Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, as a former Immigration Minister in this country, I have always been of the view that a primary responsibility of our Government should be to keep the people safe from internal and external threats. This includes maintaining our borders and dealing with immigration with policies that are firm but fair. That is certainly what we strived to achieve under my watch. That included rules that were clear and enforced without bias for immigration, including exercising the powers of removal or deportation in cases of illegality or failure under the rules. The need to improve our rates of removals is something I have always supported. But I never conflated the issues of immigration and asylum; they are wholly distinct and require different considerations. I am therefore a little surprised and disappointed that the Bill has blurred the lines between these things. It has proposed a number of controversial ideas that we need to examine carefully.

The first is Clause 28 and Schedule 3, which give the Home Office powers to send asylum applicants to offshore processing centres outside the UK. About 20 years ago, I chaired two party commissions set up to consider, in turn, the UK’s policies towards asylum and immigration. One of our asylum proposals was to consider applications in an offshore location, isolated from the mainland. I soon realised that this was a highly defective idea and it caused much unnecessary concern to certain islanders around our shores, but at least it did not suggest moving people outside of our territorial jurisdiction. These new proposals do, and in my opinion would be a clear breach of the principles of the 1951 convention on refugees, as well as providing substantial legal concerns as to the responsibility for dealing with applications. An asylum application is under the control of an applicant. Until and unless an application is made there is no status of asylum seeker, and the applicant can decide where to make their application. Therefore, deporting an applicant to another state and jurisdiction and asking them to determine the case for us is an abrogation of our responsibilities and an abuse of the applicant’s rights.

Who would agree to this without themselves breaking the rules? Not the Albanians, not the Norwegians and surely not the Rwandans. The Australians tried a similar idea, referred to by a number of noble Lords, and it was a total failure. Surely it is a totally unacceptable process for us and one where we would end up with different legal and human rights standards. It would be a nightmare and simply would not work.

My second concern relates to Clause 9, which would allow the Home Office to strip people of UK citizenship unilaterally, secretly and without right of appeal. That would be an appalling prospect and is against all our legal and constitutional principles, when notification to an individual of their rights and decisions taken about them is inherent in both our criminal and our civil law. The Bill term “public interest” is similar to that used to justify such an approach in some countries that would not be regarded as being as democratic and free as our own.

Finally, I return to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. I was proud to follow British values and the rule of law in our approach to those in need of humanitarian assistance. I was responsible for implementing the Bosnian refugee resettlement programme in the 1990s, which was of great credit to all those involved in its delivery. It was a good and legal route for many to escape persecution, complying with the necessary criteria as determined by UN and UK officials.

Why is this Bill attempting to create two categories of asylum seekers, and how can the arrival of an asylum seeker be determined as being either legal or illegal? As I stated earlier, there are no asylum seekers until asylum is requested, so a pre-application is difficult to define. There are legal and illegal immigrants, but this term cannot be easily transported to asylum seekers. Essentially, according to this Bill, all asylum seekers are therefore to be deemed illegal and we would not hear their claims at all. I think we are obliged to hear those claims. Of course, since we left the EU we can no longer return failed applicants to the states that are subject to the Dublin agreement, an agreement which I was partly responsible for drafting. Our international opportunities for using programmes or, as the Government suggest, legal routes have diminished.

Ultimately, we must recognise the ever-increasing prospect of people being forced to leave their countries of origin. The challenge requires an international effort through the UN or other recognised agencies, with renewed co-operation on both sides between the UK and the EU. This is not helped with these provisions, which are likely to be unenforceable and will perhaps even look a little inhumane. I call upon the Government to think again and try to make sure that the reputation of this country, which is a proud one, is something that we can continue. I am sure that, with the help of your Lordships, this Bill will be returned to the other place in a much better form and order than its current state.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan and the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, to oppose Clause 9; I have added my name to both. I also lend my support to all other amendments in this group. We should support anything that allows us to think again, row back and reset in an area that has developed in ways that we could not have envisaged, and take any opportunity to put it right.

The consequences of Clause 9 are, once again, incremental changes but with far-reaching consequences. I do not intend to rehearse the arguments I made at Second Reading on the history of the state’s power to strip UK citizens of their citizenship. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moylan, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for comprehensively and clearly stating the history of this issue, the background, the policy, the changes and its impact.

Each change has been sold by successive Governments as small, incremental, narrow and necessary. But each change has widened further the net of who, how and why the state can strip our fellow countrymen and women of their right. Clause 9 removes the requirement for the Secretary of State to notify someone when they are being deprived of their citizenship in a broad range of loosely defined circumstances, including when it does not appear to be “reasonably practicable”. I am grateful to my noble friend for her recent correspondence, but I am afraid it provides little justification for this change, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said.

Today I want to make three points. The Government have stripped hundreds of citizens of their citizenship over the last decade. Indeed, as recently as 2017, we heard that over 100 people were stripped of it in one year alone. The requirement for notice was, of course, fulfilled in all those cases. The lack of a Clause 9 power did not prevent the Government acting in hundreds of cases. The case of D4, which has been mentioned by other noble Lords, was what led to this clause at the 11th hour, with little debate in the Commons. To help the Committee understand the rationale behind this clause, can my noble friend start by publishing in a single document the numbers of people deprived, the reasons for the deprivation and the ethnicities of those deprived from, say, 1981 to 2010 and 2010 to date?

Secondly, I want to talk about stripping someone of their citizenship. It strips them of their right to live in their country and of their home, their job and their right to family. It often deprives them of the only place they know and forces them to find another place in the world that may or may not accept them—often a place with which they have little if any connection and where their life may be at risk.

Clause 9 seeks to do this without even notifying the person of such a radically life-altering decision. This in reality removes the person’s right to challenge the decision, the basis of it, the accuracy of the facts on which it was based or, indeed, even whether the person stripped is the right person. My noble friend’s explanation in her letter, I am afraid, goes no further in giving any reassurance that appeal rights will be preserved with Clause 9. As the Constitution Committee said in its report on the Bill:

“The House may conclude that this clause is unacceptable and should be removed from the Bill.”


Thirdly, I want to move to a fundamental principle that we are equal before the law, entitled to equal protection and equal treatment. I think the whole Committee can agree on that. In this country, we legislate for what is a crime and publish the law, including sentencing guidelines. If we break the law, we know the consequences that will follow—and follow equally for all citizens. Yet it seems that these fundamental principles are now being eroded.

So perhaps I may ask my noble friend: if an act, a crime, carries the penalty and sentence of citizenship being stripped, should it apply to anyone convicted of that crime? Do my noble friends on the Front Bench agree that sentencing should be linked to crime, not where your grandparents or great-grandparents were born, and that a sentence should not change based on heritage or race? If my noble friends agree with that principle, they will think again and, I hope, before Report they will strike Clause 9 from the Bill, because to do anything else would mean that we further the appalling situation in which we find ourselves now in Britain that seeks to sentence predominately a minority black and brown community differently from the majority white community. Yes, that is hard to listen to, but it should disgust and disturb us in this House.

Being a citizen of this country means that, when you commit a crime, you are arrested, tried and convicted by our laws and our courts. I therefore disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I accept that it is hard for him to revisit his time, but it is punishment and cannot be protection, as he says it is. If the laws, as he says, were brought in as a response to the challenge of terrorism and an international terrorist franchise, surely that required an international response. So how will dumping our citizens who have shown support for that international franchise in another country—likely with less resources—protect us? I would argue that it makes us all less safe.

Finally, this clause has had a chilling effect in our country. It has provoked debates in homes in settled, established communities such as mine and those of other noble Lords. I want to mention a very personal story. When I was growing up, there were two things I remember acutely. The first was a Hitachi case containing everyone’s papers, passports and naturalisation certificates. When anything happened in our home, for example if we moved, that Hitachi case was rescued first, because the fear was real that, without that case, we might be asked to leave.

The story that I heard from my parents was this. My dad is an optimistic guy who always thought that he would build a house in the north of Pakistan in the way that many of us dream of having a villa in the south of Spain. But my mum, like many women, was more realistic and cynical. She worried that one day we would be asked to leave and go back home. I did not envisage that here I would be at 50, not quite dreaming my dad’s dream but definitely worrying my mum’s worry.

So I say to my noble friend that opposition to this clause is widespread. Most of our inboxes are full of briefings and correspondence. The clause is broadly opposed in this Committee. Today we have seen the House at its best; across it and across political divides we have had noble Lords raising their concerns. So I hope that my noble friend will think again before Report.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say just a few words because I have listened very carefully, looked at all these amendments and heard some extremely good speeches from colleagues on all sides of the House. However, I am a former Immigration Minister and, looking back at legislation that I was involved in in the 1990s, there were certain Bills in which clauses came forward, we looked at amendments and, frankly, we concluded that, however good the amendments were, the clauses were unamendable and should be removed when they were not effective and where it had been clearly shown that they would have had bad effects.

I am grateful to those who have moved or spoken to their amendments, but I can think of few proposals that can offend as widely and as profoundly as the removal of people’s citizenship. Clause 9, sadly—to me, anyway, as a lawyer—is an affront to our common law, to international legal standards and understandings, and to our various human rights commitments. Critically, it could have appalling consequences for those affected.

As I stated at Second Reading, stripping people of their citizenship—secretly and unilaterally, on vaguely defined grounds such as “in the public interest”—exposes us to actions that fall short of our normal democratic standards, both at home and abroad. It also predicates many legal proceedings.

We all know that the first rule of government is to protect our citizens. I took that very seriously then, as I do know. Clause 9 would place already vulnerable people at greater risk. There are plenty of examples of this. A person may be deported to a country where capital punishment is practised, or where other inhumanities might present themselves. This proposal could hardly be described as protective, as it would open us up to accusations of double standards, which would undermine our efforts to speak out against issues such as the death penalty or cruel and inhumane practices elsewhere.

The UK has a very good and proud record of calling out injustice when it applies to other countries that show a lack of respect for human rights and international standards. At times—not often, but occasionally—we are also good at sporting spurious justifications to mask unsavoury policies. I fear that this clause would grant the UK the same sort of cover and ability to employ the same sorts of excuses to enforce policies that are otherwise indefensible and might be misused.

Citizenship is a valuable status and a clear constitutional right. The issue of revocation is, therefore, to be taken seriously. Any attempt by the state to withdraw an individual’s citizenship must have a clear and robust basis in law. It must assert the primacy of due process, including the right of appeal. Above all, it must be transparent, where the basic rights of notification of action to a subject are followed.

I fear that Clause 9 will create a process that is arbitrary and fundamentally unjust. That is why it should not be supported. I hope that my noble friend can rectify the situation before Report. I listened particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. He was quite correct; it is very difficult to see that any form of amendment could put this clause right.

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, it is important to situate Clause 9 within the breadth of our immigration law as it stands. For obvious reasons, deprivation powers available to a Secretary of State to strip a person of their British citizenship were historically very tightly drawn indeed. In 2003, 2006, 2014 and 2018, these powers were significantly expanded. They may now be exercised in relation to any British citizen who is a dual national—including British citizens from birth—where the Secretary of State is satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good.

If we want to grasp how broad a power that is and how broad are its implications, we need only recall what the Supreme Court said in the Begum case last year—that this includes a situation where the person does not even know that they are a dual national and where they have little or no connection with the country of their second nationality.

The power can also be exercised in relation to naturalised British citizens even where they are not dual nationals if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the conducive to the public good test is passed because the person has acted in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK. If the Secretary of State has a reasonable belief that the person is able to become a national of another country and that belief turns out to be unfounded, the individual will become stateless.

The leading immigration law silk, Raza Husain, has said:

“This progressive extension over the last two decades has meant that it is no longer necessary to demonstrate that someone is a terrorist or a traitor before stripping them of British citizenship. Individuals may be deprived of citizenship on general public interest grounds of the sort usually invoked to justify deportation, rather than on the basis of their severing the bonds of allegiance that are the hallmark of nationality.”


It is no doubt because of the lowering of these procedural safeguards that the exercise of deprivation of citizenship is now relatively common. In the period from 1973 to 2002, there were no deprivation orders at all. I am told that, since 2011, the power has been used in at least 441 cases, with 104 in 2017 alone. Of course, Clause 9 has the potential very significantly to increase the use of this power. The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, has spoken very compellingly about the disproportionate impact that this will inevitably have on non-white British citizens.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate]

100: Clause 28, page 33, line 20, leave out paragraph (a)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is linked to the amendment to leave out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 3.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that I will not bore you for long. I shall take careful note of the Chief Whip’s remarks but I am very pleased to introduce Amendments 100, 101 and 102. I thank those Lords spiritual and temporal who have added their names to these amendments and who are supportive of the contents.

These amendments seek to remove amendments to Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 from Schedule 3. The intention is to erase the proposal contained in the Bill to introduce powers to export offshore any person in the UK who is seeking asylum without first considering their claim. Few would disagree that protection and control of our borders, primary responsibilities of any Government, are noble and necessary objectives. A Home Secretary must be able to discharge her duties in this respect, which include expediting deportation swiftly and without delay where illegality has been determined under the rules. This was certainly my approach when I served as Immigration Minister in the 1990s.

Most would agree that the process by which we pursue these objectives matters no less than the solutions on the table. Indeed, solutions need to be effective, but they must also be pragmatic and practical, and enforceable under domestic and international law. They need to be imaginative but also financially viable. They must be firm but also fair. I am afraid that Clause 28 and Schedule 3 fail on these counts. In very literal terms, Clause 28 amends the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which states that a person seeking asylum cannot be removed from the UK while their asylum claim is being processed—in other words, before a final decision is given on their refugee status, including access to an appeal. However, paragraph 1 of Schedule 3 to the Bill withdraws those rights by allowing the transfer of any asylum seeker to any country which will be listed in Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 as amended by Schedule 3.

Before Brexit, under the Dublin regulations, the UK Government could remove an asylum seeker from the UK while their claim was still pending but only to return them to the EU country of first entry and only after having issued a certificate under Schedule 3 to the Asylum and Immigration Act that permitted them a legal right to do so. With the end of the UK’s involvement in the Dublin regulations this option became inaccessible. However, Clause 28 would provide the Home Secretary with the legal power to forcibly remove any asylum seeker from the UK while their claim is still pending to another country which the Government have deemed safe. Clause 28 would allow them to do this without seeking and issuing a certificate under Schedule 3 to the 2004 Act. This goes against our legal and constitutional principles and surely should be repudiated.

All credible immigration systems must first acknowledge the distinction between immigration and asylum. A person who comes here for economic reasons is definitely not the same as a person who comes here to seek safety. The Bill’s failure to disentangle these definitions is significant because in the Government’s bid to control overall immigration, it will be vulnerable people—those fleeing conflict and persecution—who would be disproportionately and adversely affected.

Many years ago, I oversaw an inquiry that included the viability of offshoring. At the time, the proposal was to create processing centres off the mainland but within British territorial jurisdiction. We quickly judged that to be deeply flawed as an idea, but the problems we identified around domestic offshoring are almost trivial compared with the problems we would face by offshoring asylum seekers to foreign territory. For one thing, it would be a clear breach of our principles in the 1951 convention on refugees. We may be abrogating our responsibilities for dealing with applications, as well as those to the asylum seekers themselves, who, by international law, should be able to retain control over where and when they submit those requests. Indeed, a person’s physical removal from the UK would effectively terminate their claim for asylum in the UK, transferring it instead to a third country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have the answers before me, so I will write on the questions that I have not answered, if that is okay with the noble Baroness.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her responses and all noble Lords for their very important contributions on a really significant part of the Bill. I stand by what I said in my remarks, and I think that others will do so too, despite assurances that we may have received. I would be very grateful if the Government would perhaps be prepared to discuss this matter further between now and Report. On that basis, without further ado, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 100 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment is also about children, but it is about children who are in Europe and do not have family anywhere. It is similar to an amendment that was passed by this House and became Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. There is a long story to that; I will not waste noble Lords’ time on it now except to say that there was quite a lot of resistance then on the part of the Government but, eventually, the amendment was passed and Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, accepted it.

However, as I understand it, Mrs May did so under the pressure of public opinion because, at the time, people were horrified when they saw dinghies and people drowning in the Mediterranean. They saw a little Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, drowned on a Mediterranean beach. I think that woke up public opinion. The public then came onside and decided that we as a country can do this for unaccompanied child refugees. That is a summary of the history there. Theresa May then summoned me again to see her and said that the Government were prepared to accept the amendment.

The Government then decided that they would cap the number; it was capped at 480, I think. The Government’s argument was that they could not find more local authorities to provide foster families and foster parents to take in more children—a point that was disproved by Safe Passage, which contacted a number of local authorities and found around 1,500 places. Whether they are there today, I do not know, but they were certainly there at the time. There is a problem, of course: there is increasing financial pressure on local authorities, so local authorities are willing to do it but probably cannot afford to do it. There are difficulties; I can see that. Nevertheless, Amendment 115 says:

“The number of children to be resettled … must be determined by the Government in consultation with local authorities.”


That is close to the wording of the earlier amendment some years ago.

The argument here is that, in principle, the Government should accept that we will take a few—only a few—unaccompanied child refugees in Europe, and they should settle on how many and the speed in conjunction with local authorities and with regard to local authorities’ ability to provide foster places. It is a simple proposition. I believe that public opinion is still supportive of it. We have sought support across the political spectrum on this because that is, I am sure, the best way to be successful. Faith groups have been very supportive; altogether, we have a good coalition of people supporting the principle in this amendment and the earlier amendment on Dublin III that I spoke about.

This amendment makes a simple proposition. It would not be difficult for the Government to say that, where there are unaccompanied children who have nowhere else to go and are stuck, we could take at least some of them—not all of them, but some of them—in this country and repeat the small successes of a few years ago. I beg to move.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 116 is in my name. I thank my noble friends Lord Shinkwin, Lady Stroud and Lady Helic for their support. We propose a workable, sensible and impactful solution for the Government to meet their stated objective, as set out in Explanatory Notes,

“to enhance resettlement routes to continue to provide pathways for refugees to be granted protection in the UK.”

Introducing a carefully designed, long-term global resettlement scheme with a numerical target will have the effect of meaningfully expanding safe routes for the world’s most vulnerable refugees.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise with some hesitancy because I feel I am likely to be chastised for rambling, saying the wrong thing and going on too long. But let me see if I can entertain you.

I think that this is a very important and serious moment in a discussion on a very important and serious matter. I do not feel that this Bill will resolve it. I have been critical throughout on a range of issues and I feel that the Government have wasted opportunities —but I am not going to remind noble Lords of that.

At this point in the passage of the Bill, having listened to the considerations in the other place, we should recognise with a certain humility that the failure of the Government or Parliament to deal with the arrival by irregular routes of so many people is seen by so many citizens of this country as making a mockery of border control. This has led people to welcome the Rwanda solution as “At least somebody is trying to do something”. People will ask, “What would you do about the boats crossing the channel?” It is fair enough for people to say that, if something appears to be a deterrent, maybe we should try it.

As it happens, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that there are not enough legal routes. I would like to open up a debate about more economic migration for unskilled workers. This might not go down well with my fellow citizens, but I should like to try to win that argument. I am fed up with having to describe people who want to come into this country as asylum seekers, when I know that many of them want a better standard of living—and why should they not have it? I defend them.

But we are not even having this debate. In this House, all the emphasis is on international obligations and the rule of law. There is little discussion about our obligations to the sovereignty of this country or the rights of British citizens of all ethnicities who worry about the fact that borders are not controlled. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords who are sighing that in a different context people are perfectly happy to grandstand about nation states, national sovereignty and the importance of border control—but that is only when you are talking about Ukraine. This is a different question.

On the Rwanda scheme, while I do not think that subcontracting our responsibilities to refugees to another country is against the nature of God, I actually do not like it. It is largely a cowardly decision. Despite what I have said, I would not choose this method. Over many years I have argued against such an approach, because I have always thought that any organisation that outsources or subcontracts its obligations on migration—particularly to heavily beleaguered countries—to police its borders on their behalf is washing their hands of a problem that they should tackle.

When I was criticising other places for doing this, I was criticising the EU—fortress Europe—which, for decades, has had a history of dumping asylum seekers on its non-EU neighbours. In 2016, the EU signed a deal with Turkey in exchange for £6 billion. President Erdoğan—that democrat—promised to stop Syrian refugees crossing the Turkish border into Greece and Bulgaria, and anyone found to have entered Greece was illegally deported to Turkey. The EU’s outsourcing of its migrant policy to, first, Colonel Gaddafi and, when he died, to warlords and militias or EU-funded Libyan detention centres has been a humanitarian disaster with torture and slavery at its heart. As it happens, Rwanda is not in that category, but I am always nervous about outsourcing to poor African countries that need the money; it seems unsavoury and cowardly. The reason these policies, which I feel avoid difficult problems, are greeted as they are by people is that they want something to be done. It equally avoids the problem and washes our hands of it to describe everyone in small boats as genuine refugees, and anyone who does not say that is seen as unkind. It also avoids the problem when you do not have an honest conversation about economic migration. It is equally cowardly and indulging in moral grandstanding to imply that “evil Tories” have turned into Nazis because they are actually putting forward a policy when no one knows what other policy to put forward. This does not help improve the level of debate about a very difficult situation.

Finally, and briefly, I support Motion D1, on the right to work, because it is ridiculous that we do not encourage people to have the right to work. In this instance, when the Government say that all claims should be settled within six months, I say to them: if they could get all the claims of the tens of thousands of people settled in a matter of months, we might not have a crisis where people say, “Bring in the Rwanda situation”. The claims go on and on for years and no one really trusts the processes to be done efficiently by Home Office civil servants in the background—no disrespect intended—so people sit around unproductively for years. For those who think that this would mean that they might undermine the wages and salaries of British citizens and workers, which is always a concern, let me tell noble Lords that, when they are sitting around for months and years, most are working but they are just working on the black market. That is perfectly legitimate because we will not let them work responsibly. Alternatively, if they are not working, they are sitting around doing nothing for years and years. That is not a very positive contribution to the UK, even if you are going to ask them to leave after their asylum status has been assessed eventually. I urge the Government, in this instance, to reconsider.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I feel it necessary to say a few words because I was the Member responsible for bringing the amendments on offshoring to the House’s attention. I do not intend to make another Second Reading speech, because this not Second Reading. I do not intend to repeat the speech I gave when I introduced amendments in Committee. I am still opposed to the whole question of offshoring, particularly to Rwanda, for the reasons I have already given. I believe that it is inappropriate, legally dubious and very expensive, and I do not believe that it will have the effect, as is argued, of deterring the traffickers who should be dealt with in a harsh manner.

The other end of this place has twice now made it very clear that it does not support the wisdom that has come from this House. There is a constitutional issue here. Ping-pong is what it is; I believe that the will of the other place will prevail. As we have argued so forcefully, the responsibility for these actions must be laid squarely now on the shoulders of our friends in the other place—the Conservative MPs in particular and the Government—and, on that basis, I rest my position.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I shall be extremely brief, noble Lords will be glad to hear. I should just like to draw attention to the state of public opinion, which is amazed by people arriving on our beaches in their tens of thousands. It was 30,000 last year; it could be double that this year. The public do not like it and they are right. It is very bad for the Government’s reputation. It is not so good for the Opposition either, in that the political system is failing to deal with an obviously very serious question.

The only way to deal with it is to break the business model of the traffickers. The Rwanda proposal is very far from ideal but for the present we have no alternative. I have to say, therefore, that it has my reluctant support.