Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

I strongly appeal to the Minister to reconsider and give an undertaking either to come back with a reframed provision or, preferably, to delete this; otherwise, I will certainly vote in favour of my noble friend Lady Ritchie’s amendment.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I did not intend to take part in this debate, but, given the description of life in County Fermanagh of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, I have been tempted to participate, because I too was brought up there, just a few miles from the border. As someone who now lives about 20 miles from the border, I am always interested in hearing descriptions of life on the border from those who are not often in Northern Ireland or, indeed, the Irish Republic. But we should take very seriously indeed those who comment with real experience of living there—I am talking about not just myself but the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, who also does not live very far from the border.

Noble Lords have raised a number of practical issues that affect the common travel area. We need to remember that this has been of immense value and benefit to the people of the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic over many years, predating the European Union. It has existed for many decades, and we should cherish it and do everything possible to remove any travel friction within it, regardless of our position on Brexit—certainly that was always our view.

It is also clear that there should not be any kind of barrier or checks along the border with the Irish Republic in relation to the movement of people—or goods, for that matter. That has always been very clear from the standpoint of my party and those who come from Northern Ireland.

Some people have said that there cannot be checks on the border for the practical reason of the 300 crossings, and all the rest of it—that has always been clear. Never mind the principle; the reality is that you cannot have that kind of checking along the border. No one wants that, and it cannot be done. For that reason, no one was ever advocating that there should be any kind of checks along the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

There is of course a border; sometimes there is not a visible sign of it, but in other parts of the Province there are visible signs of the border. I recently noticed that, on the road from Dublin up to Belfast, as you cross the border, there is now a sign saying, “Welcome to Northern Ireland”. It has thankfully not been defaced—many years ago such signs were constantly defaced. Maybe after reading this debate somebody might decide to go out and do that, but I hope not. Indeed, there is a camera at that part of the border. We were told at one stage there could not be any infrastructure along the border, but there has been a security camera there for many years, without any controversy.

We have a different fiscal regime, excise regime and currency, as well as different tax laws. There is a whole range of differences between north and south, and they are all managed not by checking anything at the border but by intelligence-led investigation at the destination that people or goods are travelling to. That has been the case for decades. For instance, when it comes to the investigation of fuel laundering, the authorities on both sides of the border co-operate very well and share intelligence. They do not do that along the border but they do investigate these matters. That is the way these things should be done.

The only thing I want to say to the House tonight is that all that having been said and accepted, we would say that exactly the same principles should apply between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If all of this is correct about checks and there being no friction between north and south, that should equally apply between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and vice versa—east-west. You cannot have one principle for the north-south relationship and a completely different set of principles for the east-west relationship.

For instance, if the protocol was being properly and fully implemented today, and we did not have the grace periods—that were opposed by some Members of this House and the other House—people would be getting their luggage checked when they travelled between Northern Ireland and Great Britain or Great Britain and Northern Ireland in relation to some SPS and customs regulations. Pets cannot be brought from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland to Great Britain under EU laws—this is for British citizens travelling from one part of the United Kingdom to the other.

Therefore, all I say in relation to this matter is that of course we need to keep the border open and frictionless, with free movement and the rest, but let the same principles and passion for freedom of movement and no checks apply east-west as well as north-south. That is what is in the Belfast agreement, which the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, referred to. It is a three-stranded approach. The first strand is the internal Northern Ireland arrangement and strand 2 is the north-south arrangement. But we also have strand 3, which deals with east-west, and that has to be protected and preserved. The fact that it is not is at the root of the problems we are having with devolution in Northern Ireland at the current time.

I want to put that matter of principle, as it were, on the record, because it is important. I do not disagree with what has been said about the matter under consideration in this amendment but we must also consider ensuring that the principles of the Belfast agreement, as amended by the St Andrews agreement, are preserved and upheld in their entirety.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a tremendous pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dodds—I have been doing so for 20 years. I do not always agree with him but we agree on lots of things, and I agreed with much of what he said this evening: there is a special difference between dealing with these issues about Northern Ireland and dealing with things generally in the Bill.

The proposal by the Government is daft and it could be dangerous, and it is also utterly unnecessary. It has clearly been drawn up by people who know nothing about Northern Ireland—that is the difficulty. If only the architects of this proposal had talked to the Governments in Belfast or Dublin, or even to the Northern Ireland Office. And I absolutely agree, with great respect to the Minister who is winding up, that it should have been the noble Lord, Lord Caine, doing so—he is the one who knows a huge amount about Northern Ireland and presumably he would have been able to answer these questions with the experience of someone who has spent many years dealing with these issues.

The practical problems have been outlined well by my noble friends, such as the problem with tourism. One of the very first north-south bodies to be established was an all-Ireland tourist body. People come from all over the world to Ireland and want to see both ends. To impose this unnecessary restriction on them will jeopardise an industry that has been severely hit because of Covid over the last number of years. There are thousands of Lithuanians working in the Republic of Ireland, and probably a number in Northern Ireland, whose lives could easily be overturned by this—particularly those who work near the border, of course. They rely on common health facilities, as well as common shopping facilities.

As the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, and my noble friends have said, the border does not exist in the ordinary sense. It is not like a border anywhere else. One of the great issues which has been ignored in drawing up this silly proposal is that it ignores entirely what has been agreed for the last quarter of a century. In drawing up the Good Friday agreement, in which I played some part a long time ago, we believed that the border was crucial to the success of our talks. The border has hundreds of crossings; there is no apparatus checking on people going back and forth. The principle lying behind that lack of the border being a border, if you see what I mean, and the fact that it is invisible in many ways, was an integral part of the agreement. I shall not talk this evening about the protocol but that is another disaster, in the sense that it has caused difficulties in Northern Ireland, and we will come to it on another occasion. The resolution on the border was a hugely important and significant factor in the success of the Good Friday agreement, and this provision strikes at the heart of it.

The problem is not simply what is in this particular proposal—it is how the proposal was arrived at, how it was structured, and how people drew it up. That has been disastrous, because it has been done with no knowledge of how it could affect the Good Friday agreement or future proposals on the border itself.

The relations between the Republic of Ireland and our Government are at rock bottom at the moment, and this does not help; it makes it worse—and I bet your bottom dollar that there have been no real discussions between the two Governments, in the way that there should be.

This should be dealt with in the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference—the agreement set that up. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds referred to strand 3 of the agreement—that is to say, the relationship between east and west. I chaired the talks, along with the Irish Minister, on setting that up, and one result of it was the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference: a body including both Governments to deal with tricky issues. If this is not a tricky issue, I do not know what is. I bet your bottom dollar, too, that there has not been much discussion with the parties in Northern Ireland either, or with the Northern Ireland Executive or the Northern Ireland Assembly. No—it is a disaster.

The sooner that this provision is removed from this Bill, the better. I doubt that the Government will do it but, if they do not, it will just fall into a pattern, whereby Northern Ireland is put on the side and seen as a peripheral business. It will come back to bite them, and I urge the Government to withdraw the provision or accept this amendment.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

I shall speak briefly on Motion T1. It was a pleasure to listen to the noble Lords who have spoken to this important matter. One thing we all agree on is that there should be no checks or barriers along the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and certainly there should be no barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That is an equal assertion. Unfortunately, those of us from a unionist position sometimes feel that the concentration is very much on the north-south dimension and that the east-west dimension is almost forgotten or people call for the rigorous implementation of checks, which is a bizarre position to adopt when there has been so much passion. I agree with those who have argued that there should be no checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and vice versa.

As someone who lives just about 15 miles from the border, I understand the concerns. However, there are a couple of myths that need to be dispelled. First, we are talking about an international border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. It is a different jurisdiction for currency, taxation and fiscal rules. For goodness’ sake, even the road signs change from kilometres to miles. We have different voting systems. All these things matter, and it is wrong to dismiss the guarantees and agreements that were made in the Belfast agreement, as amended by the St Andrews agreement, because it enshrined the principle of consent and that the people of Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom so long as they voted that way.

The second thing to say gently to the House is that there were checks for immigration on the UK side and on the Irish Republic side of the border—not at the border because nobody wants to stay at the border—even before we left the European Union. I am looking at a tweet put out by the Garda and PSNI in 2018, which eulogises and praises a checkpoint near the Monaghan/Armagh border seeking those in breach of immigration law. There are many other examples we could give. Eight illegal immigrants were caught at a checkpoint in Dundalk just across the Irish border by the Garda Síochána after travelling via England and Northern Ireland. These checks are not done at the border but they are intelligence-led, so it is wrong to suggest that somehow any checks are contrary to the spirit of the Belfast agreement because that is exactly the sort of regime that will apply going forward as it did previously.

The final thing I will say, very briefly, is that—as I mentioned at the start—we must have the same considerations and the same passion and desire to avoid problems against the spirit of the Belfast agreement which has been evoked today and we must ensure that it applies east-west for strand 3 as it does for strand 2. In June 2021, the European Union, as published by the DAERA department in January of this year, was complaining to the UK Government that ferry passengers coming from Great Britain into Larne or Belfast, where there is no border at all—British citizens moving from one part of the United Kingdom to the other—were not having their luggage checked. If anything illustrated the detriment to tourism, for instance, which has been mentioned in this regard, there is an example.

Issues have been raised about people getting access to health and the protocol’s effect on medicines for UK citizens and Irish citizens coming from one part of the United Kingdom to the other. There are barriers to that, yet we do not hear the same concerns. All I am pleading for is balance and equivalence. If checks are wrong north-south, they are wrong east-west.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to Motion L1 in my name and, briefly, to some of the other amendments before us. I congratulate the Government on Motion A and welcome the movement from them with respect to the Chagossian community—the Minister deserves credit for persuading the Government to move on that, as does my noble friend Lady Lister and many others for the campaign to advance this cause and issue. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, was right also to point out the efforts of Henry Smith MP who has worked exceedingly hard on this issue.

There will be a number of disagreements between us as we debate this Bill today, as well as many challenges to the Government and pushback—if that is the right phrase to use in the context of this Bill—asking the Government to think again. It shows the importance of how the Lords works to ask the Government to revise their legislation. This is an example of where the Government have responded positively to the various concerns that have been expressed. This shows Parliament at its best and, hopefully, with respect to other issues that I and other noble Lords will raise through our amendments, we will see the same happen elsewhere before the Bill becomes an Act.

On Motions B and B1, the deprivation of citizenship in certain cases, with proper safeguards, is an important tool of our national security. We do not believe that the Government have made the case for the suggested powers under Clause 9 to remove citizenship without giving notice. It remains our preference that the clause should be removed altogether; however, it is clear the debate has moved on from this. In that light, we strongly welcome that there has at least been some movement to introduce safeguards. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, whose work has improved the clause and has added much-needed safeguards into the process.

However, Motion B1 from the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, raises further extremely important questions about Clause 9. I ask again: is it not the case that the Government must reissue existing deprivation orders that were made without notice under the processes now defined by—what I would call—the Anderson amendments? If a person is currently subject to a deprivation order but they have not been notified of that, when do their appeal rights start and finish? Can the Minister provide clarity on this? There are a number of questions and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, is quite right to point out through her Motion the various problems that still exist, notwithstanding the improvements that have been made. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness with respect to her Motion B1.

On Motion L and my Motion L1, the proposed arrival offence makes arriving in the UK to seek asylum a criminal act. We feel really strongly about this, as indeed your Lordships did. The Commons reason for disagreeing with the Lords over this offence is that

“the Commons consider that it should be a criminal offence for a person who requires entry clearance to knowingly arrive in the United Kingdom without such clearance.”

But do the Government genuinely believe that a person arriving in the UK and asking for sanctuary is a criminal act? That is what is suggested by this offence. At the same time, Ministers have repeatedly stated that they do not intend it to be used in all circumstances to which it applies.

A specific example of what we are talking about came up last week in the debate in the other place when considering a Ukrainian who had fled to the UK to join their family in the first few days after the appalling Russian invasion to escape the bombing and destruction of their home, but who had not completed a lengthy visa process. Under the Government’s proposals, that Ukrainian person would have been guilty of a criminal offence and liable to up to four years in prison. That is surely not what the Government want, but that would be the consequence of their Bill as drafted. Therefore, although that is a very emotive example to give because we all feel so passionately about that, that is exactly what the Bill does. That cannot be right.

The Government say that we need to ensure that there are safe and legal routes, and much of this has been driven by what has happened with respect to migrants crossing the channel. As Damian Green MP, a former Immigration Minister, asked of the Government,

“Home Office data confirms that 87% of those arriving by small boats in 2021 comprised nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen,”—[Official Report, Commons; 22/3/22; col. 199.]

but what safe route is open to them? I know the Government’s answer is that they should stop in the first country in which it is safe for them to do so, but if 87% are from those four countries—as the Home Office data itself says—what difference does the criminalisation of the offence of arrival make? The Bill does not make sense in this regard.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, as I say, Ministers have repeatedly said that this offence is intended to be prosecuted only in specific cases, such as where a person arrives in the UK in breach of a deportation order. If the Government’s intention is for those cases to be prosecuted, they should pass a law which says that. That is why we have tabled our amendment in lieu: to do just that. We have listened to Ministers and what they are seeking to achieve and have actually tried to find a way through. So, our Amendment 13B would provide a specific offence of arriving in the UK in breach of a deportation order. It is an example of the type of specific offence that Ministers can put into the Bill to achieve their desired outcomes. The Commons reason regarding the offence as drafted does not reflect the assurances or the policy intent expressed to both Houses by Ministers. For that reason, we believe that further action is needed on the issue—hence my Motion L1.

On Motions M and M1, the Government have ended up in a position where a person who saves lives at sea without co-ordination of that rescue attempt by the coastguard risks committing an offence. The Government’s answer is that a rescuer in that situation will have a full defence that they have gone to the aid of people in distress, which they are duty bound to do under international law. I accept that the change is not intended to lead to the prosecution of anyone who rescues lives at sea, and we recognise that the Government have moved some way during consideration of the Bill to put beyond doubt that a coastguard co-ordinated rescue is not in the scope of the offence. But we are still left with an unsatisfactory outcome and a lack of clarity on what should be included in the scope of the offence. We have this problem throughout the Bill, and this is yet another example of an offence capturing behaviour that should not be captured. The Bill does not clarify the position and the Government so far refuse in many instances to give us the clarity we need.

Turning to Amendment 20, tabled by my noble friend Lord Rosser, regrettably, we do not believe that there is more to be gained by insisting on sending it back to the Commons a further time. But the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, perfectly highlights the remaining issue and would be a simple and sensible addition to the Bill. We support it, and we ask the Minister to consider it seriously.

On Motions T and T1, spoken to by my noble friend Lord Murphy and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, there is a real problem here, notwithstanding the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds. We have been raising this issue for months; the border is still an afterthought, and we are seeking to clear the issue up at this juncture. The problem is that the proposed approach is not only unworkable but does not reflect the reality of those who live and work on the border at all.