Immigration: Human Rights

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. The UK has a proud history of providing protection to those who need it, in accordance with our international obligations under the refugee convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. She will know that we are proposing an immigration White Paper shortly, which will look at some of the issues she has mentioned. She will also know that the Government are extremely keen to ensure that we crack down on illegal migration and on those individuals who are brought to this country to undercut the working conditions, pay and other benefits of individuals who are here with asylum and refugee status, and who are approved and working, and also the population of the United Kingdom as a whole. She makes a very important point.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in hearing claims, one of the biggest problems in the past has been the number of claims that go to appeal, therefore making the system much lengthier than it needs to be. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that, when an asylum case is heard, they get it right the first time rather than having to go further on in an appeal? I draw attention to my interests; I am supported by the RAMP project.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. It is not the Government’s intention to drag out the appeals procedure, or indeed the claims procedure. We have been trying since July to speed up the consideration of asylum claims. We have put additional staff in to do that. We want to get the decisions right first time, obviously, and that is an important part of the Government’s proposals to reduce both the asylum backlog and the dependency on hotels, which reached record levels under the previous Government.