Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Lemos Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 207 in this group. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, that it is rather odd that the serious crime prevention provisions are in this Bill. I wondered whether it is because the Crime and Policing Bill was “overloaded”—would that be the term to use? But that is the extent to which I agree with the noble Lord.

I am not alone on these Benches: the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I have raised a number of times over the years our concern about civil orders morphing into crime without any finding of guilt. The Bill extends serious crime prevention orders with the inclusion of electronic monitoring and the creation of interim orders, extends the list of parties who can apply for an order—the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would extend it further—and gives the Crown Court jurisdiction in this area. So it will be no surprise to anyone who has heard us before to see this amendment.

It is not only the extensions that make the need for a review all the more important. There is very little evidence or data, if any, to show that the orders work. They overlap with other orders, so there is some confusion. There is inconsistency in their use, which I have become very aware of in the context of modern slavery and human trafficking, where it became clear that some police forces were not even aware that they could pursue equivalent orders. There is a lack of resourcing and infrastructure to monitor and enforce orders. Breaches are common, which is not surprising, because individuals do not have adequate support to comply with the restrictions and requirements that orders can contain and so, as has been put to us, they are set up to fail.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights made recommendations with regard to these provisions:

“Given the severe infringement on the right to privacy posed by the imposition of electronic monitoring, the test should be one of ‘necessity and proportionality’, not whether it is ‘appropriate’”,


and,

“To ensure respect for Convention rights, the prosecuting authorities and the courts must be careful to only seek and impose these interim orders where risks are imminent”.


Rather than proposing those provisions specifically, we on these Benches feel that it would be helpful and important for there to be a review of prevention orders in the round before we make piecemeal additions to them, and a review would certainly extend to the issues of necessity and proportionality.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Cameron, in the first instance, if I may, for their careful consideration of these new provisions and for tabling Amendment 204. I recognise that the amendment stems from a shared commitment to robustly address serious crimes. With regard to objectives, I think we are largely on the same page here. I am hoping that I am going to be able to explain why the provisions are framed as they are in a way that will satisfy the noble Lords.

This amendment seeks to align the sentencing framework for this new offence with that of Clauses 13 and 14, which deal with articles intended to for use in immigration crime. The articles for use in immigration crime offences require that the individual charged knew or suspected that what they were supplying or handling was for use in immigration crime. People, such as smuggling gangs, know that, although the items involved may be very everyday items, they are being supplied and sold to vulnerable people, and in doing so they contribute to the tragic loss of life at sea and in the back of refrigerated lorries. This is a serious crime leading to endangerment and loss of life and, as such, combined with the mens rea threshold, the sentence is set appropriately and proportionately high.

By contrast—this is the distinction, because it relates to both the amendments that I want to clarify—the new offence in this clause targets items that are rarely if ever used for lawful purposes. There is a strong justification in the Government’s view for shifting the evidential burden in those cases. I will come in a moment to the question of reviewing and monitoring that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. For example, where someone is found with a 3D firearm template or a pill press, the suspect will need to demonstrate a lawful purpose, which will obviously be very difficult. Standardising the punishment across these two offences would ignore those important differences and, with that in mind, while I understand the intent behind the amendment and the seriousness with which we take the commitment to address the issues in both immigration crimes and serious crime prevention orders, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment at this stage.

Turning now to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am grateful to her and the noble Lords, Lord German, Lord Davis and Lord Cameron, for their careful scrutiny of these provisions and for tabling Amendments 204A, 204B, 207 and 208B. Amendments 204A and 204B, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Davies, propose expanding the list of agencies that can apply for a serious crime prevention order to include Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and Border Security Command. I reassure the noble Lords that the Government share their intention to ensure that front-line agencies can apply directly to the High Court for an SCPO and therefore remove some of the difficulties. That is why the Bill is already expanding the list of agencies to include the police in all cases, as well as the National Crime Agency, HMRC, Ministry of Defence Police and British Transport Police. It is likely that, in many cases where criminal proceedings are not being pursued, these agencies, in our view, will be best placed to lead the process of applying for an SCPO as they will already have an in-depth knowledge of the case.

However—I come to the point of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower—to add these three Home Office commands to this list would be ineffectual. That is because we believe they are not resourced to monitor and enforce SCPOs effectively. Rather, their focus is rightly on protecting the UK’s border while working alongside law enforcement agencies. I think we are suggesting that, without stating it too baldly, there is a conceptual difference in our mind between border security and pursuing that and law enforcement and monitoring that. We think their focus should be on protecting the UK’s border while working alongside law enforcement, such as the National Crime Agency, referring cases and sharing intelligence as appropriate. Therefore, on that basis, I ask the noble Lords not to press their amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, that has to some extent answered the point I was going to make, but the noble Lord has made me realise that we missed a trick in not seeking to leave out the power to extend these provisions, as he has just mentioned. He said that the use will be monitored and that there will be data. I take it that that will be published. Will the evaluation of the monitoring be published, because monitoring without assessing what is going on is not terribly helpful? Does it fall within the reporting to the House? He may not in a position to answer that this evening—or rather this morning—but perhaps he can write to me on that.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I am very happy to write on that point but, speaking as a practitioner of the dark arts of evaluation, I am generally in favour of its publication.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response and will be very brief in closing this group. The amendments considered here all focus on provisions drafted by the previous Government and continued by this one, so it is not surprising that I support them. My amendments in this group do not signify my opposition to these clauses of the Bill. Rather, they serve as suggestions to further improve and expand the ability of immigration authorities to combat immigration crime—although I perhaps take issue with what the noble Lord said in respect of Amendment 204B. Perhaps that is a debate for another time. I understand his view on this and I beg leave to withdraw.