Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, in Committee I tabled a similar amendment to Amendment 10, so I will not say much now because I said it then. I listened with interest to what the noble Lord has just said, and I recognise that we do not want illegal migration. However, there are broader and more important issues.

Children have rights. A child who is unaccompanied comes to this country, sometimes quite young, and is settled here in local authority care, placed perhaps in a foster family or a residential home. They go to an English school and become fluent in English but then, at the age of 18, are then removed either to Rwanda—the only country with which there is an agreement apart from Albania, and Albanian children are unlikely to be in this group—or to some other country or home that they have fled. Quite simply, to uproot children at 18 is, as I said in Committee, cruel.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid I have dropped my notes.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 10, tabled by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss. The sole objective of the amendment is to ensure that the Government fulfil their clear responsibility to protect the best interests of children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 3 of the convention provides explicitly that in all actions the child’s best interests must be a primary consideration, and that is what the amendment says. Article 20 requires that children separated from their parents be given special protection and assistance. Unaccompanied children seeking asylum in this country, as noble Lords know, will have escaped from the most appalling persecution, trafficking, modern slavery and other abominable experiences. The current Government are putting the reputation of this country at risk for years to come if they insist on rejecting Amendment 10 and others that seek only to ensure that this country respects our international obligations.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I have found my notes—they were at my feet—and so will intervene now, if I may.

I support Amendments 6 and 10, and I hope all other noble Lords will similarly support them. I am responsible for Amendment 8. It has been suggested that this is a busting amendment. I do not intend to put it to a vote but I intend to tell your Lordships the importance of my amendment.

It is a little difficult for me to make this intervention because I greatly respect my Front Bench and do not like being in fundamental disagreement with them. However, I am making this intervention because I believe we should all be aware of the gross injustice that this Bill will impose, when enacted, on thousands of refugees arriving in this country. Noble Lords should also be aware that we have the power, under the Parliament Acts, to delay this process as far as to May or June of next year, thereby allowing the Government to have a big rethink.

I wish to be cognisant of the wishes of your Lordships’ House and not to speak at length, and I certainly do not want to upset my Front Bench and Chief Whip by going on too long, but this will affect thousands and thousands of refugees, and we should be aware of what we are doing. That is why I have tabled an amendment to remove Clause 2. In Committee, this amendment was supported by the noble Lord, Lord German, and my noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lord Coaker. I am now being left to table it on my own.

What is the injustice? Let me trace it through one set of refugees: the Afghan refugees. The information relating to them is contained in the official government statistics for 2022. I do not have the figures for 2023 to bring it up to date—I do not think they have even been issued. In 2022, 8,633 Afghan refugees sought asylum in this country. Most significantly, 97% of them were granted asylum or other status so that they could remain in the United Kingdom. Compare that with the Albanian refugees—there are rather more of them, at around 12,000—76% of whom were refused entry.

It can be assumed that, in 2023, the same number of Afghans, or possibly more, will arrive in this country. We can also assume that there will be the same proportion of genuine refugees, and that all of them will have come to this land in the genuine belief that there is the availability of asylum for them—the people smugglers are hardly going to tell them otherwise. This point was supported by paragraph 33 on page 13 of the impact assessment.

The further point I ask your Lordships to note is that, under the Taliban, there is a lot of evidence of mistreatment of Afghans, particularly women, and particularly relating to education. I also ask noble Lords to take note that, in Afghanistan, there is terrorism, persecution, false imprisonment and torture, hence the very large number of Afghans who got asylum. I remind noble Lords that that figure is 97%.

We should also look at their long journey to this country. The measured distance between Kabul and Calais is 4,168 miles—nearly twice the journey of crossing the United States of America. We do not know precisely how they carried out that journey but, inevitably, it must have been through Iran and Iraq—two countries which are not friendly to passengers—and possibly on through war-torn Syria. Somehow or other, they managed to reach the Mediterranean and Europe, via Greece or Italy. Their mode of transport must have been fairly limited. If they had the money, they might have been able to take a bus, but, in the main, they must have had to get the indulgence of lorry drivers and accept lifts from them. In my view, one has to be left with an admiration of the Afghans who made it to Calais. The Government make much of the illegal entry of the boat people, but how else could they have got here? Should they have obtained UK visa forms in the depths of the mountainous country of Afghanistan? How on earth could they have made the journey here, except in the circumstances they have?

The consequences of the provisions of the Bill will simply be dire for all refugees. Let us briefly look at them. First, without any investigation about their asylum or other status, they are to be shipped immediately, under Clause 2, to Rwanda—it could hardly be back to their home state, which is the other alternative. Rwanda carries a capacity of about 30,000 refugees. Secondly, once they get to Rwanda, for example, they will be barred from UK asylum status and left with Rwanda asylum status, if that does them any good. Thirdly, they will be branded as illegal immigrants and barred for ever from entering the UK. Their only sin has been that they travelled here from Afghanistan without the necessary paperwork and crossed the channel in a rubber dinghy, yet on arriving here they were seeking to escape the terrors—this is the important point—of the Taliban Government, probably in large numbers.

I will not detain your Lordships further, except to make it plain that, if we allow the Bill through in its present form, it will impose terrible consequences on a lot of refugees who have no opportunity to establish their asylum status. I could go through the mechanism of the Parliament Acts—I have my notes for it—but it suffices to say that, under them, we have the power to stop this, and we should at least consider it.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief because my timetable has not allowed me to take a significant part in the Bill hitherto. However, I have attended quite a lot of the debate, which I started attending in a very troubled state of mind, completely uncertain about what I would do about this startling proposal. I sat through quite a bit of the Committee debate, and have listened today to the debate on the two amendments we have had, and I think that the underlying problem is being missed. We all agree that there is a huge problem with illegal migration and that, if we cannot find a solution, people will die in the channel in considerable numbers—they go up each year—by taking risks as they come here. We all admit that it is a global problem, so, if we suddenly become an easier country than others, we are likely to find significant pressures.

We all want to retain our excellent reputation—it is not unblemished, but better than those of most other European countries—for good race relations and an integrated community. During my lifetime, Britain has become a multicultural, multiracial society, and I am glad to say that I think the majority of my fellow citizens feel that the contribution that has been made, and the improvements to our society, are quite substantial as a result. As my noble friend said a moment ago, concern about the dinghies and old fishing boats bobbing on the ocean will, if we are not careful, rearouse all the bad feelings that we used to know, which we remember only too well from 20 or 30 years ago. That is why more than 60% of our population wish to stop illegal immigration.

I have tried to listen for a solution during the debates on the two groups of amendments but, sadly, the only solution being put forward is the rather extraordinary one by the Government that we simply cease to entertain illegal immigration and deport to safe places. I have not heard a single alternative policy put forward. I am not sure that it will work—I think I said that at an earlier stage—but I am still to hear anybody else offer anything but the possibility of litigation or huge numbers of people coming here as the practice of trying to get over the channel grows. We have to face up to our responsibilities. I am a lawyer and have a huge respect for law—abiding by the rule of law is one of the most important underlying principles of our constitution—but we cannot simply produce a lot of legalisms to shoot down the proposal without making any suggestion whatever of a practical kind that is likely to impact a great national problem, which we share as part of a global problem.

Finally—I am sorry that I have spoken for longer than I intended—I give this Government credit, not for coming up with the extraordinary idea of Rwanda but for making our contribution. We have done well with Ukrainian and Hong Kong refugees and admitted a lot of people from Afghanistan, although we could have made a better job of that. We are making our contribution to the global problem and taking a huge net increase to our population each year; we are getting some benefit, as it is helping our workforce. We are not becoming a walled-in, closed country. That is a good British contribution to a tremendous problem for the whole of the western world.

With no alternative policy in sight at all, this latest legal argument, which lies behind the key amendments here, is simply not a good enough reason for rejecting this policy. I do not know whether the policy will work, but we can no longer simply do nothing. To retreat into hours and hours of legalistic debate—which is very interesting, if you are interested in that kind of thing—is not rising to the occasion. Therefore, with a certain reluctance, I will yet again support the Government, which is not always my habit in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, these amendments go to the issue of whether it is safe to remove a person to a country listed in Schedule 1. It remains the Government’s view that these amendments are not necessary. I will briefly set out why that is the case.

It is not the case that anyone who meets the conditions in Clause 2 can be sent to any of the countries listed in Schedule 1 without further ado. In the case of a national of a non-Section 80AA country, were they to make a protection claim or human rights claim they could not be returned to their home country. In speaking to his amendment the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, itemised a number of the countries with which he has particular concern. For the sake of brevity, I will answer by reference to a single example, but that example covers the list: a Gambian LGBT person fearing persecution if they were returned to Gambia would not be so returned if they make an asylum claim.

The point was taken up by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, spoke with power and made specific reference to an individual example, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, returned to the point when summing up. However, I reiterate that an LGBT person fearing persecution if they were returned to their own country would not be so returned if they make an asylum claim.

In the case of a national of a Section 80AA country, the fact that they have raised a protection or human rights claim against their country of nationality would not be a bar to their removal to their home country, unless the Secretary of State considers that there are exceptional circumstances why they cannot be removed there. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in summing up from the Opposition Benches, drew our attention to the concern that that might lay open this serious matter to the idiosyncrasies of a particular Home Secretary, but I urge your Lordships to consider that the countries with which we are dealing here are EU and EEA countries, plus Switzerland and Albania, all of which, we maintain, are clearly safe. That said, if it was considered that there were exceptional circumstances, they would not be removed there and would instead be removed—

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I have listened intently to the argument that was presented, particularly by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and I just make a very simple proposition. Would it not be much safer to adopt Amendment 37, rather than leaving it to individuals as to whether they make an asylum claim and in what circumstances? That is why I ask the Minister to think again about this.

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, the Government Front Bench will reflect, as your Lordships would expect, on submissions made on the Floor of the House at this stage. With respect to the noble Lord, I will defer my consideration of that point until later in my submission and will take matters in a different order. I will return to that point.