Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, first of all, I want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady May, for getting legislation about modern slavery on to the statute books. I want to say thank you very much, because we have people—some from my own country—coming here under that very disheartening reality. The second thing I want to mention is what the noble Baroness did with the Hillsborough inquiry. She resolved a lot of pain for a lot of people in Liverpool, so I wanted to say thank you for that.

The question I want to ask is this. Under Amendment 47, the line of defence would be that they were

“acting under the duress of slavery”.

What about a member of one of these criminal gangs that are bringing people over? They could easily say as their defence, “I was under duress when I did what I have done”. What would be the response to such a line of defence?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lady May, raise some interesting questions that I hope the Government will be able to address.

Modern slavery is of course an extremely serious issue. As the recent report from the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking—which is most ably chaired by my noble friend—made clear, the effect that this brutal trade can have on the people involved is truly harrowing. It is right that the Government take this opportunity to outline how they will incorporate protections for those who are acting under duress of slavery into the immigration system. I welcome my noble friend’s amendment in so far as it provides the Government with an opportunity to address this important issue.

However, I want to raise a cautious concern about one particular aspect of the amendment, which is that the protection would apply only once someone’s status as having acted under the duress of slavery had been established. I understand that determining this status would involve going through the national referral mechanism, which, as noble Lords across the Committee will be well aware, faces severe backlogs. Not only that but, as the UN themselves has highlighted, far fewer foreign applicants under the NRM actually have a decision made in their favour, suggesting that immigrants are increasingly applying to the NRM on the basis that this will delay any decision to remove them, rather than because they have genuine grounds for a claim. That raises the question of whether the amendment would risk creating another loophole and another incentive for those crossing in small boats to delay any decision on their application in the full knowledge that the NRM mechanism already is severely delayed and backlogged.

It is the duty of the Government to seek to protect those who are under duress of slavery. As I have said, the amendment might risk creating a considerable loophole that could be easily exploited by bad actors. That is not to say that I do not support the intent behind the amendment, but I will be paying close attention to what the Minister has to say on this point.

On Amendment 49, we agree that this is an important provision and that it makes complete sense to be assured that articles will be both protected and kept in a condition that will allow them to be used and referred to in any future case. As my noble friend has already alluded to, my understanding is that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act powers will already cover this, and that if any seized articles were lost or damaged then that would perhaps be a disciplinary matter for the officer involved. We therefore question whether a protection in the Bill in the form of this amendment is necessary, but the point that my noble friend raises is an important one. We will join her in seeking strong assurances from the Minister that these articles will be protected and kept in a condition that will allow them to be used in the future.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, for tabling these amendments and instigating this discussion. I am grateful for the efforts that she took as Home Secretary, all those years ago, to establish the first Modern Slavery Act, following the very good process that the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, mentioned. As I recall, having been the shadow at the time, that process had Frank Field, among others, chairing cross-party pre-legislative scrutiny efforts, which led to the legislation—the Act whose implementation my right honourable friend the current Home Secretary and I, as Members of Parliament, shadowed at the time.

It is one thing to pass an Act—we have all done that many times in this House and other Houses—but it is quite another to retain what I sense is a lifelong interest and passion for the issue. I say to the noble Baroness, 10 years on, that it is a tribute to her commitment at the time that she continues to do that. I also pay tribute to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Randall, in his absence, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton. All four have now formed a sort of coalition—I think we will call them the quartet after the earlier intervention by colleagues—that is taking a real interest in the development of this issue. I was pleased to address, on behalf of the Government, a reception in the House of Lords a couple of weeks ago at which the noble Baroness, Lady May, appeared virtually to look at the next stages of tackling this issue.

Having said all that, I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness that the amendments she has tabled today are covered by existing legislation. I am willing to be tested on that, but I hope I can give her that reassurance. She raised these issues at Second Reading and I hoped I had given her such reassurances then.

Amendment 47 seeks to provide a reasonable excuse for articles for use in immigration crime for those who are acting under duress of slavery, a point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu. I put it to the noble Baroness and the other noble Lords that the protections she is seeking are covered by Section 45 of the very Modern Slavery Act 2015 that was legislated for at that time. Going back to the point mentioned by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, Section 45 provides a statutory defence against prosecution where an individual was compelled to commit an offence as a result of their exploitation. That is very clear in the Modern Slavery Act, which—this is my view and that of my legal advisers in the Home Office, and I hope it has been echoed again today—can be interpreted to mean that, in the event of trafficking from modern slavery, all of the provisions of the Bill can be dealt with by that statutory defence. We can debate that, but I hope it will eventually satisfy the noble Baroness’s noble intention in bringing forward the amendment today.