Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Ludford]

100: After Clause 36, insert the following Clause—
“Requirement to produce an annual report on cooperation with Europol(1) The Secretary of State must, within one year of the passage of this Act, lay before Parliament an annual report on cooperation between UK law enforcement agencies and Europol.(2) A further report must be published and laid before Parliament at least once per year.(3) An annual report under this section must include—(a) actions taken during the previous year to cooperate with Europol,(b) progress in reducing people smuggling and human trafficking, and(c) planned activities for improving future cooperation with Europol.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Government to provide an annual report to Parliament detailing the UK’s efforts to cooperate with Europol, its progress in reducing levels of people smuggling and human trafficking, and its plans to improve future cooperation.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, Amendments 100 and 101 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord German. I will also speak to Amendment 206, tabled by my noble friend Lady Hamwee, with me and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, as signatories.

These amendments are all about co-operation with Europol in various ways, and I hope they are pushing at a very open door with the Government. They try to put some flesh on the bones of various aspirational texts of the last five years and to give some practical and operational content to what has remained a bit declaratory so far. Maybe the Minister will be able to give some information about what is going to happen to implement the reset document of 19 May.

Amendment 100 asks for the Government to produce an annual report on co-operation with Europol, the idea being that if the Secretary of State is required to produce an annual report on co-operation between the UK’s law enforcement agencies and Europol, that will provide an impetus to have something to report on. New subsection (3) in Amendment 100 suggests that the annual report should include actions taken during the previous year to co-operate with Europol, progress in reducing people smuggling and human trafficking, and planned activities for improving future co-operation with Europol. It would not just be a report for its own sake—I am sure Home Office civil servants have quite a bit to do as it is—but it would be in order to say, “Oh golly, we’ve got to produce that annual report, so let’s do something”.

Amendment 101 would require the Secretary of State to seek to establish a joint taskforce with Europol for the purposes of co-operation, which are set out: disrupting trafficking operations, enhancement of law enforcement capabilities, specialised training for officials involved in border security and immigration enforcement, and of that ilk. It takes two to tango, so obviously the amendment does not expect the UK Government to establish a joint taskforce with Europol on their own, so it says “seek to” establish a joint taskforce.

Amendment 206 is a request for a unilateral obligation on the Government, saying:

“The Secretary of State must provide adequate resources to law enforcement agencies”—


that is, the national crime agencies, the police forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police—

“for the purpose of enhancing their participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations … The resources … must include technology for conducting improved surveillance on, and detection of, smuggling networks”.

Just to look at the history of, and aspirations for, co-operation between the UK and Europol, we started about five years ago—obviously, we were once extremely significant in Europol; I know that I have said this before in the Chamber, but it riles somewhat. For 10 years, Rob Wainwright, a senior British police figure, was the distinguished director of Europol—we were in “pol” position, you could say. However, we must make the best of what we now have, which is the trade and co-operation agreement.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is probably best if I reflect on that, because although I know who is embedded in Europol, I do not know offhand, unless I can find some inspiration in the next few seconds—I fear that I may have to check. I say that simply because this Minister and this Government are responsible for National Crime Agency liaison; we are not responsible for the Europol aspect of liaison with us. Rather than give the noble Lord an unhelpful answer, if he will allow me I will reflect on that in due course and give him a specific answer in writing, post this very helpful set of amendments, which I still hope will not be pressed.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response. The tone and approach go very much in the direction and spirit of the amendments, even if their drafting is not entirely fit, in the Minister’s mind. He is right that they were designed to illustrate the very welcome change of approach of the current Government, who regard co-operation with Europol—and, indeed, with the EU generally—as important.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, said that we must be driven by operational need, not ideological nostalgia. I do not think you could find anything in the drafting of the amendments which is not operational. To be honest, I take slight exception to any suggestion that they are driven by ideological nostalgia. If there is any ideology, it is coming from those on the Opposition Benches, who are still displaying an allergy to the European Union.

I have the pleasure of serving on the European Affairs Committee with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. We are going to have some interesting discussions when we finalise our report on the reset. He referred to the leads from the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council giving evidence to us a few months ago. I looked it up while he was speaking, and they referred to the more cumbersome, clunky and process-heavy post-Brexit arrangements. They were engaged in mitigation, so they were making the best—I am now using words they did not use—of a not great job. I am afraid that what is coming from the Benches to my right is a prejudice against working with the European Union.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to the noble Baroness. She knows that there has been cross-party support on, for instance, information-sharing in respect of the Schengen Information System’s second iteration, which we were members of in 2015, and it is incumbent upon this Government and the European Union to negotiate that information-sharing. We could ameliorate the clunkiness were the EU to be a little bit flexible, for mutual benefit, in sharing the SIS II data.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

There are all kinds of things we can aspire to. Unfortunately, the arrangements the noble Lord’s party negotiated have certain constraints in terms of the legal operation of the European Union, and he knows that.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am sorry to disturb the noble Baroness’s flow, but I want to place on record, in answer to the question raised by Members, that there are no Europol embeds in the UK. There is a Europol liaison unit, which is staffed entirely by UK police officers. I hope that is helpful.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for that helpful information.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Forgive me, but I just want to be clear, because I think the noble Baroness may have, I am sure inadvertently, misunderstood me. I am very supportive of us co-operating with Europol. We did when I was in government as Immigration Minister, we do now, and I want us to continue to. I also want us to co-operate with law enforcement agencies around the world. What I do not want to do is fetter either agencies or the Government by skewing priorities towards only one of them. I want them to co-operate with all relevant agencies and make those decisions based on the threat assessment and the operational need. I want to do all those things, but I am very supportive of our co-operation with Europol and always have been. I do not want her to run away with the impression that I am not.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord; I was coming to his remarks. In his original remarks, he said precisely that—we do not want to co-operate just with Europe; we want global co-operation. Of course I want global co-operation, but the fact is that something like Interpol is not operational. Europol is operational and it is our next-door neighbour. It is obvious, because of the routes that irregular migrants take, that geography means we have to co-operate particularly with our European counterparts on issues such as people smuggling and migrant trafficking. That does not mean we do not want to co-operate elsewhere, in particular with countries of origin, but we do not have the same operational possibilities as we do with EU institutions and agencies.

I was reminding the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, of the evidence we heard from senior police officers. They had to be diplomatic, and they are doing their best with the hand they have been dealt, but it is not ideological nostalgia to say that the TCA places serious limitations on those possibilities. One would not wish, frankly, to start from there. I hugely welcome the change of tone, the approach and the willingness—not this baggage or allergy to anything that has the word “Europe” in it. I know that the Minister personally and the Government want, within limitations that I do not necessarily endorse, to co-operate with the European Union and individual member states. It is not about politics or ideology; it is about whether we are going to catch major criminals. That is why we have to give our police and European police the tools to be able to disrupt the gangs—that is what we all claim we want. We must not allow ideology to impede that co-operation.

I conclude that I am grateful for the reply from the Minister. I will reflect on whether I can submit something on Report that is more to his and the Government’s taste, but I welcome the positivity in his remarks and intentions about how we need co-operation. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 100 withdrawn.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Swire. I begin with a confession, which I think is shared by most of my colleagues on these Benches, that we were all whipped in 2006 or 2007 in the other place when in opposition to oppose identity cards. It was a period when there were serious concerns about the infringement on civil liberties of identity cards. Tony Blair, our former Prime Minister, got a lot of things wrong over the years, but he was absolutely right on identity cards. If I were to go back in time and vote again, I would support identity cards, for many reasons. We are talking almost 20 years ago and the world has changed significantly in terms of transnational travel, patterns of serious organised crime, and the challenges of large numbers of people moving across the world, a minority of whom are doing so for nefarious reasons and for criminal enterprises.

The Minister knows that I have great respect for him. I know he serves in the greatest tradition of patriots in the Labour Party who have served in government and he wants to do his best to protect our borders and the safety and security of our country. However, we can no longer have these slightly erudite debates about ID cards and civil liberties when we have so many huge challenges, particularly the threat of Islamist terrorism and other serious organised crime. If we look abroad, we see that other countries have taken this very seriously as well, including many English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and of course the United States. What bedevils us is the lack of co-ordination and collaboration in terms of sharing data.

I have been nice about the Minister and now I am going to be nasty. I have asked him four or five times the same question—I dare say it is his officials’ fault, not his—about whether we collect data on students whose visas are rescinded as a result of criminal activity. For various reasons, he has had to answer that he cannot give me that information, telling me the Home Office does not collate that data, there are too many databases, or it would be too expensive to collect that data. I am not blaming him as such, but that is symptomatic of the difficulty of being able to properly co-ordinate data in the public interest to fight crime. Therefore, we should consider anything that can assist that, whether it is facial recognition—I know there are civil liberties issues and in China we see some very major infringements of civil liberties, so I do not want to go down that road—iris scans, fingerprints, et cetera. The ability to collect that data for people coming in—

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My noble friend Lord German is going to speak on the entirety of the amendments, but I did not want to lose the theme of ID cards. I have a question, because I genuinely do not understand. We have had big, long debates about ID cards in the past and maybe we will again in the future, but how are ID cards supposed to help in the case of irregular migration? Employers who are employing people illegally are presumably meant to be checking documents at the moment to make sure that people have the right to stay and the right to work. How does an ID card actually help?

If employers have the means to check whether someone has the right to work legally—that is an alleged pull factor, although of course the Migration Advisory Committee has always advised that that is actually not true—can the noble Lord explain to me what ID cards add as a supposed deterrent to irregular migrants, when employers should already be checking documentation? How do they add value to that particular issue?