Let me go briefly through my quick summing up of what I have heard.
It seems that there are those who wish to leave things as they are; those who wish to have a more relaxed regime in terms of getting further from the convention; and those, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who want to …
My Lords, I do not want to repeat all that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, but I agree with every word. If we wish people to become full citizens of, or to integrate into, our country, looking back at the way in which they came into the country actually damages that process. People who could …
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate around a cluster of amendments that are, I remind the Committee, largely about children and women. If we look at the background of the present system, we find that 91% of all visas granted since 2010 were for women and children, with children being the m…
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Brinton, for very sad personal reasons, I shall speak to the amendments in her name, which I have also signed, and do my best to replicate what I think was her intention when she tabled them.
First, I need to say that the Government have already slip…
On behalf of the Government Benches, I echo the noble Lord’s comments about his noble friend. He was a good servant to his party, to his constituency and to the country. The recommendations made by that working group have been put into government consideration. I am not involved in that working grou…
As noble Lords will know, we have negotiated the French pilot for the first time with the French to ensure that we have detention in the UK and return to France. As I said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Massey, we intend to have returns under that scheme imminently. That is a pilot scheme; it wil…
My Lords, I will make a very brief point in addition to that one. It is interesting that we have just came out of a debate on a group of amendments that address the rule of law and legal advice. Around the Committee, there was a strong view that people should have representation, that they should be…
My Lords, it is a pleasure to support these amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Ludford and Lord Oates. We support Amendments 142 to 145, as they would safeguard the rights of individuals granted status under the EU settlement scheme, ensure the proper application of the withdrawal agre…
I repeat what I said to the right reverend Prelate: we are running the pilot until December and it will be evaluated. We have made some changes from 1 September, but not for the vast majority of people in the system—they will still be eligible for 56 days. Families, over-65s and those with disabilit…
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 116 and 118 in my name. This is a bit of a reversal, because it is looking not at what is happening but at what is left behind. I am asking the Government to consider this in some detail, so I am worried that the Minister may have some difficulty answering all th…
I thank the Minister. As I said at the beginning, it would be very helpful to have it in writing so that, as he rightly says, we can reflect on it in the greater time we will have available to us.
My Lords, in sporting words, this has been a game of two halves. One half has very much struck at what I would call Second Reading speeches and issues, and the other has been very specifically about the structure and place of safety issues in the Bill. I will deal first with the amendments from the …
Georgia has been suspended for reasons we just talked about to do with the way it treats people.
My Lords, we on these Benches agree with the Government that the Conservatives “trashed” our asylum system, leaving the backlog spiralling out of control. We also agree that there is no silver bullet to deal with that failure. However, the Government have so far failed to get a grip on the problem a…
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as set out in the register; I am supported by RAMP. I also thank the police for their work in Epping in Essex. I listened to the chief constable make his statement just an hour ago. In particular, I welcome the fact that they have now arrested 10 people and…
I cannot commit to that, I am afraid, simply because the Home Office currently undertakes significant research on those very factors. Self-evidently, the English language is a pull factor for people, because English is a very common and well-understood language throughout the world. The perception o…
My Lords, I start by giving my registered interests. I am supported by the RAMP organisation. These Benches welcome the principle lying behind this deal for two reasons: first, it undermines the model that the smugglers use and, secondly, it creates an additional safe route. These Benches commend th…
Interestingly, the challenge in the Bill before us is to smash the gangs. That was the statement from the Minister, and the issue of boats crossing the English Channel dominates the Bill and is the one that has been given the most effect. It was, of course, the previous Government who made this such…
I thank the Minister very much for the explanation he has given so far, which I think indicates a surprising level of progress, given where we started from with the agreement that preceded this. The Minister has kindly told us that we have officers embedded in The Hague. Does Europol have similar of…
My Lords, I need to declare my regular interest in the RAMP organisation, which provides support for me and for other Members of this House across all parties. I want to start by reflecting on Amendment 190, which is about protecting trafficked people and those coerced, in many cases, into coming in…
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken. The amendments in my noble friend’s name, which I have signed, are, I think, well received across the Committee as a whole. On top of that, I must repeat the welcome for Clauses 34 and 35, which seek to increase flexibility when taking biometric informati…
My Lords, there are only two amendments in this group, both of which are from my colleague and noble friend Lady Hamwee. They both probe whether providing humanitarian support and legal services is a reasonable excuse in the offence in Clause 16:
“Collecting information for use in immigration crime…
My Lords, I speak to the amendment in my name and that in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. We have probably exhausted the use of recklessness—we have had it, virtually, in every other group—but, in essence, I also have a very specific issue to raise in respect of the amendment in my name…
My Lords, what we have just heard is not unexpected. I understand that the Conservative Benches really want to stop everyone from coming across and making those dangerous crossings, which everyone would want to do, but it is quite surprising that we are debating how these matters will work between o…
I think the answer is related to the nature of the offence which is before us. An offence which is punishable by a 15-year maximum jail sentence is a very serious and big crime to have committed. To put it simply, the suspicion threshold is seldom applied in our criminal law because such a low thres…
We are getting on quite well, actually. If noble Lords will bear with me, the supported accommodation as of 31 March 2025 is 15% lower than at the end of 2024 and 42% lower than at the end of September 2023. We are moving people through supported accommodation, and we are trying to get the backlog d…
If I were to set our annual borders Bill debates to music, I would pick Stravinsky. It has become a rite of spring, with clashing discords from the Conservative Front Bench and ritual incantations that there can be a sacrifice of international law because we are a dualist system.
We had the Nationa…
My Lords, with a prison population at 98.9% of capacity last month, a 19% increase in the number of assaults on prison officers in the last year and a shortage of prison officers, that is a bagful of problems for the Minister. Does he have an emergency plan for these problems, and what will he do to…