Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 95 is about the use of information supplied by HMRC. I acknowledge that many—possibly most—people believe that if information is given to a government official in one part of government, the Government as a whole have it. That is not the case, and we do need to take care with protecting data. Clause 28(1) allows for the use of any of an organisation’s functions, and the amendment would limit it to the functions for which the information is supplied, it being for the purpose of any other functions of the persons in in subsection (3).

I have explained that extraordinarily badly. This comes of thinking that you can write brief notes instead of a complete speech, which I try and avoid for Committee. I refer noble Lords to the authority of the Bill. Basically, I want to limit the use of information provided under the Bill and to ask the Minister how this will work, how it will be policed and what sanctions, what remedies, there are if information is misused.

Amendment 190—in his absence, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson—raises again the issue of a firewall to protect vulnerable people. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Katz, is going to hear a repetition of points that I made on the Employment Rights Bill, because they are relevant here too. The objective is to protect workers who are in particular need of protection because of the abuse, the exploitation, they are experiencing. The amendment would restrict the use of information disclosed for enforcement purposes—enforcement against abuse or exploitation—regarding a subject of abuse who is seeking support, and of information regarding a witness to that exploitation. I shall return to witnesses in a moment.

I became aware during the passage of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 of the conditions to which some overseas domestic workers were subject. Slavery was the right term for them, and a change in the rules was made. It was minor and, frankly, quite inadequate. Our law did not and does not protect migrant workers—not just domestic workers but those in agriculture, care, health and so on—as it should. They are particularly vulnerable to abuse, not just because of the consequences if their existence comes to the attention of immigration authorities, but because of their fear of the consequences. People who do not know their way around the system, who are in fear of any authority figure, are very open to unscrupulous employers who can make threats—the threats may have no foundation at all—that the person may be detained or deported, or that the person’s children will be taken away, so they cannot take the risk of reporting abuse and exploitation. I am told by the sector that this fear is not ill-founded. There is evidence that data is often shared between labour market enforcement agencies, the police and Immigration Enforcement.

The current situation has a widespread effect: mistrust by migrant communities prevents police and labour inspectors doing their job properly, which drives down conditions for all workers. It is not impossible to deal with this. Secure reporting has been implemented in the Netherlands and Spain. I understand that Surrey Police has implemented a firewall, and the Greater London Authority is undertaking a pilot. During Committee on the Employment Rights Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, mentioned that the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found that allegations raised during inspections were not investigated by the Home Office. As she said, the rights of all workers are only ever as strong as those of the most vulnerable.

One comment made during that debate was that nobody should fear. Another comment—with which, of course, I agree, and which came from the Conservative Benches—was that one of the gravest human rights abuses is modern slavery and human trafficking, and that vulnerable individuals risk slipping through the gaps. The Minister on that Bill argued that blocking information-sharing

“could have unintended consequences and make it harder for the vulnerable individuals concerned to get the help they need and deserve”,

and that the right balance was

“between protecting vulnerable workers and maintaining the integrity of our immigration system.” ”—[Official Report, 18/6/25; col. 2078.]

I would argue that the system actually deters those vulnerable workers from seeking protection, and the clear view of those working in the sector is that the current position is to their very considerable detriment.

The immigration White Paper states:

“We recognise the challenges migrant victims of domestic abuse can face”—


“domestic” is quite a wide term in this context—

“and we will strengthen the protections in place to support them to take action against their abusers, without fear of repercussion on their immigration status.”

This is an opportunity to make an adjustment that would make a very considerable difference to people who do not always get the help they deserve from those who are in a position to make that difference.

The Conservative Front Bench has tabled Amendment 188. I am really intrigued as to why it wants to amend the Data Protection Act, given paragraph 4 of Schedule 2, which we on these Benches have often opposed. We will see. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief, because I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, particularly about the position of domestic migrant workers. This is something we will come back to at later stages of the Bill, but as the noble Baroness has raised it now, I just put on record how much I agree with her. The noble Lord, Lord German, and I recently met with Kalayaan, which does so much extraordinary, wonderful work in this field. We were reviewing with it how things have changed—and what else needs to be changed—in the years that have passed since 2015. I have with me a publication it issued called 12 Years of Modern Slavery, the Smoke Screen Used to Deflect State Accountability for Migrant Domestic Workers.

I know that the Minister agrees with Kalayaan’s 2015 findings, because there is a photograph of the Minister and me, both of us looking considerably younger, alongside our redoubtable friend, now retired from this place, Lord Hylton. We were celebrating the passage of the 2015 legislation but recognising that more still needed to be done. I will not quote at length from the report. If the Minister has not seen it, I will be more than happy to share my copy with him, so that he can study the photographs and see the effects of too much engagement with Bills such as this.

The report says:

“Government data tells us that from 2005 to 2022, the number of visas issued to migrant domestic workers has remained consistent at around 20,000 per year”,


so this does affect a significant number of people doing significant work. Kalayaan urged the Government to take immediate steps to amend the Immigration Rules and reinstate the rights provided for under the pre-2012 visa regime. Among those is the right to renew a domestic worker visa annually, subject to ongoing employment. That is a reasonable demand. I hope that at some stage during the proceedings on the Bill, the Minister will see whether there is a way to address that issue. So I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has said.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on a couple of the amendments in this group.

I was listening very carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said on the information-sharing provisions in Clauses 27 and 28, which her amendment refers to. It would be helpful, certainly for me, if the Minister when he responds could be clear about the scope of those two clauses. My reading of Clauses 27 and 28 is that the HMRC data that is allowed to be shared under those provisions is that gained purely through its customs functions, not through its other activities. I am unclear about how that would help—or not—in the very important issues that the noble Baroness raised about the protection of workers and, rightly, the need to crack down on those who abuse people’s immigration status and employ them when they have no right to work in this country.

I very much support strengthening the law in this area and sharing information to support that, but I am unclear on the customs function. The customs data helps strengthen the case about combating organised criminal groups and their transporting of funds and the supplies they use to do this trafficking. That seems to be the purpose of the clause, so it would be helpful if the Minister could flesh that out.

I strongly support my noble friend’s Amendment 188. Whether we support them or not, we should go back to the purposes of the GDPR and the human rights legislation, particularly the GDPR data. The intention of that legislation is absolutely right—that we protect the information of people who are legitimately in the country. However, we should not use that legislation to protect those who are here illegally or who are criminals trafficking in human beings and abusing our laws. It would be much more helpful if that legislation was not used to protect them. Therefore, I very much support my noble friend’s amendment. I know he will set it out in more detail; I just wanted to add my support and to raise the question that arose from the noble Baroness’s contribution.

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[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a couple of words in support of these amendments from my noble friend. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, just remarked, it is not as if these changes would be difficult to make: the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to them as simple improvements to the process. My noble friend referred to the current summit: to be honest, I have not seen the results, as I was in meetings all morning. Are there any yet? It has obviously been widely trailed that President Macron will talk about improving the reception by this country of applicants for family reunion. It would be perhaps a little ironic—well, there would be a nice coincidence of efforts—if, from this side, we are proposing simple improvements in process and we also have an ally in President Macron, who is saying, “Please simplify and streamline your family reunion efforts”. That would be a nice entente amicale.

I will make a point that I am not sure any of the other speakers have, which is made in our briefings. Families often become separated, so not only does a family together have to make possible multiple journeys but dispersed members of a family, including children, might have to make multiple trips from different locations. So you are multiplying the risks and the possibility of violence and distress. I think my noble friend referred to one in five families saying they had to resort to using smugglers to reach the visa centre. Well, surely one of the major purposes of the Bill, which we all support, is to try to put the smugglers and people traffickers out of business. Here is a government policy that is helping to give people smugglers more business—we regret it, but it is the reality—which you could avoid by the simple shortcut of making biometrics collectable other than at visa centres and not requiring at least two journeys. The thought of a lone woman or a family with children having to expose themselves to all the threats to safety that we can imagine and are told about is really unconscionable, when it really would not take a great deal of effort by the Home Office to keep people safer, streamline the process and satisfy President Macron, as well as us, all at the same time.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, whether or not President Macron is tuned into our debate today and supportive of what noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, has just said, she will be glad to know, as I was, that the British Red Cross says:

“Extending the relevant clause to include refugee family reunion would ensure families, including children, were able to provide biometrics outside a visa centre and significantly reduce the risks encountered to reach visa centres”.


That was the point that my noble friend Lord Kerr was making during his very good speech—his remarks were eminently sensible, as always—and the invitation to try to extend that provision is long overdue.

The Red Cross interviewed 215 people—100 families. I will summarise just three things that it found:

“Just under half of the people found the journey difficult … 1 in 5 families said they had to resort to using smugglers to reach the visa centre … Just under 60 percent of families were displaced before or during the application process.”


The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, gave an example from Iran. I will give an example, if I may, from the Red Cross, from Sudan. Between 2003 and 2005, I travelled to Darfur. During that genocide, 300,000 people were killed there and 2 million people were displaced. Here we are in 2025 with the war in Sudan, which is often overlooked because events in the Middle East and in Ukraine are so high on our agendas. It has been appalling to see the horrific number of deaths and displacements again in Sudan. It is not surprising, therefore, that Sudan is probably top of the list of those who end up in the small boats trying to cross the English Channel.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I just have a few points to make on the amendments and the contributions that have been made, which I hope means that the Minister can make sure he covers them when he responds.

On the first two amendments, on family reunion, I support the concept and did a lot to support it when I was Immigration Minister. Just to give a balanced argument, though, it is important that we collect biometric information to make sure that the people who are applying are who they say they are. That is of course the reason why—the Minister will confirm this—it is important to get the biometric information before the application is submitted, so that you know that the person making the application is indeed entitled to do so. Clearly, it would be helpful to make it easier to collect that biometric information.

Of course, one challenge with the list of countries read out earlier by noble Lords is that we often do not have our own personnel in those countries, for very sensible reasons. In making it safer for those applying for family reunion, we must obviously be mindful of the risks that might be run by British officials in collecting the biometric information. There are some countries where it would be problematic to do so, because we simply do not have people. I am therefore not sure that it is quite as straightforward as some noble Lords have suggested, but I suspect that, given the progress of technology and the point made by the noble Lord, Lord German—that a lot of this equipment is now much more advanced, portable and transportable—we can make some improvements. I will therefore listen carefully to what the Minister has to say about how we can make things easier for people with a legitimate family reunion claim, while also maintaining our border security.

I want to pick up on one point that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, made—I understand why he made it—about data protection and protecting the rights of children. I think there is a bit of a danger here of focusing on the process and forgetting what the point is. If a child, someone over 16 but under 18, is coming to the United Kingdom in order to get to a safer location, we obviously need to be satisfied that they do not present a risk and are not a criminal or a terrorist from abroad—we know, of course, that in many countries, you can be those things while still being a child. If we are not careful and we overdo the GDPR aspect, for example, the danger is that we will not take the biometric data from the child, or that the circumstances will be such that doing so is problematic. In not doing so, we would not then be able sensibly to give that child safe protection in the United Kingdom—we would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

There is a balance to strike here. If the point of the exercise is that that child is able to get a successful asylum claim and come to the United Kingdom and be safe, we should not let what are otherwise sensible information protections get in the way. There is a risk of missing the point, and there needs to be a bit of proportionality and balance here.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I agree with the general thrust of the argument the noble Lord, Lord Harper, is putting to the Committee. He talked about getting the balance right, and that is really what I was arguing. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that these are children or young people, and we owe them a duty of care. We should get the balance right and not categorise them all as potential criminals or as having been involved in acts of terror or criminality. However, I recognise that there is that potential, and therefore, as he says, we have to get the balance right. We do not want a general disapplication of protections. We want to know that they are going to be used in a measured and sane way.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

As a supplement to that, I add that the balance is already there in the international standards, in things such as making sure there is an appropriate adult present. That does not harm any of the ambitions of the noble Lord. It is just what we would normally expect for minors.

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There are ways around that challenge which we are trying to examine, to see where they can be approved. However, in the context of family migration reunion today, I respectfully hope that noble Lords will reflect on what I have said, as we will reflect on what they have said. For the moment, I hope they feel able not to press their amendments. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I am grateful to the Minister. He will recall the example I gave of a two year-old boy in Sudan wanting to be reunited with his grandmother. It took 11 months to do that, and it required the transportation of information half-way across Africa in order to achieve it.

Will the Minister look at the countries generating the largest number of migrants who end up in boats in the channel, on irregular journeys, as some would put it—we all know that Sudan is one of the foremost of those countries—and see if we can do more to prevent people leaving in the first place by dealing with issues like family reunion in a more expeditious manner? I am not asking him necessarily to come forward with amendments to that effect, but even if he were to facilitate further discussions between his department and particularly the FCDO to see how that might be generated, that would be helpful to the Committee.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I will let my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti speak and then respond.