Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment because I completely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has said.

In my time at Defra, there was a weekly biosecurity meeting covering a variety of things, such as invasive species. In particular, the risks of African swine fever and Xylella fastidiosa were probably our biggest concerns. Those concerns continue to rise, which is why the extra investment has gone in to support Border Force. There is a bit of a debate about Dover and Sevington—or, more accurately, Bastion Point—but nevertheless, officials recommended that Sevington be the principal gateway and that it be reinforced by the Border Force at Dover.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, set out quite extensively, this matters because it was often a challenge in government to try to get other departments to realise the impact of having something like African swine fever in this country. It would entirely wipe out our pig industry. Xylella fastidiosa would wipe out species after species of flora. This is why it matters for our national biosecurity. It was great to see particular reference to investment going into Weybridge in the security strategy.

Your Lordships should not underestimate what can be done by malicious actors trying to bring in this sort of element to disrupt our country. Although I know there is collaboration between the Border Force and port health in Dover and around the country, having this issue in the priorities of this new commander would give it the prominence it desperately needs—not just among officials but across Cabinet and Ministers.

As a slight aside, I welcome the investment in Weybridge, and I pay tribute to Dame Tamara Finkelstein. She is stepping down as Permanent Secretary at Defra and is leaving the Civil Service. Candidly, I think this will be the main legacy of her time at Defra. It has taken quite a few years and money has gone along the way, but having world-class facilities is vital to recognise the importance of this to our nation.

On how this could work as a priority, a lot of effort is going into the transition from the European Union and more on the border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Of course, there is no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I fear a lot of effort is going into that at times, and I genuinely believe it has been completely and utterly unnecessary. We need to keep our focus right around the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is particularly focused on Dover, and I understand why. Candidly, a lot of stuff coming in through the classic white van is going to different parts of the country. I also pay tribute to trading standards around the country, which has been tackling this issue. It is a limited resource in local government and is trying to do many other things as well, such as tackling illegal vaping and similar things. By bringing this into the Home Office as an issue of importance, that should then extend to it becoming a priority for our local police forces around the country too.

A lot of this is seen as quite low-level organised crime, but the impact could become truly devastating. I am very conscious that the Government want to make this Border Security Commander principally about the boats, people and illegal immigration, but we have the opportunity to consider a more strategic approach. Even if this is lower down in the priorities—not that I think it should be—at least it would be a shared agenda for one of the most important posts, which this Government are creating through the Bill.

I hope the Government will consider this. Defra works exceptionally hard on this and tries to work with other parts of government. This is an opportunity to stress how big this risk is and how malicious actors can do little things to massively disrupt this country. Just think back to 20 or 25 years ago and what happened with foot and mouth: it brought the country to a standstill, so much so that a general election was delayed. That is the sort of thing we need to think about. I hope this amendment will go through.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I am a small organic farmer and therefore have an interest in this. I also was the Secretary of State and Minister of Agriculture in the key area when we were trying to deal with BSE.

Looking back, it is amazing how we got through that period. Part of the reason was that we had a real reputation for protecting biosecurity here, so it was possible to get other countries to believe us when we said what we were doing and how we were doing it. As the person absolutely in the spotlight on this, I owed my predecessors enormously, because they created the circumstances in which it was possible to fight that battle.

It is very important, and I hope the Minister will accept this, because I honour him considerably and I think the Committee recognises what a considerable role he is playing. He can usually convince us that what he needs us to do is the right thing. I say to him personally: there is a problem if you have a Cabinet in which none of the people is a countryman or has a country constituency.

There are 9 million people who live in the countryside, and agriculture is one of our crucially important industries. Therefore, I hope the Minister will understand why we are very concerned that this should be in this Bill, because it covers a much wider range than doing the things that we might otherwise do in agriculture Bills and the like.

The truth is that, although the noble Lord and my noble friend have concentrated on the gangs and the people who make a lot of money out of it, one problem with biosecurity is that it is sometimes breached almost accidentally by individuals. You can bring really serious diseases in by bringing in a ham sandwich in the wrong circumstances and dropping it. I would just be frank about that end of it. We also know that there is considerable activity in bushmeats—in other words, meat which itself is illegal, as a matter of fact, but therefore has gone through no protective system at all—and the effects of that are really serious. We do not have to go into the details of some of the human diseases which have been spread by the use of bushmeats.

I recently had to spend a lot of time trying to get the Government of the time, a Conservative Government, to take seriously the problem of the growth in the number of wild boars in our forests and the fact that African pig diseases can get into that whole community and then threaten the entire British pig industry. I can tell the Committee why it was so difficult: it was because you were talking to people who did not appear to understand, first, that pigs have two litters and produce an awful lot of piglets, which can very soon get out of hand. They did not understand how close these wild boars were to the pig industry, and they had never really seen a wild boar—as somebody who had most of the lawn dug up by one, not all that time ago, I am quite strongly affected. I say merely that I found it difficult to explain to people how serious this was, why it mattered and what the effects were if we did not get it right, so I beg the Committee to support this change.

I know that the Minister wants to control the Bill, and one does not want to expand it, and I know that the Government are very concerned about that, but it is our only chance to remind everybody of the importance of biosecurity. The challenge is getting worse and worse. It is not just animals but, as my noble friend remarked, it is also about plants, invasive species and huge costs, and I end on that issue.

If we let this get out of hand, the cost to the national Exchequer will be enormous. We need only look at what we are trying to do about Japanese knotweed and all kinds of invasive species—we know what the monster wasp is likely to do, and we think of the American crayfish. I could go through a whole series of things that we would then have to deal with. Many people will know what we had to deal with with the escape of mink, for example. The control of our borders is crucial for biosecurity reasons, but it is crucial also to the Treasury—and, if I may say so, I have never found a department less understanding of how crucial it is to them. They ought to remember the cost of foot and mouth and the cost of BSE and all those diseases. Just think of what bird flu is doing to us at this moment. Therefore, I beg the Minister to take this very seriously.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Noble Lords will be aware that I have been concerned with immigration matters for about 25 years. I have not paid much attention to asylum because the numbers were much smaller, but they are now significantly greater. I repeat my warning that we really need to have our feet on the ground if we are going to deal with the scale of what is now in front of us. The public need to know that their concerns are understood and are being acted on. That is not yet the case and it needs to be done.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps it is possible to bring both sides together on this issue. I have a long history of being attacked for my views on this. I was the Member for Lewisham West when we brought in the east African Asians, and I remember the appalling attacks that one had for supporting Ted Heath and the Conservative Government at the time. I want to underline the long history of Conservatives being supportive of proper attitudes towards human rights and asylum. But it does not help us in this discussion if we miss out two different things.

The first is that we need to support international agreements, because this is not going to get any easier. I will not bore the Committee on the question of climate change, but if anybody thinks we have real problems of immigration now, the kind of weather changes we are going to have will mean that there will be a lot more people moving not for economic reasons but because they can no longer live where they are born. We have to realise how serious the issue of immigration right across the board is going to be. One has to take this very seriously, but that means we should be very careful about protecting the rights of asylum seekers. We did not just do this because of the Holocaust, although that was the proximate pressure. There are people who are treated in a way that makes life in their countries absolutely impossible, and they cannot leave by some accepted rule or open system. They have to hide and escape, and we need to take them very seriously.

The other thing we have to remember is that there is widespread concern about the number of immigrants who have come into this country and who are likely to do so. This Committee must not ignore that fact. But if we are to accept both those things, we have to be very careful that the legislation we pass is truly consonant with the international agreements we have. We also have to be extremely careful that we do not say, every time there is an amendment, that somehow there is something unsuitable behind it.

These amendments are technical. I do not agree with them all, but the Committee has to accept that they are important. To dismiss them as if they were merely the product of people who always oppose any kind of restraint on immigration seems unfair and unworthy. I also happen to think that many of us opposed the Rwanda proposal because it was a load of old rubbish—because it was not going to work. That is why we opposed it, not because we did not understand the importance of the issue but because it was not the right answer. Frankly, to suggest that because we did not agree with the Rwanda concept we are somehow wet on this subject seems untrue and very unfair.

We in this House are surely in the business of discussing these matters in detail and carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have rightly brought to our notice some important issues that we have to get right. They may not be the right amendments, but we have to discuss them without automatically believing what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has a long history of defending those who are not otherwise defended, has brought to our notice. I am pleased that we have been discussing it. I think we will find that he withdraws or does not move the amendments and thinks again about which ones he wishes to press.

I hope we will treat this with the seriousness it deserves, which means, first, recognising the national concern about numbers and, secondly, trying to make a proper distinction that protects people who flee from terrible regimes. I would like everybody in this Committee to think once again how blessed we are that we are not in that position. If we are blessed in that way, we should think carefully about those who are not.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, every time I speak after the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I feel as though I have taken on the headmaster. Having been admonished, I tread carefully. I have wanted to comment on this group of amendments from the beginning. The fact that the debate has become quite fractious and animated in some ways indicates what my original concerns are and why I wanted to ask the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in particular, to clarify something.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will answer that question in due course.

The noble and learned Baroness suggested that the Government should not even be asked to respond to these amendments. With very great respect, I do not agree. The previous Government’s Bill that eventually fell away—the Rwanda Bill—was intended to provide a deterrent. I think it is common ground that a deterrent is necessary. The nature of that deterrent may be very much in dispute. Government thinking is still forming on the best way to deal with this very real problem.

The Government need to come up with a response. They had quite a lot of time in opposition in which to generate what they thought was an appropriate deterrent. They have now been in power for a year, and it appears that there is more thinking going on in recognition of the very real problem that they face. In my respectful view, the Government have a case to answer as to what precisely the deterrent will be. What will prevent what we see in our papers and on our screens every day?

My second point is about Amendment 107 and the interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights. I think it was during the Minister’s interregnum that there was a great deal of debate about the interim order made by the European Court of Human Rights. Even the most fervent defender of the European Court of Human Rights would be hard pushed to defend the order it made, which rejected a decision by our courts. It was made by an unnamed judge, it did not give the Government an opportunity to make representations and it did not have a return date by which, in accordance with normal practice, a Government or any other party would have a chance to answer the original order. This was a flagrant breach of natural justice, as was more or less accepted.

Whatever form the Government’s policy finally takes, they would be well advised to bear in mind what is in Amendment 107. It would give the Government the chance to consider the appropriateness of the interim measure—it is a very carefully drawn amendment because it gives that responsibility to a Minister of the Crown. There were many debates about whether the European Court of Human Rights even had the jurisdiction to make these interim measures. I respectfully suggest that, whatever else the Government think about these amendments, Amendment 107 ought to be very carefully considered.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I will just ask for two things. First, I hope that the Government will take and answer these amendments seriously. Secondly, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, will accept that it is not proper for the previous Government, who failed to answer this problem, constantly to suggest that this Government are also failing.

None of us has an answer to what is a very real problem. We do not help it by saying, “Yah boo, we thought we should do this”, particularly when, we may have thought we should do it, but it would be very difficult to argue that the previous Government were terribly successful at stopping the boats. I plead that we have these debates in a form which says that we want to find an answer to what is a very difficult issue. Both sides have to accept that. The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, who is not in his place now, was a Minister and did not solve the problem. I do not blame him for that, because it is an almost impossible problem to solve, due to the whole range of issues that we have talked about.

I hope that the Committee will talk about this issue in a way where we are all trying to solve it, rather than sides trying to suggest that they are better at solving it. We know perfectly well that, at the moment, the Government have not shown themselves able to solve it and the Opposition have to admit that, in all the years of being in power, we did not solve it. Can we start off with a bit of humility on this side and a bit of acceptance of vulnerability on the other?

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 8th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Amendment 144, as my noble friend has said, is critical, as it seeks to remove subsection (2)(c) which currently allows a person’s EUSS status to be removed without applying the procedural safeguards enshrined in the withdrawal agreement—those safeguards which I listed at the beginning. The Home Office’s stated reason for this provision is to remove EUSS status granted in error. However, this creates a group of individuals who lack procedural protection to challenge the Home Office’s assessment, risking arbitrary outcomes and denying them their withdrawal agreement rights. This amendment would ensure that all actions relate—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I do not understand why one should object to protecting people with these four protections in circumstances in which it appears that the Home Office has made a mistake. It seems to me that the most unsuitable moment to remove the protections is when the Home Office has made a mistake. Indeed, if the Home Office has made a mistake, one would hope there would be greater protections because there was a mistake.

[Lord German (LD)]

The noble Lord is correct. If the Home Office recognises it has made a mistake, then it should apply the protections which are provided by the withdrawal agreement, which is precisely the major point that is being made in this set of amendments. Amendment 144 would ensure that all actions related to EUSS status are subject to clear procedural safeguards, as laid out in the withdrawal agreement.

Taken together, these amendments reinforce fairness and legal certainty for EUSS beneficiaries, ensuring that administrative decisions respect individual rights and that the procedural safeguards are consistently applied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the Committee does not need me to repeat what has been said about Clause 43 by the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Kirkhope. I agree more than I can say with what they have said. Tagging, curfew, and requiring someone to be or prohibiting someone from being in a particular place at particular times, et cetera—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has explained what “et cetera” could mean in this situation—are all huge interferences with life in practical, emotional and psychological terms. It basically means that you cannot live a normal life. For instance, how would an international student pursue a course with these restrictions?

As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned, the Constitution Committee made a recommendation regarding this clause in its report on the Bill. We have had a response today from the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, saying that the person affected can make representations to the Home Office and apply for a judicial review, which the Home Office says in its letter would “provide appropriate scrutiny”. That may be the topic for a whole other, long debate. Noble Lords will understand that I do not feel—I say this personally, because the committee has not had an opportunity to discuss this yet—that that is an appropriate or particularly helpful response.

The comments—the assurances, perhaps I should call them—made by the then Minister for Border Security and Asylum have been referred to. I would be surprised if this detail had yet been discussed within the Home Office, but one never knows, so perhaps it would not be out of place to ask the Minister whether the change of various Ministers within the department means that these assurances remain in place. Is this still what the Government think? Would they be able to give some sort of undertaking to this effect? However, I do not think that would completely answer our objections to Clause 43.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, in an earlier debate on the Bill, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel reminded me that it is the purpose of the Opposition to oppose. That is why I find it impossible to understand why the Opposition are not opposing this clause. I thought that Conservatives were wholly against Governments being given powers without very clear parliamentary restrictions.

I understand the argument that, if people are allowed into this country with conditions and they break them, all kinds of things, perfectly rightly, can be carried out; I am not disagreeing with that. But I would have thought that it would not take much, looking around the world at the moment, to see how dangerous it is to have a law which can be used by Governments of any kind to do almost anything that they want to. We can look at the United States and see a President who appears to be trying to do things which the law does not allow him to do. Think what would happen if the law did allow him to make the kinds of decisions this clause suggests. I also say to my noble friends that, if this clause applied without any restrictions to citizens of this country, the very first people to object to that would be the Opposition.

Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be serious in accepting that the argument is not about immigration; it is about what powers the Government should be given, unfettered by parliamentary decision-making and the courts. It seems to me that the powers given to Governments under this clause are unacceptable. I am sure that they would not be misused by the Minister or any of his colleagues, but that is not to say that we do not have in this country politicians whom I would not trust with these powers—some of them, indeed, have been in power, and I would not have trusted them with these powers.

Having been a Minister for some 16 years, I always found it valuable that my decision-making should be kept within particular parameters laid down by Parliament. One was constantly being asked by civil servants and people outside to do this, that or the other, and one was able to say, “That is not within my power”. I do not think this is a suitable clause for a British Parliament to pass. We should rely on the law we have already or, if there is any gap in it, reduce that gap in a clause which is very specifically restricted so that we do not tempt any future politicians to behave improperly.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I agree with everything that the noble Lord said, although I slightly dissent from his description of his discussions with his civil servants. I used to be a civil servant and I thought that the main job of civil servants was to stop Ministers doing things they should not do or did not have the powers to do. Otherwise, however, I entirely agree.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, made a powerful case. To me, this is a very strange clause. We have to listen to what our Constitution Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights said. I followed what the Minister said in the Commons, which was that the power conferred on Ministers would be used only in cases involving conduct such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, extremism—I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson—or serious crime, or when a person poses a threat to national security or public safety and, presumably, cannot be deported. If the clause said all that, limiting and ring-fencing the powers of the Minister, I could understand the rationale for it and might even support it. However, with no ring-fencing, it is—as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, said—a sledgehammer. The absence of any judicial oversight provision is wrong. It is dangerous to give Ministers the power to add such other conditions as they think fit. This is just too broad and, if it is to be there at all, it needs to be limited. If the Government’s intentions are as Angela Eagle said in the other place, let that be spelled out in the Bill.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

That was quite a lengthy intervention, with a number of points. The case raised by the noble and right reverend Lord about a country that we would normally deem not safe is a perfectly reasonable one. But, as I said, my challenge back is this. Is there any offence that people who come from certain countries to which we would not normally return them can commit that is of a level of seriousness that we think should make them immune to being sent back to that country? I believe that there are certain offences that people commit for which it is reasonable that they forfeit the right to stay in the United Kingdom. That is a perfectly reasonable case.

It may be that the wording in these amendments is not entirely perfect, but the argument that we are having is whether, if you come to this country and you commit a serious sexual offence, for example—as in my noble friend’s example—or you murder or rape somebody, you should be able to stay here for ever because the country from which you came is not ideal and we would not normally send you back to it. That is a debate worth having. I think the general public would take a much more robust position in those cases than many Members of your Lordships’ House would feel comfortable with.

Finally, I challenge the Minister, as my noble friend Lord Jackson did, having got in before me, to respond to the points in the debate we had earlier about what the Government will do to bring forward amendments or changes to how they interpret human rights legislation to give them a better chance—I am assuming the Government will not accept these amendments—of removing people who we know the Government would like to get rid of. In the case that my noble friend Lord Jackson set out, it sounded to me as though Ministers were very frustrated—as frustrated as he is. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think I could be accused of being extreme on these issues, and therefore I want to apply a very serious matter here. This is an issue that most disturbs people in Britain. There are those of us who are determined to protect a multiracial society, who strongly believe in people living with each other and who are proud to have their grandchildren educated with a wide range of different backgrounds in schools that care about that. We are very concerned when we do not deport people who have been guilty of offences, because it is felt by the majority of people in Britain not to be sensible to keep in this country people who have committed offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for tabling the amendments, because they have, self-evidently, generated a good discussion on some important principles. For the avoidance of any doubt, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lords, Lord Mackinlay of Richborough and Lord Harper, that the Government will oppose these amendments tonight, but that does not mean that they will oppose the principle of deporting foreign national offenders.

I am really grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, for his measured approach to this issue—I often find myself agreeing with him now, which is contrary to what I did during the whole of the 1980s. I will take that back as a potential area of support, and I appreciate his reasoned approach to this issue, because he is right; it is important that the British people know that the Government will take action on these issues, that there is fairness on these issues and that this Government are not going to tolerate foreign national offenders committing offences in this country. That is why, and I say it to all noble Lords who have spoken today, in the period between the July of the general election in 2024 and July of this year, the Government have increased the number of foreign national deportations by some 14% over the previous year under the previous Government—the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, shakes his head. The Government have increased the deportation of foreign national offenders during this year. The noble Lord referenced the previous Conservative Government. In the past year, from July to July, 5,200 foreign national criminals were removed. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that is why we are trying to meet the objectives that he has set. It is important that individuals in the country know that.

Amendment 34 would seek to extend automatic deportation to any foreign national convicted of “an offence”—I take the point mentioned by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—committed in the UK without consideration of their human rights. Amendment 72 from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, seeks to prevent any appeal against deportation. Both those issues remove protections for under-18s and for victims of human trafficking in the face of the UK Borders Act 2007. It would also require a court to pass a sentence of deportation on any foreign national convicted of an offence in the UK. The comments of the noble Lord, Lord German, on that were extremely important.

Just to back up what I have said with regard to the performance on removal of foreign national offenders, noble Lords have made some important points about how we need to put in place prisoner transfer agreements. When a Minister of Justice, I spent part of 2009 negotiating such an agreement with the Nigerian authorities. It is important that we continue to do that and continue to work with our partners, but no one is going to reach a prisoner transfer agreement if we ignore human rights issues under our international obligations. Nobody is going to sign one of those with this country if we are ignoring our human rights obligations as a whole.

What are the Government going to do if we oppose the amendments proposed by the Opposition Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, today? We are going to simplify the rules and processes for removing foreign national offenders. We are going to take further targeted action against any recent arrivals who commit crimes in the UK before their offending can escalate. Later this year, we are going to set out more detailed reforms and stronger measures to ensure that our laws are upheld, including streamlining and speeding up the removals process. Later this year, in answer to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, we are going to look at Article 8 and how we can streamline that proposal. We are going to bring forward legislation to strengthen the public interest test, to make it clear that Parliament needs to be able to control our country’s borders and take back control over who comes to and stays in the UK, striking that right balance between individual family rights and the wider public interest—the very point that the noble Earl mentioned.

Those are things that the Government are going to bring forward later this year. It may not satisfy noble Lords that we are not doing it today, but we are going to bring those things forward. However, the amendments before us today would not be workable and, as the noble Lord, Lord German, has said, they would be contrary to our international obligations.

Again, I recognise that some Members of this House will want us to walk away from our international obligations. I understand that, but our obligations are there, and we do support the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, of which we are a signatory. We support other human rights legislation, which is important, and I do not accept that Amendment 34 or Amendment 72 would help us maintain an international reputation, which I think is important for the UK to maintain.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I hope the Minister will accept that we are discussing a Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. What he is saying is what the Government are going to do. The problem for some of us is that this Bill ought to have had this in it, and as a result, we have two unsatisfactory amendments; but the only way that we can bring home just how serious this is to the Government is to ask: how on earth can we produce what will be an Act without what the Minister is now saying is going to be? That is the problem we all have.

We support the Government’s very considerable improvement. I have already said to my own side that I think a bit of humility about how well we managed some of these things would help a lot. That does not mean to say, however, that there should not be a bit of virility about asking the Government to act more quickly. It should have been in this Act, which is why some of us are going to find it very difficult not to support the amendments, not because we think the amendments are right; not because they should not be different; but because the Government have produced a Bill which does not have this in it.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

This Bill covers a whole range of manifesto commitments that the Government made in the general election, including the establishment of a Border Security Commander. Going back, for example, to the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, mentioned about Albania, that Border Security Commander has established a Balkans task force dealing with a whole range of issues there to tighten up our performance with countries such as Albania. This Bill covers a whole range of other matters, but the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has been around a long time. He knows that the Government have processes to follow and legislation to bring forward.

I am saying today that we are going to bring forward, in very short order, the measures I have outlined: detailed reforms on ensuring that our laws are upheld; simplifying the rules on processing for removal of foreign national offenders; and strengthening public interest tests under Article 8. That is going to happen in very short order. Not everything can happen in the first 12 months of a Government. Actually, if I go back to the point that the noble Lord mentioned, the non-legislative drive has seen us increase the number of foreign national offenders removed from this country by 14%, so it is an absolutely important matter that we have.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, asked me an important question, and I just want to give her a response on this. Immigration is a reserved matter. Deportation powers are consistent across the United Kingdom. Article 2.1 of the Windsor Framework provides a commitment that the rights, safeguards and equality of opportunities set out in a particular part of the Good Friday agreement are not diminished as a result of EU exit. This means that certain rights people in Northern Ireland had before Brexit cannot be reduced as a result of EU exit.

The Home Secretary is currently continuing to challenge some court interpretations on those matters, including the scope of Article 2.1 of the Windsor Framework, both in the case of Dillon and Ors v the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and in pursuing an appeal against the High Court ruling on the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission’s application, JR295, which found that certain provisions of the Illegal Migration Act were incompatible with Article 2 of the Windsor Framework.

Bluntly, the bottom line is: when foreign nationals commit serious crimes in our country, we will do everything in our power to deport them. We will bring back measures in the near future on some of the issues that have been raised today to give greater support and clarification. But I cannot accept the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Lochiel and Lord Jackson of Peterborough.