Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, as we have heard already today, there are serious concerns in the country about the security of our borders. Of course, this is motivated by keeping ourselves safe, but it is also motivated by wanting to make sure that those who deserve to claim asylum and are refugees who want to travel here are able to use a fair system, that they have a good reception when they arrive and that we are able to plan for a larger population. I am afraid that, at the moment, I am not at all clear that we are managing migration in such a way that that we are able to plan for it in any great way. I will give a couple of examples of where this really matters.

I get increasingly frustrated in this place. Almost every day, we hear of a Government, this one or the previous, being blamed for things. That is the nature of politics but, just last week, we heard accusations that it was someone’s fault that nine more reservoirs are needed, and we have regular complaints about lack of housing and lack of electricity. There are many other things that we do not seem able to cope with.

I suspect that one reason is that our population has grown so quickly. When I took over the Met in 2011, the population of London was about 7.4 million; by the time I left, it was 8.4 million and, today, it is about 9 million. A significant number of the people who have come to the UK have ended up in our major economic centres, such as London. This is a very significant shift. Some of the symptoms of that growth were that, in places such as Newham, around 50,000 people were living in what are called “beds in sheds”. These places were not designed to hold people—they were garages that had things added on. When people are living in such conditions, you are just waiting for epidemics or other things to happen. I am afraid that, unless we plan well to make sure that all the facilities are there, everyone suffers. Probably those who suffer most are the migrants who arrive but who we did not anticipate in the way that we should have.

There are two major categories of migration in this country. The first is legal migration, which is allowing those who want to enter our country for economic reasons and asylum seekers or refugees who need our help. At some point, the previous Government got things a little wrong with legal migration because, by some of the measures that they took, legal migration went out of control and up to around 800,000. The noble Lord, Lord Green, mentioned at the time that some of the levers—it is not easy to predict how people will react to them—were probably set at the wrong level. The previous Government changed those levels, as mentioned earlier. This Government are now using those levers to make sure that legal migration is more under control.

This Bill, however, is about illegal migration and improving how we can stop it. I think it has some good ideas, but I am honestly not convinced that it is comprehensive, forensic or ruthless enough to deal with all the issues that we face now and will face in the coming years. I have four tests for this Bill to see whether it will improve the situation in which around 1,000 people a day have been seen to cross the channel to land on our south coast.

My first test is whether the Bill will deter people who have no right to be here from trying to get here. We have said that we do not want them to cross the border. At the moment, there are thousands of people each year who broadly say, “We do not respect your rules but are confident that, having crossed the border, we will not be removed”. I do not see any great change in this Bill that will affect their motivation.

My second test is what happens to people who have arrived here and been found to have no claim to remain, particularly where they have a criminal record. I have no confidence that those whom we wish to remove will be removed, even where they have a criminal record. Often in this country, we do not know the backgrounds of the people who are here, because we do not know their identity. Consequently, we are not very familiar with some of the things that they have done or been involved in, in the past.

My third test is whether the Bill will deter and detect those who commit organised crime and arrange for people to bypass the rules for profit. I see very little in the Bill that shows me that the Government will ruthlessly and massively go after the assets of the criminals. If we can take the profit from the business, we can exert some control. There are some incremental steps in the Bill, but it does not convince me that we will see more than marginal improvements in the seizure of criminals’ assets.

My fourth test is whether there is anything in the Bill that will allow the courts to distinguish better between valid and invalid claims for asylum. In particular, how will they either change the European Convention on Human Rights or its interpretation, which presently seems to give precedence to the failed asylum seeker or the convicted criminal against the rights of people who are properly using the legal system and the victims of crime?

In closing, I highlight a particular concern I have about the Bill. It has been mentioned already by the noble Lords, Lord Swire and Lord Browne. The Border Security Commander is, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said, a misnomer. The Border Security Command has no people to command, and the organisations that do have people to command are not commanded by it. At best, it tries to co-ordinate those who have a duty to manage our borders, which includes the border agency, the immigration service, the National Crime Agency, security services and local police forces. Each of those organisations is accountable for its own actions. The commander cannot order them to take any particular action. I am not persuaded that the commander having a board, as proposed by the Bill, will make any difference to that.

The Government found their leadership voice today on defence. They made an excellent announcement about our future defence and sent a clear message to our enemies. Does this Bill send the same clear message to the organisers of illegal migration? I am not convinced that it does. It needs to speak clearly about the profit they are making and the fact that if they continue there will be a serious penalty. At least two or three noble Lords have mentioned that if the Government do not do that, people like Reform benefit, which does not benefit many people at all. Unless we get some better answers to some of the things that I and others have identified, that is the way it will go.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Does the Minister concur with and endorse that view? If so, will he give some further consideration to whether any disapplication might occur that would not be in accordance with the commitments that we have entered into?

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 99 is not directly related to the previous amendments other than by the connection of biometric data. My question is about which database the biometric data is being checked against. The question comes from the briefing that was helpfully provided by the Minister and his advisers prior to the Bill being laid. At that briefing, I asked whether the databases were being checked for particular purposes, and the advice we received was that they could not be used by the police. I found that confusing when I re-read the Bill and saw that there is a law enforcement clause. The questions today are about whether the databases are being checked for these particular reasons.

If the people you are checking are entering for the first time, they should never have their data in these databases because they have never been to the UK. But, of course, many of the people who arrive, sometimes illegally, have been here before, have left and now are returning—so it is important to establish their identity first, obviously.

The databases that I am interested in are, first, the unsolved crime scene database. Crimes happen every day, samples are taken—DNA, fingerprints and sometimes photographs now—and, of course, not all crimes are solved. A database is kept of those crimes that are not solved, so is the biometric data of the people who are entering being checked against that?

The second group I am interested in is people who are wanted. They might be wanted in this country or in other countries. It may be that we choose not to let the third country know that this person has arrived, but at least we should know whether we are at risk of importing someone who is wanted somewhere else. This is probably quite important, given the group of countries that many of the people who are coming to our country are linked to. When many of our soldiers in Afghanistan were murdered and badly maimed by IEDs, we collected an awful lot of forensic material, which is now stored in this country in case we ever discover the people who carried out those crimes. It would certainly be ironic if somebody claimed to want to come to this country legally and had previously killed or maimed one of our soldiers—we should at least be aware of that. Are we checking this against that database?

This is quite a specific set of questions, but it relies on the data being checked. The advice we received at the briefing was that it was not. The purpose of this amendment is to get on record exactly what it is being checked against.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which have been so ably supported across the Committee—pretty much every voice so far has been in support of them. They are a very useful humanitarian mirror to arguments that have been made on the previous group about the importance of data sharing for law enforcement purposes.

Amendments 97 and 98, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, very much endorse the views of the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Alton, on the need for even more breadth and possibly a government amendment. These amendments are very sympathetic to the Government’s stated policy of smashing the gangs et cetera. It is a perverse outcome to hear that people who were trying to satisfy the Government’s legal and practical requirements for family reunion are having to resort to people smugglers. So, with respect, I hope that the Minister will see that this is a no brainer in terms of the practical facilitation of government policy.

Finally, I talked about these amendments being very much the humanitarian mirror of the need sometimes to share data—in this case, biometric information—for the purpose of giving effect to lawful family reunion. Please do not shoot the messenger, but I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that the Data Protection Act and the UK GDPR contain very broad law enforcement exemptions, but broad is not blanket. I hope I can say to Conservative noble Lords that it is one thing to have a broad law enforcement exemption, but another to have blanket immunity from data protection. I am sure that noble Lords opposite would not want, for example, data controllers to be negligent or not to maintain a secure system so that sensitive information, even about potential criminals, was dumped on the internet, easily hacked or simply negligently maintained. Data controllers, particularly public authority data controllers, and especially of sensitive information, should at least have to maintain a proper, secure system. Yes, data should be shared for law enforcement purposes where that is necessary and proportionate, but they should not be totally negligent with this information.

I hope that provides some reassurance on that issue. In any event, if it does not, the Minister has already said that he can write.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord brings great experience of the Foreign Office. He will know about this better than I do; I am a Home Office person rather than a Foreign Office person. I am trying to assure the House that, while the points that have been made are a fair challenge to the Government, we believe that the clause meets those obligations, providing flexibility and engagement with the International Organization for Migration, the UNHCR and others.

I mentioned Operation Pitting in Afghanistan in 2021. Some 15,000 people were evacuated and biometrics were collected post arrival in the United Kingdom. In the Sudan evacuation, just under 2,500 individuals were evacuated, with biometric checks taken in third-party countries such as Saudi Arabia. In Gaza, 250 British nationals were supported to exit and biometric checks were taken. The mechanism is there. I have had strong representations from across the Committee on this issue, but I am trying to explain the position of Clause 34. I hope that, with my comments, the noble Baroness can withdraw her amendment.

I have not forgotten the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who may want to intervene—he does want to, so I shall allow him to before I finally, I hope, wind up.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I thank the Minister. First, I am broadly reassured. There is just one area where I hope he might reassure himself and therefore me. I mentioned the Afghanistan IED material. It is probably difficult to talk about publicly, but if he could reassure himself that this biometric data had been checked against that database, I would be very reassured and that might help him too.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I have given a broad description. The police have access to terrorist databases with information and biometrics generally. I think it best not to talk, at the moment, about specific databases. I believe the IED database that he mentioned is covered by the proposals, but I will check with my colleagues who have a responsibility for that, rather than inadvertently give the Committee information that proves subsequently not to be as accurate as I would wish.

With that, I would very much welcome the noble Baroness responding and withdrawing the amendment.