My Lords, the eloquent speech this evening by the noble Lord, Lord St John, reminded me yet again of what this House is losing by chucking out its hereditary Peers.
I want to take advantage of the slightly longer time allowed to Back-Benchers to make a technical point about language, before going o…
My Lords, briefly, I support the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Callanan, and I particularly support his Amendment 47. I also support Amendment 50 from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis.
The scrutiny of this Bill by the House of Lords has been excellent, far better than in the House of Commons. Wha…
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on securing this debate. He has been consistent and courageous in drawing public attention to the very serious consequences that will flow from continued immigration on anything like the present scale. His opening speech was masterly and, o…
I will follow my noble friend Lord Hannan on this subject of consultation. It really is quite shocking that there is no mention in the agreement of any consultation with the Chagossians—no mention at all. Indeed, as I said at Second Reading, there is only one mention of Chagossians and it is not a r…
I should just correct the noble Baroness. When Mr Henry Smith was the Conservative MP for Crawley, he listened very carefully to the people in his constituency. He was also an active member of the APPG on Chagos, of which I am a member.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, for securing this debate. In an often-told story, Albert Einstein set an exam paper for his graduate class. One of his colleagues noticed that the questions were the same as on the previous year’s exam paper. He asked how the great man c…
My Lords, I first declare an interest as a friend of British Overseas Territories.
The Bill is labelled the Diego Garcia Bill, but we all know it goes much further than that and deals with the full implementation of the Chagos Islands deal. The Government have told us that the previous Government s…
I am very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. He always makes a very pertinent point, but this is surely wrong in common sense. I do not speak as a lawyer, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, did, but this is common sense. Surely, as my noble friend Lord Murray said, the refugee…
To adjudicate between my noble friends Lord Harper and Lord Jackson, I think that my noble friend Lord Harper has a point. We can do something short of full-scale electronic data collection and the identity card system. The problem at the moment, frankly, is the cost, and it was a problem at the tim…
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I am a veteran of those dreadful, seemingly endless debates and I too recall them with some horror, including the ping-pong. But let us put this in perspective. That policy was chosen because it replicated the only purely successful means of stopping illegal imm…
My Lords, immigration is constantly presented as a negative—something to be scared of and to be feared. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill tries to address these fears, dealing primarily with illegal immigration, which we unanimously want to stop.
After all, 150,000 people on small bo…