Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

These amendments provide some specific suggestions, such as reporting on what is happening, and itemising the actions and operations that are the subject of UK involvement, particularly on smuggling, for the UK to provide sufficient resources to enable our agencies to participate in Europol projects and operations. Aside from saying that these are brilliant amendments and he will accept every word, I would like to hear from the Minister, in fairly concrete terms, where exactly we are in co-operating with Europol. We have probably heard quite enough about pledges, aspiration and intent. A little flesh on the bones would not go amiss. I beg to move.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I have some points to make on these amendments and some questions, which the Minister or the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, may be able to deal with at the end.

Amendment 100 proposes a requirement to produce an annual report. I am broadly not in favour of these. They seem to just dump a load of bureaucracy on departments, which then have to set up a team of people who spend all their time producing glossy documents that nobody reads, and it takes up a lot of time. I sort of understand why she said it, but the noble Baroness said that, if you have to produce a report, you then have to do some things to put in the report. I do not want the Home Office doing things just to put them in a report. I want it making sensible decisions on our strategic policing choices and doing those things, not things to fill a report up. There is a danger in putting in statute stuff that you have to do. These are not suggestions that the noble Baroness’s amendment is making; departments would have to do them as a priority over other things because it would be a legal requirement. I am not awfully keen on that.

I am not entirely clear—by the way, this is not a request to make the proposed new clause broader—why the noble Baroness has picked just Europol. The problem with organised crime gangs and international groups—Europol deals with not just trafficking but drug trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism and cybercrime—is that these things are global problems, not European problems. Europe as a key territory for us in the issue of people trafficking, but it is not the only place people come from.

We should remember that, large though the small boats problem is, it is still the case that the majority of people who come to the United Kingdom seeking asylum are not coming on small boats but getting here by some other mechanism, including those people who do not have a legitimate claim for asylum, and they are coming from countries around the world. Having this skew towards co-operating with just Europol would be unhelpful. I want Ministers and law enforcement agencies to decide which international agencies they are going to co-operate with based on the threat assessment to the United Kingdom, not based on a statutory provision to have to co-operate with one and not the other.

Specifically in Amendment 101, about a joint task force, particularly concerning is subsection (3) of the proposed new clause. The amendment as a whole would force the Secretary of State to set up a joint task force, but, on what the task force has a duty to do, it says that that has to do with

“matters which the Secretary of State or Director of Europol deem appropriate”.

Fundamentally, it is not right that the director of Europol in effect gets to pick the priorities on which the Secretary of State is then forced to spend resources and focus, even if the Secretary of State does not agree that those are the things she wants to focus on. I want Ministers to remain accountable to Parliament and to make decisions that they think are appropriate and justify them accordingly. This would, in effect, give the director of Europol the ability to direct the resources of the British Government and the British taxpayer, which I do not think is appropriate.

I turn to the last amendment in this group, Amendment 206, about participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations. It does not specifically say, but I presume by that we mean human trafficking operations, as opposed to drug trafficking operations. The amendment again would force the Secretary of State, using the word “must”, to

“provide adequate resources to law enforcement agencies for the purpose of enhancing their participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations”.

That means operations that Europol is doing. It does not give the Secretary of State discretion to make a judgment about whether she thinks that we should focus our efforts on those anti-trafficking operations but forces her to make available resources, whether she thinks that is appropriate or not—and I do not think it is.

The scope and territorial extent of the Bill is the whole of the United Kingdom: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I am not entirely certain why, for the purposes of proposed new subsection (1), the law enforcement agencies include only the National Crime Agency, police forces in England and Wales, and the BTP. Excellent force though the BTP is—I had some responsibility for it in the past—I do not know why Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland are not included. Look at the breadth of Europol’s operations. It seems to me that Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland will be absolutely interested in countering terrorism, cybercrime, drug trafficking and human trafficking. Particularly given Northern Ireland’s position, with a land border with a part of the European Union, it seems to me extraordinary that the amendment does not include the Police Service of Northern Ireland. That is an omission. There is a danger once you start listing things in primary legislation. My understanding of how interpretation works is that, by not including things in a list, you make it less possible for them to have the powers than if you had not had a list at all.

Much as I understand the objective and think it perfectly reasonable—to improve co-operation with our partners in other countries on what is, inevitably, a transnational crime—the focus on Europol, and then not looking at other organisations and international law enforcement bodies we could be partnering with, would skew our focus. Ministers ought to be able to make judgments about where we put our resources. We do not have infinite resources. Ministers should have to decide, and law enforcement bodies should be able to choose, where the threats are and what the priorities are on an operational basis, day to day and month to month, not by looking at primary legislation.

I think the fundamentals are misconceived, but there are quite a lot of problems, even if you thought that the fundamentals were not misconceived, in the way that the amendments have been drafted. I hope the noble Baroness will not press them. If she comes back on Report with amendments crafted in perhaps a more focused way, we could look at them further. However, in the way they are set out at the moment, they are not going to deliver the objectives she is hoping they would. I hope the Minister can touch on some of those points when he responds, and the noble Baroness may want to address them when she winds up at the end of this group.

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[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for that helpful information.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Forgive me, but I just want to be clear, because I think the noble Baroness may have, I am sure inadvertently, misunderstood me. I am very supportive of us co-operating with Europol. We did when I was in government as Immigration Minister, we do now, and I want us to continue to. I also want us to co-operate with law enforcement agencies around the world. What I do not want to do is fetter either agencies or the Government by skewing priorities towards only one of them. I want them to co-operate with all relevant agencies and make those decisions based on the threat assessment and the operational need. I want to do all those things, but I am very supportive of our co-operation with Europol and always have been. I do not want her to run away with the impression that I am not.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Swire’s two amendments, which are well-intentioned, well drafted and have the right approach. Strengthening the ability of state agencies to be able collect this information would be very helpful.

However, at this point, I part company with my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which I do not do very often. I will not allow him to tempt me at length on this, but I do not agree with him at all on ID cards. I hope she does not find that it damages her reputation, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, on this point. She asked the right question: how does having ID cards solve any of these problems?

In his excellent introduction, my noble friend Lord Swire highlighted that we already require people who come to this country as migrants to have identity documents and that their biometric information is on a database. We require those who employ them, for example, to check their employment status. There is a gap in that, which we will come to deal with in later groups on Clause 45. The Government rightly are looking to strengthen that to include not just traditional employment models but some of the new employment models that are not currently captured but which have been highlighted publicly, including by the shadow Home Secretary, when talking about the problem that the gig economy, for example, and those who deliver things are not captured by the traditional models. That is important, but we already require people to check that information. Those employers who are operating illegally and choose not to do it still will not do it even if we have ID cards.

My worry about ID cards—and then I will stop talking about them, because it is not strictly within the scope of these things—is that you put the burden on those of us who are lawfully in the country and who should not have to keep being asked for ID when we have the right to use such services. All the public services that we access, including the NHS—except, rightly, for emergency care—the DWP and so on, require you to evidence that you have a right to be in the country and to access those services. We rightly do not insist that the NHS does it for emergency care, but, if you go to a hospital for planned treatment, they will check that you are entitled to have free NHS care. They may not always do so, but they are legally supposed to—those checks already exist.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I have to ask my noble friend a fundamental question. Regarding the biometric data that we currently retain across all the agencies of government, if that system is working, why have the Government—and indeed the previous Government, who he served and I supported—no idea how many illegal immigrants there are in the country? Why do they have no idea of the veracity of the estimate that one in 10 of the 9 million people in Greater London are illegal immigrants? We simply do not know the numbers. ID cards may not be perfect, but they may go some way to enabling us to have a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the challenge facing us in the delivery of public services. At the moment, we are flying blind and cannot use the data. The Government simply do not know how many people are in the country.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

I was coming to this. This is where I do agree with my noble friend. There is a big difference between having ID cards—which, in effect, puts the burden on the rest of the population and would not materially affect how we deliver services or protect ourselves—and data. His point about the state needing to be better at collecting and using data is a very good one. I was always sceptical about the state using data, but we have seen how the private sector uses it effectively to deliver better services.

Having had some responsibility in the past for some of our agencies and having used their services, I know that people sometimes have concerns and have the “big brother” conversation. One thing I know is that the powers of our intelligence agencies, for example, are on a legal footing under the Investigatory Powers Act. There are very clear controls within which Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament, have to make decisions. In the past, I have signed warrants for intercepting communications, and there are very clear rules about how that works. All that is overseen by a judicial check, to make sure that the law is being enforced properly.

I think there are appropriate safeguards and that we could do a better job in collecting and using data and delivering services. The private sector does a much better job at this. This is true across government, not just in the Home Office but in the NHS and other organisations that use data. I distinguish between the two points. I absolutely support collecting and using data to deliver services, but I do not think it follows from that that we will have to require people to carry identity documents.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

To adjudicate between my noble friends Lord Harper and Lord Jackson, I think that my noble friend Lord Harper has a point. We can do something short of full-scale electronic data collection and the identity card system. The problem at the moment, frankly, is the cost, and it was a problem at the time. My noble friends may recall the cost—I think it was £3 billion or something of that order—to install a full ID system all those years ago, during the Blair Government. God knows what the Chancellor of the Exchequer would do if she was suddenly presented with the cost of a full ID system. However, I agree with my noble friends Lord Harper and Lord Swire that we need more data, particularly in the area of immigration, where we simply do not know what is going on, in London or anywhere else.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his attempt to adjudicate between me and my noble friend Lord Jackson. He makes a good point. This is where the state needs to get much better at using data to make policy decisions—by the way, this is not a criticism of the current Government; we had our challenges in office as well—and operational decisions, deal with threats and be nimble enough to recognise that those threats do not remain static but change. The state has to be much better at altering its focus to deal with the threats as they face us today.

I regret that I disagree with my noble friend, as I try not to do so, but I strongly support my noble friend Lord Swire’s amendments, and I hope that they will get a fair hearing from the Government. Even if the Government do not like the way they are drafted or whatever, I hope they will take them away and have a think about whether my noble friend’s amendments make a good point and could be incorporated into the Bill in due course.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for tabling these amendments relating to the provision of biometric information by those seeking entry into the United Kingdom. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Harper and Lord Jackson for that interesting duel, which contributed greatly to this debate.

Amendment 102 would extend the powers under Section 141 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 by mandating the collection of biometric information from those awaiting deportation, those who have been arrested for an immigration offence and asylum seekers. Currently, the ability to collect fingerprints from such people is optional, and therefore we cannot be certain that immigration officers are collecting enough information to enable sufficient protection of our borders. My noble friend’s amendment goes further and would require the fingerprinting of everyone who is not a British citizen who seeks to enter the country. My noble friend has raised this issue on numerous occasions, and he is right to do so. If we do not know who has entered our country, and indeed who is already here, we cannot take adequate measures to prosecute crimes and deport those with no right to be here.

Importantly, my noble friend is proposing that we use biometric information primarily in cases where the person in question has failed to provide us with any other form of identification that would show who they are, where they came from and why they wished to enter the UK. These are not needlessly intrusive questions. Noble Lords who are lucky enough to travel abroad this summer will be asked exactly those questions, and rightly so. Every nation has to understand who is coming in. As I have mentioned before, the consequences of not knowing can be dire. I remind noble Lords that the massive Iranian terror attack, which was only just intercepted, was plotted by those who arrived without paperwork on small boats and in the back of lorries.

It is a matter of national security that we know who is entering the UK. My noble friend Lord Swire has proposed a sensible amendment to this Bill, which would give our law enforcement agencies the information they need to begin to build up this picture.

Amendment 149 is also built on this principle and seeks to introduce robust powers, allowing immigration officers to search for, seize, retain and make use of identity documents for certain categories of non-British nationals and to issue biometric registration cards in their place. This amendment once again speaks to the fundamental principle of border security: that we must know who is trying to enter the UK and where they are from, and try to determine why. The amendment has clear provision for returning all documents once the relevant period is passed and is a sensible proposal designed to ensure that our immigration officers have access to as much information as possible when making the decisions needed to safeguard our borders.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Perhaps I can help the noble Lord. If he was in the building, he would have voted that particular way; otherwise, he would not have been a Northern Ireland Minister for very much longer. However, it is immaterial whether he was in the building or not; the Government he supported voted to abolish ID cards. Let me put that to one side, however; it is a debate for another day.

The proposed new clause in Amendment 102 is intended to require all foreign nationals to provide biometric information on arrival to the United Kingdom or face arrest if they fail to do so. I have no problem with biometric information and using it to secure our borders and protect the public. I have no problem with the fact that it is already a cornerstone of our immigration system, as it enables us to identify foreign nationals who are coming in and out of, or staying in, the United Kingdom. Individuals who seek to enter the UK are required to provide biometric information as part of their application for entry clearance or, indeed, an electronic travel authorisation. This allows us to do what I think the noble Lord wants us to do: to verify identity and assess suitability before arrival. We already compare applicants’ fingerprints against immigration and law enforcement databases, and that already enables us to identify those who may pose a threat in coming to United Kingdom. Requiring biometrics to be provided before a person travels to the UK also reduces the need for Border Force officers to deal with people who pose a threat on arrival.

Where a person arrives in the UK without the necessary entry clearance or electronic travel authorisation, we already have existing powers to capture their biometric information, and we can use reasonable force where necessary to do so. We already check biometrics at the UK borders, using e-gates that can match facial images to images contained in passports. For visa holders, we check their fingerprints at the primary control desks. Let me remind the Committee that the Government remain vigilant in their duty to protect our borders. As recently as March 2025, we introduced new legislation which significantly enhanced our ability to collect such biometric information at the border.

I know the noble Lord has good intentions, but were this new clause to be enacted, all foreign nationals would need to provide their biometric information, including people who are normally excused. This would include people who are physically unable to enrol with their biometrics or who are exempt from immigration control, such as sovereigns or heads of state, and that is neither practical nor proportionate.

For me, this is a key issue. The noble Lord and I are both former Northern Ireland Minsters, so he will know that under the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. As part of the common travel area arrangements, the UK does not operate routine immigration controls on journeys within the common travel area, and no immigration checks are undertaken. Under his new clause, we would be unable to implement a policy of taking everyone’s biometric information as they enter Northern Ireland from Ireland without introducing a hard border. I do not think he wants that, but that is what the new clause would mean.

Turning to Amendment 149, on seizing identity documents—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

If the Minister thinks that my noble friend’s amendment has some merit, one way of dealing with this issue as the EU implements its EES checks would be to exchange biometric information with the Irish Republic so that, as people come into the common travel area, we can collect that information. Earlier, we talked about sharing information with our European partners. Dealing with the issue in this way does not require a hard border on the island of Ireland, but it hardens the border around the common travel area, which I think would be welcomed.

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[Lord Horam (Con)]

That is not true; it was offloading as well, because the decisions were taken by the Government in Nauru at the behest of the Australian Government, although they obviously had a back-up situation and did not entirely hand it over. However, if the noble Lord will look at it, he will see that it was very similar to the arrangements with Rwanda. As he will recall, we had not only arrangements with the Rwandan Government but a back-up arrangement—a monitoring committee—which he acknowledged during those debates was composed of the most distinguished international lawyers and so forth, who would check whether anything was going wrong.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I want to draw my noble friend back, in case noble Lords missed it, to the very interesting political point he made—which I can validate from conversations I have had with a member of the Australian Government—that the Australian scheme was introduced by a Liberal Government, the equivalent of the Conservatives, and then reversed by a Labor Government, who realised that they had made a terrible mistake and, when they came back into government, wanted to keep the scheme. Does he think that might be this Government’s experience in trying to deal with this important issue?

[Lord Horam (Con)]

Exactly. It is such a pity. We made the point on ID cards just recently that one of the worst aspects of our system of government is new Governments coming in and instantly reversing policies carried through by the preceding Government. ID cards were an example where my noble friend Lord Jackson admitted that we might have been wrong. In some cases, we were right, by the way—we should have cancelled HS2. My noble friend Lord Harper might not necessarily agree with me there. None the less, sometimes new Governments can get it right as well as get it wrong, but the constant changing of policies of this kind between Governments is a real issue. Australia got it right: the Liberal Government brought it in; the Labor Government then rejected it and realised they were wrong. The Liberal Government brought it back, the Labor Government accepted it, and they now have a bipartisan approach which, in effect, means there is very little illegal immigration into Australia. It is the only extant example of this problem being dealt with.

Not only that, but the success of the bipartisan approach in Australia enabled them to go on to deal with legal immigration very transparently. There is a debate every year with a proposal from the Government on how many legal immigrants should be accepted into the country, broken down by different categories— students, families, workers in various categories, asylum seekers and so forth. That is then is debated in parliament and a view is taken. That is a model of what we are all trying to achieve here. If we could get to that position here with a bipartisan approach and an open debate every year in Parliament, that would be wonderful. This may seem like “Monty Python” land in some ways in its fantasy, but it is a reality in Australia.

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[Lord Horam (Con)]

It was never deployed as a deterrent. As my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower said, it was never put into operation. The idea that the Minister can say that it did not work is nonsense, because it was never actually tried. First, there were all the judicial reviews and additional challenges that were sustained, and then there was the general election, so it never actually happened. It is a myth to believe that it somehow did not work or that it was not a deterrent. We do not know, frankly.

The great pity about all this is that we will never know whether it would have been a deterrent. I fully confess that I do not know whether it would have acted as a deterrent or not; no one could say until we saw the effects. Indeed, in the case of Australia, it was quite a long time before people realised that this was an effective deterrent. It took about 10 years before it was fully realised that this did work and was a means of doing it, and that would likely have been the case here. A policy without a serious deterrent is not really a policy at all; that is the problem.

I am sure the Minister will say that what the Government are now doing with France has considerable potential as a means of deterring people from coming across, but that depends on relations with France. I am all in favour of having favourable relations with France. I believe that the UK and France are particularly important countries in the European context these days, and I fully commend what happened over the last couple of days—I think King Charles in particular played a blinder in bringing the countries together—but none the less, we have to look at whether this will work as a deterrent. I understand that the talks on this are going on this afternoon, and that therefore the Minister may not have much information and may be unable answer questions, but currently only 6% of people will be sent back under this scheme. It is hardly a deterrent to say that 94% of people will stay here and only 6% will be sent back.

Obviously, it is sensible to start in a small way and ramp it up as time goes on, and I am sure that the Minister will argue that, but if you have a whole gamut of people coming over and only a small proportion are returned, what sort of deterrent is that? Will it not also fall foul of the problems that the previous Government had, where any individual who is asked to go back to France immediately has recourse to a lawyer who seeks to keep them here, and maybe succeeds in that effort, and therefore the whole scheme begins to unwind in a morass of legal challenges? That is what happened to the last Government: they became bogged down in a whole series of legal challenges. That is the danger, and that is why we are becoming afraid of the ECHR. The Government have had a year to think about all this. Unless they have a clear plan that encompasses these other extraneous elements that protrude into the problems they have, there is no serious possibility of stopping the boats.

Therefore, while I understand why the Government, having decided not to go ahead with the Rwanda plan, have given themselves the resources that were devoted to Rwanda and used them in a new way to develop the Bill, they will have to go very much further if they hope to stop the boats. I am afraid that we need a much more decisive, thorough and holistic approach to this problem than that we have had so far.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. Unlike a number of noble Lords here, I was unable to take part in the earlier iterations of debate on the Bill. I was a very strong supporter of it, but, as a member of the Government, it was not within my area of responsibility, and I was, sadly, excluded. Therefore, unlike others, I relish the opportunity to volunteer my support for it this afternoon.

Fundamentally, this argument is about whether or not you believe in the deterrent effect. As was mentioned in Tuesday’s debate, and on previous occasions, the challenge we face—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, highlighted this in the Joint Committee’s report when he was introducing his amendments earlier in the week—is the enormous number of displaced people around the world who, under the refugee convention, would potentially have a claim for asylum. The fact is that those volumes cannot all be accommodated here. The extra challenge we get from the issue of small boats crossing the channel goes directly to one’s interpretation of that convention; this was the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised when she talked about people coming across the channel from France.

It is the Joint Committee’s view, but it is not a universal view and it is not my view, that the refugee convention protects people fleeing persecution who come directly to the United Kingdom. Most of these people enter the European Union on the southern borders, so they have crossed—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I will finish the point and then of course I will take the noble Baroness’s intervention. They cross a number of safe European countries before they get to their final safe EU country of France. I absolutely accept that a number of them—not all of them; some of them are economic migrants—are absolutely fleeing persecution, but they have not come directly to the UK, and therefore I do not feel that they benefit from the protection of the convention. On that point, I will take the noble Baroness’s intervention, and then I will make some progress.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. It is not simply what I say or the Joint Committee on Human Rights says; it is the UN High Commission on Refugees, which is given the responsibility of overseeing the refugee convention. It is very clear that the Rwanda Act went against that convention, and it does not accept this interpretation of what coming immediately from a safe country means.

While I am up, the noble Lord talked about all these people coming here, but what proportion of asylum seekers do we in this country take in, as opposed to other European countries? My understanding is that we are not a country that is taking more than our share.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I shall deal with those points briefly. First, I do not accept that the UN is the arbiter of what the convention means. It is our job in this House and the House of Commons to make laws and set out our immigration policies. We should not subcontract that to outside organisations that sometimes have a very eccentric view of the world, and it is not one that is supported by the British people.

This comes down to the point about numbers. I am a strong supporter of our long tradition of taking genuine asylum seekers and refugees in the United Kingdom, but we can do that only if we retain public support for it. I say to those who oppose stronger and tougher controls on who can come here and make it clear that it is only people who follow our laws that they are in danger of forfeiting that public support and confidence. If we do not deal with this issue, at some point—and I think we are getting very close to it—the public will say, “We just don’t want anybody. We’re not interested in their circumstances. We’re not interested in what’s happened. We want to control the number of people that are coming here”. I think that would be a tragedy. I say to those who oppose tougher border controls that they are running a real risk of altering public opinion so that it does not support it.

When we get these schemes right—I referenced earlier in the week the scheme that we set up for those fleeing the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine—they have huge public support. In my part of the world, I had no complaints about the Ukraine scheme. But when people think people are taking the mickey out of us, as they do with these small boat crossings, public support is not there and is not supportive. In a democracy, we should be mindful that we have to carry the public with us.

On this issue of deterrence, I think you have to have a deterrent. My noble friend demonstrated earlier the success in Australia. It was very telling that one political party in Australia opposed the scheme, and then when it came back into government it recognised that it was necessary. Although it would be politically convenient if that happened to this Government—if, in the end, what they are proposing was a failure and they suffered some political damage from it—the bit of me that wants my country to be successful, having had some responsibility for our borders in the past, does not want that to happen. I want to get this right. If we had won the election and been able to implement the Rwanda scheme, it would have been a deterrent. It would have sent a very clear message to people that paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers to cross the channel was a fruitless endeavour. The one thing we know about the people who pay people smugglers is that they expect to get what they pay for and, if they were not able to get to the United Kingdom and stay here, they absolutely would not have carried on paying people smugglers and that business model would have collapsed.

I completely accept that it was perfectly reasonable for people to disagree with the Rwanda scheme in the way that it was set up, whether it was Rwanda or a different country, but the problem the Government have is that Clause 37 repeals our scheme and, as my noble friend said, replaces it with no alternative deterrent at all. We have just seen this afternoon what the Prime Minister has announced. Obviously, we have not seen all the detail—we have just seen the headlines—but a one-in, one-out scheme has now been announced. The problem with that is twofold.

First, as my noble friend said, I am not sure what the legal underpinning of that is. It would be helpful if the Minister could set out whether the scheme that has been announced today, in both its pilot and its full form, will require any further primary legislation to make sure it can be implemented, and if it does need primary legislation, whether it is going to be inserted into this Bill before it leaves the House. Also, I fear it will be subject to enormous legal challenge and the Government will have exactly the same problems as we had with the Rwanda scheme. It will take them ages to be able to scale it up. The final flaw is that the public want to stop the volume of people coming here and, although a one-in, one-out scheme might alter the composition of the people coming, by definition a one-in, one-out scheme will not reduce the numbers. If we can only send somebody back to France and get another person, we might change who they are, but we are not going to deal with the numbers problem at all, so for a lot of the public the scheme will be a failure by its very definition.

As I said, I strongly support what my noble friend said. I think the Government are making a terrible mistake with this clause—not from my perspective, but from their own perspective. They are going to find that, welcome though some of the measures in this Bill are that support the powers the Government have—I have already referred to some of the later clauses that strengthen the controls on those working illegally, and where the Bill has measures in it that are strengthening the system, I support them—completely removing a deterrent without putting anything in its place, not amending it but completely scrapping it, is a mistake, and I fear that the Government will come to regret it. That will not be a good thing. It might be a short-term political advantage for us, but it will not be a good thing for the country. I would rather, if they had some disagreements with the detail of the scheme, that they had reflected on that and altered it.

If there was a clause here that was making changes to the Rwanda scheme—for example, the way it was dealing with the processing, or maybe even picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about who did the processing—that would have at least been an argument that we could have entered into, and it would have been a better argument than scrapping it overnight without anything at all to replace it. I fear the Government will come to regret having done so. We will know from the robust remarks of my noble friend that we did our best to stop them making that terrible mistake. I only hope that we are not proved to be correct.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I remember those long evenings over the last two years when we debated the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. The words of Pyrrhus come to mind, because noble Lords on the then Opposition Benches, particularly the Cross-Benchers and the Liberal Democrats, eventually prevented the Act from happening by a circuitous route. As Pyrrhus said, “One more such victory and we are doomed”. I think that the Government will reap the whirlwind of overpromising to smash the gangs and potentially not delivering.

It is important to make the point again that there is no plan B. We have spent £209 million this year giving money to the French, and yet we are told that we might send back 50 illegal migrants a week. That is one in 17 migrants. At the time when the Rwanda policy was developed, the number of illegal entrants crossing the channel was 45,700 in 2022. We are now in a position where we have had a 55% increase in those channel crossings in the last year, so it is not working.

Of course, my noble friend Lord Horam is right to make the point that it is impossible to judge the efficacy of the policy because it was never rolled out properly. It is no good the Minister complaining about that because his Government, for purely cynical political reasons, decided to draw a line in the sand and curtail and end the scheme. The scheme was popular with the public. Even after the Supreme Court hearing and judgment in November 2023, a Savanta poll found that 47% of people supported it and only 26% were against it.

For too long, our asylum system had been overwhelmed by those who sought to abuse our generosity and bypass legal immigration routes. The current system was not only unsustainable—it still is—but fundamentally unfair to those who follow proper procedures and wait patiently for their applications to be processed through legitimate channels. The Rwanda scheme was always about breaking the business model of people smuggling. The Rwanda partnership addressed the root cause of this crisis by fundamentally disrupting the business model of the criminal gangs that profited from human misery—I think we agree that that is the number one priority.

When people understood that making dangerous channel crossings would not lead to permanent settlement in the UK, the economic incentive for these perilous journeys disappeared. This was not merely theoretical: as my noble friend said, there have been examples of countries working together—Australia, for instance, but also Denmark and Israel—to return irregular or illegal migrants. Far from abandoning our humanitarian obligations, the legislation strengthened our ability to help those most in need. By creating an orderly, managed system, we could better focus our resources on genuine refugees who required our protection. Rwanda, as a safe third country with a growing economy and commitment to refugee protection, offered a new life with dignity and opportunity.

The Act reasserted parliamentary sovereignty in matters of immigration policy. The British people voted repeatedly for Governments committed to controlling immigration. This legislation ensured that elected representatives, rather than foreign courts—I know some noble Lords do not like that term—determine how we implement our policies.

There were economic benefits. We always hear from Ministers how expensive the Rwanda scheme was, but, actually, by the time of the general election, the National Audit Office found that we had spent something like £318 million. That is not an insignificant amount of public money, of course, but the Minister quotes a £700 million figure—I would like him perhaps to write to me to outline how he gets that breakdown, because I am not sure that the NAO would necessarily agree with him. But we are now spending £4.7 billion every year on the asylum system and hotels. So, on a cost-benefit analysis, a scheme that potentially reduced the pull factor was probably better value for money.

The legislation demonstrated Britain’s commitment to international co-operation in addressing global migration challenges. Of course, the Government approved of this in principle. In May, we saw the slightly unedifying sight of the Prime Minister travelling to Albania to go cap in hand to the slightly dubious Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, seeking offshore processing facilities in Albania. Unfortunately, he was several months too late. The Italian Government had gone in before and the charms of Madame Meloni surpassed those of Mr Starmer—I cannot think why. The Government obviously believe in the principle of offshoring the processing of asylum seekers, and it is disingenuous to say that that is not the case. We wish them well if they wish to pursue other opportunities to explore working and collaborating with other countries.

The safety of Rwanda Act 2024 represented compassionate but firm governance—compassionate towards genuine refugees who deserved our protection and firm in our determination to prevent abuses of our asylum system. The legislation delivered on our manifesto commitment of 2019.

But as I said, Labour Peers, Cross-Benchers, Liberal Democrats and Bishops—all unelected and unaccountable —conspired to thwart this legislation; to undermine, traduce and attack the Bill at every turn; not to improve it or to scrutinise it but to wreck it. We should not be surprised at the specious claims by lawyers in this House that the legislation was “unlawful”, which demonstrated their own anti-democratic inclinations and propagated the fiction that unelected courts have sovereignty over our own elected Parliament and a Government with a strong electoral mandate. That is completely wrong. Parliament is supreme, as a casual reference to Sections 7 and 23 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 makes clear.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Politics is about the exchange of views and ideas and the delivery of policies. I think we have reached an impasse. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, and Opposition Back-Benchers think that the scheme would have worked, and the Government think that the scheme was expensive and would not have worked. That is the clear blue—or red—water between us on this. I am grateful for my noble friend Lady Lister’s support for the Government in taking the steps that we have taken.

The UK will also exit the UK-Rwanda treaty as part of ending this partnership and it is therefore appropriate for the Government to repeal the safety of Rwanda Act. Clause 37 will achieve this. In doing so, it is also important that we address the issue that has been endemic in the discussion we have had today, that somehow this was a deterrent and the removal of this clause and the removal of the scheme will therefore end that deterrent. I just refer noble Lords to Clauses 1 to 12 of this Bill, which establish a new Border Security Command and put in place resources of £150 million and £280 million over the next few years to establish very strong action on the meaningful issues that are important to us all.

We have created co-operation with the French, Dutch, Germans and Belgians through the new Border Security Commander on tackling the small boats at source. There is the work that the border commander has been doing with the French Government as part of the preparations for today’s conference between the President of the Republic of France, the Prime Minister and other representatives. There is also the work that the Government will do under Clauses 13 to 17 of this Bill to create new offences to bring people to justice if they provide activity on the issue of supplying articles, handling articles, collecting information and offences committed outside the United Kingdom. There is also Clause 18 on endangering another during the sea crossing to the United Kingdom, as well as powers to search on electronic devices to bring people to justice in that way. This Bill is full of deterrent activity that, if and when implemented by the Government after being passed by both Houses, will make a real difference.

I am pleased to say to the House that, hot off the press today, the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic of France have now finished their deliberations and, speaking with the President at a news conference just a few moments ago, the Prime Minister has confirmed a new UK-France returns pilot scheme. The Prime Minister has said that the scheme will come into force in a matter of weeks. Migrants arriving via small boats will be detained and returned to France in short order. In exchange for every return, a different individual will be allowed to come here via safe and legal routes, which individuals in this House have been pressing this Government to have. There will be strict security checks, open only to those who have not tried to enter the UK illegally. The suggestion is that, under the pilot, 50 people per week will be sent back to France across the channel—as I recall, even in this very week alone, that will be 46 more than left under the Rwanda scheme.

For the first time since we left the European Union, the UK has secured a bilateral agreement with France to pilot the return of illegal migrants across the channel. This tightly controlled pilot will be, I hope, the premise for further action downstream. The UK-France summit today has seen both nations strengthen co-operation on border security. We know that there is no silver bullet on this issue. We know that the returns pilot is part of a border crackdown, but it is the culmination—and this goes again to the value of the Border Security Command in this Bill—of six months’ work by the Border Security Commander with the Home Secretary, my right honourable friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, the French Interior Minister and the French-established new Compagnie de Marche. That is real progress in developing real, positive action. I can even go back to our discussions about Europol earlier today, on ensuring that we tackle smuggling gangs and disrupt their business model, that we have stronger law enforcement and that we dismantle this multi-million pound black market. This is not just about gangs; it is about lives.

The Rwanda scheme was ineffective, costly and did not deliver. The Government’s proposals in this Bill, and the statements by the Prime Minister and the President of France today, will add greatly to the potential to impact this heinous crime and business.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Can I just check, now that the Prime Minister and the French President have announced the details of the scheme, whether the Minister’s contention is that what has been announced today—once it has had a pilot and been scaled up—is, in effect, the Government’s attempt to put in place a deterrent that he thinks will, over the term of this Parliament, have the desired effect of driving down the number of people crossing the channel to effectively as low as you can get it? Is that his contention?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government are doing a range of things. The border security Bill is one of them. We have put the £150 million and £280 million for future SRs into the Border Security Command. Our work with the French so far has prevented 12,000 crossings this year alone through joint patrols and intelligence services. We are funding a new unit of specialist officers to increase patrols. We have a new specialist intelligence unit stationed at Dunkirk being launched today. Additional drone pilots are being launched. We have funded an extra 100 specialist National Crime Agency intelligence officers who will be stationed with Europol—to go back to the points that we mentioned earlier.

The NCA has seized 600 boats. Germany is already looking at changing its laws because of action that we have taken with the Border Security Command. We have put in place a landmark agreement with Iraq. We have practised and worked through illegal working raids. Arrests have increased by 50%. We have boosted asylum decision-making. Since the election, 30,000 people have gone back—a 12% increase since the previous Government. We have work upstream with Vietnam and Albania to stop people making the journeys from those countries in the first place.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

So he really cannot say.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Look, if we are going to talk about more people coming, can we go back to 2016? Can the noble Lord tell me how many people arrived on a small boat in 2016, compared with July 2024? I will tell him. There were 400 in 2016 and over 30,000 in 2024. We have a legacy of complete and utter failure by that Government, of which he was a significant member in the Cabinet. These are strong, practical measures; the Rwanda scheme was not, which is why I commend Clause 37 to the House. I ask the noble Lord to reflect on what we have said. If he chooses to vote at some point to remove Clause 37, I and, I think, many other Members of this House will stand together to oppose him.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is not in her place, I will move Amendment 102A and will speak to the consequential amendments, because I was planning to speak in support of this amendment.

I had assumed that the noble Baroness would be here to explain it, so I will briefly quote from briefings that some of us have received from ILPA, BID and Detention Action. The briefing says:

“Section 12 IMA, since 28 September 2023, has sought to enable the Executive to (a) decide the reasonableness of the length of all forms of immigration detention, intending to overturn an established common law principle which provides for judicial oversight over the length of detention as an important safeguard against arbitrary detention, and (b) continue to detain persons after the reason for their detention (pending examination, removal, or deportation order/decision being made within a reasonable period of time) falls away”.


I probably will not be quite as helpful to my noble friend the Minister as I was on the previous group, but I will start by welcoming the repeal of most of the Illegal Migration Act; needless to say, I do not support the other amendments in this group. However, the omission of Section 12—one of the very few sections to survive—is worrying, because I fear it may reflect an attitude towards detention that I had hoped we had seen the back of with a change in government.

We will be returning to the question of detention and the case for a time limit at a later date but, as I will probably be away then, I hope the Committee will bear with me for raising some more general points about detention. In justification, I cite the UNHCR’s observations on the Bill. It emphasises:

“Detention of asylum-seekers and refugees should be a measure of last resort and both necessary and proportionate in each individual case”.


It therefore recommends the repeal of Section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act, which it fears could mean in some cases detention for periods inconsistent with standards in international refugee and human rights law. Previously, it had pointed to the policy of indefinite detention as a key point of concern. This concern has to be the greater so long as Section 12 remains on the statute book.

It has been a full decade since the inquiry into the use of immigration detention on which I served, established by the APPGs on refugees and migration, called for a 28-day time limit on detention. It argued that detention should be an absolute last resort, with a presumption in favour of community-based solutions. It is depressing that, despite countless reports, including that of the official Brook House inquiry, making the same case in the intervening 10 years, here we are again.

One of those reports was by the Home Affairs Committee in 2019, chaired by the now Home Secretary. It pointed out that the UK is the only country in Europe without a limit on the length of time someone can be held in immigration detention. Having reviewed the evidence, it concluded:

“There is a rapidly growing consensus among medical professionals, independent inspectorate bodies, people with lived experience and other key stakeholders on the urgent need for a maximum time limit”.


The committee called on the then Government to

“bring an end to indefinite immigration detention and to implement a maximum 28-day time limit with immediate effect”.

That was in 2019. Of course, nothing happened. One has to ask: what has changed the Home Secretary’s mind?

The consensus is still very much there. Indeed, the evidence of the harmful effects on health, particularly mental health, has mounted, including last year from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Moreover, as Refugee Tales, which met with some of us the other day, found during its walking inquiry into immigration detention, the damaging impacts last long after release. It notes that:

“For those with lived experience, ‘detention never leaves you’”.


A series of reports by Women for Refugee Women over the past decade have underlined the particularly damaging impact of detention generally on women, the majority of whom are survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence. Their most recent report warns:

“Locking up women who have already survived serious violence and abuse retraumatises them, causing profound and longlasting damage to their mental health”.


Shockingly, its latest research found that despite the Home Office banning such practices, male detention centre staff still subjected women in intimate situations to constant supervision.

For a brief period, the previous Government flirted with alternatives to detention with two pilot schemes. In an assessment of these pilots, the UNHCR wrote that:

“Alternatives to Detention provide a people centered approach to supporting asylum seekers whilst waiting for case resolution without any evidence of a reduction in compliance with UK Home Office directives”.


The evidence from the pilot shows significant improvement in the mental health and well-being of participants and that alternatives to detention are cheaper and offer better value for money compared with the cost of detaining asylum seekers. One would have thought that would appeal to Governments of any persuasion.

It was thus disappointing that, when we debated the guidance on the detention of vulnerable persons last October, my noble friend the Minister told us it was the new Government’s policy to “expand the detention estate”. Apropos of that, I understand that the review of that guidance is still ongoing. Can my noble friend the Minister give me an assurance that any changes it proposes will strengthen, and not weaken further, the safeguards for vulnerable people in detention?

Just about finally, returning to the question of indefinite detention, whenever I raised the issue with Ministers in the previous Government, I was met with the semantic response that detention is not indefinite because it comes to an end. We all know that, in this context, “indefinite” means without a specified end or time limit. I hope this semantic distinction did not lie behind Minister Eagle’s recent response to an Oral Question, when she stated:

“Immigration centres are not used for indefinite detention”,—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/25; col. 18.]


because, if there is no reasonable prospect of removal, the person has to be released. Yet in the year ending 31 March 2025, just over a third of those leaving detention had been held for 29 days or more, and as many as 533 for six months or more.

I trust that my noble friend will accept that we do apply indefinite detention, with important, limited exceptions, in this country. I hope he will acknowledge the harm that this does to those affected. Will Members of your Lordships’ House still have to be making the case for a time limit and minimal use of detention a decade on from now?

In conclusion, repeal of Section 12 of the IMA is the absolute minimum needed to even begin to meet the UNHCR’s concerns, echoed by the JCHR, which, like the UNHCR, also called for its repeal:

“to restore certainty and ensure compliance with Article 5”

of the ECHR. This point is underlined by the Bar Council, which, along with numerous other bodies, argues for repeal with reference to the rule of law and access to justice.

I hope that my noble friend will give serious thought to this, and also to the case that will be made in later amendments for a clear time limit and the development of alternatives to detention. I beg to move.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose this amendment. I am afraid—and she will not be surprised, I suspect—that I broadly disagree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has just said. Let me set out the reason why.

First, she mentioned that the Home Secretary changed her mind and wondered why that might have been. I obviously cannot get inside the Home Secretary’s mind. I suspect what has changed, between chairing the Home Affairs Committee and now, is that she is now the Home Secretary and responsible for protecting the borders and the security of the United Kingdom. Whoever holds that responsibility is sometimes confronted with reality; despite things that they might have liked to have done, they are confronted with the reality of keeping the country safe. What the Home Secretary, I suspect, will have realised is that there is a cohort of people here who she thinks should be removed, as they have no legal right to be here, and she has realised that unless you detain them, you are not able to carry out your functions of keep the country safe.

Now, I do not know whether that is the reason why—the Minister may or may not confirm it—but I suspect that the realities of office have changed her mind, for this reason. We do not detain people indefinitely. The power to detain people is in order to facilitate their removal from the country and to protect the public. The Home Secretary has to have reasonable grounds to believe that, and people are able to challenge that through the judicial process.

The noble Baroness quoted some statistics; I will quote the same statistics but the other way around. Two-thirds of people are detained for 28 days or fewer. It is true that some people are detained for a long period of time. In most of those cases, the reason for the lengthy detention is the responsibility of the individual themselves: it is because they are trying to avoid being removed from the country that they have no legal right to be in, throwing up legal challenge after legal challenge. That is the reason why they are detained. If they wish to cease being detained, they could comply with the deportation order that they have been issued by the Home Secretary, get on a plane and leave the country. It is the fact that they do not wish to comply with the law that means they are held in detention.

The Home Secretary must have a reasonable belief that she can ultimately remove them—otherwise, she would not have the legal power to detain them. If we were to have what the noble Baroness suggests, which is a fixed statutory time period of 28 days, all that would do would give a bigger incentive to people with no right to be in this country to legally challenge decisions. Unless you could get all those legal challenges heard and decided within 28 days, all those people would have to be let out of detention, and we would cease to be able to remove any of them from the country. That would include some people who are not just here illegally but a present danger to people in this country. I strongly support the ability of the Home Secretary to detain people and not to have a fixed time limit, which would simply be an incentive for those people to delay.

If the noble Baroness looks into the details of who stays here in detention for a long period of time, it is people trying to avoid having to leave the country when they have no right to be here, throwing up legal challenge after legal challenge. The alternative way of dealing with it, if you really want not to detain people, is to reduce the opportunities for them to challenge the decision, and for deportation orders to be able to be carried out swiftly. Then we would not need to detain people. I am afraid that I suspect the Home Secretary has realised that detention is necessary to protect the public and to make sure that we can enforce the necessary deportation decisions.

I understand why people do not like it, but I am afraid it is a bit naive to think that everyone who comes to this country, or who overstays their welcome and is in this country without legal authority, goes when they are asked to. You sometimes have to use the power of the state and detention, and you sometimes have to enforce their removal, because otherwise they do not go. If you do not demonstrate that you have a robust system, you will have even more people coming here because they think that, once they get here, they are never going to be removed.

One of the important reasons for having a deterrent is that, if you look at the total number of people we remove, you want to get to a position where the balance between enforced removals and those who go voluntarily is much more in favour of those who go on a voluntary basis, because it is quicker and cheaper for everybody, but that happens only if people realise they are going to have to go at some point. If people think they can get away with staying when they have no right to be here, we have to use the powers that we have at our disposal. I accept that it is not ideal, but I am afraid there are limited choices for Ministers if they want to enforce a robust immigration system. Detaining and removing people where necessary ensures you command the confidence of the public that you have a robust system. If that confidence disappears, the public will not support anybody coming here, whether legally or not. As I have said in debates on earlier clauses, that would be a tragedy.

[Lord German (LD)]

I support the amendment for the removal of Section 12 and will address one or two of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Harper, made. I agree with him that voluntary methods of return are obviously the best. They are usually done very speedily and without fuss. When the explanation is provided and people have had the chance to have that internal conversation, they work very well indeed. So I would put that as a number one factor in this whole issue of how you remove people.

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The canter through all this does not really do justice to the situation, and I hope that the organisations and, indeed, victims who are aware of this debate will understand that compressing the arguments does not mean that their situation is not fully recognised and that there is not huge concern for them. I beg to move.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, on the overall issue, I strongly support the various provisions in legislation to make sure that victims of modern slavery and trafficking are properly protected. There is, however, a balance to strike, because the people we want to protect are actual victims of modern slavery and trafficking. We have to be very careful because, if you have a blanket exemption for anyone who claims to be a victim of modern slavery and trafficking, you just create a massive gap in our laws where anybody who is then intercepted ends up claiming to be a victim of modern slavery and trafficking to avoid being removed from the country. That has two incredibly damaging consequences. One is that they are able to undercut our immigration control, but they also damage public support for and acceptance of genuine victims of modern slavery and trafficking. We have to have a system which recognises that there are many bad actors out there who will take advantage of every weakness in our legislation.

I do not support the first amendment in this group, which seeks to get rid of the Home Secretary’s ability to remove people who have sought to use modern slavery protections in bad faith: the sorts of people I have talked about who try to use these provisions, where they do not apply, to try to avoid our immigration controls. I think it is reasonable that the Home Secretary is able to do that. I know from my experience, and I have no reason to suspect it is now any different, that the officials in the Home Office who look after this area of policy are expert, competent people who do their very best to try to make these decisions.

I have met victims of modern slavery. I met the people who implemented this legislation when my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead was Home Secretary and I was in the Home Office, and I have a lot of confidence that they get the decisions right—not in 100% of cases, because people are not perfect, but I think we have a good system—but we have to have the power to deal with people who act in bad faith.

Amendment 117 repeals a whole bunch of sections of the Nationality and Borders Act that actually provide the protections for victims of modern slavery, such as their ability to get leave to stay in the United Kingdom for a period of up to 60 months and to have a recovery period. Those are all very valuable protections that ought to remain, so I do not support that amendment.

Very briefly, given that my noble friend Lady May is not able to be here, I briefly support the thrust of her amendment, Amendment 183. That looks at making sure that people who are victims of modern slavery and perhaps have committed criminal offences but under duress are not then punished for a second time as a result of only having committed those offences under duress.

I think that amendment has a lot of merit. If my noble friend Lady May were to bring it back on Report, I would consider supporting it. If there are any flaws or weaknesses in the way it is drafted, it would be good if the Minister were able to set them out today or would engage with my noble friend and the people who have supported the amendment to deal with them so that we could have an agreed position on Report.

With those relatively brief comments and mindful of time, I will sit down.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 172. I would genuinely press the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to elucidate the meaning behind it, because I find it quite confusing. The amendment seeks to prevent the proper authorities gaining any information about a person. I read the wording very carefully. It refers to

“suspected victims of slavery or human trafficking”.

It could be that that status changes, and that a person was originally suspected of being a victim but when further inquiry took place it proved not to be the case. Therefore, I find it odd that under this restrictive amendment—I am happy to be disabused if I have got it wrong—a public authority would be speaking to, for instance, adult social care or adult social services, children’s services and others but would be prevented on a statutory basis from talking to anyone else on the chance that, somewhat down the line, that person may have criminal charges laid against them. At that stage, they may be found not to have been truly a victim of slavery or human trafficking.

To specifically rule out

“a customs official ... a law enforcement officer … a UK authorised person”—

I am not entirely certain what that is—or

“the government of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom”

seems pretty draconian and restrictive. Perhaps the noble Baroness might wish to enlighten us about the meaning behind this amendment. However, for the reasons I set out, I do not think it would be appropriate to incorporate it into the Bill, and on that basis, I oppose it.