Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. She started off her speech so well with her kind remarks about a speech that I had not yet given. Having listened to the rest of her speech, I fear that this is one subject on which she and I are destined not to agree.

It is a great privilege to be a Member of this House and to have the opportunity to continue in public service. I thank Black Rod and her team, the doorkeepers, the clerks and the Lord Speaker’s team, who all made me very welcome before my introduction and subsequently. I also thank the catering team, who looked after my guests so very well. I should also thank, for supporting my introduction, my noble friends Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Taylor of Holbeach, as well as my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, who, whether or not he thinks it an honour, has been assigned as my mentor to keep me out of trouble.

Although I served in the other place for 19 years, I am well aware that this House is very different. I fear that this is the time to make a confession. In the coalition Government, the Liberal Democrats, as a matter of great principle, insisted that the coalition Government tried to reform your Lordships’ House. I was the lucky junior Minister tasked with preparing a Bill to elect this House. Noble Lords will be aware that this was kiboshed by my then colleagues in the House of Commons, who saw that it was a threat to the primacy of the House of Commons, and that Bill made no further progress. However, since I have been here, I have been very pleased to see that so many of those Liberal Democrats whom I worked closely with in the coalition Government have felt able to serve in this House for many years. I hope to see them here for many years into the future. There is hope for us all.

After the coalition Government, we had the election in 2015, at which the Conservatives won our first majority for 23 years. My noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton asked me to be the Government Chief Whip. I hope your Lordships will indulge me: I should put on record a tribute to the late Sir Roy Stone, who was my principal private secretary when I was Government Chief Whip. He served in that capacity for over two decades. A finer and wiser public servant you could not wish to find. All those who came across him professionally will miss him, but the biggest loss will be felt by his family—his wife Dawn and his children, Hannah and Elliott. A fulsome tribute was paid in the other place. I wish to put mine on the record in your Lordships’ House.

When I was Government Chief Whip, I worked very closely with my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who was the Government Chief Whip here. He made it clear to me that whipping in your Lordships’ House is a much subtler art than it is perhaps at the other end of the building. You do not have the same tools at your disposal. However, I did not realise quite how different it was until I sat in on my first few sessions of Oral Questions here. I marvelled at the magical abilities of the pen of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, which is amazingly able to select who can speak when there is a clash. I felt a certain level of envy that I did not have that power when I was the Government Chief Whip at the other end of the building. I suspect that his pen is authoritative, because noble Lords think that he exercises it with a certain amount of fairness and judiciousness. I hope that level of fairness extends, perhaps especially, to those of us who have been Chief Whips, so that we get a fair crack of the whip.

Turning to the subject matter at hand, I have some experience in this, having served as Immigration Minister when my noble friend Lady May was Home Secretary. The Minister shadowed our home affairs team for a number of years. A couple of weeks ago, he referred in this House to Labour having always had a very robust policy on migration. My noble friend and I were a little surprised. We had not spotted that enormous support when he was in opposition. However, it is always nice to see a sinner repenteth.

On this Bill, I will say a couple of things. First, when I was the Immigration Minister, I tried, as I know my noble friend Lady May did, to put in place tough measures but talk moderately and reasonably about this subject. I feat the Government are in danger of doing the opposite—talking tough but not having sufficiently tough measures. I will draw out a couple. First, we have seen illegal migration via small boats rise by 30% since the election and, secondly, the Government have removed with this Bill the deterrent, the Rwanda scheme, without replacing it with an alternative. There is not time now to dwell on these matters, but I give the Minister notice that I will be doing so in Committee and on Report. I look forward to our clashes perhaps across your Lordships’ House in due course.