Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard

Committee stage
Monday 8th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, self-evidently I am not my noble friend Lady Ludford, but her name is on this amendment on behalf of these Benches. The noble Lord described immigration law as labyrinthine. It certainly is. There are easier subjects in which to practise. As a society, we are very lucky that a lot of lawyers are prepared to sacrifice themselves—I do not say this lightly—to ensure that people are advised about the labyrinthine rules.

I am a member of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. At the moment, we are doing some work on the rule of law. I think we have raised with every witness the issue of access to justice. The committee is paying a lot of attention to that.

I want to pick up the reference to the 30 minutes of advice that is available. It is not 30 minutes; it is less than that, as I discovered when I visited Yarl’s Wood a few years ago. It was explained that you have to take out of those 30 minutes the time needed to bring the detainee to the room where the lawyer is holding a surgery, for want of a better word. Can it really be advice? The first job of a lawyer in this situation is to listen. In pretty much every case, if you were to do it properly, I think it must take longer than 30 minutes to have a detainee explain what has happened and what his or her history is, and not just in one period, taken consecutively. For a number of people—those who have been subject to human trafficking and modern slavery have been mentioned—it takes a long time to be able to tell that story. So there is listening, and then there is advice—or, rather, an explanation and then advice, let alone action. We know that action does not happen. These Benches very much support the noble Lord’s amendment.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bach. Had I been awake, I would have added my name to it, but I was sleeping in the Recess. He describes a situation which I do not think it is exaggerating to call critical. The numbers and percentages that he cites are shocking. The case for his amendment can be made on the grounds of fairness, access to justice and, as he said, the requirement for the Executive to carry out the laws that this place has passed. I agree with all that, and I do not think anybody in this House would disagree.

I will emphasise a point that the noble Lord made en passant and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, made at greater length: we should not just act on this amendment on the grounds of fairness, equity and access to justice, but it makes sense in terms of economy. The costs of the delays in the system, which must in many cases result from inadequate preparation of a case, the wrong grounds being advanced and cases being deferred and having to be heard again, must be considerable. I have no numbers to offer, but I know that, in asylum cases, 50% of initial applicants have no legal representation and, in asylum appeals, 60% have no legal representation. That must prolong the process.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, I congratulate the Government on the efforts they are making to reduce the queues for the initial application stage and for appeals, getting rid of these backlogs which grew terrifyingly under the previous Administration while the emphasis was on the Rwanda scheme and people were taken off these cases. The Government’s efforts to get the backlogs down are admirable, but they would be assisted by putting into practice what this amendment calls for, so I support it on the grounds not just of equity, which is perhaps in itself sufficient, but economy.

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[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has left out of his critique the requirement that the happy couple, as he described them, must both be at least 23 years old. When minimum income rules increased the amount of income that had to be shown in 2012, I heard a call-in debate about this on the radio. British citizens were affected; as he has said, it is not just about the foreigner. One person who called in said of the person who had been speaking, “Well, why can’t you just go and work in her country?” He said, very calmly, that it is not easy to find a job in mortgage broking in Nigeria.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, for her interesting statistics. As a former chairman of a university court, I find high student numbers a cause for delight. I am not quite sure why we should see it as bad news; the university sector as a whole finds large numbers of students wanting to apply from abroad rather good news, and so do I.

I would like to put a question to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, about Amendment 198, on which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has expressed some doubts. I am struck by the plight of the British Romeo, who happens to go to Verona and meet Juliet. Not only does he have to tell her that they have to wait until they are both 23—the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—but they have to wait until he is earning £37,750 a year and until they have already been married for two years. Even then, they cannot be sure, because they have to get a place in the quota. The quota for Italy will be 7% of an unknown number, to be determined at some future annual date by the Secretary of State. So, they would be well advised to get up very early on 1 January, two years after they got married, and register their application to come to this country. On what basis, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Davies, does one pick 7%, and on what basis is the Secretary of State to pick the annual number?