Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham’s Amendment 128B, in particular the reference to removing BNO nationals from the safe and legal routes. I do so because the Government’s own document on safe and legal routes, in its description of Hong Kong British national (overseas) visas, says that the scheme

“was developed following concerns about erosion of human rights protections in Hong Kong, but it is not an explicitly protection-based scheme. Eligibility is not based on the person’s risk of persecution in Hong Kong. Rather, it is a way of making it easier for Hong Kong BN(O) status holders to migrate to the UK compared to the general work, study, and family visa rules”.

As we discussed on Monday night—I will not rehearse those points again—BNO holders of course have rights under the British Nationality Act 1981, in that they can arrive and move to settlement without having to seek the discretion of the Home Secretary to make them a British citizen; it comes with the package of holding a BNO status. That then means that they and their dependants, after they have been here for the right amount of time, can move straight to that status.

I ask the Minister this question because it relates not just to BNO holders. If the Government seriously want to propose caps to safe and legal routes, why is there one group in there which, under our British Nationality Act 1981, does not have to be capped? Any such capping would inevitably mean that people fleeing from other countries would have their numbers reduced in order to protect BNO status-holders, who also have rights and should be able to come here, given that most of the 144,000 who have arrived did so because they or their families are dissidents under the rule of the CCP in Hong Kong.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will be extremely brief. I suggest that we look at these issues, which have now been dealt with in great detail, in a wider context. The fact is that the asylum system is a shambles; I will not go into that any further—we all know that. However, we need to be very careful before we make further commitments on safe and legal routes.

The wider reason is that, last year, we had overall net migration of 606,000. Of those, roughly 200,000 were refugees of different kinds—I am putting it in the most general terms. If that is allowed to continue, and if we fail to reduce the other elements of immigration which are also rising very quickly under this Government, we will have to build something like 16 cities the size of Birmingham in the next 25 years. Nobody has challenged that, because it is a matter of arithmetic.

We face a huge problem. Therefore, I suggest that whatever the arguments for this particular category may be, we need to keep well in mind the wider impact on the scale and nature of our society. That should not be overlooked.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have my doubts about the term “safe and legal routes” as well. I would prefer to focus on safety; to talk about legal routes now impliedly accepts the argument that people who come here in the way that we have been discussing are in some way illegal. I do not think the routes are illegal any more than the people.

I did not know that my noble friend was going to refer to the recent report of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee on family migration, published in February. It raised a number of matters pertinent to the debate. Noble Lords will be familiar with the problem that one of our recommendations addresses. We recommended that the Home Office should allow biometrics to be completed on arrival in the UK for a wider range of nationalities in crisis situations. As noble Lords will know, there are many countries in which it is not possible to reach a visa application centre before travelling in order to enrol your biometrics. There are countries which do not have them. My noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed said of the Government’s attitude to Iran and Sudan that they do not recognise the reality of the situation. In this connection, I do not think they recognise the realities either.

The reply from the Government arrived less than a week ago. I hope that this “in due course” is quite quick, and we will have the opportunity to debate it, but who knows? The Government said:

“Where an applicant considers they cannot travel to a Visa Application Centre … to enrol their biometrics, they can contact us to explain their circumstances”.


Well, that sounds practical, does it not? They continued:

“New guidance will be published in the near future setting out the unsafe journey policy. Where an applicant believes that travelling to a VAC would be unsafe, their request will be placed on hold pending the new guidance being published, however, should there be an urgent requirement to resolve their request this should be made clear in the request and consideration will be given as to the applicant’s circumstances and whether there is an urgent need to travel to the UK. If the request is deemed to be urgent we will contact the applicants to explain available options prior to the guidance being published”.


What a neat and tidy world the Home Office thinks exists.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, at an earlier stage in our debates I asked all the lawyers present why our judiciary and officials, in interpreting these international agreements, give 75% of applicants for asylum the right to asylum on first application. It is only 25% in France and in almost all other countries it is below ours. If we are interpreting these laws correctly, other countries must be interpreting them incorrectly. We are told that we will lose all credibility if we do things incorrectly. Why do these other countries not lose all credibility? Why has none of the lawyers answered these questions before or now?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak within two minutes and oppose this amendment. Migration Watch was the first organisation to draw attention to this problem and has been calling for action for three years. I will make two political points, not legal ones. I leave the law to the lawyers.

Practically, we find ourselves in a situation where we have no means of stopping the flow of another 50,000 applicants for asylum over this year, and quite possibly as many or more next year. With last year’s intake still under consideration, the whole system is being overwhelmed and the cost is becoming extraordinary, even as a percentage of our foreign aid. This is unacceptable.

Secondly, from a political point of view, I am not political but the public are furious—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Noble Lords know that I am not. The point has just been made that the public do not understand this—they are furious and the Government’s reputation is suffering severely. Effective action is essential, but that will be only harder if this amendment is approved. I trust that this House will ensure some flexibility on the legal front in order that a very serious matter may be addressed practically.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, some extreme language was used throughout Second Reading and Committee and there was very strong emotion. I understand that, because the Bill evokes strong feelings, but I suspect that, beneath all that, there may be more agreement than has been visible in our debate today and in previous debates. The spokesman for the Opposition has not added his name to this amendment and they did not oppose Second Reading, I suspect because there is an understanding that this is a difficult problem that any Government have to deal with. Any Government of whatever stripe have to take protecting the country’s borders extremely seriously.

A great deal of agreement underlies all this. For example, we all agree that there should be better-organised legal routes for genuine asylum seekers than there are at the moment. The main difference between the two sides in this debate is over the role of deterrence. The Government argue that we will not succeed in handling this problem unless there is an element of deterrence.

To bring it up to date—I will respond to the Chief Whip’s desire to be quick—we now all have the impact assessment, which we did not have until the day before yesterday, which points out the Australian example. Australia brought in a law very similar to this, which gave its Government the power to detain people and turn them around, in their case to Nauru and the Solomon Islands—in our case it is to Rwanda—within 48 hours. I asked the Government, reasonably, why we are not doing this. They pointed out that the Australians do not have to pay any regard to the European Convention on Human Rights, whereas we do. In their view, to comply with that, we could not reasonably turn detainees around within 48 hours; we would have to take at least 28 days, as is in the Bill at the moment.

I do not know whether the Government have ticked every box and crossed every T in relation to the ECHR, but it is quite clear that they have made a big attempt to do so. They have clearly taken on board the spirit of what we have agreed, even if not the letter of the law. The Government are in discussions with the European court about the convention. I am interested to know what the Minister can say about the state of those discussions. It is not only the UK but other countries—Italy, Spain and France—that are in discussion, because this is a new problem which is not covered by the original convention. We have to take that into account and realise that there is a real problem here, which is not a lot to do with immigration but is about border control more than anything else, which any Government will have deal with.

In relation to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, the Bill in its unamended form, as it is now, passed the Commons with a majority of 59. There is huge public support for what the Government are attempting to do. The latest YouGov poll showed 60% as saying that illegal migrants should not be allowed to claim asylum in this country; only 20% said the reverse, and 20% were undecided. We have to take that into account. As Matthew Parris, who is no one’s idea of a right-wing nutcase, said recently in an article:

“If you oppose the government’s plans to send away those who land, then whether or not you know it you are advocating an indefinite continuation of migrant deaths. And that is cruel”.


It is indeed cruel to allow that continue.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be even briefer. I listened with great interest to our two lawyers. They spoke with the fluency and knowledge that one simply has to respect. However, I point out that we face a very difficult policy problem, with serious effects on public opinion towards immigrants and arrivals in Britain. We face a situation in which, so far, what the Government have done has had no or very little effect. If this continues for some months or longer, there will be a serious impact on the authority of this Government and, possibly, the successor Government. I ask the lawyers and other Members of the House to bear those aspects in mind.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Ludford, who cannot be in her place today, I will speak to Amendments 77, 78 and 79, which are in her name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. Those three amendments are intended to tackle the same issues as those tackled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, albeit with a different approach. If the noble Lord wishes to press his Amendment 66 to a vote, we will support him.

It is critical that the decision about the reasonableness—we have just heard that word from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham—of the length of immigration detention remains a matter for judges, not for the Secretary of State. Incidentally, those who read the judgment of the Appeal Court last week will have noted subsection (5) of paragraph 264, in which the Appeal Court questions

“whether the culture of the Rwandan judiciary will mean that judges are reluctant to reverse the decisions of the Minister”.

This very much puts the separation of powers between the courts and the Executive in Rwanda under question. Here we have virtually the same process, in which the courts of this country are being denied the principles on which they have operated. Set against that is a decision that is down to the reasonableness of the Secretary of State.

It is critical to preserve the Hardial Singh principles to ensure that the most vulnerable people do not have their freedoms curtailed unjustifiably. When the Secretary of State deprives someone of their liberty, there must be a clear avenue for the person to seek independent review of the legality and necessity of their detention. Detention should be for only a short period pending removal. We know now from the judgment that that will be much more unlikely. With no viable agreements in place, save with individual countries for individual persons who belong to those countries, it is highly likely that the 28 days that people will be detained on arrival in the UK will not be pending removal but will be purposely and purely to deter others.

We will be building up more and more people in detention or in some form of curtailed liberties. That is wrong, and it is why the judiciary needs to maintain oversight. This is critical, given that the Bill intends to detain everyone, regardless of age, ill health, disability and trauma. I am pleased to speak to these amendments and, as I say, these Benches will support the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, if he wishes to press his amendment.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Ludford, who is unable to be here today, has her name to these amendments so I am speaking on her behalf, as it were, and on behalf of these Benches.

I make the general point that interim relief is an intrinsic and sensible part of our law. Injunctions are generally to prevent something happening, to maintain the status quo until there can be thorough consideration of a case. It is that way round because the person who wants to prevent that something happening is at risk of an action which would have a major effect on him—the other way round does not work in the same way. In this case, the action—removal from the UK —would effectively be the end of the story for the claimant and, if not that, it would at least make pursuit of claim from outside the UK very difficult indeed. That is quite different from the depiction we heard last week of a witness on a video link from another room or another building with all the normal support and access to his representatives.

This afternoon, I received an email from the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law—I stress “Bingham” and “rule of law”; noble Lords will note that title—with quite a long summary of a report on this subject which I understand is to be published tomorrow. It concludes that although improvements could be made to the process in the European Court of Human Rights, they do not affect the court’s jurisdiction to indicate binding interim measures. It makes the point that, when states signed up to the European convention, they expressly accepted that:

“In the event of dispute as to whether the Court has jurisdiction, the Court shall decide”.


So as not to detain your Lordships from making another trip to increase your steps through the Lobbies this evening, I will not read the whole of the summary. However, I make the point that the UK Government have proactively promoted the binding force of interim measures, advocating that other states, such as Russia, treat them as binding and comply with them. Given the provenance of that advice, I take it—and I hope your Lordships take it—very seriously.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister when he speaks in a moment will explain what this is intended to deal with. It is only specific to these circumstances; is it that a certain number of lawyers are making a certain amount of money and he thinks that that is not helpful to the policy that the Government intend to put forward?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, we support my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti in her defence of the rule of law and interim relief in cases involving the alleged expulsion of people to unsafe places. The Government were happy to support the court’s decision not to grant such relief in the current Rwanda cases, but now they want to take away this jurisdiction, forcing more applicants to Strasbourg pending a final UK judicial determination. If the Government are right that Strasbourg interim measures are not binding, Clause 54 is unnecessary. If the European Court of Human Rights is correct that they are binding, our amended Clause 1 should be enough to safeguard international law. With respect to those comments, I urge my noble friend if she is so minded to test the opinion of the House on her Amendment 152, which we would support rather than Amendment 153.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

There are no rules of order in this House.

I therefore hope that we will stop the pretence that there is a simple means of stopping the flow of refugees across the channel, risking their lives—and, once here, inevitably being removed—other than the policy of deterrence or prevention.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, it has certainly been quite a debate, has it not? I agree strongly with the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Lilley. It gives me difficulty and regret not to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, who are clearly striving to help people who really need help.

The question here is whether this bit of law will help or not, and I suggest to the House that that is not relevant to the actual problem on the ground of dealing with a very wide range of cases. I have been in a number of difficult countries and I can assure noble Lords that lots of people live in real difficulty and fear and would well want, and be justified in seeking, to move to the UK, especially if they had friends or relatives here. However, it seems to me that what we have here is not so much a problem of law as a problem of policy; we need to be much clearer on what we are trying to achieve and how we will achieve it.

For example, where will applications be submitted? You could do it on the internet, but the other stages that would then have to be dealt with could not be done satisfactorily on the internet. It could be done by the embassies overseas; there was some ability to do that in the past. However, the numbers are now astronomical—tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe more—and there is no way that an embassy could do that. Even if it could, the host country would say, “All right, you deal with them in your embassy—you can have a special office, if you like—but on the condition that, if you fail an applicant, you then deal with the consequences”. Of course, you would be left with huge numbers of people who we had judged were not sufficiently strong cases; they would be there in country X but they would be our responsibility.

Then there will be the question—I will be very brief—of where and how the interview process will be conducted. How would the claims be prioritised? What would happen to those whose claims fail? These questions have been completely unconsidered. We should not be passing laws and letting the thinking be done later.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Well, that is what this amounts to.

Let the Government come forward with a viable scheme—they have promised to do so—and let us then support that.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I understand the concerns raised by my noble friend Lord Lilley and others, but I also agree that there is no simple solution to all this, which is why we have to look at little bits of the system to understand whether there is an overall system that we can tackle.

I will start with some high-level things that we should be proud of. We should be proud that people want to come to Britain, either as refugees or economic migrants, and that we are a beacon of tolerance in the world. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, I told the taxi drivers in Strasbourg or Brussels that I was from London. They would say how incredibly lucky and fortunate I was compared with people in their countries, and how much more tolerant we are in many ways.

The other thing we have to realise is that we cannot let everyone in. Of course, our hearts want to help everyone we see who suffers persecution and has lost their home and family. We also understand that people want to come to make a better life for themselves, as my parents did as economic migrants. We had jobs and labour shortages in this country then, and the economic migrants filled that gap.

One of the questions we have to ask is: where do we draw the line? I will speak specifically to some of the amendments, beginning with Amendment 162 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and others. He is absolutely right, particularly on the Afghan relocation scheme: we have some moral obligation to the people from Afghanistan. Was it not as a result of some of our foreign policy interventions that some of these people are now in real danger for having co-operated with the British? Of course, there may well need to be a cap, but if there is a cap, I hope that the Government can explain where else some of those people can go. This highlights, once again, the need for international agreements to tackle this issue. This issue is not going away. For the reasons that people leave their homeland and want to come here or go elsewhere, we will see more and more migration, either by those fleeing persecution or for economic reasons. Therefore, we need to understand where else they can go.

I completely understand the sentiment behind Amendment 164, in the names of my noble friends Lady Stroud and Lord Kirkhope and others, but I do not necessarily agree on the timeline proposed. I also welcome the government amendment but, as my noble friend Lady Stroud said, we need guarantees that this will happen. It is not sufficient to say, “We will come forward with proposals for safe and legal routes”. If we do not have safe and legal routes, you might well say, “Well, we’re not going to stop the boats anyway”—but this will incentivise people to come on the boats, because there is no legal way for them to apply to come here. Some of those people who have applied and were rejected may well still try to come, but many others will say, “No, I’ve tried my luck, I’m not coming”, particularly when it comes to economic migrants.

Overall, I would like to ask the Government please to consider the language we use about this. We should be proud that we are a beacon internationally; we should be proud that people want to come here, but also understand that not everyone can come and we have to draw a line somewhere. These people are not invaders; they are simply seeking to escape persecution or coming here for a better life. I hope we can be more pragmatic. I am very sympathetic to both Amendments 162 and 164.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, I will say a brief word in support of the most reverend Primate and to follow my noble friend Lord Horam. If we are to deal with this problem, it ultimately has to be on the basis of cross-party support, rather like defence. How are we going to do that without somebody first putting forward a framework that will, undoubtedly, be unsatisfactory to the other parties? Then there will be debate and ultimately consensus.

There has to be international action, but that is so difficult. Unless our own country takes a broad-based approach to this problem, we will drive the solutions to the fringes, which will be very dangerous for our politics. It has happened in Italy and Hungary, and is perhaps happening in the United States. It is happening around the world where Governments have failed to base their response broadly enough and therefore keep the extremists at the very fringes, where they always are.

The most reverend Primate offers a way of introducing that kind of debate into our programme. I am the last person to think that making a strategy is the solution to a problem. That is always the long grass—let us have a strategy and it will disappear for ever into committees. I did that myself as a Minister many a time. What he is offering here—and I hope we respond to it in the right spirit—is perhaps the beginning of a way in which we can broaden the basis of agreement about our approach, so that what does not happen, if, say, by some surprise the party opposite comes into power, is that it reverses everything that we have done. What will the electorate think then? They will say that these people cannot be trusted to deal with this problem, which is right in the general public’s mind. If we make it the knockabout of ordinary party politics, we will not have served our people well.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I had intended to vote against this proposal, but I confess that I am persuaded by the opening speech from the most reverend Primate. It is clearly a useful proposal, and contributions from around the House point to that.

I will make one point. It is a short-term point but I do not apologise for that. We really must not overlook the very serious problems that we now have in the channel. The public are very angry about it, and rightly so. It is extremely difficult to deal with. For all the criticism that is made of the Government, those who may be a future Government understand that it could be difficult for them too. If all that is continuing, there will not be a wider audience for these very important and longer-term considerations.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, many noble Lords have made very helpful and interesting points in this debate. Amendment 168A, moved by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, raises an interesting matter of policy, seeking as it does to introduce a new clause to require the Secretary of State to

“prepare a ten-year strategy for tackling refugee crises affecting migration by irregular routes, or the movement of refugees … through collaboration with signatories to the Refugee Convention or any other international agreement on the rights of refugees”.

Although I agree with much of the sentiment behind this worthy aim, I am afraid that I cannot support the amendment.

The Bill is to deter and prevent illegal entry into the UK. It is not a Bill about international agreements into which the UK may enter in the future, modify or make. It is for the Government of the day to propose a policy, not the unelected Chamber. Measures such as that which we are now debating tend to be part of general manifesto proposals, on which a Government is elected. They therefore have the authority of the people in whose name the Government are formed, and they reflect the democratic wish. Yes, such a policy may indeed become part of a future Government’s manifesto proposals, but I do not believe that it is for this Chamber to bind the current Government in such a way as Amendment 168A proposes.