Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Noble Lords will be aware that I have been concerned with immigration matters for about 25 years. I have not paid much attention to asylum because the numbers were much smaller, but they are now significantly greater. I repeat my warning that we really need to have our feet on the ground if we are going to deal with the scale of what is now in front of us. The public need to know that their concerns are understood and are being acted on. That is not yet the case and it needs to be done.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps it is possible to bring both sides together on this issue. I have a long history of being attacked for my views on this. I was the Member for Lewisham West when we brought in the east African Asians, and I remember the appalling attacks that one had for supporting Ted Heath and the Conservative Government at the time. I want to underline the long history of Conservatives being supportive of proper attitudes towards human rights and asylum. But it does not help us in this discussion if we miss out two different things.

The first is that we need to support international agreements, because this is not going to get any easier. I will not bore the Committee on the question of climate change, but if anybody thinks we have real problems of immigration now, the kind of weather changes we are going to have will mean that there will be a lot more people moving not for economic reasons but because they can no longer live where they are born. We have to realise how serious the issue of immigration right across the board is going to be. One has to take this very seriously, but that means we should be very careful about protecting the rights of asylum seekers. We did not just do this because of the Holocaust, although that was the proximate pressure. There are people who are treated in a way that makes life in their countries absolutely impossible, and they cannot leave by some accepted rule or open system. They have to hide and escape, and we need to take them very seriously.

The other thing we have to remember is that there is widespread concern about the number of immigrants who have come into this country and who are likely to do so. This Committee must not ignore that fact. But if we are to accept both those things, we have to be very careful that the legislation we pass is truly consonant with the international agreements we have. We also have to be extremely careful that we do not say, every time there is an amendment, that somehow there is something unsuitable behind it.

These amendments are technical. I do not agree with them all, but the Committee has to accept that they are important. To dismiss them as if they were merely the product of people who always oppose any kind of restraint on immigration seems unfair and unworthy. I also happen to think that many of us opposed the Rwanda proposal because it was a load of old rubbish—because it was not going to work. That is why we opposed it, not because we did not understand the importance of the issue but because it was not the right answer. Frankly, to suggest that because we did not agree with the Rwanda concept we are somehow wet on this subject seems untrue and very unfair.

We in this House are surely in the business of discussing these matters in detail and carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have rightly brought to our notice some important issues that we have to get right. They may not be the right amendments, but we have to discuss them without automatically believing what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has a long history of defending those who are not otherwise defended, has brought to our notice. I am pleased that we have been discussing it. I think we will find that he withdraws or does not move the amendments and thinks again about which ones he wishes to press.

I hope we will treat this with the seriousness it deserves, which means, first, recognising the national concern about numbers and, secondly, trying to make a proper distinction that protects people who flee from terrible regimes. I would like everybody in this Committee to think once again how blessed we are that we are not in that position. If we are blessed in that way, we should think carefully about those who are not.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, every time I speak after the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I feel as though I have taken on the headmaster. Having been admonished, I tread carefully. I have wanted to comment on this group of amendments from the beginning. The fact that the debate has become quite fractious and animated in some ways indicates what my original concerns are and why I wanted to ask the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in particular, to clarify something.