Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

That is the tension in tone and competence in these various departments that I wanted to highlight in Amendment 139. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 139 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I have put my name to Amendments 134 and 135 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and I will leave it to him to speak to them if he wishes to do so at any length. I support these amendments to ensure that we have accountability and review, and I do so on a probing basis.

I think the Minister who will reply to this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, has been in the Chamber when the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, has been subjected to a considerable amount of attrition on the Bill—which he has treated with commendable control and self-restraint. Few have been provoked as much as he has in this Chamber in recent years. That said, I think the noble Lord, Lord Murray, would confirm in his private conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, that there is real concern in your Lordships’ House and in certain well-informed sectors in the country about the consequences of the Bill.

In the recent past we have had reviews—I and my noble friend Lord Anderson have been part of this in relation to terrorism—which have reported to Parliament in relation to controversial pieces of legislation that cause great concern, particularly to Members of the other place. I understand that, having been one. I simply ask the Government to take into account that such reviews are necessary in some form and to provide for accountability and review of the consequences of the Bill, if it becomes an Act of Parliament.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. She made her case for transferring this responsibility from the Home Office to the Foreign Office on grounds of efficiency and good administration. In my totally unbiased view, it is of course the case that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a model of efficiency and good administration. But on practical grounds, I really do not agree with this.

There is a Foreign Office role. The role of the treaty section is monitoring, ratification procedures and quality control over the treaties that we sign. There is a role for legal advisers, referred to by the noble Baroness, monitoring the Government’s respect for their treaty obligations and, if necessary, reminding other departments of the obligations that we have taken on.

There could be a role for our posts abroad. I strongly support the proposal in Amendment 130 for the safe passage visa. It would be very good if our posts abroad were allowed, say, to filter out applications that are clearly not unfounded and to assist applicants with the electronic application system. That would be very good, but the trend in the Home Office, which the noble Baroness in my view correctly described, to move more and more to being a department of the interior, with a bit of homeland security, would be increased if responsibility for carrying out our treaty obligations in respect of asylum seekers were transferred to another department.

Moreover, the Foreign Office really is not equipped to take on the enhanced teams required to deal with 178,000 applicants in the asylum queue. So, although I understand the noble Baroness’s motives and applaud her praise for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I am against this proposal.

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I hope the Government may be able to look at the potential economic argument. Not allowing these people to work is, for a Conservative Government, very odd.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, at an earlier stage in our debates on the Bill, I referred to the fact that I am a member of the Woolf Institute’s Commission on the Integration of Refugees, which is declared in the register of interests.

I and some other Members of both Houses of Parliament have had the advantage of going to a number of meetings where those with lived experience of applying for asylum and achieving it have told us about their experience. Unanimously, they say that being unable to work while there has been work obviously available for them has been the most dispiriting experience. It is the thing that has driven them—most of them young people with considerable skills, and some with professional and technological qualifications—near to total despair. It seems entirely unreasonable that they should not be able to work when, as my noble friend has said, there is clearly work available and the pull factor has been shown to be non-existent.

The other thing that people with lived experience have mentioned is the lack of availability of higher education in particular in some areas. I invite Ministers to take account of that issue too.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I support Amendment 133 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford has added her name to it. She regrets that she cannot be here today; she is actually working with the Woolf Institute’s independent commission on refugee integration. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and other noble Lords who have eloquently made the case for the amendment already.

As it stands, the Bill makes the case for a right to work for some asylum seekers more important than ever. Of course, it is a theme that has come up already. There is little prospect of potential removals being able to keep pace with the large population of asylum seekers who will be deemed inadmissible in the future, and currently we have a huge backlog. We risk the creation of a permanent underclass. Apart from the deleterious effects, that drives some of those people into the grey and black economies because they are not allowed to work openly.

In principle, there may be a grain of evidence on the pull factors but not very much at all, as has been noted already. Allowing a subset of asylum seekers to work does not undermine the duty on the Secretary of State to remove people or open up any path to citizenship or leave to remain. If the Government are able to deliver on their own timelines for processing people and deeming that they are refugees, or should be removed, not a single person will ever attain the right to work under the amendment. We ought to consider the amendment as nothing more than a failsafe aimed only at those who have been here far too long without the ability to support themselves easily and who wish to work and contribute to their own welfare, that of their local community and sometimes that of their family, back in the land they have come from, who are sometimes in semi-hiding.

I think of a friend of mine—I will share a bit of the story, but I do not want to identify them in any way—who has been given the right to work because their claim was not dealt with within 12 months. Because of the inefficiency of the system, it took nearly 12 months after that for them to be told they had the right to work. They are now working in the care sector, way below the level of qualifications and experience they have in their life; they could potentially offer huge amounts to this country. They fled because of persecution. What do they do with most of their money? They pay tax and so on, but they send most of it back to the home country to support their family who are in semi-hiding. It enables their dignity to feel able to support their family, as well as taking part in the life of the community and feeling they are contributing to a country that, they still hope, will welcome them.

This is entirely in line with Conservative economic arguments. It is in line with everything in the universal credit system about encouraging people into work and supporting themselves. Please, it is time to agree to this.

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[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I cannot, and I am not here to get into a detailed discussion about that. I am simply trying to make this point. Noble Lords are raising the issue of productivity and the economy as a justification for accepting this right now in the Bill. As I said to the Committee earlier, there is some value and legitimacy, in principle, to some of the arguments being made. For instance, I would support the right reverend Prelate’s argument about ensuring that people who come to this country and are waiting for their application to be processed are able to make their contribution. However, we need to get to a position where the current rate of asylum seekers in the system is not that with which we are currently dealing.

Some noble Lords are arguing to be able to do both at the same time. Of course, I absolutely agree that the Home Office must be much better than it currently is at processing these things. I am not disagreeing with any of this. Unlike those noble Lords, however, I am saying that, for that kind of change to be accepted by the country at large, we have to take steps to get there. If you look at the bigger issue of immigration, part of what we are trying to do is to create a system that is acceptable and works for the country as a whole, and that everybody can have confidence in, so that they can feel much more in line with what the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, would like everyone to feel and believe regarding the changes she wishes to see. We cannot do it all at the same time.

That is what I am trying to do. I am not trying to argue about pull or push factors; just that the Bill is about an immediate issue that the Government are rightly trying to respond to—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I will finish my point and then I will give way. I think that some of the matters that noble Lords are advancing should not be dealt with at this time. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I wonder whether she will answer the next question with a yes or no, because I am confused by some of the things I have heard from her. If a job is available and an asylum seeker is the only person available who can realistically fill it, does she agree that, after three months or so, the asylum seeker should be allowed to take that job?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

At the moment, if somebody is still awaiting a decision on their asylum status or their status as a citizen or resident of the country, they are not eligible for employment—no.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

Surely noble Lords can speak only if they have been present throughout the debate from the very beginning.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right—that is correct.

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[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

The noble Lord may be referring to my having to rush out urgently—I needed to get a glass of water. I shall catch up with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, which I missed with great regret, but I was back for the next one.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I do not want to be unkind, but the rest of us manage to persuade the door- keepers to bring us glasses of water.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

May I? Forgive me, I am normally somebody who is a stickler for us keeping to the Companion—absolutely, for sure. However, if the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, can contribute to this debate having not even been here at the beginning, when my noble friend was here at the beginning and nipped out to get a glass of water, I think we can hear from my noble friend. If the noble Lord is minded to object, I would hope he would have objected to his noble colleague speaking.

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[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am sorry if the noble Baroness misunderstood my first comment. It was in response to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness will not mind my using her as an excuse but, on reflection, I think that I was unkind to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, and I wish to apologise to the House.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, shall I move on to Amendment 150? In fact, it takes us back to the previous group; I have no idea why it comes into this group. It would provide that the Act should not come into force until at least 28 days—I propose—after the Secretary of State has published a statement confirming the number of persons who, for a period of six months or more, have been awaiting final determination of their claim for asylum; and that, for not less than six months, that number has been not more than 20,000.

That may be a little circular and rambling but, basically, it proposes that we should get to a steady state in dealing with asylum applications. The periods may not be ones that noble Lords agree with, but I propose a figure of 20,000 people, which is not a negligible number of people. This amendment seeks to be realistic and provide a bit of—to our minds—common sense to the context of what we are debating.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and my noble friend Lord Paddick—who probably had no option but to sign it. This is a serious amendment that follows on from the serious points made about the operations of the Home Office. It is the backlog that is the problem. So much of this debate has suggested, implicitly or explicitly, that the position that we are in is somehow the fault of those who are seeking asylum, which is not an easy thing to take on.