Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

35: After Clause 41, insert the following new Clause—
“Collection of data on overseas students subject to visa conditions and immigration rules(1) The Secretary of State must collate and publish—(a) the number of overseas students who have had their student visas revoked as a result of the commission of criminal offences,(b) the number of overseas students who have been deported following the revocation of their student visas, and(c) the number of overseas students detained pending deportation following the revocation of their student visas.(2) Data published under subsection (1) must be broken down by nationality.(3) For the purposes of this section—“overseas students” means any person who is not a British citizen who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for the purposes of partaking in an educational course;“student visa” has the same meaning as in the Immigration Rules.”

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I believe this amendment supports the main thrust of the Bill, which seeks to help make our country safer and more secure, a goal that I share. It seeks to have a robust immigration system, and I commend the Government on that. The first step in that process is having the information that you require to give effect to efficacious public policy. An effective immigration system that protects the UK and allows it to flourish needs to understand the people coming into our country and whether they are acting like the good, law-abiding citizens they ought.

It is as well to remember that at the heart of this amendment is the central fact that the Immigration Act 1971 was and always has been a permissive legislative instrument, in that student visas are issued with conditions, impose obligations and are in no sense an absolute civil or human right. Some 431,725 sponsored study visas were granted in the year ending June 2025. I want to make it clear that the vast majority of those individuals come, study hard and contribute to our society and economy, but there is a minority who abuse that privilege —and it is a privilege. We have some of the world’s top universities in our country, and it is not an automatic right to be here.

In the 2022-23 academic year, less than a quarter of recent foreign students were on courses that the Department for Education deemed “strategically important” for the UK, such as in engineering, science, technology or healthcare, contrary to the hopes of Ministers in the previous Government when they launched the graduate visa route in 2019 and enacted it in 2021. Indeed, 69% had been on a course of only one year’s duration. The proportion of international students remaining in the UK after graduation climbed from 20% to 56% between 2021 and 2024, with only a minority of 23% studying a strategically important postgraduate course. Others studied, for instance, anarchism, television studies, recreation and leisure studies, hair and make-up, computer games, beauty therapy and alternative medicines and therapy.

This may be linked to the fact that 1.9 million foreign nationals are now claiming benefits in the UK; 30% of those benefits were paid to non-working dependants and family members, which adds up to £10.1 billion in universal credit payments in 2024. If you come to this country as a student, if you get a visa and the opportunity to come to the UK, you have responsibilities in our society and under the law. If you abuse the freedoms we allow here and break the law, you will be punished, and the legitimacy of your stay in the country should be questioned.

I tabled this amendment in the context of the serious public disorder linked to the Israel-Gaza conflict, and the not unreasonable accusations of two-tier policing by the Metropolitan Police and others in the way that public disorder and rampant antisemitism were treated and policed. I made the point that other jurisdictions defend the integrity of their student visa regime and take a robust stance on individuals who flout or disregard their obligations to be good, law-abiding citizens while guests in the country. The relevance of this amendment has been recently brought to further attention with the jailing of two Chinese students who fraudulently claimed more than £140,000 in train refunds. Once again, most students come here and work hard, and I have nothing but respect for them, but the information should be collected so that those who commit offences here face the consequences.

Your Lordships’ House will want to know the context of why I brought this specific amendment. Regrettably, it is not a good story. For the last six months, I have been met in my Questions to Ministers with obfuscation, ignorance, stonewalling and answers to questions that I did not ask. I first asked the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, a Written Question in March as to whether the Home Office collects this information. He responded that it did not—fair enough.

On 26 March, I asked His Majesty’s Government,

“further to the Written Answer … why information about the removal of foreign nationals following the revocation of student visas is not collected and published”.

He said:

“Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics”,


et cetera—but he did not answer the Question.

On 30 April, I asked him

“what specific factors they have taken into account in deciding not to collect and publish data on the revocation of foreign student visas”.

He said, rather unhelpfully:

“I refer the Rt. Hon. Lord to the Answer he received on 26 March”.


Then on 8 May, trying a different tack, I asked,

“further to the Written Answers by Lord Hanson of Flint on 30 April … and 25 March … what plans they have, if any, to collect data on the revocation of student visas”.

He said:

“Obtaining the specific information requested would involve collating and verifying information from multiple systems owned by multiple teams across the Home Office and, therefore, could only be obtained at disproportionate cost”.


On 9 June, I tried again. I asked him

“what discussions they have had with representatives of the higher education sector on the revocation of student visas for those foreign nationals convicted of serious criminal offences in the United Kingdom”.

He said, apropos of nothing:

“Any foreign national who commits serious crimes in the UK should expect to be removed from our country, regardless of the visa on which they travelled here”.


So he did not answer that Question either.

So, on 11 June, I asked another Question, which was a bit more up front:

“whether they will now answer the question put, namely, what discussions they have had with representatives of the higher education sector on the revocation of student visas for foreign nationals convicted of serious criminal offences in the United Kingdom”.

The noble Lord’s Answer was:

“The Home Office keeps all aspects of the immigration system under review, including compliance and enforcement issues within the education sector, in consultation with a wide range of experts and other stakeholders”.


So, he did not answer that Question either. We have clearly not had clear and concise Answers on this issue, and I have to say that the Minister, for whom I have inordinate respect from our time in the other place, really should understand that it is not acceptable and is a gross discourtesy to this House that he and his department will not answer straightforward Questions in a timely way.

For the avoidance of doubt, the Government cannot abdicate the responsibility of maintaining an immigration regime for students only to higher education institutions, which have a vested interest and, indeed, a conflict of interest. The Government have a proper responsibility to police our borders and protect the system from gaming criminality and abuse. You cannot design an immigration system, you cannot make effective and wise decisions and you cannot serve the British people as well as you want to without the right information. If a disproportionately high percentage of students come from certain countries and are more predisposed to criminality, that must be known and addressed.

In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, reassured us at the Dispatch Box that Immigration Rules are in place for the cancellation of entry clearance and stays, and that he was committed to reviewing the collection of statistics in order to

“identify changing needs for new statistics to support public understanding”.—[Official Report, 8/9/25; col. 1178.]

This is the time to make real that undertaking and that commitment to transparency. The purpose of this amendment is simply to make sure that the Government can make better-informed choices in our national interests. For that reason, I commend it to the House and hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 35C aims to stop people who come to the UK on a student visa abandoning that route for an asylum claim. Today, I will explain why such an amendment is needed, and then I will respond to the objections made by the Minister, take account of them and explain why this amendment meets the most substantive one.

First, why is this amendment needed? Around 435,000 people were granted student visas in the 12 months to June 2025. In the same period, 111,000 people claimed asylum, of whom 14,800 had entered the UK on a student visa. So, 13% of claims for asylum were made by student visa switches. The consequences—as I explained, so I will not run through them again in detail—are serious. For university finances, the ability to plan courses and allocate places suffers if students accept and are allocated a place but drop out mid-course or never show up, leaving empty places, damaging the finances and creating black holes for the university. They are not, except in a few cases, innocents overtaken by dangerous political changes at home, which my Amendment 35C now covers; rather, they are people who abuse the student visa route and exploit the laxity of our rules and the by now reluctant generosity of our taxpayers.

I may have mentioned a recent report of a couple from India who candidly spoke anonymously on camera to a reporter. The wife had got her student visa but had no intention, she said, of taking up her place. An agency had been engaged to see to the paperwork and fake the financial and other eligibility documents. That couple are now living on benefits and hope they will be given asylum because one of their children has a bad medical condition.

In Committee, the Minister made three sorts of objections to my amendment, designed to include claims from student visa holders made two days after arrival. The first was also mentioned by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst. I therefore take account of this, the substantive objection in both the Minister’s and my own Front Bench’s argument. A two-day time limit does not cover unfortunate students who dutifully pursue their degree courses but discover, sometime into it, that the political circumstances have changed and they could face imprisonment, torture or even execution if they go home. Today’s amendment allows for these changed circumstances.

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This amendment aims to remove that discretion, which we think is the most effective way to achieve returns co-operation. The assessment of whether a Government are co-operating sufficiently is a discretionary judgment which Ministers must have the flexibilities to take. Visa penalties have not been used yet but, in the Government’s view, the existing provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 remain sufficient for the primary aims of the powers, and I urge the noble Lord not to press this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who took part in the debate, in particular my noble friends.

If I can just clear up an issue for the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, this amendment is colour-blind and is not about citizenship; in that respect, I hope I can reassure him. I defer to no-one in my admiration for his success; he came here as a student from Uganda and has made such an enormous contribution to our society. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for a thoughtful and helpful contribution in putting the questions to the Minister.

This debate has shown that there is a very significant culture of secrecy and obfuscation around these figures. I have been trying to get these figures for nine months and have thus far failed. There seems to be a void at the centre of public policy on data management of these figures, particularly for student visas. Notwithstanding the calming and insouciant voice of the Minister at the Dispatch Box, on the basis of what he said rather than the way he said it, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments tabled in my name in this group, but, before doing so, I will say that I strongly support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Murray and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. My amendments are to Amendments 47 and 68, and would ensure that modern slavery claims and appeals cannot be singled out in some way and still be used as a loophole for the merry-go-round of asylum claims that we see. The Home Secretary herself highlighted the vexatious last-minute modern slavery claim that was put in, in the case of the one-in, one-out asylum seeker. We have heard other examples as well.

Last year, noble Lords might wish to know, we saw that 65% of referrals to the NRM were found to have no reasonable grounds. This was compared with only 16% four years ago. So there is evidence that this is increasingly being used for last-minute, spurious claims, and I would like to make sure that these amendments are as bulletproof as possible. We should seek to restore public confidence in the modern slavery system, to make sure that it is doing what it was designed to do and what this Parliament designed it to do: that is, to be a lifeline for victims of horrific abuse. It was not designed, as it has increasingly become, as a route for Albanian men arriving on small boats.

The British citizens who are referred into the system are overwhelmingly children. I am sure that most people would agree that that is the right thing for the state to be doing. Foreign citizens referred in tell a different story: these are mostly adult men from Vietnam, Albania, Eritrea and Sudan. Supporting them is not the right priority for the taxpayers of this country. My amendment therefore ensures that only genuine victims can make use of our generous support and that these vexatious claims can definitely be thrown out.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to speak to the amendment in my name, but only in passing, because I cannot better the excellent remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. They made a very strong case. I also associate myself with Amendment 68. But I really want to talk to Amendment 46, the first in this group.

We all have a vested interest in protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system, and the faith and trust that our citizens have in that system. At the present time, I fear that people are losing faith in it. They are losing faith in the capacity of the judicial system to deliver fairness and equity for the British taxpayer. I think it is perfectly possible to have a strong modicum of compassion for those people driven to seek asylum in this country by poverty, famine, war and despotic dictatorships. However, a system that is intrinsically designed to be gamed—for young men to come to this country and use legal loopholes to settle in one of the wealthiest countries in the world—is no longer a situation that we can tolerate. That is why we need to take what would appear to be immoderate and draconian action in the first instance, because we are in the middle of a crisis.

I do not often quote Labour Members of Parliament, but Mike Tapp, the Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal—I think he is the Minister’s colleague—has been criticised for quite rightly complaining about the fact that people who are criminals are coming to this country and there is effectively nothing we can do about it. We can do nothing about it because this Government set their face against the Rwanda scheme and scrapped that scheme before it had a chance to work. Yet they go scrambling around parts of eastern Europe seeking an alternative scheme to put in place.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is absolutely correct; it is incumbent upon this Government, after 16 months, to come up with an alternative. With all due respect to the Minister, the speech he gave to the Chamber on Monday was exactly the same speech, verbatim, that he gave on 8 September on undertakings to bring forward legislation and to the review of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is quite right that we are now in a position where a significant number of member countries of the Council of Europe are sufficiently concerned that they are putting a very great deal of pressure to change things, because the system is broken.

If the system breaks, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is absolutely right that it gives rise to people who are not moderate, who are extreme and who will scapegoat honest, decent people seeking to make a better life. It is incumbent on us to come up with solutions. Look at some of the egregious cases we have seen in recent years from the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal. “Egyptian migrant is ‘danger to the community’—but can stay in Britain”. “Cannabis dealer claimed deportation would destroy his marriage”. “Albanian who battered man with umbrella can stay because the attack was ‘one-off’”. “Asylum seeker can stay in Britain after having affair”. “Afghan drug user allowed to stay in the UK because Taliban is harsh on addicts”. “Migrant avoids deportation because he lost his phone”.

We may have a wry smile at some of those cases, and I accept that they are a minority of cases, but they are corrosive of the faith and trust people have in the system. That is why Amendment 46 is so important. If the Government are truly of the view that nothing is off the table, they have to be able to bring forward costed alternatives and not just fall back on the fact they are reviewing, they are looking at the European Convention on Human Rights and they will bring forward legislation. They have had 16 months; they need to take firm action to deal with this immigration crisis. On that basis, I strongly support the excellent amendment from my noble friend Lord Murray and, of course, the other amendments, including Amendment 46 from the Front Bench.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, this is obviously a lawyers’ paradise of a debate, where we normally have expressions of views. I am going to be much simpler than that. I want to look at Amendment 79A first, because it is important and I think I understand what is happening. I am in the fortunate position of being a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which enables me to have access, ask questions and find out far more than perhaps this House has been informed about at this stage. I would encourage all Members to talk to their party delegates on this matter to see what they have been doing about it.

My question about Amendment 79A is: does it mean withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights? Is that being suspended? If that is the case, which I understand is Conservative Party policy, quite clearly what we are heading for is Brexit 2. Is that the position?

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I mention to the noble Lord the deal with France, the deal with Iraq, the scheme we are taking upstream with the Germans to tackle various issues, the work of the Calais Group, the work of the Border Security Command being executed by this Bill, the important measures in this Bill to tackle illegal migration, the measures we are taking to speed up asylum claims and get them through quickly, the two new barracks that we announced last week would be opened to speed up asylum claims and get a deterrent in place, and the work on illegal working in migration. We have done a whole range of things. Although I never cross my fingers on these matters, the last couple of weeks have seen no small boat crossings whatever. It is a difficult challenge, but let us look at how we deal with these issues.

We know that more must be done to address the backlog in the immigration and asylum appeals system. Clauses 46 and 47 set a statutory timeframe on First-tier Tribunal decisions. We have put in place additional funding to increase sitting days in 2025-26 to speed up the processing of asylum claims. I know that more needs to be done, which is why we are introducing a new appeals body to deal with immigration and asylum appeals, fully independent of government. We are committed to setting out further details of our plans very shortly.

Although the Government share the frustrations about the inefficiencies and delays in the immigration and asylum system, there is still a need to ensure due process, which is a fundamental part of our legal system. That touches on the points that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, mentioned, because we have to have due process as part of our legal system. The amendments would remove any judicial oversight of Home Office decisions and prevent an independent review of a decision other than by a Home Office board—effectively putting the department in charge of marking its own work. That is not a good place to be; judicial oversight is an important matter. There would inevitably be legal challenges against the Government based on that lack of independence. It would also be contrary to important UK legal principles, notably the rule of law, the protection of rights and access to justice, as well as more proposals on the most vulnerable, including in modern slavery cases—the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean of Redditch, mentioned this.

Without alternative ways of independent and impartial redress, these amendments would cause serious issues with the withdrawal agreement, which—like it or lump it—is in place. It is a legal agreement with the Government of the day. This also impacts upon the Windsor Framework and the relationship with Northern Ireland. All this points me to saying that I cannot accept those amendments.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I might be wrong, and I hesitate to say this in the presence of so many eminent lawyers, but my understanding is that there is a precedent for this suggestion, in that coronial verdicts are not traditionally appealable unless there has been irrationality or the coroner has erred in law. It is not the case that every single decision made in the criminal justice system, or the justice system generally, is necessarily traditionally appealable.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I defer to those who have expertise in coronial decisions—that is an MoJ matter—but in this case, this is what we have, and I am not prepared to give it up. We can disagree on that, and there are Division Lobbies on either side if we need to sort this out, but I do not expect to support those amendments, on the basis of the arguments that I have put forward today.

Amendment 79A from the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, would require the Home Secretary to disregard the Human Rights Act. I am not going to support that either. It would further limit when the UK could comply with interim measures and how they should be treated in domestic courts. The UK is fully committed to the protection of human rights at home and abroad, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, as the Prime Minister has made clear—

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, almost daily we are subjected to ever more horrific stories of foreign nationals committing horrendous crimes in this country, who are all too often permitted to stay in the United Kingdom. Fahad Al Enaze, an asylum seeker from Kuwait being housed in a hotel in Liverpool, sent sexual messages to a person he believed to be a 14 year-old girl. He was sentenced to eight months in jail, but the sentence was suspended for 24 months. Consequently, he will be spared jail time and, under the current law, he will not be subject to automatic deportation.

Section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007 as it stands permits the automatic deportation of a person sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment or who is convicted of an offence which is specified in an order made under Section 72(4)(a) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The individual just cited was convicted of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, which is an offence under Section 15A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 but is not specified under Section 72(4)(a) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Since he was convicted of an offence that is not specified and was not sentenced to more than 12 months in prison, he will not be automatically deported. This is obviously wrong. This is a man seeking to obtain asylum status in the UK who is being housed at the taxpayers’ expense. He is a convicted paedophile and yet the law will permit him to stay. There are many more examples of this and it cannot be right. We cannot claim to be protecting the British public when we permit people like this to remain in the country.

The amendments in this group in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough would change that. Amendment 34 would ensure that, where any foreign national is convicted of an offence, regardless of the sentence, they will be deported. The amendment does this through two avenues. First, it proposes an alteration to Sections 3 and 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. Proposed new subsection (2) in my amendment would change the current discretion in Section 3 for a court to recommend deportation where a person over the age of 17 is convicted of an offence to make that recommendation mandatory. The change to Section 24 would ensure that, where a person commits the offence of entering the UK illegally, they will be liable to deportation and the Secretary of State must make the necessary arrangement for that person’s removal.

Secondly, my amendment would amend Sections 32, 33 and 38 of the UK Borders Act 2007 to remove the condition that a person must be sentenced to a custodial sentence of at least 12 months to be eligible for automatic deportation. Government figures show that 12% of the current prison population are foreign-national offenders—that is nearly 11,000 people. Not only this, but a further 19,500 foreign-national offenders have been released from jail but not deported. We know that this Government have released almost 40,000 prisoners before the end of their sentences. Their Sentencing Bill, which introduces the presumption that any sentence shorter than 12 months will be suspended, will mean that another 40,000 people will avoid jail every year. The Government claim this is necessary due to prison capacity. Of course, if the Government were to adopt our proposals to remove all foreign-national offenders from UK prisons and deport them, and ensure that any foreign national convicted of a criminal offence was also swiftly deported, we would have thousands of spare prison spaces.

The British public does not want foreign nationals who commit criminal offences to remain in the United Kingdom. A poll from March this year found that over 80% of people want them deported. Unfortunately, under the law as it stands, this will not happen. Even after the Government bring in changes to the early removal scheme via Clause 32 of the Sentencing Bill, a significant proportion of foreign criminals will not be deported, and that is to say nothing of those foreign-national offenders who have served sentences and then been released. Amendment 72 tabled by my noble friend Lord Jackson would ensure that they were given a deportation order within seven days of their release from prison. When the time comes, if my noble friend decides to test the opinion of the House, he will have my full support.

Where this Government have acted, we will support them. They have increased the rates of removal for foreign-national offenders, and that is welcome, but it is not enough. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak to Amendment 72 in my name and emphatically support Amendment 34 in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench.

The amendment seeks to enshrine in law the responsibility of and duty on the Government to remove from this country those who do not have the automatic right to be here and who have committed a serious enough offence to have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment. If you come to this country and make it your home, you must understand that if you break the law, there are consequences. The amendment would apply to those who have committed crimes serious enough that they present a risk to the security and public safety of the British people.

The increase in the number of foreign national offenders between 2021 and 2024 was three times greater than that of British nationals, at 19.4% compared to 5.9%. In 2024, there were 20,866 non-summary convictions, of which violence and sexual offences by foreign national offenders amounted to 14,016 crimes, or 67% of offences, and a quarter of jailed sex offenders come from just five countries. We also have over 11,000 foreign national offenders housed in our prison estate, as my noble friend said. Albanians take up over 1,000 prison places. To my knowledge, they have been part of neither the British Empire nor the Commonwealth and have never been citizens of the European Union. Therefore, why is this the case and what are Ministers doing about it?

At the same time, the number of foreign national offenders released and not deported rose to 19,244 by the end of 2024. One of the reasons for this is the backlog of legal cases by those who have challenged deportation. The Government need to take strong action to clear this backlog and remove new offenders who present themselves.

This Government can blame only themselves, in all honesty, for this crisis, for which they have no solutions. Their cultural cringe to the European Court of Human Rights and their activist so-called jurists have facilitated the abuse of the central tenets of human rights and obligations by our own activist judiciary, as well as by some rapacious and cynical human rights lawyers.

The necessity of this amendment—the imperative of placing such a duty on a statutory footing—has been shown by recent events. A foreign offender who was imprisoned for sexual assault was accidentally released and then deported only after he was recaptured. He was then paid £500 so that he would not try to challenge his deportation. He was given taxpayers’ money in case he tried to claim asylum. The Government should not be in a situation where officials must decide that the paying of foreign offenders to leave nicely without causing a disturbance is the only way forward. That is not the best course of action. An individual who has been convicted and has served time for sexual assault should not have the ability to hold our immigration system to ransom.

On a wider question, could the Minister advise the House on the progress made in the returns deal with the Balkan states, and the review of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which my noble friend Lord Harper challenged him on two months ago, on 8 September? On that date, the Minister stated:

“We will simplify the rules and processes for removing foreign national offenders and take further targeted action against recent arrivals who commit crime in the UK before their offending can escalate … Later this year … we will table legislation to strengthen the public interest test, to make it clear that Parliament needs to be able to control our country’s borders and take back control over who comes to and stays in the UK”.—[Official Report, 8/9/25; col. 1164.]


I ask the Minister, when are we likely to see this new legislation?

I concede that the Government have moved in a positive direction. Around 5,100 foreign national offenders were deported in 2024, which, to their credit, is more than the just under 4,000 deported under the previous Government. That said, a large number chose to leave voluntarily.

I spoke in Committee about a

“chronic issue of mismanagement in the criminal justice system”.—[Official Report, 8/9/25; col. 1157.]

That mismanagement has now been brought to public attention. In the 12 months leading to March 2025, 262 prisoners were released by mistake, a 128% increase compared to the previous year. A criminal justice system as dysfunctional as ours, as error prone as this, needs clarity brought to it where possible, and that is what this amendment brings.

I agree that my own party’s record was suboptimal, but this Government have had 16 months to develop—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

That is being polite. They have had 16 months to develop a workable strategy, yet the one-in, one-out strategy is an embarrassment and an international joke. Plans to spend vast sums of money on asylum hostels and houses in multiple occupation continue, and we are welcoming Gazans and their families without any proper security vetting or due diligence.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 191 proposes an extremely radical change to abortion law. It was added on Report in the other place without due consideration and with only 46 minutes of Back-Bench debate. It is unnecessary, badly drafted and will harm women. We already have one of the most permissive abortion laws in the world. Even David Steel said he never intended the Abortion Act 1967 to enable termination to be treated like a form of contraception. The presumption in the Act is that deliberately ending the life of a child in the womb is a criminal offence unless it is signed off by two doctors who decide in good faith that one or more of the specified grounds are met.

The change in the law is not because there are women who cannot get abortions or because it is too difficult to get a doctor to sign off, but because of an ideological commitment to presenting abortion as a form of healthcare, like the removal of a tumour. The humanity of the baby in the womb is ignored. A wanted child is a baby and should be protected; an unwanted child is a foetus—an othering word, if ever there was one—and can be removed and disposed of. I simply do not believe the degree to which a mother wants or does not want her baby changes the moral status of the child and think we need to have a national conversation about this.

I may be in a minority in this House when I speak on this issue, but I suspect that the removal of abortion from the ambit of the criminal law for the mother is something that makes many people uncomfortable because abortion is important. I think we all instinctively know we are dealing with the termination of a human life. We cannot just allow a free for all; there must be limits. Even though prosecution of mothers for unlawful abortions is incredibly rare, the existence of a criminal law framework for abortion sends a vital message that ending the life of an unborn person is a serious matter. This is reflected in the way the law is framed, and that is what the majority of the public appear to want.

A poll of over 2,000 adults found that more than six in 10 respondents agreed that abortion should continue to remain illegal after 24 weeks; just 17% disagreed. Clause 191 disapplies the law from a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy. No matter how she ends the life of her unborn baby, no matter how late in the pregnancy, no matter how painful for the child, no matter how distressing for whoever finds the remains, she would be beyond the reach of the law; whereas any doctor or nurse who is complicit would be committing a criminal offence. The Member for Gower gave an interview to Times Radio. She was asked whether she was comfortable with any woman ending a pregnancy at any time; she said she was. That is what Clause 191 will enable.

Janice Turner of the Times, a supporter of abortion, wrote that she was “aghast” at this “glib, careless and amoral” clause. In her words,

“it cannot be that killing a full-term baby in the birth canal is legal, but smothering it outside the womb is infanticide”.

The Times editorial also raised the issue of pills by post, which was passed in the dead of night in 2022 without proper debate, or an impact assessment, and indeed the amendment was a disorderly one which had to be amended by the department.

There can be severe complications with abortion pills, especially when they are taken late in pregnancy. These include haemorrhaging and excruciating pain. The traumatic situations in which these women have ended up is as a result of pills by post. It enables women to have dangerous, late-term abortions at home alone without any medical supervision. Yet activists are now using the failings of pills by post to push for even more extreme laws.

In conclusion, Clause 191 will only make the situation worse, increasing the number of late-term abortions, and putting more women in danger. If we really care for women, we need to reinstate in-person appointments: proper, sensitive, skilled medical assessments where experts can assess how far along a woman is, whether there are any complicating factors that put her in danger, or whether she is being coerced. We already have unfettered access to abortion: Clause 191 is an embarrassment to supporters of abortion and a stain on our reputation as a country that claims to care for pregnant women and their unborn children.

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.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, as we heard earlier, this past Wednesday was World Suicide Prevention Day. Suicide is always a tragedy, and its effects profoundly felt by whole communities as well as the immediate family. As legislators, I believe we have a responsibility to affirm every life as having inherent and equal value, regardless of age, health, disability or circumstances. I believe we need to seek to prevent suicide, not facilitate it.

We have a national strategy for reducing the number of lives lost to suicide but sadly, the suicide rate in this country is the highest it has been in over two decades. It is almost unfathomable, therefore, that in the very week we should be shining a light on suicide prevention, we are considering amending the Suicide Act 1961—in Clause 32—to make it legal for the state to give drugs to people to hasten the end of their own lives.

Proponents of the Bill have tried to argue that legalising “assisted dying” will somehow reduce the number of unassisted suicides, but there is robust evidence to suggest that it has the opposite effect. Backers of assisted suicide in the Australian state of Victoria claimed it would prevent 50 suicides of terminally ill people each year. They won the argument. But, since the law was changed, unassisted suicide among over 65s—the largest demographic of terminally ill people—has increased by more than 50%.

You can see why. If the state tells the sick and elderly that suicide is a valid way out, some of those who do not qualify under the terms of the legislation will still feel that they should take that same way out, because it has been normalised. Our commitment to suicide prevention as a society depends on a consistent message that every life has meaning and value and is deserving of protection. Suicide cannot be both something we try hard to prevent and something we assist in some cases. That is nonsensical. For the state to tell certain suicidal people, “You’re right. Your life isn’t worth living”, is an appalling message. It is the ultimate in hopelessness and the very opposite of compassion.

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, suicidal ideation in terminal illness typically resolves once a

“person’s physical pain or associated fear of it is alleviated”.

But the Bill ignores our duty of care to these people. It sanctions death by poisoning for those who, with the right palliative care and support, would otherwise often choose to live.

The Bill will put vulnerable people under even greater pressure to end their lives for fear of being a physical, emotional or financial burden on others. We see this in Canada, where the medical assistance in dying law has become, in the words of an ME sufferer called Madeline, a “brutal practicality” for people seeking to escape poverty and social isolation. One 37 year-old homeless man applied for medically assisted death because, in his words, he felt “useless” and thought he was “hurting society”. Another woman, in her 50s, asked to die because she could not get adequate housing. Who wants to live in a society like that? This utilitarian way of thinking becomes normalised once assisted suicide is legalised. Polling shows that over one quarter of Canadians now think that it should be acceptable for people to seek state-assisted death as a solution to poverty and homelessness.

The current law exists to protect those who might otherwise feel pressured into ending their lives, and that is why we must keep it. We should be seeking to strengthen people in hope, respect their agency and give them the care and support they need—not affirming them in their hopelessness and giving them drugs to kill themselves. We need to ask: is this Bill really the best we can do for society’s most vulnerable? The Bill cannot be improved; it must therefore fail.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 8th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 138 and 139 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. Together, they go to the heart of what it means to have a fair, firm and trusted asylum and immigration system that both commands the confidence of the British people and respects their good will.

We should start from first principles. The people of this country are generous, compassionate and welcoming. That generosity has been demonstrated towards those migrating to the UK over the centuries and has especially been seen more recently in the Homes for Ukraine scheme, through which ordinary families across the UK opened their doors, and the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which have offered refuge to those who stood by our Armed Forces. This reflects a profound national instinct to offer sanctuary to those in genuine need fleeing persecution and violence, and to do so with humanity and dignity.

However, that good will is not unlimited, nor should it be exploited. When we ask the British people to assent to immigration policy, we are not legislating in the abstract. We are in effect asking our fellow citizens to share their homes and their services with those arriving on our shores. That is a profound act of trust, and it is our duty in this place to protect that trust. That is why I suggest that these amendments matter: they draw a clear and important distinction between those who come here in need of our support and behave with gratitude and decency, and those who come here and break our criminal law and expect to remain regardless.

I turn to the detail of the two amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Davies. Amendment 139 would provide that any person who was not a British citizen and was convicted of a crime while in the UK would be automatically deported. Furthermore, where a non-British citizen over the age of 17 was convicted of an offence, the court would have to order deportation when sentencing. That would bring absolute clarity: if you break the law, you forfeit the right to remain. It would also ensure that those who committed immigration offences, such as entering or remaining unlawfully, were dealt with firmly and consistently.

Amendment 138 deals specifically with automatic deportation orders. These were introduced to the immigration system by the previous Labour Government in the UK Borders Act 2007. They state that the Secretary of State must make a deportation order in cases of conviction where 12 months’ imprisonment is applied and an offence is specified. My amendment seeks to prevent the possibility of constant and lengthy appeals by removing the ability of foreign offenders to frustrate an automatic deportation order through a lengthy appeal mechanism. It provides that, if a deportation order is made, it is final and can be neither appealed nor overturned by a higher court. That would not, of course, affect the right to appeal the criminal conviction, which would remain, but the automatic deportation order could not be overturned.

We cannot justify to the British people a system in which convicted criminals linger here for years during protracted appeal proceedings. These amendments are not directed against those who genuinely need our protection—those fleeing war, persecution and danger—but against those who exploit our generosity, take advantage of our systems and commit crimes against the very society that has given them shelter.

Finally, I lend a word of support to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I have no wish to steal his thunder, so will be as brief as I can. I support the amendment, which would ensure that deportation orders follow swiftly within seven days of release and cannot be endlessly delayed or appealed. That clarity is essential both for the integrity of the system and for the public’s trust in it.

These amendments draw a firm line, restore public trust and reaffirm the principle that compassion must be matched by responsibility. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak to Amendment 203A in my name and to contribute to the wider deliberations of the Committee. It almost feels as if this Bill is from a different era. The speed of change of government policy on immigration following the publication of the immigration White Paper and various other political developments has left us somewhat flat-footed.

Foreign national offenders remain an endemic issue, which the previous Government, in all fairness, failed to tackle as effectively as they could have. It is apposite that just today the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Removal of Prisoners for Deportation) Order 2025 is being considered by the Grand Committee. As noble Lords will know, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has opined on that statutory instrument in its 31st report. I will not bore the Committee with the details.

Foreign national offenders cost roughly £54,000 each. They cost £500 million a year and, as of 25 June, there were 10,772 foreign national offenders in our prison estate. They represent 12.5% of the prison population. Disproportionate groups are Albanians, Poles, Romanians, Jamaicans and Irish citizens.

I welcome the Government’s new focus on this area. It is fair to say that they have made some progress. Up to August 2025, they had removed around 5,000 of these individuals. Nevertheless, the number of foreign national offenders is still extremely high compared with just six years ago. Since 2019, there has been a 16.8% rise in foreign national offenders in the prison estate. It was not always the case that we were struggling to remove them. In 2016, the previous Government removed 6,437. In 2017 the figure was 6,292 and in 2018 it was 5,500. Believe it or not, over 12,000 were removed in 2012. The previous Government secured a prisoner transfer agreement with Albania in May 2023.

Regarding some of the legal impediments to the removal of foreign national offenders at the end of their sentences, the German Government—no doubt we will come back to this issue in future—derogated from parts of the European Convention on Human Rights specifically to prevent vexatious and spurious claims against deportation by, in particular, persistent Albanian career criminals. I wonder why the UK Government have not sought to pursue a similar policy, but I am obviously glad that they are looking at it in their review of Article 8. Every time the Minister speaks on this, he sounds a bit more robust in his interpretation, which I am hopeful about.

One-third of foreign national offenders are citizens of the European Union. They should be removed on the basis of public policy, public health and public safety and security, available under the free movement regulations and, post Brexit, Regulation 27 of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016.

I am interested to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, in the Chamber, as I do not know what the statutory basis for this is, but why do we not remove the many hundreds of Irish prisoners in our estate? It seems to be a “convention” that we do not. As she would no doubt agree, surely we can ask the Irish to take back their own prisoners as a quid pro quo for the defence support we consistently give to them. The previous Government paid £25 million to the Government of Jamaica to construct a prison in Kingston as part of a quid pro quo for the removal of several thousand Jamaican prisoners in our estate. It seems that we have not expedited that positive outcome. Can the Minister update us on any new prisoner transfer agreement that is likely to come to fruition on top of the one signed in October 2023 with the Philippines? I know that there is ongoing work with the Government of Italy in this respect as well. Maybe he can say how many prisoners claim asylum, or are likely to claim asylum, at the point that they are due to be released or deported.

The reason why we need this amendment and a statutory duty as an imperative in law is that Ministers are bedevilled not just by judicial activism and the misuse of Article 8 of the ECHR by some judges in the Upper Tribunal, as consistently exposed by the Daily Telegraph, but by a fundamental and chronic issue of mismanagement in the criminal justice system. It is why we have 12,000 criminals mooted for deportation at large in our communities, an increase of 192% since 2012. Yet we have the legal powers to act decisively under the Immigration Act 1971 and the UK Borders Act 2007. I applaud the Government for their early removal scheme changes and efforts to secure new prisoner transfer agreements. I think we all agree with that, but we need better and more up-to-date data and communications between the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. We need better reporting performance at the foreign national offenders returns command and a review of case working. We need to stop the use of manually accessed spreadsheets, tackle poor IT provision and improve case ownership, case management, accountability and timelines.

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[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I will make a very brief point in addition to that one. It is interesting that we have just came out of a debate on a group of amendments that address the rule of law and legal advice. Around the Committee, there was a strong view that people should have representation, that they should be able to make their case and that their case should be heard. What we have before us now is a group of amendments in which there is absolutism without any sense of balance or proportionality. The case of coercion, which my noble friend has just discussed, makes it incredibly difficult for anyone who believes in the rule of law and in due process to support these amendments, particularly when we are told that the criticism largely comes from the Daily Telegraph.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I will respond, with all due respect, to the noble Lord’s comments about minors. We should bear in mind that this amendment would apply to people who would be subject to the provision as adults, not children, when sent into the prison estate. They would be subject, for instance, to pre-sentence reports and background information being provided if they were young people, but, in essence, they would be adults. They would be at the top level of criminality, because they would be incarcerated in respect of a custodial sentence. In other words, they would have committed pretty serious offences; they would not have been sent to prison for not paying their TV licence or for speeding. Therefore, for the noble Lord to conflate the two is wrong. This is something that the British people are looking to the Government to take action on. They look at other jurisdictions and simply cannot understand why other jurisdictions are in a position to take robust action to remove people who have committed persistent criminal offences in their country.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, the question was posed by my noble friend Lord Jackson—and touched on by, I think, my noble friend Lord Harper—as to why Irish citizens are not deported. The answer lies in the Ireland Act 1949, which was passed by this Parliament when the Irish Free State turned itself into a republic. The Ireland Act 1949 states that Irish citizens should not be treated as foreign citizens for the purposes of British law, which is why Irish citizens can vote in our elections and why Irish prisoners are not sent to the Republic of Ireland.

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Moved by

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

141: After Clause 41, insert the following new Clause—
“Collection of data on overseas students subject to visa conditions and immigration rules(1) The Secretary of State must collate and publish—(a) the number of overseas students who have had their student visas revoked as a result of the commission of criminal offences,(b) the number of overseas students who have been deported following the revocation of their student visas, and(c) the number of overseas students detained pending deportation following the revocation of their student visas.(2) Data published under subsection (1) must be broken down by nationality.(3) For the purposes of this section—“overseas students” means any person who is not a British citizen who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for the purposes of partaking in an educational course;“student visa” has the same meaning as in the Immigration Rules.”

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships’ House too long with this amendment because it is straightforward. It relates to the piece of the jigsaw that is missing in respect of foreign national students with visas to study in the United Kingdom. The background of my amendment is the very serious occasions on which public disorder has occurred, in London and other parts of the country, arising from the Israel-Gaza conflict, which dates from October 2023.

This has obviously been a phenomenon across the world of student bodies, whether it is Harvard, Columbia in New York, in Australia or across Europe, protesting against what they perceive as wrong policy pursued by a particular country—not just the Israel-Gaza situation but other contentious political issues. Other jurisdictions have co-ordinated their response to public disorder which has occurred with student bodies in a better way. In other words, they have monitored whether those students have properly abided by the restrictions and obligations put on them when they apply for and are successfully granted a visa.

Students and those with educational visas in higher education are not in any sense sui generis. They do not have carve-outs and are not given a free pass. Indeed, for the purposes of any transgression of criminal law, public disorder and other issues, they are as much subject to statute as anyone else: the Immigration Act 1971, the UK Borders Act 2007 and the Immigration Act 2016. As I referenced in the earlier group, if they are from the European Union, they are also subject to restrictions in their conduct, essentially around visa breaches and immigration law violations, but for our purposes today, I am focusing on criminal activity. That is quite a high bar for those students, in that it is deemed to pose a threat “to the public good”, which is the wording used in primary and secondary legislation—statutory instruments.

It is unusual that I am praising the Government slightly today, but I know that they are mindful of the concerns that the general public have on this issue and that they are seeking, as did the previous Government, to address and ameliorate abuses of the student visa system. We accept in good faith that they are seeking to tackle those egregious abuses, but, to my mind, the piece of the puzzle that is missing is that there is not proper co-ordination in respect of student visas. Therefore, it is important to collect the data on those student visas which are applied for by students who are subject to criminal sanction, not just being arrested but charged and, perhaps, subject to criminal penalty, including, of course, incarceration in the prison estate.

It is for that reason that I think my amendment fits well with this Bill. I am not saying that every foreign student is a criminal—far from it. We welcome the many thousands of students who come to our country to study, some of whom stay here to further their careers and add to our economy and our civic life, et cetera. But there will be some who come here and commit criminal offences. To my mind—I echo the astute comments of my noble friend Lord Harper—you have an obligation, if you apply for a visa and come here, to behave yourself, to behave in a civilized manner, to abide by the law, to work hard and to abide by the conditions of your visa and wider obligations. If you fail to discharge that, particularly, for instance, by shouting antisemitic abuse on a hate march in London or anywhere else, that is unacceptable. If you are subject to criminal sanction and penalty, there is a strong case that your visa should be revoked and you should be removed from this country.

However, the first step should be that that information should be collected and collated in a way which is transparent and open, so that the state and the criminal justice system has an opportunity to make a value judgment on your behaviour, as someone who is not a British citizen and who has been invited here in good faith to behave as a decent, honest, law-abiding citizen. For those reasons, I commend the amendment in my name, support Amendment 141A from my noble friend Lady Lawlor, and look forward to the Minister’s answer in due course.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments proposes the means to make transparent one of the constituent parts of the high immigration levels that the Government aim to reduce. The amendments propose making transparent the data on the numbers granted student visas and the numbers of dependents, capping the numbers—in the case of the amendments that will follow, Amendments 198 and 199—and dealing with those who offend and the home countries of offenders.

I shall focus on my Amendment 141A, which proposes an annual statement on the number of visas given to overseas students and their dependents, because they contribute significantly to the overall immigration numbers, on which this Government and the previous one have concentrated in order to get them down. The evidence that we have is piecemeal. It covers a range of periods and categories and comes from the Home Office, the ONS and the Higher Education Statistics Authority, but all of the evidence indicates that overseas students’ visas and those issued for dependents constitute a large cohort of the immigration numbers.

In the previous academic year ending September 2024, there were 732,285 overseas students at higher education institutions in the UK. That is almost 25% of the total student population. Around one in 10 came from the EU, while 90% of them came from further across the world. Although the total was down from the very high period of 2022-23—a record high, as it happens—these figures from 2023-24 are still the second-highest ever for overseas students and their dependents.

We want to find out what the top countries are. India was top of the list, sending 107,500—almost nine times the number from India in 2017-18. China, which sent the most students for 10 years, is now in second place; it sent 98,400. There have been rapid increases from Nigeria, which is in third place. The figures for Nigeria will come up in my notes in a moment, so I will come back to them, but it is in third place.

Now we have another set of figures, though, from the Home Office. I want to talk about them. They give an indication of the numbers for the year ending in June this year—the year in which the Labour Government have been in power. From them, we discovered that the number of student visas granted for the year ending June 2025 was 436,000; that was higher than the average from 2012-21, which was an average of 305,000, although it was much smaller than in the peak year of 2023, which was the year when 650,000 student visas were granted. During that time, there were 18,000 dependents—a far lower figure than the 154,000 who came in before that. That is, I think, due to the previous Government’s attempts to curb the figures.

What we see from this is that student visas for overseas students still run at a very high rate. If we take the figures for the year ending June and multiply them, say, by three, we are looking at well over a million people in the country on overseas student visas. For these reasons, it would be very helpful for Parliament, and indeed the public, to know on an annual basis the number of overseas student visas granted, and the numbers granted to dependents, and whether that is increasing or falling. That kind of information in an accessible and consistent form will help identify the nature and scale of the question, whether it is indeed a serious problem and, if so, how we can deal with it.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I want to touch on three matters—two to do with these amendments and one of a more topical nature. We have at previous stages of this Bill talked about the ability of the Government to remove people from the country. Amendment 199 touches on illegal removals. The Minister has been very keen to champion the deal the Government have done with France. Given that the French Government have, just a few moments ago, been voted down by the National Assembly and therefore collapsed, I wonder if the Minister, as he has been in post—I am sure the Home Office will have given it a great deal of thought—could comment on what impact, if any, that will have on the deal that the Government have done, whether in substance or the speed with which they will be able to implement it. That would be both of interest to the Committee and relevant to this legislation.

I strongly support Amendments 141 and 141A, from my noble friends Lord Jackson and Lady Lawlor, because they are about making sure that we better understand the system. While I welcome students who come here to go on good courses, who are here to study, it is useful for us to know if those students are breaching criminal law. I will not rehearse the arguments that my noble friend Lord Jackson made so eloquently, but there is a very good reason why having this data is helpful: one of the things that the Home Office pays a great deal of attention to, when it is making judgments about granting student visas in the first place, is looking at countries where there is a high risk of abuse. It puts a great deal of weight and expectation on universities to ensure that students are genuinely here, that they are competent to study courses and that they are going to study those courses when they get here. If the data highlights countries that are a particular risk, it would enable the Home Office and universities to take that into account when they are making decisions; it would tighten our immigration system and it would make sure that people are genuinely coming here to study—which is, of course, the reason they have been given the visas. So I strongly support both those amendments.

I also support Amendment 199. There is an argument for it—the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, was not enormously persuaded, but I will just give him one argument for where it might be helpful. One of the things that the Home Office finds difficult at the moment is when it wants to deport people to countries that will not have their nationals back. This is internal government politics, but I suspect that the Home Office is very keen to implement those visa requirements. I do not know—and I would not expect the Minister to confirm this at the Dispatch Box—but I suspect that other bits of government, such as the Department for Business and Trade and perhaps the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, are not very keen on implementing those visa sanctions. They would come up with all sorts of compelling reasons—for them—for why the Government should not do so. The countries know this, and they also make those arguments about why we would not want to implement those visa sanctions—damage to our trade and all sorts of other reasons.

This provision may be helpful when Ministers are having those conversations because, by making it mandatory, if the country will not up its game and if is not willing to take back citizens who are not entitled to stay in the United Kingdom, the Government can explain to those countries that their hands and discretion have been fettered by Parliament. Therefore, the only possible sensible course for that country is to improve its compliance and, frankly, do what it is required to do by its international obligations, which is to take back the citizens who are not welcome here. So I think there is a very sensible argument. It may be that the drafting of this amendment can be improved, and the noble Lord is well qualified to help with that.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Is my noble friend as pleased as I am by the news that the new Home Secretary is a keen reader of the amendments that His Majesty’s loyal Opposition have put down on this Bill? The top story in the Times today is:

“Mahmood plans visa crackdown on countries that won’t take back migrants”.


Is she a sinner repenting, and is my noble friend full of joy about this?

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Jackson raised that, because I read that piece this morning and it is part of the reason why I was keen to speak on this amendment. In the debate that was going on this morning, our friend the shadow Home Secretary was challenging the new Home Secretary on this. She hit back and made the point that this permissive power had been in place for some time and had not been used for the reasons that I set out and because of all the other arguments that will be brought forward in government about why you would not want to disturb the relationship between the United Kingdom and the other country that is refusing to take back its citizens. It was interesting to note that the Home Secretary appears a little more seized of using this power.

We are trying to be helpful here because—I do not know, but I suspect—when she has these arguments inside government and expresses her intention to use this power, she will get quite a lot of push-back from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and from the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Secretary, who perhaps may not have remembered that, just a short while ago, she was responsible for these important matters in the Home Office; it is amazing how quickly Ministers forget when they change departments. The Business Department and the new Business Secretary will be making the point about our important commercial relationships. Actually, the new Home Secretary may well welcome the strengthening of her hand that would be put in place by the Government accepting Amendment 199.

When the Minister responds, even if he does not like the specific drafting of the amendment on the Marshalled List today, and given what my noble friend Lord Jackson said about the Home Secretary’s views, I hope that he gives it a fair wind and commits to come back with a government amendment on Report. If he does not, perhaps we will discover that the Home Secretary’s tough words are just that—words.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

It is not really within my brief to comment on the financing of universities, so the noble Baroness will forgive me if I do not go too deeply into that. However, I can be clear about the grounds on which a student’s permission to stay may be cancelled, and this relates to some of the points the noble Baroness has made: where the person’s sponsorship or endorsement has been withdrawn, for example because they do not have the required knowledge level of the English language; where the person does not start their course with their sponsor—that is important because, as universities know, people sign up but do not turn up; where the person ceases to study, which can include no longer attending their course, completing it at an earlier date or the start date of their course being delayed for more than 28 days; where the sponsor loses their licence—this is important too—or transfers the business, so if they are not a serious higher education institution and are not sustainable; or where the business for which the person studies is transferred to another business or institution and that business or institution, for example, fails to apply for a sponsor’s licence.

If the noble Baroness will forgive me, I do not feel I can comment on higher education funding, but we think we have robust arrangements for removing people and cancelling student visas where there are the sort of problems I have set out, including those to which the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, referred in relation to crime and disorder.

Foreign nationals—including students, of course—who commit a crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced, and that, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation. Before coming to your Lordships’ House, I was deeply involved for many years with the Prison Service, and I saw at first hand the problems of not deporting foreign national offenders and what that was doing to not just immigration policy but the prison capacity crisis. I spent several years working on that policy with the Ministry of Justice, so I understand that problem very well and take very seriously the need to get better at it.

On the specifics of the amendments about publishing data on these topics, the Home Office already publishes a vast amount of migration statistics, as your Lordships know, including information on visas, returns and detentions. If I may say so, too much of that information does not play a large enough role in an often fevered public debate which is often based on rumours rather than detailed facts. The official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review, in line with the code of practice for statistics. This ensures that we identify changing needs for new statistics to support public understanding. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, have made suggestions, and they may want to continue to press that case.

The Government recognise that there has been heightened interest from parliamentarians, the media and members of the public about the numbers and types of criminal offences committed by foreign nationals in the UK, what happens to foreign national offenders after they have been convicted—I have already stressed my interest in this subject—and what happens to them after they have completed their sentences. We understand the importance of this information. The department is assessing what more can be done to improve the processes for collecting and verifying relevant data on foreign national offenders and their offences and to establish a more regular means of placing that data in the public domain. By the end of 2025—so, again, not far away—if this work progresses as planned, the Home Office proposes to publish more detailed statistical reporting on foreign national offenders subject to deportation and those returned to countries outside the UK.

Before I sit down, I shall make one other comment in response to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Harper, about the agreement between the UK and France. It remains firmly in place, and we shall continue to work with the French Government in all their various forms. On the basis of the assurances that I have given, I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, for his excellent response. It is the first time I have had the pleasure of listening to him at the Dispatch Box, and I welcome him to it. I thank other noble Lords for their contributions to this interesting debate—even the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with whom I disagree. His characteristically eloquent but pugnacious contribution was most appreciated.

The Minister touched earlier on the reason why I tabled this amendment. I asked his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, a Question for Written Answer about the collection of data around student visas and criminality. He answered on 25 March that the Home Office did not collect that data. If you are going to design public policy around an efficient and effective immigration policy, wider economic issues and the efficacy and viability of the higher education sector all wrapped up in one, you cannot do it if you do not have the data. You need to collect that data. It is not just about criminality. In fact—dare I say it?—my noble friend Lady Lawlor’s amendment is actually more germane to this debate because we need to collect that data. The Government should perhaps look at that on Report.

On Amendment 199, I think that there is quite a bit of consensus across the Committee about the rather liberal, permissive powers of the Government in response to what one might call, if one used a pejorative term, visa retaliation. There is a way of doing it in a more collaborative way without going nose-to-nose with each individual country. It is good that the Government are now looking to invoke those powers because they are important. Countries should know that they have a duty and a responsibility adequately to address the issues we have in our country.

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[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to reiterate what has just been said on Amendment 153. Like the previous speaker, I too have had experience of dealing with domestic servitude. I chaired an inquiry for the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Scotland which was dealing with trafficking more generally. It came as a great surprise to me, because my own experiences as a younger barrister had been dealing with domestic workers inside embassies and diplomatic circles. People would often be brought from countries other than the Emirates or Saudi; they would be Filipino, or from parts of Pakistan or India. They were collected on entry into the country, their passports were taken from them, and they were deeply exploited. I remember being involved in a number of such cases when I was a young lawyer.

As a much more senior person chairing an inquiry, it came as a great surprise to me to find that many successful business people who were running chains of Indian restaurants and all manner of businesses brought people from villages where their ancestors were from. They would say to the workers that they would be paying their parents for their services. They would be paid at the sorts of rate that people would be getting back in those countries, whether it be Bangladesh, Pakistan, or wherever. The workers often received no money—maybe just meagre pocket money. They often slept on mats in the kitchen rather than in a proper bed. They were expected to work all hours of the day and night and were not able to complain anywhere. The idea of someone with a specific visa ending up being tied, like indentured labour, to a family, and not having it made clear to them that there were other options, was quite scandalous. It was rather shocking that we made those changes to those arrangements some years back, as has already been described. Since we have this Bill before us, now is the time to put that right; we have the opportunity to do so.

Kalayaan has been doing incredible work on this front. It has done deep research into what is a form of modern slavery—a smokescreen used to deflect the transparency and accountability there should be for what is experienced by many migrant workers. The evidence that Kalayaan has compiled reports very serious abuse. I ask the Committee to take seriously the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which I strongly support.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose Amendments 151 and 152 and endorse and support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Lawlor. The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, will know that there have been a number of reports in local and national media about people without settled status who are seeking determination of their asylum-seeker status who have been alleged to be working as delivery drivers for food-delivery companies. Clearly, it is a potential loophole, and it is responsible for us to respond to that sensibly by an amendment that seeks to close that loophole.

On the other two amendments, the noble Lord, Lord German, will be aware that we debated this issue in Grand Committee a year or so ago, when we had quite a good debate. I always think it is a good rule of thumb that my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge speaks good sense. I do not always agree with everything he says, but I was determined to agree with something he said in his remarks. We laboured in the Whips’ Office in the other place many moons ago, and he took a pastoral interest in my short-lived career in the Whips’ Office. I agree with him more than I disagree in that this is a point of principle about whether you should give asylum seekers the right to work. I think the challenge is that, despite what the noble Lord, Lord German, says, there is a pull factor. People come to the UK, which is a unique economy, because it is in the right time zone, we speak English and we have a dynamic, service-based economy. They travel over many countries mainly, in my view, as economic migrants—clearly, there are a number of genuine asylum seekers—and it is not possible comprehensively to disprove the idea that they are coming for work.

The problem with the proposal is that the most disadvantaged group of people in this country is poor white British boys. A situation where you encourage an economic model that brings in more people to drive down wages, keep conditions not much better than was hitherto the case, cut back on training and keep this addiction to cheap foreign labour is not a model for a successful, happy and contented country. That does not, in any sense, second-guess the merits of individual people who want to come to the country to make a better life.

That brings me on to the point that the challenge we have here, and the thing that the Government can take away from this debate, is that there is much more to be done along the lines that my noble friend Lord Randall outlined in terms of civic education around British values—an educative or didactic process for these new asylum seekers to understand what Britain is about and how they can contribute as decent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens without working. If you cross the Rubicon and say that, if you arrive and claim asylum, you can automatically work and enter the employment market, that is a step too far. However, the Government have a duty and a responsibility, for the sake of the taxpayer and for the welfare of those people and their families, to give them the opportunity to volunteer, train and assimilate but not to work. That is the challenge for the Minister.

In many respects, I support my noble friend Lord Randall—and even, maybe, to a certain extent the noble Lord, Lord German, and others—but on a point of principle I cannot support this amendment. I hope that the Minister will set his face against it, but the Government, as the previous Government did, could do a lot more in terms of the training and development of people who aspire to be British citizens.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I would like to find that there is something on which I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I think his point about assisting assimilation is very strong, but it is not an alternative to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German.

The Minister knows full well that I have been boring him for years about the right to work, and he used to show some personal sympathy for the point. I am with the noble Lord, Lord German, in not believing very strongly in the pull factor. I think people come here basically to escape persecution, famine and war. I think pull factors are, to the extent they exist, much less important. I think, secondly, that the best way to deal with pull factors to the extent that they do exist is with identity cards. I am a strong believer in identity cards. We made a great mistake when we dropped the idea; we should get back to it.

I support Amendments 151 and 155A. Amendment 155A is a very modest proposal; I hope that the Minister will feel that he can consider it. I think there is much to be said for the Treasury approach to this issue. That is an unusual statement to make but, in the Treasury, the right to work would have a double benefit: it would increase the tax take, and it would reduce public expenditure. These are both quite desirable benefits; if you are in the Treasury in current circumstances, they are highly desirable. The main argument for the right to work is human dignity and assisting the assimilation process. The Exchequer arguments are subordinate arguments, but they are real. We ought to reduce the cost of the queue. Of course, the best thing—as the Government are trying to do—would be to reduce the length of the queue but, if we can reduce the cost of the queue and increase the tax take, these must be things that are worth doing.

I have long felt that this is something that we ought to be able to do something about. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate at least an open mind on the softest of these amendments, Amendment 155A—the one that simply calls for a report.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I emphatically support the excellent Amendment 203J, to insert a new clause after Clause 48, moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth.

It is important at this juncture to put this into some context, because there is a fast-moving debate on our involvement with the 1951 refugee convention and our obligations therein, and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister knows that these issues have been debated recently by his noble friends, including the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, and even other esteemed Members of this House, such as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. However, we are not here necessarily to talk about the disapplication of or derogation from the ECHR, although I may press the Minister to update your Lordships’ House on progress made on the review of Article 8 of the convention, which has been a government undertaking for several months.

The fact of the matter is that we have a small boat crossings crisis, which is the kernel of the rationale of this amendment. Small boat crossings are costing us £5.6 million a day in hotel accommodation for asylum seekers—the equivalent of 73,000 visits to accident and emergency by British citizens and others every day. The National Audit Office tells us that by the end of this Parliament, this is likely to cost the country £15 billion. We have had 180,000 individual crossings since 2018, and this year alone, as of yesterday, 28,000 individual arrivals.

The point is that this is an existential emergency for the protection of our borders, so we need to look at different ways of approaching the situation. On that basis, the Minister should look very carefully at this amendment. It is not about withdrawing from the convention, but a very robust interpretation of our legal obligations under Section 31 of the convention. I will not try the patience of the House by repeating the specific wording of that convention, which is often being misinterpreted by some members of the judiciary and others, including, of course, some charity groups with a vested interest in this area.

My noble friend is right to talk about accretion and the reach of the concept that has developed since the 1970s: the living instrument doctrine, which has informed decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in this area. I accept that the Government are in a difficult position at the moment. We were, of course, party to the Dublin III convention— Regulation 604/2013—and we are now waiting for the European Union’s decision on how to implement the asylum and migration management regulation 2024, which will come into full effect in June 2026.

This is a question of fairness. If you go the right route and seek asylum, naturalisation as a British citizen or indefinite leave to remain, you are, as we know from the Home Secretary’s remarks earlier this week, subject to some pretty significant restrictions on who you can bring in, what your salary or pay should be and your access to public funds. That is perhaps as it should be, but if you arrive by small boat, you have no such restrictions. You are put up in a hotel, subject to limited security checks and are perhaps eventually to be reunited with family members, who will access NHS services, school services and local authority and housing association housing. There is an issue of disproportionality and unfairness between those two groups, and the important thing we need to remember is that my noble friend Lord Murray’s proposal addresses this issue in a way that will not cause—how can I put it?—legal chaos. Most importantly, it will act as a clear and demonstrable deterrent to the people traffickers and to those seeking to arrive by illegal and irregular means, by small boat across the channel. The Government have a good opportunity, as my noble friend says, to seize this issue with both hands.

I finish on the second issue: the UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme, which was sealed by means of a treaty between the United Kingdom and France in May. Interestingly, the Home Secretary wrote to my committee, the European Affairs Committee, on 6 August to indicate that Section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 was being disapplied, and that the Government had invoked Section 22(1) of CRaG to prevent proper scrutiny and oversight of the treaty, as per the legislation—in other words, 21 days of proper scrutiny. That may be an operational issue which was necessary at the time, but it goes to the inability of the other place and this House to properly scrutinise that one-in, one-out treaty and its efficacy. I would value the Minister’s comments on that. When will we have a chance to look properly at how that treaty and its effects are working, both in the interests of the UK and of our partners in France?

With that point in mind, the Minister has an opportunity to properly consider the amendment. The Government are in a pickle; they are flailing around for some gimmicks to convince the public that they have got a grip on small boat crossings, which they do not. This is a real opportunity for them to seize this issue and to reduce the pull factor of small boat crossings. On that basis, I strongly support the amendment, and hope the Minister at least responds in kind in an attempt to ameliorate what is a national emergency.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 104 and 203J, and to join the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, in inviting the Minister to consider carefully the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was a member of the court in the decision to which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred. It provides a good example of the problem we face in looking at these amendments.

The problem with the courts is that individual cases come to us and you have to consider them one by one. But as legislators, we can take a broader view, cover the whole ground and intercept problems that, if not intercepted, would come back to the courts one by one to be dealt with. The Georgian case is a good example: if it came before the Supreme Court now, the protection the court offered in the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred, would be made available as well. To allow that person to be extradited to Georgia, in the light of such conduct, would be quite contrary to their human rights. For these reasons, there is a lot of force in those two amendments, on the ground that they intercept a problem that will recur and is best dealt with by legislation now.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, referred to a case in the Supreme Court. I have no recollection of that case, and he will correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that I was party to the decision and therefore was not in the majority. However, if the minority had included Lord Rodger, that would carry great weight for me.

I confess that, for quite some time, I have felt that the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is making had a lot of force behind it. I would need to look again more carefully at the wording of the convention to determine what my final decision would be, but he said enough to justify the invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to the Government to look at it very carefully, because the advantages of giving effect to that reading are obvious. I do not think that it would damage our reputation, because it would depend on an interpretation of the wording of the convention—not defying or withdrawing from the convention but giving effect to it. That, I think, is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is making, and there is a lot of force behind it.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

These amendments are about maintaining the tools the Government need to act decisively on the basis of authoritative information and without being hamstrung by vexatious delays. We cannot afford to slip into a system in which removals are paralysed by endless backlogs, where spurious challenges proliferate and where factual determinations are relitigated to no end. We struck the right balance when these provisions were first drafted: fair but firm; open to genuine challenge but closed to tactical obstruction. If the Government truly believe that removing these powers will have no adverse effect, they must explain why to the Committee. Otherwise, they should reintroduce them, so that those who they themselves have determined have no right to remain can be removed swiftly and the integrity of our immigration system can be preserved. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments on age assessments moved by my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower.

When we ventilated these issues in 2023, when we were looking at the then Illegal Migration Bill, we had a very good debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was very voluble and passionate about this issue, as one would expect of her, and as we have come to know and love during the course of these debates. However, I think the public have moved on. When we debated the earlier clauses of the Bill, we talked about the crisis of confidence and the lack of public support for any actions taken by parties in government, whether Labour or Conservative. That crisis of confidence is worse than ever now. I do not think that it is improved by anecdotal and media portrayals of people who are quite obviously young men and not children, but who are purporting to be children and using various methods to thwart the reasonable expectation of most people that they should be removed because they should not be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom on a permanent basis as asylum seekers.

Therefore, we have to use our common sense here. I regret the fact that the Government seem to be throwing the baby out with the bath water. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said earlier that it was a moveable feast, but in fact, she is now a compatriot of the Government on many of the proposals. I know she has always been a compatriot of the Minister, as they both hail from north Wales. However, we have moved on significantly since we debated this issue two years ago. People expect fair and equitable treatment of minors and people purporting to be minors. Therefore, we have to use our common sense.

Often, it is young men—disproportionately so—who are arriving without any identification. They will have disposed of their passports or ID cards and will therefore be able to make the case that they are children or very young people, and there is no identification to disprove that notion. The appearance of young people over 18—facial growth, bone structure, beards and so on—decries the idea that they are allegedly children. They look over 18. Across the world, artificial intelligence and scientific methods are used to ascertain the precise age of young people.

The Government should look more favourably on these amendments, because they were put in the earlier legislation for good reason. I specifically support my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth’s amendment, and Amendment 200, because this is not being done surreptitiously; it is being done in the open. You will be able to test the veracity of the scientific assessment, judge it against international comparators and get scientific experts in anatomy to test whether these scientific assessments work. A blanket ban on a reasonable scientific assessment is not the right way to proceed, particularly as this will be a relatively small number of people. There will be a relatively small number of young men claiming they are children. A robust scientific regime to test that and, more importantly, parliamentary scrutiny and oversight of the regulations the Minister will lay before the House for this scientific assessment and method, is a reasonable position to adopt.

If the Government are seeking to persuade the electorate that they are serious about and committed to tackling the egregious abuses of our border, they must recognise that people pretending to be children—forcing often cash-strapped local authorities to find them a school place or provide a statement of special educational needs and other contingent liabilities and funding—is an issue of public importance, safety and security.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is champing at the bit to disabuse me of my notions. It is unfortunate that the Government and the Minister, for whom I have huge respect, as he knows, have seen fit to remove this provision for no particular reason. He has not made the case for why he is doing that. Therefore, he needs to think again. Hopefully, he will have better news for us on Report. In the interim, naturally, I support all four amendments.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak very briefly, before the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, because I am unhappy about these amendments. I was very relieved when the Government put forward a situation that would not support them.

I was invited by the charity Safe Passage to attend a drop-in session at its drop-in house in London, where I met two young men. Safe Passage was absolutely satisfied that both of them were 16. They were Afghans; one had a beard, and the other had a moustache. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, seems to me to be unsafe, because what we are looking at is Europeans. Europeans do not normally get beards and moustaches under the age of 18, but those who come as refugees and asylum seekers come from all over the world, where they grow up and mature much more quickly.

I was extremely relieved to see the approach of this Government and very disturbed to see these amendments, which I hope will not succeed.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Before the noble and learned Baroness sits down, if I may, for the avoidance of doubt, I was not arguing that it would be merely a subjective assessment or value judgment of appearance: it would be complementary to a robust scientific method, which would be tested both in this House and by other scientists in the course of the work. It would not just be a border officer saying, “You look like a 21 year-old”. The amendments make reference to scientific assessment, which would be an important complementary safeguard that might address the particular concerns of the noble and learned Baroness.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I am very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, says, because he did talk about common sense and looking at a person. That is what encouraged me to speak. When I met those two young men, I absolutely took the view that they were over 18, but I was disabused, not only by their age, which was identified, but by the fact that I had been thinking in European terms. That is the danger of what is being said by the Opposition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s intervention. One of the problems is that social workers are using exactly those techniques—perhaps not in full, but they are. What is more, the NNAB social workers are paid through the NNAB by the Home Office. They are not independent, which is the other key point we wanted to make. I am very grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said at the start. He said that the public had moved on. But, as a former trustee of UNICEF, I say that my priority has to be the protection of young people who are under 18, and an arrangement for those where it may not be possible to decide that exactly—and we have had many debates about all that.

The issue is not just one of public satisfaction. The public may be very irritated by the young men who are clearly over 18 who are doing this, and that is fine for the system. Those of us who are bringing back amendments, probably on Monday, want to make sure that it is not happening the other way round: that people under 18 are being deemed to be adult. We know that this has happened and I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that we might finally see some data on this. Every time I have asked over the last three or four years, there has been no data about those who are deemed to be 18 and over who were under, and, indeed, the other way around. That is important for the Home Office, because it needs to understand about provision for those who are in this very small group, who need to be looked after in a slightly more special way.

By the way, not every young person who is under 18 who goes to a school is going to have special needs. They may need some language support, but not necessarily special needs. They may need emotional support if they have come from a war zone such as Sudan but, if we are saying that they are awaiting assessment as asylum seekers, that is something that this country really ought to be prepared to look at. So I am much more cynical about the NNAB being as truly independent and clear as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, was making out. Those of us who have amendments will go over this in detail next week.

I want to go back to Amendments 114 and 115. Young people having no right of appeal contravenes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child. They absolutely must have support in complex issues, particularly in a country where they may not speak the language. When the official Opposition were in power, they also refused to let young people who were having age assessments carried over have any access to legal or advisory support during that process. They said it was not necessary. But I have to say that those European countries that use age assessments all have independent support for these young people from that Government’s own process. I particularly pray in aid the Netherlands, because it was cited by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, when he was at the Dispatch Box in the past.

These protections are built in because we have a formal duty to look after those under 18 and, yes, it may be difficult to work out if some are, but we will know about most of them. I really think that the first two amendments need to be reviewed, and I do not think we can support them. I can remember when I read the first full report: it is not as clear as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, said. There is always talk about ranges. I do not know about noble Lords, but I have a son of six foot four and he was certainly sprouting a beard by 16 or 17 and was already over six foot. We make mistakes, and I absolutely support what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was saying. You cannot just assume that that is right and, if we get it wrong, you have a young man—they usually are young men—who is put into an adult centre. They then are at risk, and that is on us as a country.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I absolutely applaud the laudable work of UNICEF. The point that I was attempting to make was that we must focus our efforts on weeding out those who are clearly, as she concedes, not reaching the age criteria, so that we can focus on those in most need, who have suffered terror, despotism, trauma et cetera.

Taking the noble Baroness back to the appeals, what is the alternative? If you have an open-ended, liberal, permissive appeals system, it will be gamed by many people. She might want to think about this before she tables an amendment: can you have an appeals system that pays due regard to the universal human rights of children but does not allow the system to be gamed by endless appeals that take months and years?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The problem is that Amendment 114 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, says there is no appeal—full stop, end. None. Therefore, that young person, who probably has English as a second language, whichever side they are and who will be arguing that they are under 18, does not even have the right that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, was talking about, and that worries me. I have argued this for some time, as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, knows, to his cost. I agree that the public are concerned. I have no doubt about that. However, are we only concerned with what the public are concerned about? Do we not need to focus on children who are seeking asylum in this country and can get some help? If we go by, “Well, actually the public don’t want it”, it will all start going the wrong way.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I have heard what the noble Baroness said. I will reflect on that point. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The Minister anticipated my point, and the noble Baroness put it much more clearly. I was going to ask whether there would be periodic production of qualitative and quantitative data around the numbers coming in. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, we are debating in the dark on numbers—we need the numbers. But the Minister answered the question, for which I thank him.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for our agreement on the answering of the question and I retain my position. I hope noble Lords will not press their amendments.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

Some things have not changed. Then you had the mechanical engineers, the aircraft fitters, and so on and so forth: several different unions representing different members. I learned as a very young man that some unions are more militant than others and that a very small group of people could bring a whole aircraft plant to a halt.

I recall crossing a picket line. I was not a member of a trade union, but I was a contractor. A small group of trade unionists brought the plant to a halt. I turned up to work and wanted to go through the gates, and I was barred. But I was always taught to stand up to bullies, so I insisted on going through the gates—indeed, I did walk through the gates. I can remember to this day—and it is 45 years ago—the abuse I received as I walked through those gates to work as a young teenager. I still recall it, because every time I go to a Conservative Party conference I get a very similar amount of abuse. So some things have not changed.

The noble Lord, Lord Barber, rightly pointed out that trade unions are a force for good, because they look after their members in so many ways. Nobody across this House would argue with that. But the point of my amendment is that a small group of militant colleagues on the trade union side can bring the whole factory or organisation to a halt. Throughout this debate we have talked about SMEs; in this case I am talking about a very large organisation. It is the intimidation of the minority that affects the majority. Eliminating the 50% turnout threshold for strike ballots would significantly lower the bar for industrial action, allowing strikes to proceed if only a small minority of the workforce participates. This creates unpredictability and challenges for business continuity and planning, as substantial disruptions could occur based on the votes of a very limited number of employees.

In sectors where products are highly perishable, including the distribution of medicines or those with just-in-time supply chains, the ease of initiating industrial action increases the risk of supply chain interruptions. Some medical products have a limited shelf life. Strikes at distribution centres could lead to critical shortages, with direct consequences for public health and patient care. For industries that rely on seasonal production cycles, such as manufacturing and distribution of vaccines, removing the threshold places the delicate timing of mandatory deliveries at risk.

Even short periods of industrial action could jeopardise the ability to meet strict production targets and delivery deadlines, impacting public services and national preparedness. Lowering the requirements for strike action could deter domestic and international investors, who typically are seeking business environments with stable industrial relations frameworks. The potential for frequent or unpredictable strikes may lead to perceptions of elevated operational risk, discouraging long-term commitment across multiple sectors. The absence of a robust threshold may undermine industrial relations by encouraging strike action that lacks clear, broad-based support among employees. This could erode morale, create internal divisions and reduce trust between management and staff, ultimately affecting organisation productivity and the wider economy. I grew up in the 1970s; we do not want to go back to the 1970s.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 149A—and Amendment 149, spoken to very ably by my noble friend Lord Evans of Rainow. He is absolutely right about the qualifying percentage. Not long ago, I was thumbing through my copy of the Labour Party rules, as you do; the template rules of the Labour Party. I noticed that regional executive council meetings of that party have a quorum of 33% in terms of any decisions made in the deliberations of that committee. If the Labour Party is going to impose a less than 50% and certainly less than 33% marker for decisions being made internally, it is odd that it does not take a similarly robust attitude towards important decisions that affect many workers in industrial landscapes and industrial relations.

Amendment 149A addresses a very perverse consequence—the decision, in terms of Clause 72, to remove proper organised supervision of industrial disputes in the industrial landscape that we have at the moment. It is pretty odd that there does not appear to be a rationale for this. It seems sensible and prudent for us to be in a position where trade union officials are responsible for ensuring that there is an orderly management of industrial disputes. No case has been made by Ministers, in Committee or at Second Reading, for why it is necessary, other than demands from the trade unions to remove that part of previous legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

The Labour Party’s Green Paper, A New Deal for Working People, endorsed by the Labour Party conference in 2021 and 2022, committed the party to regulation of industrial action law which complied with international law. The situation is that the supervisory bodies of the ILO since 1989 and of the European Social Charter since 1991 have repeatedly found that the UK’s ban on secondary action is in breach of the respective treaties that I have mentioned. The ILO most recently proclaimed this in 2024, in the report from the Committee on Freedom of Association on the P&O Ferries scandal. The European Social Charter body most recently repeated the same conclusion in its cyclical report on the United Kingdom in 2023. In my respectful view, this situation of international law-breaking by the United Kingdom is simply not tolerable for a country that purports to uphold the rule of law. Therefore, I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. In doing so, I accept that he is very sincere in the arguments that he makes. I would not necessarily wish to dispute his interpretation of ILO regulations or policies, but we are nevertheless being asked to accept the central premise of secondary picketing. Although I agree with the noble Lord—any reasonable person would—that the P&O dispute was an egregious example of malfeasance and inappropriate behaviour by the management, it should not be the basis of industrial policy and legislation that governs employment. On that basis, and with all due respect, I do not think that the noble Lord’s argument is very compelling. It is always bad law to work on the basis of unique circumstances, situations and anecdotes, notwithstanding the fact that we disagree with how P&O Ferries handled that situation, which was pretty lamentable.

That said, in the situation that we now have in the economy, where we have pressure on employment, rising inflation, difficulties in recruitment and ossified GDP growth, and where we are not achieving growth levels that we need, the last thing we need is to make the employment market more disputatious and more litigious. That is what this amendment would do, frankly. If one reads it carefully, the term “connected with” in proposed new subsection 4(a) would probably do a lot of heavy lifting in the future and no doubt be the subject of quite a bit of legal action, one would assume, were it to be incorporated into the Bill. In addition, the change in proposed new subsection 4(b) from employed by “that employer” to by “an employer”—that is, all employers—gives carte blanche, frankly, for going back to the bad old days of the 1970s when we saw behaviour that caused huge disputes and very significant dislocation between the workforce and employers across a wide range of industries.

As others touched on in Committee, and notwithstanding what the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, said about the ILO, this is almost from a different era. We are no longer in the era, or we are less so than we were, of heavily mechanised, heavily unionised manufacturing, where that central argument for having collective action between different groups of workers at different locations—I could mention Saltley coke works and Orgreave, which is very topical—was a pertinent issue. We are no longer in that situation, because of technical change, communication change and the way that people work now. Many more people work from home and many more work on a self-employed basis. They are not accessing unions as members and it is not necessary for them to have that physical collective action.

There are, very briefly, other big philosophical and ideological reasons why it would be bad news were this amendment to be appended to the Bill. There would be a disproportionate impact of secondary picketing, which would undermine the confidence of employers, customers and suppliers in businesses that are not directly involved in the dispute. It would create economic damage that extends far beyond the scope of the actual workforce disagreement. It would unfairly target neutral parties. Secondary picketing affects businesses and workers in the supply chain who have no direct involvement in the original dispute. These neutral employers face disruption to their operations, despite having no control over, or responsibility for resolving, the underlying conflict. There would obviously be a multiplier effect in the economy of such disruption. There are also legal and fairness arguments and contractual rights. Secondary picketing can interfere with existing contractual relationships between neutral businesses and their customers, suppliers or employees, which undermines the security of commercial contracts and business relationships.

There is also the right to work. Workers at secondary sites who are not party to the original dispute have their own right to work without interference; secondary picketing would, of course, impinge on that right. Secondary picketing can effectively coerce those workers into supporting a cause that they may not agree with or have a stake in. In terms of property rights, secondary picketing often takes place on or near the property of businesses uninvolved in the dispute, potentially interfering with property owners’ rights to conduct their business freely.

The rule of law is important as well. There is a reason why there was consensus among the voting public at the 1979 election and onwards, with the continuing legislation brought forward by the Conservative Government, that secondary picketing was essentially retrograde, a bad thing and not good for jobs, prosperity and business.

There is a final point to be made about democratic legitimacy. Secondary picketing can give unions power to disrupt parts of the economy where they lack a democratic mandate from the affected workers, as those workers have not chosen to join the industrial action. The point is that if you wish to go on strike, having gone through the democratic processes of a union workplace ballot at your place of work, that must be respected and it must be proper and within the rule of law. However, imposing that particular dispute on other people through secondary picketing undermines democratic legitimacy.

I say finally that the Blair Government were not perfect, but they looked at this situation, as did the Brown Government, when Labour was in power from 1997 to 2010 and did not essentially resile from a settled position and a consensus on secondary picketing. For that reason, notwithstanding that I respect the great expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, I think that this is an unfortunate amendment and I oppose it.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 150 in the name of my noble friend Lord Hendy, because I think that it is worth taking just a moment to consider the impact of the reduction in union bargaining power that we have seen on ordinary working people in this country. That will not take long, because it is plain to see, in stagnating living standards and the drag on fair growth, but it is also worth considering how the position of the party opposite on industrial action has evolved over time.

In April 1980, the then Secretary of State for Employment, Jim Prior, introduced an Employment Bill which restricted secondary action, but he certainly did not advocate that it should be banned altogether. The then Conservative Government’s position was that secondary action should in fact remain lawful if it related to a first customer and/or supplier that was of direct importance to the original dispute. Jim Prior said that

“the only other position that we could take would be to say that there will be no immunity for anything other than primary action. I do not believe … that that is either a practical or a reasonable position to take”.

He also said that, by protecting the right to take secondary action in relation to a customer or supplier,

“We are seeking to reach a position which we believe is fair and which recognises the traditional rights of the trade union movement”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/4/1980; col. 1490.]

Back then, a Conservative Minister could acknowledge that the relationship between an employer, on one hand, and workers and their unions, on the other, is an inherently unequal one. But, of course, Jim Prior did not last long in that role and, under successive Conservative Governments, the inequality of power between workers and employers was deliberately and repeatedly reinforced.

Secondary action, or solidarity action as it is commonly called, was effectively outlawed in 1990, but here is the problem that I invite noble Lords to reflect on when considering the arguments of my noble friend Lord Hendy. Business was handed a unilateral power to define what secondary action is and, unfortunately, that is an invitation to an abuse of power. This is not an academic point. It was only after a six-week strike in 1984 that Ford sewing machinists finally secured full equal pay, but the victory was short-lived. Ultimately, the company took the decision to outsource those jobs and so avoid any need for pay parity, secure in the knowledge that solidarity action from workers in the customer company would become unlawful. Today, some companies continue to use long supply chains and complex outsourcing arrangements to effectively balkanise workers’ bargaining power. For example, take a company that decides to boost profit margins by targeting one part of the work- force for wage cuts. To prevent fellow workers from participating in industrial action to resist those pay cuts, a company can simply divide itself in two. To paraphrase Jim Prior, is that fair?

UK-France Migration: Co-operation

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises a number of key points. As a Government, we are committed to our international obligations. The noble Lord mentioned the 1951 convention. As he knows, a letter has been circulated by some European Union member states calling for that to be examined. We want to maintain our international obligations, and it is important that we do so. In doing that, we still have to undertake the actions mentioned—I am thankful for the noble Lord’s support on those today—as well as other actions.

The noble Lord mentioned the EU’s interests. On 30 March and 1 April this year, we had a border security summit on organised crime that brought together 50 countries that are impacted by this, including key members of the European Union such as Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, and other countries such as Turkey, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Albania, Nigeria and Pakistan. It is very important that those longer-term issues are addressed.

The people who arrive in northern France have usually entered the European Union via southern Italy or Greece, and sometimes via the borders of Poland and eastern Europe. It is in the EU’s interests to examine the French-British scheme and to ensure, if there are positive lessons to be learned, that it is expanded. It is in nobody’s interest to have criminal gangs operating throughout the EU and in the United Kingdom and the channel. As well as the challenges of that movement, the profits those criminal gangs make are going into drugs, guns and other activity that fuels further crime. I hope that the noble Lord’s fears will not be realised and that we can take action.

The noble Lord said that a large number of people are arriving here. I point him to the figure of 10,191 asylum-related returns that took place last year because of the speeding-up of the asylum-claim process. We are speeding up the asylum-claim process and weeding out those people who have paid for a small boat trip and arrived in the UK but have no legitimate asylum claim whatever, having arrived as economic migrants who did not go through a legal route. Those people are being removed.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Minister very gently that his Government have a duty and responsibility to the tax-paying, law-abiding citizens of this country, not just to supranational legal entities such as the European Court of Human Rights.

On the specific issues, other jurisdictions consider this to be close to a crisis and have actively considered the derogation of Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This Government are not even looking at that. Why is this the case? If Spain, Italy, Germany and other countries can do it, why is it impossible for the UK to at least review the situation? The noble Lord, Lord Empey, is quite right that the 1951 convention is out of date, and it is apposite and totally proper for the Government to review it and how it works for Britain.

The other issue is asylum accommodation. Six months ago, when I raised the issue of the Dragonfly Hotel in Peterborough, which has 146 male asylum seekers, the Minister reassured me that his department would improve its communication with local authorities and other key agencies where new asylum facilities and hotels were being opened. Is that the case? Has there been a demonstrable improvement?

My final question comes in the wake of the rather humiliating rebuff that the Prime Minister received in Albania in May. The House will know that the Government are not in principle against a third-country processing facility. What progress has the Government made to date in identifying an alternative to the Rwanda scheme to facilitate the processing of asylum seeker applications?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful, as ever, to the noble Lord for his questions. I reassure him that the taxpayer is at the forefront of this Government’s thinking about the costs of this illegal migration and the criminal gangs that drive it. It is for those very reasons that we are taking action, not just to secure our borders but also to secure taxpayers’ resource. That is why, this time last year when we inherited the positions we proudly hold now, we were paying roughly £8 million a day in hotel fees: because the then Government were not processing asylum seekers and were not taking the actions we have taken in the last year to have a deterrent effect, in our view, against the criminal gangs. We have managed to reduce those hotel costs to around £6 million a day, saving the taxpayer £2 million a day so far, and we intend to drive it down further.

So I hope I can reassure the noble Lord that border control, dealing with asylum and dealing with the impact of people being returned have a cost to the taxpayer. That is why, as I said—without repeating the figures—we are upping returns, upping processing and making sure that we are taking foreign national prisoners out. We are doing that to reduce the illegal pressure on the United Kingdom’s borders.

The noble Lord asked a very fair question about consultation with local authorities. It is the Government’s intent that we consult with local authorities and, if possible, with elected representatives outside those local authorities—Members of Parliament and others—to ensure that they have an understanding of where that dispersal accommodation goes. If he wants to supply any examples of where that is not working, I will certainly look at them with my ministerial colleagues. It is important that we get that right so that there is consent.

On the international agreements the noble Lord mentioned, as I said, it is the Government’s intention to support our international agreements. Any change from that will be done on an international co-operation basis. We keep everything under review. As the noble Lord knows, in the immigration White Paper we have said we want to redefine Article 8 and how that is interpreted by the judges. We will keep things under review, but this Government will not move from our international obligations. Also, it is not a foreign court; it was established with UK support after the Second World War.