Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

This is a thoroughly nasty amendment. That is all I have to say about it.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will not be quite as brief as that, but I will try to be brief.

I rise to support Amendment 33 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, which I have co-sponsored. It is surely right that the failure to produce identifying documents should be a factor—I put it no stronger than that—in assessing the credibility of a claimant. The destruction of identity documents has long been a means of undermining our asylum system. As I mentioned in Committee, we overcame a similar problem for those arriving by air simply by photographing the documents before they got on the plane, so if they stuck them down the loo, it was not going to help them, and that had been going on for some considerable time.

It is no accident that today, 98% of all cross-channel arrivals, whether by truck or boat, have no documents. Indeed, it is not in dispute that people smugglers instruct them to destroy any documents to reduce the risk of being returned to their home countries. In many cases, the applicants are making fools of us. Surely, the least we can do is to specify in law a requirement to take into consideration the absence of documents as a factor in judging the applicant’s credibility. I can think of no reason why that should not be the case and I strongly support the amendment put down by the noble Baroness.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I rise briefly to support this amendment. I had an opportunity years ago, when we were part of the European Union, to participate in an inquiry about FRONTEX and to go to Heathrow Airport to see the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Green, has just addressed. We were asked to be there at 8.30 in the morning to see what happened when people arrived at Heathrow on the overnight flights. Issues that have since been cured, largely, were then putting the immigration officers under enormous strain.

For example, on the day that we were there, a young man from Australia arrived who claimed to be British, but he came without any documentation; and a man from Brazil arrived for a holiday but without any money, so he was obviously going to work. Most significantly, a man on a flight from Nigeria claimed that he could not speak any of the languages available through interpreters at terminal 3, which is quite a wide range. I asked the reason for that, and they said that he will not speak until the flights back to Nigeria have left, and then he will start to speak, because otherwise he will be put back on the next flight to Nigeria. This was a prevalent issue, but I think it has now largely been tackled for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Green. It was a huge gap in our ability to provide control. Those measures are not applicable to channel crossings, but we do need to find ways to tackle this issue, just as the noble Lord, Lord Green, described how we tackled it at airports. In the absence of that, we need to make it clear in law that the lack of clarity referred to by my noble friend when she moved the amendment should be taken into account by immigration officials.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

Order.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

If I may—

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

No. My Lords, this is Report. First, we are allowed to speak only once during a debate. Secondly, even if noble Lords were not here for Second Reading or Committee, they should not be making Second Reading or Committee speeches on Report.

We cannot support this amendment because there is no differentiation between documents that are genuinely lost or stolen. We know that people smugglers control the people they are smuggling, including stealing and taking their documents away from them deliberately, so it may not be the fault of the asylum seeker that they do not have a document. This amendment and the other provisions in the Bill seem to ignore the fact that officials and tribunals are quite capable of deciding, on the basis of the evidence, what weight they place on the evidence that is provided to them and what should be considered in terms of the credibility of the claimant, without what is contained in the Bill or in this amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, on the basis of a freedom of information request, that only 2% of asylum seekers were in possession of a passport. Only four in 10 Americans have a passport. Is it any wonder that those fleeing war in less developed countries, often when normal government services have completely collapsed, do not have passports? If you are fleeing war, if you are being bombed, if you are being persecuted because of your sexuality or your political views, the first thing on your mind is to get out of that country, not to go to the Government and ask for a passport.

This amendment and the related clauses in the Bill that seem to be telling officials and tribunals what interpretation they should put on evidence should not be supported by this House.

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[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard some very moving speeches. Because I have consistently spoken over the years in favour of family reunion, I will say something about Amendments 47 and 48, which I support. I urge the Government to take them away and combine the best points from both of them into something workable, practical and possible to implement.

It is most important that children and young people who are already here should be able to sponsor their close relatives, and, conversely, older people here should be able to sponsor their younger next of kin.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I offer just a sentence on some of these amendments.

On Amendment 48, we need to bear in mind the risk that if we set up what is now proposed, children who are not yet in Europe will feel obliged to take quite serious risks to get into Europe to take advantage of it. With regard to Amendment 49, Syria is a good example. We decided that something needed to be done. We chose a target that, if you like, was doable—5,000 a year—and we did it. I take some encouragement from that. However, we need to be careful about the numbers, because we are already taking 40,000 a year, and if the Channel gets any worse that could be 70,000. We need to be careful not to lose the public’s support, which underlies all this.

Lastly, on Amendment 51, I have a good deal of sympathy with the comments of my noble friend Lord Alton on the Yazidis and others in Iraq. It may be that we should aim to do something similar to what was done over Syria, but again with a cap, in case the numbers run out of control. That has, indeed, been included in subsection (4) of the amendment, I think.

I mentioned public opinion, which changes from time to time. There is certainly very strong opposition to what is happening in the Channel; there is widespread public feeling that the Government, having promised to reduce immigration, have in fact lost control of the Channel. That, indeed, is the case. We cannot really expect the public to distinguish very clearly between asylum and other kinds of immigration. They are very uneasy, and in taking policy forward we need to keep that well in mind.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, as we have heard, in addition to the family reunion amendments so ably explained by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lady Ludford, this group includes amendments on setting an annual target for the acceptance of asylum seekers into the UK and the acceptance of refugees in specific circumstances—such as those faced by female judges in Afghanistan, the victims of genocide and those fleeing the appalling situation in Ukraine. If the noble Baroness does not take up the challenge set by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, to combine the best parts of the two family reunion amendments, we will vote for Amendment 48, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, explained, the Government need to build capacity in this country to enable us to take in at least 10,000 refugees a year—a number that is seen almost universally as the UK’s annual fair share of global refugees. Without a target to aim for, the necessary arrangements—the infrastructure and capacity in local services—will not be in place to cope with situations, such as Ukraine, that can arise, as we have seen, with relatively little notice. It is no excuse for the Government to say, “We are unprepared”. We must be prepared, and Amendment 49 seeks to ensure that we are.

I reiterate what I said late on Monday: the British people want to help genuine refugees, like those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine. What they worry about, rightly or wrongly, is being overwhelmed by immigrants. I repeat: in recent years only six in every hundred people coming to the UK to live have been asylum seekers. The British people have nothing to fear from this amendment. On the contrary, if it was explained to them, I am sure that they would support it overwhelmingly.

We support Amendment 50—so powerfully spoken to, and in the name of, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws—which makes special emergency provision for people at particular risk, such as human rights defenders, including journalists, and minorities. We also support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, to make special provision for victims of genocide.

To put beyond doubt the mixed messages from the Government about what they will do to support refugees from Ukraine, Amendment 54A in my name, and signed by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, puts into primary legislation the requirement to support, by whatever means necessary, Ukrainian refugees who need to come to the UK. We passionately support all the amendments in this group.