People of African Descent in the United Kingdom

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Monday 17th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, it is, in fact, the turn of the Conservative Benches.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Did my noble friend give the visiting body a copy of the excellent Sewell report? It showed that, though discrimination and prejudice exist, are wrong and should be combated, they could not account for most of the disparities. For example, there is a huge disparity between performance of black people from the Caribbean and black people from Africa. Nor could they account for the fact that one of the worst performing groups is white working class people. Did this body comment on those facts?

Small Boats Incident in the Channel

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that, if it is morally and legally right for the French authorities to turn back immigrants seeking to leave their shores, it would likewise be morally right for us to return immigrants who had evaded attempts to keep them in France? It is possibly right legally and certainly is if we do so safely and with the approval of the French authorities. It would be odd of them to refuse that approval, given that they took our money to help them do it, in the first place.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right, and of course he caveats that by saying that the methods by which people are turned back have to be safe. That is essential.

UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement: Foreign Workers

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I could tell the noble Baroness what is going right. We will have a system that is fair for the whole world, as people who have the skills and can contribute to our economy will be able to make their life and work in the UK. I accept her point about certain sectors facing shortages at the moment and the Government have remedied this.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I greatly respect the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and do not want to comment on the legality of this, but could my noble friend confirm that the effect of reversing the Government’s policy would be to make it easier and cheaper to import cheap labour from abroad? Would the Opposition Benches not be more likely to make the Labour Party electable again if they were to seek to implement Gordon Brown’s cry to train people, so that we have British workers doing British jobs, rather than simply making it easier to import cheap labour from Europe?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I totally agree with my noble friend and have said on many occasions that the days when we could import cheap labour from the EU or anywhere else are gone. Our immigration system will be based on the skills that people bring to bear and there will be certain thresholds on incomes.

Immigration Rules: Au Pairs

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, successive Governments since 2008 have decided that the UK’s immigration system will not offer a dedicated visa route for au pairs, and I do not see that situation changing. I described in my initial Answer the YMS route, on which there are around 20,000 people from participating countries or territories coming to experience life in the UK.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that we are moving away from the deplorable British habit of paying British workers too little and not training them enough, and instead relying on cheap labour from abroad. I understand the reasons my noble friend gives for wanting an exception in the case of au pairs, but I counsel the House that it will open us to ridicule if the only exception we are prepared to make is to help us deal with the servant problem.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. Debates have been had over the last few months and years, but the whole point is to offer competitive wages here for workers from either here or abroad. Au pairs certainly are labour on the cheap.

Refugees: Status

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the first safe country principle is widely recognised internationally; for example, it is the fundamental feature of the common European asylum system. Without enforcement of this principle, we simply encourage criminal smugglers to continue to exploit very vulnerable migrants.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that it is time to renegotiate the original Geneva convention on refugees, which was passed when there was a finite problem of displaced persons in Europe and was subsequently extended worldwide before anyone realised that cheap mass transport and communications would make mass movement of economic refugees between continents possible? The scale of the mass movement is indicated by the US’s offer of 50,000 visas every year to a handful of countries on a lottery basis. It receives applications from 13% of the population of Albania, 9% of the population of Armenia, 8% of the population of Ghana and 15% of the population of Liberia. It is time to recognise that the scale of this problem exceeds anything the original treaty was designed to deal with.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I certainly concur with my noble friend that not only are migration patterns changing because of the nature of access to travel but that the figures all over the world are massively increasing from what they were. Renegotiation of the 1951 convention is a bit above my pay grade, but I certainly say that this country has always tried to give refuge to those most in need. To that end, we have been extremely generous.

Criminal Trials: Intercept Evidence

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the question of how many individuals could have been prosecuted is very difficult to answer, given that the evidence was not used. I do not know if there are figures that I can give to the noble Lord. I want to make the point that we do not actually have an objection in principle to the use of intercept material as evidence, and we have tried to find a practical way to allow the use of intercept evidence in court. As I said, though, successive reviews have found that it is just not possible.

[Lord Lilley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, when I was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, something that I proposed had the unexpected effect, unknown to me, of affecting the way in which the security services carried out surveillance. I was therefore given a briefing on the different ways in which they did these things, some of which were well-known to me and the public but others were not. Surely it would be possible to allow the security services to decide which methods they are going to reveal where they are using techniques that we do not want criminals to know about.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As I have said to other noble Lords, the costs and risks of using intercept as evidence are disproportionate to the potential benefits, and therefore we have not proceeded to intercept as an evidence model. However, we are not closed to the idea and will keep the position under review, and I totally acknowledge what my noble friend has said.

Planned Deportation Flight to Jamaica

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Lilley

Monday 10th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I assure the noble Lord that all those considerations will be taken into account. Each case will be gone through to ensure that the right decision is made, because we are making life-changing decisions for these people. This is not a flippant decision to make. The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise that issue to ensure that we are rigorous in making decisions on who we will deport. Do not forget that these are serious criminals.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend and the Government are right to take a robust line with foreign criminals, but it must be at least doubtful how foreign people are if they have been here for an awfully long time and they probably thought that they were British citizens. Why is there such a contrast between the Government’s robustness on this issue and their failure immediately to deport people who come across the channel from safe countries on the continent who are manifestly foreign and have no legal right to be here? Why do they go through a lengthy process of considering whether they have any right to be here when they manifestly do not?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend asks a very valuable question. Most of the people we deport go to the EU. He is also right to point out that it is very difficult to deport people to some countries. We would, of course, not deport people to places where they would suffer human rights abuses.