Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the Bill so succinctly. I welcome my noble friend Lord Harper, who is not in his place, and wish him very well in this House.

The Bill seems to have two aims and to be speaking to two different audiences. One of the aims is to control the borders by tackling the criminal gangs who ferry migrants to the shores of this country. A number of clauses—Clauses 1 to 12—will introduce a new Border Security Command to tackle the gangs. There will be new offences—in Clauses 13 to 18 and 21 to 23—with new powers and data-sharing powers. The Bill aims to address the very wide concern in this country about levels of immigration, both legal and illegal or irregular, but it aims also to tackle the asylum and immigration system, to strengthen and build confidence in the border system, and—to do that—to repeal certain parts of Conservative legislation.

That part of the Bill is addressed to people on the left who see the streamlining and processing of the asylum system as paramount. It is not a matter of tightening the rules, and I welcome the Minister’s outlining some of the more peripheral ways in which these will be strengthened—in Clauses 41, 43 and 45, for example. It is also not a matter of reviewing the international agreements from the post-World War II period for Europe to protect people who were displaced by the war, by the defeat of Germany and by the new arrangements with the Soviet Union to give it some sphere of influence over eastern Europe.

From the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, on the Cross Benches, we have heard something of the numbers involved then. We are speaking about 2.1 million people of European origin, displaced mainly in Europe. However, we are now looking at a world where, globally, people are on the move. The figure mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, is 400 million refugees. These are very significant numbers. He rightly alluded to the 1951 refugee convention and some of the international framework of law. Many people like to pooh-pooh those of us who feel it needs to be reviewed because it is totally unsuitable for today’s global world, with millions of people on the move. Therefore, I will concentrate on what kind of figures we are dealing with in this country alone for immigration and asylum. I fear that streamlining and processing the system is not enough to help reduce the overall numbers.

In the year in which the new Government came to power, there were 224,742 asylum cases in the system in June 2024. For the year ending March 2025, around 50% of claims had been granted at an initial decision, giving 45,084 people refugee protection, according to Home Office figures. Some 40% of asylum claims were granted between January and March. This is a significantly higher rate than historically; the rate was 29% in the period from 2001 to 2018. It was 18% more than in 2023 and 5% more than in 2022, and it includes almost all small boat immigrants, whose claims by and large tend to be successful—77% of them.

With such numbers arriving after the Conservative Government’s measures to deter, I am very worried about Clauses 37 and 38, which are going to repeal those parts of the Act that acted as a deterrent. The figures speak for themselves. In 2023 the numbers of people arriving—they are just astonishing—fell to 36,699, a figure substantially lower than the 54,702 the previous year. I cannot think it right to say that the measures that the Conservative Government introduced, the Rwanda scheme and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, did not serve as a deterrent. Those numbers do speak. I agree that it is too late for Rwanda, but certainly there are the measures in the Illegal Migration Act.

To close, I welcome those parts of the Bill that aim to strengthen the borders, strengthen control of the borders and bring in offences, but I rather fear that they will not be strong enough to deter illegal migration. I fear that in trying to speak to two different audiences, we will end up pleasing neither those who want a more streamlined immigration system that will allow more asylum applications and more claims to be granted nor those in the country who, by and large, want immigration, legal and illegal, drastically cut.