Lords
Proceedings
4 September 2025
4 contributions
Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
I am grateful for the questions, and the broad welcome for our measures, from both His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Benches. I too echo the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for her work and focus on these issues.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, rightly press…
I thank the noble Baroness for her question and the work she has done in this area. She will remember that in January, the Home Secretary announced a £5 million fund for local inquiries, and we are encouraging any local authority to bid for that resource if it still wishes to. The terms of reference…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
4 September 2025
7 contributions
Refugee Accommodation: Move-on Period
I thank the Minister for his response, although my concerns are not entirely allayed. It is important to remember that those affected by move-on period policies have already been formally recognised by government as refugees, with rights to protection that are enshrined in international law. First, …
My Lords, the arguments given last year for the 28-day/56-day pilot are the same as those given currently. In the Statements given to this House at the time, it was quite clear that this pilot was until the end of July and would be evaluated and the results published by the end of the summer. We are…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
3 September 2025
16 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, for the amendment. As I have said previously, the Government are trying to ensure that we have a properly functioning immigration system. The Illegal Migration Act 2023 included provisions that, in my…
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his introduction to Amendments 120 and 110, which respectively seek to retain the Schedule 1 list of countries to which a person subject to the duty to remove under the Illegal Migration Act could be removed, and the power to amend that list of coun…
+14 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
3 September 2025
16 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
I am grateful to noble Lords for what has been a very wide discussion, wider than I anticipated. I sense that at the end of the debate I probably will not have satisfied many noble Lords in the Chamber today, but such is the nature of government responsibilities.
I was not intending to say this, bu…
I am happy to examine that. We have said publicly that Article 8 is the focus for our examination, discussion and wider review. However, that does not mean—and this is the key, important point—that we will ditch the ECHR. Although it is 75 to 80 years old and was established in 1950, as a number of …
+14 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
3 September 2025
8 contributions
Nitrous Oxide Misuse: Drivers
I thank the Minister for his Answer, but given the serious increase in this apparent trend of inhaling nitrous oxide through balloons while driving and the deadly danger this presents on our roads, what assessment have the Government made regarding additional powers and tools that may be needed to h…
My Lords, what assessment, if any, have the Government made of the increase in the number of young people using nitrous oxide seeking medical assistance? There seems to be a trend of fewer young people but of their using bigger cylinders so inhaling more—more acute use. What assessment have the Gove…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
2 September 2025
11 contributions
Borders and Asylum
I am grateful to His Majesty’s Opposition and to the Liberal Democrats for their initial questions.
I will start, if I may, with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. He makes the allegation that the Government are responding to the protests that have taken place around the country in August of thi…
The noble Lord heckles from a sedentary position. We have been in office for 13 months now, and we have taken action—which relates, as I will come to, to what the noble Lord, Lord German, said—to establish a border command under the immigration Bill, to put in new powers to tackle small boats, which…
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
2 September 2025
7 contributions
Public Order Legislation
I am grateful as always to my noble and learned friend—my almost learned friend—the Minister for that Answer, but the issue is about more than one statute. Indeed, the common law and statute law in this sensitive area has mushroomed under Governments of all persuasions in recent years. Given the sum…
My Lords, I suggest that Sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 need amendment. To sit in a square and hold a placard is not an obvious act of terrorism. To arrest and prosecute such people is an infringement of the right to free speech and dissent. What needs to be caught are acts of definite…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
23 July 2025
5 contributions
Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I hope that I can help him. Essex Police have issued a statement:
“There are claims on social media that Essex Police officers ‘bussed’ protesters to the protest outside the Bell Hotel on Thursday July 17. This is categorically wrong”.
Now, I can o…
The key to that objective, which I share, is speeding up the asylum claims process. Therefore, the Government have invested in roughly 1,000 further individuals who are helping to make that processing quicker. It is a long task, because there is a large number of hotels. The number in use is smaller…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
23 July 2025
8 contributions
Palestine Action Protests: Arrests
My Lords, more than 200 people have been arrested across the UK, protesting entirely peacefully for Palestinian rights, one a retired woman priest aged 83 and another for holding up a Private Eye cartoon. Surely this is an unjust, perverse but entirely predictable consequence of the proscription of …
My Lords, Palestine Action was proscribed after a five-year-long campaign of criminal sabotage and violence against working people. There is a deliberate and deceitful attempt to conflate the protests about what is happening in Gaza with support for a proscribed group. It is a curious conception of …
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
22 July 2025
8 contributions
Illegal Migration: Pull Factors
I thank the Minister for his response. The Minister is currently introducing some minor measures to make it more difficult for the traffickers facilitating small boat crossings, and I support those measures, but does he believe that it is sustainable for us as a nation to admit between 10,000 and 23…
Immigration is a global crisis, with every wealthy country in the world suffering social and political pressures from unsustainable levels of immigration from poorer countries. Do the Government therefore agree that there needs to be international co-operation involving the British Government before…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
17 July 2025
6 contributions
UK-France Migration: Co-operation
My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome, in broad terms, from the Liberal Democrat Benches and for the cautious, guarded welcome from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition—who, it must be remembered, had 400 crossings in 2018 and 40,000 in 2023. This is a challenge and a problem for which the previous Gove…
The noble Baroness raises a very important point on some of the pull factors and the illegal grey market and black market in employment. She will know that we spent a lot of time last night on the Employment Rights Bill. That is partly to ensure that we undertake those standards. At the Home Office,…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
17 July 2025
Online Communication Offence Arrests
My Lords, I welcome this debate. As of this week, I have been in your Lordships’ House just over a year and today is the first opportunity I have had to exchange views with the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev. I appreciate the opportunity to do so and thank him for the powerful case that he made and the ar…
Lords
Debate
10 July 2025
16 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I have a confession to make—and I hope that noble Lords will bear with me as I make it. As a Member of Parliament, I spent a lot of the period between 2016 and 2019 arguing for a close relationship with Europol when we were agreeing the Brexit referendum and agreements. I put a lot of pres…
The noble Lord knows that this is a complex challenge and that the Government are trying to undertake a range of measures to address it. He will also know—we will return to this in more detail later—that, with the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme, we have been able both to process more applications on…
+14 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
10 July 2025
7 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
I am grateful to noble Lords for commencing this afternoon’s consideration and for the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Before addressing the points made by noble Lords on their own amendments, I just want to point out government Amendment 96 to Clause 33 in this group, which …
I will look in detail at the Hansard report of the contributions that have been made today and reflect on them, but my assessment is that I can give the noble Lord that assurance. If there is any difference in the detail that he has mentioned, I will double-check with officials to make sure that we …
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
8 July 2025
5 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I am tempted to just say “I agree”, but it is important that we put some points on the record.
I thank the noble Baroness for her amendments. Amendment 59 seeks to include an explicit carve-out in the clause to list humanitarian support as a reasonable excuse. The list of reasonable excus…
I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling these amendments. I think there is a common aim in the Committee to ensure that we take action to prevent illegal migration, dangerous crossings and fatalities at sea. While we may have different views on some of the issues, this is a common aim that we all s…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
8 July 2025
11 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for tabling their amendments. They have stimulated a discussion on important points that the Committee needs to consider. I am also grateful to noble Lords for attending this debate when such powerful alternative optio…
The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, would expect me to defend the Bill. We have taken judgments on the legislation and taken legal advice internally in the Home Office, and we think that that is a reasonable legislative framework for the operations that we are discussing. We will discuss in later clauses …
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
7 July 2025
3 contributions
Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) (Threshold Amount) (Amendment) Order 2025
My Lords, before I address the content of this statutory instrument, I will briefly provide some background. The fight against money laundering is an important element of the Government’s missions to deliver safer streets and kick-start economic growth. This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the…
My Lords, I am sure that all parliamentarians will agree that tackling money laundering is a shared mission across both Houses to create a safer society and support our economy. I am proud that the previous Conservative Government introduced the economic crime levy, which raises some £100 million pe…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Statutory Instrument
3 July 2025
3 contributions
Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025
My Lords, this order was laid before the House on 30 June. I am grateful to the House for its consideration of this draft order, which will see three distinct groups proscribed. They are Maniacs Murder Cult, Palestine Action and the Russian Imperial Movement. The proscription of these three organisa…
My Lords, when I tabled this regret amendment yesterday, my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle gave me some advice. She said, “Don’t lose your temper”. I am going to try to do my best to heed her advice. I thank the Minister for his engagement; he has been very kind and polite, and I thank hi…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
3 July 2025
7 contributions
Music Festivals: Hate Speech
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Does he agree that, when it was obvious that the law was being broken by these artists, the BBC should have immediately stopped the live feed? Does he agree that very senior people in the BBC must now take personal responsibility for this? I ap…
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former BBC producer. In light of the events at Glastonbury last weekend, the BBC has put out a statement saying that
“we will look at our guidance around live events so that we can be sure teams are clear on when it is acceptable to keep output on air”.
Would t…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
2 July 2025
8 contributions
Police: Facial Recognition Technology
I am grateful, as always, to my noble friend. Since the groundbreaking Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, in which noble Lords opposite may take some pride, it has been decided that in this country police power is principally a matter for Parliament and statute, not for incremental development b…
My Lords, this is an important tool, but the reality is that recently, there have been reports in the press about two women who were stopped by the police for shoplifting, through the use of facial recognition technology. There is an issue here about the algorithms used in facial recognition technol…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
1 July 2025
5 contributions
Licensing Act 2003 (UEFA Women’s European Football Championship Licensing Hours) Order 2025
My Lords, I move seamlessly from investigatory powers to the European football championships, as is the wont of the Home Office. This order was laid before Parliament on 15 May.
The summer brings with it the UEFA European Women’s Championship 2025, or the women’s Euros, as we like to call it. It wi…
My Lords, I welcome this order, but I should go over the background from which I speak.
I was the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association at the time of the then Licensing Bill. I spent many happy hours debating the Bill with the then Minister, Kim Howells, and with somebody called …
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
1 July 2025
6 contributions
Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) (Relevant Public Authorities and Designated Senior Officers) Regulations 2025
My Lords, it is a pleasure to be here today to bring forward these regulations, which are enabled by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, during the passage of which some nine years ago I recall sitting for many hours. The IPA provides a framework designed to protect the public by giving law enforceme…
My Lords, I will not detain noble Lords for long. I have three questions for the Minister. First, I want a little detail on the process that is undertaken by the department. Who triggers the review into which organisations have these powers, whether that is as a result of requests from organisations…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
1 July 2025
9 contributions
Migrants: Hotel Accommodation
I thank the Minister for that Answer and apologise for not being my noble friend Lord Evans. He has a contact who runs a series of hostels for backpackers, many of whom are young men who must, in the course of things, share facilities. But when my noble friend’s contact applied to the Home Office to…
The accommodation is not suitable for either the community or the asylum seekers. Given that there are two main ways in which the Government could improve this situation dramatically, can the noble Lord tell us how they are getting on with reducing the backlog of cases being heard, and whether they …
+7 more contributions in this session