"My Lords, does one of the principal answers to this question lie in the statistics the Minister was kind enough to give me last week: of the 160,000 small-boat arrivals since 2018, only 4% have been returned? In other words, if you come here illegally in a small boat, you …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"My Lords, all noble Lords who have spoken on the amendment have got a deep understanding of a very complex system—the legal aid system—which I certainly do not, so I will leave the fundamentals of the amendment and how the legal aid system works to those who have a great …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him a question of fact? There are so many different statistics flying around that I think it would assist the House. Could he advise the House of the ratio of people who, having arrived by small boat, are then successfully deported …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness that this feels a little like a Second Reading debate today, but there are two good reasons for that. First, quite a bit of time has passed since we last met in this Chamber to discuss this subject and, secondly, an awful …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"We are very rarely on exactly the same side as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti— I will certainly accept her correction. I think the noble Lord, Lord Empey, described the overall situation brilliantly—we cannot just do nothing or scratch around at the edges, which is an awful lot of what …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Cameron, which seek to flesh out what the role of this organisation is to be and to put more detail on objectives and functions. If one looks at the functions of the commander, one sees that …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"It is very generous of the Minister to interrupt his afternoon and his peroration to let me do so.
I asked the Minister just to give the Committee a bit more detail. He talked about some teams of people who were undertaking various different tasks. But what is the anticipated …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"My Lords, I support the thrust of my noble friend’s amendments in this first group. Chapter 1 puts the commander role and organisation on a statutory footing but, as we heard, we already have a commander in place and the Bill provides very few—if any—real powers beyond the ability to …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"I am grateful to the Minister. Before he moves on from the points that I made, can he answer the question about what the commander will be able to do under the provisions of the Bill that his office cannot do currently, on a non-statutory footing? We do not need …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech
"My Lords, my Amendment 11 in this group is an amendment to my noble friend’s Amendment 10.
Before I get into the detail of it, I must support what my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said in the previous group. They put their finger on one of …..." Viscount Goschen - View Speech