Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, we have heard several times in the course of debates on the Bill that this is the will of the British people. I can assure the noble Lord sitting opposite that, if he steps outside the right-wing media, he will see that it is not. They have already been quite shocked by the egregious and often law-breaking behaviour of this Government, so now the only decent thing this Government can do is accept Amendment 5 and say that they will not break more laws. This is a reasonable request from, apparently, the whole House. I urge the Government to accept this amendment.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, at an earlier stage in our debates I asked all the lawyers present why our judiciary and officials, in interpreting these international agreements, give 75% of applicants for asylum the right to asylum on first application. It is only 25% in France and in almost all other countries it is below ours. If we are interpreting these laws correctly, other countries must be interpreting them incorrectly. We are told that we will lose all credibility if we do things incorrectly. Why do these other countries not lose all credibility? Why has none of the lawyers answered these questions before or now?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak within two minutes and oppose this amendment. Migration Watch was the first organisation to draw attention to this problem and has been calling for action for three years. I will make two political points, not legal ones. I leave the law to the lawyers.

Practically, we find ourselves in a situation where we have no means of stopping the flow of another 50,000 applicants for asylum over this year, and quite possibly as many or more next year. With last year’s intake still under consideration, the whole system is being overwhelmed and the cost is becoming extraordinary, even as a percentage of our foreign aid. This is unacceptable.

Secondly, from a political point of view, I am not political but the public are furious—

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I express my gratitude to the noble Viscount and others who have spoken on the Bill, including the noble Lord, Lord German. I now come to this place for my daily dose of disappointment. It seems to me that the Minister is deliberately missing the point. He cannot be failing to see it, and I very much regret having to say that.

Who do noble Lords trust to make these decisions: a Minister or the courts? I will tell them something about the latter, in case they have never seen any of these cases in court. Judges sit day after day in the Administrative Court, hearing case after case involving asylum and refugees, and they make decision after decision about whether a period of detention is too long, too robust or unreasonable in some other way. They have built up a corpus of law which has become reliable and admired not just in this place but throughout our jurisdiction and the common law world.

Make your choice. I am going to test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, can the noble Lord explain why our courts, and our officials acting under their duties, reach such different decisions from the courts and officials on the continent? Why do we reject only 25% of claims for asylum, whereas France rejects 75%?

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, this is Report and that intervention is not appropriate, I am afraid.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I support the idea of safe and legal routes, which are already in the Bill, but there is no way that they will stop the boats. I have several questions for those proposing these amendments. Would they give safe and legal routes to people already in safe neighbouring countries in Europe, such as France? If not, it will do little or nothing to stop the boats coming from France. If we do not give them safe routes, they will continue to come as they do at present. If we decide to give safe and legal routes to people already in safe countries in Europe, I suggest that that should not be our priority. Our priority should be helping the young lady in Tehran and the people coming directly from persecution, or from immediately neighbouring countries, rather than from already safe countries.

My next question is: will the UK bear the costs of assessment, accommodation and litigation, through all the appeal stages we allow here, to those applying overseas? If so, those costs can be huge. I again suggest that that money would be better used helping people languishing in refugee camps in the Middle East, where we can help many times more people for the same amount of money than if we bring them to this country.

My third question is: will there be a cap on the safe and legal routes? There is a cap in the Government’s Bill, but there certainly is not in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. If there is a cap, anyone applying above the number of the cap is not prevented from coming by small boat across the channel. So it is a deliberately misleading fallacy to suggest that safe and legal routes will stop the passage across the channel if there is a cap.

I will also address the bishops’ letter in the Times and the most reverend Primate’s promises in previous debates that he was going to bring forward practical measures to solve the problem, while accepting that we could not take unlimited numbers of people. In fact, in that letter and in the amendments that he has put forward, he has not come forward with a policy; he has come forward with a policy to have a policy. It is not—

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

My Lords—

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

May I just continue and then perhaps the most reverend Primate can ask three questions in one go?

It is a policy to have a policy. It is not even a policy for him to have a policy; it is a policy for the Government to have a policy. It is a policy that the Government’s policy must be agreed by other Governments overseas. I give way to the most reverend Primate.

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

I hardly know where to begin.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

By giving us a policy.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[The Archbishop of Canterbury]

If the noble Lord would wait for a second, I would be able to respond. If he were to look at the debate on Friday 9 December, which I led, he will find that a policy is set out there very clearly. One has also been set out very clearly in an article in the Times a few weeks ago, which has been repeated on numerous occasions by other Members of these Benches.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I have reread the debate on 9 December and he does not give a policy in it. I ask him to reread it himself, come back to the House and tell us what that policy is. Because it is not there; it is a non-policy. His policy for other people to have policies is not a policy.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

There are no rules of order in this House.

I therefore hope that we will stop the pretence that there is a simple means of stopping the flow of refugees across the channel, risking their lives—and, once here, inevitably being removed—other than the policy of deterrence or prevention.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, it has certainly been quite a debate, has it not? I agree strongly with the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Lilley. It gives me difficulty and regret not to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, who are clearly striving to help people who really need help.

The question here is whether this bit of law will help or not, and I suggest to the House that that is not relevant to the actual problem on the ground of dealing with a very wide range of cases. I have been in a number of difficult countries and I can assure noble Lords that lots of people live in real difficulty and fear and would well want, and be justified in seeking, to move to the UK, especially if they had friends or relatives here. However, it seems to me that what we have here is not so much a problem of law as a problem of policy; we need to be much clearer on what we are trying to achieve and how we will achieve it.

For example, where will applications be submitted? You could do it on the internet, but the other stages that would then have to be dealt with could not be done satisfactorily on the internet. It could be done by the embassies overseas; there was some ability to do that in the past. However, the numbers are now astronomical—tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe more—and there is no way that an embassy could do that. Even if it could, the host country would say, “All right, you deal with them in your embassy—you can have a special office, if you like—but on the condition that, if you fail an applicant, you then deal with the consequences”. Of course, you would be left with huge numbers of people who we had judged were not sufficiently strong cases; they would be there in country X but they would be our responsibility.

Then there will be the question—I will be very brief—of where and how the interview process will be conducted. How would the claims be prioritised? What would happen to those whose claims fail? These questions have been completely unconsidered. We should not be passing laws and letting the thinking be done later.