Family Reunion Visas: Gaza

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I hope the House will forgive me if I follow the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, about Lord Field. I worked with Frank Field for more than 50 years; he fought more than anybody else I know for people in this country who are poor and disadvantaged, and they have lost a treasure with his death yesterday.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, the Minister referred to the Government making decisions about special visa schemes on a crisis-by-crisis basis. What criteria do the Government apply in making those judgments? Perhaps the Minister can point me to where it is written down, so that we can all see how the Government are making them.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

It very much depends on the circumstances and other factors. For example, there were separate arrangements made after earthquakes in places like Turkey and Syria.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 22nd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 3J in my name turned out to be the last one standing. Perhaps I may say just a few words at its funeral. It was not much, perhaps, compared with some of those amendments that had already been defeated. Indeed, it survived so long under the guidance of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who I am delighted to see back in his place, precisely because it was so modest and unthreatening to the Government’s policy. But it at least touched on a central disease of this Bill and perhaps of our body politic more generally: the imputation of decisions to Parliament to reduce the possibilities for challenge and the pretence that by asserting something to be true, even in the teeth of the evidence, one can not only make it true but keep it true for ever.

Many people, some of them perhaps still watching even now, will have wished us to keep on fighting, but without the threat of double insistence—which remains part of our constitutional armoury, but which did not command the necessary political support on this occasion—there would have been no point in doing so. The purpose of ping-pong is to persuade the Government, through force of argument, to come to the table and agree a compromise. They have refused pointedly to do so, and after four rounds of ping-pong, their control of the Commons remains as solid as ever.

The time has now come to acknowledge the primacy of the elected House and to withdraw from the fray. We do so secure at least in the knowledge that the so-called judgment of Parliament was not the judgment of this House, and that we tried our hardest to achieve something a little more sensible. We must take comfort from such assurances as the Minister has been able to give and hold the Government to them. This is the Government’s Bill, resolutely free of any outside influence. As a patriot, I can only hope—though I am afraid, without much optimism—that it will bring benefits, in some way, commensurate to its real and painful cost.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with a heavy heart, given the lack of further amendment, to this dreadful, international law-busting Bill. I note that in the other place, the SNP twice used procedural Motions to delay it by 15 minutes each time. I applaud them for that, and I am not going to take up the same length, but I am going to take a moment to mark this historic occasion.

Your Lordships’ House has put a lot of work into trying to make the Bill comply with international law, with basic moral laws and with the principles of justice and fairness. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, earlier today said:

“Its costs will be measured not only in money but in principles debased—disregard for our international commitments, avoiding statutory protections for the vulnerable, and the removal of judicial scrutiny”.


Nothing has changed in the Bill in the last few hours.

I note that Amnesty International this evening warned airline companies that many members of the public take an extremely negative view of the content of the policy. Those were really unnecessary words, because no company of any repute whatsoever is going to take part in implementing this dreadful policy. That is a measure of the Bill and the disgraceful, despicable actions it represents.

I am disappointed to see the almost empty Benches around me. I note that the Liberal Democrat Benches are here, having played their part in trying to stop the Bill at Second Reading, and I commend them for that action that the Green group supported. They are still here to the bitter end.

We heard from the Minister, we will hear tonight, and no doubt will keep hearing in the coming days that “Well, we’re the unelected House”. That does not mean that this House is without moral or legal responsibilities. I have asked the House a number of times: if not now, when? What will it take to make this House say, “Here we take a stand”?

We have had the abomination of the Elections Act, the elements of a policing Act that targeted Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people explicitly. We have had multiple indefensible restrictions on the right to protest. Now, we are letting through an attack on some of the most vulnerable, desperate people on this planet. What more will we let through? I suggest to noble Lords as they leave this Chamber tonight to ask themselves that question.

With a desperate, flailing government party bereft of ideas and philosophy and without principles, this House will keep being tested. I ask these empty Benches: you might be waiting for an election, but what kind of a country will it be if you do not stand up now?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention. He put his points across extremely eloquently, and I agree with all of them.

I say gently to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that the Bill does comply with international law. It is profoundly moral and patriotic to defend the integrity of our borders, and it is profoundly moral and patriotic to prevent the needless loss of life in the channel and to put the criminal gangs out of business.

I also ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, why the Green group is currently a solo act. Where is her partner?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I have been asked a direct question. I am sure the House would have been delighted to hear from both of us this evening, but we made a choice to have one representative. If the House would like to hear and see more of us, we would welcome being invited to do that.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Speaking personally, I would rather hear a lot less, but there we are.

Rwanda is a safe country that has proven time and again its ability to offer asylum seekers a safe haven and a chance to build a new life. Rwanda has a strong history of providing protection to those who need it and currently hosts over 135,000 refugees and asylum seekers, who have found safety and sanctuary there. Binding provisions in the treaty place obligations on the Government of Rwanda to provide for those relocated under the partnership, and this is long overdue. I put on record my thanks to officials in the Government of Rwanda for all their efforts in delivering this partnership. I commend the Motion to the House.

Windrush

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port. The comparison that he made between the cascade of immigration of legislation we have seen being pushed through the House and what has happened with the Windrush scheme was telling. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for securing this debate for us—although I join her in regretting that she has had to—and for introducing it so powerfully.

It is an honour to take part in this debate of the absolute highest quality so it seems unfair to single people out—but everyone says that before they do it anyway. I particularly single out the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, for so powerfully setting the scene of the enormous contributions made. I should warn the noble Lord that I intend to clip his speech and put it out on social media—be warned. I also join others in crediting the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, who has today powerfully carried the Back-Bench flag for his own Benches all on his own.

I will not apologise for briefly repeating some of the things that have been said before because it is important to see that they are driven home. It is telling that a number of people have referred to the Age UK report, which came out today. The fact that it is Age UK that produced the report is a reminder that there is huge urgency in dealing with this matter; people are dying before they receive compensation, which is important, but also before they receive the acknowledgment that comes with it, which is even more important to many people. As Age UK has said, it must not be too late. We cannot let more people go to their graves uncompensated for the enormous harm that they and their families have experienced.

We have heard the figures: by the end of 2023, fewer than 2,000 individuals had been offered compensation, and it was often clearly inadequate. That is fewer than one in seven of those who had been estimated to be eligible. Only around 7,600 claims have been made—little more than half of what was thought to be needed. What do we do? I offer strong Green Party support to the idea, which others have mentioned, of an independent body to take over this. For all the reasons that have been outlined by almost every speaker, the Home Office is inappropriate to handle the situation; indeed, it is not handling it. People are fearful of approaching the Home Office as it is associated with the hostile environment, and the administrative delays and errors in the appeals process mean that it just is not adequate. I pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and others, that the scheme must include compensation for the loss of private pensions and future earnings.

I also agree with the noble Baroness and others that this should be called the Home Office scandal, but I am afraid that I would turn that round and say that the Home Office is a scandal—a long-standing, enormous blot on the landscape of our governance. The Green Party’s position is that we need to split the Home Office in two. It is impossible for it to be both the policer of immigration and the body that is supposed to facilitate people’s entry into the UK and welcome them. However, we would go wider than the scandal and the failure of the Home Office; quite simply, our Government are not working at the moment. The Windrush scandal is a powerful demonstration and illustration of the fact that it is the most vulnerable and the poorest who pay the highest price for government dysfunction; this is something that is systemically true, not just true in this case.

I again echo the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, that no amount of compensation can make up for the suffering. However, it is an acknowledgment, and that is crucial. It is an acknowledgement not just of individuals but of the continuing problems in our society. A point that has not been highlighted is that it could be a powerful step towards healing the problems of racism in our society if an independent body is created and this situation is resolved as fast as possible, and people get the compensation they deserve.

While thinking about this, I have been looking at some of the recent reflections on racism in our society. Kalwant Bhopal, professor of education and social justice and director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education at the University of Birmingham, has focused on what is happening in our universities. She says that they are often taking tokenistic measures and failing to confront their complicity in racial injustice. The professor noted:

“There are only 100 black professors in the whole of the UK, and only four … Vice Chancellors”


from minoritised communities. Curricula remain underweighted on issues of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. When people work on racism and social justice issues, it is too often considered personal research and something affecting them, and not something that gets the proper professional weight.

Reflecting on racism today, there is a major study, which I fear has got very little attention, from the University of Manchester, the University of St Andrews and King’s College London. The evidence for equality national survey, carried out by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity, reports that more than one-third of people from minoritised communities in Britain have experienced some form of racist assault. The report stresses that

“tackling racism is not just a case of merely removing ‘bad apples’ from workplaces and institutions … we need to seriously transform the policies and procedures”.

This has been a hugely powerful debate. I am not going to use my full 10 minutes because I want to keep the focus on the key points about Windrush. However, I will finish with a final question. If the Minister cannot answer this—I am aware it is not within his departmental responsibility—I hope that he might be able to write to all of us. It is important for us all to know how much is being taught in primary and secondary schools about the Windrush generation and the injustice they have suffered. It is crucially important that future generations know what has happened and have an understanding of the processes of what happened. The point, of course, is to make sure that we have change and do not find ourselves in your Lordships’ House in 10 or 20 years confronting a new, similar scandal.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin by urging noble Lords interested in the circumstances in Rwanda to pay close attention to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald of Salford. Members of the Rwandan Green Party have been at the forefront of opposition to President Kagame. They have paid dearly for it, including with their lives. I want to acknowledge that today.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will later concentrate on the contents of this Bill: its hideous human impacts and the indefensible politics behind its existence. I will focus chiefly on the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord German, which he so powerfully and effectively introduced to us. I will set out why the Green Party believes we should vote down this Bill today.

In that, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, who, making arguments with which we are all too familiar, suggested that “We’re the unelected House; we cannot overrule the elected House”. Can we really claim to have a functioning government majority in the House of Commons, a fast-shrinking majority, put in place with the backing—four years ago and three Prime Ministers back—of little more than a third of registered voters, the majority of voters choosing opposition parties?

It is not working, our constitution accreted over centuries of historical accident. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, set out powerfully, the Government are seeking to overrule on a matter of fact a judgment of the Supreme Court. I ask those who have been in this House for decades to mull on that reality and consider how shocking, how unbelievable, how banana republic you would a decade or two ago have considered even a suggestion that that might happen.

So what do we do? We often hear praise for the independence of your Lordships’ House and the relative weakness of the party Whip in those old-fashioned parties that do still whip. How about we apply independent judgment, independent thought, to this Bill, as your Lordships’ House did last week in scrutinising the Rwanda treaty—scrutiny that the Government have said they are going to dismiss without any consideration?

If the House cannot stop this Bill that the UNHCR tell us is in breach of the basic principles of international law, what is this House for? What defence is there for its existence and for its very curious composition? Sure, we can scrutinise, tidy up the Government’s mistakes in legislation, straighten out some of the worst elements and loosen things a little, and that is a job worth doing, but what use is that if we are within a deeply broken system, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred. I think the noble Lord meant the asylum system, but it fits perfectly too as a description of our constitutional system, which is unable, it would seem, to defend the basics of the rule of law.

There is one point on which I somewhat disagree with the noble Lord, Lord German. He said that the West is often accused of double standards. I say that the West is often guilty of double standards—something that has all too often been hidden in the past behind gunboat diplomacy and economic might. The balance of the world is changing and we are no longer in a position to suggest that other nations should follow the rules while we do not. We desperately need the norms that have been established—very often by British campaigners, civil society and lawyers over decades—to be upheld, and that means that we need to uphold them ourselves. As the noble Lord, Lord German, said, to pass this Bill would be to undermine our global standing and the principle of universality, however often in the past the West has ignored it in its own interests.

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for whom I have the highest respect, said that the Commons has the right to pass bad law. The question I am going to leave noble Lords with is this. How far would your Lordships go in accepting that precept? How bad does the law have to be? I have asked this question before, when we passed the policing Bill which explicitly targeted Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. I asked it during the passage of the Nationality and Borders Bill, when we declared millions of Britons to be second-class citizens, capable of having their citizenship taken away by the stroke of the Home Secretary’s pen. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, asked where the limits are. That is the question I put to your Lordships’ House today.

Asylum: UK-Rwanda Agreement

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the wonderfully clear and blunt speech of the noble Lord, Lord Razzall. I am acutely aware of the depth of knowledge already contributed in this debate, as well of the House’s desire to get to the vote on the important issue before us, so I will aim not to detain the House for too long.

There are some points from the debate thus far that are worth stressing. As many speakers have noted, we are not here to debate the infamous Rwanda Bill; that pleasure is to come. It is no secret that the Green Party absolutely opposes the Rwanda Bill and will do everything it possibly can to stop it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, noted, the will of the people is diverse, not singular. Many people are joining with us by signing the Green Party’s petition against the Bill to express the concordance of their feelings with ours. However, that is not what we are talking about today. We are scrutinising the viability, practicality and deliverability of the safe and legal offloading—I borrow the term from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, as it sums up the position so well—to Rwanda of Britain’s responsibility to provide care and refuge for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

One interesting measure worth considering is the economic one. Rwanda has an annual GDP of $1,000 per person. The UK has a figure approaching 50 times that, yet we are—with significant financial payments, admittedly—permanently transferring responsibility for these refugees to Rwanda. Is a country that was wracked by genocidal conflict only 20 years ago resourced, organised and structured well enough to cope? Can it live up to the promises made by its president? These are some of the questions that your Lordships’ International Agreements Committee, cross-party that it is, says can be answered only after a period of time.

It is worth stressing again that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who introduced our debate so clearly, was speaking not as a Labour Lord but as a representative of a highly respected committee of your Lordships’ House. He acknowledged that this was an unprecedented Section 20 Motion, but can your Lordships think of a better word than “unprecedented” to describe the terms by which we now live? As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, the Supreme Court made a judgment of fact that the Government, with the power of the Executive, are now seeking to overturn.

The UK has an unwritten—or, if your Lordships prefer, uncodified—constitution. In comparison to many other countries, which have human rights and rules of law written into their constitutions, we rely on the actions of the historic moment to maintain them. For those who speak in favour of our current constitutional arrangements, voting for both these Motions is a chance to prove that the current arrangements can defend basic rights, legal principles and government based on fact.

In the United States back in 2004, politics being “reality-based” was mocked by an official of the Bush Administration. This has often been repeated by that side of politics since, but many on my side of politics take it as a badge of honour. “Yes”, I proudly claim, “I am reality based”.

Paragraph 9 of the International Agreements Committee report notes:

“The Supreme Court … considered that on the facts Rwanda was not a safe third country”.


As Professor Tom Hickman KC told the committee, as recorded in paragraph 16,

“the Rwandan government does not possess the practical ability to fulfil its assurances”.

Your Lordships will make a judgment not on party politics but on whether the actions of the British state should be based on facts. Is this a reality-based House? The Green Party will support both these Motions and I urge every Member of your Lordships’ House to do the same.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Border Security) Regulations 2023

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

As an amendment to the motion in the name of Lord Sharpe of Epsom, to leave out all the words after “that” and to insert “this House declines to approve the draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Border Security) Regulations 2023 because they expose trade unions to liability of up to £1 million, make trade unions act as enforcement agents on behalf of employers and His Majesty's Government, and reduce the rights of workers to withdraw their labour, and will prohibit around 75 per cent of Border Force workers from taking part in strike action.”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to move my fatal amendment on the border security minimum service levels regulations. I will be very brief in doing so, in the interests of progressing the business of the House, particularly given the fine balance of our numbers. I am not going to repeat all my previous statements and arguments but, for the record, that does not mean that I am in any way withdrawing any of them.

I agree with virtually everything that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, just said about these being, in some ways, the strictest of the regulations before us today. Some 70% to 75% of staff are losing the right to strike; in many smaller places, there is effectively no right to strike. We are taking that right away from people. However, that would really be a stronger argument for my fatal amendment. In that context, the regret amendment does not really achieve anything, as I have said before. I will, however, just reflect on one comment that the Minister made, repeating statements that the Government have often made before. If the Government are committed to conciliation for national disputes, this is a kind of rhetorical question, but it is worth asking. Can the Minister confirm how he can speak for future Governments, because these are the regulations we are laying now?

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this is perhaps the most curious of the three statutory instruments aimed at particular sectors. I say that because it seems that the Government have chosen to pick a fight with one of the groups of public sector workers with which, to my knowledge, they do not currently have a full-blown dispute. Perhaps there is one coming; perhaps that is why Robert Jenrick has just resigned. He must know something that we do not. Given the choice of sectors, why did the Government choose to accelerate this one over other public services which are currently in trouble? It seems strange. Clearly, as other speakers have said, it is not a very long measure, and noble Lords will be happy to know that my speech will be shorter.

At the heart of this, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, the intent of the measure is that the strike-day service from Border Force should be no less effective than on a non-strike day, and services should cover all the areas normally running—port and airport services, passport services and so on—as the Minister has set out. I do not need to explain that when the minimum service level is no less effective than the everyday service level, that basically means almost everybody is required to go to work. In this case, the estimate from the TUC is that 70% to 75% of the employees of Border Force on a normal day will be required to attend on a strike day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for all the contributions and will address the points that have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has tabled a Motion to regret this statutory instrument because

“the draft Regulations contain policy detail that was not included in primary legislation contrary to the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; and … given that the impact assessment acknowledges that some workers’ right to take industrial action will be affected or denied… they are too prohibitive”.

I do not agree. The 27th Report of Session 2022-23 of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published on 2 March 2023, made two recommendations regarding what became the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act. The first was that

“the House may wish to press the Minister to provide an explanation of how the power to set minimum service levels … is likely to be exercised”,

and the second, as I have already said, is that

“the House may wish to press the Minister to provide an explanation of how the power to define ‘relevant services’ … is likely to be exercised”.

I respectfully submit that both those recommendations have now been addressed through the regulations themselves and in this debate.

I also respectfully disagree that the regulations are too prohibitive. The Government committed to introducing statutory minimum service levels on strike days in a range of sectors, including border security. That was to establish a fair balance between the ability to strike and enabling people to go about their daily lives. The ability for staff to take strike action is an integral part of industrial relations. However, the security of our borders is something that we cannot compromise on; that is why this measure is proportionate. We must also consider the disruption caused to, and the costs incurred by, passengers and businesses that expect the essential services they pay for to be there when needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked me about the consultation. We are grateful to all those who responded to it. As noted in our formal response, we received 69 online questionnaires and a further nine written responses, but we consider that those who responded have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality, which is why we have not identified them.

In the consultation we ran in the summer, we made it clear that we were considering applying these regulations to Border Force and other organisations. We invited respondents to identify any organisations they thought should be in scope. Following the consultation, we considered it important to include critical passport services in the regulations. Passport services required for the purposes of national security could include, for example, identifying stolen passports and forged documents. In practice, as I said in opening, we think that we would require around a dozen employees from the Passport Office to work on a strike day, if necessary.

Our commitment on conciliation is clear. To partially answer both noble Lords’ questions on Northern Ireland, there are issues in the background with Northern Ireland that we are working through. I will return to those subjects in writing.

The public rightly expect us to maintain a secure border—as I said, that is why this is proportionate— in balance with the ability of workers to strike. The Government believe that these new border security minimum service levels will do that. I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting these regulations, which I commend to the House.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I note that the Minister did not address my admittedly unanswerable question about the next Government. The news from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, might make us wonder when the next Government, or at least the next Prime Minister, might arrive. In light of the hour, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle’s amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Legal Migration

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. Obviously, the universities and the education sector provide an enormous amount of good to the country in many ways, including, of course, in terms of soft power. As the noble Lord indicated, it is an export industry. We have reconfirmed our intention to attract the best and brightest. Our manifesto committed to establishing the graduate route. More than 100,000 people last year to September 2023 were issued visas for the graduate route. We have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to review this route to ensure that it is fit for purpose and prevent abuse, protecting the quality and integrity of UK higher education. However, as I said earlier, I note the noble Lord’s points and broadly agree.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, following on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, on the Government’s own figures they expect there to be 140,000 fewer people coming in through student routes. How much income is expected to be lost to UK universities overall from that? Have the Government made any assessment of the regional impacts of this? There are northern and Midlands cities for whom the universities are a very significant part of their economy, and students and their dependants coming in are a significant contributor to the life and economy of those cities. Have the Government got an idea of the total cost of the 140,000 cut in students and how that cost will be distributed regionally?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the figures that I have are in terms of sponsored study to the year ending June 2022. There were actually more than 400,000 main applicants granted and 152,000 dependants were granted—so it is the dependants who will not be coming. In terms of dependants, about half of them are adults and only half of them actually work, so I suspect that the economic impact of their non-arrival will be very minimal.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his questions. Of course, there is no barrier to recruiting people to the Church, as long as £38,700 is paid to them. I do not think that unreasonable, I am afraid. I appreciate that salaries may not be as high in the Church as he might like, never mind the rest of his colleagues, but that is the median salary, as I said earlier, and it is not unfair. As for recruiting to the health and care sectors, I think I answered that question earlier. Again, there are exemptions in place for those people and we obviously value their work and their service here. I do not know whether the family test has been applied. However, we also regard families as very important. If the lady whom the right reverend Prelate referenced is sending the bulk of her money home, one wonders exactly what the economic benefit is to this country as well. That is obviously an unfortunate state of affairs, but it is worth mentioning.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, just to follow up on a previous question, I am currently looking at reports of Home Office modelling that suggests that there are 140,000 fewer students arriving. Perhaps he will write to me about that figure, because it appears to be a Home Office figure.

I want to pick up on the point from the noble Lord, Lord German, about British people bringing foreign spouses and children into the UK. The Minister may be aware that in 2015, the Children’s Commissioner for England produced a report identifying up to 15,000 children who belonged to what were then called Skype families: children whom the Children’s Commissioner said were suffering from stress and anxiety by being separated from a parent by the rules brought in in 2012 that demanded a salary for the sponsoring partner of £18,600 for a partner and even more for children. There have long been complaints that there is no allowance made for the potential income of an incoming spouse, who may well be able to find a job and be a high earner; only the British resident can be counted to sponsor their spouse in.

We are now in a situation where the salaries of 60% to 70% of British workers would not be enough to sponsor a foreign spouse to come into the UK. I have been speaking to people affected by this, many of whom have found that even their MP does not understand the situation. Many people say, “You’re a Briton—of course you must be able to live in your own country with your spouse and your children must be able to come here”, yet 60% to 70% of British people will now be unable to live in their own country with a foreign spouse and will be separated from their children. Do the Government really think that is an acceptable state of affairs?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, as I have indicated, we estimate that only around 25% of dependants work when they come to the UK—half of the adult dependants; the other half are children.

I now have a marginally better answer for the right reverend Prelate on the family test. I can confirm that the policy is compliant under the Human Rights Act, which includes respect for family life.

Justification Decision (Scientific Age Imaging) Regulations 2023

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this interesting and insightful debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her regret amendment, which I will obviously refute, because the introduction of scientific methods of age assessment is an innovative approach for the UK. It is entirely right that the Government take action to disincentivise individuals from deliberately misrepresenting their age in order to game the system, as well as to safeguard and promote the welfare of genuine children, who have a need to access children’s services. Scientific methods provide additional evidence and create a more consistent system, and there is nothing inhumane about those objectives. I hope that noble Lords will consider each regulation on its merits, and I will do my best to answer all the questions. If I miss any, I will endeavour to write.

The question of accuracy has come up. Determining the age of a young person is an inherently difficult task. The Home Office is aware that there is no current single age-assessment method, scientific or not, that can determine an individual’s age with precision. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord German, there is a risk of harm to both the age-disputed individual and to the public interest through misclassifying children as adults, or adults as children, which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred to—I will come back to this. That is why the UK Government are taking steps to improve the robustness of the age-assessment process. Scientific age assessment will be completed alongside the current Merton-compliant age assessment, and the age-assessment process will remain a holistic assessment. The well-being of the individual will continue to be at the forefront. I am happy to say categorically to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that scientific methods will not replace, but will be used alongside, Merton. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, asked me how accurate these methods are. For X-rays, I do not know—I will find out—but for teeth X-rays it is two years either side. I will come back to this in more detail in a second.

On international comparators, to which my noble friend referred, the Home Office believes that the negative credibility inference in respect of someone’s claimed age is necessary, logical and proportionate where a person refuses to undergo a scientific age assessment without good reason. It is important to note that negative consequences, such as automatic assumptions, are applied with variations by a number of ECHR signatories, including the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The UK is an outlier as one of the very few European countries that do not currently employ scientific methods such as X-rays as part of age assessments.

On our plans for operationalisation, the Home Office wants to specify these methods as soon as possible to pave the way for the introduction of scientific age assessments. The increasing number of age-disputed young people presents safeguarding challenges and puts additional pressure on children’s services, which should be accessed only by genuine children. This is a new and complex process that the Government need to get right. The full plans for integrating scientific age assessments into the existing processes will be set out in good time, and full guidance and assessments will be provided. For now, the Home Office has welcomed the report from the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee and is making clear steps to proceed with the recommendations and consider others.

Consent was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Lister, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London. To address the concerns regarding consent, I assure all that no X-ray or MRI image can or will be taken without informed consent from the individual. The Home Office will ensure that the individual has capacity, fully understands the process and is communicated to in a child-friendly and clear way. Interpreters will be available to assist with understanding information, and documents will be translated into a language the individual understands. If the individual refuses to consent to a scientific age assessment, they will continue to proceed with the current Merton-compliant age assessment. Those who are clearly children will be identified as part of the initial age assessment and not included in the cohort for an age assessment.

It is the Home Office’s policy to refer individuals for an age assessment only when there is some doubt about their age—specifically, where that individual’s physical appearance and demeanour do not very strongly suggest that they are significantly over 18. This threshold is set purposefully high to ensure that individuals can be given the benefit of the doubt. As a result, only those whose ages are in genuine doubt would be referred for this scientific age assessment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister has repeated a statement he made in his introduction about it being only the clear-cut cases. Can he explain how, in the year to August, in just one city—Leeds—30 children arrived, having been assessed as adults by the Home Office on initial arrival, and were immediately identified by people in Leeds as children? Will those children not face the potential of ionising radiation and other medical procedures as a result of this regulation?

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise before appearing—or, more precisely, not appearing—before your Lordships in this manner, but I understand that there has been a failure in the parliamentary network and I cannot appear in video; it was either by telephone or smoke signals, so I will settle for the phone.

I should begin by declaring my interest as chair of Big Brother Watch, which campaigns for the privacy and freedom of speech of the citizens of our country and seeks to protect them from unwarranted intrusion by the state into their lives and their data. Big Brother Watch has managed to rapidly prepare a briefing for parliamentarians about this Bill, and I commend it to Members of this House. It sets out five areas of concern, which I will cover later in my contribution.

However, Big Brother Watch had to work at pace to complete the briefing for this Second Reading because the Government published the Bill only on 8 November, just eight working days ago. I wonder what the reason could be for this rushed processing. Could it be that the Government want to avoid the thorough examination that this detailed and complex Bill needs? If so, the small number of Members who are ready to speak about it today—just 11, including the Minister—suggests that this strategy might have worked. Therefore, my first question for the Minister is to ask for an explanation of why so little time has been given to prepare for this Second Reading.

I sat on the Joint Committee that carried out the pre-legislative scrutiny of the original Investigatory Powers Bill in 2015 and 2016. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, whom I am pleased to follow in this debate, was the chair of that committee and a very good job he did too. My view eight years ago was, and still is, that bulk data collection—that is, the interception or collection and indefinite storage of everybody’s innocent internet, phone and computer communication—is a serious intrusion on every citizen’s privacy and requires very strong judicial oversight.

Those who support this mass surveillance seek to reassure us by saying that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. However, in truth do we not all have something to hide that we would prefer to keep to ourselves? That is why we shut the toilet or bedroom door behind us. That is why we do not speak in public about troubling issues in our family or friendship circle such as addictions, unwanted pregnancies, financial woes and the like. There are some things that we just feel are private—the kind of information that, in the wrong hands, can be used to demean or blackmail any of us. That detailed knowledge about every individual in the country could be used by an unscrupulous Government—who are considering ignoring laws and treaties, for example, if that rings any bells. They could use it to identify all citizens of a particular religion, political persuasion, sexual proclivity or whatever, to single them out for disadvantageous treatment or worse—much worse.

The state is collecting this personal information about us all and we cannot predict who in a future Government will get their hands on it and might totally misuse it. All I can say with certainty is that East Germany’s Stasi would have thought that every day was Christmas if it could have laid its hands on such a rich source of intimate data about all its citizens. Therefore, we must achieve a balance between the privacy needs and rights of individual citizens and protection of those same citizens from terrorists and serious and organised crime. It is not an easy balance to get right. I fear that the Government are still erring in favour of capturing too much data about innocent citizens—of course, the vast majority of us.

There is another very strong reason for not engaging in the collection of everyone’s data. The problem is that the useful information about terrorism or organised crime gets buried in a blizzard of useless data about the vast majority of us who are innocently going about our lives. In 2016, the Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill heard startling evidence about the problem that this causes for security services from a gentleman called Bill Binney, a retired technical director of the United States National Security Agency and a bit of a folk hero in the intelligence community because he predicted with great accuracy when the Russians would invade Afghanistan just by analysing the patterns of their military signals. However, later in his career Mr Binney concluded that the NSA’s policy of collecting the data of all American citizens was unconstitutional, so his team devised software called ThinThread. It used smart collection to pick out for inspection only the communications of known terrorists, those they were talking to—and who those people were talking to.

The management of the NSA instead chose to go down the road of collecting 100% of the data through a highly expensive project, Trailblazer—which was later abandoned—and ignoring Bill Binney’s method of giving the analysts a much smaller but richer and more relevant set of data. The consequence was that the NSA missed the data that it already had in its systems which would have alerted it to the plot to attack the twin towers on 9/11. If only the NSA had known that it had it and had looked at it. We know that the NSA did have it because shortly after 9/11, Mr Binney’s team ran its ThinThread software against the NSA’s database at the time of 9/11 and found six of the 9/11 conspirators and their command centres. Mr Binney shocked the committee by revealing that 9/11 could, and should, have been prevented—if only the American security analysts had not been swamped with useless information.

The price paid by the American people for their security services’ predilection for bulk data collection was very high indeed. Yet here we have in this Bill the continuation of that folly by our own intelligence services. I invite noble Lords to recall the terrorist attacks of the last 20 years and that, almost every time, it was later revealed that the perpetrators were known to the police or the intelligence services. Our people being swamped with irrelevant data must have contributed to the failure to further investigate these suspects before they acted.

The Government will no doubt argue that the advent of artificial intelligence makes it more possible for them to search for needles in haystacks. That may well be so, but some of that advantage will be negated by the massive explosion of data volumes they are now collecting from a wide variety of sources, especially social media and video. The fact remains that they are still holding, and have available for inquiry, huge amounts of data about all of us in this House and in this country—all of it at risk of being misused. Bill Binney’s solution was to immediately encrypt the 99.9% of the data that was of no interest to protect it from snooping, official or unofficial. In the UK we have none of that protection.

The Investigatory Powers Act, to the credit of the then Government, sought to reassure the public that there are limitations on the use of personal data by law enforcement and the security services, and how those limitations are policed. However, it is worth noting that it was also disclosed that several intrusive powers have been used on the British people for many years, without any such constraint. That was because they had been in use without the consent or even the knowledge of Parliament. If it had not been for the brave whistleblowing of Edward Snowden, the contractor to the American National Security Agency, the scandal of the UK’s surveillance powers would not have been revealed to Parliament and may never have been addressed.

We need an Edward Snowden-type whistleblower every few years to keep our security services and our Government honest, because the safeguards that are in place to ensure compliance by the security services and prevent misuse of these highly intrusive powers seem to be inadequate, as illustrated by the TechEn case. This was a very serious breach of the statutory safeguards in the Investigatory Powers Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. It was the subject of the scathing judgment against the Security Service and the Home Office by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in January this year. MI5 admitted that it had been aware, since May 2016, that there was a very high risk it was in breach of its statutory obligations concerning the holding of personal data under both Acts. It also admitted that it should have immediately reported to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal but failed to do this for three years.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that

“there were serious failings in compliance with the statutory obligations of MI5 from late 2014 onwards”—

that is, two years earlier than MI5 admitted—and that those failings should

“have been addressed … by the Management Board”.

It was also strongly critical of the Home Office’s failure to inquire further into MI5’s long-standing compliance failures, after being made aware of them several times since 2016. The tribunal found that the Secretary of State breached their duty to make adequate inquiries as to whether the statutory safeguards were being met, and that warrants were issued after late 2014, through to 5 April 2019, that were unlawful and did not meet the safeguarding requirements imposed by the Investigatory Powers Act and RIPA. Other breaches of the safeguards were alleged, but we do not know the tribunal’s verdict on them because they were covered only in the secret part of the judgment.

As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, whom I also thank for this thorough review, points out:

“MI5’s previous non-compliance has led to it being the subject of particularly rigorous oversight by IPCO with four extraordinary inspections taking place in 2019”.


He later warns that the TechEn case is a

“salutary reminder of the principle underlying the IPA: that exceptional powers require strong and independent external oversight”.

We would do well to remember those words when we come to consider the Bill in detail. There is clear, authoritative evidence that all is not well with the compliance mechanism in the Investigatory Powers Act. Some of us predicted this during the Bill’s consideration in this House. We also called for judicial authorisation to manage the risk of these suspicionless electronic surveillance powers, which are on a scale never seen before in a democracy. Instead, the Government set up a much weaker double-lock system, and now we see the consequences. So my second and third questions for the Minister are: what are the Government’s plans to seriously improve compliance with the Investigatory Powers Act, and will they now recognise that the current supervision regime is failing and needs to be replaced with much stronger arrangements? On a related matter, my fourth question is: when will the Government introduce regulation of a highly intrusive technology that is running riot in policing and security with absolutely no rules, safeguards or oversight—namely, facial recognition?

I turn to this Bill. There are five primary concerns that will be covered in detail in future stages in this House. As has been discussed, it weakens the safeguards against the intelligence services collecting bulk datasets of personal information by potentially harvesting millions of facial images and mass social media data. The Bill’s creation of a vague and nebulous category of information where there is deemed to be a low or no reasonable expectation of privacy is a concerning departure from existing privacy law, in particular data protection law. Such an undefined category requires agencies that are motivated to process such data to adjust safeguards according to unqualified assertions about other people’s expectations of the privacy of their data. On the contrary, data protection law is constructed according to the sensitivity of the information rather than guesswork about the individual’s expectation of privacy concerning personal information. In my view, this provision needs to be worded more tightly.

It weakens safeguards when authorities harvest communications data—for example, membership of and Facebook posts to a racial equality group could be seen as data available to a section of the public as defined in this Bill, and therefore the authorities may wrongly believe that they consequently possess lawful authority to obtain associated communications data from the platform. Once again, more precise wording is needed.

Thirdly, it expressly permits the harvesting and processing of internet connection records for generalised mass surveillance, which is a much wider purpose than originally envisioned.

Fourthly, it increases the number of politicians who can authorise the surveillance of British parliamentarians and members of other domestic legislative bodies. Politicians are not above the law but, given their important constitutional role, spying on them must require the highest authority—namely, that of the Prime Minister.

Fifthly and finally, it attempts to force technology companies, including those overseas, to inform the Government of any plans to improve security or privacy measures on their platforms so that the Government can consider serving a notice to prevent such changes. I am sorry to say that the Government must be suffering from delusions of grandeur if they think that Apple, for example, will agree to desist from improving the privacy protection of its products or to produce an iPhone with downgraded privacy features especially for the UK. Superior privacy for its customers is one of Apple’s main selling features, and it is not going to forfeit that to please the current Government in a small part of its worldwide market.

We have much to discuss when this Bill reaches its Committee stage. In the meantime I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to my four questions at the end of this debate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I apologise to the noble Lord.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Evans: my enthusiasm to reinforce the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, who I think made many important points in this debate, got me carried away.

I am delighted to present the Green Party’s position on this Bill. I am very aware of the depth of expertise in this debate, but I reinforce the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, in reflecting on the narrowness of the contributions and the short time your Lordships’ House has had to absorb this Bill. I note that I am the only female contributor on the speakers’ list for this debate, which is perhaps one measure of the lack of diversity of views that have been able to participate. I also note that we are talking about further strengthening the Investigatory Powers Act, which, when it was brought in in 2016, was known universally as the snoopers’ charter. Liberty described it as

“the most intrusive mass surveillance regime of any democratic country”.

Since then, a number of court cases brought by Liberty have brought in some restrictions in terms of the operations of the Act, which I very much applaud, but the Act was also subject to a petition from 130,000 people to speak out against the snoopers’ charter. Of course, the speed at which we are operating now makes it very difficult to get such level of public engagement as we saw in 2016.

We are talking about a further erosion of privacy and, as many noble Lords have said, this is a question of balance, but we are tilting the balance very clearly with these amendments to the snoopers’ charter. What is particularly worrying is that this Bill is about granting the security services access to bulk data, which will clearly be used to build what are known as artificial intelligence machine learning models. In essence, the Bill lays the foundation for the Government to use rapidly developing artificial intelligence—so-called; I prefer to call it big data wrangling—in mass surveillance. Not only does this have huge ethical ramifications, but its adoption in surveillance would be extremely irresponsible, given that we do not know how these technologies are going to evolve in future. We have talked about trying to keep up with where they are, but we are potentially opening the door to let them race ahead much further than we can currently comprehend, as we stand in the House today.

In other contexts I have drawn to your Lordships’ attention the rapid increase of privatised medical testing and the widespread advertising of it that we have seen. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, referred to genomic data. What is being assembled is a huge amount of intensely private information about individuals, and if that is then to be opened and exposed to the state on a mass, untargeted basis, that surely is cause for grave concern.

The Bill gives the Government unprecedented powers to monitor and target the entire British population and lays the foundation for use of artificial intelligence in surveillance. This is indiscriminate surveillance. Anyone can be monitored, regardless of whether they are a suspect. This is a complete assault on our right to privacy and raises a real question to ask about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Coming down to some of the detail, Clauses 1 to 4 allow for the mass trawling of social media and for the Government to collect data from every person’s web use, and Clause 14 allows the Government to obtain information from companies around every person’s web use—whereas, before, they were able to look only at specific data. In addition, the potential use of artificial intelligence as part of this Bill means that the Government could in theory identify everyone who is behind every single anonymous social media account, meaning that nobody would have anonymity online.

I am well aware that many people express concerns about anonymity and the behaviour of anonymous accounts online. Here I declare my position as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. I am delighted that the UK has welcomed many exiles from Hong Kong who have sought refuge in the UK, but they remain deeply fearful about the very long arm of the Chinese state. Similarly, we have seen that many Russians have had good cause for concern about the long arm of the Russia state, which, despite the best efforts of our intelligence service, has proved itself capable of reaching within our borders. Anonymity is crucial to some people’s safety in the world. Lest we think of this as being just about states regarded as hostile by the UK Government, let us all remember the fate of Jamal Khashoggi and the actions of our friend and ally Saudi Arabia in his horrific death.

The widespread use of surveillance means that this Bill would push the UK further away from what are considered democratic norms. What is more, as a number of other speakers have already said, this blanket surveillance is not necessarily effective. There is a real risk that, the more information you collect, the harder it is to see the needles in the haystack. This Bill erases some of the checks and balances already in place.

We have seen how far this can go. Again, looking on the international stage—what China is doing to its Uighur population, what it has done in Tibet, and what is happening in Burma—these are situations where the more surveillance there is, the more issues arise. If the UK is heading in the wrong direction, what kind of model are we creating on the international stage? The UK likes to present itself as a leader, a model of democracy, speaking up for democracy in international contexts. We must not be a leader in allowing further steps towards autocracy.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, who spoke of how these technologies have often been used in discriminatory ways. We know that the police, certainly, have unfairly singled out people based on their identity, and that has had dangerous, damaging consequences, both in relation to the treatment of individuals and in relation to communities’ views of the police and our security services. If artificial intelligence is added into this mix, we know that there are built-in biases in the way in which the databases have been developed, and that is a real issue.

We also know—I declare an interest here—that the police and security services in the UK have made disproportionate efforts to monitor politically active individuals, trade unionists and whistleblowers. Providing the police and the security services with greater surveillance capacities means that people who are acting democratically in our society could be—in fact, almost certainly will be—subjected to further unwarranted surveillance. As a number of other noble Lords have said, the fact that Part 5 of the Bill allows further extension of the Prime Minister’s powers to approve interception and examination of MPs’ communications is a cause for grave concern.

To conclude, I will share an experience from the weekend. On Saturday, I was at a protest against the proposed new coal mine in Whitehaven in Cumbria, which is opposed by, among others in your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Stern of Brentford. He made similar points to mine about the messages we are sending to the international community. The slogan was “No Time for a Coal Mine”. At that protest, there were 100 or so supporters, and the four of us who were speaking had all advertised this fact on social media beforehand. For nearly all the two and a half hours we were there, flying above us was what I am told was a police drone. There were at this protest of 100 people—all advertised and entirely peaceful with no plans for direct action—at least six police officers, one of whom filmed my contribution and all the other contributions. That is the experience of people peacefully protesting within the UK.

There was another story at the weekend that 15 government departments are monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling files to block them from speaking at public events. This is the experience that people have of the UK state today. We have savage reductions in the right to protest; we have deeply concerning directions of travel, and the Bill is a further step in that direction.

Certificate of Sponsorship: Foreign Health and Care Workers

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Information is certainly available on the GOV.UK website, which is signposted from the health and social care visa pages. There are also NGO bodies, including Care England and the gangmasters licensing authority, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said, trade unions.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The Minister has used the term “abuses” a number of times. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, to which he has just referred, says that the health and care worker visa system is being abused by criminals, leading to a “constant stream of allegations” of fraud and modern slavery—a rather stronger term. Following on from the question about the involvement of the private sector in this, I ask: what value are all these Wild West private sector firms that are popping up adding to the system? Would it be better to do this not in a privatised way but, if we need to recruit care workers from overseas, to do so through a national workforce plan and not-for-profit agencies?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be unsurprised to learn that I do not agree that the state is the answer in the provision of health and social care in the way that she suggests. It is entirely appropriate that private companies can recruit in the way that they presently do, that abuses are stamped out and that the Home Office uses its enforcement powers in the way that it does and will continue to do.