Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

31: Clause 13, page 7, line 9, leave out “knows or suspects that” and insert “intends that, or is reckless as to whether,”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment gives effect to the JCHR’s recommendation that the mens rea threshold for clause 13 ought to be one of intention or recklessness.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the first part of day 2 in Committee deals with organised immigration crime offences. We will hear later about safeguards and modern slavery, and will return to the question of what might constitute a reasonable explanation on the part of an irregular migrant, but we begin with Amendments 31 and 41 in my name, which deal with mens rea. I am also happy to be associated with Amendments 32, 42 and 53, which are grouped with these. The Committee should note too that these amendments are linked to the next group, beginning with Amendment 33. I will keep some of my powder dry in suggesting why the Minister should also give them a fair wind or at least a promise of further consideration.

The Committee will know that the amendments in this and the subsequent group are among the recommendations contained in the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the Bill, appearing in the report as amendment 3. I was grateful to the Minister for his assurance that, before we reach the next stage of the Bill in September, there will be a considered response to the JCHR report and its recommendations.

As a grammar school boy from a council estate with a mother whose first language was Irish rather than English, I remember being daunted as an 11 year- old by my first lesson in Latin. Later in life I read with some amusement that Winston Churchill questioned the use of the vocative case “O table” when learning the word mensa. His teacher’s explanation, that it was used to address a table, was met with Churchill’s practical, albeit impertinent, response, “But I never do”. However, I think the great man would have seen much more practical use for the words mens rea, meaning guilty mind in Latin.

Linguistics to one side, my barrister daughter assures me that it remains a crucial concept in criminal law. It refers to the mental state of a defendant at the time of committing a crime, specifically their intention, knowledge or recklessness regarding the prohibited act. That mental element, along with the physical act, actus reus, must be proven for a person to be found guilty of a crime.

My Amendment 31 would leave out “knows or suspects that” and insert

“intends that, or is reckless as to whether”.

This amendment would give effect to the JCHR’s recommendation that the mens rea threshold for Clause 13 ought to be one of intention or recklessness. Amendment 41, which is amendment 4 in the Joint Committee report, appears at Clause 14, page 8, line 9. It would leave out “knows or suspects that” and insert

“intends that, or is reckless as to whether”.

Amendment 41 would also give effect to the JCHR recommendation that the mens rea threshold for Clause 14 ought to be one of intention or recklessness. It would have the same effect as Amendment 31, but in a different clause.

Put these amendments into the context of Clauses 13 to 17, which create three new precursor offences to target the activities of facilitators and organised criminal gangs that look to profit from organised immigration crime. These amendments seek to raise the mens rea threshold for which someone might be caught by the offence of supplying, offering to supply or handling a relevant article for use in the commission of certain immigration offences. The words in Clause 13, “knows or suspects that”, are a lower mens rea threshold compared with intention and recklessness, which is what the JCHR recommendation is urging us to substitute.

The JCHR report notes that

“comparable precursor terrorism offences have a higher mental element, requiring intention to commit or assist in the commission of terrorist acts”.

In paragraph 17 of the JCHR report, Liberty provides an example in its written evidence. It illustrates how a woman fleeing persecution who has had her phone stolen, and her British grandfather who provides her with a phone to help her—despite suspecting that she will use it to contact smugglers—might both be caught by this offence. In paragraph 19 of the JCHR report, ILPA, the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, provides a further example:

“A well-meaning individual providing voluntary humanitarian assistance in Calais hands out SIM Cards. A father receives one and passes a mobile phone and the SIM card to his daughter”.


They may both be prosecuted for having supplied a relevant article.

Paragraph 38 of the JCHR report concludes that

“the breadth of these precursor offences”

captured in Clauses 13 to 17

“poses a risk of unintended harms to those who are most vulnerable”.

These relevant amendments seek to mitigate this risk by seeking greater circumscription and more robust safeguards.

Paragraph 50 of the JCHR report similarly concludes that the precursor offences captured in Clauses 13 to 17

“create uncertainty, extend beyond the Government’s stated … aim, and risk inadvertently criminalising persons who ought to be protected from criminal penalty”.

I hope the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, agrees that some fine-tuning, while not preventing prosecutions, could strike a better balance. I commend the amendments to the Committee and beg to move.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

I shall address both the points the noble Baroness has made. On the first, in one sense I am very much looking at it from the point of view of the participants. I want them to be clear that carrying out that particular set of actions would indeed be an offence with a significant penalty, because I want them to then conclude that they do not want to do that and do not want to cross the channel to the United Kingdom from the safe country in which they currently reside. That is the point of the legislation.

On the second point, I am clear, having had some experience of running the immigration regime, and particularly of the development of technology, that the noble Baroness will find that most of the people concerned have mobile telephones and are very well aware of what is going on. There are many groups out there that provide detailed information to migrants about the law and those who can facilitate their being smuggled into the United Kingdom. They are very well aware of changes we make and of the legal position. We were very well aware—I am saying this only because it has just occurred to me—that in the run-up to the election, lots of communications were being made with people in northern France about the likely outcome of that election and whether they should stay put or make the crossing to the United Kingdom. They are very well aware of what is going on, and that is very relevant.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

The example that Liberty gave—the committee did not invent it—is built on a statement by the committee that:

“There is no express distinction in clause 16 between those who engage in such conduct as smugglers, and those who engage in such conduct as asylum seekers, victims of modern slavery, or persons (including children) who may be coerced into carrying items such as phones”.


I am sure that, with his experience, the noble Lord will accept that that is the case. It is about trying to find a balance, so that we can deal with those making money from creating the circumstances to smuggle people in and out of this country and those who are genuine, including children like those whom the committee describes.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

The noble Lord makes half a good point. I agree with him on people who are victims of modern slavery. I think my noble friend Lady May will speak to some amendments on that in later groups.

I am sorry if this disappoints noble Lords, but the fact that the example in the report was given by Liberty does not strengthen the case, in my humble opinion, but somewhat lessens it. When I was Immigration Minister, Liberty spent most of its time trying to undermine our immigration legislation and argued for not protecting our borders. It failed to understand, importantly, that if the British public do not think that we have a robust immigration and asylum system then they will become increasingly intolerant of protecting people whom I believe should be protected. You command wide public support for people genuinely fleeing persecution, for whom we should provide refuge, by being clear that we have the ability to stop those who are not entitled to that protection coming to our country and making a mockery of our system. Organisations in favour of our looking after genuine asylum seekers and people who would meet the test of being a refugee should sometimes reflect that being uncritical, as I am afraid many of them are, about those people attempting to come to the United Kingdom damages the public’s view and our ability to have a system that genuinely helps those who need it, as everyone then gets swept up because the system is not working.

Finally, I may have misunderstood the noble Baroness—I am very happy to take an intervention if I have it wrong—but, on her amendments probing the removal of the defence, she said that she wanted the prosecution to have to make the argument. She said that the current drafting means that people would have to prove their defence beyond a reasonable doubt. That is not my understanding of how this works. It is for the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody is guilty of an offence and the legislation, as drafted, provides that there are defences that people can offer as to why they may have conducted themselves in a certain way. Unless I have misunderstood something very badly, that does not require the person to prove their defence beyond a reasonable doubt—all they have to do is, in setting out the defence, raise at least a reasonable doubt with the court that they were not guilty of the offence. That seems the right place to have the test in our criminal justice system. As currently drafted, the legislation does not have the effect that she thinks it does.

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[Lord German (LD)]

I did not use the example of a knife. I can refer the Member to the Hansard of the previous day in Committee, which I have already apologised for not being at it because I was working with colleagues on immigration matters in another parliament at which this Parliament is represented. It would be unwise to try and deal with arguments that we had last week, of which I was not a part, but I simply say that the relationship between the offence in this case and the threshold which is being put before it is not significant. I suspect that we will treat and think about this throughout the course of the debate on the whole Bill today when we relate ourselves to the fact that this is meant to be aimed at the smugglers.

One of the things in common to all the people on the north coast of France, who represent so many different parts of the structure that is trying to stop the people taking these dangerous routes, was that they were concentrating on the smugglers. Everything was determined in terms of how they could get at the smugglers, and protecting human life and being humane in what they do as well.

The challenge in the Bill as we go through, and to the Minister, who I hope will give me a hopeful reply on what the man in the next room is saying, is the fact that this is a distinction between making very powerful offences for challenging those who are guilty of this horrible crime of taking people in terrible conditions on what are very dangerous routes indeed.

I have just one final point about the messages which smugglers send to the people who are going to be smuggled. I am sure they will not be saying, “You’d better be careful: the British are changing their laws in these directions”. As we were told by those who intercept their telephones in France, it is much more about where they should go and what they should avoid going to, what they should avoid doing and what they should do in terms of getting their journey. That is really the whole challenge from the smugglers. I welcome the response from the JCHR on the reason why, unanimously, it posed and passed these resolutions.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I am grateful that he ended on that note, because I just want, for the sake of the record, to say that although paragraphs 1 to 52 were agreed unanimously, the entire report was not—two members voted against and one abstained—but it was a very thorough report, conducted, I might say, on all sides with a great deal of diligence and thoroughness. All my colleagues participated in that in a robust way, as the noble Lord might imagine.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, would expect me to defend the Bill. We have taken judgments on the legislation and taken legal advice internally in the Home Office, and we think that that is a reasonable legislative framework for the operations that we are discussing. We will discuss in later clauses the scrapping of the Rwanda Act and that preventive deterrent, but the whole purpose of the Bill is to provide some measures of deterrence and of punishment for offences that aid and assist the dangerous illegal crossings for individuals who, in being trafficked, face very serious injury or potential death.

I want to be clear that these powers are not designed for indiscriminate use. Investigations under these provisions will be intelligence-led and focused on enforcement activity on serious organised crime gangs and their enablers, not on the migrants fleeing persecution or those acting with humanitarian motives. I am not giving the Committee theoretical reassurances: these are reflected in how this will operate. The forces trying to stop the criminal gangs will use any legislation that this House passes to ensure that we act as a deterrent but also, therefore, target those individuals who have committed offences under this legislation. They will have the potential to put forward a defence; the prosecution will therefore have the potential to chop that defence to bits and prove that the actions were malicious, as under the legislation before us.

In summary, these clauses contain strong safeguards, including a list of non-exhaustive reasonable excuses, to protect those acting legitimately and in good faith. These safeguards combine with the investigatory discretion that is at the heart of the police’s focus on the real potential criminals in this process, and with the prosecutions that are taken through the CPS and the prosecutions test for charging decisions to be made. Therefore, in my view, the enforcement is targeted, fair and proportionate.

I hope noble Lords will reflect on those points as we continue our scrutiny of the Bill. I urge the noble Lord and the noble Baroness to reflect on what I have said and to consider whether I have convinced them. That is a matter for them to consider in due course, but at the moment I cannot accept their amendments. I assure the noble Lord that the report he has produced will be examined and we will give a full response in due course. I urge him to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for the way in which he has dealt with this group of amendments and for the thorough response he has given to your Lordships in Committee this afternoon. For the avoidance of doubt, I reiterate that the Joint Committee on Human Rights welcomes the overall aims of the Bill—to deter organised crime and prevent the loss of life at sea. It is right that the Government do all they can to ensure there is a legislative framework in place to help eradicate this dangerous criminality. All of us who have spoken in the debate today are agreed about that.

The issue comes down to one of judgment about whether it is preventive, whether it is a deterrent and whether it will really make any difference to those who will anyway try to break these laws. Are we doing the right things to combat this criminality? I do not know all the answers to that any more than the Joint Committee on Human Rights does, but I am grateful for what the Minister said about the importance of the report the committee produced and many of the questions we have rightly raised.

In parentheses, I am glad that organisations such as Liberty take these issues as seriously as they do. They gave very valuable evidence to the committee during its inquiry. You do not have to always agree with the positions of NGOs or groups to know that they are part of the civic response to issues of this kind. We are very fortunate to have such organisations in our country.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, if the noble Lord would give way on a point of agreement, I would be grateful to him. To be clear, I am also grateful that organisations such as Liberty exist and that they have views on things—I just do not agree with them. I too am very grateful that we live in a country where such organisations exist and have contrary views. On that point, we are in complete agreement.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I was about to say that I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, for the other points he made but, yes, we are agreed about that too. I thank his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and, on the Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for the way in which they put their arguments this afternoon. I was not surprised by those arguments, which were put quite eloquently in our committee, incidentally, as some here will almost certainly remember, by the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, who was of course a Minister in the last Government. We can disagree about these things without having to fall out over it.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Green. We do not agree about many of these questions, but we know there is a public conviction that wants something done about illegality. That is why I argue for safe and legal routes, which my noble friend and I disagree on. We have to find other ways forward of tackling the root cause. I can sound like a broken record about this, but there are 122 million displaced people in the world today and that has doubled in the last decade. If we do not deal with the root causes, we will go on introducing Bills such as this indefinitely, ad nauseam, and will still not get to the root of dealing with the problem.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, presented the arguments perfectly as she always does. I strongly agree with her remark that we are taking these actions on slight or no evidence. She said that it does not require much for a prosecution. We must not emasculate our laws or commitments to things such as the refugee convention to try to tackle something we all know needs to be tackled; it is a question of striking the right balance.

I have listened to what the Minister has said in Committee this afternoon. He is right that we should all reflect on this. I look forward to seeing what he has to say to the Joint Committee when he publishes his response. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 31 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

33: Clause 13, page 7, line 12, at end insert “, and
(c) P derives a financial or material benefit, directly or indirectly, from the supply or offer to supply a relevant article.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment gives effect to the JCHR’s recommendation that the scope of the offence in clause 13 should only apply to persons involved in the smuggling of persons for direct or indirect financial or material gain.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that the Committee will bear with me as I now bring Joint Committee on Human Rights Amendments 33, 35, 38, 44, 57 and 203 for consideration. Amendment 33 appears as amendment 1 in the Joint Committee report and would give effect to the JCHR’s recommendation that the scope of the offence in Clause 13 should apply only to persons involved in the smuggling of persons for direct or indirect financial or material gain.

I described in the debate on the earlier group how Clauses 13 to 17 create three new precursor offences to target the activities of facilitators and organised criminal gangs who look to profit from organised immigration crime. Paragraphs 38 and 50 of the JCHR report conclude that the breadth of the precursor offences captured in those clauses risks

“unintended harms to those who are most vulnerable”

and

“inadvertently criminalising persons who ought to be protected from criminal penalty”.

Ultimately, the scope of the offences is therefore broad, and we should at least consider that.

Paragraph 51 of the JCHR report recommends:

“The Government should give consideration to amending the scope of the offences to ensure that they only apply to persons involved in the smuggling of persons for direct or indirect financial or material gain”.


That is what this amendment seeks to achieve.

I refer again to the examples from Liberty and the ILPA on how the scope of these offences might apply to those who are not smugglers. Amendment 35 would insert, at Clause 13, page 7, line 15:

“For the purpose of subsection (2), a defence of reasonable excuse must be interpreted in accordance with Article 31 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951, Article 5 of the Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air 2000, and section 26 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings 2005”,


all of which this country is committed to. The amendment would give effect to the JCHR recommendation that the defence of reasonable excuse in Clause 13 must be interpreted compatibly with the UK’s international legal obligations not to penalise refugees, smuggled persons and the victims of trafficking in certain circumstances.

Clauses 13 and 14 provide for non-exhaustive reasonable excuses to the aforementioned precursor offences. They include actions to rescue a person from danger or serious harm and actions taken on behalf of an organisation that aims to assist asylum seekers for free, not making money out of the exercise. The rationale for strengthening that provision is explained in the recommendations in paragraph 51 of the report:

“The defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ ought to explicitly provide that it must be interpreted compatibly with Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, Article 5 of the Smuggling Protocol, and section 26 of the Council of Europe Convention Against Trafficking”—


hence Amendment 35.

Recall that Article 31 prohibits the general imposition of penalties on refugees on account of their unlawful entry or presence in the country where they claim asylum. This protection applies to refugees who come directly from the state where they first faced persecution. In September 2024 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees published legal guidance on international protection relating to non-penalisation of refugees on account of irregular entry. It acknowledges that in seeking asylum, many are compelled to arrive, enter or stay in a territory without authorisation or documentation, or

“with documentation which is insufficient, false or obtained by fraudulent means, or by using clandestine modes of entry”.

Article 5 of the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, of 2000, provides that:

“Migrants shall not become liable to criminal prosecution”


for the fact of having been smuggled with intent by persons

“in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit”.

Article 26 of ECAT provides for a “Non-punishment provision” for victims of human trafficking who have been engaged in illegal activities provided that

“they have been compelled to do so”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Harper, mentioned during his remarks earlier, we will hear later from the noble Baroness, Lady May, on the subject of human trafficking. In circumstances where victims of trafficking have committed an offence of supplying or handling relevant articles or collecting information likely to be useful in immigration crime, they must not be prosecuted if the commission of these offences was as a result of trafficking. Any prosecution of victims in such circumstances would be in breach of Article 26 of ECAT.

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[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support almost all the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I said to him yesterday that I thought that the committee’s work had been—I thought carefully about this word—painstaking.

My name and that of my noble friend Lord German are not to a couple of the amendments because he and I had already tabled amendments on the same point when the noble Lord’s were tabled. My noble friend will pursue the point of a defence of not doing action if one was not doing so for financial gain—the same point, in effect, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has made. As my noble friend has said, and we are going to go on saying, the clauses in the Bill should not sweep up asylum seekers, whom one could also describe as victims of smugglers.

I have Amendment 51A, which I picked up from the JCHR report, to add to the list of excepted articles in Clause 15. One of the things that people in this situation, and I am thinking of the asylum seekers now, must feel that they are losing is their dignity. The JCHR suggested adding—“At a minimum”, to use its words—hygiene products. If one is without hygiene products, that adds to one’s sense of a loss of dignity, a loss of looking after oneself as a real person with a proper place in the world, and so on. It is a matter of proportionality.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

The noble Baroness is quite right. This issue was specifically raised by Mr Alex Sobel, Member of Parliament for Leeds, who encouraged us to include those words about hygiene. It was based on exactly what the noble Baroness has just said about our concern for human dignity. We talk a lot during these debates about human rights, but let us also remember human dignity.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I think one has a right to human dignity, actually. That is probably a point at which I could stop and commend the amendment.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am aware of that. I am merely drawing to your Lordships’ attention the fact that there will be real-world consequences from the interpretation of the legislation when it finally gets Royal Assent and becomes an Act.

As has been said by my noble friend Lord Harper, there are other individual groups who have a vested interest—perhaps for the right reasons—to not consider the security and safety of our border. They are perfectly entitled to believe in there being no borders and in a very loose and liberal interpretation of immigration policy. However, we must be careful when we legislate that we do not allow those people—who are massively out of step with the views of most of the public—to put in the Bill, through advocacy, something that will not be in the long-term best interest.

I cannot add anything more to the excellent points on Amendment 33 made by my noble friend. I oppose Amendments 35 and 44. Although it looks on the face of it beguilingly attractive that we should not be in breach of international treaty obligations which we have signed, my concern is that this is a moveable feast. To put in the Bill quite a prescriptive, tight and draconian interpretation of an international regime which may well change over the next few years is not appropriate. I have no doubt that the 1951 refugee convention will evolve—for the better, I hope—and that certainly the ECHR will be reviewed, as it is not only people in the UK who are concerned about it. The amendments are well meant and make a strong argument, but they would tie the hands of our own judiciary and Ministers.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I do not wish to detain the Committee now, but will the noble Lord, at some point between now and Report, at least have a conversation with me about what he thinks is draconian in these international conventions to which we are already a signatory, and which these amendments will simply ensure that we act upon in the way that is suggested in things that we are already signed up to?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am always more than happy to have a conversation with my friend the noble Lord. However, as the Minister himself said not that long ago, the Bill in its entirety is compliant with the current legislation in respect of the Human Rights Act and the European Court of Human Rights. It would be otiose, and at the same time restrictive, to put this stand-alone amendment in the Bill. It would encourage what I have previously described as judicial activism, which we have seen in the immigration tribunal and has been featured in the Daily Telegraph quite regularly. I do not think that is helpful; it would undermine the faith and trust that people have in the criminal justice system. For that reason, I do not think the Bill should be amended in the way that the noble Lord proposes, but I am always happy to be persuaded by him.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, for his comments. I do not think there will be very much difference between us on this, and he has made some very strong points which I may echo in my remarks to the Committee.

I just want to re-emphasise three points which are important to the consideration of these amendments. First, the gangs are the targets of the Government’s action, not the people who are seeking asylum or refugee status, or even the people being trafficked without either of those two issues being the reason. The gangs are the targets.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, made much reference to the Joint Committee report on the Bill, a copy of which I have for ease of understanding. I just reaffirm to him that it is the Government’s intention to respond to that report prior to Report. Some of the issues that he is bringing forward as amendments to the Bill are recommendations from the report, but we want to examine the report and give a full response to it before Report. So he will have the opportunity to examine the Government’s response prior to tabling any amendments on Report.

I noted, just out of interest, that there were, I think, 12 Divisions among members of the committee during its consideration of the report on Wednesday 18 June, so there was never unanimity even within the committee on what it should say. Therefore, it is even more important that the Government examine all those concerns and reflect on the 12 Divisions that took place, as well as the unanimity in the report that was finally produced after that. It is important that I say that.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I recall that I was keen to tell the noble Lord, Lord German, that in fact paragraphs 1 to 52 had been agreed unanimously. There were Divisions in the report—I mentioned that—but the Minister will be pleased to know that the Labour members of the committee voted in favour of it to a man and woman.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am always pleased to know what my comrades in arms in both Houses have done, and it is important that the Government reflect on all points of view. I simply make the point that there will be a response to the committee’s report prior to Report, and those nuances will be examined as part of the discussion.

The third point that the Government want to put on record—I have said this in earlier discussions—is that the United Kingdom is unequivocally committed to the European Convention on Human Rights, and the measures in the Bill support that aim and are compatible with UK human rights obligations. That leads directly to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord German. Those are the three important principles: gangs are the target; we will respond to the report; and we believe we are compliant.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I remind the Committee that this offence criminalises not specific articles but those who supply. I do not see a realistic scenario in which items mentioned in Amendment 51A, when used for their intended purposes, could be used in connection with an offence under Sections 24 and 25 of the Immigration Act and therefore fall within scope of this offence. However, I understand the intent of the noble Baroness’s amendment. There are legal safe- guards, and we can reflect on this and have a discussion around it. I hope she recognises that the points I have made are equally valid, and that she does not move her amendment. We can examine this issue outside of the Committee.

I hope that noble Lords feel able to withdraw or not move their amendments. Once we have responded to the report, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, can return to any of these issues on Report.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response to this long list of amendments. I apologised earlier to the Committee that, inevitably, it was going to take time to get through them all.

We are agreed about one thing. The Bill is there to target those who are profiting from organised crime. There is no disagreement in the House about this. It is not a binary choice between the victims or the profiteers. The people they are exploiting need to be protected, but at present, there is a risk that the most vulnerable are caught by some of these offences. Again, we are agreed about that; how we do it is what matters. It is the role of committees such as the Joint Committee on Human Rights to scrutinise these things in detail—even issues such as hygiene kits. That came up as an amendment in the committee from one of its members, who said that the Government should at least examine this. It is on page 67 of the report, which details amendment 8, which inserts “hygiene kits” in Clause 15, thereby extending the list of included items.

I am grateful to the Minister for his responses to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Chakrabarti. This issue can be looked at outside of our proceedings. I will take away the points he has made, and those of all noble Lords who have participated in this excellent debate. I will make a couple of brief remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, talked a lot about the international agreements that have been entered into. Our duty is to comply with those. They are living documents, open to challenge and amendment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, in pressing the Government, as I have done previously, to let us know as soon as possible, before Report, what their thinking is on Article 8 of the ECHR.

It was not just the ECHR that I referred to in these amendments. We also referred to the protocol against smuggling and Article 26 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, published in 2005, to which we are a signatory. These are important questions that we must always benchmark our actions here against. It is not that we are caught in a trap of international agreements; we, as a nation, have entered into them, and they are obligations we must live up to.

As far as the interpretation of the courts is concerned, my noble friend Lord Faulks made a very good point. Just as there needs to be further training—for instance, in lower-tier tribunals, a point we have discussed previously—it is not beyond the ability of our judges to give direction on many of these international conventions, which all of us are very familiar with anyway. Regarding Article 8, the Danish Government and others would not normally be regarded as hostile to international action. Donald Tusk was one of the signatories of the email that the noble Lord, Lord German, referred to earlier—it had no destination but caused quite a lot of controversy inside the Council of Europe and the European Court. It has provoked a debate, which was overdue, on whether that interpretation of Article 8 is correct. We all welcome that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said that we should go after the people who are monetarising this issue. She is right. She is also right that we have had a fine tradition in this country. She said that it was the world’s apology for the Holocaust to introduce the European Convention. A lot of other factors were involved there, but we all know that British lawyers, British politicians and the Conservative Party leadership at that time were deeply committed to the creation of European scaffold to govern some of these questions. Times have changed, and some of the challenges are different. That is not a reason for walking away from our obligations. It is a reason for standing together with others who want to make sense of these things, so that we protect those who are at risk and ensure that we go after those who are acting in a criminal manner.

I will take back to the Joint Committee the points the Minister has made. I am grateful that he will respond before Report. That will give us a chance to decide on amendments of a similar nature, or others which work in the eyes of the Government. We can continue to discuss this outside Committee, and whether it is possible to bring them back. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 33 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to these two amendments, and I declare that I am co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery and vice-chair of the Human Trafficking Foundation. I agree with every word that the noble Baroness, Lady May, said. We need to remember that in these two amendments we are talking about not people traffickers but human traffickers, those who are bringing people from other countries to this country to be enslaved. As the noble Baroness said, many millions of people across the world—men, women and children, including babies—are in that very sad situation.

The idea of this amendment is to recognise that the Modern Slavery Act 2015, brought into Parliament by the noble Baroness, Lady May, does not specifically deal with this. It provides a partial defence under Section 45 for those who are genuine victims of modern slavery, but that does not deal with Clause 14 of the Bill.

Whatever the Minister may have thought, I would ask him to rethink whether in this modern time, when that relatively small number of people coming through either on boats or in lorries or in any other way who are pushed into this country by those who are exploiting them, it is not crucial that it is clear to anyone dealing with them that, if there is a possibility that the person may have been exploited or is coming into this country to be exploited, then the articles that they have need to be looked at in a completely different way. Indeed, under Amendment 49, the articles need specifically to be retained as potentially of value for the first part of the national referral mechanism when the person is going through that rather prolonged process. I strongly support the two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady May.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I too am a signatory to Amendment 49. It is a great pleasure to support both amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady May. In parenthesis, I should say that, in 2015, along with my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, it was a great pleasure to support what was then ground-breaking legislation. It was a classic, textbook example of how to make good law: first, we had robust pre-legislative scrutiny; the noble Baroness, in her role as the Home Secretary of the day, along with Dame Karen Bradley, was magnificent in steering the legislation through; and we had bicameral agreement across both Houses, with amendments being made and accepted as the Bill went through both Houses.

I might add that the Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently conducting a new inquiry—the Minister will be pleased to hear—into supply chain transparency and modern-day slavery, and the noble Baroness, Lady May, has been extraordinarily generous with her time and in making a wonderful written submission to the committee. I know that this will be taken into account when we come to write our report and its recommendations; 2015 is a decade ago and, as the noble Baroness has recognised, issues like Section 54 need to be looked at again. The way we use the Proceeds of Crime Act needs to be looked at in relation to modern-day slavery and human trafficking. It is another living document, something that, from time to time, we have to go back to. I believe that the whole House would want to pay tribute to the noble Baroness for the commitment that she has given to people who are victims of modern-day slavery.

I referred to Dame Karen Bradley. For some time, I was a trustee of the Arise Foundation charity; I see that my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, who was also a trustee of Arise, is here. We became intimately involved in some of the personal cases that were raised by victims of modern slavery. With the noble Lord, Lord German, at an event that he kindly hosted a couple of weeks ago for Kalayaan—another wonderful charity that works with victims of modern slavery—we heard some heart-rending cases of people who had been trafficked but who had come through the national referral mechanism. It would be helpful for later stages of the Bill if the Minister were able to give us some updated information about the numbers of people who are in the national referral mechanism at present, and the average time that people spend in the NRM. At the event in the Attlee Room, hosted by the noble Lord, Lord German, we heard, for instance, from one woman who had been four years in the national referral mechanism.

There is always work to be done, but the noble Baroness’s amendments, especially Amendment 49, are incredibly important. People who go into the NRM have to prove their justification and right to be able to stay in the United Kingdom. If they do not have access to the evidence—if it has been taken away —then it will be impossible for them to prove their case; it will undermine the victim seeking determination by the NRM.

At pages 21 and 22 of the Joint Committee on Human Rights report, which I referred to at some length earlier today, the committee warns of the danger of breaching the European Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, and points to our obligations to victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. We should never forget that victims of modern slavery and human trafficking did not come here willingly and were not migrants; they are victims of a heinous crime. The noble Baroness is right to remind us of the distinctions that we should make.

On 16 April, the Minister replied to my Written Question HL6468, asking for the Government’s response to the manifesto entitled Putting Victims First: Renewing the UK Commitment to Victims of Trafficking and Modern Slavery, which was published in July last year by a coalition of modern slavery organisations. In his helpful Answer, the Minister said:

“The Government continues to engage with the coalition … keeping all aspects of asylum and immigration systems under regular review including in relation to trafficking and modern slavery”.


I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether they have discussed with the coalition the protection of belongings of people likely to have been trafficked and, if so, what response they received. If not, I hope that they will do so between now and Report. I hope that the Government, and the Minister, will accept the excellent amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady May.

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I hope that, with those assurances, the noble Baroness—

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, he will remember that I asked him some questions about the national referral mechanism. I do not expect an answer now, but will he agree to write to me about that?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I was just coming to the noble Lord’s question in my denouement. As I was saying to the noble Baroness, I hope she can reflect on the assurances I have given and withdraw her amendment. If she is not happy, she can return to these issues, but I hope she will reflect upon them. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, that I do not have the figures he requested to hand. I can undoubtedly find a person who does have them and get them to him in short order. I will do it before we finish Committee.

With that, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady May, will withdraw her amendment.