Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, this is an interesting group with two distinct parts. I must confess that I am not immediately drawn to Amendments 184 and 185 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. They would, in effect, incorporate the refugee convention into the domestic law of the UK, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. I therefore cannot accept that, given the unhappy experience that we have had of the Human Rights Act and the unpredictable effect of incorporating an international convention into domestic law. I am not tempted to repeat that mistake. I therefore support the Government in their sensible and inevitable rejection of the amendments that the noble Baroness proposes.

I shall not be drawn into a broader conversation about the suitability of the refugee convention, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, were. It is clearly an interesting and important debate, which builds on comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, about whether, in principle, a well-founded fear of persecution is the correct test for the grant of asylum. These are important and justifiable discussions, but a debate on these amendments in Committee is not the place to have them.

All this takes me to the wording of my Amendment 203I. I invite Members of the Committee who have a copy of the amendment just to look at it for a moment. This amendment emulates the one laid by the noble Baroness in seeking to revise the provisions of earlier statutes. It would amend Section 31 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 by inserting a new subsection (2). This would provide:

“For the purposes of subsection (1) a person is not to be taken to have come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which their life or freedom were threatened as mentioned in that subsection if, in coming from such a country, they passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom where their life or freedom were not so threatened”.


That provision accurately reflects the provisions of Article 31 of the refugee convention.

It is clear that, in 1951, the state parties were of the view that, for an appropriate claim for asylum to be made, it must be made by someone who had come directly from an area where their life or freedom were threatened. The stretching of the term “come directly” to include spending a number of years in another safe country where they could have claimed asylum is a matter of domestic law, which this Parliament is able to revisit. It ties in with my Amendment 203J, which the Committee will recall we debated on 3 September. It is clear that one option open to the Government in creating a disincentive effect is to go back to the original intended wording of the refugee convention.

Amendment 203I is a stand-alone provision because it protects the rights of the United Kingdom as a state party to the convention. It is intended to avoid the deeply regrettable state of our domestic law in respect of this provision of the refugee convention, which has gone far beyond what our international obligations actually are. If noble Lords are worried, as some may be, about our possible repudiation of the refugee convention by some future Government and/or a sizable fraction of the public, they should support measures that reinforce and restate the United Kingdom’s rights as a state party under the refugee convention, and they should align domestic law with the international law.

As Professor Ekins, professor of constitutional law at Oxford, made clear in his 2019 article in the book The Political Philosophy of Refuge, case law has rendered the right afforded to a nation, as stated in Article 31, effectively nugatory. This undercuts self-government and warrants condemnation, I submit, from this Parliament. But its consequences are broader than that, in that, as a consequence, it encourages hundreds of thousands of refugees to become economic migrants, leading to the deaths of potentially thousands at sea; the vast extension of the people trafficking industry, with all the horrors that that entails; and the exposure of European peoples, especially in Greece and Italy, to an ongoing stream of new arrivals, few of whom will ever return home.

The state’s right to exclude asylum seekers and some refugees is an important power that protects the common good of the political community. It preserves the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, on which decent social life and effective self-government depends. The commitments that the states undertook in 1951 in the convention were carefully framed to require refugees to be treated well but not to expose states to an open-ended liability to accept persons fleeing persecution or war, let alone poverty. This amendment restores the meaning—the correct meaning on any reading—of Article 31 of the refugee convention. I commend it to the Committee and the Government.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here right at the beginning. I hope no one will object if I none the less intervene, as I was here for the previous discussion. I think I understand the motivation behind Amendment 184, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. It would not perhaps be regarded by her as necessary if it were not for the nibbling away at the refugee convention in recent years.

I must confess that I am not attracted by the solution of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, which is to say that we will have a complete disconnect between being a party to the refugee convention—sort of parking it over there—and saying that in domestic law we can do whatever we like. Sorry, I do not wish to parody what he said, but he was basically saying that we will do our own thing in domestic law and Parliament will decide what we want to implement. I am not sure that that really honours being a party to the refugee convention.

I am not quite sure whether my legal analysis matches that of other contributors to this debate but, as I read it, the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, does not seek incorporation in the way that the ECHR was incorporated through the Human Rights Act. It is a bit stronger than the assimilation that we have had, such as in the Conservatives’ 1993 immigration appeals Act, which absorbed some of the definitions and wording of the refugee convention. Perhaps some kind of rather British compromise is going on.

What has happened in recent years is that there has been an attempt to ignore aspects of the refugee convention. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is more expert on the refugee convention than I am, but I cannot really follow his assertion that his Amendment 203I would restore the correct reading or interpretation of Article 31. I do not know where he gets that from. Article 31 is worded as it is; it says anyone “coming directly”. It does not incorporate any kind of wording like that in his amendment. It just says someone “coming directly”; it does not say that they have not come directly if they have passed through or stopped in another country. I have a vague recollection that there is case law that says if someone passes through rather quickly—there are probably other qualifications, but with no intention to stay and not staying several years somewhere—then that would be ignored. That would be de minimis and it could still be concluded that they had come “directly” to the UK. I do not think the definition of “directly” has to be absolutist. No doubt the noble Lord will correct me, but I do not understand where this assertion that he is restoring the correct interpretation of the refugee convention comes from.

Rather like with the ECHR, if there is a belief that the convention itself is wrongly worded or not fit for purpose—I do not agree with that interpretation of either the ECHR or the refugee convention—then we should attempt to get an assembly of the state parties to change it. Obviously, there are some people who want to pull out of the ECHR, which is something that I vehemently disagree with, but even going short of that and saying, “We can stay a member but we’ll just make sure that we subvert and undermine it”, seems disingenuous and even dishonest. Be up front: if you want to try to change the refugee convention or the European Convention on Human Rights then try to get all the parties together and attempt to do so, but trying to pretend that we belong but do not really want to implement the provisions seems the worst of all worlds.

For instance, it is true that Article 31 of the refugee convention refers to “illegal entry or presence” but that has morphed, in current terminology, into describing people as illegal—“illegal immigrants”, a term that I will never accept. People cannot be illegal. I prefer the term irregular entry, because if someone arrives, applies for asylum and is granted it, having been described as illegal seems an unfortunate beginning. I am stuck with the fact that the refugee convention uses that term, but it does not refer to the persons themselves as illegal, which is what has happened in modern political and media commentary, which I deplore, frankly. That is just an example. I would prefer the refugee convention to be changed to say “irregular entry and presence”, until it is illegal presence. Once they have been refused asylum and they need to leave, they then have a different status. Anyway, I digress slightly.

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I turn now substantively to Amendment 203I from the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, also spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. This would narrow the UK’s current interpretation of Article 31, preventing refugees who travelled to the UK through a safe third country from relying on a defence under Section 31, even when it was not reasonable for them to have sought protection in that country. This amendment risks undermining the intention of Article 31 of the convention. As I said, I am not entirely clear how, if we were applying that principle in good faith, we would be taking in many potential asylum seekers at all.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The noble Lord says, rather speedily, that it would undermine the intention of Article 31. How does he know what the intention is if it uses the words “coming directly”?

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, we now turn, in my submission, to probably one of the most important groups of amendments on the Bill, which I am sure will promote some discussion and likely much disagreement. That is perhaps something to be welcomed.

The stated aim of the Human Rights Act, when it was introduced, was to bring rights home. It incorporates 16 rights derived from the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law and was itself enacted to satisfy the obligations placed on the British Government by Article 1 of the ECHR. This was all to satisfy a noble purpose: to make sure that human rights in the United Kingdom were protected and upheld. But we have seen the corruption of this noble purpose no more keenly than when we see how it has been applied to matters of immigration and deportation.

To give an example, noble Lords will no doubt be familiar with the horrific abuses inflicted on girls by the Rochdale grooming gangs. Two of the Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders, Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf, fought deportation by claiming their right to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is also Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. Rauf even gave up his Pakistani citizenship just to make sure that we could not deport him. He lost his appeals, yet he is still here: still in Rochdale, still living among the people whose lives he destroyed.

It is clear that, under the straitjacket imposed on us by the Human Rights Act, our country has lost control of the asylum system. Hundreds of thousands of people have come here claiming to be refugees—far more than politicians before us ever imagined—almost all passing through neighbouring countries which are perfectly safe. Tens of thousands of them will receive taxpayer-funded legal aid, which is spent on lawyers competing to devise ever more ingenious legal arguments to keep them in the country.

Let me give your Lordships some more examples. One woman, who was refused leave to remain, deliberately joined a terrorist organisation to manufacture a claim that she risked imprisonment back home. A convicted paedophile evaded deportation by claiming he was gay and that his life would be at risk in his home country. And let us not forget the Albanian criminal who claimed in February that he could not be deported because of his son’s sensitivity around food, the sole example given in court being his aversion to foreign chicken nuggets. The immigration tribunal ruled that his deportation would breach his Article 8 rights, as it would apparently have an “unduly harsh” impact on his son.

Every day we see these kinds of cases reported, and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, mainly adult men, take the risk of crossing the channel in small boats because they know that we cannot remove even criminals and terrorists. Indeed, we pay their legal fees to help them stay. We have seen this unjust situation unfold further with the Government’s returns deal with France. The week before Parliament broke for recess saw the first two flights leave with no migrants on board. Those who were due to be deported on those flights had their deportation orders halted by the High Court due to concerns about human trafficking and torture. The new Home Secretary herself admonished those trying to use the Human Rights Act and the ECHR to prevent their deportation as

“making a mockery of our laws”.

How can this situation be a reflection of the laudable aims that heralded the incorporation of the ECHR into our statute book in 1998? The simple answer is that it is not. The dream has become a nightmare, and the time has come for us to do something about it. That is why I and my noble friends on these Benches have tabled this amendment.

There is a point I wish to clarify here. After the excellent, thorough report of my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, the Conservative Party has committed itself to repealing the Human Rights Act and leaving the ECHR. While it is no longer the policy of the Official Opposition simply to disapply the Human Rights Act for immigration cases, this Bill does not present us with the opportunity to repeal the HRA. To do so would require a Bill of its own. This amendment is therefore the avenue through which we are able at this stage to facilitate discussion on the impact of our continued membership of the ECHR.

I know that some noble Lords in your Lordships’ House today will disagree with me. As I have already said, the debate is welcome, but I ask those who disagree whether our situation now, this minute, is one that the Human Rights Act is working to improve. Has the Human Rights Act protected the victims, their families and communities in Rochdale? Has it protected our people from the paedophiles who continue to languish in the United Kingdom because we cannot deport them? Does it help or hinder people smugglers who use it to reassure the people they are transporting that they will not be removed? The answer is clear: the Human Rights Act in this context does not uphold human rights. It aids and abets abusers in their abuse. Trauma is continued and renewed because of the Act. The rights of our people come second to the rights of child abusers and terrorists, who hide behind the Act to remain on our shores, to remain a threat to our people and to remain a source of terror and pain for the people they have already harmed. We are prevented from deporting those who show flagrant disrespect for the laws passed by our sovereign Parliament, but even more fundamentally it prevents us enacting the wishes of the British people. This is an untenable situation that we must swiftly seek to remedy.

I further welcome the amendments to Amendment 189 tabled by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth; they perform an important function in strengthening its purpose. While that amendment would disapply the Human Rights Act from immigration legislation, my noble friend’s additions would ensure that the mechanisms contained in Sections 4 and 10 of the Human Rights Act are also expressly excluded. In practice, this means that the courts would not be able to issue declarations of incompatibility in relation to immigration law; nor would Ministers be able to use remedial orders to alter such legislation on human rights grounds. That would close off any backdoor reintroduction of Human Rights Act challenges into this field, and it would provide the clarity and certainty that are essential if this policy is to be delivered effectively. I therefore strongly support these amendments as a logical and necessary reinforcement of the central principle of Amendment 189.

As has been said in the other place, now is the time for radical decisions. This is an amendment the Government should welcome if we are to stand up for the rights and well-being of the British people. I beg to move.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, as foreshadowed by my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower, I have two amendments in this group that seek to amend the Front Bench disapplication provision for the Human Rights Act. Of course, disapplication feels rather “yesterday”; the Overton window on the question of human rights law is now clearly swinging in favour of repeal of the Human Rights Act, following the excellent report produced by my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and the announcement of the party’s new policy. Be that as it may, for the purposes of this Bill, the correct approach, which I suggest the Minister should grasp with both hands, is to disapply the effect of the convention and the operation of the Act in the sphere of immigration decisions.

Disapplying the Human Rights Act from this area is not unprecedented. As the Minister will recall, this provision was incorporated, in a slightly different form, in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act, and it was clearly a matter that passed both Houses of Parliament. It is both a precedented and a necessary step.

I turn briefly to the context for my amendment. The amendment itself would add two further provisions to the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Davies: that is, to include in the operation Section 4 of the Human Rights Act, which is the court power to make a declaration of incompatibility, and Section 10, which is a power to remedy any incompatibility by means of a statutory instrument. As Policy Exchange observed in its paper on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act in December 2023, that disapplication provision did not mention Sections 4 and 10 and was the worse for it, because the experience has been that, where a court can make a declaration of incompatibility, those matters are taken almost automatically by the Government as warranting some sort of remedial step.

No Government so far have ignored a declaration of incompatibility, to my knowledge. For example, in the recent case where the Northern Irish High Court found an incompatibility in the legacy Act, the decision of the Government was to bring forward a remedial order to have the effect of suspending the operation of the provisions of that Act without waiting for primary legislation, itself a controversial move. To avoid that situation recurring, I have tabled these amendments to exclude from any potential challenge to immigration-related decisions a decision by a court to make a declaration of incompatibility, or a decision by a Government to attempt to remedy it by making a remedial order under Section 10 of the Human Rights Act.

It is clearly time that we took back control of the United Kingdom’s borders. This Government, and particularly this Home Office, know the difficulties that trying to operate within the constraints of the Human Rights Act has generated as it has evolved. I encourage the Minister to accept a provision similar to this so that he can implement the policies of his Government.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when the Government first came into power last year, great emphasis was placed by the Prime Minister and his Attorney-General on the importance of the rule of law and in particular respect for international law. We were told that there was no way the Government would revisit the Human Rights Act or seek to amend the ECHR. Attitudes appear to have changed.

The previous home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said that the Government would bring in

“a clear framework set out by parliament that then can be much easier for the courts to interpret”.

I am not quite sure what that means, but she was talking about the application of human rights guarantees to various claims for asylum, in particular in relation to Article 8. It may have been a coincidence that this statement followed quite shortly after Reform had announced its policy on asylum claims.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We are identifying challenges that the Government have responsibilities to identify and work on. The challenges that we are identifying exist for some of the reasons mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. Issues to do with applications of Articles 3 and 8 are causing some challenges.

That does not mean we have to withdraw from human rights or ECHR legislation. We can either work with further UK amendments, to support changes to that legislation while retaining the spirit of the law that we apply, or—I was going to go on to say this before taking the intervention—actively engage with our European partners and the Council of Europe to consider what international reforms could restore the right balance between individual rights and wider public interest in controlling migration. As the noble Lord will know, this is a shared challenge. The basic rights set out in the ECHR and Human Rights Act are still valid today, but this does not mean that it is a static, permanent document that cannot be looked at in certain areas. As I have said, work is under way on reviewing the application of Articles 3 and 8 in immigration cases.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. In this new piece of legislation on Articles 3 and 8, will the Home Office be able to certify in its new Bill that the new provision will be compatible with the convention rights, or will it certify that they are not?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I suggest that the noble Lord tests me on these matters when we have, as I have said, undertaken the work, reviewed potential legislation, brought forward proposals and put them before both this House and the House of Commons. Either I or a Minister in the House of Commons will have signed the Bill at that stage, in terms of those issues, but we are a number of steps away from that.

At the moment, we have assessed—this goes back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, mentioned—that Articles 3 and 8 have some challenges, but the principle is not to do what the Opposition seek, which is to withdraw from this in its entirety and, in doing so, withdraw from a range of international obligations that we share with many countries and which underpin the work of this United Kingdom in so many areas. That is not my natural approach to this challenge. With due respect to noble Lords, let us have that debate and, if need be, let us have that vote at some point. We will be on different sides of that argument.

To the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, I say this: bear with us. We will bring forward the points that I have tried to make in tonight’s debate on Articles 3 and 8. They will be examined when the Government have had an opportunity both to examine them in detail—now that we are in government, as opposed to being outside the tent in opposition—and to bring forward proposals that will help in a way that builds consensus with our partners on what ECHR reform could look like. At the recent European Political Community Summit, 17 nations, including the UK, agreed to work together to ensure that the ECHR and other international frameworks are implemented in a way that safeguards against abuse so that Governments can tackle modern challenges.

The UK is committed to complying with international law. If we accepted the amendments from those opposite, we would not be, in my view, complying with international law. That includes implementing judgments of the European court and complying when it indicates binding interim measures in pending cases; when the court has reformed and improved its approach to interim measures, which I currently welcome, we will abide by those also.

In summary, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, can be patient. To the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Murray, I say this: I am sorry that we are not going to agree, but I hope that I have explained the reasons why.

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Moved by

[Lord Murray of Blidworth]

203F: After Clause 48 insert the following new Clause—
“Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber)(1) All judgments of Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) must be published on a Government website within three days of being made.(2) Judgments published under subsection (1) may be anonymised to the extent considered necessary by the Tribunal.”

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 203F and 203G deal with the publication of tribunal decisions. First, I thank my supporters in this amendment, the noble Lords, Lord Faulks, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Alton of Liverpool. These amendments deal with an important issue and I should outline what the current position is in relation to the publication of judgments.

In the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), decisions of the judges are not routinely published. In the Upper Tribunal, which hears appeals from the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), decisions are published, although not all decisions may be reported. Bearing that in mind, I then invite the Committee to note that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, sitting judicially in the case of Cape Intermediate Holdings v Dring, 2019, United Kingdom Supreme Court 38, found that the purpose of the open justice principle was twofold.

The first purpose is to enable public scrutiny of the way in which courts decide cases, to hold judges to account for the decisions they make and to enable the public to have confidence that judges are doing their job properly. The second is to enable the public to understand how the justice system works and why decisions are taken. The First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) is one of the largest of the seven chambers of the First-tier Tribunal. Of the other chambers, the Tax Chamber, the Property Chamber, formerly the Lands Tribunal, and the General Regulatory Chamber, which deals with Information Commissioner matters, among other things, all routinely publish their decisions on the website. Furthermore, the Employment Tribunal, which, although not part of the First-tier Tribunal, is a tribunal of even jurisdiction, also publishes all its decisions on the website. But the First-tier Tribunal does not do that. Its decisions are made behind what is effectively a curtain of secrecy.

This is no small number of cases. In 2020-21, the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) disposed of 20,000 appeals. In 2021-22, it disposed of 41,000 appeals. In 2022-23, it disposed of 38,000 appeals and in the last year we have numbers for, 2023-24, it was 39,000 appeals. It will come as no surprise that it is plainly in the public interest to have openness and transparency of decision-making. There should be public scrutiny of the decision-making of the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). There is no basis for there not being transparency and publication of judgments of the First-tier Tribunal.

It is of course open to litigants in the First-tier Tribunal to apply to the tribunal for an order that the identity of everybody in the case be anonymised in the decision, so no risk to anyone participating in the case would be occasioned by the publication of the decision. The Supreme Court, in the case of Kambadzi in 2011, made it clear that, while anonymity needed to be justified in each case, there is now an expectation that in asylum cases there are frequently anonymity orders. So there is no argument that the non-publication of First-tier Tribunal decisions is to protect the people participating in the cases. There is, in fact, absolutely no coherent basis for not publishing these decisions, and this is made all the worse because there is very significant public interest in this decision-making.

I venture to suggest that the judges of the First-tier Tribunal would welcome the additional openness and transparency. We hear cases reported in the press: for example, the famous “Case of Theresa’s cat”, as it was called in the Daily Mail, and the “Chicken Nuggets Case”. We can all think of cases which have been reported by reason of matters which are identified as amounting to a breach of Article 8 or Article 3 of the convention. If the decisions were published in an accessible way on the internet, like all the other decisions in the other tribunals I listed, the press could immediately go to the decision and see whether that particular feature was, in fact, decisive in the decision-making.

And it cuts both ways. Not only would it be open to a journalist or researcher to analyse the methods by which decisions are taken by the judges of the First-tier Tribunal; they could analyse it by reference to the individual judge. Allegations of bias may be rebutted, or indeed it may be found that particular judges are refusing all cases. It does not favour one side of the argument or the other; it is simply fair and appropriate that these judgments be published.

The only reason which I can discern that these decisions are not published at present is that it has been the practice hitherto. Since 2007, on the formulation of the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum) chamber, there has been a practice direction. There is nothing in statute, and the judges one speaks to can see no good reason why those decisions are not published. We know the tribunal service can manage it, because it manages it in the tax chamber, the property chamber, the general regulatory chamber and in the employment tribunal; it is the same tribunal service. Furthermore, it has all the judgments electronically in any event, so there is no cost argument and no process argument.

This is an amendment whose time has come. The Government should accept it at this stage and appreciate that this is something that warrants careful consideration. I beg to move.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is not obvious how there could be any sensible objection to this group of amendments. They are all concerned with open justice. There are many well-known judicial utterances about the importance of this, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, quoting the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale. I like a recent one from a Scottish judge, Lord Carloway, who said this:

“Open justice has two key elements. The first is that proceedings are heard and determined in public. The second is that the public should have access to judicial decisions, including any reasons given for them and the identity of the parties. As a proxy for the wider public, the media have an important role. Reporting on court and tribunal cases is vital to ensuring public confidence in the justice system and the rule of law. The public would lose confidence in the courts if they could not understand what decision had been reached and why it had been reached”.


The 188-page report from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, has already been mentioned on more than one occasion. Referring to these decisions, in paragraph 48 he said this:

“A further difficulty in this area is that many of these decisions are not reported, making accountability difficult, and often these only come to light on appeal to the Upper Tribunal”.


There, he is referring to the First-tier Tribunal. In paragraph 50 of the same report, he said

“there may well be low-quality decision making going on in the initial stages, much of which is never corrected”.

In whose interests can it be to keep these decisions out of the public domain? For those who defend the decisions, they can illustrate the point; for those who attack them, they will have much better evidence. It cannot seriously be doubted that the decisions at the moment are of particular importance. Please can the public know what is being decided and why?

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[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Faulks, for their Amendments 203F and 203G, which seek to introduce mandatory publication of immigration and asylum judgments from the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal. I agree that accountability and transparency are absolutely vital for building trust and credibility in the immigration system. However, it remains the case that the judiciary is responsible for decisions on publishing individual judgments, including judgments of the immigration and asylum chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. The Government do not consider it necessary to legislate to change the current arrangements.

Members of the public and the media can still apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a copy of the judgment in a specific case, and the request will be considered by the president of the immigration and asylum chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. On the other hand, judgments of the immigration and asylum chamber of the Upper Tribunal, which determines appeals against First-tier decisions on points of law, are already routinely published online. Appeals to the Upper Tribunal are made on points of law, meaning that these decisions are likely to be of most interest and use to practitioners of the law and to the public through the lens of media outlets. Given the status quo, we see no reason to change it, and we feel that it is not simply a matter of transparency but of independence of the judiciary—

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Is it the Government’s position that they would like to see the publication of these decisions, but it is a matter for judges to decide? Or is it the Government’s position that they would not like to see the publication of these decisions? If it is the former, what are the Government going to do to encourage judges to make that change, if they will not accept this amendment?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

Members of the public or any interested parties can apply to have decisions of the First-tier Tribunal published, and it is the case that that can be decided by members of the judiciary. We see no reason—to sidestep the binary choice the noble Lord presents—to enforce that position on the judiciary.

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[Lord Katz (Lab)]

It would probably ill behove me to predicate my answer on legislation that I have yet to see. As and when we get to the passage of that legislation, we can perhaps revisit this conversation, and he might want to bring back my words to haunt me, but as it currently stands, I cannot talk about legislation that, frankly, I have not seen.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank the Minister. I am obviously familiar with how difficult life can be at that Dispatch Box, and I have a great deal of respect for the Minister, who is of course deputising for the noble Lord, Lord Hanson. However, I am afraid his answers were not very satisfactory. In fact, if you had asked a First-tier Tribunal judge whether they would accept submissions made on the basis that “We like it how it is”, I suspect that you might get short shrift.

Therefore, although I am of course content to withdraw the amendments for now, I anticipate that we will bring them back on Report. I anticipate that this House will pass these amendments—it is obviously very interested in open justice and in the publication of judgments—so the world can see how our human rights decisions are made in immigration claims. Would the Government really try to overturn this in the House of Commons on the basis that “This is how it has been done, so we will leave it”? I find that difficult to believe. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 203F withdrawn.

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In all, it gives a workable solution to a serious problem which has a wide impact on universities, communities and the taxpayer. I understand that the Government recognise this problem and hope to tackle it, but I hope this amendment will be helpful towards a solution. I beg to move.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Perhaps I may add one brief point in support of my noble friend’s amendment. The statistics clearly show that the abuse of student visas by people who come here, have a period as a student or as a purported student, and then choose to try to extend their time here by claiming asylum is a significant problem. The amendment would force a genuine asylum seeker to lodge their claim once they reached the safe country of Britain, and two days is plenty of time to do that. On their arrival, they can make that claim for asylum. Having this rule in place would provide a significant deterrent for those who seek to abuse our asylum system in an attempt to extend their stay in the United Kingdom. For that reason, I certainly support this amendment.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak broadly in favour of Amendment 203L, tabled by my noble friend Lady Lawlor. At its core, this amendment seeks to prevent the abuse of the student visa route by using it as a back door to asylum. This recognises an important principle. Those who enter the United Kingdom in one set of circumstances should not then be permitted to rewrite those circumstances once they have got here.

A student visa is granted on trust. It is granted to those who come here to study, not to those who claim asylum. When someone applies for such a visa, they do so on the clear understanding that they are entering this country for educational purposes. If, once here, they make an asylum claim that was not mentioned at the point of entry and, indeed, do so days, weeks or months later, they are by definition acting under false pretences unless there is a good reason for it—and I will come to that in a moment. The asylum system exists to protect those who are genuinely fleeing persecution, not to reward those who seek to manipulate our visa system for other ends. Where individuals apply dishonestly, where they misrepresent their reasons for coming to the United Kingdom, we cannot simply turn a blind eye and reward that deception with the right to remain.

On this side, we on the Front Bench have a qualification: we cannot be blind to the fact that circumstances in someone’s home country may change after arrival. A student in the United Kingdom on a student visa may find that, in their absence, their home country becomes unsafe for them personally to return. They may therefore become eligible for asylum during the time they are in the United Kingdom on a student visa.

The amendment as drafted prevents any asylum claim being made if someone has entered on a student visa. That is a strong prohibition. If this were clarified in some way, with a carve-out for those who can establish that the situation has genuinely changed in their home country while they are here, we would commend consideration of an amendment to address that situation. So I ask my noble friend Lady Lawlor to consider whether the amendment should be redrafted.

For their part, the Government must stop the abuse of student visas under the current system. They should equally ensure that, in the appropriate but, I hope, reasonably exceptional circumstances where there has been a genuine change, such people are protected.