Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will start my remarks on this group where the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, finished, since that seems the most convenient way to do it. I will not rehearse my arguments on Amendment 26 at length because I spoke to it in Committee.

On co-operation with Europol, which is very important, I shall make two points. First, the Government’s motivation to co-operate with Europol is because they want to deal with the problem, and I do not believe that the necessity to produce a report will change that dynamic. If the Government did not want to co-operate with Europol because they did not think it was important, I do not believe that having to prepare a report would change their mind either. I do not think it will achieve very much.

Secondly, as I said in Committee, the danger is that this then skews attention towards Europol. We know that border security is not just a European problem. Obviously, the small boats issue—the visible bit of it—is a European problem, because that is where the boats are coming from, but the people in them are not all starting off from France. This is a global problem, and these organised crime groups are global in nature. If we start putting legislation in place that forces the department to start overly focusing on one area to do bureaucratic tasks, we will skew its resources. I want the Home Office and the Government to choose which agencies they partner with, and the work they do, based not on the need to produce bureaucratic documents but on the security threat to our border. That is best left to the judgment of Ministers and those in post, so I respectfully suggest that this is not a wise amendment.

I turn to Amendments 1 and 2 tabled my noble friend Lord Davies. Unfortunately, I was not in the Committee stage debate when the Minister put this forward, so I had a look at the arguments. I confess that I am not entirely clear how designating a civil servant—or, indeed, anyone with this title—makes a meaningful difference, other than perhaps presentationally, to our ability to secure the border.

I pick up the point that my noble friend made about the pace at which the Government are giving this individual powers. Having looked at the Bill again, it is noticeable that this person does not have the ability to co-ordinate. The ability to co-ordinate or direct members of the Armed Forces is excluded—that power effectively remains with Ministers. In addition, the intelligence agencies of our country are not counted as partner authorities for the purposes of the Border Security Commander either, so those responsibilities effectively remain with the Home Secretary and other Ministers.

In terms of the role, and this is why who gets the role matters, effectively strategic priorities for government departments are set not by officials—well, they should not be set by officials—but by Ministers. I understand in one way why the Government are making sure that this person is a civil servant, because they are therefore clearly being directed by Ministers, which is right. However, if they are a civil servant being directed by Ministers, giving them a fancy title is basically just window dressing; it does not have any meaningful effect. My noble friend is therefore right to argue that this does not really have a meaningful role.

If we take the Government at their word, from the way it is presented as the starting point of this Bill—in that they want this individual to have a powerful role where they can make a meaningful difference—then Amendment 2 asks some good questions about whether the type of person we want doing this role and their previous experience should be in the nature of law enforcement or military command in some way. It may be that, over time, the Government can build this role —as well as the board that the Border Security Commander would chair and the structure they will put around them—into a meaningful law enforcement and crime fighting capability.

That seems to be the Government’s ambition, in which case Amendment 2 has quite a lot of merit, but making the person a civil servant does not achieve that. Just for the avoidance of doubt, this is not in any way to denigrate civil servants; when I was in the Home Office, I was always very impressed by them. It is just making the point that in our democratic system, setting strategic priorities and co-ordinating between different agencies, some that are responsible to the Home Office and some that are not, is really a job for Ministers. In the end, the responsibility for securing the country’s border is the Home Secretary’s responsibility. You can appoint somebody with whatever title you like and whatever background you like, but, in the end, that is the fact. The strategic priorities for the department are set by the Home Secretary, and everything else flows from that.

It seems to me that the Border Security Commander as set out in the Bill is really neither one thing nor the other. Either the Border Security Commander is effectively the Home Secretary and sets clear priorities, setting a very clear direction in the department and delivering on what we are led to believe is the Government’s or the Home Secretary’s number one priority, or that is not the case, and you try to create a meaningful role that people understand has that important focus in the same way that people can see that the heads of the Armed Forces or Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police have a very important leadership role—but in which case that person probably should not be a civil servant and should come with a different type of command experience. So it seems to me that the role set out in the Bill is neither one thing or the other.

My noble friend’s amendments test that point, and I would certainly like to hear from the Minister about which direction this role is going to go in. Is it effectively just going to be working for the Home Secretary, which is perfectly fine, in which case a lot of this is just window dressing, or is it really intended to make it a meaningful, authoritative, powerful role in Whitehall, in which case the person’s qualities need to be somewhat different than is set out by making them a career civil servant?

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not quite sure where the noble Lord, Lord Harper, is ending up in his consideration of Amendments 1 and 2. On any view, the crisis has got worse and worse with regard to the arrival of masses more immigrants coming across in small boats and the inability to identify and arrest these criminal people-smugglers. I am afraid I cannot give examples because I have not had time to think about it, but I do recognise one example: the modern slavery commissioner is completely free from the Civil Service, as indeed was her predecessor. This suggestion advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, seems sensible, and therefore I want to hear what my noble friend the Minister has to say about it.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I will first address Amendment 26. In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, I would say that the reason we have this particular amendment before us is because of the harness which was left by the Conservative Government in the arrangements that they made with Europe in the TCA relating to Europol. I do not want to go through the five or six pages in that heavy white tome—I photocopied those pages to make it lighter to carry—but in the whole remit of the way in which the relationship with Europol is stated it is quite clear that we “should” do something and the European Union, through Europol, “may” do something. I think we are trying to address that sort of relationship.

The core objective of the Bill, which I think unites the House, is clear. We must strengthen our borders and effectively identify, disrupt and dismantle the criminal gangs engaged in people-smuggling and human trafficking. To achieve this, international co-operation is paramount, especially in addressing the complex international and cross-border nature of these challenges.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, in seeking to intervene in the gap, my intention is to bring about the minimum of delay as we reach the most important stage of Second Reading, namely the winding-up speeches. I unhesitatingly begin by entirely endorsing the words of my new noble friend Lady Levitt—to whom much welcome—when opening this debate. Yes, neighbourhood policing has been neglected. Yes, we need to pay much more attention, for example, to the awful offence of child sexual abuse. But, in the steps of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, although in rather stronger language, I have to say that this Bill is a monster.

Indeed, I am holding it in my hand and I have to put it down because it is going to crash any moment and it is causing all my notes to go in a mess. In its 422 pages it seeks, if my arithmetic is correct, to amend no less than 44 previous statutes going back to the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and the Limitation Act 1980. In some cases, the amendments are extensive. For example, for the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, if you look at Schedule 16 to the Bill and pages 316 to 323, you will see no less than seven pages of amendments. We cannot change this in this Bill, but we should be aware of what we are doing. Not only are we imposing on ourselves in Committee, doing our job properly, the task of putting in front of ourselves all 44 of these statutes while seeking to amend them, but what about this Bill becoming law? How are the police and everybody else involved in enforcement going to cope? When in Committee, we must do our duty, however long it takes. Fortunately, we have in my noble friend Lord Hanson the nicest of Ministers who has ever-enduring patience—but he is going to be tried out.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, my phone is ringing—I have to sling it away from me. This is very embarrassing—I am so sorry. I will start again; can the clock start again? I have lost 12 seconds to that intrusion.

As with my noble friend Lord Rees and as with many Peers in this Chamber, I have received lots of communications on the Bill, both in the post and by email. In my case, every one of these communications—except the paper by the sponsors of this Bill, which I hold in my hand—was against the Bill. I did not count them all, but there must be up to 50. Although we are an unelected Chamber, I believe we should take note of these representations that we have received.

I therefore thought that I should give the Bill careful study. I found it thoughtful and well drafted. It is readable and comprehensible—quite a change from every other Bill that is now descending on this House. It provides safeguards on the proposed assisted dying. There is also the appointment of the assisted dying commissioner and the assisted dying review panels. It carries a number of helpful stipulations and goes right to what should be discussed with the patient, and it deals with other safeguards. Importantly, it defines who is entitled to apply for assisted dying. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer covered this in his opening remarks, and I therefore draw attention only to the crucial one, which is that the patient has to be terminally ill, with the prospect of death within six months.

However, these provisions do not cover those with neurological disorders. I refer to multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, muscular dystrophy and advanced Parkinson’s. These are all terrible diseases, where the patient loses all control of their body movement, but they have no direct expectation of death. I could also refer, like the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, to those who have severe spinal injury. One of my sons received a very serious spinal injury and went to Stoke Mandeville. There I met a rugby player—he must have been 18 or 20 years old—who had quadriplegic injury right up to his neck, with no movement of his body. I am told that he wanted to go to Dignitas in Switzerland. I do not know whether he ever went there, but I can say that he felt he had no future in life.

My concern about the Bill, if passed, is that inevitably its terms will be extended. That is exactly what has happened in Belgium, the Netherlands and the US state of Oregon, all of which have had assisting dying legislation for over 20 years. One can expect the lowering of the age from 18 years and the inclusion of many more who do not have terminal illness. The prospects for extending this Bill are never-ending.

This brings me to a moral position and a practical position. The moral position is that no doctor should ever be asked to kill his patient. The practical position relates to palliative care: the Bill overrides the wonderful work of palliative care in providing every help to a dying patient. That brings me to oppose the Bill.

Retail Crime: Effects

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, said, there is unanimity on the approach to the issue of shop theft, as has been eloquently outlined by my noble friend Lord Hannett. I thank him for securing this timely debate, and all who have spoken in it. My noble friend brings to his role in your Lordships’ House a wealth of experience in standing up for shop workers in his work for USDAW. He is continuing that work in conjunction with his colleague Paddy Lillis, who is the general secretary of USDAW. Most importantly, my noble friend brings the life experience of thousands of members in shops and stores across the United Kingdom, who have contributed to developing USDAW’s policy and, in doing so, the policy of the Labour Party and this Labour Government. They contributed too to the pressure that was put on the previous Conservative Government to take action.

I declare an interest: I have been a member of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for 44 years. I have stacked shelves, worked the tills and delivered to people’s doors, so I know the pressures in retail. The noble Baroness may be interested to know that I did this for Tesco, and later the Co-op.

The important thing is that there is unanimity here today. We need to change the tenor of the debate on shop theft and the protection of shop workers. We have seen today that there is unanimity in this debate: it is not acceptable in our society to steal from shops; it is not acceptable to attack shop workers in the course of their duty; and it is not acceptable to undertake ram raids or organise crime raids on shops and outlets. This is not a victimless crime; it adds money to everybody’s bills and to the cost of strengthening security for staff, and this Government are committed to taking action on it.

We do so for the reasons that have been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, in a very powerful speech, and my noble friends Lord Monks and Lady Crawley and many others, who indicated that there is an unacceptable rise in the level of shop theft.

I particularly welcome the committee report that was produced. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, was a key member of the committee, along with my noble friend Lord Dubs—who, I must say, on his 92nd birthday is arguing in this Chamber for protection for shop staff and against shop theft. That shows the commitment that he has to his party and his cause but also to the good of the country at large. I wish him a very happy birthday.

Shop theft is up 29% in the year to June 2024 compared with the previous year. The British Retail Consortium crime survey has shown that around 475,000 incidents of violence occur each year. My noble friends Lord Monks, Lady Crawley and Lady Hazarika all mentioned the importance of tackling that crime. Whether it is on Lambeth High Street, in Brixton or in north Wales, where I am heading back this evening, there will be a concerted effort to ensure that we reduce the number of crimes that occur in shops. However, it is not just about the shoplifting; it is unacceptable to have 1,300 incidents of violence against staff in our communities at large.

It is not easy for this Government, and it will never be easy. But the points that the noble Lord, Lord Godson, and other Members of this House made today are extremely important. That is why the Government have a plan for action to both mirror some of the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Committee and Justice Committee of this House, and to commit to a range of things.

On a personal basis, having campaigned for some of these things for the best part of 20 years, I am absolutely delighted to stand at this Dispatch Box and to be able to put action in place, because we have a Government who have committed to do that. Among the actions that we will bring forward and put in place is a specific offence of attacking shop workers, which USDAW—which I am a proud member of—has campaigned for since 2003. Freedom from fear is an absolutely important issue. Shop staff are not just serving us but are upholding the law on alcohol, knife, solvent and tobacco sales. When they find themselves facing threats because of that, they deserve our support and our encouragement. That is why the Government will in due course, as a manifesto commitment, bring forward a specific offence of assaulting shop workers.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that the £200 threshold did not change the law but it sent a signal to the police that shoplifting under £200 was not an important issue. I recognised that in 2014 and I led the opposition to that. We forced a vote on that clause then because we thought it would downgrade the importance of shop theft, which, as a whole, it did. We will repeal that in due course and will make sure that the police have proper guidance on those issues.

We will, as a number of my noble friends mentioned, increase the number of neighbourhood police and PCSOs to 13,000, to have a named officer in each community who will work with the local community and look at the very issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned as well—community intelligence-gathering and community support. Through work we are doing now, which is a continuation of the previous Government’s work, we will look at Opal and Project Pegasus to co-ordinate action on gangs, tackling crime across borders and across police authorities.

There were points made in the debate which I will certainly reflect on, as well as the issue of drug and alcohol treatment orders and on technology, ensuring that we look at facial technology issues as a whole. We will reflect on those issues in due course, and when legislation on these issues comes before this House, which it will in relatively short order, we will be able to deal with those issues as a whole. We keep new technologies under review, and we will keep those technologies under review in the future.

I noticed a small frisson of concern from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the Labour Government’s Budget, which I will return to briefly in a moment. As my noble friend Lord Hannett said, it provided £100,000 for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, £5 million over the next three years to develop Operation Opal and £2 million over the next three years to build the National Business Crime Centre. If the noble Baroness looks at the detail in the Budget, she will see that there are proposals on business rates and on strengthening and revitalising the high street. I have campaigned for these issues over the last 10 to 20 years and I am more than proud to stand here today and say that this Government will take action on shop theft and assaults on retail workers in due course.

The facial recognition technology mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Kirkham and Lord Davies, is a very powerful tool and has huge potential to keep our streets safe. This gives us an opportunity to look at how we operate it. We particularly want to look at how we can put that on a firm footing to make our streets safe. In answer to their specific point, we want to ensure that we look at the legal framework and discuss that issue with the public over the coming months.

I am acutely aware that this House has been united today. There are no political differences. There may be differences over pressure, time and the things we have done, but there is unanimity that Parliament and Government should take action on these issues. A number of detailed issues were mentioned. I could go through them, but that would take time. I hope that the emphasis I have put on the measures the Government intend to bring forward give reassurance to all Members of this House that this Government are committed to the issue of shop theft.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, summed up the importance of this issue and how we need to focus on the staff. Shop workers will be on the train with me tonight. They will be on the bus going home. They will be walking the streets around you. They are the people who serve you and they deserve our support. The customers are there to support the staff and we need to make a stand to say that, although we will never eradicate shop theft or violence, it is a priority for the Government, the police and Parliament that, between us, we will help reduce crime, shoplifting and violence over the course of this Parliament.

I commend the measures that my noble friend Lord Hannett has proposed. We will hopefully find widespread support in due course for the measures that this Parliament will face when the Government bring them forward.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Does my noble friend agree that the most shocking account in this debate was given by our noble friend Lady Hazarika who was in a shop when a rogue came in and stole two bottles of alcohol? He was known as a repeat offender and his identity was known. Would my noble friend agree that that is a most shocking account for this framework to improve the law?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his intervention after I thought I had finished. Repeat offenders are part of a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. Part of that is due to alcohol or drug dependence and part of it is due to interventions in alcohol and drug dependence. That is part of the focus of the Ministry of Justice. The MoJ will look at many measures in relation to how we better tag, control and monitor offenders and what interventions we make to reduce their dependence on alcohol and drugs.

It is important that the revolving door of prison sentences—the cycle of people going into prison for six months, coming out, committing the offences that my noble friend Lady Hazarika mentioned, going back to prison, coming out again and then finding themselves homeless—needs to be broken. I know that my noble friend Lord Timpson, who is accountable to this House, is very exercised by those issues and will bring forward a number of measures to try to improve how we deal with offenders who have a persistent offending behaviour. Overall, the issues of tolerance are still there. We should not tolerate shoplifting, attacks on shop staff or organised crime gangs, and we should look collectively at what measures we can bring. I hope that I have given some indication to the House of how we can do that.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, there are not many advantages to speaking so late in the debate, but one is that you can experience the feeling of the House. I have listened to all 55 speakers who have preceded me—except for four or five of them, when I was out of the House. Of those, 37 Members of your Lordships’ House have spoken against the Bill, including five Members on the Conservative Benches, who made very powerful speeches. We all remember the powerful speeches of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham. Against that, only 10 speakers have spoken in favour of the Bill.

At this time of night, I think it best that I go straight to giving your Lordships my reasons for being strongly opposed to this Bill. Let us work with the facts. In the official statistics issued for 2022, it is recorded that 8,756 Afghan migrants arriving here applied for asylum status. Of those, 97% were granted asylum. This is hardly surprising given the reports that we still regularly receive of breaches of human rights by the Taliban. On the radio only a few days ago, I heard a report that women were not only banned from education but banned from going out to work, creating serious problems for supporting their families.

I turn to the statistics for 2023. We do not have the official statistics yet, but we have been told that there has been a drop in the overall migration figures in relation to the boat people; that has gone down from about 45,000 to 30,000. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that there are now about 5,000 Afghan migrants eligible for deportation to Rwanda.

Let us look at the journey that those migrants have made. The distance from Kabul to Calais is 4,168 miles, nearly double the journey from one coast of the United States of America to the other. I cannot tell your Lordships their exact route, but the assumption is that they took the land route, and that they would have had to go through Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria, then decide whether to go north-east, to enter Europe via Greece, or west, to enter Europe via Italy. They would not have travelled in any air-conditioned coaches, let alone aeroplanes. Their only means of undertaking this colossally long journey must have been by hitchhiking on lorries.

What will happen to those 5,000 Afghans if they are deported to Rwanda—which will follow from the implementation of this Bill if the Illegal Migration Act is held to be lawful? They will lose their UK asylum rights and will be branded as illegal migrants. If they try to get back here, they will be rejected. Therefore, I ask the whole House, looking around to all Benches and those of us still here: is this remotely fair or right? Can we possibly allow this to happen when we have the constitutional right to stop it by refusing to allow the Bill to pass through this House? The question is whether we attempt to do so now, at Second Reading, or later, at Third Reading.

Rwanda Treaty

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, if I can just come back again on the issue of money, I have a figure in front of me of £240 million and then £60 million, and that is the Rwanda policy. The Minister rightly draws attention to the daily cost of those kept in various facilities, including hotels—I think he said it was £8 million per day—but the execution of the Rwanda policy will not remove that. There will still be indigenous costs of looking after the migrants who remain here. One has to be worried that so much money is being spent in the direction of the Rwanda policy; there is so much need for money to be used elsewhere—in the National Health Service, in schools and so forth. Therefore, it must be a great worry to all of us that so much money is going in the direction of the Rwanda policy.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

What is a great worry to the Government is that the costs of the migration system, as I mentioned earlier in answer to my noble friend, have doubled to £4 billion this year. As the noble Lord has just rightly referenced, we are spending £8 million a day on hotels. That is clearly unsustainable and I do not think it represents value for money.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 76 which, in my view, sets out in the clearest possible terms the principles that should be applied to the power of detention presently under discussion. Indeed, if I have correctly understood the law—of which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, reminded us—Amendment 76’s principles are principles that are currently being applied by the courts, and will be applied unless this Bill is enacted in its present form.

It is perhaps worth reminding the House of the strategic purpose of the Bill: to deter would-be migrants by the prospect of deportation to their country of origin or to a safe country. In my view, that is a perfectly legitimate objective; nation states are entitled to regulate the flow of migration. However, I also think that, in the modern world, that can be done only by the collective action of countries working together. That may require—I think it probably will—the substantive amendment of existing international agreements and conventions. I think there is very little prospect of unilateral action succeeding, save on the margins of the problem. The policy that underpins this Bill will fail because it will not be possible to deport migrants in sufficient numbers to constitute an effective deterrent.

Given that, I am extremely concerned about the ability of a Secretary of State to use a power of detention to reinforce, rather than to implement, the policy of deterrence. That would be an improper use of the power of detention. I am also deeply concerned that the power of detention as contemplated by the Bill will be used as an administrative convenience: detention without obvious limits of time in the hope that some possible prospect of deportation in respect of an individual will turn up. In my view, that would be highly objectionable.

I come to the four detailed provisions in Amendment 76. They should be considered individually. I will not repeat each one, because the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has read them out, but just take the first and ask a sensible question:

“the Secretary of State must intend to remove the person being detained and can only use the power to detain for that purpose”.

That seems to be a very fair statement of the law, and we are entitled to know from my noble friend the Minister what the principled objection to such a statement is. The same question applies to each of the remaining three provisions. I will not read them out because the noble Lord already has. Each one of them seems to me to be wholly right as a statement of principle, and this House is entitled to know the principled objection to them if there is one.

As it happens, I think I know the principled objections—at least I know the objections—because they are set out in paragraph 95 of the Explanatory Notes. The Government wish to give the Secretary of State, rather than the courts, the right to determine the length of time deemed to be reasonable for a period of detention. Moreover, when early deportation is not practicable, the Bill will give the Secretary of State the power to detain for such a period that the Secretary of State deems reasonable. That is a huge enlargement in the discretionary powers of a Secretary of State, and I do not want to give any Secretary of State, least of all the present Home Secretary or her immediate predecessor, such additional powers. In my view, the judgment of the legality of detention should be left to the judges and the courts, in applying the principles that are so well set out in Amendment 76.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been asked by my Front Bench not to speak at all and, if I break that, to speak in the shortest possible terms. I can do that, because I completely support the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in the speech that he just gave and most particularly in his admonishing the Government for not withdrawing this Bill. I have read the two court judgments and can say only that, until or unless the Supreme Court takes a different view, Clause 2 is a nullity, and that is the heart of the Bill.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise—when I get my papers in proper order—to support my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett in her Amendment 128A. As she explained, the purpose of this amendment is to remove Albania from the list of safe states in new Section 80AA on page 59 of the Bill.

As I rise, I am looking at the clock at 5.40 am—or rather 1.40 am; happily, we have not got as bad as 5.40 am, and it is certainly better than 4.20 am. I do regret that we are having to debate these important matters so late in the night. My sympathy, first of all, goes to the Ministers: they have had to work so hard on this matter. My sympathy extends to all those friends of the Minister sitting behind him. They seem to have left him now, but earlier there were hordes of them here. But this has happened and it is all part of a purge to get this Bill through in the summer—

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful for his sympathy. I am delighted to be here, but we would move forward a great deal faster if we had not had so many repetitious speeches.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Well, my Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord thought my speech about sympathy was repetitious. I have not heard it yet today, and I give those words of sympathy with great sincerity.

The important thing is to look at the state of Albania. Albania was a communist state under a particularly vicious dictator, Hoxha, until the mid-1980s. Great steps have been made since then, and when the USSR broke its ranks many Albanians worked very hard in democracy. But things have not always gone right. For example, in 1997 the Government of Berisha, who was then the president of the country, collapsed in the wake of pyramid schemes and widespread corruption. More recently, in February last year the president was subject to impeachment proceedings which were stopped only by the Albanian constitutional court.

I mention that because in the number of years that I acted as an international arbitrator and conducted arbitrations arising out of activities in the former countries of the USSR, time and again one came across very serious corruption which led to feuds and sometimes to heinous blood feuds. Corruption is a matter of great concern, and one wonders exactly how the list of safe states was drawn up; in that list are other countries of similar background to Albania—Bulgaria and Romania to name two. One looks at the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act to see what the test is, according to that Act, for the Secretary of State to take their decision. In new Section 80AA(3) it says:

“The Secretary of State may add a State to the list only if satisfied that … there is in general in that State no serious risk of persecution of nationals of that State”.


How strictly has that been applied, if it has been applied at all?

As my noble friend Lady Lister said, there is a lot of evidence of significant and outstanding issues in Albania relating to corruption, trafficking, blood feuds, discrimination and violence against the LGBT community, and stigma and discrimination against ethnic Roma and Egyptian communities and so forth. There are real grounds to be concerned whether, on any definition, Albania is properly placed as a safe country. That view is supported in our own Home Office’s work in 2022 when the UK granted protection status to 700 Albanian nationals, including 60 unaccompanied children.

For all those reasons, I hope your Lordships will feel that they should be on the safe side and remove Albania from the list of safe states.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the proposition that Clause 57 should not stand part of the Bill. Before I do, let me say that there are various myths arising around this Bill, one of which is that the Government are going to deport vast numbers of people, and another is that speeches from this side of the Committee are repetitious. I think it is regrettable that that sort of claim is being made. I referred at the beginning of proceedings today to the fact that this Bill got almost no scrutiny in the other place. As Dr Hannah White, the director of the Institute for Government, said last night on the radio, it has just come to expect that we will do that job.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendment 2, which is in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Paddick, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I will take just a little while. We had only six minutes at Second Reading and this group is key to the whole Bill. My remarks will follow on almost seamlessly, if I may say so, from those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Did the noble Baroness refer to Amendment 32 just now?

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

No, I referred to Amendment 2, which is the second one in this group.

Before I move to human rights issues, I want to make a couple of preliminary points. First, it is incumbent on this Committee to subject this Bill to very detailed scrutiny. It proposes to strip human rights protections from a group of people excluded from the democratic process. It is a core part of our justification, as an unelected revising second Chamber, that we do this kind of detailed scrutiny.

In the other place, there was quite a compressed timetable—that is an understatement. Second Reading there was expedited, only a few days after the Bill’s introduction. Instead of the usual detailed consideration and evidence-gathering in Committee, the Bill had only two days on the Floor of the House, during which its provisions were considered out of sequence. On Report, the Government published more than 100 amendments at late notice, dealing with both substantive and highly technical issues, many of major constitutional importance. Particularly in the case of this Bill, it behoves us to carry out intense scrutiny.

My second preliminary point was made in a briefing from the Law Society. It stressed the importance of the UK’s reputation for its commitment to the rule of law and international obligations, including human rights obligations, to our attractiveness as a place to do business. It says:

“Senior representatives of the UK’s biggest law firms have told us they are concerned about the damage non-compliance”


with our legal commitments

“could do to the UK’s economic competitiveness, by undermining the confidence of businesses looking to invest in the UK”.

I think we recently saw a reported drop in UK inward direct investment, and Germany has shot up the list. It is not just for us human rights nerds that international legal commitments are important. Global business places great importance on these issues too.

This is a perilous moment for human rights protections in Europe, as the war on Ukraine by Russia continues and Russia has been expelled from the Council of Europe. The UK’s reputation is strengthened by being not only a founding party to the European Convention on Human Rights but an active, leading member of the Council of Europe. It was therefore good news that the Prime Minister went to the recent Council of Europe summit of Heads of State and Government.

Now is precisely the moment for the UK to lead on the world stage in reinforcing basic human rights norms and international law, including the ECHR. Pushing this Bill through this Chamber when the Government cannot confirm that in their view, multiple provisions in it are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, threatens our reputation as a country that upholds international law.

As has been noted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the Home Secretary has been unable to make a statement under Section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act that the Bill is compatible with convention rights. This is an extremely unusual step, and it means there is a high risk that the Bill will violate rights under the ECHR. Then, we have a bit of snakes and ladders. We have the Section 19(1)(b) statement, but in a Home Office Oral Statement delivered in the Commons on 29 March—which the Minister repeated here—entitled “Illegal Migration Update”, the Minister for Immigration said:

“Of course, as we reform the asylum system, we will continue to honour our country-specific and global safe and legal commitments.” —[Official Report, Commons, 29/3/23; col. 1017.]

In his letter to us on 27 April, the Minister said:

“As the Minister made clear in the House of Commons, the Government takes our international treaty obligations incredibly seriously”.


We have the statement with the Bill, but when the Home Secretary introduced the Bill, she expressed confidence that it was compatible with international law, as the Minister’s statements have said. However, her justification for being unable to make a statement of compatibility with the convention was that the Government’s approach was “robust and novel”. We are getting considerably mixed messages: on the one hand, the Government cannot confirm that the Bill is compatible; on the other, there are statements from the Home Secretary that she is “confident” and certain that the Bill’s measures are compatible.

How she can have that stated confidence—when she had to make a Section 19(1)(b) statement that she cannot confirm that it is compatible—is a mystery. We have a juxtaposition of different measures. If the Government cannot confirm that the provisions are compatible with the ECHR, it threatens our reputation as a country that upholds international law. I am sorry that I have taken a bit of time on this amendment, but it seems crucial to the whole passage of the Bill through the House.

Finally, I turn specifically to Amendment 2. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, mentioned, it would remove Clause 1(5) of the Bill, which disapplies Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998. I remind noble colleagues that Section 3 places a duty on a judiciary to interpret, so far as it is possible to do so, all legislation

“in a way which is compatible with the … rights”

under the ECHR, which are incorporated into domestic law through the HRA. The effect of the provision in the Illegal Migration Bill is that judges will be unable to reconcile its provisions with our human rights obligations under the HRA and the ECHR. The only option available to the courts would be to issue a declaration of incompatibility under Section 4 of the HRA. However, that merely flags incompatibility to the Executive. The court cannot do anything about it; it just has to flag it, which puts the ball back to the Government to have responsibility to initiate measures to rectify the incompatibility.

The possible likely outcome of all this is that these cases will go to the Strasbourg court. Given that the UK court has already found that there is a violation, because it had to issue a declaration of incompatibility, it is likely that Strasbourg will find a violation, thereby putting the UK on a collision course with the European Court of Human Rights. It would be a serious breach of international law if the UK refused to comply with a binding judgment issued by the Strasbourg court.

All in all, I put it to the Committee that the Government have got themselves in quite a mess with the HRA and the ECHR. Removing the scope of Section 3 of the Human Rights Act suggests that the Government are in fact worried about the provisions of this Bill being incompatible with our international law obligations under the ECHR. Otherwise, what would there be to worry about? If the Home Secretary is “confident” et cetera, leave it to the courts to interpret the Bill’s compatibility with convention rights. If human rights compliance is truly sought by this Government, why is it necessary to oust the duty to do nothing more than interpret the Bill in accordance with the Human Rights Act—if the Bill’s wording can provide for that?

Removing this provision, Clause 1(5), from the Bill, as Amendment 2 requests, would go some way to resolving anxieties about the impact of the ministerial statement under Section 19 of the HRA, whereas retaining the application of Section 3 would help to uphold the UK’s reputation as a jurisdiction which upholds the rule of law and respect for human rights. That is what I suggest should happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I largely made at Second Reading all the points I would have wished to make in this debate, and they were admirably made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, to construe for us the meaning of the Section 19(1)(b) statement. The Minister made a sporting shot at it at Second Reading when he said:

“I think it is fair to say that there has been a misunderstanding of the effect of such a statement. We have designed a scheme that is novel and ambitious”.


One can say that again. He continued:

“as a result, we have made a Section 19(1)(b) statement under that Act. This simply makes it clear that we cannot say definitively that we will win a challenge in Strasbourg. However, we are confident that Strasbourg will respect the will of Parliament and our domestic court processes. We make no apologies for taking this approach. This is what the situation demands and what the British public expect”.—[Official Report, 10/5/23; col. 1921.]

I find that a slightly sinister statement. It seems to carry the ring of, “And the court had better find for us, or else”—and we all know what the “or else” is that is talked about in some quarters. To be fair to the Minister, he did not try to argue that, in a dualist state like us, breaching international law is a legitimate action, but some he cited in his speech are so arguing.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, that if one thinks that these conventions are a bit old and wants to change them, the way to go about that is to call for an international conference and put down proposals for amendments to the conventions. The refugee situation and the problems of asylum are not less now than they were when the conventions were created, so the need to defend and perhaps develop them—there is a case for trying to develop them—is more important now than it was even when they were first set up.

I strongly support Amendment 4. I also support Amendment 2.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 4 for all the reasons that almost every Member of the Committee has expressed in the debate, but I will not repeat any of those arguments. I am a little disappointed that we have not heard from the noble Lords, Lord Sandhurst and Lord Wolfson, both of whom are sitting on the Government Benches. As a fellow lawyer, I would be interested to know their position on Amendment 4. I think that I saw the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, attempt to stand up, so I may get an answer to that question.

I am going to read to your Lordships a short quotation from the brief I have just received from Justice. I should tell your Lordships that I am on the council of Justice and have been a member for many years. It reads as follows:

“This is a perilous moment for human rights protections in continental Europe, as the war in Ukraine continues and Russia is expelled from the Council of Europe (the leading human rights organisation on the continent). The UK’s reputation is strengthened not only by being a party to the European Convention on Human Rights but an active leading member of the Council of Europe. Now is the moment for the UK to take the lead”.

--- Later in debate ---

To conclude, I simply remind the Committee of the speech just now from my noble friend Lord Hodgson. He explained the growth in numbers. If we do nothing, it may be only 50,000, not the 500,000 or 700,000 this year, but that is the size of a decent-sized town. We simply cannot go on allowing that number to come in without any discouragement to those who want to follow behind. We all know, if we are honest with ourselves, that in the last few years, the numbers coming in seeking asylum, claiming that they are genuine refugees, have rocketed, and I am afraid that that is likely to become a larger number, not smaller, if we do not adopt the measures in the Bill. It contains a carefully interlinked package of provisions—

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

If the noble Lord looked at the national statistics on immigration for 2022, he would see that the figure is about 47,500 immigrants coming in by boat, but of those, there was a large portion of Albanians, and none of them were permitted to stay; they were shipped back to Albania.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

That may be so, but the numbers are on a rising plane, and it is not simply Albanians now, they are coming from elsewhere. All I say is this. This is a carefully interlinked package of provisions. It may not be attractive or how we have done things in the past, but we face very different circumstances, and I suggest we should not seek to unpick its structure.

Public Order Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 46 and 47. I say a very loud, “Hear, hear” to the impassioned intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, which was spot on. I want to answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Deben—on behalf of the Government, noble Lords will all be surprised to know. I thought I would quote what the Home Office Minister said the last time we dealt with this. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, explained why these new powers were necessary:

“it is not always possible for the police to form suspicions that certain individuals have particular items with them.”—[Official Report, 24/11/22; col. 978.]

That is true, but if that is the basis on which we are legislating—that it is not always possible to know if someone has suspicious items on them—then even though you do not know what the suspicions are, it will be all right to stop and search them. This seems to me to bring arbitrariness into the law in a way that can only be dangerous and will not make any logical sense to anybody outside this House.

Think of the consequences of some of this. The Government keep telling us that this is not about stopping the right to protest, and I will take them at face value on that. But let us consider someone who is not doing anything suspicious or carrying anything suspicious, but who is going on a demonstration. The police have the right to stop them, which means that what is suspicious is that they are going on a demonstration: it implies that. Going on a demonstration is pre-emptively seen as something dodgy, and I therefore become sceptical when the Government assure me that this will not have a chilling effect on people going on demonstrations.

I draw attention to a clause that has not been mentioned in these amendments but is related: Clause 14, which we will not need if we vote down Clauses 10 and 11. It contains a new offence of obstructing a police officer in a police-related suspicionless stop and search—for which, by the way, you can go to prison for 51 weeks or get a substantial fine. This clause indicates why Clause 10 and even Clause 11 are so dangerous: they will destroy any feasible community relations with the police.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, referred to the fact that many women might well be nervous if they are approached for a suspicionless stop and search. In all the briefings we have received, people have drawn attention to what happened, tragically, to Sarah Everard. If the police say they have no suspicions but they are stopping and searching you, you might say, as a woman, “Excuse me, I am not having that; I don’t want that to happen.” In fact, a lot of advice was given to young women that they should not just take it on face value if a police officer approaches them and says he wants to interfere with them in some way. But I want to use a more everyday example.

During lockdown, two care workers I know were walking home from work and sat down on a bench in a park to have a coffee. They worked together in a bubble, giving intimate care to people in the care home they worked in throughout the pandemic. They were approached by a number of police officers, who asked them if they lived in the same home. When they said no, the police officers said they were breaking their bubble—if noble Lords can remember those mad days, that is what it was like. They said, rather jokingly, “We’re taking people to the toilet and working intimately with them day in, day out.” The police officers became quite aggressive, threatening to arrest them and all sorts of things. We know those stories from lockdown. The reason I share this story is that the woman who told it to me had never been in trouble with the police before. She had never been approached by the police in that way; she is a law-abiding citizen who would, generally speaking, support the kind of law and order measures being brought in by this Government. However, because this police officer treated her as though she was behaving suspiciously for having her coffee on a bench, having done a long 12-hour shift in a care home, she said that she will never trust the police again. She argued back and they threatened to arrest her.

I fear that, if we give arbitrary powers to the police to use suspicionless stop and search, this Government might unintentionally and inadvertently build a new movement of people who do not trust the police and are not suspicionless but suspicious, with good reason in this instance, that the police are stopping them arbitrarily and that we are no longer a free society. We should all vote against Clauses 10 and 11 and, through that, destroy Clause 14 as well.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I will carry through a bit further the citation from my noble friend Lady Fox of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, a much-respected Minister at the Home Office. More fully, she said that these powers were necessary:

“To ensure that the police have the ability to proactively prevent protesters causing harm … it is not always possible for the police to form suspicions that certain individuals have particular items with them.” —[Official Report, 24/11/21; cols. 977-78.]


That leaves me with a sense of nervousness, for the same reason as the noble Lord, Lord Debden, who unfortunately seems to have left the Chamber—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

He is called the noble Lord, Lord Deben.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I have never been very good on the rivers of Essex.

[A noble Lord]

It is in Suffolk.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

For the reasons that the noble Lord gave in his short speech, these statements by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is greatly respected in this House, make me nervous.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, as we are on Report and not in Committee, I will make three short points.

First, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is quite right to refer to our freedoms. I am sure that she intentionally used the plural and not the singular, because there are two freedoms here that we need to have regard to: the undoubted freedom to protest and demonstrate, and the freedom to go about your business unhindered and not be harassed. Ultimately, in a democratic society we seek to balance those two freedoms. We need to have regard to both sides of that coin.

Secondly, on the objects that could be caught by these clauses as drafted, a number of references have been made to John Lewis—I do not know whether its publicity department is grateful for that. It would be a misconception to proceed on the basis that, merely because an object has been or could be bought in John Lewis, it is therefore inoffensive and should not be caught by the criminal law. The last time I was in John Lewis, which I accept was some time ago, it sold very large knives, hammers, ropes and other implements. Let us put the John Lewis point to one side; it is a good old-fashioned red herring.

Thirdly, I turn to what the clause provides. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, focused on the powers of the constable in Clause 11(7). The important thing about Clause 11(7), I would suggest, is that you have to read the clause as a whole. Clause 11(1) starts with an officer at

“or above the rank of inspector”

believing, first, that some offences are going to be committed and, secondly, that people will be carrying prohibited objects, which are defined in the clause. Next, that officer has to reach three conclusions under subsection (4). I invite noble Lords to look at subsection (4), because “necessary” appears there three times. He has to believe reasonably, first, that

“the authorisation is necessary to prevent the commission of offences”;

that the “specified locality”—it has to be a specified locality—

“is no greater than is necessary to prevent such activity”;

and that the period of time, which cannot be more than 24 hours, is no more than is necessary. What can the superintendent do under subsection (5)? All they can do is to continue that authorisation—not start it, but continue it. For how long? No more than a further 24 hours. It is in that context that the constable can apprehend and do a stop and search.