Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, “Stop the boats” is a worthy aim, and the Prime Minister is right to consider it a priority of the Government, but the Bill as currently written will not achieve it. Let me assure my noble friend straightaway that, although I have great concerns about this text, I will not be opposing the Bill’s Second Reading today. My concerns are numerous, and my probing questions require some clear answers from my noble friend. My remarks are made partly from my background as an Immigration Minister in the UK, partly as a former spokesperson in the European Parliament, and partly as a lawyer—not a lefty lawyer.

I begin by telling my noble friend that the ways chosen by the Government to alleviate the undoubted suffering of persecuted people fleeing tyranny will have the opposite outcomes to those suggested, and in implementation they will both break solemn laws and treaties and provide greater sustenance to the real criminals—the people traffickers and smugglers—who should be our first targets. The number of detected human trafficking offences has increased substantially in recent years, and we must not allow them to profit from vulnerable people. Why are we not doing more to catch these real criminals, some of whom are here in the UK?

As a lawyer, my noble friend must understand that I will never vote in favour of our Government breaking the law—and I trust that it is the same situation for him. The Government have claimed that they have taken advice from the “finest legal minds” in this country. Can he please name these fine legal minds? To clarify, I am satisfied, as is the UNHCR and other organisations, that no asylum seeker per se can be illegal. There is a clear difference, as my noble friend ought to know, between migrants who come here illicitly or deceitfully and are in breach of our tight Immigration Rules, and asylum seekers who present here and claim asylum under the strict criteria of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. In the first case, those who break our Immigration Rules should and must be deported speedily. In the second case, applicants for asylum should be quickly put to proof that they meet the fundamental criteria to be granted refuge. If they cannot, they should then be returned to whence they came.

When I was the Minister in 1996, I committed extra resources to the removal process, because I believed that our system must be seen by our people as firm but fair. We had to sometimes apply pressure on foreign Governments to achieve that. Those who succeeded in complying or proving their status were afforded the traditional and vital hospitality that this country was, until now, noted for. The Government are instead trying to recategorise asylum seekers as themselves being criminals, before their cases are even heard. They are using extreme rhetoric and, in implementing their Rwandan scheme, flagrantly ignoring laws—not only the 1951 refugee convention but other international agreements and, of course, the European Convention on Human Rights.

Regarding the Rwanda scheme, the Bill sets out to diminish the UK courts’ powers to suspend deportation and sets a dangerous precedent about the way in which they look at judicial review. As a lawyer, can my noble friend really defend this behaviour? When he replies, can he please give us the precise details of that part of the agreement which obliges the UK to take Rwandan asylum seekers back here? I refer him to section 16 of the memorandum of understanding.

Changes to the Bill were made in the House of Commons. Some were made in deference to extreme demands; one was also made relating to the issue of safe and legal routes to this country for asylum seekers. We are all aware of those routes, which come from UN programmes. Indeed, I was the Minister responsible for that from Bosnia in 1996. We are also aware of special UK programmes from favoured countries. Noting the wish of the Government to have an annual limit on such arrivals, how can my noble friend describe what the new arrangements might look like? The concession in the Commons does not really give us much to go on.

All UK embassies and consulates, in my view, should be a potential application post for entry where processing can take place. That is the least we should accept. Of course, the Foreign Office maintains a list of safe countries, and I accept that it will be more difficult for those from such countries to meet the criteria for asylum, but the opportunities for applicants must be spread across our presence, wherever in the world it might be. We need to increase our resources to deal with cases quickly.

Let us go back, finally, to the channel and the boats. I was a drafter of the Dublin agreements when we were in the EU; they at least made it easier to send back asylum seekers within the law. Since we have left the EU, we must rely on bilaterals with our neighbours. I welcome our discussions with the French, but these need to go further, with good will on both sides. Breaking international law certainly will not help. We also need to become reassociated with new EU initiatives to handle the large number of migrants who try to enter the Schengen area every year. Together, we have a better chance of achieving this.

There are various ways in which we can bring about change to protect lives and our borders at the same time, but that does not include breaking international law; leaving the European Convention on Human Rights; curtailing the powers of the UK courts; criminalising innocent victims; and harming as a result our race and community relations in the UK, which a lot of us have worked so hard over many years to improve.