Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

This amendment does not mean that everyone who is at risk around the world would be able to apply, but it means there would be a targeted response that could be protected against government whim and would be clearly understood. All those factors would mean that it would be an effective way of breaking the smuggling and trafficking routes that are all too prevalent. If the Government think some of the drafting can be improved, we will happily sit down with Ministers to discuss it. As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, said, hopefully on at least some element of the Bill, the Government will work with others in this House to ensure that there are practical mechanisms that do not need to wait on a political mechanism of when boats have been stopped, but we can act now to put in place workable, practical and meaningful responses to a real problem to assist individuals.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 128B, 128C and 131, which all deal with an issue which is crucial to any overall approach by this country to remake its broken asylum policy. Without that, you do not have an overall approach; you just have a piece-by-piece approach. All that was spelled out during the debate tabled by the most reverend Primate in December last year, and many Members of the House spoke in support of these safe and legal routes as one part of an overall solution. That is what I am doing today by supporting these amendments. At the time, the Minister who replied to that debate did not respond on the point of safe and legal routes, nor did the Government respond in the legislation we are discussing today, which they tabled quite soon after that debate. That was a pity: it was an opportunity missed.

Now, in the course of the proceedings in another place, the Government have put in the Bill some language about safe and legal routes. I welcome that—it is a shift of policy, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, said, back to policy which we practised before 2011—but I am sorry to say that the drafting currently in the Bill is really quite inadequate, not only because of the cap, which is arbitrary and is liable to frustrate the objective being pursued, but because actually there is no obligation on the Government, if the Bill passes in its current form, with some reference to safe and legal routes, to arrive at the implementation of such safe and legal routes. Amendments 128B, 128C and 131 are all aimed to arrive at that point: where there is an obligation on the Government. The Bill imposes a lot of obligations on the Government, many of which I and others in this House have said are contrary to our international obligations. This would be in total conformity to our international obligations, and I therefore argue that it needs to be mandatory now, not awaiting some mythical moment when the last boat has been stopped. That is not going to work; it is simply not going to happen. The wording in the Bill at the moment leaves enormous opportunities for a Government who do not wish to proceed to give effect to safe and legal routes to escape. That is why I support the amendments.

I hope that the Minister will finally lay to rest the argument that the UNHCR can do all this on our behalf. As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, has said—and others have said—reading out the text that the UNHCR has issued, that is simply not the case. I hope also that the Minister will feel able on this occasion to answer the question that has been put so many times and which I now put again: what safe and legal route exists for an Iranian woman fleeing for her life from the persecution of an extremely unpleasant regime that has hanged quite a lot of people and persecuted many others? What safe and legal route does this Iranian woman have to apply for asylum in this country? I believe myself that the answer is a very short, one-word answer: none. I would like to hear from the Minister whether he disagrees with that. If he does disagree, I would be delighted. Perhaps he would then, on the public record, show us what such a woman could do to achieve a safe and legal application, which is what she deserves.

My final point is that this all fits with our relationship with the other countries of Europe, which are also struggling to shape their migration policy to make it more apt for the circumstances of today. They are at the point of agreeing a new set of migration policies. Everyone who has looked at this—and I think the Home Office believes this too, because that is why the Interior Minister of France is in this country today, talking to the Home Secretary—acknowledges that the only way that we are going to get to grips with this is if we are able to work together right across the board. Whether it is on prevention, police work, intelligence or handling the scale of the problem, we need to work together with other European countries. That is, after all, where all these asylum seekers come from when they come illegally and where some of them would come from if we made it possible for them to come legally. At the heart of getting an effective policy is the need to have one where we can work 100% hand-in-hand with the other European countries. I hope that the Minister, when he replies to this really rather crucial set of amendments, can give us a full-scale response to these wider issues. I am sorry if it is thought at some stage that some parts of this debate have been repetitious. This is not repetitious; it is necessary.

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendment 128C in the names of my noble friends Lady Stroud, Lord Kirkhope and Lady Mobarik. The very first clause of the Bill states that its purpose is to,

“prevent and deter unlawful migration, and in particular migration by unsafe and illegal routes”.

This amendment seeks to support that aim by requiring the Secretary of State to set out additional safe and legal routes in keeping with the Prime Minister’s ambition, as stated in the House of Commons last December, to “create more” safe and legal routes. The amendment leaves significant discretion for the Secretary of State to determine the size and scope of these routes, and I hope that the Government will recognise that. It complements the existing clauses of the Bill that require the Secretary of State to report on what routes exist. I believe it is entirely in line with the Government’s own aims and ambitions for this Bill.

In particular, the amendment addresses one of the key pressures that drives unsafe and illegal migration: the fact that, for the vast majority of refugees and asylum seekers, there are no routes deemed safe and legal by the Government. As it stands, there are routes, as others have said, for Ukrainians, for the British nationals (overseas) from Hong Kong, for select Afghans, and for a few—a very few—under UNHCR resettlement, though there is no guarantee of being sent to the United Kingdom under resettlement. For many people in desperate circumstances, there is simply no safe and legal route available for claiming asylum in the United Kingdom; yet there will always be people forced from their homes who want to seek safety—and, in particular, safety in the United Kingdom, perhaps because of family or historical ties, or perhaps because of their admiration for this country, something that we ought to be proud of. We should also recognise our obligation under the refugee convention to allow people to claim asylum in the United Kingdom. The question is whether we provide a safe method where we can carefully monitor—and indeed, as per the Bill, control—the numbers coming, or whether we criminalise everything and everyone, force everything underground and push people into unsafe routes.

There are more refugees and displaced persons around the world than ever before. The number has doubled in the past decade. Only a very small proportion of them seek to come to the United Kingdom. However, this is a global crisis that is likely to get worse rather than better. Climate change risks driving millions of new displacements. This is not something that one country can hope to solve on its own. As it stands, three-quarters of refugees are hosted by low- and middle-income countries. If they start to follow the approach set out in our Bill, the Government really will have a migration crisis on their hands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I hear what the noble Baroness says and hope to be able to offer her some more reassurance during our meeting but, for the reasons I have already set out, the Government do not accept that Amendment 128B is a necessary amendment to the Bill. No doubt we can discuss this further in due course.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

The Minister has left me a little confused about numbers. He said that it would be a terrible thing if we admitted more asylum seekers by safe and legal routes than could be housed by local authorities. He has made much of the fact that this would be an exercise in futility—a “paper exercise”, he said. Can he say what assurances the Government got from local authorities about housing the 606,000 people in the net migration figures this year? It seems a bit odd that a much smaller number of asylum seekers should be subjected to these limitations whereas the much larger number is not.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The noble Lord omits to understand that the obligation to assist an asylum seeker is born of Section 95 of the 1996 Act, which applies to destitute asylum seekers. Those entering the country on a visa—for example, as a student—would not be entitled to government support for housing. The noble Lord is perhaps eliding two points in a way that is not particularly helpful.