Business of the House

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I second that. They are absolutely wonderful.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Can the noble Baroness respond to what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said? One of the reasons why a lot of questions have been asked, over and again, is because of the lack of an impact assessment, which is absolutely vital for this House to do its job. Will the impact assessment be available to the House before Report?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord completely underlines the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, made.

Spousal Visas: Processing Times

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I say to my noble friend, as I have said to other noble Lords, that I hope that normal visa services, in terms of delivery times, will return in due course, but we are prioritising the Ukrainians at the moment.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

In answer to my noble friend Lord Paddick, the Minister answered the first part of his question. The second part was: as a result of Ukraine, what is the detriment in the number of outstanding applications from other people waiting for visas? Could the Minister please answer that part of the question?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, are absolutely right that it is to the detriment of other visa schemes— student and spousal visas, for example—and, as I said, we hope to get them back on to a more normal footing in due course.

Mr Mike Veale

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I think my noble friend will concede that there is a process under way and that misconduct hearings must commence within 100 working days of the officer being served with a notice. But the legally qualified chair does have the power to extend the period of time when they consider it in the interest of justice to do so. It is a decision entirely for the chair, and it would be inappropriate to comment on such a decision.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I will follow on from the excellent question from the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. The contract that Mike Veale has with the Conservative police and crime commissioner in Leicester, under which he has so far been paid £35,000, includes a clause that says that part of his role is to hold the chief constable of Leicestershire to account for implementation of crime strategies. Does the Minister agree that it is totally unacceptable that the chief constable of Leicestershire, with an unblemished record, should answer to someone facing a gross misconduct hearing?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, it is a matter for the office of the PCC, and it would not be appropriate to comment further on this matter.

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

We know that Northern Ireland has been very generous in resettlement. I have not been party to any of these discussions but I am sure they are ongoing, because Northern Ireland will of course want to play its part.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, a five year-old boy whose family had fled the Taliban, Mohammed Munib Majeedi, fell to his death from a hotel in Sheffield last year. The Metropolitan hotel in Sheffield had been condemned only a few months earlier by the Home Office as “unsafe and unsuitable” for refugees to stay. Why, therefore, did the Home Office allow this family to stay in such a hotel?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord highlights a terrible event in Sheffield. We need to ensure, first, that the quality of accommodation is of a standard and we avoid such terrible incidents, and, secondly, that we ensure that we get people into permanent accommodation.

Abolished Offences

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, for whom I also have the highest regard; we have worked very constructively over the years. I have his Bill in my pack and look forward to reading it. He is absolutely right to say that this is about women and men—it is equality before the law that is so important. On the timetable, I know that we are doing a review of the offence of soliciting and intend to publish the outcome during the summer. The noble Lord will also know that two Bills are coming up, and I am trying to gauge whether the timetable for those would be in line with the outcome of the review.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has from the Dispatch Box used the words that we require “suitable legal criteria”, saying it is “complex” and not that “simple”—yet two parts of the United Kingdom have laws enacted on this issue on a wider disregard scheme, and in 2017, Professor Paul Johnson gave a full list of draft regulations, including legal definitions. Will the Minister please spell out in more detail what else the Home Office requires to get this Bill through, rather than, as it seems to many of us, dragging its feet?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we are not dragging our feet. We are working with Paul Johnson and others to try to ensure that regulation provides for that equality before the law. We are going through offences which go back decades to see whether they are in line with the disregard and considering offences that people bring to us to see whether they are in scope as well.

Police National Computer

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

We have just seen from the previous question that there is a bit of contradiction in some of the points raised by noble Lords on the Opposition Benches. Personally, I would allow my data to be kept for as long as anybody wanted for the purposes for which it might be used. Those pleas from the Opposition Benches have certainly been quite contradictory over the years.

[Lord Scriven (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we now know that a weekly weeding session from the database owned and operated by the Home Office takes place for DNA and fingerprint records, and this has links to local police force databases. The Minister answered a Written Question that I tabled by saying:

“The police in England and Wales cannot at present automatically wipe facial images at the point when a person is determined to be innocent.”


So why are “no further action” facial recognition images not included in the Home Office’s weekly weeding?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Facial images have to be manually removed from the database, whereas the DNA database allows for automatic deletion. That is the answer.

Covid-19: Christmas Breaches of Restrictions

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the statement by the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner on 28 October that the police will investigate breaches at Christmas of the restrictions in place to address the Covid-19 pandemic.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the police will continue to enforce the measures that are in place, to protect the public and to save lives, as they have done throughout the pandemic. However, it is too early to determine what restrictions will be necessary over Christmas.

[Lord Scriven (LD) [V]]

My Lords, on average over 15 million journeys take place over the Christmas week, as people head back to their families. If, as the Prime Minister has indicated, after 2 December a tiered system is reintroduced, with different rules geographically on how many people you can have Christmas dinner or sing carols with, realistically how are the police expected to enforce what will be utter confusion?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Messaging and communication must be very clear in whatever regime we are in over Christmas, but it is too early to determine what might be necessary then. By acting now with a second national lockdown, we have the best chance of allowing more contact at Christmas, which we all want for ourselves and our families, but we will continue to be guided by the science.

Asylum System

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, outside the EU, last year we granted family reunion visas to almost 7,500 people, and have granted 29,000 since 2015, so there is a family reunion route through resettlement and we have no intention of stopping that.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, if the asylum system is not institutionally homophobic and transphobic, what explanation can the Minister offer as to why the latest Home Office figures show that, yet again, the grant rate for applicants for asylum identifying as LGBT+ was significantly lower, as a percentage, compared with those granted asylum from the general cohort?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

What I can tell the noble Lord is that, as he will know, caseworkers have gone through an awful lot of training with the help of UKLGIG and Stonewall to ensure that people who apply on the grounds of homophobia in their country of origin have their cases treated fairly. I hope that that is reflected—although the noble Lord disagrees with me—in the outcome of those cases.

Planned Deportation Flight to Jamaica

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Monday 10th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend asks a very valuable question. Most of the people we deport go to the EU. He is also right to point out that it is very difficult to deport people to some countries. We would, of course, not deport people to places where they would suffer human rights abuses.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, new guidance came out in May 2019 from the Home Office on Article 8 being applied to such cases. How does a child who came over here aged five, committed a crime at 17, possibly through being recruited by a gang, has all his family in the UK and is on the plane to be deported meet with that guidance?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as I said, human rights considerations are in play for anyone we decide to deport. These people are not British citizens. The Labour Government laid out in 2007 what would happen when such people committed such crimes. The Home Secretary is obliged to abide by the law that they have to be deported.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I have had many discussions with him, as he outlined. We do not always agree on how we are going to get to places, but we certainly agree with the end. I think Parliament and the Government are in absolute agreement that we are all fully committed to the principle of family reunion and to supporting the most vulnerable children in the world. Our policy on this has not changed. I want to underline that point because noble Lords seem to think that perhaps the policy has changed. It has not. On the point the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, made on the manifesto commitment, it is writ large in our manifesto:

“We will continue to grant asylum and support to refugees fleeing persecution”.


We intend to keep to that commitment, and I am sure Parliament will hold us to account if we do not.

Clause 37 underlines that. We could have just deleted Section 17 and, by turn, Clause 37. We did not because we wanted to outline that commitment again in legislation. The commitment builds on the Government’s proud record of providing protection to vulnerable children. Since 2010, the UK has granted protection to 41,000 children—7,500 of them in the year ending September 2019—most of them because of our obligations under the refugee convention and the wider commitments that we have made. It is mostly nothing to do with EU structures.

More than 5,000 unaccompanied children are being cared for by local authorities in England alone—an increase of almost 150% since 2014. The noble Lord referred to local authorities, and he knows that the Government wrote to local authorities in good faith, and that whenever we heard about additional places being available, we took note and upped our number under Dubs. We have granted 27,000 family reunion visas under the refugee family reunion Immigration Rules over the last five years. This is not a mean Government or a mean country, and I am very proud of our record.

In 2018, the UK received more than 3,000 asylum claims from unaccompanied children, accounting for 15% of all such claims across the EU. That makes ours the third highest intake in the European Union. On national resettlement schemes, we take more children than any other country in the European Union. It is worth saying this because sometimes, if you listen to debates in this House, you would think that we do not do anything. It is important to outline our record, which reflects the unique importance of protecting unaccompanied children and preserves the principle of family reunion, which will continue. I commend this House on its strength of feeling on this issue—we are all humanitarians, and I assure noble Lords that the Government share an undiminished commitment to addressing these issues.

Clause 37 concerns only whether there should be a statutory duty to negotiate an agreement on family reunion for unaccompanied children who have applied for international protection in an EU member state, and who have family in the UK, and vice versa. The debate is not on wider issues relating to refugees, asylum or family unity. It does not represent a change of Government policy—as I said at the outset—it simply removes the statutory requirement to negotiate. We remain fully committed to providing protection to vulnerable children, and noble Lords might note that we have already committed to taking 5,000 people from beyond the MENA region, in dangerous areas of the world with vulnerable children, in the next year alone.

Noble Lords will be aware that, as part of the negotiation and making of treaties, including international trade agreements, this is a function of the Executive. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said in the previous group that he did not want to tie the Government’s hands, but in the group before that, the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Howarth of Newport, said that Parliament should not tie the Government’s hands. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern made a good analogy with the Prorogation decision.

A statutory negotiating objective is neither necessary nor the constitutional norm. It is unnecessary because the Government have already written to the European Commission on 27 October to commence discussions on this issue. It is vital that the Government are now able to get on with it. The UK has existing and extensive legal provisions to guarantee family reunion, and one noble Lord—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, but I apologise if I am wrong—spoke of no guarantees going forward, yet this legislation already exists, and is not affected by EU exit in any way. Furthermore, the UK will continue to be bound by the Dublin regulation during the implementation period, as my noble and learned friend pointed out.

[Lord Scriven]

That is a bit perplexing. If the guarantee is already in law, what is this clause about?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord hits the nail on the head, because one might ask what Section 17 was about in the first instance. I said at the beginning of my speech that Clause 37 could not have existed, and we could have deleted Section 17, but Section 17 is, in most part, as it was originally, and is amended to include the reporting to Parliament and not the seeking to negotiate. It goes above our obligations and commits the Government to lay that Statement to Parliament on our policy regarding future arrangements with the EU for the family reunification of unaccompanied children seeking international protection, providing Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise our progress.

The clause makes it clear that supporting the most vulnerable children remains a priority, along with restoring the traditional division of competences between Parliament and government, as the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Butler, pointed out. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that Parliament cannot give the Government their marching orders in negotiations. I hope that I have quoted him correctly.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord outlines the point that I have just made about information being seen by people who are entitled to see it for the purposes for which it should be seen.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

The Data Protection Act protects all data whether written or digital. Therefore the argument is nonsensical.