Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

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

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

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

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

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

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

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

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I had better rise at this stage to introduce my Amendment 203H. As with my last amendment, the mysteries of grouping have left me slightly confused, because this amendment does not actually relate to the Illegal Migration Act. This is an amendment which I offer to the Home Office as a sensible amendment that will save public money. It will be a sensible and useful use of time, and I implore the Minister, who I know to be a sensible and reasonable person, to look at this carefully.

Amendment 203H refers to the National Age Assessment Board, which was set up under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, before I was in this House—I know there are some noble Lords here who remember the debates about that particular Bill. The Bill presently before the Committee does not repeal any provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act. The National Age Assessment Board was set up by the 2022 Act to bring into the Home Office the system whereby those who claimed to be minors would be assessed. Prior to these provisions coming into force, that was done by local authorities. What had routinely been the case was that a person who purported to be younger than 18 and who wished to challenge a decision would then seek a judicial review of the assessment made by the local authority. There is a whole run of cases in which the courts considered what the test should be, on judicial review, of a social worker’s evaluation of the person’s age. Across the country, different local authorities had different approaches.

In a case called A v Croydon, the Supreme Court, led by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, determined that age assessments would not be made on the usual basis of a judicial review. As noble Lords will be well aware—and I am sorry that I am teaching grandmothers to suck eggs, but in case there is anyone watching who does not know this—a decision on judicial review is not normally taken by means of a court looking at the decision afresh, considering the evidence and taking a decision for itself; instead, what the court does is to look at the decision to see whether it is lawful and not unreasonable in the public law sense, which is classically defined as being so unreasonable that no decision-maker could have reached that decision —the “Oh gosh” test, as it has been described previously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Does the noble Baroness have any figures for the number of young people whose ages are in dispute, because I suspect that there are not that many? We may be worrying about a relatively small number of people compared with the huge number who are seeking asylum.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness and say again to the Minister, who will probably curse me for it, that there is no data and we need that data to understand the size of the problem. It must be not just pure data about age. It must also be about the response when children or young people are placed in the wrong one, and what support they need. I will leave it there.