Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I understand that but I said at the beginning of my speech that I was going to range more widely. There are difficulties concerning children, but the point of the Bill is deterrence. If the Government can deter people from coming here, they are saving themselves a lot of difficulties. If the Government can deter people from sending their children here, often alone, they can avoid the difficulties the noble Baroness and her colleagues have so rightly described.

I have just one other point to make. The British public are very angry indeed. Some 68% want to see effective action; I sympathise with them and would like to find a way to deal with the problem. The Bill clearly has some serious difficulties and it has been strongly attacked in this House without much attention given to the real issue facing the Government—and the next Government—of how to deal with the inflow and the state of public opinion.

In reviewing where we have got to, I have looked at the amendments being discussed. There are at least nine that would render the Government’s policy completely ineffective; they would torpedo it and, therefore, later in this process, will have to be addressed. I am referring to Amendments 1C, 8, 20, 36, 39, 48, 57, 81 and 90. Most of those would pretty much destroy the Government’s policy.

I conclude with a quotation from the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who wrote in connection with a paper produced by the CPS:

“The British public are fair-minded, tolerant and generous in spirit. But we are fed up with the continued flouting of our laws and immigration rules to game our asylum system. And we’ve had enough of the persistent abuse of human rights laws to thwart the removal of those with no right to be in the UK. This must end. Saying so is not xenophobic or anti-immigration”.


I recognise that that is a different note and I am quoting the former Home Secretary, but a lot of people outside this Chamber would agree with that.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Green. For my part, I agree with his assessment. However, it is one of the unfortunate features of the area that our more generous arrangements for handling unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are open to abuse and are abused. We needed to take steps to stop that. That is why, in the Illegal Migration Act, we put into force Sections 57 and 58. In the Nationality and Borders Act, authorisation was given for the utilisation of scientific methods of age assessment, all of which aim to prevent adults abusing our special arrangements for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

All these amendments, in particular Amendment 55, will not have the objective that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, sought to persuade the Committee. She says in her Member’s explanatory statement that the amendment

“avoids a situation in which an unaccompanied child is erroneously relocated to the Republic of Rwanda”.

That is simply not the case. If one looks at the Illegal Migration Act, one will see that Section 57(1) makes it clear that it applies only if the

“relevant authority decides the age of a person … who meets the four conditions in section 2”—

ie, that they are an illegal entrant—and determines their age in accordance with Sections 50 and 51 of the Nationality and Borders Act, using scientific methods. The effect of the provision is to avoid the hazard that there will be repeated challenges which would be suspensive of removal. It does not take away someone’s opportunity to challenge completely the finding that they are, in fact, an adult. It simply says that they have to do that from Rwanda, and there is nothing wrong with that. For those reasons, I oppose these amendments.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, this group has been about children. We spoke at length during the passage of the then Illegal Migration Bill about the danger posed to children by the changes in that legislation. To open, I have a couple of questions for the Government. Can the Government give an update on the number of children who have previously been identified as adults but have later been identified as children? How many of them would have been on the list to be moved to Rwanda had the scheme been working?

It is clear that the asylum system is failing, and failing vulnerable children. Beyond the risk of children being sent to Rwanda before their age has been identified, there have been ongoing reports about missing children, children exposed to assault, and children waiting potentially years for a decision on their protections claims. Given this, how can we trust the Government to make the correct decisions for children when it comes to Rwanda?

My noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett said that it was cruel for children who come in under the age of 18 and live here for a number of years to be sent to Rwanda when they get to 18. She rightly said that this provides an incentive for children to disappear when they know that birth date is arriving. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, talked about the age-old issue of age assessment. I know that very well because, as a youth magistrate, one of the first bits of training I did was on age assessment. Despite all the processes which are rightly in place, sometimes you are bounced into making those decisions, both as an adult magistrate and as a youth magistrate. I am very conscious of the difficulty in making those decisions. I think it was last week that somebody referred to Luke Littler, the darts player, and how he does not look like a 16 year-old boy.

All noble Lords have set out the case very well, and I will not go over the same points that they have raised. I will raise a different point, which I have raised in previous debates. This arises out of a trip with my noble friend Lord Coaker to RAF Manston about a year ago, facilitated by the noble Lord, Lord Murray. At that trip, it became evident to me from talking to the officials there that there is a reasonably large cohort of young people who identify as adults. I have debated this with the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe—before, and he has written me a letter about it. They identify as adults because they want to work when they get here. They may well have been working in their own countries since they were about 14 years old. They identify as adults, they may look like adults, and they move into an economy—maybe an underground economy—because they want to work. It seems to me that by having the provisions within the Bill, they will have no incentive to identify as an adult. That will be taken away from them. They would prefer to identify as a youth. Have the Government made any assessment of the increase in people likely to identify as youths when they are coming irregularly into the country? I suspect it is not an insignificant figure and that it is actually quite a large figure.

Nevertheless, this is a very important group of amendments, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I have to respect the noble and learned Lord’s point of view on that; I am afraid that I am not as well up on the court process as perhaps I should be. I will have to come back to him, if he will allow me to do so.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister might want to make reference to the powers that this Parliament has already passed in Section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act, which provide for those judicial reviews to be conducted abroad once the section comes into force.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend is right; I might very well want to refer to that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I remind noble Lords that it is illegal only because we made it illegal in the legislation that previously went through this House. There is nothing illegal about seeking asylum; there is an international right to do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray, questioned the explanatory statement. This has been drafted by a lawyer for me; I will not go into all the legal stuff now. The Minister rattled through section this and section that, and I am afraid I could not even keep up with it, so I will not try to address that; obviously, I will read what he said afterwards. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, said that there is nothing wrong with sending children to Rwanda and expecting them to challenge a decision from there. There is everything wrong with it. Think about it.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

There is nothing wrong with sending adults, I said rhetorically, because that is the effect of Section 57. Those who are found to be adults may be sent, and if they wish to challenge that finding, they can do that from Rwanda.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

We are talking about children who have been wrongly assessed. I do not think it is reasonable to expect them to challenge a decision. Other noble Lords made points on this: the sort of legal support they will get there; they will have to do it through video; and then, if they are lucky, they will be sent back.

The Minister simply repeated what we said about two separate senior immigration officers assessing people visually, but he did not engage with the arguments that we put as to why that is inadequate. I sometimes feel as though we take note of the arguments that have been put, look at them and come up with evidence that suggests that they are not strong arguments, only for those arguments to be put all over again. There is no real attempt to engage with what we have said. I am sure that we will come back to this. A number of questions have either not been answered adequately or not been answered at all, so I look forward to the Minister’s letter. I hope that we will get that letter before Report, because there are important questions that need to be answered.

I finish with the image raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, for whose support I am grateful. Do the Government really want us to see images of traumatised children on planes, because we can be sure that when that first plane goes to Rwanda there will be a lot of TV cameras there? Does the Minister really want us to see that image of traumatised children either being sent to Rwanda or being sent back again like parcels, as I said, because they have managed somehow to be assessed as the children that they are? I do not think so.

I will leave it there for now, although I do not think that my noble friend Lord Dubs will be satisfied with the responses that we have had. We will certainly come back at Report with something around children and probably age assessment, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.