Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

We cannot ignore the plight of those to whom family reunion is denied. I end with the general comment, with which I would not expect the Committee to disagree, that scrutiny, revision and making legislation fit for purpose must include humanity. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose Amendment 165, although I will not detain the Committee with my views on it, and Amendments 173 and 203K. I will speak to the substantive amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, Amendment 166, and, naturally, to my Amendments 167 to 171 and Amendment 174.

The noble Baroness is right that this is a moveable feast. Since the Bill had its First Reading in this House, we have moved immeasurably in the Government’s commendable reaction to public disquiet about irregular and illegal immigration. We should not be churlish and should welcome that. I await the Minister’s response. I suspect he will be more robust than the noble Baroness would like in the Government’s formal response to her amendments.

We have moved on to the extent that immigration is now the number one issue of voter salience in the country, over the cost of living and the NHS. There is a reason for that. I say very gently to the noble Baroness that, although I agree with her on the principle of volunteering and work for asylum seekers—I have always believed that, even when I was in the other place—I do not think this is the Bill for that, but there is a degree of consensus on that between us. However, her amendments fail to take note of the significant public concern regarding the scale and speed of legal immigration and irregular and illegal immigration and the abuse of refugee status by economic migrants and people traffickers.

We need to look at the wider context. The noble Baroness will know that, in the year to June 2025, 111,084 people applied for asylum, and there was still a backlog at that date of 90,812 applicants. There have been 33,000 channel crossings this year, against 37,000 in the whole of 2024. The facts are pretty straightforward: 95% of people who come across the channel now apply for asylum, and 88% of those applicants are men aged between 17 and 40, roughly speaking.

The noble Baroness will know that estimates are that the small boats crisis alone will cost £3.5 billion this year. Indeed, on 7 May this year, the National Audit Office produced a report that estimated that the UK will be spending £15 billion in the next 10 years on the asylum system. In 2022, for example, hotel accommodation was costing £5.6 million a day, and it is not getting any better. The noble Baroness will also know that, on 8 October, 1,075 migrants crossed the channel in 15 boats. That figure does not take into account the concomitant costs of the crisis, such as healthcare, housing, asylum support allowance, state school provision, special educational needs, court services, translation et cetera. It is important to remember, within that context, that pretty much every applicant for asylum travelled through a safe, modern country—in virtually all cases, France.

I do not think, if I may say so, that there is a real understanding in these amendments of the geopolitical trends of push and pull—we have discussed this before—because they ignore hugely important and salient issues, one of which is cost. There is no impact assessment or robust qualitative or quantitative analysis of the impact of the level of migration that her proposals would give rise to. I accept that she is not proposing a stand-alone Bill but an amendment to a Bill, but there is no understanding of the costs that would fall on the shoulders of UK taxpayers.

There are safety and security issues. Because so many asylum seekers—wilfully, in most cases—destroy their ID, it is impossible to vet those individuals properly for security reasons and for public safety, security and the public good. Your Lordships may or may not have seen that I asked the Minister Written Questions on 25 and 26 September respectively about public safety and procedures for safeguarding public safety in dealing with migrants arriving at detention centres. Because I had been tipped off about these issues, I specifically asked him

“how many migrants with suspected links to organised crime groups, including the Turkish Militias, have (1) arrived in the UK, (2) been removed, (3) been taken to secure detention centres, and (4) have been released on bail to non-secure accommodation such as hotels and hostels, in the past 12 months”.

You would think that was a niche group—Turkish militia and organised crime—but nevertheless, the Minister told me:

“The information requested is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost”.


Frankly, if it is not possible to focus on one specific, sui generis threat to safety and security, how can it be possible to monitor and vet potentially thousands of new people coming into the country where we do not have data systems, intelligence or even consular or embassy support on the ground?

I turn to the specifics of my amendments—forgive me, they are somewhat out of sequence. Amendment 171 seeks to enshrine in primary legislation the imperative for the Minister of a secure border. Noble Lords will know that the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness is essentially a reconfiguration of the Private Member’s Bill that she brought forward in, I think, January this year. At that time, we had a lively debate, although sadly it was curtailed by the Government Chief Whip at about 3 pm on that particular afternoon. Nevertheless, it is important that the concept of securing the border is plainly in the Bill.

My Amendment 168 is about a deterrent factor—a push factor to prevent people coming to the country who are potentially people traffickers or repeat offenders. It seeks to prevent those who have previously fallen foul of immigration law and have specifically been removed from the UK, those who would be considered a foreign criminal under Section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, and those who have committed a serious offence in respect of illegal entry or similar offences. There is an element of consensus between the noble Baroness and me on this. I believe she is as passionate as I am about setting her face against illegal people traffickers. Putting something in a Bill that seeks to prevent them continually attempting to get people into the country by nefarious or illegal means is sensible, and any fair-minded and right-thinking person would think that too.

Amendment 169, another of my amendments, would disaggregate

“civil partner or unmarried partner”

into just “civil partner”. Many of us understand the importance of established family structures, and none is more established than the sanctity and legal status of marriage. Frankly, it is not practical, as the proposed new clause in Amendment 166 stands, to prove that someone is a partner, in the sense of a de facto wife or husband—a spouse—in many of these regimes and jurisdictions. There would be too much opportunity for that to be misused, particularly by the upper-tier immigration tribunal. The wording as drafted is incredibly broad—I make the same criticisms in Amendment 170—and would be open to misinterpretation and worse. In Amendment 170, I say that proposed new paragraphs (d) and (e) are too broad and therefore should be rejected.

These amendments seek to ameliorate the most damaging aspects of the substantive proposals in the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and others, which I think are regrettably naive. They may reward criminal behaviour, undermine our existing immigration and asylum regime, and exacerbate an immigration crisis and the chronic lack of faith and trust that the British people have in their Government to discharge their most fundamental duty: to protect and safeguard our borders.

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The unsustainable levels of immigration are threatening the stability of the settled political arrangements of this country, and its cultural cohesion, traditions and ordered communities. The worries this prompts and the level of immigration do no service to those unfortunate people whose lives and liberty are threatened, under grave danger in their home country, and who come directly to the UK. Over centuries, they have had a sympathetic hearing in this country, as have others seeking a better life, long before the international conventions of the post-war period—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My noble friend is making a very compelling case. Does she agree with me, in response to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that the context, to be fair, is that the last Government took an outward-looking, internationalist approach and their safe routes to citizenship for Syrians, Ukrainians and Hong Kong citizens were widely supported across the world? She was careful to praise the existing Government, who have been in power for 16 months, rather than the strong, positive record of the previous Conservative Government.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I did refer to the Conservatives as having carried on the very good practice.