Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, the Ukraine crisis adds urgency to improve this legislation. Refugees fleeing Ukraine will create conditions ripe for exploitation by traffickers. In the coming months we should expect an increase in the number of victims of modern slavery in the United Kingdom. I will speak to Amendment 70, but I note the important issues raised by other amendments in the group to ensure that victims are not excluded from the support they need in the first place.

Amendment 70 would provide genuine victims with sufficient certainty to underpin their recovery, prevent their retrafficking and ensure that they have the security from which to engage with the police and prosecutors to bring the perpetrators to justice. These objectives alone would be reason enough to support Amendment 70, which has cross-party support—I thank the noble Lords, Lord Alton, Lord Paddick and Lord Coaker.

I make it clear that Amendment 70 would provide support and leave to remain only to individuals identified as genuine victims by the Government, through their own processes. These are not bad apples seeking to abuse modern slavery protection; they are confirmed victims—I cannot stress that enough. There are victims for whom the Government have recognised the need for ongoing support for at least 12 months. If, as the Minister said, the Government do not intend to wriggle out of this commitment, why have they not tabled their own amendment?

In Committee, the Minister responded with this extraordinary statement:

“We appreciate the push to put this into legislation at the earliest opportunity, but we do not agree that this Bill, with its focus on immigration is the most appropriate place to do so.”—[Official Report, 10/2/22; col. 1890.]


It was the Government who put modern slavery into an immigration Bill in the first place, and it is they who have already proposed adding a new section to the Modern Slavery Act, through Clause 63, providing statutory support during the national referral mechanism. Amendment 70 would complement Clause 63 and enhance the support provided to victims after the NRM by adding a second, new, section to the 2015 Act.

Statutory support for at least 12 months has been consistently recommended by organisations as essential for victims. Of course, support and leave to remain go hand in hand: victims who are not British nationals need leave to access that support. Victims also need leave to give them the security to engage with the police. The prosecution rate is unacceptable: prosecution figures are complicated, I agree, but, since 2015, only 88 offenders have been convicted for modern slavery as the principal offence. That tells enough of the story. Why is the prosecution rate so low? It is not the fault of the prosecutors; it is because the victims do not have the security to come forward. Many victims’ loved ones are threatened with death at the hands of the traffickers. The Government say that they want the Bill to increase prosecutions, and Amendment 70 will help them to do just that. I quote again the Zulu exhortation: “Vukuzenzele”—just get on and do it.

I intend to test the will of the House, and I ask your Lordships to vote for Amendment 70 to get on with it, to provide confirmed victims with the support and leave to remain needed to give both current and future victims hope for the future.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I will make a brief contribution to this debate—when I say “brief”, I mean it. I commend those who have already spoken for their powerful speeches, and I trust that they will be enough to convince the Government that they should in fact adopt these amendments.

I started my speech in Committee by saying:

“For victims of modern slavery, escaping from their exploitation is only the beginning of their journey towards recovery.”—[Official Report, 10/2/22; col. 1885.]


The noble Lord, Lord McColl, has known this for a long time and has consistently brought this message to your Lordships’ House. I of course will support Amendment 70 today, and I trust that it will be pushed to a vote.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has also been debating longer-term support for victims, and, just yesterday, it agreed that it should be available for up to 12 months, or longer, if needed. But that recognition makes the inclusion of leave to remain for victims who get that support acutely relevant to victims in Northern Ireland. If they do not have the ability to remain in the UK, the option of support is just illusionary. We are snatching away hope for recovery and a different type of future, free from exploitation.

We need the Government to be an enabler of recovery for victims across the UK and to provide, through temporary leave to remain, an environment where victims can co-operate with prosecutors. We need to be clear that the UK is a very hostile place for traffickers. Amendment 70 builds on the success of the modern slavery legislation across the United Kingdom jurisdictions and puts the needs of genuine victims on the statute book. The UK has prided itself on being at the forefront of providing for victims of modern slavery; let us continue that tradition by voting in favour of Amendment 70, which I commend to your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, this is another occasion when, from and on behalf of these Benches, I can say that we agree and can edit my remarks down—although not completely. Between us, my noble friend Lord Paddick and I have put our names to all of the amendments, save that of the noble Lord, Lord Alton—nothing was meant by that except that it slipped past us—and we support them all.

The noble and learned Baroness referred to the combination of seeing victims of trafficking through the lens of immigration, as if this is all a single issue, ignoring the trauma and exploitation they have suffered as victims. I add that, of course, not all victims are immigrants. In fact, the minority are, so far as we know —there is a lot that we do not know yet. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner has commented that the Bill creates

“a distinction between victims who are deserving of support and those who are not”,

like deserving and undeserving refugees.

I will go back to trauma, which was referred to by the noble and learned Baroness. There seems to be an assumption that, if a story varies, even in a small detail, from one day to the next, the whole must be a lie. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned legislating in haste; I say that it is not us who repent at leisure but the victims who suffer hard at leisure.

I am no great fan of using domestic legislation to construe and apply an international treaty—I support Amendment 68A, but I simply pre-empt the point being made against me, referring back to previous amendments. It is a very neat way of not disqualifying victims from protection, other than in very limited circumstances. It is very difficult to see how the Government could oppose the amendment on the best interests of the child, if we are truly concerned about child victims. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, said in Committee that the Government do not consider that Clause 62 would prevent victims coming forward because of the “discretionary approach”. He said:

“All of us ... want victims of modern slavery to continue to come forward for identification and support, irrespective of their personal circumstances or the circumstances in which they came to be exploited.”—[Official Report, 10/2/22; col. 1877.]