the amendment, welcome as it is. I hope, therefore, that noble Lords will stand firm and support Motion B1 because the amendment does not provide a cast-iron guarantee against the evil of statelessness.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

Like other noble Lords, I welcome the concessions that have been made by the Government which do, to an extent—although this could be argued—reduce the risk that an individual might become stateless. However, the risk still exists and I still have some concerns apart from those that have been expressed so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I agree that we need answers to those questions, but I would like to touch on some other concerns.

We have already heard that the Government recognise what the Supreme Court called, in the case of Al-Jedda, “the evil of statelessness”. They now purport to address that evil by providing in their Amendment 18A that the Secretary of State has “reasonable grounds for believing” that the individual she is depriving of his citizenship will be able to become a citizen of some other state to which he formerly belonged. That assumption has been made by other states from time to time, including—as the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association has pointed out—the Dominican Republic, in the case of persons born in Haiti, and Zimbabwe, in the case of all residents who might have had a claim through having been born in some other country. In the UK, too, the Government asserted for many years that persons of Indian origin who lived in Hong Kong had the right to reclaim the nationality of China—until finally in 2006 we satisfied them that they were wrong.

No doubt Ministers will say that what is now proposed is different, because instead of treating a whole class of persons the same, each case will be examined individually. However, in the case of the people who were formerly dual Malaysians and British Overseas Citizens, and had renounced their Malaysian citizenship in the hope of getting full British citizenship, they had all applied individually and had all been rejected. It was only after several years of correspondence and meetings with Ministers that in October 2013 the then Minister wrote to me asserting that an agreement had been reached with the former Malaysians on a scheme under which they would return to their country of origin, where they could enter a process of regaining the equivalent of indefinite leave to remain after five years; and after a further unspecified time, they would be able to resume Malaysian citizenship. During the whole of that period they would of course remain effectively stateless, as they had been during the latter years of their residence in the United Kingdom.

I wrote to the new Minister, James Brokenshire, on 11 February, asking if I could have a copy of the agreement he had reached with the Malaysians, having had no response to a verbal request made to his predecessor. I also asked about the experience of the one guinea pig returnee under the new arrangement. Having had no answer, I wrote again on 15 March, reminding the Minister of my earlier letter. After two further months, I had had no reply until, finally, after a telephone call this morning, the Minister’s reply arrived by e-mail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Avebury]

Would the Secretary of State have the power to consider the case whereby a person has an entitlement to nationality of a state such as Saudi Arabia where his residence could be more harmful to the United Kingdom than if he were in the UK itself—as one knows from the fact that the vast majority of people who committed the 9/11 atrocity were nationals of Saudi Arabia? If we send people back to Saudi Arabia and they become involved in these offences, it would be immensely harmful to the interests of the United Kingdom.