Wednesday 3rd September 2025
(3 days ago)
Lords ChamberBorder Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 101-IV Fourth marshalled list for Committee - (1 Sep 2025)
Lord Browne of Ladyton
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 104 in my name and that of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. In so doing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord Dubs, who, in my absence, moved and spoke to amendments in my name. He did so with characteristic thoughtfulness, eloquence and rigour, and I am pleased to have this chance to record my gratitude. I am also pleased to have this chance to record my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, who was willing to move and speak to Amendment 104 on 10 July, had he not been defeated by time.
This amendment seeks to do something essentially very simple to the Bill that is before the Committee and the legislation it relates to. However, I hope that the Committee will bear with me as in some ways it requires a complicated explanation—I will do my best not to complicate it even more. Essentially, it seeks to repeal Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act and, in so doing, remove certain anomalies, which I will come to.
Section 59 extends the current inadmissibility process for certain asylum claims and other human rights claims from what was, initially, broadly nationals or those who came from the EEA states, one or two other European states and other countries that are deemed safe. The mechanism for this in Section 59 is a list of safe states—countries from which an asylum or human rights claim must be declared inadmissible unless exceptional circumstances apply. That list can be added to, and the list that was originally drafted in the clause was increased to include India and Georgia by regulations that were laid on 8 November 2023.
I could detain the Committee for quite a time explaining the state these countries were in in respect of human rights on that date. I will read, in short, from the United States’s 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Georgia—that is the source of the information and noble Lords can find it and read it for themselves. I will read only two of about seven lines:
“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture or inhuman, cruel, or degrading treatment; arbitrary arrest or incarcerations; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary, along with investigations and prosecutions widely considered to be politically motivated; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media”.
The first three lines of the United States’s 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: India included the following:
“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful and arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by police and prison officials; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or detainees; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy”.
I will stop there—that is enough. There are many other lines that come with that.
Despite this and other information from other sources, the then Government thought that these two countries were candidates for a list of safe states, and therefore places from which certain asylum or human rights claims would be declared inadmissible.
I believe that this amendment to repeal this is in harmony with the animating spirit of this legislation. Repealing Section 59 would terminate the proposition in it that you can declare states to be safe in this way, despite the evidence, and would remove certain anomalies that I will come to. It presently extends the inadmissibility process for asylum claims and other human rights claims. The distinction between human rights claims and claims to asylum is critical, but Section 59 conflates them. Unlike asylum claims, many human rights claims are founded not on an assessment of a country’s safety but on an individual’s connection with this country: family ties and relationships. As it stands, we risk imposing what amounts, in an anomalous fashion, to a blanket ban on consideration of human rights claims from a country because it is deemed safe, when that is irrelevant to the nature of the claim.
Section 59 deprives individuals of a right to appeal, as these claims, because they are disregarded from the outset, go unconsidered rather than refused, and therefore there is no right of appeal unless there are exceptional circumstances. But what might be considered exceptional circumstances are defined in the legislation in a non-exhaustive way, with narrow examples, such as derogations from human rights obligations under the ECHR or suspension from the EU by the country itself. They are simply inapplicable to states such as India, leaving us with legal uncertainty, over and above all the other problems with this process.
Noble Lords will know that exceptional circumstances have been narrowly interpreted by the Court of Appeal in the past as requiring compelling reasons to believe that there is a clear risk that the individual will be liable to persecution in the country of origin. This test is clearly incorrect for private and family life claims—again a result of the conflation of human rights and asylum claims.
Returning to the list of safe countries, I believe that this involves the other place and your Lordships’ House being asked to do something that they are plainly ill-equipped to do. The list of safe states in Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act may be altered by the Government and future Governments through affirmative regulations, but I for one would feel myself placed in an invidious situation if asked to vote on whether a member of a religious minority could be considered safe in parts of India; on whether a young Bohra girl is safe in India, given the very high incidence of FGM in that community; or on whether a gay man in Georgia can be considered as residing in a safe country. To reach an informed judgment in these cases would require an omniscience that I do not pretend to possess.
I am grateful to the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, which, in the case of Georgia, drew my attention to the case of Noah, a man who, mere months before Georgia was declared safe, was granted refugee status in the UK. After coming out as gay, he was physically attacked by his own family members, he was forced to stay in a hospital for people with mental illnesses, and he had an exorcism performed on him at his local church. His partner was attacked too, but the police in Georgia did not protect either of them—but the United Kingdom did, despite this legislation being in power at the time.
Considering this case and others like it, the lack of an obligation to keep the list of safe countries under constant review is troubling, over and above all the criticism that I have. The Committee needs no reminder of the tortuous logic-chopping that accompanied the decision to legislate as to the absolute and perpetual safety of the country of Rwanda. I worry that the absence of a reviewing mechanism for this list threatens to put us in a similarly invidious position.
Of course, Section 59 has not been fully commenced, but, given that the Home Office has granted asylum or human rights protections to hundreds of people from the countries on the list in recent years, even the shadow of the Section 59 provision is damaging. If commenced, these individuals would have no way to challenge a decision wrongfully to deport them. So either the Home Office has, in granting asylum or human rights claims, been acting out of a superfluity of compassion, or the suggestion that these countries are in all circumstances safe is wrong.
It is my belief that Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act is ill-conceived and that it ties the hands of the Home Secretary, who, under its provision, must declare asylum and human rights claims from these countries as an inadmissible, save where largely undefined exceptional circumstances are detected. If fully commenced, it risks involving us, going forward under a new Government, in multiple breaches of our obligations under international law. I urge the Committee to support Amendment 104. I beg to move.
Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I support Amendment 104 and I am proud to follow my noble friend after the passionate and eloquent way he introduced it. He spoke passionately and deeply about the young man, Noah, and the experience that he had in Georgia. Before I speak further in support of this amendment, to which I have added my name, I wish to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, who, as your Lordships know, died on 6 May this year. I had the privilege to work alongside him on immigration and asylum legislation in this House. He was always seeking to bring justice and fairness where there was none and to give a voice to the voiceless. His contributions will be greatly missed. It is clear to me, having listened to previous interventions on this Bill and from the media stigmatisation of migrants, that this vital work of bringing justice and fairness to the system must go on.
I support Amendment 104, which, as I said, has been put before your Lordships’ House so eloquently by my noble friend. I also welcome and support Amendment 203E. These amendments bring us back to addressing the primary reasons of those seeking asylum. It is vital that each case is processed solely on its merits and not on the presumption of the safety of the country from which the person has fled, despite the issue of exceptional circumstances to which my noble friend has already referred. I am pleased to say the noble Lord, Lord Browne, has put the case exhaustively and therefore there is very little for me to add.
I believe this amendment to be essential because Section 59, once fully commenced, will make far-reaching amendments to the general inadmissibility of asylum claims from EU nationals, introduced by the Nationalities and Borders Act 2022. This could result in violations of the UK’s international human rights obligations, and I am grateful for the briefings that I have received, particularly from the Refugee Council. Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act extends the current general inadmissibility of asylum claims from nationals of EU member states to cover human rights claims and to cover nationals of other countries deemed to be safe, despite concerns expressed about the safety of three of those states: India, Albania and Georgia.
There can be no general safety presumption if there is a risk of persecution to even one recognisable section of a community. Concerns have been raised by numerous organisations on protection issues in India, Albania and Georgia, including those faced by women and girls, victims of trafficking, and minorities such as certain religious groups and LGBTQ+ people. In relation to the latter, we must recall and recognise the Supreme Court judgment of 2010, HG (Iran) and HT (Cameroon) v the Home Secretary, particularly in relation to the lived experiences of such individuals seeking asylum.
Finally, there is a fundamental issue with legislating for so-called safe states. The list of safe states in Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 may be altered by the Executive through affirmative regulations, but Members of this House have expressed concern time and time again, particularly throughout the passage of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, that we are institutionally ill-equipped to act decisively to determine the safety of a state.
We have also expressed in your Lordships’ House concerns that we have been repeatedly asked to rubber-stamp such decisions of the Government of the day. It is our contention that the safety of a state must be designated by a review on the basis of reliable and objective information from a range of sources and regularly updated and published. I urge the Government to consider and reflect widely on this sensible and notable amendment and to work with us and the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, to accept this amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 203E, to which the noble Lord has just referred. I certainly do not seek to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Browne.
I appreciate that we are in very topical territory, and I confess that I found it quite difficult to know how to approach this Bill following the Statement on Monday, because there is a lot to come—and I know that the Minister will tell us that we will have the opportunity to debate it, but of course we do not have that much detail and we are being asked to consider a Bill written before that Statement. We will have opportunities to consider the Home Office’s proposals, and today’s debates will give the Minister a flavour—if he needs it, because I do not think that he will be surprised by very much that is said today—of what is to come by way of our responses.
I, too, am grateful to the various organisations that have briefed us on Section 59. They have clearly spelled out the distinction between asylum and human rights claims and, as they say, human rights claims in many cases have nothing to do with a country’s general safety, or perceived safety. They are about someone’s connections to this country and their dependency and family ties here—as I said, this is topical—and are made by people seeking lawfully to enter or remain with their UK-based family. Among other things, this means that there is no right of appeal, because claims are not refused, they are just not considered. Of course—and it is “of course” to me, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said—a country may be safe generally, but not to particular groups or sections of the community. The Supreme Court has recognised that a serious risk of persecution can exist as a general feature of life that applies to a recognisable section of the community.
This amendment takes us back to the 2002 Act, which Section 59 amends. That Act allows for exceptional circumstances, and what they may include is a subject of my amendment, in what would be the proposed new Section 80A(5A), which would provide that they include where
“the claimant is at substantial risk of significant personal harm, either as a member of a minority group or as an individual”.
The amendment would also omit Albania, Georgia and India from the list of countries that are automatically “safe” for everyone.
Noah has been mentioned—and, in fact, he was my example for Georgia, where there is a lack of effective state protection for LBGTQI+ people in the face of considerable violence. To add to what has been said, he said:
“No one can know you are gay. If you are gay, your two options are either hospital or exorcism”.
This man was attacked by his own family, forced to stay in a hospital for people with mental illnesses and subjected to exorcism.
The Home Office country note for India refers to gender-based violence, with women and girls in rural areas or from certain castes and tribes especially vulnerable. Institutional prejudices—violence against Muslims, Christians and certain castes and tribes—go unpunished. Indeed, the country note describes the active involvement of the police. In Albania, trafficking is rife. It is one of the top three nationalities—whether you regard that as the top three or the bottom three—of people referred to the national referral mechanism and recognised to be victims of trafficking. It is internationally recognised that domestic and international trafficking, including trafficking to the UK, is rife, and the families of victims themselves are threatened.
I have been involved with the case of a young man —he was young when he came; his application has not been determined yet—where the threat to his family has been a major factor in his response to what has affected his life. Sexual and domestic violence is widespread in Albania. Wherever we are going in legislative terms with this, we have to recognise the situation that noble Lords have already described.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I will address Amendment 203J. I declare my interest as a barrister practising in public law and in the immigration space.
As noble Lords will have noticed, Amendment 203J does not sit happily with the other amendments in this group. It is not directly about the inadmissibility of an asylum claim, but it is on a very important point. The refugee convention of 1951 says that, if an asylum seeker has entered the country illegally, he is not to be punished or penalised for doing so, provided he came directly from a territory where his life or freedom was threatened by persecution. Specifically, it says:
“The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, in the sense of Article 1”—
the persecution provision in the convention—
“enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence”.
As Professor John Finnis, professor emeritus of law and legal philosophy at Oxford, and I pointed out in our paper published in 2021 by Policy Exchange entitled Immigration, Strasbourg, and Judicial Overreach, the drafting and proper meaning of Article 31(1) of the refugee convention were compellingly expanded by Lord Rodger of Earlsferry and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, dissenting in the case of the Crown v Asfaw 2008, UK House of Lords 31. In doing so, they demonstrated the error of the living instrument interpretation advanced by the majority in that case and by the Divisional Court in the case of the Crown v Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court, ex parte Adimi, 2001 Queen’s Bench 667. The erroneous but reigning interpretation in Adimi is predicated on the notion, plainly rejected by the draftsmen of Article 31 of the refugee convention, that refugees passing through safe country A en route to safe country B and/or C and/or D and/or E should have the option to choose to seek asylum in B, C, D or E.
This is plainly wrong and not what was intended by the state parties when they signed the refugee convention in 1951. It is time that we corrected the law in this regard. Amendment 203J, together with Amendment 203I in my name, which is to be debated in a later group, restores the proper meaning of “coming directly”. In doing so, it provides a solution to the nightmare of the dangerous channel crossings and uncontrolled entry. I suggest that the refugee convention purposefully distinguishes between those who enter directly from a country where they are in danger and those who do not. There is no immunity from immigration law for those not coming directly; this was entirely intentional.
This amendment aims to vindicate the distinction and seeks to bring an end to the practice of widening the refugee convention beyond the terms that the United Kingdom and the other states agreed. Let us look at the terms of Amendment 203J. The Secretary of State would have a duty to refuse a claim for asylum if a person meets the conditions set out. The first condition, in proposed new subsection (2), is that they require leave to enter the United Kingdom and they have done so without such leave, whether illegally or otherwise. The second condition, in proposed new subsection (3), is that
“in entering or arriving as mentioned in subsection (2), the person did not come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which the person’s life and liberty were threatened by reason of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.
Those words are taken from the convention. Proposed new subsection (4), for clarity, specifies:
“For the purposes of subsection (3) a person is not to be taken to have come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which their life and liberty were threatened as mentioned in that subsection if, in coming from such a country, they passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom where their life and liberty were not so threatened”.
To make it absolutely crystal clear, proposed new subsection (5) says:
“For the removal of doubt but without limitation, for the purposes of subsection (3), a person has passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom if they depart in a boat, vessel or aircraft from France or any other European coastal state”.
If this provision were enforced, would you risk your life in the channel in a small boat if you knew that your asylum claim would be bound to be refused? You would not.
This amendment—to use the slogan so favoured by the Prime Minister—would smash the gangs by destroying the business model, and do so while we remain a member of the refugee convention. Unlike the timid tinkering around the edges we see in almost all of this rather performative Bill as presently proposed, this amendment proposes a real, beneficial solution and the Home Office should grab it with both hands.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendment 203E tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and declare my interests as vice-president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and chair of human rights at Liberal International.
I want to mention briefly something that happened in Georgia this afternoon. Nika Katsia, who was imprisoned by Georgian Dream on trumped-up drug charges, has finally been freed after the regime, astonishingly, admitted in court to planting drugs on him at a protest. This is the third such case in recent weeks. Many thousands of others remain in prison. Over the last four months, leaders and senior activists have been told by the regime they had to go into the Parliament and kowtow to the new regime. They were immediately imprisoned; it became a contempt of Parliament and some have sentences of seven to 15 years. These are the high-profile people, but some of the hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets every night are finding that, like Nika Katsia, they are ending up in prison for absolutely no reason. Georgia is not a safe place; I support my noble friend’s amendment for this reason.
During the passage of the safety of Rwanda Act, we on these Benches repeatedly said that Rwanda was not safe, and that continues to this day. The Rwandan Government have again imprisoned Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, leader of the Development and Liberty for All Party. She has been nominated for the Sakharov prize and was the winner of the Liberal International prize for freedom last year. She has spent most of the last 20 years in prison, as have members of her party. Many have tried to escape and seek asylum elsewhere for their safety.
Rwanda was not safe then and it is not safe now, so I am really pleased to see that we are at least now discussing that. These amendments are important, and when we come on to another group later today, I will raise the issue of how appropriate it is to have a list in a Bill or a regulation when things can move as fast as they have happened in Georgia recently. That is worth exploring, but I will leave that until we get to that group.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I emphatically support the excellent Amendment 203J, to insert a new clause after Clause 48, moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth.
It is important at this juncture to put this into some context, because there is a fast-moving debate on our involvement with the 1951 refugee convention and our obligations therein, and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister knows that these issues have been debated recently by his noble friends, including the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, and even other esteemed Members of this House, such as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. However, we are not here necessarily to talk about the disapplication of or derogation from the ECHR, although I may press the Minister to update your Lordships’ House on progress made on the review of Article 8 of the convention, which has been a government undertaking for several months.
The fact of the matter is that we have a small boat crossings crisis, which is the kernel of the rationale of this amendment. Small boat crossings are costing us £5.6 million a day in hotel accommodation for asylum seekers—the equivalent of 73,000 visits to accident and emergency by British citizens and others every day. The National Audit Office tells us that by the end of this Parliament, this is likely to cost the country £15 billion. We have had 180,000 individual crossings since 2018, and this year alone, as of yesterday, 28,000 individual arrivals.
The point is that this is an existential emergency for the protection of our borders, so we need to look at different ways of approaching the situation. On that basis, the Minister should look very carefully at this amendment. It is not about withdrawing from the convention, but a very robust interpretation of our legal obligations under Section 31 of the convention. I will not try the patience of the House by repeating the specific wording of that convention, which is often being misinterpreted by some members of the judiciary and others, including, of course, some charity groups with a vested interest in this area.
My noble friend is right to talk about accretion and the reach of the concept that has developed since the 1970s: the living instrument doctrine, which has informed decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in this area. I accept that the Government are in a difficult position at the moment. We were, of course, party to the Dublin III convention— Regulation 604/2013—and we are now waiting for the European Union’s decision on how to implement the asylum and migration management regulation 2024, which will come into full effect in June 2026.
This is a question of fairness. If you go the right route and seek asylum, naturalisation as a British citizen or indefinite leave to remain, you are, as we know from the Home Secretary’s remarks earlier this week, subject to some pretty significant restrictions on who you can bring in, what your salary or pay should be and your access to public funds. That is perhaps as it should be, but if you arrive by small boat, you have no such restrictions. You are put up in a hotel, subject to limited security checks and are perhaps eventually to be reunited with family members, who will access NHS services, school services and local authority and housing association housing. There is an issue of disproportionality and unfairness between those two groups, and the important thing we need to remember is that my noble friend Lord Murray’s proposal addresses this issue in a way that will not cause—how can I put it?—legal chaos. Most importantly, it will act as a clear and demonstrable deterrent to the people traffickers and to those seeking to arrive by illegal and irregular means, by small boat across the channel. The Government have a good opportunity, as my noble friend says, to seize this issue with both hands.
I finish on the second issue: the UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme, which was sealed by means of a treaty between the United Kingdom and France in May. Interestingly, the Home Secretary wrote to my committee, the European Affairs Committee, on 6 August to indicate that Section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 was being disapplied, and that the Government had invoked Section 22(1) of CRaG to prevent proper scrutiny and oversight of the treaty, as per the legislation—in other words, 21 days of proper scrutiny. That may be an operational issue which was necessary at the time, but it goes to the inability of the other place and this House to properly scrutinise that one-in, one-out treaty and its efficacy. I would value the Minister’s comments on that. When will we have a chance to look properly at how that treaty and its effects are working, both in the interests of the UK and of our partners in France?
With that point in mind, the Minister has an opportunity to properly consider the amendment. The Government are in a pickle; they are flailing around for some gimmicks to convince the public that they have got a grip on small boat crossings, which they do not. This is a real opportunity for them to seize this issue and to reduce the pull factor of small boat crossings. On that basis, I strongly support the amendment, and hope the Minister at least responds in kind in an attempt to ameliorate what is a national emergency.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 104 and 203J, and to join the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, in inviting the Minister to consider carefully the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was a member of the court in the decision to which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred. It provides a good example of the problem we face in looking at these amendments.
The problem with the courts is that individual cases come to us and you have to consider them one by one. But as legislators, we can take a broader view, cover the whole ground and intercept problems that, if not intercepted, would come back to the courts one by one to be dealt with. The Georgian case is a good example: if it came before the Supreme Court now, the protection the court offered in the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred, would be made available as well. To allow that person to be extradited to Georgia, in the light of such conduct, would be quite contrary to their human rights. For these reasons, there is a lot of force in those two amendments, on the ground that they intercept a problem that will recur and is best dealt with by legislation now.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, referred to a case in the Supreme Court. I have no recollection of that case, and he will correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that I was party to the decision and therefore was not in the majority. However, if the minority had included Lord Rodger, that would carry great weight for me.
I confess that, for quite some time, I have felt that the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is making had a lot of force behind it. I would need to look again more carefully at the wording of the convention to determine what my final decision would be, but he said enough to justify the invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to the Government to look at it very carefully, because the advantages of giving effect to that reading are obvious. I do not think that it would damage our reputation, because it would depend on an interpretation of the wording of the convention—not defying or withdrawing from the convention but giving effect to it. That, I think, is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is making, and there is a lot of force behind it.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, I am also tempted to speak to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, but I will restrict myself to that from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, which seeks to include a reference to Section 59 in the clause.
Most of the asylum seekers who want to end up in Britain come from countries which we may at first see as safe countries but which soon go into chaos, confusion and great difficulty. So, to define a “safe country” in the rather difficult world that we happen to inhabit at the moment is precarious, because we will never know how safe it is. For a country that we thought was safe, we may suddenly discover that there has been a coup, or that people want a different Government, or that there is a lot of organised theft—and that is not simply a question of corruption, because, for me, the concept of corruption, at the heart of it, is a bit illusory. Because of the vicissitudes that exist for the majority of the people who come to this country illegally, let us not assure ourselves that the countries that we think are safe now will be safe in the next two months. Things change pretty quickly.
If we are to repeal parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 in Clause 38 of this Bill, it is best to include the repeal of Section 59 and not stop at Section 58, because of the difficulty we find in defining what we thought was a safe country. To put it in legislation would be a very unwise decision. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, has been wise to invite us to go up to Section 59 and not to stop at Section 58, because we would cover this uncertainty that still exists.
I am also attracted to this idea because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has supported Amendment 104 —and with good reason. I do not want to repeat the arguments that were carefully crafted by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, but simply to say that, because I come from Uganda, I know that while we may think that the country is stable today, it may easily find itself in great difficulty tomorrow. As legislators, let us not assume that the countries where we want to send these people are safe, because we do not know how quickly that temperature may change, and we may find that we have legislated for something that we really should not have done. Let us not be prophets; let us be legislators.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, when responding to questions about immigration in general, the Minister frequently repeated the phrase that the United Kingdom will honour its international obligations, and I fully understand that. Following the raising of the issue of the 1951 convention, I asked the Government in a Written Question in July last year whether they were talking to our allies and friends with regard to reviewing the convention given the changing circumstances of the world since the day and hour it was drafted. I got a one-liner saying no. I repeated the question on 3 June. The Answer exceeded the one line, but I was told that it had been looked at as long ago as 2018 in the United Nations but that no action had been taken, so, in effect, no discussions were taking place with our allies with regard to the convention.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 203J, in the name of my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth, which has been so ably supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I was glad of the response from other noble Lords in the Chamber to my noble friend’s very constructive suggestion. Across the Committee, there is recognition that we have a problem. I know that in the House of Commons this is now recognised across the Benches, and I have heard it discussed on these Benches with a great sense of a constructive approach to try to deal with things as they are. That is the approach of my noble friend.
We are looking at figures and costs which, as other noble Lords have said, are really very high. We know that 111,084 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending June 2025. That is 14% more than in the year ending June 2024 and 8% more than the previous peak of 103,000 in 2002. Of asylum claims, 55,700 come from people arriving on small boats or through other illegal routes. Of these, 43,000 arrive on small boat crossings and 12,100 through such routes as the back of a lorry, shipping containers or without relevant documentation. The overall figures include around 41,000 people who have come to the UK on a visa or other leave—an authorised route—and who seek asylum.
We are dealing with two broad categories of claimant: people who are coming through irregular routes and those who are coming through legal routes, all of whom claim asylum, or did so in these numbers in 2025. The people who come by small boats or in other ways—lorries or shipping containers—normally come directly from France, from where they make dreadfully dangerous crossings across the high seas, where after arrival, for the year ending in June, we see the figures for those claiming asylum.
Why do they come to the UK? Noble Lords have spoken about the many reasons why they come here. One of the legal answers is that, under the UK’s immigration law, they would be deemed to have committed an offence for not having the necessary authorisation to enter as stipulated under the Immigration Act 1971 and would therefore be deemed to have committed an offence. But the arrangements in Section 31 of the Immigration Act 1999, as my noble friend Lord Murray already explained, are based on Article 31 of the refugee convention. That convention suggests that, where their life or freedom is threatened and they present themselves to the authorities and show good cause for the illegal entry, as has been stated, or if the person stopped in a safe country before coming to the UK—this is in subsection 2—they must show that they could not reasonably be expected to have sought protection under the refugee convention.
We know that just under half of claims—48%—which received an initial decision in the year ending June 2025 were granted. Although that figure is a smaller proportion in comparison to the year ending June 2024, when it was 58%, or below the peak of 77% in September 2022, it is still around half of all people claiming asylum. In France, 27% of claims are granted—this may be one other reason why they could travel on; it will be for the courts to decide under present law whether it is a good reason. Of course, these figures will change when there are appeals or reviews.
My noble friend Lord Murray has spoken about the legal context and the initial meaning of the refugee convention and the relevant Article 31. I will just say a word about the historical convention. It was in the post-Second World War era. This was another time and another world; we were dealing with different problems during the post-war settlement of Europe, when many of the borders had been redrawn and people had suffered terribly under the occupation by Germany, and many millions had died in the Soviet Union. We are dealing in the refugee convention with questions arising from a war in which Britain played a leading part. She had been to the forefront to defend her own sovereignty and, as Churchill always said and all parties agreed, to restore the liberty of European countries threatened, or indeed subjugated, by Germany before 1945. We can understand the historical context, and I accept fully the legal context which my noble friend Lord Murray outlined. However, because of the changed interpretation, the law as we now have it is applied to facilitate global migration in an era of mass travel, much of it with economic aims.
As I mentioned, noble Lords on other Benches have drawn attention to the legacy which we are dealing with and how we tackle it. I sincerely hope that the Government will accept this amendment in the spirit in which it is offered. It is in line with government policy not to abandon international conventions, but it restores a meaning and, to my mind, is a lifeline towards saving the constitutional democracy of this country, which we see, night after night on our screens, under threat because people in this country who are law-abiding and who have welcomed refugees over centuries—far more than other countries—really cannot bear the brunt of it any more. I beg the Minister to accept Amendment 203J.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, inspires me to join in. His reading of the refugee convention is one with which the House is familiar—we have heard it down the years—but it is not one that the world as yet accepts. It is not accepted by the UNHCR, which is the custodian of the convention. It would be rather Trumpian to propose to change the interpretation of the convention by unilateral domestic legislation. If we wish to see a change, there are procedures set out in the convention for proposing that change and going about it. That is standard practice. It would be a little odd for us to establish the “Murray interpretation”, as set out in the 2021 article, proving the error of the ways of so many Governments around the world, without ourselves trying to sell the “Murray argument”, if we believe in it.
I do not myself believe in it, for the following reason. Let us think about Afghanistan. If you are an Afghan, the Taliban are after you, there is a price on your head, you manage to get over the Khyber and you get to Landi Kotal, you get to Peshawar, and you then get in a plane and come here—or get here by any means—under the “Murray Amendment 203J”, we would be required to send you back immediately to Afghanistan, because, on the reading of the convention by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, you have come indirectly. You touched ground in Pakistan, therefore you cannot have asylum in the United Kingdom. If that became the general interpretation of the convention, it would completely erode the whole purpose of the convention. The purpose of the convention was to ensure that neighbouring states do not have to carry all the burden. Most refugees want to stay in neighbouring states because they hope to go home, but the convention was not intended to say that all refugees must stay in neighbouring states. There was an element of burden sharing in the thinking, and there still is.
If we were to put this amendment into the Bill and require the Government to follow what might be, and I heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, a very plausible interpretation of the convention—I do not know, I am not a lawyer—we would be seen by all our convention partners as acting in breach of the convention, because they do not agree with it yet. The right course would be to seek a conference at which we propose that the convention should in future be read in a different way from the way it has been read in the past—should be read in the “Murray way”. I have to oppose this amendment very strongly.
Lord Empey (UUP)
I had answers from the Government last year saying that they were not talking to allies and friends. Surely that must be the first sensible thing to do.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I am inclined to agree with the noble Lord, but that does not lead me to have any sympathy at all for Amendment 203J.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
The noble Lord says that it would be “Trumpian” to take the course that is being suggested. Supposing that in the Supreme Court, the majority and the minority had been the other way round—and it may be that the majority was taking the correct view—there would be a decision of the Supreme Court which would be at odds with his interpretation and general understanding of the refugee convention. Why is that Trumpian? When we have a dualist system in this country, where we are capable of legislating for our own interests, why is it Trumpian to say that we cannot do that?
Lord Horam (Con)
I am very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. He always makes a very pertinent point, but this is surely wrong in common sense. I do not speak as a lawyer, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, did, but this is common sense. Surely, as my noble friend Lord Murray said, the refugee convention as it stands would want someone from Afghanistan to be accepted in a country near Afghanistan, and they would probably prefer that. But that person is given four or five alternatives. He need not stop in one country or another country. Surely it is designed to discourage “asylum tourism”, whereby you decide which countries suit your purpose.
That is surely something we shall consider. It is not necessarily the case that someone coming from Afghanistan will be sent back to Afghanistan. They may come from France, in which case they may stay in France, where they are in no danger. If they go via Italy, they are in no danger there, either. Surely this is the logic of the situation, which ordinary people cannot understand. Why do we have to accept these people who come through multiple countries when there is a refugee convention which accepts that they need not be accepted if they have come through more than one country?
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is not just ordinary people who do not understand it. I do not understand it at all, logically. Mind you, I am an ordinary person.
The discussion so far has been very helpful in raising some key issues that the country is preoccupied with. The sensible way to approach this, which people have started to do, is to say that there should be a proper, open debate on it. We need to have a proper discussion about whether the 1951 refugee convention is appropriate for 2025 and very different circumstances. Some of the amendments have allowed us to reflect on that.
Every word of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was on the money—absolutely hear, hear. We sometimes have discussions in this Chamber that bear little relationship to the political, social and cultural context of what everybody else in the country is talking about. There have been times during this debate in which the discussion about what constitutes safety and fleeing unsafe countries gives us a hint as to how we have got into a very serious political crisis in this country. The definition of what constitutes unsafe, the definition of what constitutes asylum and the definition of what constitutes refugee have become so expansive that it is a miracle or a mystery to me that anyone has been deported. If anyone was listening, you would just think, “Oh well, we can’t do anything”.
To give an example of some of the things that were argued, I was involved in a debate on the radio some months ago about whether Albania was a safe country. The example given was one that has been cited here today about the levels of domestic violence in Albania. I pointed out that most of the people that I had seen in the small boats who were Albanian did not look like they were the victims of domestic violence. Given the historic split, sex-wise, in terms of domestic violence, they might well have been the abusers.
I point this out only because, every time you say, “Surely, there is no reason why they should be in this country; they are from a safe country”, people will say, “No they’re not”, and you get left in a situation where you cannot remove them.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I will make the point, before the noble Baroness moves on, that that is exactly the point that many of us are making—you cannot generalise. I will just put it that way.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I was about to go on to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who said that a country may be safe generally but not for a particular section of the population. The noble Baroness more or less made the point there that she has just made now about not generalising. I agree that it is difficult to say, “This is a safe country” or “This is not”. The problem I have is that we have a situation where we either say, “These countries are not safe” or “Every country can be safe, but not to some groups of people”. We end up, therefore, saying that the whole world, and sections of the whole world, are likely to be unsafe and the people there can come to the UK. We cannot be in a situation where we open up to everybody from around the world who is in an unsafe situation.
By the way, that would also be true of this country, when it comes to the threat of violence against women and girls. You could say that the UK is a safe country. Let me tell you that it has not been a safe country in hundreds of towns for thousands and thousands of young women, girls and children who were sexually abused and raped in their thousands, in an industrial fashion, in the “safe” country of the United Kingdom. I am not prepared to generalise, but we cannot simply say that, because of the lived experience of those individuals who have suffered at the hands of others in other countries, it should be automatically assumed that they can move to the United Kingdom.
Finally, therefore, I want to ask for some guidance from the Minister on the status of the Bill. I read through a lot of the sections and notes in preparation for what I was going to say today and for other forthcoming days in Committee, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this Bill is completely out of date”. I do not mean it is out of date as far as I am concerned but rather as far as the Government are concerned. Looking at a number of the amendments I have put my name to, I now look like a lily-livered liberal type in comparison with some of the comments made by Labour Government Ministers on the Front Benches. I suddenly thought, “Oh, I was being rather tentative there on the European Court of Human Rights and so on”. But it is full throttle—the Home Secretary covering herself in Union Jacks and flags, as she has told us. I thought, “I don’t know where to go now”.
In all seriousness, the Government have said, perfectly reasonably, that parliamentary time is short in general, and we all know that the Bill is under a lot of scrutiny. There are an awful lot of amendments to the Bill. Would it be possible for the Government Front Bench to assess all the amendments from across the House in different directions and tick off all those that the Government might now agree with, so that we do not waste parliamentary time on things on which there is general unanimity on the Government Front Bench, if not on their Back Benches?
As we continue to discuss the Bill, we should constantly bear in mind that the reason why there is concern about international conventions, the European Court of Human Rights and so on, is that this Parliament—the whole point of us being here—has to pass legislation it considers to be in the best interests of the people who live in this country and are of this country, the national interest being important. If the will of the people, as expressed in Parliament, cannot happen because of international conventions and human rights laws, as liberally interpreted by a plethora of lawyers, then it means that democracy is threatened. I therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, when he said we should look at some of this again. I hope the Government will look at it again and that we do not have to waste time on amendments that they will, broadly speaking, agree with.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
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 lot has happened politically. I was fascinated to see, for example, the kite being flown around digital ID cards, which is an incredibly important subject and has a huge bearing on the question of illegal immigration and control of people once they are in this country. I think it is very fair that we have a very wide-ranging debate having kicked off this day in Committee.
When we started looking at this Bill, much of the commentary was that the Bill was thin. I think we spent two days or a day and a half talking about the border controller—essentially a renamed civil servant with pretty much exactly the powers that they had previously. The Bill was not substantive. Since then, we have heard the Government floating various potential initiatives around digital ID cards, the ECHR and reform of family access—if I can describe it as that—so this is very much a moving target. It almost feels as if there is an argument to pause this Bill while some of these initiatives are worked through.
We also really need to be frank about the nature of the situation and the pull factors which drive people, for entirely logical reasons, to choose the UK as their destination of choice. The Minister and I have had a number of interactions to try and get to the bottom of why the Government believe that the UK is so popular among those who go through a number of other countries to arrive here. I am not satisfied: I am not convinced that I have had really a full answer to that question. I think some of it, as my noble friend says, lies around the very low chance of being deported from this country if one arrives in a small boat.
My noble friend Lord Murray in his Amendment 203J at least has come forward with a really substantive suggestion. Whether that works legally or not, I am absolutely not the person to opine on. When I saw the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, anxious to rise to his feet, I thought a massive torpedo was going to be launched from the Cross Benches into the middle of that amendment. A number of us over here sort of scratched our heads and thought, “Have we heard correctly?” We were delighted that we had, because I think we really are all on the same side here—
Viscount Goschen (Con)
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 this particular Bill is about. We need to look at different situations and different solutions, and that is why I very much look forward to the Minister’s response to my noble friend’s Amendment 203J.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, I am conscious that this has been a long group already, and I know that the Government Whips will be staring at me with glaring eyes. I did not intend to speak in this debate; this is my first raising of my head into the fray of the Bill. I was listening to what my noble friend and others have said. As some will recall, I was answering from the Dispatch Box on behalf of the Home Office at the tail end of the last Government, and I confess to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that, I am sorry to say, I was involved in the drafting of the then Rwanda deal in No. 10 when one of the previous Prime Ministers was there. It was good then; it is good now.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
The noble Lord says that it was good. There was a provision in the Rwanda Bill which said that, notwithstanding deeming that Rwanda was safe, it might not be safe for the individual, so the Bill would not even have worked.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
I suppose that was a slight defect of the Bill, but that ship has sailed. The crucial point, which I will come back to—and I respect the noble Lord enormously—is that the Rwanda deal had a deterrent, and that is what we are lacking. It may have been only for small numbers, not anywhere near the numbers we wanted, but it was a deterrent. It was one part of a series of steps that we should have taken, but, as I say, that ship has sailed.
I am backing the amendments from my noble friend Lord Murray and my noble friends on my Front Bench, certainly not because I have been asked or told to, and, as my noble friend Lord Jackson said, this is not about pulling out of the ECHR or the refugee convention, nor—as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, was saying—about saying that we do not want to accept any refugees, but because it is about tackling illegal migration and the crossings we have had.
We have seen one so-called spectre raise its head today in the form of the elected President of the United States. There is another spectre on the horizon that we have not yet heard about, but I am sure we will at some stage: Reform UK and Farage. It is certainly not a view that I share, nor is it that of Reform voters. I am not saying that the Ministers do not know this, but I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said: outside this hallowed hall there is a genuine, deep, growing sense of unease, anger and frustration, which is building. I know that it is not unique to this Government, as it has been growing for some time, but it has grown exponentially of late because of this sense of injustice and lack of control.
As I think the Government have said—which the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, alluded to—crucially, we need a deterrent to tackle the crossings. We have to grip this; we have to tackle the numbers and, as I think my noble friend Lord Goschen was saying, we have to tackle the pull factor. There is no deterrent in the Bill as it currently stands. That is why I wholeheartedly support my noble friend, and the two amendments from my Front Bench.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, in sporting words, this has been a game of two halves. One half has very much struck at what I would call Second Reading speeches and issues, and the other has been very specifically about the structure and place of safety issues in the Bill. I will deal first with the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee, supported by my noble friend Lady Brinton, on Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act.
My first question to the Government is why they are retaining this section of the Illegal Migration Act, which I understand has not been enacted. I understand that their rationale is what we call “operational benefit”. That could mean having some petrol in the car or some policy vehicle that you want to move forward. An explanation of what that operational benefit is would be helpful, because the retention of this section effectively removes the Secretary of State’s discretion in declaring asylum and human rights claims from these countries and renders them all inadmissible.
We have been talking about what is “generally safe”, and so on. I recall the 2023 regulations, on which I spoke about the inclusion of Georgia, Albania and India. I made the point that countries can be safe for most people, but not all. The context is that, as the UNHCR says, we have to note that, while a safe destination may be procedural, it does not negate the need for individual assessment, particularly in avoiding the risk of refoulement, significantly, which we have talked about here over the years.
It is down to the Government to tell us why they want to retain this section. We talked about the threshold for admissibility being negligible. As I understand it, there is only a limited judicial review route with no right of appeal, so if somebody wishes to try to appeal, it is a very thin route, and judicial review is not a simple process—it requires considerable assistance.
My colleagues have raised major concerns, particularly about Georgia. Colleagues in this Chamber will know that we have spoken to the leaders of political parties. One of those I spoke to went back the next day and was immediately imprisoned. Just think about this policy of treating Georgia as safe. By the way, Georgia is in the Government’s list but not in the Conservatives’ list, which we will discuss later—even they agree that Georgia is not safe. Let us imagine that we were commanded by the Lord Speaker to attend here at a certain time and sign a particular support motion for the Government, not as a recommendation but as an imprisonable offence. That is happening. Political freedoms, which we all think are essential, are being denigrated in Georgia at the moment.
We have heard about how changes in countries can happen frequently and rapidly. We just cannot afford to say, “This place is safe”, and then a few years later change our mind after many people have suffered because of its actions. I repeat the report from the United Nations high commissioner: we have to make an individual assessment and make sure that we are obviating the risk of refoulement.
I will simply say two things about the second half. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, was absolutely right that, if you are a member of a convention and want to change it in a big way, we know from the way that conventions are placed that there is room for movement, adjustment and interpretation. I would maintain that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is a severe method. Under it, the only people who could be admitted to this country, for example, would be people who took a flight directly from Sudan to London Heathrow. There are no flights—and I know that there are noble Lords here who know that. Our experience is that it is right for conventions to be examined all the time, and to try to make them move on.
I noted many mistakes. People frequently interpret the ECHR as being a body of Europe. It is actually a body of the Council of Europe. Could the Minister address this? I spoke to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who is responsible for the Committee of Ministers, including those from this country, and he said that discussion on the ECHR is already under way among the countries in the Council of Europe. I must say to those who say we should leave the ECHR that we would be leaving the Council of Europe as well. We as a country have signed up to 151 conventions on freedoms that we all take for granted. We have to be clear about this and take the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Empey. I do not know how far it has progressed, but it has certainly started and is under way, and I know that that discussion will progress.
I do not think that any other noble Lords in the Chamber are members of the IAC of this Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, asked about the Hillmore agreement, where the decision was taken not to have the scrutiny under the CRaG arrangement. It is the IAC of your Lordships’ House that does it on behalf of Parliament, by the way—not just the House of Lords but also the House of Commons. We discussed this matter yesterday because obviously, it is clearly important. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, is sitting right next to the noble Lord, and she will tell him that there was an exchange of letters between the Government and the committee. We have agreement from the Secretary of State for Home Affairs that there will be an evidence session, and they will provide exact details of the agreement. The committee will then report to Parliament, and there can be a debate in this House about that matter. In some senses, it is a bit of an advantage to have a treaty that is in action in this case, so we will be able to report on what is happening rather than what is proposed to happen. It may be second best, but it certainly was possible for it to happen.
So, in conclusion, I return to my first question: why do the Government want to retain this section of the Illegal Migration Act? If they do, what is the operational benefit?
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
My Lords, this has been a very wide-ranging debate that has departed in many ways from the list in the group that we are debating. But it has been a worthwhile and fascinating debate and, as my noble friend Lord Gascoigne said, the context for it has to be what he termed the growing sense of injustice on the part of many people in this country about the direction of our immigration system. That should be borne in mind by us all as we debate not just this group but the Bill in general.
Returning to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, which attempts to remove Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act from the statute book, I suggest that the principle of that section is straightforward and hard to disagree with. That principle is: if an individual is a national of a country where there is no general risk of persecution, where human rights are respected and where there is access to justice and democratic accountability, is it not right that their claim be considered inadmissible unless there are exceptional grounds? Is it not right that, instead, we focus our finite resources and time on those fleeing regimes where oppression, conflict and state violence are real and present dangers?
The practical benefits of Section 59 are significant. It reduces administrative and clerical delay, streamlines caseworking, ensures that officials can focus on the most serious and urgent claims, and establishes a clear statutory list of safe states, with the ability to amend that list through accountable parliamentary procedure. That list is not set in stone; it can change, and it creates both clarity and flexibility.
By failing to adopt this section, we risk achieving the opposite. We risk a system clogged with vexatious or unfounded claims by legal gamesmanship—I say that as a lawyer—and by delay, which comes at a cost not only to the taxpayer but, more importantly, to those who truly do need our help: the victims of torture, persecution, war and trafficking, whom we have a moral duty to protect. I suggest to the Committee that Section 59 helps to ensure that that duty is fulfilled, not diluted, and that it prioritises principle, preserves the fairness of the system and promotes justice. For all those reasons, and despite my long-standing respect for the noble Lord, I am unable to support his amendment.
Amendment 192, tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower, does not target genuine refugees or close the door to those in real and urgent need who use safe and legal routes to come to the UK. It ensures that the law applies equally to all and that those who enter this country legally or who make claims from safe third countries are not placed at a disadvantage compared to those who enter clandestinely or via criminal routes. We cannot have a two-tier legal system: one for citizens and legal migrants and another for those who deliberately breach our laws and then ask for protection. We need to remember that this is not just damaging for us and our legal system; it is damaging and dangerous for the migrants themselves. It hands power to the criminal or gangs; it encourages risky and dangerous unlawful crossings; and it ensures that vulnerable people are drawn into a system that is harder, not easier, to navigate.
That ties in with Amendment 203J, tabled by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth and spoken to by him with his customary lucidity and compelling arguments. I note that it was supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, at least tentatively, and he prayed in aid Lord Rodger of Earlsferry in the court case that he mentioned—two of Scotland’s most eminent jurists of the last 25 years. My noble friends Lord Murray and Lord Jackson of Peterborough and many others made excellent points about that amendment, which has a simple and sensible underlying premise: genuine asylum seekers should claim asylum when they get to a safe country. Travelling through multiple safe countries and then attempting to cross the channel to claim asylum in the UK is an abuse of that system, and I therefore support that amendment.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
What is the noble Lord’s answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that we have no business interpreting the refugee convention on a domestic level and that it is a matter for the wide world that considers the convention?
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. My answer is that it is our business and that we can devise an asylum and immigration system for this country—and that entitles us to make the points that not only my noble friend Lord Murray but the Conservative Party Front Bench have made throughout the Bill: that this is about achieving a system that deters illegal migration and yet allows those who are in real need to use safe and legal routes to come to the UK.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
Taking the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Murray, I entirely understand the situation of somebody who has come over illegally and has no good reason to stay here, but, if that person comes from an unsafe country, where would you send him or her?
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for making that point. I think my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth’s argument is that genuine asylum seekers have to claim asylum when they reach a safe country. The amendment is aimed at stopping travelling through multiple safe countries and then attempting to cross the channel to claim asylum.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
An Afghan soldier who served alongside our troops, to whom we have a duty, has no safe route to the UK now. Is the noble Lord suggesting that we should not support an asylum application if they arrived illegally—illegal only because the noble Lord’s Government made it so?
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
I am supporting the premise that a genuine asylum seeker should claim asylum when they get to a safe country.
Amendment 193, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Davies, seeks to incorporate what I believe should be an entirely uncontroversial principle: if someone arrives in this country and needs sanctuary, they should say so, and without delay. This demand is the bare minimum of what a functioning immigration and asylum system should expect. I would argue that this amendment brings clarity and discipline to that expectation. It establishes a one-year window in which claims must be made and it ensures that claims brought beyond that point, without compelling reason, are not entertained.
I want to be very clear: that is a defence of genuine refugees. When our system is flooded with last-minute, opportunistic or tactical claims, it is those with genuine protection needs who suffer. Delays grow longer, the backlogs increase, and the resources stretch thinner. We owe it to those in real danger to ensure that the system works for them and not for those seeking to game it. The amendment is drawn from the new Canadian asylum and immigration rules, which also impose a one-year time limit for claiming asylum. The Home Secretary herself has acknowledged that this is an acute problem. As my noble friend Lord Davies said from this Dispatch Box yesterday, the Government have stated that they want to clamp down on students who come to the UK on a student visa and then claim asylum once they are in the UK, often at the end of their visa. The amendment would prevent that happening, since if a person came to the UK, studied for three years at university and then attempted to make an asylum claim, they would not be able to do so. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in response.
Finally, Amendment 203E in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would remove Albania, Georgia and India from the list of safe states in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. I urge the House to consider very carefully the implications of such a move, not only for the integrity of our asylum system but for our bilateral relations, our immigration enforcement systems and the principle of credible, evidence-based policy. Let us begin with Albania—
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
I am sorry, because the noble Lord was obviously about to go through the list. Perhaps he could add France, because I have been wondering about our relationship with France if we were to pursue the route of insisting that any safe country through which an asylum seeker travels should be aware that he pursues asylum.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
I will continue to go through the list. Let us begin with Albania. The amendment proposes to strike from the list of safe countries a NATO member and a nation with which the United Kingdom has a formal bilateral returns agreement, signed in 2022, that has been a cornerstone of our efforts to tackle illegal migration and organised criminality. It allows for the swift return of Albanians who have no right to remain in the UK and ensures that genuine protection claims are still assessed on a case-by-case basis. According to Home Office statistics, a massive proportion of Albanian asylum claims by adult males are refused. Why? It is because Albania is, by any objective measure, a safe and functioning democracy, so much so that the Prime Minister visited Albania in May to hold talks about returning failed asylum seekers.
Georgia is a member of the Council of Europe, has EU candidate status, and co-operates with a range of international human rights mechanisms—
Lord German (LD)
Georgia has been suspended for reasons we just talked about to do with the way it treats people.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
I still suggest that it co-operates with a range of human rights mechanisms.
India is the world’s largest democracy, a Commonwealth partner and a strategic ally of the United Kingdom. It has robust constitutional protections for minorities, an independent judiciary and regular multi-party elections.
To suggest that those countries are unsafe as a matter of UK immigration law risks not only diplomatic tensions but is also factually unsound. Are there challenges in all societies? Yes, of course—that point was made forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. However, that is not the test, because the test under Section 80AA is whether “in general” the country poses a serious risk, so the statutory test is a general one. When the Secretary of State asks herself the question, she has to generalise. A lot of noble Lords have made points about the need to take into account specific individual assessments, but the question that she has to ask herself is a general one: does that country in general pose a serious risk of persecution to its nationals, and would removal to those countries contravene our human rights obligations? I would suggest quite firmly that the test is not remotely met in the cases of Albania, Georgia or India.
Genuine refugees deserve our protection, and they must come first. We do a disservice to them if we open the gates to unfounded claims from nationals of safe democratic states. That is why we cannot support the amendment.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful to noble Lords for what has been a very wide discussion, wider than I anticipated. I sense that at the end of the debate I probably will not have satisfied many noble Lords in the Chamber today, but such is the nature of government responsibilities.
I was not intending to say this, but given the comments from the noble Viscount, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, the noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne and Lord Empey, and others, I think it is worth setting out that the Government have taken this issue extremely seriously in their manifesto and in their actions, not just in this Bill but in the immigration White Paper that we have published and in the unilateral actions that we have taken independently without requiring legislation. The issues of illegal entry, defining our asylum system and tackling an effective immigration system are extremely important. I do not wish to rehearse all the arguments, but it is worth placing on the record again that this Government have spent time talking to their allies in France and agreed the treaty looking at an exchange. It is a pilot that will be looked at in detail. We are working with the Calais Group of Belgium, France and Holland on international action to stop smuggling. We are working downstream with the German Government to tackle issues to do with boat manufacture and transfers. We have signed agreements with Iraq. We have put powers in this Bill to establish the Border Security Command and to make some activities criminal, which we discussed earlier today. We have a commitment to end hotel use by the end of this Parliament and we have saved £1 billion-worth of expenditure over the past 12 months by reducing the number of hotels being used but also by maximising the use of those hotels. We have put a lot of energy into cracking down on illegal working to try to stop some of the pull factors that make people think they can come to this country, disappear into the system and work illegally. We are trying to crack down on that and we have increased the number of arrests and prosecutions. We have speeded up the asylum claims system, because at the heart of this is determining who has a right to stay in this country and removing those who do not. We have speeded up the processing of asylum claims and removed 9,000-plus people in the past 12 months who have no right to be in the UK.
A number of Members have said that the Bill seems to have been frozen in time and things have moved on. I can assure the noble Baroness that we will have a debate about how lily-livered she is—we can discuss that in due course in a friendly, competitive way—but we are continually looking at these issues. The measures that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has brought forward this week are based on the assessment that she has made of the situation, which is ongoing. To give the example of this week, if we find that family reunion applications have increased by over 100% in the past two years and there is a big issue in terms of people coming to the country through that route, it is right to suspend that family reunion route to review it, as we will do very shortly. That is what Governments do. We look at the problems and challenges and we review it.
We have set out measures in this Bill to establish a fairer, stronger system. We have done the same in the immigration White Paper and we have taken actions accordingly elsewhere to have a purpose. I do not want to see the type of concerns, distrust and disorder that there are around hotel use and people who are here while their asylum claims are assessed. I want to understand those concerns. I am not making this a party-political issue. The concerns that have arisen over the past nine years are driven by small boat crossings. The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, stood at this Dispatch Box while I had my interregnum from both Houses of Parliament and made cases for the Rwanda scheme, which he has admitted today had some flaws and which we have taken a decision to repeal in full. I think that we have a shared understanding from all sides of this Committee that this is an issue that needs to be challenged and tackled, which is why we are setting out the measures today.
There are a number of amendments before us, and I shall try to talk to them as a whole, starting with the Opposition Front Bench, because they are the Opposition and they are the Front Bench, so it is fair to start with them. I shall return to my noble friend Lord Browne in due course.
The two amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Davies, Amendments 192 and 193, seek to widen the current inadmissibility provisions. Currently, individuals can be removed to a safe third country if their asylum claims are declared inadmissible. That includes illegal entrants as well as other claimants whose asylum claims are liable to inadmissibility. The inadmissibility process is intended to support the safety of asylum seekers and the integrity of the border, as well as the fairness of the asylum system, by encouraging asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, deterring them from making unnecessary and dangerous onward journeys to the UK.
For a claim to be declared inadmissible and not substantively considered by the UK, the individual has to have been present previously in, or have a connection to, a safe third country where they could claim asylum or could reasonably be expected to have done so. Under Amendment 192, anyone who arrives illegally must have their asylum claim declared inadmissible. With due respect to the noble Lord, that amendment would mean in practice that all asylum seekers who entered the UK illegally would have their claims declared inadmissible, with no regard for whether there is a safe third country for them to return to. Such an approach would, in my view, mean a rapidly growing number of people whose claims would be inadmissible, which in turn would mean that we could not establish whether they qualify for refugee status. In that scenario, those individuals would be in a holding position, unable to be removed, including those with genuine claims who would have their claims assessed now under the system, where 60%-plus of people who make a claim have it approved. That is a difficult challenge. It is with integrity that the noble Lord has moved the amendment, but it is difficult, and it would not have the objective that he seeks.
Similarly, with Amendment 193, the noble Lord also seeks to ensure that individuals will have their asylum claims declared inadmissible when they fail to register an asylum claim within 12 months. Again, there is a motive behind that which has an integrity, but it is one that I cannot share. Some people do lodge asylum claims in an opportunistic manner, sometimes to extend the time that they can remain in the UK, but this amendment would not deal with that particular issue. It would simply extend indefinitely the time in which those individuals would be able to remain in the UK because, without an ability to examine their claims, we cannot determine whether they qualify for refugee status.
The amendment also fails to take account of sur place refugees, which would mean that anyone lawfully in the UK from a country in which the circumstances have changed—and we have had much discussion around that today—in a significant and detrimental way, for example if there has been an armed conflict in the 12 months they have been here, would be unable to avail themselves of the protection of the UK.
In contrast to that, we have the amendment from my noble friend Lord Browne, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and the noble and learned Lord Hope, have spoken in support of it. That amendment would repeal Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act, which amends Section 80A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which itself provides that asylum claims from EU nationals must be declared inadmissible to the UK’s asylum system, other than where exceptional circumstances apply. Inadmissibility procedures in this section allow a state to declare an asylum claim inadmissible when the claim is made by nationals of countries that are declared generally safe. It is an important, long-standing process that can help prevent asylum claims from nationals of countries that are safe absorbing the limited resources that we have.
I understand the motivation behind the amendment from my noble friend, but I remind the Committee that Section 59 is not yet fully commenced. Indeed, the only part of Section 59 that has been commenced is the power to add or remove countries from that list of safe countries. However, and this goes to the question posed to me by the noble Lord, Lord German, the Government believe that it is important and the right approach to retain the flexibility to expand the use of inadmissibility in the event that we see asylum claims from individuals from countries that we would generally consider safe. That addresses the point that my noble friend made.
Amendment 203J has had support from a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox of Buckley and Lady Lawlor, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and the noble Lord, Lord Murray, who proposed this system. We have had some discussion around ECHR Article 8 and the French treaty from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. Let me just say again, for clarity and for this Committee, that the Government believe in the ECHR and are committed to our international obligations, for a whole range of reasons that I have outlined on a number of occasions, but that does not mean that we cannot look at things.
The Article 8 provisions that we have trailed that we will look at, which again goes to other points that have been made by other noble Lords, are issues that we will return to in the coming months that we want to consult on, including consulting colleagues in the judiciary to ensure that we have an understanding of the interpretation of Article 8 and whether it needs to be tightened to ensure that the country is not taken for a ride by individuals using that premise under circumstances where effectively they are using it as a last resort, in a way in which we all really think is inadmissible, to use a word that we have used a lot today. I do not think that that is appropriate. That Article 8 review is ongoing. The French treaty that we have established is in pilot form and we will review it during this month. We hope to extend it further and I shall report back to the House on the numbers involved. There are other tools that we are working on to ensure that we help put some energy into tackling this important problem.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
I am grateful to the Minister for taking this intervention and grateful to him as well for explaining in general terms what the Government are thinking about. I understand why at the moment he cannot be more specific. He says that the consideration is to Article 8, but should it not also embrace Article 3, which is very often used in circumstances where many people would raise a question as to how appropriate it is?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am happy to examine that. We have said publicly that Article 8 is the focus for our examination, discussion and wider review. However, that does not mean—and this is the key, important point—that we will ditch the ECHR. Although it is 75 to 80 years old and was established in 1950, as a number of noble Lords, including Lord Kerr, have mentioned, it establishes a number of basic rights, which are important to me and to the people we represent and the people in our communities. They set a basic framework, but that does not mean that we cannot look at how those interpretations are made. That is why we are trying to do that.
To come back to Amendment 203J from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, this would impose a legal obligation to refuse all asylum claims made by illegal or other irregular migrants who travel from safe countries. The stated intention of the measure is to deter such people from using dangerous and illegal methods to enter the UK. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on this: the amendment would not achieve that aim. Refusing a person’s asylum claim and proposing removal to their country of origin without consideration of the merits of their claim would put the UK in breach of its obligations under the refugee convention. We may not want to be in the refugee convention, but we are in it and we cannot in my view unilaterally breach those obligations accordingly. Even if a person’s asylum claim could be refused on account of this measure, the humanitarian protection claim would still need to be properly considered on its merits.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister and I appreciate the difficulty of the position from which he speaks, and the difficulty of the position of the Home Office in this regard. The point of my amendment was not to breach international law. As I hope I made clear, the wording of the convention in Article 31.1 is clear: one has to come directly. This is an opportunity for the Government to comply with their stated intention of not breaching international law but still deliver a policy that has a deterrent. This is a vital opportunity and I implore the Minister not to miss it just because it is coming from me.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Let me reassure the noble Lord that this is not personal. I would welcome any suggestions from across the Committee. If we reject the amendment in due course, as he is right to suspect we will, it will not be because it comes from him; if anyone else had moved it, it would still be rejected. The noble Lord knows better than anybody the challenges of the roles that we have in the Home Office. I am grateful for his suggestions and we are trying to examine them.
The key point—maybe this will give the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, a chance to think again as well—is that the merits of the claim could attract an appeal right, removing the possibility provided under the current system for certifying the claim as clearly unfounded. We would end up with even more litigation, which may help lawyers but would not help the resolution of the challenge at home. Without the specific further provisions in the legislation, our decision would need to explain why we considered that this measure applied in an individual’s particular circumstances, addressing anything they raised alleging that their life and liberty were threatened in what we consider to be a safe third country. It is nothing personal to the noble Lord, but we cannot accept the amendment.
Amendment 203E, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, had support from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Cashman. It seeks to provide a definition of “exceptional circumstances” for the working of our inadmissibility provisions. It also seeks to remove Albania, Georgia and India from the list of generally safe countries to which inadmissibility provisions may apply in the future.
I have explained how exceptional circumstances bear on the inadmissibility process. Section 80A already sets out examples of what constitutes exceptional circumstances, which relate to states derogating from obligations under the ECHR and actions taken by EU institutions. These examples are not exhaustive, and there may be case-by-case instances where exceptional circumstances are identified and where that inadmissibility should not be applied. At present, the question of whether a person’s evidence or other relevant matters constitute exceptional circumstances is determined according to case law. The amendment would replace this established approach.
Lord German (LD)
I thank the Minister for taking the intervention. He has referred to derogation from the ECHR. I wonder what consideration the Government are now giving to Georgia, which is in clear breach of the ECHR and has taken itself out of the Council of Europe, because it knows it has to do so. This is clearly a country that has derogated. Is that something that the Government are looking at? We can do it by regulation, as we are going to talk about, but since this is the only power that the Government are holding on to, this is a country that needs to be looked at very seriously indeed.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
To add to that, that is a country in which our Foreign Secretary has sanctioned a number of individual Ministers. Is there any correlation between what the Foreign Office does and what the Home Office considers?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
We will take a whole-government approach to this issue. I would like to reflect on this with colleagues who are directly dealing with the matter and will respond. We are in Committee, but there will be opportunities later, on Report, to examine this further. I will take away the comments that have been made and contact both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord accordingly.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who I think of as my noble friend, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, although the list has been commenced, the provisions necessary for it to have any effect have not been. If this Government decide that it is right to change the list for inadmissibility decisions, we will at that time, based on up-to-date information, consider whether any countries should be removed. That goes to the point that has been made about Georgia. We will consider those issues and reflect upon them using the appropriate parliamentary procedures, according to the criteria set out in Section 80AA.
In summary, the Government have a solid approach to try to tackle this issue. Some of the measures are still in the pipeline because of the legislation, but there is a strong series of measures to try to make an impact on what is a genuinely serious issue facing this country—one that needs resolution and which has built up over a number of years. However, I do not believe that the series of amendments in this group would assist in that process. For the moment at least, I ask my noble friend Lord Browne, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, to withdraw his amendment, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Murray, from the Official Opposition, and Members from the Liberal Democrats not to press their amendments. There will be an opportunity to reflect on what has been said, with an examination of Hansard tomorrow. There will be opportunities on Report, if need be. For the moment, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.
Lord Empey (UUP)
I may not be the Minister’s parliamentary friend but I am not his parliamentary enemy either. Seeing as he is in an emollient mood, might I prevail upon him further? He says that a government-wide approach is being taken to the ECHR. His colleague in the Foreign Office has told me twice that they are not looking at the refugee convention of 1951. Surely we have to open a discussion with our allies and look at how that has been operating since its inception in 1951. Perhaps the Minister could persuade his friends in the Government to look at that convention.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, will know that the Government keep all matters under review at all times—that is the political, Civil Service direct answer in response to this matter. I assure him that, from my perspective, our international obligations are extremely important. That does not mean that we cannot examine how we interpret those actions. That does not mean that we cannot examine the measures in this Bill, announced by my right honourable friend this week, and the direct executive actions we can take around hotel use and other things, to ensure that we put some pressure and energy into the system to achieve—let us end on a united note—the objective of all Members of this House to have a resolution to people being exploited by criminal gangs, in small boats, subverting immigration and asylum systems in the United Kingdom. With that, I hope noble Lords will reflect on my comments and do the right thing.
Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, I may have misunderstood him, but did the Minister say that the Government would consider derogating from Article 3?
Lord Hardie (CB)
I know that. I may have misunderstood what the Minister said, but, if that was the case, I point out that that is not possible.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The intervention that I took invited me to examine that issue. I have said I will examine it, but, as I said in response to that question, the focus of the Government as a whole is on Article 8. We anticipate energising the review of Article 8 to ensure that we examine how it is currently interpreted, what actions are taken as a result of the article, and whether further guidance needs to be issued about those matters. In response to the intervention as to whether I would look at Article 3, I have said that I will look at the point that was made then. The focus of the Government is Article 8.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
To clarify the position, I was not suggesting derogating from Article 8. The possibility of giving guidance to judges is, I believe, under consideration and it may be that, in resolving issues under both Articles 8 and 3, it might be necessary for the Government to think again as to what guidance to give to courts.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I thought that was what I said. I hope we can agree, at the end of this group of amendments that was livelier than I initially anticipated, that the Committee can support the Government’s direction of travel. However, I hope the amendment before the Committee today will be withdrawn.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I offer my final remarks with the traditional thanks to all those who have contributed to the debate on Amendment 104. When I saw that I had the overt support of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Brinton—whose support was more implied than overt—and the noble Lord, Lord German, whose support was overt, I began to think the only group that is of similar value to this one are the players that Liverpool signed in the transfer window. I thought, “I cannot possibly lose this argument”, until my noble friend explained operational benefit. I do not know if I should be pleased about the noble Lord, Lord German, reminding him of the possibility of “operational benefit”, but he found it—I will come back to that in a moment.
I heard nine Conservative speeches. I was astonished that, until the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, not one defended it—not one—and I think at least one of them may well have been responsible for the drafting of the legislation that Section 59 was in. I was therefore surprised when the noble Lord found that there was a pretty straightforward principle for Section 59, which is not that much different in its outcome to the speech made by my noble friend Lord Hanson. However, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron—and I will spend some time expanding this argument—if one looks at Clause 38 of the Bill, Section 59 is going to be pretty much alone as something that was in the Illegal Migration Act 2023. It is going to find itself in a very lonely context. The noble Lord’s argument was that one had to see this in context, but that will disappear if this Bill is passed. I will spend some more time between now and Report looking at just what that means for the ambitions that people have for Section 59 as it is presently drafted.
Some of the most important points that were made in this debate are well worth repeating. I do not intend to repeat very many of them because it has been a very wide-ranging debate and there has been a lot of repetition. It is important to start as my friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, encourages us to do, not only in debates but in conversations: to remember that it is people’s lived experience that should decide whether they deserve asylum or human rights protection, not conclusions that Governments or officials have come to about the temporary safety of the environments in which they may be living. This is all about people, and if we start from there and take into account all the other complexities of this legislation, we get to a point where there should be no room for Section 59 in the legislation going forward. There may need to be something similar to provide a benefit to the management of an issue of this scale, but it will not be that particular section in my view. This is a matter that I will come to again.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I rise to oppose the Question that Clauses 38 and 39 stand part of the Bill. It is a curious feature of this Bill that, on the one hand, it purports to take tougher action on illegal migration, yet at the same time it repeals the very Act of Parliament which would tackle that illegal migration in the most robust and effective way.
The Illegal Migration Act was introduced in the other place on 7 March 2023, in response to the crisis along the shorelines of the south-east and in the channel. It was aimed at stopping the boats, defending our borders and preventing those who enter the United Kingdom illegally from being able to remain. As my right honourable friend Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary at the time, said when moving the Second Reading in the other place:
“The British public know that border security is national security, and that illegal migration makes us all less safe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/23; col. 573.]
At the time, the Labour Party did not agree with that sentiment as it consistently opposed all efforts to stop the boats under the previous Government. It was welcome that the current Government began to acknowledge the necessity of stopping the boats, but it is clear from this clause that they have not yet fully appreciated what must be done. If they had, then they would not be pursuing this course of action.
Central to all of this is that this is what the British people want. They want to stop illegal migration, people making the journey across the channel in small boats and people dying in the channel. The way we do that is by having a credible deterrent to end the demand. That deterrent needs to contain both the ability to remove everyone that enters the United Kingdom illegally and a removals policy involving a safe third country.
The Government have spent much time trying to tear down the sensible policies of the previous Government, both the safety of Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act. At the same time, they have announced that they want to follow the Italian approach and pursue third-country removal centres—or, as the Prime Minister calls them, return hubs. In a visit to Albania in May, the Prime Minister said:
“What now we want to do and are having discussions of, talks of, is return hubs, which is where someone has been through the system in the UK, they need to be returned and we have to make sure they’re returned effectively, and we’ll do that, if we can, through return hubs”.
However, we know that Albania does not want to work with this Government in establishing return hubs. The Government have also spent much of the last few months talking up the one-in, one-out returns deal with France, but, as we all know, this returns deal is not much more than smoke and mirrors. It is very clear that EU countries do not want to take third country returns. It is also clear that the only country willing to take third country returns is in fact Rwanda. That is why we pursued the Rwanda policy and why we passed the Illegal Migration Act.
The effect of repealing the Illegal Migration Act and scrapping the Rwanda deterrent is that people who arrive in Calais know that all they have to do is make their way into British territorial waters and they will most likely be able to remain in the United Kingdom. Even if they are not successful in their asylum claim, they may very well be able to remain in the UK because we cannot return them for one reason or another.
The measures in the Illegal Migration Act placed a legal duty on the Secretary of State to remove illegal entrants, thereby sending a strong and unambiguous message to those who would seek to flout our laws and abuse our immigration system. This Act, taken in tandem with the Rwanda scheme, if allowed fully to operate, could have acted as a suitable deterrent. By repealing this Act almost in its entirety, the Government now lack the ability swiftly to remove illegal migrants and will not be able to deter further crossings. This is highly disappointing. It betrays the simple fact that this Government are not truly serious about stopping illegal migration and defending our borders. I beg to move.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for proposing the clause stand part notice. At the outset, I place on record for the House that 35,052 people were returned from 5 July 2024 to 4 July 2025, the first year of this Government. Of those returns, 9,115 were enforced returns of people with no legal right to remain in the UK, a 24% increase over the period of the previous year.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Of the total returns, 5,179 enforced and voluntary returns were of—
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
In a moment. I will always give way, if the noble Lord will let me finish the sentence. Of the total returns, 5,179 were of foreign national offenders, an increase of 14% over the same period in the 12 months prior. Therefore, before the noble Lord puts the premise that we cannot remove people and that this Government are not trying to, those figures put the record straight.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Of the 9,000 that he refers to, how many came across on a small boat?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
There were a number. I have not got the figure to hand.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
If the 9,115 were low-hanging fruit, why was this figure 24% higher than the previous year, when—let me just remind myself —who was the Minister in charge of this system? Would it be, by any chance, the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Right. I think we will just settle at that: that it is 24% higher than in the previous year because of the actions this Government have taken. That is the context in which Amendments 105 and 109 seek to reintroduce the duty to remove measures in the Illegal Migration Act that we are repealing. Therefore, it will not come as a surprise to him to know that we are not going to accept his clause stand part notice today.
Having a duty to remove people who are unlawfully in the UK is easy to say but very difficult to deliver in practice, as evidenced by the previous Government’s failure to implement this part of the INA. Such a legal obligation means taking away all discretion, and defining exceptions to that duty is not always straightforward. There remains a risk of legal challenge, of acting unreasonably in individual cases. For a duty to remove to be effective, there needs to be a destination where it is safe to remove people to when their own country is not safe for them.
We have taken a judgment on the Rwanda scheme for that effect, where there are practical difficulties in proceeding with the removal, and where a host country needs to agree to accept those people. If a third country is not willing to accept foreign national offenders or unaccompanied children, that can incentivise perverse behaviour for migrants seeking to remain in the UK.
We already have well-established powers to remove people who are unlawfully in the UK and have in fact, as I have just mentioned, seen an increase of more than 20% in failed asylum seekers being removed since the election of July last year, along with a 14% increase in foreign national offenders being removed. The Government’s aim is to deliver long-term credible policies to ensure a properly functioning immigration system. Having a duty to remove will not add anything useful to that aim. We are repealing the legislation that the noble Lord brought in; he is trying to reinsert it. There is an honest disagreement between us, but I invite the noble Lord to withdraw the stand part notice.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
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 or removed from the country? I would be very grateful if the noble Lord gave us a figure.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I have given the House accurate figures which show the removals. I cannot give the noble Viscount the figure he asked for immediately in this discussion, but I will reflect upon that question for him, on the ratio of individuals and where they have come from. However, around 35% of asylum claims are rejected. We are trying to speed up the asylum claims system to ensure that we come to decisions earlier and can therefore remove people with no right to be here. I will certainly examine the noble Viscount’s question, and if he is not happy with the response I eventually give him, there are opportunities further downstream for us to debate that further.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I have listened to so much claptrap from this side of the Chamber, I cannot bear it any more. Could we please stop the right-wing nonsense you are all spouting? Could we perhaps hear just how many people who arrive by small boat are actually given asylum because they have a justified claim?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I cannot give the noble Baroness the definitive figure on small boat arrival asylum claims, but roughly 61% to 65% of asylum claims are accepted, and roughly 35% are not. I can reflect on the exact figures, but those are the rough figures. From the Government’s perspective, we then have to speed up the asylum claims so we can make those assessments much more speedily. Part of the reason for the problem of having a large number of people in hotels is that those asylum applications were not speedily assessed. Therefore, people have been left in limbo in asylum hotels.
Those numbers have grown exponentially during the period 2015 to 2024. There was a dip just before the election, which I acknowledge, but further energy needs to be put into that to close the hotels—which we intend to do—and to speed up the asylum claim procedure to determine who has a right to asylum. There are separate issues, which have been raised by a number of noble Lords, such as ECHR obligations, refugee convention obligations, et cetera. But the Government simply believe that we need to speed up those asylum claims, and the measures in the Bill and externally from executive action and the immigration White Paper, along with future proposals, are designed to do that. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his clause stand part notice.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. At this point, I thank my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. I pay tribute to him for the sterling work he did as a Home Office Minister in steering the Illegal Migration Act through this House, and I thank him for his continued, erudite defence of this Act.
The Government have some serious explaining to do to justify how they think they will have a credible system to protect our borders and prevent illegal migration. If they cannot act swiftly and decisively to remove those who illegally enter this country and process their claims offshore, there is no deterrent. Without a deterrent, there is no hope of stopping the boats, and if the Government cannot stop the boats, then I believe this Bill will fail.
I assure the House that we will be returning to this matter in due course, but for now, I will not oppose the clause standing part of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the stand part notice.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel
“Duty to make arrangements for removal(1) The Secretary of State must make arrangements for the removal of a person from the United Kingdom if the person meets the following four conditions.(2) The first condition is that—(a) the person requires leave to enter the United Kingdom, but has entered the United Kingdom—(i) without leave to enter, or(ii) with leave to enter that was obtained by means which included deception by any person,(b) the person has entered the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order,(c) the person has entered or arrived in the United Kingdom at a time when they were an excluded person within the meaning of section 8B of the Immigration Act 1971 (persons excluded from the United Kingdom under certain instruments) and—(i) subsection (5A) of that section (exceptions to section 8B) does not apply to the person, and(ii) an exception created under, or direction given by virtue of, section 15(4) of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 (power to create exceptions to section 8B) does not apply to the person,(d) the person requires entry clearance under the immigration rules, but has arrived in the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance, or(e) the person is required under immigration rules not to travel to the United Kingdom without an electronic travel authorisation that is valid for that person’s journey to the United Kingdom, but has arrived in the United Kingdom without such an electronic travel authorisation.(3) The second condition is that the person entered or arrived in the United Kingdom as mentioned in subsection (2) on or after the day on which this Act is passed.(4) The third condition is that, in entering or arriving as mentioned in subsection (2), the person did not come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which the person’s life and liberty were threatened by reason of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.(5) For the purposes of subsection (4) a person is not to be taken to have come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which their life and liberty were threatened as mentioned in that subsection if, in coming from such a country, they passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom where their life and liberty were not so threatened.(6) The fourth condition is that the person requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but does not have it.(7) In this section—“country” includes territory;“deportation order” means an order under section 5 of the Immigration Act 1971;“electronic travel authorisation” means an authorisation in electronic form to travel to the United Kingdom;“entry clearance” has the meaning given by section 33(1) of the Immigration Act 1971.(8) In this section “immigration rules” means rules under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971. (9) Section 11(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 (person deemed not to enter the United Kingdom before disembarkation, while in controlled area or while under immigration control) applies for the purposes of this section as it applies for the purposes of that Act.(10) The only circumstances in which the duty in subsection (1) does not apply to a person who meets the four conditions in this section are where—(a) section (Unaccompanied children and power to provide for exceptions)(1) applies to the person,(b) regulations under section (Unaccompanied children and power to provide for exceptions)(7) apply to the person,(c) a Minister of the Crown has made a determination under section (Interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights)(2) in relation to the person, or(d) section 61 or 62 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (victims of slavery and human trafficking) apply in relation to the person.”
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
My Lords, we now come to amendments which seek to reinsert certain provisions of the Illegal Migration Act that the Government are repealing with this Bill. The intention of these Benches is that the Government justify the repeal of each section of that Act.
Amendment 105 would reintroduce the duty on the Secretary of State to remove anyone from the UK who meets all of the following four conditions: they affected an unlawful, deceptive entry, including without a visa; they entered on or after this Bill becomes law; they did not come directly from a country where they were genuinely fleeing persecution; and they lack lawful immigration status. There are protections under this proposed new clause which recognise the specific needs of those who are unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking or those protected by European court measures. The clause sets out the clear duty of the Secretary of State to remove those who enter the UK illegally.
Let us be candid about why this amendment matters. Control over our borders is not just a political imperative; it is also a moral and democratic one. We all know that our asylum system is under intolerable strain. The public expect us to take action against those who break the rules, jump the queue and undermine the integrity of legal migration pathways. The purpose of this amendment is simple: to create an unambiguous legal duty to remove those who arrive illegally after this Bill comes into force, so that the message is clear that if you enter the UK unlawfully, you will not be allowed to stay.
This summer, as we have already heard, we have seen the strength of feeling that many in communities throughout the UK have towards the illegal migration crisis that this Government are presiding over. The problem is getting worse, and without serious action now it is going to get much worse. Dismantling the legal toolbox on this point seems to us on these Benches to be a poor decision.
Further, Amendment 109 seeks to reintroduce the process element of the Illegal Migration Act for removals. This proposed new clause would make it clear that removals must be made
“as soon as is reasonably practicable”
to a person’s country of nationality, a country where they obtained a passport or identity document, a country they departed from to reach the UK, or a country that is willing to accept them. These provisions would apply only when the said country is deemed to be safe.
I suggest that the amendment would do something essential: it would reintroduce the clear legal framework for the removal of individuals who have no right to remain in the United Kingdom. It seeks to set a reasonable and practicable duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that removal takes place as soon as possible after arrival. In doing so, it sends out an unambiguous message that our Immigration Rules are not optional, and that entry into the UK without lawful status will carry consequences. We cannot have a situation where people are languishing here indefinitely at taxpayers’ expense.
At the same time, this proposed new clause is far from draconian. It is structured with carefully calibrated safeguards. It distinguishes between those from designated safe countries and those who may not be. It places clear limitations on the countries to which individuals can be removed. Where a protection or human rights claim is made, the amendment would ensure that no one is removed to a country unless it is formally listed and the Secretary of State is satisfied that the individual falls within a lawful category for removal. In short, the system would balance our obligations with the public expectation that illegal migration will be addressed seriously and systematically, and would provide clarity. It would avoid legal ambiguity, giving operational certainty to the Home Office, and would send a signal to the people-smugglers and traffickers alike that the UK will not be a soft target.
If this Government believe in deterrence, border security and preserving the capacity to protect the most vulnerable, this amendment embodies that balance. It would not slam the door shut but would set lawful parameters. It seeks to make it clear that the UK will not reward those who undermine our rules and ignore safe routes of migration. I beg to move.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I wonder if I could put to the noble Lord the question that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, put, which he did not answer in the previous debate? The amendment would impose a requirement to deport, but to where? Where are they to go?
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I find it rather odd to read these two amendments. I am not party political. I sat through a large amount of legislation by the last Government: the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda Act. There was a great deal of legislation but there were remarkably few people actually deported. There appeared to be, within the last year of the last Government, even fewer people being deported. There seemed to be—if I might put it like this—almost a degree of lethargy. So listening to the way in which the noble Lord has put forward these two amendments makes me feel, to some extent, astonished. What they are asking of this Government, as far as I can see, is what in legislation they achieved but in deportation they did not achieve. They are expecting this Government to do what the last Government did not do. Sitting as I do on the sidelines, listening to what parliamentarians say and to what the Opposition say to the Government, I find it difficult to see why the Government should have to respond to this. It really seems quite extraordinary.
Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has just said, in subsection (3) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 109, there are four ways in which somebody could be returned. One is to
“a country of which P is a national”.
I understand—and they understand, and have said so quite properly—that they would not send the person back to a genuinely unsafe country. So an Afghan would not go back to Afghanistan, I assume, and probably a Syrian might not, even now, go back to Syria. That is where we start.
Then we have
“a country or territory in which P has obtained a passport or other document”.
Is that country automatically going to receive this particular person?
Number three, at paragraph (c), is
“a country or territory in which P embarked for the United Kingdom”.
Again, is that country—mainly France, or Belgium or Holland, I would expect, which are the nearest countries—going to be expected to take back every person who comes over? At the moment, the Government are negotiating a pilot scheme for a few to be taken back. I would have thought that the French would simply say certainly not.
The fourth one is
“a country or territory to which there is reason to believe P will be admitted”.
That is a sensible proposal, but where is that country? At the moment, from what we have heard, there are not likely to be many countries which would want to take the majority of people who have come to this country illegally. As I said earlier, I find these two amendments astonishing.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who eloquently set out some of the history of the most recent slew of immigration Acts.
I have a slightly more practical question for both the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and the Minister, which relates to the various lists of safe countries. The Opposition will discuss their Amendment 120 later. In Amendment 109, proposed new subsection (5) states:
“P may be removed to a country or territory … only if it is listed in”
their proposed new schedule. That schedule is in Amendment 120, where, for many of the countries listed, it states “in respect of men”—in other words, men will be regarded as safe to go back to that country. However, many of those countries already have severe discrimination against LGBT people, including men. In some countries, it is punishable by death and, in others, by imprisonment—but, much more importantly, society feels at liberty to attack and kill gay men. I ask both the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson: what happens to an individual in that position, where the country is regarded to be safe in general but for one group of people it is clearly not?
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister will answer that question in due course.
The noble and learned Baroness suggested that the Government should not even be asked to respond to these amendments. With very great respect, I do not agree. The previous Government’s Bill that eventually fell away—the Rwanda Bill—was intended to provide a deterrent. I think it is common ground that a deterrent is necessary. The nature of that deterrent may be very much in dispute. Government thinking is still forming on the best way to deal with this very real problem.
The Government need to come up with a response. They had quite a lot of time in opposition in which to generate what they thought was an appropriate deterrent. They have now been in power for a year, and it appears that there is more thinking going on in recognition of the very real problem that they face. In my respectful view, the Government have a case to answer as to what precisely the deterrent will be. What will prevent what we see in our papers and on our screens every day?
My second point is about Amendment 107 and the interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights. I think it was during the Minister’s interregnum that there was a great deal of debate about the interim order made by the European Court of Human Rights. Even the most fervent defender of the European Court of Human Rights would be hard pushed to defend the order it made, which rejected a decision by our courts. It was made by an unnamed judge, it did not give the Government an opportunity to make representations and it did not have a return date by which, in accordance with normal practice, a Government or any other party would have a chance to answer the original order. This was a flagrant breach of natural justice, as was more or less accepted.
Whatever form the Government’s policy finally takes, they would be well advised to bear in mind what is in Amendment 107. It would give the Government the chance to consider the appropriateness of the interim measure—it is a very carefully drawn amendment because it gives that responsibility to a Minister of the Crown. There were many debates about whether the European Court of Human Rights even had the jurisdiction to make these interim measures. I respectfully suggest that, whatever else the Government think about these amendments, Amendment 107 ought to be very carefully considered.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I will just ask for two things. First, I hope that the Government will take and answer these amendments seriously. Secondly, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, will accept that it is not proper for the previous Government, who failed to answer this problem, constantly to suggest that this Government are also failing.
None of us has an answer to what is a very real problem. We do not help it by saying, “Yah boo, we thought we should do this”, particularly when, we may have thought we should do it, but it would be very difficult to argue that the previous Government were terribly successful at stopping the boats. I plead that we have these debates in a form which says that we want to find an answer to what is a very difficult issue. Both sides have to accept that. The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, who is not in his place now, was a Minister and did not solve the problem. I do not blame him for that, because it is an almost impossible problem to solve, due to the whole range of issues that we have talked about.
I hope that the Committee will talk about this issue in a way where we are all trying to solve it, rather than sides trying to suggest that they are better at solving it. We know perfectly well that, at the moment, the Government have not shown themselves able to solve it and the Opposition have to admit that, in all the years of being in power, we did not solve it. Can we start off with a bit of humility on this side and a bit of acceptance of vulnerability on the other?
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I echo the remarks that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, made about the blame game and the importance of us all working with the Government to do what we can to try to tackle the fundamental issues that are influencing the nature of this huge crisis. As I have said before—I repeat the figure now—117 million people are displaced in the world today. That is not the fault of the previous Government or this Government, but it is the reality. People will keep on coming, including from places such as Sudan, which was mentioned in the previous group of amendments.
I attended the All-Party Group on Sudan’s meeting at lunchtime today. The situation in Darfur is absolutely horrific. It is a place I have visited in the past. Two million people were displaced from Darfur, and 200,000 to 300,000 people have died there. If any of us were in Darfur, we too would try to leave, and we too would probably make dangerous journeys. Most people who leave Darfur travel through Chad. They try to get to Libya and to the Mediterranean. Most never even succeed in making that journey—they die on that part of the journey. If they get into the Mediterranean, they probably reach the seabed. If they make it to the continent, some of them finally get to the English Channel. We talk about this as our crisis, but it is their crisis as much as it is ours.
If we do not tackle the fundamental reasons why people are being displaced—for instance, the nature of the current, almost untalked-about war in Sudan that has led to this massive surge in the number of people leaving that part of the world, as is reflected in the figures that the Government publish about the people who are in these boats, coming from places such as Sudan—and if we do not tackle the root causes, this will keep coming round again and again, whoever the Government of the day may be. That is why I agreed with what was said in the previous group of amendments, and I reiterate the importance of finding international solutions.
The 1951 convention on refugees was right in its time—it needed to be drafted in the way it was drafted at the time—but we still need that convention. Yes, it probably needs to be reappraised. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has been thinking about this too, as well as looking at Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Minister and others have referred to. These things can be examined, as the Minister has said again and again today, but they can also be reformed. Indeed, nine countries, including Denmark, wrote an email to the European court and the Council of Europe—
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
Well, they sent an email. The noble Lord, Lord German, is right to point out, from a sedentary position, that it was perhaps not done through the most courteous of routes. However, the point is that those nine countries—Poland was another—are not illiberal countries and they are not led by people who have a hatred of European institutions. They were arguing that the time has come for international action to be taken by countries, collectively, to re-examine the things that we are signed up to, to see whether they are fit for the present time.
I want to say one other thing to those who have tabled these amendments. We have heard a lot about the Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act. At the heart of that was the suggestion that that would be a deterrent and a safe place to which we would send people. Recently, I have been looking again at Rwanda to see what the situation there is at the moment. In its human rights assessment of Rwanda just a few weeks ago, the US Department of State said that Rwanda is raising
“arbitrary or unlawful killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious abuses in a conflict; unlawful recruitment or use of children in armed conflict by government-supported armed groups; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; trafficking in persons, including forced labor; and significant presence of any of the worst forms of child labor”.
I am talking about Rwanda, and that is the US Department of State’s finding within the last few weeks. Recently, Human Rights Watch made a submission to the universal periodic review and reported on the use of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees from 2019 to 2024. I might add that the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ report on transnational repression—which is with the Minister at the present time, and I look forward to his response to that—identified Rwanda as one of the countries responsible for transnational repression. I point the Minister to those details.
Last but not least, we cannot forget about the involvement of Rwanda in atrocity crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with M23 raging on across eastern DRC. Earlier this year, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Law, Justice and Accountability that I chaired published a report on CRSV in the DRC and the abuses perpetrated by that group.
Let us be careful what we wish for. Let us understand the nature of those countries that we are going to send people to and that we say are safe places where people will be able to have good, prosperous and decent lives. Let us be realistic and honest about the nature of these things. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, reminded us that we will get to Amendment 110 from the Official Opposition, which is about lists and, indeed, we can then talk more about the countries that are on that list. Rwanda is on that list that the Official Opposition are pointing us towards.
I just want Members of the House to do what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said: we should stop blaming one another and trying to score political points and realise that this issue is now being exploited by people who have no great love of democracy and the rule of law and are taking people on to the streets and capitalising on this crisis. If we do not find solutions to this, I fear for the stability of our communities and the dangers to law and order and to the very vulnerable people whom I think all of us in this House are trying to protect.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling Amendments 105 and 109. I apologise to the House: in the confusion over the vote we had on Clause 38 stand part, I inadvertently started to discuss not only Clause 38 stand part but, in the last set of discussions, some of the arguments on Amendments 105 and 109. We drifted into that inadvertently because I thought we had finished debating Clause 38, so I apologise to noble Lords if I repeat some of the arguments here.
I start with the very sensible suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. These are complex and difficult issues. We have an inheritance from 5 July last year when we took office which we have had to deal with. I am not seeking to make political capital out of this. I want to have solutions, and the solutions are to have a fair and effective migration system, to speed it up, to ensure that we deal with international obligations on asylum, to remove those people who have failed the asylum system, to remove foreign national prisoners who have abused our hospitality and the privileges of being in this country, to ensure that we have a thriving economy and to ensure that we meet the skill sets that we need for the United Kingdom to succeed. Where we can bring entrepreneurs and others who can offer skills to this country, we do so. As has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, there are many forces outside this House which seek to divide the United Kingdom to exploit these issues. It is imperative that we find concrete solutions.
One of the concrete solutions is the very point that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has made—and it has been echoed by the Liberal Democrat Front Benches—which is how we deal with the real funnel of pressures that are coming, which are driven by terrorism, starvation, war and poverty. People who make that journey and claim asylum have very often faced challenges that I could never imagine. We need to have international co-operation, because the United Kingdom cannot solve those issues alone. That is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister met 51 countries in May of this year; has discussed with former European partners, which are still our neighbouring countries— France, Belgium and Holland—what the solutions can be; is working with the Germans; and wants to have some international action to stem that flow through the G7 and other bodies of people removing themselves from their home nations to seek asylum wherever it might be. It is an important issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, asked, “If not this, what is the deterrent?”. I do not want to repeat the issues today, but I have tried to set out the range and menu of measures that we are taking which we believe are going to add to that deterrence. However, the deterrence also demands that we take action against the criminal gangs that are leeching off that misery, poverty and desperation to ensure that they enrich themselves through criminal action. That is why we need international co-operation on a range of measures to focus on criminals who are using this to exploit people who are in a very vulnerable position. As of today, that may not be the deterrent that the previous Government potentially thought Rwanda was, but I think it is more effective.
Amendments 105 and 109 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Cameron of Lochiel, seek to reintroduce the duty to remove measures in the Illegal Migration Act that we are repealing. I take the contribution from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, very seriously. For a duty to remove to be effective, there needs to be a destination where it is safe to remove people when their own country is not safe for them or where there are practical difficulties in proceeding with the removal and a host country needs to agree to accept those people. That is the fundamental challenge that I put back to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.
Again, in the spirit of the instructions from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, to the House to deal with this in a sensible and noble way, I am not seeking to make difficulties for the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. I simply put it to him that the measures in Amendments 105 and 109 would mean that we would have to proceed with removal when there was nowhere to remove them to. That is the fundamental flaw in Amendment 109.
I repeat what I said in response to the general debate on Clause 38, that we have removed people who are unlawfully in the UK. We have seen that increase in the number of failed asylum seekers being removed. We have seen an increase in the number of foreign national prisoners removed—I have given the percentages to the House in every series of amendments we have had today, so I will not give them again now. The Government’s aim is to deliver a long-term and credible policy to ensure that we have a properly functioning immigration system. I say in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that, yes, it means that we are going to have to occasionally examine things in August and September that we had not considered a year ago. That is because the situation changes. Situations change, and politics needs to change. The measures in the Bill repeal an unsuccessful scheme and try to put in other measures to meet the deterrence that the noble Lord wishes to see.
I urge the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, not to press his amendments and to examine in further detail the proposals that we are bringing forward to the House to achieve the objectives that we share.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. I take very seriously my noble friend Lord Deben’s comments about humility and trying to be constructive about how we approach this; however, we are also a party of opposition. We remain firmly of the view that the Illegal Migration Act created a framework that was real and gave our border system structure, clarity and credibility. We did so because we recognised that the status quo was unsustainable, and we knew that deterrence without enforcement is meaningless. That is why we pursued the Rwanda scheme so vigorously and still defend it as a deterrent.
At the heart of the Illegal Migration Act was a simple premise: that if someone enters this country illegally and does not meet the necessary criteria for protection, they should be removed promptly and lawfully. Our amendments in this group are intended to encourage the Government to reflect on that principle again and really think before they abandon that framework in favour of something that we say is much softer and lacks precision, urgency and the seriousness that this challenge demands. That is a political decision, but it is one with consequences.
If we do not provide our law enforcement agencies with the legal tools they need, we cannot be surprised when the system fails to deliver. We legislated for that; we recognised that the UK needs a legal basis to enforce its own immigration laws. What the Government now propose is to remove that structure without a credible alternative. That is not just a retreat—it is a risk, and it will be paid for in public confidence, in operational paralysis and in yet more lives placed in the hands of traffickers and criminal gangs. We can and must do much better. I hope the Government use this chance to make that change but, reflecting upon what has been said across your Lordships’ House, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.