Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 184 resumed.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I will continue where other noble Lords left off. In particular, I commend the words of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who gave a very perceptive analysis of the problems that the noble Baroness’s amendment revealed. As he said, the amendment is legally coherent, and I also note that it is well motivated.

I add only this. We have adhered to the convention since 1951 or thereabouts, and it has not been domesticated into our law, as the European Convention on Human Rights has been, through the Human Rights Act 1998. I recall, when I was on the Opposition Front Bench in the other place, when discussing the Human Rights Bill, as it then was, and the then Government’s proposals to domesticate that convention into our jurisdiction, that one of the points I made was that one could be entirely in favour of our membership of the European convention—and I remain in favour of it—without necessarily supporting bringing it within the British domestic legal system.

I say in relation to the 1951 convention that one could be entirely in favour of our remaining a member of it without introducing the problems that are caused when these international treaties become part of domestic law. I said in 1998 that by bringing the European convention into our law and permitting British courts to adjudicate on cases which had to do with disputes under the convention would introduce a dangerous political element into the deliberations of our courts. I do not think I was wrong to say that. The last 25 or 30 years or so have demonstrated that a number of highly political cases have found their way through the courts, both at the lower court level, but also right the way up to the Supreme Court. Whether that has been to the advantage of the litigants or to the development of justice policy and to the development of the law in this country is a matter of debate, but it has created inconveniences, and it has created clashes between Parliament and the courts, and that is not to be wished for.

I gently urge the noble Baroness, when she comes to consider the good sense of her amendment and whether to push it, that she might find it better to leave things as they are. We have adhered faithfully, I think it is fair to say, to the 1951 convention since we ratified it, and there have been immigration and asylum statutes passed by Governments of both parties—the Labour Party and the Conservative Party—since, which have not, in my view, been unfaithful to the convention, either in its spirit or its implementation. I leave it there. I urge her to think carefully about what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and others have said, and perhaps to allow the convention to exist as a convention and to allow Parliament, this Government and any future Government to make up its or their own mind about the way in which it should be implemented on the local stage.