Lord Murray of Blidworth
Main Page: Lord Murray of Blidworth (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Murray of Blidworth's debates with the Home Office
Wednesday 14th June 2023
(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate and my noble friend Lord Murray. I did indeed mean that, and I apologise. However, if I may, I will stay with the right reverend Prelate, because he opened the debate on Amendment 139A, which deals with data sharing in relation to victims of crime.
I understand fully the sentiment behind the amendment. The whole Committee, and indeed the whole House, can agree on the need to protect all victims of crime, regardless of their immigration status. As the right reverend Prelate will be aware, guidance issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, updated in 2020, makes it clear that victims of crime should be treated as victims first and foremost.
The NPCC guidance provides that police officers will not routinely search police databases for the purpose of establishing the immigration status of a victim or witness or routinely seek proof of their entitlement to reside in the United Kingdom. In addition, police officers must give careful consideration, on a case-by-case basis, to what information they share with the Home Office and when to do so. The reasons for sharing information must be recorded and the victim advised as to what has been shared and why. Noble Lords will appreciate that I am setting up a paper trail of responsibility. I should stress that any data sharing is on a case-by-case basis, so, to that extent, I respectfully submit to the Committee that subsection (1) of the proposed new clause is misconceived in referring to the “automatic” sharing of personal data.
We should not lose sight of the fact that benefits may flow from sharing information, as it can help to prevent perpetrators of crime coercing and controlling their victims on account of their insecure immigration status. Moreover, providing a victim with accurate information about their immigration status and bringing them into the immigration system can only benefit them.
We appreciate the need to protect women and girls from threats of violence. All that being said, the Committee will understand that the Government are duty-bound to maintain an effective immigration system, protect our public services and safeguard the most vulnerable from exploitation if that might happen because of their insecure immigration status.
Information is shared with the Home Office to help protect the public, including vulnerable migrants, from harm. The need for this was recognised by Parliament in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which permits the Home Office to share information for the purposes of crime prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution, and to receive information for the purposes of effective immigration control. As for the officers charged with fulfilling those duties, Immigration Enforcement has a person-first approach and will always seek to protect and safeguard any victim before any possible enforcement action is taken.
It is important to note that the mere fact that the Home Office is aware that a person does not have lawful status and is an immigration offender does not lead automatically to that person’s detention or removal. The decision on what may be the most appropriate course of action is based on many factors that require a full assessment of the individual’s circumstances, and evidence of vulnerability is an essential part of that assessment.
The public rightly expect that individuals in this country should be subject to its laws, and it is right that when individuals with an irregular immigration status are identified they should be supported to come within our immigration system and, where possible, to regularise their stay. The Home Office routinely helps migrant victims by directing them to legal advice to help regularise their stay. The NPCC guidance provides, I submit, an appropriate framework for data sharing between the police and the Home Office where a victim of crime has insecure immigration status. On that basis, I do not consider the amendment necessary.
Amendment 139B, tabled, again, by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, would place on the Home Secretary a duty to give effect to the recommendations of the Chief Inspector of Prisons in so far as they relate to immigration detention accommodation. I start by making the general observation that recommendations by an independent inspectorate are just that: recommendations and not directions. It is properly a matter for the Home Secretary to consider whether in all the circumstances it is appropriate for her to accept and give effect to relevant recommendations by the Chief Inspector of Prisons. We naturally take very seriously all reports and recommendations by the chief inspector and have accepted many practical recommendations to improve our immigration detention accommodation. The Home Office regularly publishes service improvement plans alongside His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons’ report on its website. However, on occasion, there may be good policy, operational or other reasons why it would not be appropriate to accept a particular recommendation, and it would be wrong to bind the Home Secretary’s hands in the way that Amendment 139B seeks to do. However, I assure the right reverend Prelate and others in the Committee that the duties to report will remain and that the existing inspection framework will apply to any new detention accommodation, as my noble friend Lord Murray said from the Dispatch Box at an earlier juncture of this Committee’s deliberations.
Turning to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, a moment ago, I compliment the noble Lord on his important work in the field of detention, in particular working with persons rendered especially vulnerable by their sexuality. I assure him and the Committee that the Home Office does not ignore, but rather considers carefully, the recommendations which come to it. Independent scrutiny is a vital part of assurance that our detention facilities are safe, secure and humane, and the Home Office carefully considers all recommendations made by the Chief Inspector of Prisons along with the service improvement plan which sets out the action that will be taken by the Home Office, and such a plan is published in response to any concerns raised.
The noble Lord, Lord German, spoke to two amendments. If I may, I will take them out of the order in which the noble Lord put them, so I shall start with Amendment 139FE. I assure the noble Lord that the power in Clause 62 to make consequential amendments to devolved legislation is commonplace. The examples that I put before the Committee are Section 205 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Section 84 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.
As the noble Lord knows, it is the Government’s contention that the Bill deals with matters—in this case, immigration—that are reserved to this Parliament rather than to the devolved Administrations. As we see in Clause 27, it may be necessary to make consequential amendments to devolved legislation pursuant to that reserved purpose. The standard power in Clause 62 simply enables regulations to make any further necessary consequential amendments to enactments. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not comment on this regulation-making power in its report, and any regulations that amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation would be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, I too am grateful to the most reverend Primate for setting out the case for these amendments, which would require the Home Secretary to produce a 10-year strategy for tackling human trafficking.
I can confirm, of course, that the Government are absolutely committed to taking a long-term approach to this issue. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord German, we certainly appreciate that this is a massive global problem. Work on modern slavery and human trafficking is based on three strategic pillars: prevention, enforcement, and identification and support. I can assure the most reverend Primate that this Government are working tirelessly with our international and domestic partners to tackle human trafficking. If I may, I will take just a moment to share some of that work with noble Lords.
The UK’s international efforts to fight modern slavery and human trafficking are supported by our overseas programmes, including through the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Fund—over £37 million has been committed to the fund between 2016 and March 2023. Projects across Europe, Africa and Asia seek to identify and protect victims from re-trafficking, strengthen national responses and criminal investigations and reduce vulnerability to exploitation. A snapshot of previous successes includes direct support to over 2,500 victims of trafficking and targeted outreach work to prevent modern slavery with over 180,000 vulnerable people.
Further, the Government have continued to strengthen our international co-operation. For example, we have issued a joint communiqué with Albania and signed a joint action plan with Romania, both of which reinforce our commitment to working collaboratively to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking, in both the short and long term. We continue to engage with the international community on a global scale by working with multilateral fora such as the G7, the G20, the Commonwealth and the UN. Article 32 of ECAT requires parties to co-operate in tackling human trafficking and we take that obligation very seriously.
The Government collaborate with law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, including the police, the National Crime Agency, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the Crown Prosecution Service and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to ensure that policy and legislation are incorporated into operational policy and practice, to target and disrupt crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. In addition, the Home Office has continued to invest in policing to improve the national response to modern slavery and human trafficking by providing £17.8 million since 2016 to support the work of the Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime unit, about which we heard in the previous group.
I also add that the United Kingdom is the first country in the world to require businesses to report on the steps that they have taken to tackle modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. This has driven a change in business culture, spotlighting modern slavery risks on boardroom agendas and in the international human rights community.
Strategies have their place; I do not want to downplay the impact that they can have in the right circumstances to help focus attention on a particular issue and drive change. But they are not a silver bullet. A strategy in and of itself will not enhance the collective response to a particular challenge. It is a moot point whether a 10-year strategy is too long a horizon in this area. The most reverend Primate pointed out that policies can change with changes of government—and, indeed, one Government cannot bind their successor. There is also always a risk that resources are consumed preparing strategies and monitoring their implementation rather than getting on with the vital core task at hand.
The Government remain committed to strengthening our response, both domestically and internationally, to combat modern slavery and human trafficking, and we are considering the next steps on our strategic approach. The immediate focus of this Bill, however, is stopping the boats. If we do not tackle and substantially reduce the current scale of illegal entry into the UK, our resources will continue to be sapped by the sheer numbers crossing the channel, necessarily impacting on our capacity to address the strategic challenges that the most reverend Primate has clearly articulated.
Lord Deben (Con)
My noble friend has very helpfully gone through a whole series of things that the Government are doing and will do. Why is he opposed to that forming a strategy? Any business would do it that way. No one would have merely a series of things which one can put out in that way. Why can he not accept that a strategy that you are implementing would be much better than a series of individual things which defend where you are?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am afraid that I have already—in the last few moments—outlined why it would be inappropriate for it to be in the Bill. The reasons are that, clearly, one can have strategies without them being in primary legislation and, secondly, it would not be right to fix a strategy for 10 years in length for the reasons I have given, not least because one Government cannot bind their successor. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Deben made some wider and insightful points in his earlier address about the drivers of refugee crises, such as the impact of climate change, those topics take us into the next group. I am sure there will be other remarks we can address at that point. I noted that my noble friend said that he takes the Church’s Whip; that might explain a lot.
Lord Deben (Con)
As my noble friend has mentioned that, I said I would take the Church’s Whip because I happen to believe that moral issues overcome any other issues. The Churches are united in saying that we have to be more sensible about this Bill. I am a Catholic; I take the Church’s Whip on this because it is a moral issue and we should stand up for moral duties.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
With respect to my noble friend, I would say that the Government’s position is the moral position, but that is possibly an argument for a different type of debate, so I will revert to the topic of the proposed amendment from the most reverend Primate.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
The most reverend Primate’s amendment does not say what the strategy should be; it says just that there should be a strategy. Is the Minister really suggesting that another Government would say, “We’re not bothered about slavery; we don’t want a strategy on slavery”? The whole point is to get Governments to think strategically.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I assure the noble Baroness that this Government certainly do think strategically, but there is no reason for such a strategy to be required by reason of a statutory amendment. I appreciate that the most reverend Primate has laid this amendment, and I do not think that he realistically expects such an amendment to be accepted by the Government. What is clear is that—
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
For the reasons I have already given; shouting “why” from a sedentary position does not assist.
I am very grateful to the most reverend Primate for raising this issue. It is very important that the Committee has had a chance to step back and discuss these strategic issues in the way that it has. I am very grateful to him for affording us this opportunity to debate this issue but, having done so, I hope he will be content to withdraw his amendment. Of course, we will shortly consider the wider context of the refugee question.
Lord Paddick (LD)
Just before the most reverend Primate responds, what I heard the Minister say from the Dispatch Box was that the Government do not believe in strategy, not that the Government oppose strategy being in primary legislation. Perhaps I misheard him.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
No, I certainly did not say that the Government do not believe in strategy.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
My Lords, it is as likely that the Government did not believe in strategy as to find that a bishop did not believe in God.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
Without wishing to channel “Yes, Prime Minister”.
I am very grateful, in addition to those who so kindly co-signed the amendment, to noble Lords who contributed to this debate: the noble Lords, Lord Hannay, Lord German, Lord Paddick and Lord Coaker. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, really worried me, because every time he said something, I found it was in my speech on the next group. That is going to make the speech shorter, which is a great advantage, but it does slightly worry me as to whether he has a hitherto unsuspected hacking habit.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to make a short contribution on an amendment that we very much support. Before I make general remarks, I ask the Minister to reflect again on the importance of a strategy and why strategies can move between Governments, as I know from having seen Governments change. That does not mean that they stay exactly the same, and a strategic framework may not bind another Government, but that does not stop Governments producing strategies for themselves. I ask the Minister to reflect on that—I am sure that others who have had experience in government would bear that out.
I was reflecting more generally about the references to the 1951 refugee convention. I mention that because the world faced a global crisis in 1951, and what did it do? Visionary people came together to sort the problem out as best they could and to deal with the challenges that they faced. As the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said, it was more than regional; it was global, affecting the global institutions and world powers, which had major conflicting differences—poverty and goodness only knows what else was going on, with countless millions of people displaced.
I am not saying that the world is currently in a post-World War II situation, but I agree with the most reverend Primate that we face a global crisis that cannot be solved by one country on its own—it just cannot. The world will be driven by a common interest, in some ways, to sort this out. Whatever we think of other countries, their own self-interest will drive them to sort it out. Countries will try to sort it out on their own, but they will not be able to.
Without being a prophet of doom about this, I say that things are going to get more difficult. I do not mean that we are at the edge of the end of the world, or anything like that, but you can see the impacts of regional and ethnic conflict as well as overpopulation, failing crops, the changing climate, water and energy competition and the food crisis, as well as millions of people moving—in fact, countless millions. I know that figures have been arrived at. Many noble Lords have been to parts of the world where it is unbelievable to see some of the poorest countries in the world dealing with millions of people. If those people came into some of the richest countries, I am not sure how they would deal with it. I went to Angola 20 years ago, after the civil war, and you just could not believe it. I went to one refugee camp and there were 1 million people in it—and that was internationally supported, so it was fantastic. I went to Jordan and the number of people who had flooded across the border from Syria into temporary camps there was unbelievable. There were huge numbers of people—and you can replicate that. I do not think that it is going to stop any time soon, and we need to understand how we are going to deal with that and cope with it. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, was quite right to point out the various impacts.
The most reverend Primate is not trying to say that therefore that means that the UK should just allow in anybody who wants to come—that is just trivialising the argument. Of course you have to have control and manage the situation. The point that the amendment seeks to make is that, if this is going to be sorted out—over and above the problem of the boats, which we accept needs to be dealt with—the UK is still a significant power. It is challenged at the moment through some of its attitudes to international conferences, conventions and treaties, but we are still a member of the United Nations Security Council, NATO and the Commonwealth, which we have not mentioned. When you travel, you recognise, understand and see the influence that the UK still has.
In backing the amendment proposed by the most reverend Primate, though the initiatives that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has mentioned—with the Clewer Initiative and the Anglican community across the world—I say that in the end people are going to have to come together to sort this out. Somewhere along the line, it will need big, visionary people to stand up and say, “We’re going to do that”.
I am going to make this point—and I am going to take a minute on this issue. The argument in this country, which those of us who stood for election know is difficult, and the conflation between immigration, migration, refugees and asylum makes things actually really difficult, because it is all lumped together as one problem. Somewhere along the line, part of what a strategy does is to get people to step back and reflect. The British public, along with all the publics in the world, can do that. If people are presented even with difficult choices that they may not wish to confront, they are not stupid—they know that sometimes things have to be dealt with.
This is a really important point: people are decent. I know that sometimes they will rant and rave about how this is happening and they cannot believe that everybody is coming here, but I have seen myself, and I am sure that everyone has seen it in their own communities, that if you try to deport one family that has lived in community for a considerable period of time, there will be a campaign in that community to stop them being removed. That is because people are decent. If you look at it as individual children and grandparents, individual men and women, we all know from our own personal experiences that people look at it in a different way. All that the amendment proposed by the most reverend Primate is doing is to say that we should harness that and bring it together into a way of addressing a problem that we have as a country but which we have globally as well. If we do not try to sort it out globally, we will have a problem, because the problem will not go away—but it is a challenge that we can meet. This gives us an opportunity to develop a strategy that has at its heart using the privileged position that our country has as a world leader to be an agent for change in a way that would bring about a better world and offer hope to millions of the poorest people in the world.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
As before, I am grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for explaining so clearly the case for a 10-year strategy for tackling refugee crises. I agree with him that an assessment of the root causes of refugee migration to the UK, and indeed any country, is a worthwhile endeavour. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, by extension from his remarks, in questioning whether the British Government, or indeed any one national Government, are the appropriate body to develop such a strategy.
Indeed, the most reverend Primate also acknowledged in his speech on Amendment 139C that developing global solutions to such issues cannot be done by one country alone. None the less, I assure my noble friend Lord Bourne that this Government are strongly committed to international action and collaboration in this area. Indeed, as many have noted, we have a strong track record of international collaboration with both state and non-state actors, such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Bank, non-governmental organisations and other donors, and through our direct engagement with major refugee-hosting countries.
The UNHCR has a global mandate to protect and safeguard the rights of refugees and to support internally displaced populations and people who are stateless or whose nationality is disputed. We will of course continue to work with the UNHCR, as we have done many times before, to respond to displacement crises globally and offer safe routes to protection in the UK.
I understand the most reverend Primate’s reasoning for introducing his amendment; after all, the UNHCR estimated that, as of mid-2022, the number of forcibly displaced persons exceeded 100 million. We heard earlier today that the figure is now said to be in excess of 110 million. That figure results from armed conflict, violence, persecution, climate change, economic uncertainty and food insecurity—all of which are on the rise.
As the most reverend Primate and my noble friend Lord Bourne indicated, the international community can address displacement on this scale only collectively, through a holistic approach, utilising, where appropriate, developmental, diplomatic, military and humanitarian interventions. I also acknowledge our work with faith groups, not least the Anglican community, in furthering our policy objectives in this area. That is the approach that the UK has taken. Recognising the need for a holistic approach in our own strategy, rather than creating a siloed refugee strategy, the UK Government have already embedded actions to tackle refugee crises throughout existing cross-government strategies, including the Integrated Review Refresh, as well as the international development strategy and the humanitarian framework.
We already take a long-term approach to tackling refugee crises. The UK has been one of the largest donors to the agencies working on the front line over many years. We have also played a key role in intergovernmental processes that have shaped the way in which the international community responds to displacement crises, such as through the development of the Global Compact on Refugees—mentioned earlier by the right reverend Prelate—which was adopted by the international community in 2018, and, before that, through the World Humanitarian Summit, as well as through our engagement with major development actors such as the World Bank. In particular, the Global Compact on Refugees provides the international community with a shared strategy for tackling refugee crises, and a shared vision and strategy for how to operationalise the principles of predictable and equitable burden and responsibility sharing—principles that underpin refugee protection.
In response to the point raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the Home Office continues to work closely with the FCDO in preparation for the next Global Refugee Forum in December.
The Government are constantly considering the longer-term drivers, impacts and policy implications of migration, alongside delivering more immediate improvements to the system. Our approach is cross-government: we work with a wide range of departments on diplomacy and development, and with law enforcement agencies, in developing this. I believe that this is the most appropriate means by which to do so.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment has the effect that the power for regulations under the Bill to make consequential etc provision and to make different provision for different purposes applies to the power to make transitional and saving provision in connection with the coming into force of the Bill.
“national | section 3(11)” |
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of Lord Murray of Blidworth at page 5, line 38.