Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am coming to an end. I understand the noble Lord’s point and I am endeavouring to explain that I think those international agreements are being used in a particular political way on this issue. I have suggested that breaching promises to the British electorate—I was trying to give some examples across party lines, so that nobody would think I was having a go at any one party—is leading to cynicism and bitterness in the electorate. The low turnout at the local elections was an indication of the fact that many people feel politically homeless.

I do not necessarily support the Bill. I want it to be scrutinised by this House, but I felt that the amendments I was referring to were almost avoiding scrutiny by simply ring-fencing the whole nature of the Bill and saying, “You can’t do that because of international treaties”. That would seem to render us even trying to scrutinise the Bill a waste of time and it will lead to even more cynicism about the lack of democracy. That is my point and it has nothing, as it happens, to do with Brexit or the EU. Although the desire to control one’s borders and one’s laws was undoubtedly part of that, I was not making that point in this instance.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I think it is this side.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

It is this side; an independent has just spoken.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Speaking independently, I think it is this side, but I will give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way and therefore I will be brief. I am not a lawyer, but I come to these matters from a very personal perspective.

I stand here as someone who, for most of my life, has faced discrimination and illegality. Why? Because the views of a majority were used against people like me enjoying the equal protection of the law and freedom from discrimination. I believe it is incumbent on anyone in public life to challenge public opinion, to lead public opinion and to have the courage to do the right thing for the long term, and never follow the short term.

I am grateful for the many briefings I have received on this from the Refugee Council, the Red Cross, the Law Society and many other eminent organisations. I think it is the first time that I have read from such reputable organisations that a Bill should be rejected on grounds of legality and constitutionality.

I particularly welcome Amendment 4 in this group because it states, quite rightly, our legal obligations. It neuters the power of Clause 1 to mandate that the rest of the Bill be in conformity with what I believe is an attempt to deny the right to seek asylum and refuge in this country.

I am lucky that I was born in the United Kingdom. I have to stand back and say: what if I had not been? What if I had been born in a country where I could not be myself, love someone of the same sex or have a different political opinion or a different religion? What if I was that person? What would I do to value my family, my life or my liberty? I would seek refuge.

To leave your home is not an easy option. I say to the Government: do not represent it as a rush through Waitrose with a three-wheeled shopping trolley. It is about life and death. Yes, there are young men who have the courage to step into a leaky boat at the end of their journey and cross the English Channel. They cross the English Channel so that they can find a place where they might belong, where they might be able to use the language or learn the language or seek out others who have similar cultural and social values. What about them, coming to earn money to send back home to liberate their families from poverty and oppression? Are they not worthy of being given the right to a fair hearing and the equality of the law?

Finally, as I said, I was born in the United Kingdom, but I am told that my family left Spain as Jews in the 16th century and travelled across Europe for the centuries that followed in search of refuge—in search of asylum. Some ended up in Ireland, where they had enough of persecution because of their religion and converted to Roman Catholicism. That branch of my family came here, and I come from that branch of the family. When I was old enough to understand that my religion was being used against me to deny me my rights and to deprive me my place and my right to love, I became a born-again atheist.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, referred to the speeches she had heard. She might have heard me refer to a brilliant speech in a play by Shakespeare, which I am not going to give to your Lordships this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the personal and moving speech from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. One always has to bear in mind the personal nature of many of the discussions and speeches we are hearing today.

I share one thing with the noble Lord: like him, I am not a lawyer. Therefore, to talk about the rule of law—which, in essence, is what this group of amendments is about—is to put one’s head into the legal lion’s mouth, but I am proposing to do that because I think that some important points need to be made from outside the courtroom. Before I get to the substance of my remarks, particularly on Amendment 4, I will set in context my strategic support for the Bill and the direction of travel, which I explained at Second Reading, because it will colour the background to the remarks I will make now and the remarks I hope to make in future stages of the Bill.

We are meeting on a very important afternoon. In 2021, we gave the right to remain—not the right to enter—to 504,000 people. That is equivalent to a city the size of Cardiff. Tomorrow, at 8 am, the ONS will release the figures on the right to remain for 2022. Unless the press has got it completely wrong, we will have given 700,000 people the right to remain in this country in one year. That is equivalent to a city the size of Newcastle. There must be a serious question as to whether that rate of population growth is sustainable, particularly within the confines of an already pretty crowded and small island.

I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham is not in his place. Although we had many confrontations on the borders Bill last year, one thing we could agree on—and I suspect that there will be general agreement in Committee—is that people who are here legally, and who have legal rights to come here, need to be welcomed and given all the advantages and rights that we enjoy. The creation of two classes of citizens would surely be fatal for our country and our society. So, when we allow people to come here permanently, we take on a considerable debt requirement for investment in various aspects that make our lives suitable and happy.

The right reverend Prelate and I would also agree, I think, that, when these rights are being given, responsibilities are simultaneously imposed. If you wish to take out of our society, you must put back in —as indeed we all must. But, if the Committee accepts that we cannot, with advantage, build a Cardiff one year, a Newcastle the next year and so on into the future, we have to find ways to restrict the inflow. By the way, the unofficial figures for the first four months of this year will show higher than 700,000 if it goes on at that rate. The 67.3 million people of our settled population—18% of whom come from minority groups —deserve no less. Therefore, as I listen to noble Lords explaining how the Bill should be removed, I think they need to think about how we tackle the question of a country which has taken on 1.2 million people— 2% of its population—in the last two years.

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

I entirely accept, and everyone who has spoken so far has agreed, that we have to control migration. I do not think there is any argument about that, but does the noble Lord accept that of that 700,000 last year, or whatever the number turns out to be exactly, the Bill will cover only 45,000? The Bill is not about overall immigration.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

The most reverend Primate is exactly right: we have failed to start the conversation across the country as to what the number we can reasonably absorb is. Once we have had that conversation, the second stage of the conversation is: how does that number divide up between, as the most reverend Primate has just referred to, people who are coming here to fulfil jobs we cannot do and people who are coming here because they have money or ideas or are brilliant academics? That way, the people of this country would have some understanding of what is in store for them. I certainly accept that 40,000 people—but it may be 80,000 people—is only a fraction, a small part, of the problem that we face.

I turn, without further delay, to the rule of law. I need to begin by stating that I am an enthusiastic supporter of the rule of law, a rule of law that interprets the views of Parliament and provides the framework under which our society can operate with confidence, our freedoms are protected and our property rights are respected. Indeed, at various times since I joined your Lordships’ House, we have had debates on the importance of the rule of law which I have been pleased to participate in. At this point, Members of your Lordships’ House who are of a judicial turn of mind will no doubt be pleased by what I have been saying. I am afraid that what I am about to say is going to be rather less acceptable.

As I have explained, I am not a lawyer, but I think the rule of law is too important to be left entirely to lawyers to speak about and interpret; there are wider societal consequences. I do not wish to get involved in legal niceties and drafting. I have heard the Government’s view, expressed by my noble friend the Minister, that the UK will be in compliance. I have heard endless briefings about how the UK will not be in compliance. Let me explain from a non-lawyer’s point of view what I think the man on the Clapham omnibus thinks, which is that the rule of law is not a stand-alone, immutable entity. To be effective and accepted, it needs to be well integrated into the civil society which it seeks to protect. Specifically, in my view, to carry public confidence the rule of law needs to meet four tests: it needs to be relevant; it needs to be open to scrutiny; it needs to be applied in accordance with the original purpose of the law; and it needs the informed consent of the British people. I shall deal briefly with those points.

The first is relevance. Of the list in Amendment 4 of five conventions, two are 70 years old, one is 60 years old, one is 30 years old and only one was signed this century. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, proudly read them out. In 1950, in the aftermath of the appalling events of the Second World War, the challenge of refugees, in terms of numbers, scale and distance, bears no relation to the situation we face today. Of course, I accept that there are areas of read-across from 1950 to today, but to see a direct comparison in every aspect stretches public credibility.

The second is openness and scrutiny. Again, as a non-lawyer, I expect there to be open hearings, with pleadings by both sides, followed by a detailed reason for reaching a particular decision by an identified judge or judges. I am not clear that this has invariably been the situation in some of the key aspects that form the background to the Bill.

The third is applicability. I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Modern Slavery Act—which is not on the list in Amendment 4—but now I see it being misused as a means to frustrate the proper operation of our immigration system and so devalue and undermine the original purpose of the Act. I find it hard to believe that the increase in case load from an anticipated 3,500 cases per annum to the current 17,000 cases last year can all be based on genuine circumstances.

Fourthly and finally is informed consent. I return to a point I covered a bit earlier: successive Governments have never been courageous or honest enough to explain candidly to the British people the implications of these conventions. It has been easier to present the country with a series of faits accomplis and then wonder why there is a degree of public cynicism and toxicity about the process.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reject amendments that place excessive weight on the narrow interpretation of the rule of law. I respectfully suggest that Members of the Committee who have amendments in this group reflect on how the outcome of their decisions and discussions may serve across the country to undermine the credibility of and public confidence in a concept—the rule of law—which we can all agree lies at the heart of our society.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I largely made at Second Reading all the points I would have wished to make in this debate, and they were admirably made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, to construe for us the meaning of the Section 19(1)(b) statement. The Minister made a sporting shot at it at Second Reading when he said:

“I think it is fair to say that there has been a misunderstanding of the effect of such a statement. We have designed a scheme that is novel and ambitious”.


One can say that again. He continued:

“as a result, we have made a Section 19(1)(b) statement under that Act. This simply makes it clear that we cannot say definitively that we will win a challenge in Strasbourg. However, we are confident that Strasbourg will respect the will of Parliament and our domestic court processes. We make no apologies for taking this approach. This is what the situation demands and what the British public expect”.—[Official Report, 10/5/23; col. 1921.]

I find that a slightly sinister statement. It seems to carry the ring of, “And the court had better find for us, or else”—and we all know what the “or else” is that is talked about in some quarters. To be fair to the Minister, he did not try to argue that, in a dualist state like us, breaching international law is a legitimate action, but some he cited in his speech are so arguing.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, that if one thinks that these conventions are a bit old and wants to change them, the way to go about that is to call for an international conference and put down proposals for amendments to the conventions. The refugee situation and the problems of asylum are not less now than they were when the conventions were created, so the need to defend and perhaps develop them—there is a case for trying to develop them—is more important now than it was even when they were first set up.

I strongly support Amendment 4. I also support Amendment 2.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, talked about 700,000 people coming to the UK potentially to settle. The 700,000 is the net migration figure. According to the Daily Telegraph—and I do not know where it got the figures from—the Government gave 1,370,000 people visas to come and settle in the UK, not 700,000.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I draw the noble Lord’s attention to the fact that he is conflating two different purposes. One is rights of admission—that is for the 1.3 million—the 700,000 have the right to remain. They are quite different, and the 1.3 million do not impose the burden on us in so far as 1.3 million people, but 700,000 people here permanently need to have, as I have said, houses, schools, jobs and all the other stuff which we expect and which they must have if they are fully paid-up citizens of this country.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I will apologise to the noble Lord if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the 700,000 is net migration. That is the number of people whom the Government have given permission to come and live here—1,370,000—minus the number of people who have left the UK, so not exactly what the noble Lord has said at all. It is an issue. As the most reverend Primate said, this Bill deals with 45,000 compared with the 1,370,000 the Government have given permission to come here.

Similarly, we support Amendment 148 in that none of the Bill’s provisions should come into force until the Secretary of State makes a statement that this Bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

To the Minister, I would say that with noble friends like the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, the Government clearly have serious questions to answer. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, whatever the solution to the overall immigration issue is, it cannot involve this country riding roughshod over its international obligations. As a commander said to me when I presented my solution to a very difficult problem in the police, I do not know what the solution is but it is not this.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise—when I get my papers in proper order—to support my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett in her Amendment 128A. As she explained, the purpose of this amendment is to remove Albania from the list of safe states in new Section 80AA on page 59 of the Bill.

As I rise, I am looking at the clock at 5.40 am—or rather 1.40 am; happily, we have not got as bad as 5.40 am, and it is certainly better than 4.20 am. I do regret that we are having to debate these important matters so late in the night. My sympathy, first of all, goes to the Ministers: they have had to work so hard on this matter. My sympathy extends to all those friends of the Minister sitting behind him. They seem to have left him now, but earlier there were hordes of them here. But this has happened and it is all part of a purge to get this Bill through in the summer—

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful for his sympathy. I am delighted to be here, but we would move forward a great deal faster if we had not had so many repetitious speeches.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Well, my Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord thought my speech about sympathy was repetitious. I have not heard it yet today, and I give those words of sympathy with great sincerity.

The important thing is to look at the state of Albania. Albania was a communist state under a particularly vicious dictator, Hoxha, until the mid-1980s. Great steps have been made since then, and when the USSR broke its ranks many Albanians worked very hard in democracy. But things have not always gone right. For example, in 1997 the Government of Berisha, who was then the president of the country, collapsed in the wake of pyramid schemes and widespread corruption. More recently, in February last year the president was subject to impeachment proceedings which were stopped only by the Albanian constitutional court.

I mention that because in the number of years that I acted as an international arbitrator and conducted arbitrations arising out of activities in the former countries of the USSR, time and again one came across very serious corruption which led to feuds and sometimes to heinous blood feuds. Corruption is a matter of great concern, and one wonders exactly how the list of safe states was drawn up; in that list are other countries of similar background to Albania—Bulgaria and Romania to name two. One looks at the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act to see what the test is, according to that Act, for the Secretary of State to take their decision. In new Section 80AA(3) it says:

“The Secretary of State may add a State to the list only if satisfied that … there is in general in that State no serious risk of persecution of nationals of that State”.


How strictly has that been applied, if it has been applied at all?

As my noble friend Lady Lister said, there is a lot of evidence of significant and outstanding issues in Albania relating to corruption, trafficking, blood feuds, discrimination and violence against the LGBT community, and stigma and discrimination against ethnic Roma and Egyptian communities and so forth. There are real grounds to be concerned whether, on any definition, Albania is properly placed as a safe country. That view is supported in our own Home Office’s work in 2022 when the UK granted protection status to 700 Albanian nationals, including 60 unaccompanied children.

For all those reasons, I hope your Lordships will feel that they should be on the safe side and remove Albania from the list of safe states.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 10 and draw attention to my entry in the register with regard to support from RAMP for this and other groups of amendments.

I have lost count of the number of times I have asked where the child rights impact assessment is, only to be told that we will receive it “in due course”. It should have been available from the outset to help develop policy, and yet here we are at Report stage with no sign of it still. Without it, how are we supposed to assess ministerial claims that their policies are in the best interest of the child and that there is no incompatibility with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Yesterday in Oral Questions I asked the Minister. All he could say was that:

“I am sure that it will be provided”.—[Official Report, 27/6/23; col. 574.]

When? After the Bill has gone through?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have looked through these amendments but not put my name to any of them. I have to say that they—in particular Amendment 8—drive a coach and horses through much of what this Bill stands for. Therefore, I am going to ask my noble friend to make sure he resists them.

This is important because we face some very serious challenges in our society as a result of the rapid growth in our population. I will go over this issue only briefly because we are time-constrained, but I just remind your Lordships that this is already a relatively overcrowded island. Last year, we admitted permanently 600,000; the year before last, we admitted 500,000. Stoke-on-Trent has a population of 250,000, Milton Keynes 288,000 and Derby 259,000. If we are going to house those people properly—and we certainly should —we will have to build four Milton Keynes or four Derbies over just two years. On dwellings, we all know how fiercely fought this is. In 2001, there were 21 million dwellings in this country; there are now 25 million—in 20 years, we have built 4 million dwellings.

It is not just at that very high level. The fact that we are introducing hosepipe bans in the south-east of England now is because the population is rising so fast we are running short of water. When we debated this in Committee, I took a certain amount of incoming from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said:

“everyone who has spoken so far has agreed, that we have to control migration. I do not think there is any argument about that, but does the noble Lord accept that of that 700,000 last year, or whatever the number turns out to be exactly, the Bill will cover only 45,000? The Bill is not about overall immigration”.—[Official Report, 24/5/23; col. 897.]

That is a fair point. However, the figure turned out to be 600,000 and it may well be that that 45,000 is 60,000, in which case it is 10%, not a sufficiently significant number, but the real challenge to us is that everybody thinks it is not their challenge. Everybody thinks it is somebody else’s challenge.

We have heard persuasive, dreadful, heart-rending speeches about the positions that people find themselves in—on behalf of interest groups of various sorts—and no doubt we shall hear them again. However, one group has essentially not been heard during our debates, and that is the 67.3 million people who live in this country, 18% of whom are from minority communities.

When I undertook my polling—which, as I have said to Members of the House, is freely available to anyone—I did not want it to be said that it was going to be old white Brexiteers living in the country, as opposed to young trendy hipsters living in the towns. In response to the question “The UK is overcrowded”, between 60% and 70% of people polled, across all social classes, all regions of the country and all age groups, felt that was the case. Every interest group, including those that are seeking to blunt the effect of the legislation before us, has to play its part in reducing the number. Unless we are seen to be responding to between 60% and 70% of our fellow citizens, uglier and nastier voices will emerge to capture that. We need to be conscious of that.

In my view, the amendments would punch holes in the bucket. How much water would flow out I do not know, but I hope the Minister will think very carefully before allowing the bucket to lose too much water because that way difficulties lie for us, for our communities and for generations ahead.

[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.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, for the reasons that both noble and learned Lords have explained, we support all the amendments in this group. Should the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, not get a satisfactory answer from the Minister, we will support him if he divides the House.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, the House will be aware that I support the direction of travel of the Bill quite strongly. It represents a serious effort—it may be a vain one, and will certainly be so if the Government accept all the loopholes in the amendments we have discussed this afternoon—to address an issue of considerable concern to our fellow citizens. But, although I support the direction of travel, that does not mean that I think it perfect in every sense. I will therefore take a minute to support Amendment 131, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead—to which he has just spoken—and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich.

I do not want to add to the background as the noble and learned Lord has obviously explained that very clearly. However, this does come under the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and I tried to draw to the attention of both Houses when we chaired the Delegated Powers Committee and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee respectively: the way in which power has been slipping through the hands of Parliament, with extensive and wide powers being taken by means of secondary legislation. Some might say that their use is improper, but let us say “extensive” for the purposes of this afternoon. Too often, these issues should have had a degree of scrutiny appropriate for primary legislation, and it is not satisfactory to introduce major issues of policy without that scrutiny.

We have to remember that we do need secondary legislation. Without it, the Government’s machine would gum up completely. But we need to make sure that its use is restricted to what it says on the tin—namely, issues of secondary importance. In my view, Clause 39, entitled

“Meaning of ‘serious and irreversible harm’,”


is of pretty fundamental importance.

I agree with the need for regulation. The world moves on much faster than the rather stately pace of primary legislation. That is why I could not support Amendment 132 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Paddick, because it seeks to delete the whole clause. We need some regulatory power. In much the same way, I am concerned about Amendment 130, because it opens up a whole series of other loopholes that impede the impact of the Bill as a whole.

In response to the wider powers that the Government are seeking under the present formulation, Parliament is entitled to ask for some limits on future ministerial power. Let me use the analogy of driving down a road. The Government are entitled to drive down the road, but in turn Parliament is entitled to ask for guard-rails—guard-rails that will ensure that a future Minister cannot swerve off into parts of—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way and for all his remarks thus far. Would he agree with me, in the light of the Companion, that this would be a good moment to hear from his noble friend the Minister?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

If the noble Baroness had given me another two sentences, I would have finished. I was going to say we need guard-rails to make sure that future Ministers do not swerve off in directions hitherto undreamed of. It is because I think Amendment 131 represents those guard-rails that I support it.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, we support the comments made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and, in particular, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. Were the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, minded to test the opinion of the House, he would certainly find us supporting him on Amendment 130.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, we have just had mention made of the young woman from Tehran. I have been in touch with that young woman; in fact, there are more than one of them. Some of your Lordships may have seen the BBC programme last week, which showed the amount of footage that was recorded on cell phones of what happened when the young woman Mahsa Amini was taken into custody because she had her scarf on in an inappropriate way. She ended up in a coma, and then dead. Two young women journalists had got into the hospital and photographed her in that coma, then photographed her family being told that she was dead. Photographs were seen in that programme of her beaten body, her face obviously pulverised by blows. In the days immediately afterwards those two journalists knew that, once they had published their film footage, they would be at risk of arrest—and there was no way that we could get them out. Contact was made, but there was no way.

A few months ago I spoke to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who is always so sympathetic to these positions. Turkey is one of the obvious places that people can flee to, but it is not a safe place for Iranian women; we have seen returns of people to Iran. The question was: if they got to Turkey, could they go into the British embassy, ask for a visa and be given sanctuary and help to get out? The noble Lord had to come back to me and say no, that would not be an acceptable way of dealing with this.

So what is the mechanism for journalists like that, who are in imminent danger? Those two women journalists are now serving six years apiece. They were put on trial, were not allowed to have lawyers and are now serving sentences in jail. That is why I tabled an amendment to the Bill suggesting that there should be emergency visas so that people in imminent danger can do something to get out.

That usually means journalists. I have personal experience of sitting in this country with Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who had written about Putin and his conduct. She went back to Russia, and three weeks later I saw her body on the stairwell of the building she lived in, with blood pouring down the stairs because she had been shot. These are real events in the lives of people who are being courageous in calling out the abuses of Governments, yet there is no way that we can help them to escape.

It is not only journalists. The lawyer acting for Navalny, the opposition leader who was making a stand against Putin, was immediately arrested. There ought to be ways in which we can provide emergency visas for people to get out. In 2019 the Government announced:

“A new process for emergency resettlement will also be developed, allowing the UK to respond quickly to instances when there is a heightened need for protection”,


and that is what we were calling for. Four years later, that still has not happened.

In 2021, in the months immediately after the military evacuation of Afghanistan, I was directly involved in trying to get judges, particularly women judges, out of that country. We managed to evacuate 103 women judges and their families, but only a small number of them were taken in by Britain. At that stage I delivered a petition to No. 10, signed by tens of parliamentarians, lawyers and human rights experts, calling on Her Majesty’s Government to introduce as a matter of urgency emergency visas for the remaining women judges, women television presenters and women Members of Parliament who had not managed to get out. I did not hear a dicky bird. I did not even get a reply to the petition; I am sure that Mr Johnson took it with him into retirement.

We now have the embarrassment that Canada has created emergency human rights defender visas, as has Ireland. The Czech Republic recently did so too, at the behest of the great project that this country was at the heart of creating, the Media Freedom Coalition. We advised that there should be emergency visas for journalists and were persuading the world to create them. The Czech Republic did so, and it now has a huge number of the journalists who had to flee Russia. Do we have many of them?

I too will support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud. I will not ask for a vote on mine because we are in a bit of a hurry but, if we accept the very sensible amendment to create emergency visas and new routes for people, I call on the Government to include the ones that will be necessary where people’s lives are in imminent danger, as we have seen in a number of conflicts recently.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, the House will know that I support the direction of travel of the Bill. I have therefore listened with particular care to the heartfelt, heart-rending speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Kerr, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, but the House and indeed the country are entitled to know, broadly, the scale of the commitment that we would be asked to accept if all these amendments were passed.

Therefore, I will detain the House for a minute or two, particularly in relation to the background to Amendments 162 and 164. I accept that the phrase “safe and legal routes” has a seductive ring to it, because it makes it sound as though we can square an extraordinarily difficult circle. But in the end it comes down to numbers, and in Amendment 164 I see no mention of a cap or limit on the numbers—I stand ready to be corrected.

I heard my noble friend Lady Stroud refer to the Minister’s reference to caps for local authorities but, if she argues that this is one way for us to get around and break the business model of the boat smugglers, I ask her: what happens when we fill up to the cap that my noble friend the Minister will have devised? Will the people smugglers not reappear immediately? In relation to my noble friend Lady Stroud’s proposed subsection (3), on the procedures to be used and who will undertake them, there is a great deal of open-ended difficulty, not least around the sort of issues we discussed a few minutes ago about the definition of “children”—this will be about the definition of a “relevant person”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

Does the noble Lord agree that we are talking about admission to the system, or admissible cases? We are not saying that all applicants’ asylum requests must be granted; we are talking merely about admissions into the system. I have not heard the noble Lord answer my argument for remote admissions.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

The issue with remote admissions is that you completely lose control of the system, because it is run on a multibased system around the world. We need, quite simply, to be clear about the number we could admit into this country, under all these worthwhile systems—they may be run in the way the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, wishes, or the way the noble Lord, Lord Alton, wishes—and keep faith with the country’s ability to absorb it without undue social and economic strain.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I draw the noble Lord’s attention to proposed subsection (2) in Amendment 163, which specifically deals with numbers and a cap, and the regulations that would be available to the Secretary of State to control the very issues that the noble Lord raised. It would allow us to deal with emergency cases of the kind that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and others described.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Absolutely—that is why, in my opening remarks, I said that the noble Lord’s Amendment 163 was movingly produced and discussed. My question on the cap was aimed at Amendment 164, which I stand ready to be corrected on, and the generality of Amendment 162, where no numbers are mentioned at all.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

It may be helpful, therefore, to clarify what is happening in Amendment 164. In January, the Government will lay a report detailing the safe and legal routes that they are choosing to introduce. The amendment says that, two months later, the Government have a duty to implement what they say they want. The amendment makes no mention of numbers and does not throw open the door at all; it purely says that, if the Government have a narrative of instituting safe and legal routes, they have the responsibility and duty to implement them. They must safeguard the passage of the Bill not just by narrative but by action.